George Floyd

Oct. 28 (UPI) — A statue of a Confederate general toppled amid the civil rights protests that swept across the country during the summer of 2020 has been reinstalled in Washington, D.C.’s Judiciary Square.

The 27-foot bronze and marble statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike was reportedly returned to the square on Saturday.

It had been removed after protesters toppled the statue, the only one honoring a Confederate general in the nation’s capital, in June 2020 amid Black Lives Matter protests demanding an end to police brutality and racial injustice after the murder of George Floyd by a White police officer.

In August, the National Park Service announced that it would be restored in alignment “with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and reinstate pre-existing statues.”

While the NPS says the statue honors Pike’s “leadership in Freemasonry,” critics deride its return as the man fought against the United States in the Civil War.

“The morally objectionable move is an affront to the mostly Black and Brown residents of the District of Columbia and offensive to members of the military who serve honorably,” Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said in a statement.

“Pike represents the worst of the Confederacy and has no claim to be memorialized in the nation’s capital.”

WASHINGTON — The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, three people familiar with the matter said.

The bureau last spring had reassigned the agents but has since fired them, said the people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel matters with the Associated Press. The number of FBI employees terminated was not immediately clear, but two people said it was roughly 20.

The photographs at issue showed a group of agents taking the knee during one of the demonstrations after the May 2020 killing of Floyd, a death that led to a national reckoning over policing and racial injustice and sparked widespread anger after millions of people saw video of the arrest. The kneeling had angered some in the FBI but was also understood as a possible deescalation tactic during a period of protests.

The FBI Agents Assn. confirmed in a statement late Friday that more than a dozen agents had been fired, including military veterans with additional statutory protections, and condemned the move as unlawful. It called on Congress to investigate and said the firings were another indication of FBI Director Kash Patel’s disregard for the legal rights of bureau employees.

“As Director Patel has repeatedly stated, nobody is above the law,” the agents association said. “But rather than providing these agents with fair treatment and due process, Patel chose to again violate the law by ignoring these agents’ constitutional and legal rights instead of following the requisite process.”

An FBI spokesman declined to comment Friday.

The firings come amid a broader personnel purge at the bureau as Patel works to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

Five agents and top-level executives were known to have been summarily fired last month in a wave of ousters that current and former officials say has contributed to declining morale.

One of those, Steve Jensen, helped oversee investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Another, Brian Driscoll, served as acting FBI director in the early days of the second Trump administration and resisted Justice Department demands to supply the names of agents who investigated Jan. 6.

A third, Chris Meyer, was incorrectly rumored on social media to have participated in the investigation into President Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. A fourth, Walter Giardina, participated in high-profile investigations like the one of Trump advisor Peter Navarro.

A lawsuit filed by Jensen, Driscoll and another fired FBI supervisor, Spencer Evans, alleged that Patel communicated that he understood that it was “likely illegal” to fire agents based on cases they worked but was powerless to stop it because the White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all agents who investigated Trump.

Patel denied at a congressional hearing last week taking orders from the White House on whom to fire and said anyone who has been fired failed to meet the FBI’s standards.

Trump, who was twice impeached and is the only U.S. president with a felony conviction, was indicted on multiple criminal charges in two felony cases. Both cases were dismissed after he was elected, following long-standing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

July 20 (UPI) — The Minneapolis mayor during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests has lost the backing of the Democratic party to a Somali-American after a contested vote by members of the party.

Omar Fateh, 35, a state Senator, won the mayoral endorsement over Jacob Frey, who has held the office since 2018.

Fateh is the first Somali-American to serve in the state legislature since 2018 and received 60% of the delegates at the Minneapolis DFL convention Saturday, despite complaints from the Frey campaign about the election process.

Frey took issue with electronic balloting at the convention, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and said he would appeal the vote.

“This election should be decided by the entire city rather than the small group of people who became delegates, particularly in light of the extremely flawed and irregular conduct of this convention,” Frey’s campaign manager office said in a statement. “Voters will now have a clear choice between the records and leadership of Sen. Fateh and Mayor Frey. We look forward to taking our vision to the voters in November.”

Frey was elected mayor in 2017 and again in 2021, and was in charge of Minneapolis during the 2020 BLM riots after George Floyd died at the hands of a white police officer.

June 10 (UPI) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sparred with Democrats on Capitol Hill on Tuesday over the decision to send 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops into Los Angeles as some protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids turned violent.

Hegseth, a former National Guardsman, testified before the House Appropriations subcommittee, where he defended the decision to deploy troops and the role of ICE.

“We ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country,” Hegseth testified. “I think we’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”

“In Los Angeles, we believed ICE had the right to safely conduct operations,” Hegseth added. “We deployed National Guard and the Marines to protect them.”

Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., asked Hegseth why he was sending “war fighters to cities to interact with civilians?”

“ICE agents need to be able to do their job,” Hegseth responded. “They are being attacked for doing their job, which is deporting illegal criminals. The governor of California has failed to protect his people, along with the mayor of Los Angeles. And so President Trump has said he will protect our agents and our Guard and Marines.”

Aguilar fired back against Hegseth’s answer and said, “The law also says Mr. Secretary that the orders for these purposes shall be issued through governors of the states.”

Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota also sparred with Hegseth about the cost of deploying the National Guard and Marines, and whether their absence would impact trainings in other parts of the country.

The two talked over each other repeatedly as Hegseth referenced the George Floyd murder protests and accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of “abandoning a police precinct” in 2020.

“We’re both from Minnesota. I was in the Twin Cities during the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets for days,” said McCollum. “At no point did we need Marines to be deployed. This is a deeply unfair position to put our Marines in. Their service should be honored. It should not be exploited.”

“You are right,” Hegseth testified. “We are both originally from Minnesota. Which is why I recall 2020 quite well, when Gov. Walz abandoned a police precinct and allowed it to be burned to the ground — and also allowed five days of chaos to occur inside the streets of Minneapolis.”

“We believe that ICE has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country,” Hegseth continued. “Especially after 21 million illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration. ICE should be able to do their job.”

“Chairman, I have limited time,” McCollum declared. “I asked a budget question.”

After repeated questioning about the budget by several committee members, Hegseth finally gave an answer.

“We have a 13% increase in our defense budget and we will have the capability to cover contingencies, which is something the National Guard and the Marines plan for. So we have the funding to cover contingencies, especially ones as important as maintaining law and order in a major American city,” Hegseth testified.

During the hearing, Hegseth was also questioned about spending cuts to foreign aid programs, including USAID, and staffing cuts at the Defense Department, to which he argued the administration is reducing any program considered “wasteful and duplicitous.”

MINNEAPOLIS — Police reform and civil rights activists joined thousands of other people Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder at religious services, concerts and vigils nationwide and decry the Trump administration for setting their efforts back decades.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said at a Houston graveside service that Floyd represented all of those “who are defenseless against people who thought they could put their knee on our neck.”

He compared Floyd’s killing to that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman.

“What Emmett Till was in his time, George Floyd has been for this time in history,” Sharpton said.

In a park about 2 miles away from Floyd’s grave site, a memorial service was set to take place, followed by five hours of music, preaching, poetry readings and a balloon release.

Events started Friday in Minneapolis with concerts, a street festival and a “self-care fair,” and were to culminate with a worship service, gospel music concert and candlelight vigil on Sunday.

The remembrances come at a fraught moment for activists, who had hoped the worldwide protests that followed Floyd’s murder by police on May 25, 2020, would lead to lasting police reform across the U.S. and a continued focus on racial justice issues.

Events in Minneapolis center around George Floyd Square, the intersection where Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, used his knee to pin Floyd’s neck to the pavement for about 9½ minutes, even as the 46-year-old Black man’s cried, “I can’t breathe.” Even with Minneapolis officials’ promises to remake the Police Department, some activists contend that the progress has come at a glacial pace.

“We understand that change takes time,” Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, said in a statement last week. “However, the progress being claimed by the city is not being felt in the streets.”

The Trump administration moved Wednesday to cancel settlements with Minneapolis and Louisville that called for an overhaul of their police departments following Floyd’s murder and the police killing of Breonna Taylor. Under former President Biden, the U.S. Justice Department had pushed for oversight of local police it had accused of widespread abuses.

President Trump has also declared an end to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within the federal government, and his administration is using federal funds as leverage to force local governments, universities and public school districts to do the same. Republican-led states also have accelerated their efforts to stamp out DEI initiatives.

Vancleave and Lafleur write for the Associated Press and reported from Minneapolis and Houston, respectively.