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Protesters are changing their tone – if not their demands – as polls show that President Trump has a tough road ahead. It is Thursday and this is your political tip.
Where things are
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All four officers involved in George Floyd’s death last week have now been charged – and Derek Chauvin, the policeman who stuck his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, even after Floyd had stopped responding, faces increased charges of second-degree murder. These announcements were made yesterday by Keith Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota, who took over the case from Hennepin County’s attorney this week. But with protests across the country that continue to draw the nation’s attention – and on the whole his sympathies – It remains unclear whether a single development in the Floyd case will change a movement that represents a widespread demand for systemic changes.
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Demonstrators held vigils in memory of Floyd in cities nationwide take on a new, somber tone on Wednesday, but do little to reassure their demands. Hundreds of protesters in New York sat in silence in front of the mayor’s house for about 30 minutes. In Washington, about 700 members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had been deployed to nearby bases, according to the Associated Press report, but their services were not needed: The city’s largest Floyd protest to date drew thousands to the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon and evening with few incidents. Later that night, in these cities and others, smaller but still impressive groups gathered to watch the curfews on site and insisted on a strategy of civil disobedience against police brutality.
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Next to scenes of demonstrators raising their fists in greeting, Statues have fallen. In Philadelphia, a resemblance to Frank Rizzo – the former chief of police and mayor, who was often accused of wrongfully attacking African Americans – finally came to a standstill after the demonstrators disfigured her. The Virginia governor said he would remove a statue of Robert E. Lee in downtown Richmond. And in Birmingham, Ala., The Democratic Mayor has agreed to dismantle a Confederate memorial despite the state’s Republican Attorney General threatening to sue. (A statue of a Confederate officer in a nearby park has already bitten the dust: protesters in Birmingham scraped it to the ground at the weekend.)
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Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly rejected President Trump’s proposal relying on the Uprising Act, which would allow the President to send active military troops to cities Battle protests. “The option to deploy law enforcement officers as law enforcement officers should only be used as a last resort and only in the most pressing and dire situations.” Esper said yesterday. “We are not in one of these situations now. I do not support the appeal to the Insurrection Act. “
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Hours later, Esper’s predecessor, James Mattis, who resigned as Minister of Defense in 2018 issued his most public verdict on the President to date. Mattis called himself “angry and horrified” about the events and said Trump was “the first president in my life who doesn’t try to unite the American people – he doesn’t even pretend to try”. Espers and Mattis’ voices joined an uprising Choir by current and former officials of the military and the C.I.A. who publicly criticized Trump’s escalating threats against protesters.
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Snapchat announced yesterday that it would no longer promote Trump’s messages on his Discover homepage, the latest hint that he will face a new exam level of online platforms this campaign season. A week ago, Twitter posted warning signs on some of Trump’s brand tweets for the first time. A Times review of the 139 tweets sent by the president Over a week in May, it turned out that every third message contained false statements or questionable allegations. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has refused to restrict advertising for Trump’s messages, but this decision has been largely criticized by Facebook employees, some of whom staged a virtual one leave On Monday. Former employees wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg this week, calling his decision “cowardly”.
Protesters gathered outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Wednesday to demonstrate racism and police violence again.
Trump faces an increasingly threatening election card.
The Floyd protests were not friendly to Trump in public opinion.
While he saw the urban uprisings as an opportunity to exercise his powers as commander-in-chief, various polls released this week have shown that most Americans say they see where the protesters are from.
Polls also show that from day one, most Americans doubted the president’s ability to deal with racial affairs – and You are now no longer confident in him.
None of that is a good sign for Trump when he looks forward to a hard-fought re-election campaign. In several national Survey Released this week, he followed Joe Biden in double digits.
And in key battlefield countries – some of which were only republican in 2016 – Trump shows signs of vulnerability.
A Quinnipiac University survey of Texas, released yesterday, found Biden and Trump neck and neck in a state that has not been democratically elected president since the 1970s. This was largely due to the decline in Trump’s support from white college graduates. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by two to one among these voters in 2016 End polls;; In the Quinnipiac poll, he and Biden were statistically bound among educated white voters.
The results are remarkable, but not an aberration. In most Texas presidential election In this cycle, the difference in support between Trump and Biden was within the margin of error.
Fox News released surveys from three other states Trump won in 2016: Arizona, Wisconsin and Ohio. In any case, the results were forbidden to the president. Biden led with nine percentage points among registered voters in Wisconsin and four points in Arizona. Arizona Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly was also 13 points ahead of Republican incumbent Martha McSally.
Until recently, most political observers viewed Ohio as a fairly safe area for Trump. But the Fox poll there found that Biden, at 45 percent, is Trump’s 43 percent.
Biden supported voters in each of the three states surveyed by Fox who expressed strong interest in the election.
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