The next bookstore battle: A steady stream of Biden book deals
18 November 2020
The cash value of President-elect Biden's normality will be tested next year with a bookstore battle among Washington journalists who are competing to capture 46's backstory, inside skinny and cast of characters.
What's new: Axios has learned that Ben Schreckinger, a long-form writer who works the "Biden Inc." beat at Politico, has signed a deal with prestige publisher Twelve to write a Biden family book aimed for the second half of 2021.
- "Schreck" aims to bring encyclopedic knowledge to the family saga — highs and lows, tragedy and heartbreak, and largely unexamined things they've been up to behind the scenes, with an emphasis on business interests.
The Atlantic's Frank Foertweeted that he'll write a book for Penguin Press on Biden's first 100 days of wrestling "with seemingly every known crisis," as first reported by Politico Playbook.
- WashPost book critic Carlos Lozada, who chronicled shelves full of Trump books, quipped: "Nothing feels like turning the page on the Trump presidency quite like seeing book deals about the Biden administration."
Already out: The New Yorker's Evan Osnos beat the rush with a stocking stuffer that dropped Oct. 27, "Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now."
What's next: A couple of other hot Biden projects will be unveiled soon.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly 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.