Defund the Police: Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council, a veto-proof majority, pledged yesterday to dismantle the city’s police department and create a new system of public safety in the city where law enforcement has a troubled racial history.

  The decision to reform came after two weeks of nationwide protests over the Minneapolis police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd. Massive protests continued through the weekend.

  An offshoot of the demonstrations against police killings has been the call to “Defund the Police” — you see the signs among the demonstrators and hear them chanting. 

 Political leaders are responding already. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced yesterday that, rather than raise the city’s $6 billion police budget as planned, he’s going to cut it and divert money to social services. “We’re committed to seeing a shift of funding to youth services, to social services, that will happen literally in the course of the next three weeks,” de Blasio said.

  New York has nearly 40,000 cops, the largest force in the country.

  Demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd have said that much of the billions spent on policing in the country could be better spent on education and social services, reducing the need for so many cops. 

  New York’s mayor was preceded in his announcement by Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, who said he’s dropping plans for a $122 million increase in the city’s $1.8 billion police budget and cut it instead.

  President Trump tweeted about the defund movement, “I want great and well paid LAW ENFORCEMENT. I want LAW & ORDER!”

  For reformers, more important than cutting police budgets might be legislation to control their behavior and make it easier to convict them of crimes when they use excessive force. House and Senate Democrats are drafting a national reform bill that would ban chokeholds, limit “qualified immunity” for police officers against prosecution, establish a national misconduct registry, end the use of no-knock warrants in drug cases, among other measures. 

  Any reforms will have to overcome the powerful police unions, which have fought to protect officers, regardless of their conduct. The NY Times reports that, “The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.”

Revising History: As protests continue throughout the country, statues of the heroes of the slave era have become targets.

 Protesters in Richmond, Virginia, toppled a statue of Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham Saturday night. Earlier this week, protesters in Montgomery took down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee outside a high school named after him.

  A Confederate monument in the middle of the University of Mississippi campus was tagged “spiritual genocide” and covered in red handprints.

  Far from the angry streets of America, demonstrators in Bristol, England tumbled the statue of a British slave trader and tossed it in the harbor. The statue of  Edward Colston, a prominent 17th Century slave trader, had stood since 1895.

Final Edit: James Bennet, the editorial page editor of The New York Times, has resigned after stirring controversy printing an opinion piece by a US senator calling for military force against protesters in American cities.

  Bennet had been a candidate to one day become the paper’s executive editor.

  “Last week we saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we’ve experienced in recent years,” AG Sulzberger, the publisher, wrote in a note to the staff. 

  The opinion written by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton set off an uproar both within the Times staff and among readers. Cotton wrote that President Trump should invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to call out the military and suppress the protesters. He wrote, “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.”

  A Times note on the online edition, placed after publication, says Cotton’s piece included misinformation that should have been clarified or deleted, and that the overall tone was inflammatory. One phrase of Cotton’s in question; “cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa.”

  The editor’s note also suggests that the Times bosses, Bennet included, were not paying attention; “The editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved.”

Pandemic: As many as 400,000 people might return to work today in New York to construction, manufacturing, and retail as the city begins to re-open in recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

  As of this morning, 21,844 New Yorkers have died of the coronavirus, just 62 since Friday morning. Overall, 110,514 Americans have died of the virus as the country approaches 2 million cases.

  Worldwide, the number of coronavirus cases has surpassed 7 million with more than 400,000 deaths.

  Shutdown orders prevented 60 million coronavirus cases in the US, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.

Drifting Away: Former Army general and secretary of state Colin Powell yesterday said he’s voting for Joe Biden in the fall. Powell was secretary of state under George W. Bush, but he told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “We have a Constitution. And we have to follow that Constitution. And the President has drifted away from it.”

  Trump immediately responded on twitter with his signature personal insults, calling Powell “highly overrated” and “a real stiff.”

The Obit Page: Kurt Thomas, the first American gymnast to win a world championship, has died of a stroke at age 64. 

  Thomas won eight world medals, including three gold medals. He created two signature moves called the “Thomas Flair” and the “Thomas Salto.”

   He won the first gold medal for the US men’s gymnastics at the 1978 Gymnastic World Championships in Strasbourg, France. Thomas also competed in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, but the 1980 Olympic boycott ended his career.

Bring Sexy Back: The Department of Justice has made a formal request to interview Britain’s Prince Andrew about his friendship and visits with the late serial teen-molester Jeffrey Epstein. One of Epstein’s former “girls” says she had sex with Andrew three times, giving both Andrew and sex a bad name.

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