June 5 coverage of nationwide unrest and ongoing protests

On a day when the governor of Ohio said a state National Guard member was removed from duty in Washington, D.C. after the FBI discovered evidence of the soldier's white supremacist ideology online, the city's mayor asked Ohio to withdraw its guard members.

District Mayor Muriel Bowser on Friday wrote letters to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy arguing that the presence of their guard members is "unnecessary and may be counterproductive." The troops were sent at the behest of the U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, DeWine said.

Bowser didn't mention the removal of the guard member. DeWine said Friday the soldier was under federal investigation and it appeared likely "he will be permanently removed from the Ohio National Guard."

Bowser said the city's state of emergency in response to George Floyd protests that took place near the White House ended Friday morning.

A statue of a Confederate admiral was removed from public view overnight in Mobile, Alabama, the city's mayor said Friday.

The statue of Civl War Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes near the History Museum of Mobile was dedicated in 1900. Mayor Sandy Stimpson did not mention nationwide protests over the in-custody death of George Floyd, but she said moving the monument would help the city heal.

"Moving this statue will not change the past," he said. "It is about removing a potential distraction so we may focus clearly on the future of our city."

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees continues to walk back recent comments about the George Floyd protests with a new message for President Donald Trump: "We must stop talking about the flag."

In an Instagram post addressed to Trump, Brees late Friday said it's time to start talking about making meaningful changes to the treatment and policing of black communities.

"We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform," Brees said in the post. "We are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history! If not now, then when?"

Read the full story here. 

A Maryland cyclist suspected of attacking a group of teens as they put up signs calling for justice for George Floyd was arrested Friday, police in Maryland said.

Anthony Brennan III, 60, of Kensington, Maryland, was booked on allegations of second-degree assault in the Monday attack, which was videotaped and posted on social media.

One of the victims, described as a male, was pushed down by the suspect, who used his bicycle, the Park Police Montgomery County Division said in a statement. Two other teens, described as females, were also listed as victims of the attack in Bethesda.

The trio was putting up flyers that read, "A MAN WAS LYNCHED BY THE POLICE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?"

Read the full story here. 

A New York City police officer who was seen on video shoving a woman to the ground at a George Floyd protest last week in Brooklyn has been suspended without pay. A supervisor who was on the scene will be transferred.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a statement Friday night that the New York Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau had concluded its investigations into the May 29 incident and a separate incident last Saturday in which a police officer was seen on video pulling down an individual's face mask and spraying pepper spray at him.

Both officers have been suspended without pay, and their cases have been referred to the Department Advocate for disciplinary action, Shea said.

In the last two weeks, New York police officers have repeatedly been accused of abusing protesters, including driving into a crowd and using excessive force to push them back. On Wednesday, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams posted video on Twitter showing police officers in Brooklyn forcibly using their batons against peaceful protesters to get them to move down the street.

Read the full story here. 

A video posted on social media Friday shows a group of federal immigration officials detaining a protester at a George Floyd rally in New York City. One of the officials is seen wearing a vest labeled "HSI police," a division of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"ICE is showing up at NYC protests," the Immigrant Defense Project, the rights organization that posted the video, tweeted. "On Wednesday, this man was walking with protestors when 5 agents jumped out of a van with guns drawn & threw him to the ground."

Terry Lawson, a supervising policy attorney at the project who spoke to the man detained, told NBC News that the man was at work when he saw the protests and decided to join them. Then, several officers, most in plainclothes, "basically swarmed on him" as he was walking with the protesters.

A spokesman for HSI said the incident was not related to immigration, but that the agents believed the man had a weapon and could be a threat to public safety. No arrest was made after no weapon was found.

Read the full story here. 

A top New York City prosecutor said Friday he will not prosecute George Floyd demonstrators if they were arrested only for unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct.

The decision was made in the interest of ending the kind of racial disparity in the justice system that is part of demonstrators' critique in the death of Floyd, an African-American man killed May 25 in Minneapolis police custody, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. said in a statement.

The announcement covers 71 cases to date, said office spokesman Danny Frost.

More than 700 soldiers who have been in Washington since Monday were sent back to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Thursday night. U.S. Army officials deployed to Washington, D.C. told NBC's Courtney Kube they were relieved to be going home and that they did not want active duty troops called to the city.

Soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division were called to the Washington, D.C. area earlier this week in case President Donald Trump invoked the Insurrection Act to deal with protesters. The more than 1,600 soldiers, who had been waiting at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, were never called into the city to confront protesters.

Nearly five dozen Buffalo police officers, specially trained for civil unrest, resigned from their roles on an emergency response team Friday after two colleagues were suspended for apparently shoving and seriously injuring a 75-year-old protester, officials said.

The members of the Buffalo Police Department's Emergency Response Team quit the unit after the fallout from Thursday night's incident, which was caught on tape, according the Police Benevolent Association.

“Fifty-seven resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,” union president John Evans told NBC affiliate WGRZ.

Read the whole story here.

Michael Jordan and his Jordan Brand on Friday pledged $100 million to the effort to redress racial injustice, the retired NBA great's manager announced.

Estee Portnoy posted a statement on Twitter: "Today, we are announcing Michael Jordan and Jordan Brand will be donating $100 million over the next 10 years to organizations dedicated to ensuring racial equality, social justice, and greater access to education."

"The Jordan Brand is us, the Black Community," the statement reads. "Black Lives Matter. This isn't a controversial statement."

The pledge comes in the wake of more than a week's protests from coast-to-coast after the May 25 in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. On May 31, Jordan said on Twitter, "We have had enough."

A North Carolina attorney has compiled a running thread on Twitter of examples of police violence at protests nationwide in the wake of George Floyd's death. 

T. Greg Doucette has compiled the thread, which now has more than 300 examples of alleged police violence against demonstrators. He said the examples have been sent to him by friends, protesters and even random Twitter users from across the country. NBC News has not independently verified each incident. 

"It's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying," said Doucette, who is a criminal defense and First Amendment lawyer. 

To keep track of where the incidents are taking place, one Twitter user has put the examples from the thread into a spreadsheet, tracking where the incidents happen with a link to footage and background from Doucette. Another user has visualized the data using a map of the United States. The cities with the most incidents so far appear to be New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Seattle and Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed by a police officer.  

By compiling the thread, Doucette said he hopes people understand that "this is an everyday thing." 

"Courts and politicians have gone out of their way to make this okay and it's not," he said. 

Joe Biden blasted President Donald Trump for remarking Friday that “this is a great day for” George Floyd — who died last week in police custody — while touting positive economic data.

Speaking in Dover, Del., the apparent Democratic presidential nominee ripped into Trump for “speaking of a man who was brutally killed by an act of needless violence” and accused the president of failing to curb a “larger tide of injustice that has metastasized on” his watch.

“George Floyd's last words, ‘I can't breathe. I can't breathe,’ they've echoed all across this nation, quite frankly around the world,” Biden said. “For the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd I frankly think is despicable."

At a news conference earlier Friday to address May unemployment figures that were released in the morning, Trump said, “Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying, 'This is a great thing happening for our country.'”

Read what else Biden said.

John Kelly, President Donald Trump's ex-chief of staff, said Friday that he agrees with former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis's scathing critique of the president, but largely avoided direct criticism of his former boss himself.

In an interview with former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, Kelly said, "None of us would take making a statement like that lightly, but there is a concern — I think an awful big concern — that the partisanship has gotten out of hand." Kelly added, "He's quite a man, Gen. Jim Mattis, and for him to do that tells you where he is relative to the concern he has for our country."

"I agree with him," Kelly continued. "I think we need to step back from the politics." Referring to the constitutional separation of powers, the former White House chief of staff added, "No president, ever, is a dictator or a king." 

In a statement to The Atlantic magazine published Wednesday, Mattis — like Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general — said Trump "tries to divide us" and abused his executive authority by violating the constitutional rights of demonstrators outside the White House on Monday who were protesting the killing of George Floyd. That's when federal law enforcement forcibly cleared protesters out of the area shortly before Trump used the scene for what Mattis called a "bizarre photo-op" in front of a fire-damaged church. 

Kelly, who was Trump's head of Homeland Security before becoming his chief of staff, said "the end result" of the photo-op was "predictable," but "the jury is still out on tear gas and who got hit." He added, "I would have recommended against it."

Reddit co-founder and executive chairman Alexis Ohanian stepped down from the company’s board on Friday and “urged them to fill my seat with a black candidate."

Ohanian also committed money made on his Reddit stock "to serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate” in his announcement on his official Twitter account. He said his first donation would be to Colin Kaepernick’s racial justice charity Know Your Rights Camp.

“I believe resignation can actually be an act of leadership from people in power right now. To everyone fighting to fix our broken nation: do not stop,” Ohanian wrote on Twitter.

Reddit, the sixth-most visited website in the United States, according to web analytics company Alexa, has been the subject of critique for how it has handled racism on its platform. 

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman released a statement on Monday stating “we do not tolerate hate, racism, and violence, and while we have work to do to fight these on our platform, our values are clear.”

Huffman’s predecessor as CEO, Ellen Pao, tweeted a rebuke to the blog post hours later.

“So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all day long,” Pao wrote.

The site has struggled in the past to curtail communities devoted to hate speech. In April of 2018, when asked “Is obvious open racism, including slurs, against Reddit’s rules or not?” Huffman responded, “It’s not.”

“On Reddit, the way in which we think about speech is to separate behavior from beliefs. This means on Reddit there will be people with beliefs different from your own, sometimes extremely so,” Huffman said. “When users actions conflict with our content policies, we take action.”

Ohanian and his wife, tennis star Serena Williams, have for years supported charities that help the black community. They have also donated to and hosted events for Black Girls Code dating back to 2014.

WASHINGTON — District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser on Friday had "Black Lives Matter" painted on the street that leads to the White House where protesters have been demonstrating following George Floyd’s death in police custody.

"There was a dispute this week about whose street this is," John Falcicchio, chief of staff for Bowser, a Democrat, said in a tweet. "Mayor Bowser wanted to make it abundantly clear that this is DC's street and to honor demonstrators who (were) peacefully protesting on Monday evening."

People were seen painting the words "Black Lives Matter" on Friday morning in large block letters in yellow across 16th street, which leads to Lafayette Square and the White House.

The official D.C. chapter of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, however, suggested in a tweet that this move was merely an empty gesture by Bowser.

Read the full story here.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio reiterated Friday that essential workers are exempt from the city's 8 p.m. curfew after a food delivery worker was detained by officers on Thursday night. 

The 8 p.m. curfew began Tuesday and will remain in effect until Sunday. 

A delivery worker on Thursday was cuffed, but not arrested, by officers near Central Park West, according to NBC New York. A journalist who was standing in front of her home was "roughed up" by police the day before, NBC New York reported. 

De Blasio said it needs to be "abundantly clear" to both the NYPD and essential workers that people "doing their job are exempted from curfew." 

As far as "news media out there doing their job, reporting, looking at the truth," de Blasio said. "Their right to do their job must be protected at all times."

The curfew will remain in effect until Monday morning as originally planned, he said. 

The aggressive police response to demonstrations over George Floyd's death shows that departments have not learned the lessons of earlier protests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray and in Ferguson, Missouri, over the death of Michael Brown, experts said.

The way police in many cities have responded to the recent protests — including clashes in which officers may have violated protesters' civil rights — threatens to jeopardize the limited progress on reforms made over the past several years. 

“I don’t think anyone would agree that police have emerged better off than they were a few days ago,” said Edward Maguire, an Arizona State University criminologist who researches police response to protests. He has seen images of officers beating up protesters and firing tear gas and rubber bullets on crowds in ways that may have made things worse, he said. “They have actively diminished their image over the past few days and it’s a giant mistake for them to have responded in that way.”

Read the full story here. 

The Paris police have banned two rallies meant to take place Saturday outside the U.S. Embassy, citing restrictions on large gatherings in place to stop the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier in the week, the Defense League for Black Africans in France had scheduled a demonstration to denounce racism and in solidarity with protesters in the U.S.

A June 2 demonstration against police violence and racism was also banned by police, but 20,000 people attended to protest near the Palais de Justice in central Paris.

The city of Mobile, Alabama, removed a Confederate statue early Friday, without making any public announcements about it beforehand.

The bronze figure of Adm. Raphael Semmes had become a flashpoint for protest in the city. AL.com reported that it was removed from its pedestal after being vandalized this week and before demonstrations announced for Sunday calling for it to be taken down.

The removal of the 120-year-old figure follows days of protests in Alabama and across the nation over killings by police of African Americans. Some other Confederate symbols are coming down around the South. The city of Birmingham removed a towering obelisk after another statue was toppled by protesters. Virginia's governor has decided to remove a huge statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, after city authorities said they'll remove other Confederate monuments from Monument Avenue.

The Dallas Police Department implemented a new “duty to intervene” order in a reaction to watching co-workers of a Minneapolis police officer either assist or stand by as George Floyd suffocated to death while the officer applied pressure with his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.

“It shall be the duty of every employee present at any scene where physical force is being applied to either stop, or attempt to stop, another employee when force is being inappropriately applied or is no longer required,” the new general order says, according to a news release obtained by NBC affiliate KXAS on Thursday evening. 

The order was developed to create a culture where what happened to Floyd does not happen again, the statement said. It came after protesters gathered outside the Dallas Police Association building on Thursday to ensure police accountability, according to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.

New York City police "detained" a delivery person for violating the city's 8 p.m. curfew on Wednesday evening, even though city guidelines exempt delivery people, according to videos on social media and the police department.

The video, filmed by Kirsti Karttunen, shows a food delivery driver who worked for DoorDash — a food delivery service company — handcuffed by multiple police officers. The officers tell him to calm down as he shouts.

Police told NBC affiliate WNBC that the delivery worker was "detained" for a short period of time until his credentials were verified, then he was released.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio later tweeted that “This is NOT acceptable and must stop. Food delivery is essential work and is EXEMPTED from the curfew.”

“We are alarmed by reports that a courier appears to have been arrested this evening in New York City shortly after curfew,” DoorDash said in a statement. “We are gathering information and are in contact with city officials to determine what transpired. Essential workers must be able to complete their work and feel safe and secure while doing so, and we are prepared to provide them with our support.”

Rapper Kanye West has donated $2 million to the families and legal teams of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, a spokesperson for West told NBC News on Thursday. West has also set up a college savings fund for Floyd’s daughter Gianna, and made a donation to cover all legal costs for the Arbery and Taylor families.

Floyd and Taylor — who were both black and unarmed — were recently killed by police, and a white Georgia man shot and killed Arbery, also black and unarmed. 

The rapper and fashion designer also appeared at a march in his hometown Chicago on Thursday evening, demanding that the city keep police officers out of their schools, according to NBC News affiliate 5Chicago. 

In 2018, West visited President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss prison reform and gang violence prevention.

Police challenged whether a Black Lives Matter protest planned for Saturday in Sydney is too much of a virus risk. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is among those who criticized the plans, saying of the protesters: “I say to them, don’t go.”

Outdoor gatherings in Australia's largest city are restricted to 10 people, while up to 50 people can go to funerals, places of worship, restaurants, pubs and cafes.

In Canberra, organizers of a rally Friday that attracted about 2,000 demonstrators handed out masks and hand sanitizer. Most protesters kept a recommended social distance but drew closer to hear speeches. Public gatherings are limited to 20 in Canberra, but police did not intervene.

School teacher Wendy Brookman, a member of the Butchulla indigenous people, said Australia should not accept more than 430 indigenous Australians dying in police custody or prison in the past three decades. “We’re not here to jump on the bandwagon of what’s happened in the United States,” Brookman said. “We’re here to voice what’s happening to our indigenous people.”

The mayor of Temecula, California, has resigned after sending an email that read "I don't believe there's ever been a good person of color killed by a police officer" — something he blamed on a speech-to-text program he uses because he has dyslexia.

Mayor James "Stew" Stewart had previously apologized and said in a statement Wednesday "I absolutely did not say 'good' I have no idea how that popped up." He said he intended to say he did not think there had ever been a person of color murdered by a police officer locally.

Thursday night in a Facebook post, Stewart said in part: "My typos and off-the-cuff response to an email on a serious topic added pain at a time where our community, and our country, is suffering."

"I may not be the best writer and I sometimes misspeak, but I am not racist," Stewart said. "I deeply regret this mistake and I own it, entirely. I am truly sorry."

Stewart said he would step down as mayor and from the city council effective immediately. The email came in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody last week. The white officer who kneeled on Floyd's neck and three other officers have been fired and criminally charged.

Temecula is a city of around 114,700 in Riverside County, southeast of Los Angeles.

Patrick Mahomes, Saquon Barkley and Michael Thomas are among more than a dozen NFL stars who united to send a passionate video message to the league about racial inequality.

The 70-second video was released on social media platforms Thursday night and includes Odell Beckham Jr., Deshaun Watson, Ezekiel Elliott, Jamal Adams, Stephon Gilmore and DeAndre Hopkins, among others.

Thomas, the New Orleans Saints wide receiver who has led the league in receptions the past two seasons, opens the video with the statement: “It’s been 10 days since George Floyd was brutally murdered.” The players then take turns asking the question, “What if I was George Floyd?”

The players then name several of the black men and women who have recently been killed, including Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Eric Garner.

The video closes with the players insisting they “will not be silenced.” They also demand the NFL state that it condemns “racism and the systemic oppression of black people. ... We, the National Football League, admit wrong in silencing our players from peacefully protesting. ... We, the National Football League, believe black lives matter.”

The NFL has been a flashpoint for protests over police violence ever since Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during national anthems before games. Kaepernick has since gone unsigned — and emerged as a leading voice in opposition of police violence. 

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell spoke against Floyd's death but has been accused of hypocrisy and insincerity in his response, with critics pointing to the way the league handled Kaepernick's protest against police brutality in 2016.  

Two people thought to be National Guard members deployed during protests in Washington, D.C. were hospitalized after lightning struck the area of their post not far from the White House early Friday, a fire official said.

The strike and possible injuries were reported shortly after midnight inside a perimeter anchored by Lafayette Square, the site of George Floyd demonstrations this week, according to Vito Maggiolo, spokesman for the district's fire and emergency medical services department.

The two were hospitalized in non-life-threatening condition, he said. 

Immediate information appears to indicate the pair wasn't struck directly. He said the victims "felt the effects of a nearby lightning strike."

Overnight White House social media director Dan Scavino retweeted imagery of lightning striking the capital.

Two Buffalo police officers were suspended without pay Thursday after a video showed authorities knocking down a 75-year-old man during a protest, Mayor Byron Brown said.

In a statement, Brown said the suspension came after the city’s police commissioner launched an investigation into the incident. Brown did not identify the officers.

Brown said he was "deeply disturbed" by the video, which was published by the local National Public Radio affiliate, WBFO.

The man, who has not been publicly identified, is in serious but stable condition at a local hospital, Brown said.

Read the full story here.