Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty and several top African-American local officials were pepper sprayed by Columbus, Ohio, police during protests Saturday afternoon over the death of George Floyd.Beatty was marching with Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin and Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce when a confrontation broke out near them. A female protester had one foot in the street, according to Beatty, when police officers began pushing their bicycles up against the crowd to keep them on the sidewalk.Beatty said she witnessed Columbus police pull a man from the crowd and slam him to the ground. She said she rushed over to the scene to try to deescalate the situation. Beatty, wearing a red face mask, was in the middle of the chaotic scene with officers, according to several videos of the incident.“I just felt like maybe I could protect her,” Beatty said in a telephone interview, referring to the female

http://www.politico.com/

Rep. Val Demings, one of several women being vetted to be Joe Biden’s running mate and a former Orlando police chief, urged a nationwide review of police practices in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, whose death after he was detained by Minneapolis police has sparked protests there for the past week.In the blistering op-ed in The Washington Post, Demings (D-Fla.), who is black, outlined her professional origins as a police officer, detailing her pride and love for the job. But she slammed police violence against men and women of color, calling their actions a “stain on our country” and asking her fellow police officers bluntly: “What the hell are you doing?”The op-ed was published after a third consecutive day of unrest in Minneapolis, where protesters set fire to a police precinct and other local businesses. Protests in Minneapolis began to erupt on Tuesday, a day after Floyd’s

http://www.politico.com/

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Friday that the four police officers involved in the arrest and subsequent death of an unarmed African-American man, George Floyd, “look pretty darn guilty,” and condemned the violent protests and looting that took place in Minneapolis overnight. “We have a way of dealing with crime in this country, it’s called prosecution and conviction. Everybody is entitled to the protections of the court system, even people who apparently — if you see what happened — look pretty darn guilty,” McConnell said at a news conference in Kentucky, adding that the facts surrounding the case are “pretty obvious” and “absolutely horrendous.”McConnell also spoke out against the overnight unrest in Louisville, Kentucky, where seven people were shot and wounded during protests over the police-involved shooting of Breonna Taylor, an EMT killed during a police raid.In a written statement later Friday, McConnell said the pair of killings

http://www.politico.com/

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Senate Republicans on Friday to cancel a hearing next week on the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation and instead focus on the coronavirus pandemic. In a letter sent to the Democratic caucus ahead of the upcoming five-week session that starts Monday, Schumer decried Republicans as the “conspiracy caucus” and accused the GOP of “turning the institutions of the Senate into an extension of the President’s re-election campaign.”The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hold a hearing with former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein next week on the FBI’s probe into connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The panel will also hold a vote on subpoenas of former Obama administration officials connected with the probe.Schumer’s letter also outlined Democratic priorities for the coming weeks, including negotiating on the next coronavirus relief package and extending the Paycheck Protection Program. The House this week

http://www.politico.com/