Show an ad over header. AMP  

Rep. Val Demings to challenge Marco Rubio for Senate seat

18 May 2021
 Dan Ackermann

Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) plans to run for the U.S. Senate to unseat Republican Marco Rubio next year, rather than pursue a run for governor, according to an adviser and another source familiar with her plans.

Why it matters: Demings' candidacy will place a household name — and one who was on President Biden's shortlist for vice president — on the ballot for Democrats. Rubio has won two elections in the battleground state, including one that followed a failed bid for the GOP's nomination for the presidency in 2016.

  • The 64-year-old Demings was first elected to her Orlando-area seat in Congress in 2016, after serving as the city's first female police chief.
  • She also served as a House manager during former President Trump's first impeachment, and currently sits on the House Intelligence, Judiciary, and Homeland Security committees.

Flashback: Demings told Politico in April that she "received so many calls and texts and emails," from people who think she should "run for statewide office and maybe challenge the governor, or challenge Sen. Rubio next year."

  • "I'm seriously considering a statewide run. And we'll see what happens," she said at the time.

Between the lines: "As a Black woman and law enforcement officer, her background made her uniquely situated to be a national Democratic spokesperson for policing and race issues," writes Politico, which first reported her candidacy.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.