A guilty plea from George Floyd's murderer

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Derek Chauvin admits he violated George Floyd’s civil rights; the US appears poised to ban products made from Uyghur forced labor.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Derek Chauvin pleads guilty in George Floyd civil rights case

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

• Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in May 2020, has pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges. It’s a separate case from Chauvin’s state murder trial, which resulted in a conviction this past April. [CNN]
• Chauvin’s plea is a reversal from his earlier position; back in September, he pleaded not guilty to the charges of violating Floyd’s constitutionally protected rights to be free from unreasonable seizure and from unreasonable force by a police officer. Chauvin pleaded guilty to one count encompassing these violations, as well as to violating the rights of a teenager who Chauvin hit with a flashlight and knelt on during a 2017 interaction. [NBC / Erik Ortiz]
• Chauvin pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal, one that could have him serving 300 months in prison without the ability to appeal. As part of his guilty plea, Chauvin was required to admit aloud to the actions he took leading to Floyd’s death. [Washington Post / Holly Bailey]
• Chauvin is serving 22 and a half years in prison for Floyd’s murder, but is appealing that conviction. He’ll be moved to a federal prison to serve there, as his federal charges will run concurrently to his state charges. [Reuters]
• The three other former officers present at Floyd’s murder —  Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane — are set to go to trial next year for failing to give Floyd medical care. They have pleaded not guilty to the federal civil rights charges. [BuzzFeed / Salvador Hernandez and Nicole Fallert]
• Chauvin’s state conviction, announced after almost a year of protests calling for justice in Floyd’s murder, was a rare instance of police facing consequences for killing Black civilians. Wednesday’s guilty plea also met a high bar, securing a conviction for an officer acting under the law to willfully deprive someone of their civil rights. [AP / Amy Forliti]

US House votes unanimously to ban imports from Xinjiang due to human rights violations

• The US House of Representatives voted unanimously to ban the import of goods from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns that the Chinese government is using slave labor from Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities to produce these goods. The bill passed Tuesday reconciles a previous House version with Senate text of the bill. [Reuters / Patricia Zengerle]
• The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is now headed to the Senate, where it is also expected to pass this week. In addition to prohibiting goods “mined, produced or manufactured wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region,” the bill also threatens sanctions and visa bans for those enabling forced labor. [WSJ / Natalie Andrews]
• The bill constitutes one of the US government’s most forceful acts yet regarding China’s detention and abuse of Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang; the Chinese government has repeatedly denied those charges. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian denied the charges at a press conference Wednesday and accused US politicians of trying to meddle in China’s affairs. [Bloomberg / Daniel Flatley]
• As the US plans to deploy harsher measures against China, President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a videoconference Wednesday, shoring up their mutual support against Western threats to their power. Putin faces crippling US sanctions should Russia invade Ukraine again. [NYT / Anton Troianovski and Steven Lee Myers]

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The US death toll from Covid-19 has reached 800,000, but 1 million lives have been saved by vaccines. [Commonwealth Fund]

• The Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets military policy for the coming year. [Axios / Zachary Basu]
• Omicron will be the dominant variant in the EU by mid-January, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. [AP / Samuel Petrequin]
• Britain has recorded its first death of a Covid-19 patient with the omicron variant. [Reuters / Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Holden]

“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.”

[The Black feminist theorist, critic, and author bell hooks, in her 2002 book Communion: The Female Search for  Love. hooks died on Wednesday, at age 69, at her home in Berea, Kentucky.]

Sean Illing talks with psychologist Paul Bloom about his new book The Sweet Spot, and whether it's necessary to experience suffering in order to live a fulfilling, meaningful life. [Spotify]

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