Biden to meet George Floyd’s family on anniversary of his murder – live

Barack Obama reflected on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, saying he is hopeful about the progress he has seen over the past year to combat racism in America.

“George Floyd was murdered one year ago today. Since then, hundreds more Americans have died in encounters with police—parents, sons, daughters, friends taken from us far too soon. But the last year has also given us reasons to hope,” the former president said in a tweet thread.

Obama added, “Today, more people in more places are seeing the world more clearly than they did a year ago. It’s a tribute to all those who decided that this time would be different—and that they, in their own ways, would help make it different.

“When injustice runs deep, progress takes time. But if we can turn words into action and action into meaningful reform, we will, in the words of James Baldwin, ‘cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.’”

Obama’s words come as lawmakers continue to negotiate over the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House in March but has now stalled in the Senate.

Joe Biden, who will meet with Floyd’s family this afternoon, had originally said he hoped to sign the bill by today’s anniversary, but lawmakers have not yet reached a deal on the legislation.

Another member of the House Republican leadership team, conference chair Elise Stefanik, criticized Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comments about the Holocaust and coronavirus restrictions, although she did so without mentioning the extremist congresswoman’s name.

“Equating mask wearing and vaccines to the Holocaust belittles the most significant human atrocities ever committed. We must all work together to educate our fellow Americans on the unthinkable horrors of the Holocaust. #NeverAgain,” Stefanik said on Twitter.

Stefanik took over as conference chair earlier this month, after House Republicans ousted Liz Cheney over her criticism of Donald Trump and his lies about the presidential election.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer also condemned Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comments comparing the Holocaust to coronavirus-related restrictions.

In a floor speech this morning, Schumer, who is the first Jewish person to serve as Senate majority leader, described Greene’s comments as “sickening” and “reprehensible”.

“She should stop this vile language immediately,” Schumer said.

Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a House Republican who has repeatedly criticized minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s leadership in recent weeks, suggested Marjorie Taylor Greene should not be allowed to caucus with Republicans because of her “demented and dangerous” comparison between the Holocaust and coronavirus restrictions.

“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: while we cannot stop her from calling herself a Republican, we can and should refuse to let her caucus with the @HouseGOP,” Kinzinger said on Twitter.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has issued a statement condemning Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for comparing coronavirus-related restrictions to the suffering of Jewish people during the Holocaust.

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling. The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling,” the Republican leader said. “Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”

McCarthy’s statement comes four days after Greene, who has already been removed from her House committee assignments because of her extremist views, first made the comparison.

While appearing on Real America’s Voice network’s “The Water Cooler with David Brody,” Greene criticized House speaker Nancy Pelosi for continuing to enforce a mask mandate on the House floor because of the high number of members who have not yet been vaccinated.

“This woman is mentally ill,” Greene said of Pelosi. “You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens — so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

Greene’s comments sparked immediate outrage from members of both parties, who pointed out that the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people should not be compared to the health precautions that experts have recommended to limit the spread of a potentially deadly virus.

Joe Biden has previously indicated he was hoping to meet with Vladimir Putin during his trip to Europe next month, and the two presidents’ senior advisers have recently been ironing out the details of the summit.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan met this week with his Russian counterpart, Nikolay Patrushev, this week to discuss the potential meeting.

“The discussions were held in a constructive manner and, despite outstanding differences, allowed for a better understanding of each other’s positions,” the White House said in a statement about Sullivan and Patrushev’s meeting.

“The sides agreed that a normalization of U.S.-Russian relations would be in the interest of both countries and contribute to global predictability and stability.”

Joe Biden will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month in Geneva, Switzerland, the White House has just confirmed.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said in a statement, “President Biden will meet with President Putin in Geneva, Switzerland on June 16, 2021. The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues, as we seek to restore predictability and stability to the U.S.-Russia relationship.”

Biden’s meeting with Putin will take place shortly after he travels to Cornwall, England, for the G-7 summit. It will make the US president’s first in-person meeting with Putin since taking office in January.

Deborah Douglas, Angelique Chrisafis and Aamna Mohdin report for the Guardian:

George Floyd’s murder felt like everything was the same and nothing was the same, said Miski Noor, an activist in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed by a white police officer a year ago on 25 May.

“How many times have we seen Black death go viral?” asked Noor, the co-founder of Black Visions, which advocates for abolition, an approach to public safety that does not involve the police.

The high-profile murder of Floyd, who was pinned under the knee of a police officer for nine minutes and 29 seconds, captured the parallels between police violence against Black people across the globe, and evoked the deaths of Adama Traoré in France and Mark Duggan in the UK before him, even though the circumstances of the deaths differ.

And the execution reflected a common history of violence against Black people, from slavery to colonialism, that united protesters in a renewed global movement against the legacy of empire and its enduring racist symbols.

Since his death, those public images have rapidly come down – from the toppling of a statue honoring the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, England, to the official removal of the Confederate leader Jefferson Davis’s statue from the Kentucky state capitol.

This reclaiming of public history isn’t new, but Floyd’s death was the latest catalyst, said historian Robin DG Kelley. “There has been a continuous reckoning around public history and race,” said Kelley, Gary B Nash endowed chair in UShistory at the University of California, Los Angeles. “And it wasn’t his death but the presence of 26 million [protesters] and the fear it generated that compelled institutions to act.”

Philonise Floyd, one of the brothers of George Floyd who will meet with Joe Biden later today, said the murder of his brother continues to be “just devastating” for his family.

Speaking to CNN this morning, Floyd reflected on how his brother’s death has changed the country and the world in the past year.

“I think it’s moving slowly, but it’s making progress. I just want everything to be better in life, because I don’t want to see people dying the same way my brother has passed,” Floyd said.

He and his family’s attorney, civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, both expressed hope that Congress will soon pass a policing reform bill named in George Floyd’s honor. The Floyd family is meeting with some of the lawmakers working on the legislation later today.

Floyd told CNN, “When you see a police officer, you see somebody that you respect, somebody that’s out there serving America. And they [are] supposed to make sure that you are okay. But when an officer takes someone else’s life, to me, it’s not a mistake, because a mistake can be erased. You can’t get that person’s life back.”

Crump emphasized that Congress should not “squander” this opportunity to make meaningful change to policing in the US.

“America is finally having this conversation about racial reckoning, but that’s just talk if we don’t act. Now is the time to act,” Crump said. “Let’s do it in the name of George Floyd and all the others that have been taken from us unjustly by the very people who are supposed to protect and serve us.”

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Joe Biden will meet privately with the family of George Floyd today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his death. Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer last year, which sparked nationwide anti-racism protests.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said yesterday that Floyd’s daughter, Gianna, and several of his siblings will be among those in attendance.

“He wanted this meeting to be private in order to have a real conversation and preserve that with the family,” Psaki said. “He has a genuine relationship with them.”

The meeting also comes as Congress struggles to reach a bipartisan deal on the policing reform bill that is named in Floyd’s honor.

The House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, but a bipartisan team of lawmakers continues to negotiate over a version of the bill that can pass the evenly divided Senate.

The lawmakers said yesterday that they “remain optimistic” they can reach a deal, but Biden’s hopes of signing the bill by today’s anniversary have been dashed.

The blog will have more details on the meeting and the anniversary coming up, so stay tuned.