Fired Up and Ready to Nap for the Youths

By Ashley Reese  |  May 27, 2020 | 9:57pm
NewsPolitics
Fired Up and Ready to Nap for the Youths
Image:AP

Joe Biden hasn’t quite won over America’s Millennials and Zoomers. In fact, Biden is reportedly fairing worse than Hillary Clinton with the under-40 set: His lead among 18 to 34-year-olds is narrower than Clinton’s was to President Trump during the last stretch of the 2016 election cycle. But no need to fear! The Biden campaign has a secret weapon: Uh… some panels with former South Bend, Indiana mayor and failed Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

Buzzfeed News reports that the Biden campaign wants to win over young voters with a new initiative they like to call League 46, a “the coalition of young people that will make Joe Biden the 46th president.” League 46 will be led by Symone Sanders, one of Biden’s senior advisors who doubles as Biden’s bodyguard. Though a millennial herself, there appears to be some disconnect between the people the Biden camp chose to energize the youths and the people the youths actually know and like. Andrew Yang has done some work for the campaign, but is not yet slotted to participate in the League 46 initiative, despite the fact that he had plenty of Millennial appeal. Will League 46 include Bernie Sanders, the candidate that young voters overwhelmingly supported in the primary? I don’t know, but Buzzfeed reports that young voters can expect the following:

Among the events planned for this week is the kickoff of a young professionals finance council, featuring an online conversation Sanders will moderate with Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was a top contender for this year’s Democratic nomination.

Considering the fact that even Buttigieg seemed to accept his minimal appeal with younger voters, perhaps he’s not the guy the Biden camp should use to promote this new push. But hey, maybe Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez is busy this week.

The mayor of Minneapolis is calling for the arrest of the white police officer who knelt on the neck of a black man he was restraining, who later died at a local hospital.

A viral video depicting the man identified as George Floyd gasping and pleading for air prompted protests in the city, and outrage across the nation. Four officers, including in the incident—Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng—have been fired, but USA Today reports that Mayor Jacob Frey believes more punitive measures must be doled out.

From USA Today:

“Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a press conference Wednesday. “If you had done it, or I had done it, we would be behind bars right now.”
The mayor did not specify what the charge should be but said that his determination was based on video of the incident.
The horrifying video spread quickly on social media Tuesday, showing the officer driving his knee into Floyd’s neck as herepeatedly says he can’t breathe.
“We are not talking about a split-second decision that was made incorrectly,” Frey said. “There’s somewhere around 300 seconds in those five minutes, every one of which the officer could have turned back … and removed his knee from George Floyd’s neck.”

Frey continued his thoughts on Twitter, saying that Floyd’s family and the black community “deserve justice.”

Floyd’s family agrees. During a Today show interview on Wednesday, Floyd’s sister said, “I would like for those officers to be charged with murder because that’s exactly what they did. They murdered my brother; he was crying for help.”

What justice really looks like is unclear, and up for constant discussion between politicians, grieving family members, and activists who oppose the police and the carceral systems that prop them up. But here’s what’s not up for debate: Minneapolis and Minnesota as a whole have a history of glaring racial disparities, police brutality, and a racist justice system, and they’ve claimed another black victim.

  • The Justice Department dropped that insider trading probe into three senators who allegedly sold off stocks in anticipation for covid-19 hitting the United States. [NBC News]
  • House Republicans are ready to get The Rona, baby! [CNN]
  • State Department declares that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous. [WSJ]
  • Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer claims that her husband’s attempt to namedrop her in order to get preferential treatment was just a joke! A bad one, but a joke! [NBC News]
  • Twitter is fact-checking President Trump’s tweets, which would have been cute, like, five years ago. [Washington Post]
  • To the surprise of no one, the new religious advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development has a history of being anti-Islamic! [Washington Post]
  • A ton of covid-19 induced evictions are on the horizon. [New York Times]
  • Oh…

 
Join the discussion...