memeorandum: America Is a Tinderbox — Scenes from a country in free fall. (Michelle Goldberg/New York Times)

1:50 PM ET, May 30, 2020

Top Items:

Pentagon puts military police on alert to go to Minneapolis — DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — As unrest spread across dozens of American cities on Friday, the Pentagon took the rare step of ordering the Army to put several active-duty U.S. military police units on the ready to deploy to Minneapolis …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Daily Kos, VICE, The Hill, Outside the Beltway, The Week, New York Times, The New Civil Rights Movement, Raw Story, Rolling Stone, ABC News and Louder With Crowder, more at Mediagazer »

Sudhin Thanawala / Associated Press:

National Guard summoned to aid cities amid police clashes — ATLANTA (AP) — Protesters burned businesses in Minneapolis. They smashed police cars and windows in Atlanta, broke into police headquarters in Portland, Oregon, and chanted curses at President Donald Trump outside the White House.

Discussion: New York Times, CNN, Breitbart, The Week and The Guardian

Jason Koebler / VICE:

NYC Bus Drivers Union Refuses to Transport Protesters for the NYPD — Workers for New York City's MTA are refusing to transport people arrested during protests against police brutality in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. A video of a bus driver refusing …

Discussion: New York Post, Spectrum News NY1, OPB, ABC7, The Hill, The Root, Payday Report, Common Dreams and NBC News

Michelle Goldberg / New York Times:

America Is a Tinderbox — Scenes from a country in free fall. — The last two and a half months in America have felt like the opening montage in a dystopian film about a nation come undone. First the pandemic hit and hospitals in New York City were overwhelmed.

Discussion: FiveThirtyEight, Conservative News Today, Digby's Hullabaloo, The Daily Beast and Washington Post

Washington Post:

Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis — A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake. Protests — some of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans.

Discussion: Business Insider, Breitbart, Sputnik News, NBC News, WND, TheGrio, Al Jazeera, Common Dreams, WTRF-TV, The American Independent, New York Post, PBS NewsHour and Bring Me The News, more at Techmeme »

CBS News:

Minneapolis protesters defy curfew in fourth night of unrest — Protesters in Minneapolis defied curfew orders as firefighters worked to put out fires across the city in the fourth night of unrest over George Floyd's death. — CBS Minnesota reports they were battling fires at businesses.

Discussion: New York Times, KTLA, Spectator USA, WCCO | CBS Minnesota and NPR

Washington Post:

The death of George Floyd: What video and other records show about his final minutes — Play Video — On May 25, Minneapolis resident George Floyd was pinned facedown on the ground, in handcuffs, by a white police officer who pressed his knee against Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes.

Politico:

Trump confronts a culture war of his own making as election looms — President Donald Trump is throwing himself into a culture war he has long stoked, and a battle for voters he has eagerly pursued, as he navigates national outrage over the brutal killings of two black men …

Discussion: Raw Story, BuzzFeed News, Fox News, PBS NewsHour, Mediaite, Deadline, Mother Jones and The New Civil Rights Movement

Isaac Chotiner / New Yorker:

How Violent Protests Change Politics — On Thursday night, thousands of people gathered in the streets of Minneapolis, and other cities across the country, to protest the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, NBC News and Right Wing Watch

Fox News:

Minnesota Governor authorizes ‘full mobilization’ of state's National Guard, says protests no longer about death of George Floyd — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced Saturday he has authorized “full mobilization” of the state's National Guard - something that has never been done in the 164-year history of the Minnesota National Guard.

Discussion: Townhall, The Daily Beast, detroitnews, Los Angeles Times and Disrn

Patrick Condon / Star Tribune:
Gov. Walz to ‘fully mobilize’ the National Guard for Floyd riots

Discussion: Axios

New York Times:
Live Updates on George Floyd Protests: Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York

Discussion: Ohio Capital Journal, Mother Jones, Associated Press and KSTP-TV

New York Times:
Sprawling Protest Movement Treads Line Between Justice Agenda and Chaos

Discussion: The Week

Ryan Faircloth / Star Tribune:
‘You need to go home,’ Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says as new fires, looting hit Minneapolis

Discussion: ABC News, The Hill, Twitchy, New York Post, Washington Post and Power Line

Washington Post:
Demonstrations for George Floyd lead to clashes outside White House

Discussion: KDFX-TV, The Hill, Rolling Stone, The American Conservative, Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit

Joseph Simonson / Washington Examiner:
Biden fails to condemn rioting in remarks on Minneapolis

Discussion: USA Today

New York Times: A Justice Dept. Skeptical of Police Abuse Cases Vows to Investigate Floyd Death

Wall Street Journal:
The Minneapolis Neighborhood at the Center of Protests Over George Floyd's Death

Discussion: National Journal, The Daily Signal, New York Times and Right Wing Watch

WCCO | CBS Minnesota:
Lawyer: Wife Of Charged Ex-MPD Officer Derek Chauvin Files For Divorce

Discussion: The Sun, CBS Chicago, TheGrio, Breitbart and Sputnik News

Tess Owen / VICE: Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War

Sudhin Thanawala / Associated Press:
Protests, some violent, spread in wake of George Floyd death

Discussion: New York Post, NBC4 Washington, The Daily Caller, KTLA, Associated Press, KRQE-TV, Redstate and Las Vegas Review-Journal

Des Moines Register: Des Moines police clash with protestors, spray tear gas after bricks hit cars

The Daily Beast:
Team Biden on Klobuchar: ‘We Need to Avoid Her’

Discussion: The Dispatch, Redstate, Outside the Beltway, KDFX-TV, The Hill, Star Tribune, NBC News and Associated Press

Adam Liptak / New York Times:

Supreme Court, in 5-4 Decision, Rejects Church's Challenge to Shutdown Order — A California church argued that restrictions on public gatherings treated houses of worship worse than many businesses. — WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday turned away a request from a church in California …

Discussion: USA Today, LifeNews.com and Breitbart

J. Edward Moreno / The Hill:
Supreme Court denies California church's challenge to state restrictions

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Roberts joins court's liberals to deny California church's lockdown challenge

Discussion: Associated Press, Washington Post, Townhall, Disrn and The Hill

Shellie Sylvestri / WAVE-TV:

LMPD officer fires pepper balls at WAVE 3 News reporter during Louisville protest — LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - WAVE 3 News reporter Kaitlin Rust appeared to have been hit by pepper balls reportedly fired by an LMPD officer during a protest in downtown Louisville.

Discussion: Courier-Journal, Associated Press, NBC News, The Wrap, The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, The Hill, CBS News, Raw Story and KRQE-TV, more at Mediagazer »

New York Times:

Flynn Discussed Sanctions at Length With Russian Diplomat, Transcripts Show — The former national security adviser now says he does not remember those discussions as he fights a criminal charge he had previously pleaded guilty to. — WASHINGTON — The former national security adviser …

Discussion: LewRockwell, Mediaite and American Greatness

Sean Davis / The Federalist:
Declassified Flynn Transcripts Contradict Key Mueller Claims Against Flynn

Discussion: Redstate and Twitchy

Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:
New Transcript Shows Trump Adviser Michael Flynn Colluding With Russia in 2016

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Politico, The New Civil Rights Movement, WND, Axios and National Review

Washington Post:

All U.S. — The number of people reported to have died of the novel coronavirus in the United States surpassed 100,000 this week, a grim marker of lives lost directly to the disease, but an analysis of overall deaths during the pandemic shows that the nation probably reached a similar terrible milestone three weeks ago.

Greg Wilson / Fox News:

Fox News crew harassed, chased by angry mob while reporting on protests outside White House — An angry mob of rioters stoked by the death of a black man at the apparent hand of a Minneapolis cop turned its rage on a Fox News crew early Saturday, chasing and pummeling the journalists outside …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Disrn, TheGrio, IJR, TheBlaze and Mediaite

Karra Small / FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV:

Partygoer at Lake of the Ozarks pool party tests positive for COVID-19, potentially exposing hundreds — CAMDEN COUNTY, Mo. — A positive COVID-19 case has been confirmed in a Boone County resident who attended a crowded pool party in the Lake of the Ozarks last weekend.

Discussion: fox8.com

CNN:

North Carolina governor: Trump insisted on full convention with no face masks or social distancing — Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump called Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Friday and insisted on a full Republican convention this summer with no face masks or social distancing …

Discussion: KDFX-TV, Washington Post and The Daily Caller

Karen Attiah / Washington Post:

How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country — If we talked about what is happening in Minneapolis the same way we talk about events in a foreign country, here's how the Western media would cover it. The quotes and those “quoted” in the piece below are fictional.

Greg Bluestein / Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Georgia politicians condemn violent protests, others see ‘day of reckoning’ — Some of Georgia's top politicians echoed Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' call for violent protesters to “go home.” Others said outraged demonstrators should translate their anger into votes in November.

Discussion: Althouse