31 July 2020
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — speaking simultaneously at podiums on opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue Friday morning — painted a bleak picture of their stalled coronavirus stimulus talks, making clear that they are still a long way from striking a deal.
The bottom line: Everyone who matters in these talks is sending out dismal signals. Many important benefits, including enhanced unemployment insurance for millions of Americans, expire today — and those in charge of bringing relief admit they're nowhere close to finding common ground.
In the White House briefing room, Meadows said he and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin "made no less than four different offers" on extending enhanced unemployment benefits and protection against eviction.
- Those four offers have been "rejected," he said, adding that he's "disappointed" Democrats are playing politics. He also claimed that Democrats have made "zero offers" in return.
At the Capitol, Pelosi said Democrats made an offer 10 weeks ago — the $3 trillion HEROES Act, which passed in the House in May and would have extended unemployment insurance and housing protections, among other sweeping provisions.
- She lambasted the White House and Republicans for waiting until the 11th hour to negotiate.
- She said she and other Democrats would not settle for the short-term extensions that Meadows and Mnuchin proposed, adding that "they don’t even have the votes for it in the Senate," and that one-week extensions only work when there is a possible bill at hand.
- "Let’s get real about who says what," Pelosi said. "What are we going to do in a week?"
What's next: Negotiations between the White House and Democratic leadership will continue over the weekend, and lawmakers are reluctantly hopeful that they'll be able to reach a deal by the end of the week — before the Senate is scheduled to break for recess.
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.