# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Democrats seem to have intentions of using the George Floyd tragedy for political gain, Hoover Institute senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson told " Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Wednesday.

"They see this as useful for a larger agenda that does not have public support," he said. "So whether it's open borders or reparations or redistribution or the end of the Second or First Amendment... It doesn't really matter. They want to use this crisis to indict all of America."

As a parallel, Hanson explained this wider majority of Americans consistently ask what can be done to fix the issues at hand. But for the left, it's "never going to be enough."
GLENN ELLMERS TELLS TUCKER CARLSON 'CONSERVATISM' IS NO LONGER ENOUGH: 'WHAT'S LEFT TO CONSERVE?'
According to Hanson, this deeply-driven movement has little to do with class warfare since it's driven by a majority of coastal White and Black elites like the Obama's or Oprah Winfrey.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"They know this existential problem," he said. "Why 7,000 African Americans are killing themselves in inner cities and they're poorly run and the schools are bad. And yet, they do not want to put their kids in the public schools. They do not want to get on the ground in a concrete fashion and say to people, 'Let's preserve the African nuclear family...' No, it's virtue signaling in the abstract."

"We've got to all talk bluntly about the Black family which is the key to restoring Black success and most of the elites know that in the Black community."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Victor Davis Hanson accuses Democrats of using George Floyd's death to 'indict all of America'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Democrats seem to have intentions of using the George Floyd tragedy for political gain, Hoover Institute senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson told " Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Wednesday. "They see this as useful for a larger agenda that does not have public support," he said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Image

When George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis last May, the case drew comparisons to the death of Eric Garner six years earlier in New York.

The two men uttered the same dying words to the police officers forcefully restraining them: "I can't breathe."

But in Mr. Garner's case, none of the officers who pinned him on a Staten Island sidewalk and placed him in a banned chokehold ever faced criminal charges. On Tuesday, Mr. Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, said she was glad to hear that Derek Chauvin had been convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.

"I am elated because, finally, we did get some justice," Ms. Carr said at a news conference in Manhattan after the verdict was announced in Minnesota.

A grand jury found that the officer who had placed Mr. Garner in the chokehold in July 2014 had not committed a crime. Federal prosecutors declined to bring civil rights charges. And it took the New York Police Department five years to fire the officer, Daniel Pantaleo. Only one other officer, Sergeant Kizzy Adonis, was disciplined.

Ms. Carr has spent the last six years speaking out against police misconduct. She stood beside Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2015 when he signed an executive order assigning a special prosecutor to investigate police killings of people who were unarmed. And she pushed for the successful repeal of a law shielding police disciplinary records. The police and city lawyers had invoked it to block her attempts to learn more about the case and the officers involved.

Ms. Carr attended Mr. Chauvin's murder trial and watched parts of it on television, but she said some moments were too intense to watch. She said she spoke with Mr. Floyd's family on Saturday, prayed for them and told them to expect a positive outcome.

"It was as if I was watching my son's trial," she said, although her son's case never made it to court. "But watching this, this gave me a glimmer of hope."

People in Minneapolis and other cities gathered in reaction to the verdict on Tuesday, describing it as a legal and symbolic victory honoring the life of George Floyd. Follow our visual coverage here.

[Follow live news coverage of Derek Chauvin's sentence hearing.]
The Minneapolis Police Department's initial inaccurate and misleading description of George Floyd's death last May "might have become the official account" of what took place, had it not been for video taken by a teenage bystander, Keith Boykin, a CNN commentator, wrote on Twitter.

The video, taken by Darnella Frazier, emerged the night of Mr. Floyd's death and drove much of the public's understanding of what took place. Chief Medaria Arradondo of the police department testified at Mr. Chauvin's trial that within hours of Mr. Floyd's death he received a text from a local resident telling him about the video.

Later, Chief Arradondo, who testified as a witness for the prosecution at Mr. Chauvin's trial, praised Ms. Frazier for her actions.

The murder trial of Derek Chauvin is at the center of a national reckoning on race and policing. But cycles of protests over systemic racism and policing are not new. We watched the trial with the families of Rodney King, Oscar Grant and Stephon Clark to see this moment in history through their eyes.

After the guilty verdict was announced Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Boykin and others on social media recirculated the police department's initial account of events. To many, it was further reason not to place full trust in the narratives offered by police officials, and underscored the need for independent video of police actions.

"Seriously, read it again knowing what we know," Jake Tapper, the CNN host, wrote on Twitter.

The initial news release, posted on the police department's website, is titled "Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction." It said Mr. Floyd, who was not identified by name, "physically resisted officers" on the scene who had ordered him out of his vehicle. "Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress," the release said.

The officers called for an ambulance and Mr. Floyd was taken to the Hennepin County Medical Center, where he died, it said.

Then, in a separate one-sentence paragraph, the department said, "At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident."

State officials were investigating the episode and body cameras had been activated, the release said. It also noted, "No officers were injured in the incident."

Ms. Frazier's video helped shatter that narrative, and showed Mr. Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd's neck for several minutes.

Police officials from major cities across the country, who usually support each other especially in times of crises, welcomed the verdict against a former member of their ranks.

Commissioner Dermot Shea of the New York Police Department, by far the largest in the country, said on Twitter, "Justice has been served." Superintendent Shaun Ferguson of the New Orleans Police Department said the verdict "is justice delivered."

Chief Troy Finner of the Houston Police Department said, "Sometimes justice takes a little while, but it's going to get there." He added, "If there is anybody in the city who wants to celebrate, we are going to be there with you." But, he said, "Do it the right way."

In Seattle, the police department said, "Mr. Floyd's murder was a watershed moment for this country" and added: "From that pain, though, real change has begun."

And in Oakland, Calif., the police department called for people to be "compassionate, empathic, and forgiving." It also said, "Together we will work towards rethinking policing in America."

Last year, Ray Kelly, who retired in 2013 after serving 12 years as the New York City police commissioner, told The Wall Street Journal, "This is the worst act of police brutality that I've seen."

Read more

Following the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, friends and family of George Floyd tearfully thanked the many lawyers, bystanders, jurors and protesters who they said helped to bring justice.

"Today, the tears are pure joy," Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Mr. Floyd's family, said at a Hilton hotel in downtown Minneapolis. "Pure joy and pure shock, because days like this don't happen."

Though the family celebrated the trial's outcome, they noted that police violence against Black Americans persists, and that their fight is not over.

Philonise Floyd, one of Mr. Floyd's younger brothers, drew a line from his brother back to Emmett Till, a Black child who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, and whom he called "the first George Floyd." He also noted the recent fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was killed just a few miles from the courtroom where Mr. Chauvin was on trial.

"We ought to always understand that we have to march," he said. "We will have to do this for life. We have to protest, because it seems like this is a never-ending cycle."

Other family members called for broader police reform and for the passage of federal legislation that would increase law enforcement accountability and eliminate discriminatory policing practices.

"We can't bring him back," said Tera Brown, one of Mr. Floyd's cousins, "but we can save lives. And we want the actual reform that's going to not only give us the change we want but make sure not another family has to suffer what we've suffered."

Mr. Floyd's brother Terrence Floyd recalled him as the person who taught him to be strong, to be respectful and to speak his mind, and said he will salute him every day.

"I will miss him, but now I know he's in history," he said.

Read more

[Follow live coverage of the Derek Chauvin sentence hearing.]
President Biden praised a guilty verdict in the murder trial of the former police officer Derek Chauvin, but called it a "too rare" step to deliver "basic accountability" for Black Americans who have been killed during interactions with the police.

"It was a murder in full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see," Mr. Biden said of the death of George Floyd, who died after Mr. Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, and whose death ignited nationwide protests. "For so many, it feels like it took all of that for the judicial system to deliver just basic accountability."

Mr. Biden delivered his remarks to the nation hours after taking the unusual step of weighing in on the trial's outcome before the jury had come back with a decision, and telling reporters that he had been "praying" for the "right verdict."

"This can be a giant step forward in the march toward justice in America," Mr. Biden said during his address.

Mr. Biden assumed the presidency during a national reckoning over race and has staked his political legacy around a promise to make racial equality, which includes an overhaul on policing, a central focus of his presidency. He has been outspoken about Mr. Floyd's death, calling it a "wake up call" for the nation.

In the wake of a series of recent police-involved shootings and other violent episodes that have taken place over the course of the trial, he has repeatedly called for Congress to pass an ambitious bill on policing reform, named for Mr. Floyd and co-authored by the vice president.

On Tuesday afternoon, the White House canceled an earlier speech Mr. Biden had planned to deliver on his infrastructure plan so that he could watch the verdict come in alongside Kamala Harris, the vice president, and a group of other aides in his private dining room just off the Oval Office.

The jury's deliberations had been closely tracked throughout the day: In the minutes before the verdict was delivered, White House aides were sprinting through the West Wing, phones in hand, and setting up a podium for Mr. Biden to deliver his remarks alongside Ms. Harris in Cross Hall. Just after the verdict was delivered the president was on the phone with members of Mr. Floyd's family.

"We're all so relieved," Mr. Biden said to a group of people who included Ben Crump, the Floyd family's attorney. "I'm anxious to see you guys, I really am. We're gonna do a lot and we're gonna stand until we get it done."

Ms. Harris, who spoke before Mr. Biden gave remarks, called for the passage of the bill that would overhaul how police officers engage people in minority communities.

"Here's the truth about racial injustice," Ms Harris said. "It is not just a Black America problem or a people of color problem. It is a problem for every American. It is keeping us from fulfilling the promise of liberty and justice for all, and it is holding our nation back from realizing our full potential."

Mr. Biden can trace his political success, in part, to how he responded to the nationwide protests that rose up in the wake of Mr. Floyd's death.

Last June, as his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, stoked tensions by tweet, calling the protests a result of the "radical left" and threatening to send in the National Guard, Mr. Biden traveled to Houston with his wife, Jill, to meet with Mr. Floyd's relatives.

The hour he spent with the Floyd family effectively created a split-screen with Mr. Trump that boosted his war chest and added momentum to his campaign.

"I won't fan the flames of hate," Mr. Biden said at the time. "I will seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued this country - not use them for political gain."

Read more

George Floyd had been dead only hours before the movement began. Driven by a terrifying video and word-of-mouth, people flooded the south Minneapolis intersection shortly after Memorial Day, demanding an end to police violence against Black Americans.

The moment of collective grief and anger swiftly gave way to a yearlong, nationwide deliberation on what it means to be Black in America.

First came protests, growing every day, until they turned into the largest mass protest movement in U.S. history. Nearly 170 Confederate symbols were renamed or removed from public spaces. The Black Lives Matter slogan was claimed by a nation grappling with the killing of Mr. Floyd and what that said about the country.

Over the next 11 months, calls for racial justice would touch seemingly every aspect of American life on a scale that historians say has not happened since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

On Tuesday, nearly a year later, Derek Chauvin, the white police officer charged with killing Mr. Floyd, was convicted of two counts of murder and manslaughter. The verdict brought a measure of relief and some solace to activists for racial justice who have been riveted to the courtroom drama for the past two weeks.

But for many Black Americans, real change feels elusive, particularly given how relentlessly the killing of Black men by the police has continued on, most recently of Daunte Wright just over a week ago.

There are also signs of backlash: Legislation that would reduce voting access, protect police, and effectively criminalize public protests, has sprung up in Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country.

Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said to call what has transpired over the past year a racial reckoning is not right.

"Reckoning suggests that we are truly struggling with how to reimagine everything from criminal justice to food deserts to health disparities - we are not doing that," he said. Tuesday's guilty verdict for Mr. Chauvin, he said, "is addressing a symptom, but we have not yet dealt with the disease."

Moments before the verdict was announced, Derrick Johnson, president of the N.A.A.C.P., called Floyd's death "a Selma, Alabama, moment for America."

What happened in Selma in 1965 "with the world watching demonstrated the need for the passage of the 1965 Voting Right Act," he said."What we witnessed last year with the killing of George Floyd should be the catalyst for broad reform in policing in this nation."

The entire arc of the Floyd case - from his death and the protests through the trial and conviction of Mr. Chauvin - played out against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which further focused Americans' attention on the nation's racial inequities: People of color were among those hardest hit by the virus and by the economic dislocation that followed. And for many, Mr. Floyd's death carried the weight of many racial episodes over the past decade, a list that includes the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor.

Read more

On the sidewalk in front of the county jail in downtown Portland, Ore., Cyncyrie Cruz got the long-awaited news of the Derek Chauvin verdict via a phone call from her boyfriend.

"What is it? Tell me," she said. She started pacing.

Guilty on all three charges.

Ms. Cruz put her fist in the air and chanted George Floyd's name. Down the road, about two dozen otherpeople cheered on the street corner. A woman driving down the street shouted out of her car window, "We did it."

The celebrations were echoed across the country.

"I feel elated," said Gurpreet Singh, 46, who went to Union Square Park in New York in anticipation of the verdict. While nothing can bring Mr. Floyd back to life, Mr. Singh said,"at least this one wrong has been righted."

A short distance away in Washington Square Park, Chris Peoples, 34, said, "Justice was served."

And in Minneapolis, where Mr. Chauvin killed Mr. Floyd, it "felt like a weight was just lifted off the city's shoulder," said August Schutz, 22. "It was almost like you could hear a sigh of relief everywhere in the city."

At the same time, one celebrant after another emphasized that this was a verdict against just one man, and that a larger struggle for racial justice and against police brutality lay ahead.

"Things have changed," Mel Packer, 76, said amid a small but building crowd at Pittsburgh's Freedom Corner, tearfully recalling his time hitchhiking across the segregated South in the 1960s.

But "it's not enough," Mr. Packer, who is white, said. "Without massive police reform, it's not enough."

Tifanny Burks, 28, who is Black and organized protests in South Florida last summer with the Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward, described the verdict as "a sign, a beacon of hope that we're heading in the right direction," but called for much more systemic change, including defunding the police.

"My hope and my wish is that this verdict actually leads more people to abolition, to knowing that there's another way and that we don't have to have policing as we know it," Ms. Burks said. "The guilty on all three charges is not going to do it."

Tyson Joyner, a 44-year-old from Scranton, Pa., said at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington that the verdict represented a kind of progress but was also bittersweet.

"Today we're not as sad," said Mr. Joyner, who is Black. "But we're not going take this verdict and make it seem like everything is kumbaya and everything's done."

Reporting was contributed by Mike Baker from Portland, Ore.; Hailey Fuchs from Washington; Patricia Mazzei from Miami; Sarah Maslin Nir and Anushka Patil from New York; Bryan Pietsch from Denver; and Campbell Robertson from Pittsburgh.

Read more

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the lead prosecutor in the state's case against Derek Chauvin, said during a news conference on Tuesday that "this is not the end," and that his office expects to present another case this summer.

Mr. Ellison did not elaborate on the other case, but three other officers who were with Mr. Chauvin during the arrest face aiding and abetting charges and are scheduled to be tried together in August. At George Floyd Square, a crowd chanted "One down, three to go" after the verdict was read, in reference to the other three officers.

The guilty verdict on all three counts - second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter - is a major victory for Mr. Ellison and his team, who brought 35 witnesses to the stand over three weeks of emotionally grueling testimony. The case was one of the most high-profile in decades, and their successful plea to the jury, "Believe your eyes," has further illustrated the power of video evidence in cases of police brutality.

Mr. Ellison praised the witnesses who testified during the trial - ranging from the chief of the Minneapolis Police Department to a 9-year-old girl who witnessed the arrest - many of whom condemned Mr. Chauvin's actions during their testimony.

"We put everything we had into this prosecution," he said. "We presented the best case that we could, and the jury heard us, and we're grateful for that."

Alongside Mr. Ellison were some of the prosecutors who presented the case at trial. Matthew Frank, an assistant attorney general for Minnesota, appeared to choke back tears as he thanked George Floyd's family. "This is for you, George Floyd, and for your family and friends," he said.

Jerry W. Blackwell, a prosecutor who presented evidence during trial and gave the rebuttal argument against the defense on Monday, also thanked the prosecution team, saying they had the courage and passion to "get into good trouble" by taking on this case.

"They stepped into the light and they shined," he said. "No verdict can bring George Perry Floyd back to us, but this verdict does give a message to his family that he was somebody, that his life mattered, that all of our lives matter, and that's important."

Read more

[Follow live news coverage of the Derek Chauvin sentence hearing.]
The jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of all three counts he was facing - second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter - for the same crime: pinning George Floyd's neck to the asphalt with his knee until he stopped breathing.

When juries can choose among different counts and instead pick "all of the above," it raises questions of how one act can meet the definition of three separate crimes. In this case, Mr. Chauvin was found guilty of:

1) causing the death of a human being, without intent, while committing or attempting to commit an assault (second-degree murder);

2) unintentionally causing a death by committing an act that is eminently dangerous to other persons while exhibiting a depraved mind, with reckless disregard for human life (third-degree murder);

3) and creating an unreasonable risk, by consciously taking the chance of causing death or great bodily harm to someone else (manslaughter).

Neither murder charge required the jury to find that Mr. Chavin intended to kill Mr. Floyd. Nor did the manslaughter charge. So the jury could have determined a state of mind for Mr. Chauvin (the legal term of art is "mens rea") that would cover all three charges.

The separate acts the jury had to find Mr. Chauvin committed also seem compatible with one another. To streamline the language a bit, "committing an assault" and "committing an act that is eminently dangerous to other persons" and "creating an unreasonable risk" can all go together.

In fact, "eminently dangerous" is a synonym for unreasonably risky. And both coexist easily with committing an assault.

An appeals court could disagree with this analysis and throw out one or more of the counts.

Whether that affects Mr. Chauvin's sentence depends on how Judge Peter A. Cahill parses it. Because Mr. Chauvin has no criminal history, he would receive a 12.5-year sentence for the top charge if the judge followed Minnesota's sentencing guidelines. The maximum charge for second-degree murder, however, is 40 years.

Read more

Derek Chauvin's murder conviction on Tuesday in the killing of George Floyd brought a flood of emotion from the streets of Minneapolis to the halls of Congress, tempered with exhortations not to view the verdict as a victory against systemic racism.

The mood seemed to be summed up in a statement from former President Barack Obama: "Today, a jury did the right thing. But true justice requires much more."

Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., spoke of Mr. Floyd's young daughter, Gianna, and called for an end to qualified immunity, which shields police officers from lawsuits in which they are accused of violating people's constitutional rights.

"While justice has landed Derek Chauvin behind bars for murdering George Floyd, no amount of justice will bring back Gianna's father," Mr. Johnson said. "The same way a reasonable police officer would never suffocate an unarmed man to death, a reasonable justice system would recognize its roots in white supremacy and end qualified immunity. Police are here to protect, not lynch."

Karissa Lewis, national field director of the Movement for Black Lives, said in a statement that the verdict "doesn't fix an irredeemable, racist system of policing rooted in white supremacy."

"Minnesota police couldn't even go the full length of the trial without taking the life of another Black person, and now we're grieving for Daunte Wright just as we continue to grieve for George Floyd," Ms. Lewis said. "This repeat cycle of police killings, trials and no real substantive systemic change has to stop. Now is the time for a complete reimagining of public safety in the United States, so that no more fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, children, siblings or loved ones are lost to the hands of state violence."

Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who is the first Black person to represent Georgia in the Senate, told reporters on Capitol Hill, "Hopefully this is the beginning of a turning point in our country, where - " he paused for several seconds before continuing - "people who have seen this trauma over and over again will know that we have equal protection under the law."

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus renewed their push, begun in the wake of Mr. Floyd's death last May, for expansive federal changes to policing. Their bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would make it easier to prosecute officers for wrongdoing, add new restrictions on the use of deadly force and effectively ban chokeholds. It passed the House but has languished in the Senate.

"Today I am relieved, today I exhale, but today just marks the beginning of a new phase of a long struggle to bring justice in America," said Representative Karen Bass, Democrat of California, who is the bill's primary author.

Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina and the author of a narrower proposal that Republicans made last year and Democrats blocked, has been quietly negotiating with Ms. Bass and other Democrats for weeks. He said on Tuesday that he was "cautiously optimistic we'll find a path forward."

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said that Americans "should not mistake a guilty verdict in this case as evidence that the persistent problem of police misconduct has been solved, or that the divide between law enforcement and so many of the communities they serve has been bridged," and he said that the Senate would continue to work toward that end.

But even amid the emphasis on the verdict's limits, Bernice King, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., invoked her father's famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

"Today it bent toward justice," she wrote on Twitter, "thanks to the millions of people under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter standing up, speaking up and not letting up for humanity."

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Emily Cochrane, Nicholas Fandos and Azi Paybarah contributed reporting.

Read more

Months before the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who was convicted of killing George Floyd, millions of people around the world watched footage of Mr. Floyd's death that had been recorded by a teenage witness.

Darnella Frazier was 17 when she recorded the cellphone video and uploaded it to Facebook in May, igniting international protests over racism and police abuse.

Ms. Frazier, now 18, was among the first witnesses called to testify by the prosecution. She said in court that she felt regret for not physically engaging the four officers at the scene, but that they were the ones ultimately at fault.

"It's been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life," Ms. Frazier said. She added, seemingly referring to Mr. Chauvin, "But it's like, it's not what I should have done, it's what he should have done."

Ms. Frazier has largely stayed out of the spotlight since Mr. Floyd's death, but she said his death has haunted her and that she has anxiety. Her voice was emotional on the stand and she cried several times during her testimony, which was off-camera.

"When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles, because they're all Black," Ms. Frazier said. "I have a Black father. I have a Black brother. I have Black friends.

She added: "I look at how that could have been one of them."

On the day of Mr. Floyd's death, Ms. Frazier said, she had been walking to the Cup Foods convenience store with her 9-year-old cousin to get some snacks when they came upon the arrest.

"I see a man on the ground, and I see a cop kneeling down on him," Ms. Frazier said. She described seeing Mr. Floyd "terrified, scared, begging for his life."

Ms. Frazier said that as a crowd of bystanders yelled more loudly at the officers, Mr. Chauvin reached for his mace. "I felt in danger when he did that," she said.

She made one of her first public comments last month, as the jury was being selected, when she wrote on Facebook and Instagram that Mr. Chauvin "deserves to go down" and wondered openly "what else got covered up if it was no evidence to see what really happened."

Read more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Derek Chauvin Trial: Chauvin Found Guilty of Murdering George Floyd

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis last May, the case drew comparisons to the death of Eric Garner six years earlier in New York. The two men uttered the same dying words to the police officers forcefully restraining them: "I can't breathe."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
the law delivered justice to george floyd. america's political leaders are up next - cnnpolitics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Analysis: The law delivered justice to George Floyd. America's political leaders are up next

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The conviction of Derek Chauvin showed George Floyd's life really did matter to a justice system on trial.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
May 26 - Police issue a statement saying Floyd died after a "medical incident," and that he physically resisted and appeared to be in medical distress. Minutes later, bystander video is posted online. Police release another statement saying the FBI will help investigate. Chauvin and three other officers - Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao - are fired. Protests begin.

May 27 - Mayor Jacob Frey calls for criminal charges against Chauvin. Protests lead to unrest in Minneapolis, with some people looting and starting fires. Protests spread to other cities.

May 28 - Gov. Tim Walz activates the Minnesota National Guard. Police abandon the 3rd Precinct station as protesters overtake it and set it on fire.

May 29 - Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. President Donald Trump tweets about "thugs" in Minneapolis protests and warns: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." Protests turn violent again in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

May 30 - Trump tries to walk back his tweet. Protests continue nationwide and some turn violent.

May 31 - Walz says Attorney General Keith Ellison will lead prosecutions in Floyd's death. The nationwide protests continue.

June 1 - The county medical examiner finds that Floyd's heart stopped as police restrained him and compressed his neck, noting Floyd had underlying health issues and listing fentanyl and methamphetamine use as "other significant conditions."

June 2 - Minnesota's Department of Human Rights launches a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department.

June 3 - Ellison files a tougher second-degree murder charge against Chauvin and charges the other three officers who were involved in Floyd's arrest.

June 4 - A funeral service for Floyd is held in Minneapolis.

June 5 - Minneapolis bans chokeholds by police, the first of many changes to be announced in coming months, including an overhaul of the police department's use-of-force policy.

June 6 - Massive, peaceful protests happen nationwide to demand police reform. Services are held for Floyd in Raeford, North Carolina, near his birthplace.

June 7 - A majority of Minneapolis City Council members say they support dismantling the police department. The idea later stalls but sparks a national debate over police reform.

June 8 - Thousands pay their respects to Floyd in Houston, where he grew up. He's buried the next day.

June 10 - Floyd's brother testifies before the House Judiciary Committee for police accountability.

June 16 - Trump signs an executive order to encourage better police practices and establish a database to track officers with excessive use-of-force complaints.

July 15 - Floyd's family sues Minneapolis and the four former officers.

July 21 - The Minnesota Legislature passes a broad slate of police accountability measures that includes bans on neck restraints, chokeholds and so-called warrior-style training.

Oct. 7 - Chauvin posts $1 million bond and is released from state prison, sparking more protests.

Nov. 5 - Judge Peter Cahill rejects defense requests to move the officers' trials.

Jan. 12 - Cahill rules Chauvin will be tried alone due to courtroom capacity issues. The other officers will be tried in August.

Feb. 12 - City leaders say George Floyd Square, the intersection blocked by barricades since Floyd's death, will reopen to traffic after Chauvin's trial.

March 9 - The first potential jurors are questioned for Chauvin's trial after a day's delay for pretrial motions.

March 12 - Minneapolis agrees to pay $27 million settlement to Floyd family.

March 19 - Judge declines to delay or move the trial over concerns that the settlement could taint the jury pool.

March 23 - Jury selection completed with 12 jurors and three alternates.

March 29 - Opening statements are given.

April 11 - Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, is fatally shot by a white police officer during a traffic stop in suburban Brooklyn Center, sparking successive days of protest.

April 12 - Judge declines request to sequester Chauvin jury immediately due to Wright shooting.

April 15 - Testimony ends.

April 19 - Closing arguments. Jury begins deliberations.

April 20 - Jury finds Chauvin guilty on a second-degree unintentional murder charge, guilty on a third-degree murder charge, and guilty on a second-degree manslaughter charge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A timeline of events since George Floyd's arrest and death - The Boston Globe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
May 26 - Police issue a statement saying Floyd died after a "medical incident," and that he physically resisted and appeared to be in medical distress. Minutes later, bystander video is posted online. Police release another statement saying the FBI will help investigate. Chauvin and three other officers - Thomas Lane, J.