Guilty on All Counts: It was as if the nation gave a sigh of relief when a Minneapolis jury yesterday found the white former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty in the infamous death of George Floyd, who was black. From inside the court you could hear a cheer coming up from the streets.

  Relief and celebration spread across the country after a potential bomb of outrage was defused by the verdict. It was as if the entire concept of race and justice had been on trial.

  Chauvin was found guilty of both first and second-degree murder as well as manslaughter for kneeling on Floyd’s neck until he was dead while arresting him for passing a counterfeit $20 bill. The incident made Floyd’s last words into a protest slogan; “I can’t breathe.”

  The fired cop faces up to 40 years in prison, although that would be unlikely to happen. Bail was revoked and Chauvin was immediately led away in handcuffs.

  Floyd’s brother Philonise said after the verdict, “I’m going to put up a fight every day because I’m not just fighting for George anymore, I’m fighting for everybody around this world.” 

  On Fox News last night, host Tucker Carlson suggested that the jury was swayed to a guilty verdict by the fear of the kind of mob violence that rocked Minneapolis after Floyd’s death. “No mob has the right to destroy our cities,” Carlson said. “No politician or media figure has the right to intimidate a jury, and no political party has the right to impose a different standard of justice on its own supporters.”

  President Biden praised the verdict as long overdue justice for murder committed by a cop claiming to have just done his job. “It was a murder in full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see,” Biden said. 

  The President said,  “We can’t stop here. In order to deliver real change and reform we can, and we must do more to reduce the likelihood that tragedy like this will ever happen, to occur again, to ensure that black and brown people or anyone, so they don’t fear the interactions with law enforcement, that they don’t have to wake up knowing that they can lose their very life in the course of just living their life.”

Dollar Value: As Will Rogers used to call them, “The best politicians money can buy.”

   A new study by the nonpartisan organization Issue One says a dozen “megadonors” and their spouses contributed a combined $3.4 billion to federal office candidates and political groups since 2009, amounting to nearly one out of every 13 dollars raised.

  Issue One is devoted to reducing the influence of money in politics. The list of donors with bottomless pits of money include Wall Street billionaires and investors, a Facebook co-founder, a shipping magnate, and the heir to a family fortune dating back to the Gilded Age.

  The two biggest donors gave most of their donations to themselves. Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg News, and Tom Steyer, were both failed presidential candidates who spent fortunes.

  Number three is casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, who have contributed $523 million to Republican candidates and committees since 2009.

KIA: Chad’s President Idriss Déby is reported to have died of injuries sustained while visiting troops at the front fighting  rebels in the north, the country’s army announced. The 68-year-old Déby held office for more than 30 years and was one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.

  He was considered a central figure in the fight against Islamic extremism in Africa.

  Chad is now in danger of civil war over a successor. The country’s parliament was dissolved and a military council led by Déby’s son, a 37-year-old four star general, will govern for the next 18 months.

The Spin Rack: Donald Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity Monday night that he’s seriously considering running for president again. “I am looking at it very seriously, beyond seriously,” Trump told Hannity. — Speaking of Donald Trump, new research says people who sleep six hours or less a night in their 70s are more likely to develop dementia. Donald Trump brags that he sleeps only four or five hours. — Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s already established herself as dumber than Louis Gohmert of Texas, has quickly abandoned plans to establish an America First Caucus in the House after facing howls of ridicule.

Higher Education: A letter written to parents at New York’s Brearley School by a father pulling his daughter out of the exclusive girl’s academy because of political correctness and anti-racism gone wild has hit the internet.

  Andrew Gutmann, a former investment manager, objected to the school’s hyper focus on race, mandatory anti-racism training for both students and parents, the focus on “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness,” an obsession with “the safety of our children,” and teaching “what to think, instead of how to think.”

  Guttman said, “The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob.” 

  He wrote, “I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression.”

  And he said, “I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites.”

  The letter appears to have first been posted on Substack by former NY Times columnist Bari Weiss. It’s blistering. Gutmann said, “If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called ‘equity,’ it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets.”

  We rarely post links, but here is Gutmann’s full letter on our website.

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