The Morning: Five years after Floyd
Good morning. Trump hosted an "exclusive" crypto dinner. The government said it would halt Harvard's ability to enroll international students, causing confusion. Some aid deliveries have started to reach Gazans. More news is below. But first, German Lopez looks at what has changed in the five years since George Floyd's murder.
George Floyd's legacy
Five years ago this Sunday, Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. His murder set off protests and riots across the country. Demonstrators called for sweeping changes to policing and remedies for what they described as systemic racism in law enforcement. How much has changed? Nationwide, surprisingly little. States and cities enacted new policies aimed at improving policing, but the data suggests that these changes have had little impact on accountability or the number of killings by police officers. The changesAfter Floyd's murder, states and police departments banned chokeholds and no-knock warrants. They mandated body cameras. They rewrote guidelines about how to de-escalate a confrontation with a suspect. They educated officers about racial profiling. And more. The changes weren't universal, and some places did more than others. But every state passed at least some changes. In a few cities, the federal government intervened. It investigated and publicized police abuses, pressuring local governments into court-enforced consent decrees. These pacts forced police departments to make specific changes and let federal officials and court monitors track how the policies worked over time. Freddie Gray died in 2015 after a "rough ride" while in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department; a consent decree mandated that the city's police drivers follow the speed limit and provide functioning seatbelts when transporting detainees. At least, that's how consent decrees used to function. This week, the Trump administration dropped efforts to investigate or oversee nearly two dozen police departments. Meanwhile, killings by police officers rose from just over 1,000 in 2019 to around 1,200 in 2024.
Officers killed Black Americans at nearly three times the rate that they killed white Americans, roughly the same proportion as before. And the number of prosecutions for police shootings has not changed since Floyd's death, said Philip Stinson, a criminologist who tracks such cases. In 2015, prosecutors charged 18 officers with murder or manslaughter after an on-duty shooting. Last year, they charged 16 officers. In both years, less than 2 percent of fatal police shootings led to indictments. Waning interestSo why didn't much change? Experts cite two reasons. First, lawmakers did not embrace all the proposed changes. Ohio, Minnesota and Missouri, for example, rejected more than 98 percent of the proposals that came before their legislatures, according to the Brookings Institution. A bipartisan effort in Congress also collapsed. Second, to the extent lawmakers acted, the changes didn't go far enough to transform the nature of American policing. Then the murder rate rose in 2020 and 2021, and public sentiment shifted. Voters wanted the police to focus on crime. Attention to reform faded. Some experts point to deeper problems. Racial disparities in police killings are partly caused by officers' prejudices, but higher crime rates in poorer minority communities also mean these places are more likely to get police attention, both good and bad. Addressing those levels of crime and its root causes, such as poverty, will require more than tweaking department guidelines and training.
The Trump Administration
Trump vs. Harvard
Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversees student visas. It vets international students and certifies universities that participate in the student visa program. Federal regulations allow the agency to revoke a school's certification for a range of reasons, including a failure to comply with reporting requirements. And that's what the government now alleges: that Harvard has not answered its request for student data. Harvard says it's illegal to hand over the information that government officials seek.
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Here's a game we run from time to time. The question comes from a recent edition of The Morning. Click your answer to see if you're right. (The link will be free.) The Times obtained Pope Leo's doctoral dissertation, which he submitted in 1987 to the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. It was about:
John Eligon, who covers South Africa for The Times, was in the Oval Office during Wednesday's confrontation between Trump and the country's president, Cyril Ramaphosa. He looks at what the meeting revealed about the state of diplomacy: Meeting with the president of the United States used to be a triumph for world leaders — a chance to win opportunities from the world's largest economy and protection from its mightiest military. But in the Trump era, it has become a gamble. Keir Starmer of Britain played it well, praising the president, staying on his good side and inching toward trade deals he signed this month. Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, on the other hand, got a tongue lashing from Trump on live TV. When Ramaphosa of South Africa took his turn in the hot seat on Wednesday, he hoped to defuse tensions between the two nations. Trump had repeatedly accused Ramaphosa's government of supporting "white genocide" because he believed, without evidence, that white farmers were being killed en masse. In the days leading up to the encounter, South African officials predicted that Ramaphosa would be able to change the subject. He'd focus on trade and entice Trump with an economic offer — involving South Africa's minerals — that the president could not refuse. Trump had other ideas. He dimmed the lights in the Oval Office and played a video montage he said supported his claims. He presented newspaper articles that he said were about killings. He left Ramaphosa and his delegation squirming in a made-for-TV spectacle. It was also a message for other world leaders: Trump is in control. It's his show. Come at your own risk.
In an effort to increase deportations, the Trump administration has moved to end Biden-era programs that shielded undocumented immigrants. It wants to remove those who entered the country with an appointment they made on a government app; those from four troubled countries who were permitted to enter and work for up to two years; and some with Temporary Protected Status, a designation for people from certain countries going through extreme conditions. Read more about who is affected.
Republicans' big domestic policy bill is a Medicaid cut that denies health care to millions of Americans, the Editorial Board writes. Vice President JD Vance sat for an interview with The Times's Ross Douthat. They discussed Trump's deportations, the tariff backlash and how Vance's faith influences his politics. Click video below to see their discussion.
Blast away: Enthusiasts have made the 1993 video game Doom playable on almost any screen, including ones on treadmills and pregnancy tests. You can even play it in this article. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday asked: "My husband had an affair, and I divorced him. Should our kids know why?" Lives Lived: Judith Hope Blau turned bagels — lots of them — into works of art. And her accidental detour into bagel necklaces, napkin rings, wreaths and candleholders led to a long and successful career as a children's book author and illustrator and a toy designer. She died at 87.
N.B.A.: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Oklahoma City Thunder to a 118-103 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. The team took a 2-0 series lead in the Western Conference finals. Hockey: In a major upset, Denmark beat Canada 2-1 in a comeback victory in the men's hockey World Championship.
People are worried about what tiny particles of plastic are doing to our bodies. The bits are in our air, soil, water and food, where we consume them. Read what you can do to avoid exposure:
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