AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

Tear gas, threats for protesters before Trump visits church

WASHINGTON (AP) — It began with Attorney General Bill Barr standing with his hands casually in his pockets, not wearing a tie, surveying the scene at Lafayette Park across from the White House, where several thousand protesters had gathered for more demonstrations after the police killing of George Floyd.

President Donald Trump had announced he would soon be addressing the nation from the White House Rose Garden, as a 7 p.m. curfew in the city loomed and a mass of law enforcement, including U.S. Secret Service agents, Park Police and National Guardsmen, stood sentry, many dressed in riot gear.

Moments before 6:30 p.m., just when Trump said he would begin his address, the officers suddenly marched forward, directly confronting the protesters as many held up their hands, saying, “Don’t shoot.”

Soon, law enforcement officers were aggressively forcing the protesters back, firing tear gas and deploying flash bangs into the crowd to disperse them from the park for seemingly no reason. It was a jarring scene as police in the nation’s capital forcefully cleared young men and women gathered legally in a public park on a sunny evening, all of it on live television.

With smoke still wafting and isolated tussles continuing in the crowd, Trump emerged in the Rose Garden for a dramatic split-screen of his own creation.

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Trump threatens military force against protesters nationwide

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wielding extraordinary federal authority, President Donald Trump threatened the nation’s governors on Monday that he would deploy the military to states if they did not stamp out violent protests over police brutality that have roiled the nation over the past week. His announcement came as police under federal command forced back peaceful demonstrators with tear gas so he could walk to a nearby church and pose with a Bible.

Trump’s bellicose rhetoric came as the nation braced for another round of violence at a time when the country is already buckling because of the coronavirus outbreak and the Depression-level unemployment it has caused. The president demanded an end to the heated protests in remarks from the White House Rose Garden and vowed to use more force to achieve that aim.

If governors throughout the country do not deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers to “dominate the streets,” Trump said the U.S. military would step in to “quickly solve the problem for them.”

“We have the greatest country in the world,” the president declared. “We’re going to keep it safe.”

A military deployment by Trump to U.S. states would mark a stunning federal intervention not seen in modern American history. Yet the message Trump appeared to be sending with the brazen pushback of protesters outside the White House was that he sees few limits to what he is willing to do.

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The Latest: 2 killed during unrest in Chicago suburb

The Latest on the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white police officer pressed a knee on his neck:

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CICERO, Ill. — Two people have been killed during unrest in the Chicago suburb of Cicero as protests continued over the death of George Floyd, according to a town official.

Spokesman Ray Hanania says 60 people were arrested in the town of about 84,000 located west of Chicago. Hanania didn’t provide additional information about those killed or the circumstances of their deaths.

The Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriff’s Office were called in to help local police Monday as people broke into a liquor store and other businesses and stole items.

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Democratic governors reject Trump’s call to send in military

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Democratic governors of some of the nation’s most populous states on Monday pushed back against President Donald Trump’s threat to deploy the U.S. military unless they dispatch National Guard units to “dominate the streets” in reaction to the violence that has erupted across the country.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he doesn’t believe the federal government can send military troops into his state. He accused the president of creating an “incendiary moment” by threatening to do just that to quell violence that has arisen as demonstrators have taken to the streets in reaction to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“I reject the notion that the federal government can send troops into the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said on CNN after Trump urged governors to deploy the Guard. If they did not, he said he would send in “thousands and thousands” of soldiers.

Pritzker was among the first governors to react to Trump’s comments, which came hours after the president called governors “weak” and urged them to take a more aggressive response to weekend violence. It came as Americans gathered to protest police brutality against black Americans following the killing of Floyd, who was handcuffed and on the ground pleading for air as a white police officer pressed a knee on his neck for several minutes.

Some demonstrations have turned violent, with people breaking into and stealing from businesses, smashing car windows and setting fires.

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Trump as thug or hero? Depends on what network you watch

NEW YORK (AP) — It was a split screen for the ages on MSNBC Monday: on the left side, President Donald Trump talking about restoring law and order. On the right, a tear-gassed young woman vomiting in a Washington street.

For a nation rubbed raw following a traumatic weekend, cable television news did little to promote peace, love and understanding in its most-watched hours

Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC poke and prod the nation’s divide on most nights, and each has been amply rewarded in the ratings. Trump’s stern speech and walk to a nearby church after protesters were forcibly cleared out of the way Monday raised the temperature on those networks even higher.

“The president seems to think that dominating black people, dominating peaceful protesters, is law and order,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper said. “It’s not. He calls them thugs. Who’s the thug here?”

At the same time on Fox News Channel, Tucker Carlson said that Trump provided “a powerful symbolic gesture, a declaration that this country, our national symbols, our oldest institutions, will not be desecrated and defeated by nihilistic destruction.”

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‘Hate just hides’: Biden vows to take on systematic racism

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden vowed to address institutional racism in his first 100 days in office as he sought to elevate his voice Monday in the exploding national debate over racism and police brutality.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee offered emotional support and promised bold action during an in-person discussion with black leaders in Delaware and a subsequent virtual meeting with big-city mayors who are grappling with racial tensions and frustrated by a lack of federal support.

“Hate just hides. It doesn’t go away, and when you have somebody in power who breathes oxygen into the hate under the rocks, it comes out from under the rocks,” Biden told more than a dozen African American leaders gathered at a church in downtown Wilmington, his face mask lowered around his chin as he spoke.

Without offering specifics, he promised to “deal with institutional racism” and set up a police oversight body in his first 100 days in office, if elected. The former vice-president also said he’d be releasing an economic plan focused on education, housing and “access to capital” and investments, especially for minority Americans, later this month.

“I really do believe that the blinders have been taken off. I think this tidal wave is moving,” Biden told the mayors of Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minnesota. “I realize we’ve got to do something big, we can do it, and everyone will benefit from it.”

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On the spot where George Floyd died, his brother urges calm

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — George Floyd’s brother pleaded for peace in the streets Monday, saying destruction is “not going to bring my brother back at all.”

Terrence Floyd’s emotional plea came as the United States braced for another night of violence in response to Floyd’s killing a week ago.

Chants of “What’s his name? George Floyd!” filled the air as a large crowd gathered at the spot where the black man who became the latest symbol of racial injustice in America lay handcuffed and dying as a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck.

Wearing a face mask with Floyd’s image on it, his brother dropped to his knees at the storefront that has been turned into a memorial covered with flowers and signs. As he kneeled silently, many who were around him joined him on the ground.

The memorial site was a space of calm compared to the devastation left in the wake of fires and violence that paralyzed the city for days last week before it spread nationwide.

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CBO projects virus impact could trim GDP by $15.7 trillion

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Congressional Budget Office said Monday that the U.S. economy could be $15.7 trillion smaller over the next decade than it otherwise would have been if Congress does not mitigate the economic damage from the coronavirus.

The CBO, which had already issued a report forecasting a severe economic impact over the next two years, expanded that forecast to show that the severity of the economic shock could depress growth for far longer.

The new estimate said that over the 2020-2030 period, total GDP output could be $15.7 trillion lower than CBO had been projecting as recently as January. That would equal 5.3% of lost GDP over the coming decade.

After adjusting for inflation, CBO said the lost output would total $7.9 trillion, a loss of 3% of inflation-adjusted GDP.

CBO called this a “significant markdown” in GDP output as a result of the pandemic.

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Egypt’s ex-PM faces torture allegation in American’s lawsuit

CAIRO (AP) — After his arrest in 2013 for documenting the deadliest crackdown on protesters in Egypt’s modern history, Mohamed Soltan landed in a notorious prison where he says he was brutally tortured for 21 months.

He never thought he’d get a chance to fight back, let alone make it out alive.

But on Monday, Soltan, a 32-year-old U.S. citizen now living in Virginia, used a federal statute to accuse former Egyptian prime minister Hazem el-Beblawi of crimes against humanity.

The 1991 Torture Victims Protection Act allows for victims of torture and extrajudicial killings committed by foreign officials abroad to seek justice through the American court system.

It’s the first such case against an Egyptian official, made possible by the grim coincidence that el-Beblawi now lives just miles from Soltan, in Washington, where he is an executive director of the International Monetary Fund.

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Spike Lee on what’s different about these protests

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s not the first time that Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” has been freshly urgent, but Lee’s 1989 film has again found blistering relevance in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

On Monday, Lee released a short film titled “3 Brothers” connecting the death of Radio Raheem (played by Bill Nunn) in “Do the Right Thing” to the deaths of Floyd and Eric Garner. Floyd died last week after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against his neck as he begged for air. Garner’s dying plea of “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry against police brutality in 2014.

Blazed across the screen is the question: “Will history stop repeating itself?”

“I’ve seen this before. This is not new,” Lee said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday. “I was born in ’57 so I was 11 years old when I saw the riots with Dr. King’s assassination, later on with Rodney King and the Simi Valley verdict, Trayvon Martin and Ferguson.”

“People are tired and they take to the streets,” said Lee.

The Associated Press