These are the first large-scale reforms since the Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013.
Updated Oct 1, 2020 - Politics & PolicyThe coronavirus, rising social unrest, inequality and political polarization threaten the fabric of the U.S.
Jun 3, 2020 - Politics & PolicyEven without a legal classification, calling dissenters "terrorists" could unleash an arsenal of spying.
Jun 3, 2020 - TechnologyThis crisis has moments we’ve never seen before.
Jun 3, 2020 - Politics & PolicyPolice brutality, COVID-19, and economic pain are hitting African Americans disproportionately and all at once.
May 31, 2020 - Politics & PolicyPolice violence and a host of other problems have all been caused by unresolved systemic abuses.
May 30, 2020 - Economy & BusinessFreshly hatched caterpillars of gypsy moths on the bark of a red oak. Photo: Sebastian Willnow/picture alliance via Getty Images
Bugs, birds, fish and plants with names linked to white supremacists may be renamed, as science confronts its own ties to systemic racism.
Why it matters: The national reckoning was inevitably going to pass this way. The sciences have long underrepresented and erected barriers of entry to people of color and there’s a concerted effort for a reset under way in academia, research and hiring.
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Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, a leader of the right-wing extremist Proud Boys group, pleaded guilty Monday to burning a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a historic Black church in Washington, D.C., during a pro-Trump demonstration, the Washington Post reports.
Driving the news: Tarrio, 37, admitted to committing destruction of property and attempting to possess a high-capacity ammunition magazine. Under a deal with prosecutors, the latter charge was reduced from illegal possession of such magazines.
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Andrew Brown Jr.'s family has filed a $30 million lawsuit against a North Carolina county sheriff and several deputies, arguing the officers involved in Brown's fatal shooting acted "willfully, maliciously, in bad faith, and in reckless disregard of Brown’s federally protected constitutional rights."
Why it matters: Brown was shot and killed April 21 by Pasquotank County Sheriff’s deputies as they were serving drug-related warrants. A state autopsy found he died of a gunshot wound to the back of his head.
Black Lives Matter supporters and others march across the Brooklyn Bridge to honor George Floyd on the one year anniversary of his death on May 25, 2021 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt via Getty Images
The United Nations announced Tuesday plans to form a panel of experts to examine the root causes and effects of systemic racism in policing around the world, including the legacies of slavery and colonialism, the New York Times reports.
Why it matters: The move follows a year of heightened attention on police brutality against Black people, and comes after a UN human rights report detailed the need for reparatory justice and accountability.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is creating a task force to study the policies and practices of its law enforcement bureaus, she announced in a memo issued last week.
The big picture: A watchdog report out last month found that the U.S. Park Police's widespread failure to coordinate with assisting law enforcement led to "confusion" and the unauthorized use of chemical irritants on Black Lives Matter protesters in Lafayette Square last year.
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In a landmark report released Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet urged countries to adopt “transformative agendas" to uproot systematic racism in the wake of the killing of George Floyd last year.
Why it matters: The report, mandated by the Human Rights Council in June 2020, "could not find a single example of a state that has fully reckoned with the past or comprehensively accounted for the impacts of the lives of people of African descent today," one investigator told a news conference Monday.
A journalist watches their mobile phone showing Derek Chauvin as the verdict in his trial over the death of George Floyd is announced in Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 20, 2021. Photo: Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced by a Minnesota judge on Friday to 22.5 years for the murder of George Floyd.
State of play: The sentence from Judge Peter Cahill is about in line with what most legal experts expected. Prosecutors had asked for 30 years.
Derek Chauvin listens as the judge reads a guilty verdict on April 20. Photo courtesy of Fox 9
Judge Peter Cahill will decide Friday how long ex-Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin should spend behind bars for murdering George Floyd.
State of play: Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, has argued that his client should only receive probation as he was part of a "broken system." State prosecutors are asking for a 30-year sentence.
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The truck driver who drove through a large crowd protesting George Floyd's death last year will have his criminal charges dropped if he is law-abiding for the next year, AP reports.
Catch up quick: Authorities had closed off the highway area as a precaution, but video footage showed Bogdan Vechirko honking and driving his tanker rig through the protest, which numbered in the hundreds.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) at a bill enrollment signing ceremony for the Juneteenth National Independence Day . Photo by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images
Juneteenth's establishment as a federal holiday should serve as a launching point for Congress to create a commission on reparations for African Americans, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said at an Axios event on Friday.
Why it matters: Jackson Lee, who has long worked to get a commission on reparations funded, believes now is the time to start "correcting the social ills" of society.