The anniversary of George Floyd’s murder is a reminder of America’s racial divides
In Minneapolis, the spot where George Floyd was murdered has been turned into a mural.
His face is depicted in street art on a pavement covered in flowers, rosaries, and other trinkets left by people who have come to pay their respects in the last five years.
His final moments, struggling for breath with white police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, were captured in a viral video that provoked anger, upset, and outrage.
Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck
In Minneapolis and other parts of America, there were protests that at points boiled over into unrest.
The events to mark the fifth anniversary of his death took on a very different tone – one of celebration and joy.
Behind a wooden statue of a clenched fist on one end of a junction now renamed George Perry Floyd Square, people gathered in the morning.
There was a moment of prayer before a brass band began to play and the group marched, while singing and chanting.
George Perry Floyd Square, a makeshift memorial area
‘It made us want to fight harder’
Among those gathered in front of a makeshift stage built in the square were two of Floyd’s family members – his cousin Paris and aunt Mahalia.
To them, the man whose death sparked a racial reckoning in America and further afield, was simply “Perry,” a larger-than-life figure whose presence is missed at family gatherings.
Speaking to me while the speakers behind them thumped and people danced, they didn’t just reflect with sadness though.
There was also pride at a legacy they felt has led to change.
“It made us want to fight harder,” said Mahalia, “and it’s a feeling you cannot explain. When the whole world just stood up.”
George Floyd’s aunt Mahalia and cousin Paris
Referring to Chauvin’s eventual murder charge, Paris added: “I think that from here on out, at least officers know that you’re not going to slide through the cracks. Our voices are heard more.”
The tapestry of items outside the Cup Foods convenience store, now renamed Unity Foods, is not the only makeshift memorial in the area.
A short walk away is the “Say Their Names” cemetery, an art installation honouring black people killed by the police.
Meeting me there later in the day, activist Nikema Levy says the installation and George Floyd Square are called “sacred spaces” in the community.
As someone who took to the streets at the time of Floyd’s death and a community organiser for years before that, she’s constantly stopped by people who want to speak to her.
Activist Nikema Levy speaking to Sky News
‘White supremacy on steroids’
Once we do manage to speak, Levy reminds me of a wider political picture. One that goes beyond Minneapolis and is a fraught one.
In the week of the anniversary, the US Department of Justice rolled back investigations into some of the largest police forces in the country, including in Minneapolis – a move she calls “diabolical.”
“That type of cruelty is what we have seen since Donald Trump took office on January 20th of this year,” she continued.
“From my perspective, that is white supremacy on steroids. And it should come as no surprise that he would take these types of steps, because these are the things that he talked about on the campaign trail.”
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Has US changed five years after George Floyd’s death?
‘True healing has never taken place’
Trump has argued his policing reforms will help make America’s communities safer.
Even on a day of optimism, with a community coming together, Levy’s words in front of headstones bearing the names of black people who have died at the hands of the police are a reminder of how deep the racial divides in America still are – a sentiment she leaves me with.
“From the days of slavery and Jim Crow in this country, we’ve just had the perception of healing, but true healing has never taken place,” she says.
“So the aftermath of George Floyd is yet another example of what we already know.”
Donald Trump has signalled his intention to send troops to Chicago to ramp up the deportation of illegal immigrants – by posting an AI-generated parody image from Apocalypse Now on social media.
There were protests in the city, the largest in Illinois, on Saturday night, with thousands of people marching past Trump Tower to demonstrate against possible immigration raids.
That came as the US president ramped up his threats to deploy federal authorities and military personnel in Chicago, as he has done in Los Angeles and Washington DC.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as a military officer in the movie Apocalypse Now, with the title changed to “Chipocalypse Now” over flames and the city skyline.
The post – a screenshot from X – said: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Pic: Truth Social
Mr Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Pentagon as the Department of War.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, wrote in a post on X, responding to Mr Trump’s post.
“This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Mr Pritzker previously said that he believed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would coincide with Mexican Independence Day festivals scheduled for this weekend and next weekend.
Some Mexican festivals in the Chicago area were postponed or cancelled over the threatened stings.
A protest against threatened immigration raids in Chicago on Saturday. Pic: AP
A military deployment in Chicago has long been reported. Last month, the Pentagon was said to be drafting plans to send the US Army to Illinois.
In a statement responding to that report, originally from The Washington Post, Mr Pritzker said the state had “made no requests for federal intervention” and accused Mr Trump of “attempting to manufacture a crisis”.
Vice president JD Vance said on Wednesday that there were “no immediate plans” to send the National Guard to Chicago.
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ICE arrests 475 Hyundai workers
On Thursday, ICE agents carried out a raid at a Hyundai car battery plant in Georgia, saying 475 people, mostly South Koreans, were found to be illegally working there.
It marked the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.
The day after the raid, ICE posted a video and photos of workers shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles getting on a bus.
South Korean junior foreign minister Park Yoon-joo told a US government official in a phone call that the video release was regrettable.
Seoul’s foreign ministry added the post came “at a critical time, when the momentum of trust and cooperation” between the two countries, forged through their first summit, “must be maintained”.
Britain’s ambassador to the United States will use a keynote speech today to underline the UK-US special relationship – while also attempting to ‘Reform-proof’ his own struggling government.
Lord Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, master of political spin and now Britain’s man in Washington, will use the 2025 annual lecture at Ditchley Park to offer a positive spin on a presidency which has proudly upended norms and frayed alliances.
In the speech, parts of which have been released in advance, Mandelson will describe President Trump as a “risk taker” with an “iron-clad stomach”.
Lord Mandelson was chosen as ambassador by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer late last year. He is a political appointee rather than a career diplomat.
And with intriguing language he will offer his take on the parallels between Trump and Starmer’s challenges and mandates.
He will say: “I credit President Trump’s political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work…
“These American concerns find their mirror image in British society, where Keir Starmer won an electoral mandate for national renewal which is similar to Donald Trump’s.”
Yet Mandelson delivers the speech at the end of a week when Nigel Farage was in town.
Screaming for his own form of Trump-like national renewal, the disruptive leader of the UK’s top-polling political party – Reform – was in Washington to hobnob in the Oval Office and to tell Congress that Keir Starmer is turning Blighty into North Korea.
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Farage likens UK to North Korea in Congress
Mr Farage enjoys lapping up the limelight in Washington, where he is an old-world conservative celebrity in the new MAGA White House.
His calculation is that the MAGA wave will reach the UK shores soon.
Reform‘s policy platform is a mirror of the Trump agenda in many respects, tweaked accordingly. The administration is happy to support him. There is a MAGA-Reform mutual respect.
And so it is politically savvy or unavoidably necessary for Lord Mandelson, New Labour‘s architect laying the foundations of the current UK government, to proclaim: ‘We respect Trump too.’
The truth is the government, like so many around the world, sees Donald Trump as an infuriating and unpredictable disrupter with the ability to upend norms at the stroke of a Sharpie. But they can’t articulate that publicly.
Instead, the ‘Prince of Darkness’ will cast Mr Trump as the consequence not the cause of the disruption to international systems, even if many argue that he can be both.
As a master of spin, strategy and ruthlessness, Mandelson clearly has an admiration for Trump’s political style and sheer chutzpah.
Lord Mandelson’s speech comes a week before Mr Trump’s UK state visit. Pic: AP
He will tell the Ditchley Park lecture: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.”
At a time when the Labour government is struggling and feeling the heat from Farage and his disrupters, are these words to be read as a not-so-subtle message to Prime Minister Starmer?
Mandelson is an old-fashioned liberal. He hasn’t the stomach for ‘wokey’ politics or own goals like the arrest of Graham Linehan. Is there a frustration that the political party he built is now messing it all up?
“Indeed, he seems to have an iron-clad stomach for political risk…” he will say of Trump, decrying the tendency of previous presidents to descend “into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism”.
Lord Mandelson may be Britain’s man in Washington now but, more than anyone else to hold the post, he is deeply integrated into the Downing Street machine.
He is tight with Number 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and was inside Downing Street when Friday’s reshuffle took place. A total coincidence I am told.
A week before the president’s state visit to the UK, Lord Mandelson’s speech is designed to steady a special relationship put under pressure by the return of Trump.
“Do we always have identical views?” he will say. “Of course not, we never have. And we are not looking for special treatment. Our alliance exists because it serves both nations’ interests, because the core values of Britons and Americans remain aligned, as the world around us becomes more threatening.”
Lord Mandelson will say Brexit has freed the UK to pursue closer ties with the US. Pic Reuters
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And, in a shapeshifting manoeuvre that only the original spin doctor could manage, Lord Mandelson, a cheerleading remainer in the EU referendum campaign, now casts Brexit as a liberator.
“Brexit has freed us to pursue closer US ties,” he will say in his speech.
“Britain has the opportunity to use its regulatory freedom and independence from European law to deepen American investment opportunities. This is crucial as, post-Brexit, we need to leverage every advantage we can to spur UK growth and employment.”
The ambassador is expected to concede that pre-referendum warnings of the demise of Britain’s trans-Atlantic clout have not transpired, while maintaining that Brexit has hit the UK financially with a net-loss to its economy.
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They say the British ambassador is the custodian of the US-UK special relationship. This ambassador has seen what the relationship looks like under Trump.
With trademark political gymnastics, he seems now to be both admiring of the Trumpian movement but also anxious that if Britain under Labour doesn’t get its house in order, then it too will get its own Trumpian disrupter.
Former US president Joe Biden has had surgery for skin cancer, his spokesperson has said.
It’s unclear when he had the procedure, but video from late August showed him leaving church in Delaware with a large, fresh scar on his head.
The spokesperson told Sky’s US partner, NBC News, that he was recovering well.
Mr Biden had Mohs surgery, which involves removing a layer of tissue, examining it under a microscope to see if any cancer cells remain, and repeating if necessary.
The 82-year had a basal cell carcinoma, one of the two most common skin cancer types, removed from his chest in 2023.
His doctor said at the time that all the cancerous cells had been removed.
The same year, Mr Biden’s wife, Jill, had two basal cell carcinomas removed from near her eye and on her chest.
The former president also revealed this May that he had stage-four prostate cancer – with the disease having spread to his bones and having a Gleason score of nine.
Such a score means the disease is “likely to grow quickly”, according to Cancer Research UK.
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His office said the prostate cancer was discovered when Mr Biden visited a doctor for urinary symptoms and that he was considering “multiple treatment options”.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” said a statement.
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