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Following the deaths of unarmed Black people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the president’s administration has begun the process of ending the federal government’s involvement in the reform of local police departments.

The United States Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that it would revoke two proposed agreements that would have required that the cities of Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, submit to federal oversight of their police departments.

A federal court assists in enforcing a number of steps and objectives that the parties have in common, which are known as consent decrees.

Additionally, the Justice Department announced that it would stop reviewing reports from six additional local police departments that revealed excessive violence and discrimination.

The Trump administration framed the announcement as a step toward shifting federal responsibility away from the federal government in favor of individual cities and states.

According to Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, “the federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception, and not the norm,” according to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

She argued that taxpayer money would be squandered by such federal oversight.

“There isn’t any accountability,” he said. Local control is lacking, too. And there is a business here that, in my opinion, defrauds taxpayers and makes people less secure, Dhillon said.

However, the news, which came just days before Floyd’s death’s fifth anniversary, angered civil rights organizations and police reform advocates.

Following the release of Floyd’s final moments, a&nbsp, viral video included the Reverend Al Sharpton as one of the leaders who demanded that police departments take serious action. A white police officer, Derek Chauvin, leaned his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, causing him to suffocate and perish.

Sharpton remarked, “This isn’t just a policy change.” It’s a moral retreat that conveys the chilling message that accepting responsibility for Black and Brown victims is optional.

He warned that the Trump administration’s action would signal to police departments that they were “above scrutiny.”

A number of other high-profile deaths, including Taylor’s, were also notable in the year of Floyd’s murder.

The 26-year-old medical worker was sleeping late at night on March 13, 2020 when police broke into her apartment using a battering ram. Her boyfriend shot once because he thought they were being attacked. Taylor was killed six times when the police fired a string of bullets in response.

Millions of people in the US are protesting in the streets as part of social justice movements like Black Lives Matter, with her death and other events causing a period of nationwide unrest. One of the largest mass demonstrations in US history is thought to have occurred during the “racial reckoning” of 2020.

When Democrat Joe Biden took Trump as president in 2021, the Justice Department launched a number of 12 investigations looking into allegations of police overreach and excessive violence on the local level. Those protests took place in the final months of Trump’s first term.

Those “pattern-or-practice” investigations were intended to determine whether police brutality incidents were isolated events or a result of a trend in a particular police department.

The Trump Justice Department on Wednesday decided to drop its settlements in Minneapolis and Louisville, where Floyd’s murder took place. Under Biden, the Justice Department had discovered patterns of discriminatory policing in both cities.

The Minneapolis report states that “police officers frequently make split-second decisions and risk their lives by protecting their communities.”

However, the neighborhood police department “used dangerous methods and weapons against people who committed at most a petty offence and occasionally no offense at all,” it adds.

In addition to the Louisiana State Police, Phoenix, Arizona, Memphis, Tennessee, Trenton, New Jersey, Mount Vernon, New York, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and other police departments were under scrutiny during this time.

Dhillon, who now leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, used those findings’ retractions as a policy pivot. She also said she would consider revoke some existing agreements in order to stop people from using them as an overuse tool.

However, a judge’s approval would likely be necessary for that procedure.

Some community advocates worry that consent decrees will burden already overburdened law enforcement departments, but others oppose the Justice Department’s most recent action, claiming that a retreat will reduce resources and momentum for police reform.

Chief Paul Humphrey of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) stated that the organization’s commitment to better policing transcended settlement. He stated that he would seek out an independent watchdog to oversee reforms.

He claimed that it is not the paper’s words. It’s about the collective efforts of the LMPD, metro government, and community to make the world a safer, better place.

Mayor Jacob Frey in Minneapolis rebuffed this by saying he could continue to work with the plan for a police reform in his city.

At a press conference, he declared, “We will follow every word and every phrase of the 169-page consent decree that we signed this year.”

“We will make sure that we are moving forward with each sentence of the consent decree and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights settlement.”

Johannesburg, South Africa – When the millionaire mining magnate-turned-president of South Africa landed in Washington to meet the billionaire real estate tycoon-turned-president of the United States, it was with a deal in mind.

Tensions have been escalating between the US and its African trade ally since Donald Trump took office this year, cut off aid to South Africa, repeated false accusations that a “white genocide” is taking place there and began welcoming Afrikaners as refugees.

At the meeting between Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House on Wednesday, the South African president began by focusing heavily on trade and investments, highlighting the two countries’ years of cooperation, in keeping with statements made by South Africa’s presidency that Ramaphosa would present a trade deal to the US.

But Trump responded with a well-prepared redirect that South African media and analysts described as an “ambush” and a move that “blindsided” Ramaphosa.

Ready with printouts of news articles about alleged white victims of killings in South Africa and a video of firebrand opposition politician Julius Malema singing Kill the Boer, Trump insisted that white farmers were being targeted and murdered – an assertion Ramaphosa politely yet firmly denied, saying criminality was a problem for all South Africans regardless of race.

The team Ramaphosa assembled to join him on his working visit – which included four white South Africans: two golf legends, the wealthiest man in the country and the agriculture minister – all reaffirmed Ramaphosa’s facts that while violence was widespread, white people were not specifically being targeted.

“We have a real safety problem in South Africa, and I don’t think anyone wants to candy-coat that,” said John Steenhuisen, the agriculture minister and a member of the Democratic Alliance party, which is part of South Africa’s governing coalition.

“Certainly, the majority of South Africa’s commercial and smallholder farmers really do want to stay in South Africa and make it work,” the minister, who is himself an Afrikaner, said. Trump claimed that “thousands” of white farmers were fleeing South Africa.

Steenhuisen added that the people in the video Trump showed were leaders of opposition minority parties and his party had joined forces with Ramaphosa “precisely to keep those people out of power”.

‘The lion’s den’

The meeting began cordially where Trump complimented South African golfers, including well-known Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, who were part of the delegation. They both implored Trump for enhanced trade to uplift South Africa’s economy.

Also in the delegation was South Africa’s richest man, Johann Rupert, a luxury-goods mogul and an Afrikaner. He countered claims of racial persecution against the white minority, saying that while criminality was rife, Black people were more often the victims.

“We have too many deaths, but it’s across the board. It is not only white farmers,” Rupert said to Trump.

Ramaphosa kept his cool, local media and observers said, noting that the South African president chose to remain calm, patient and light-hearted even in light of Trump’s attack.

He steered talks back to trade, saying South Africa needed economic investment from its allies, and mostly sat expressionless while the video was played, occasionally stretching his neck to look at it.

Ramaphosa went into “the lion’s den” and was met with an ambush but he remained calm, South African political analyst Sanusha Naidu said.

“Ramaphosa and the delegation did not allow themselves to be baited into an emotional response. That’s critical. They made Trump feel like he had the upper hand in the meeting,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that given the narrative from Trump before Ramaphosa’s arrival, it “could have gone worse”.

When asked by a reporter whether he wanted the impasse between the US and South Africa resolved, Trump said he was open to it.

“I hope it has to be resolved. It should be resolved,” he said, adding that if it were not resolved, it would be “the end of the country”.

‘Reset’ relations

Before the two leaders met on Wednesday, Ramaphosa’s office said the aim was to “reset” relations, especially as the US is South Africa’s second largest trading partner after China.

“Whether we like it or not, we are joined at the hip, and we need to be talking to them,” the South African president said before his trip.

Christopher Isike, a political scientist at the University of Pretoria, told Al Jazeera that direct engagement between the leaders was important, given the tense relations between their countries.

“This is an opportunity for South Africa to correct misinformation peddled by President Trump and try to reset trade relations between the two countries,” he said.

Isike noted that both presidents’ backgrounds as businesspeople could provide common ground for discussing mutually advantageous deals.

“Rich friends of Ramaphosa are also rich friends of Trump, and that may have helped facilitate the meeting,” Isike added.

Common ground and level heads would be useful as the leaders continued private talks away from the media on Wednesday, observers said.

Before the visit, Ramaphosa maintained that while Trump was a dealmaker, he too was adept at making deals and even joked about the possibility of playing a round of golf with his US counterpart.

Washington, however, has criticised Pretoria for a host of matters since Trump took office. This continued in the meeting on Wednesday.

Trump focused on the white farmers, particularly Afrikaners – the descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who instituted apartheid. He alleged they are being killed because of their race despite evidence showing that attacks and killings are common across all groups in the country.

Trump also mentioned South Africa’s land reform law that allows land in the public interest to be taken without compensation in exceptional circumstances in an effort to redress apartheid injustices. Pretoria said no white land has been taken, but the US said the law unfairly targets minority white South Africans who are the majority landholders.

Despite Pretoria consistently seeking to rectify false assertions, the Trump administration has pushed ahead with a plan to take in Afrikaners as refugees. The first group arrived last week. He has also cut aid, including vital support for life-saving HIV programmes, to South Africa.

Additionally, there are worries that Trump may not attend the Group of 20 summit being held in South Africa in November and his government may not renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), key US trade legislation that assists economies in sub-Saharan Africa. It expires in September.

Trade and investments

Before Wednesday’s meetings, Ramaphosa said strengthening trade relations between the two countries was his primary motivation for travelling to Washington, DC.

“We want to come out of the United States with a really good trade deal, investment promotion. We invest in the United States, and they invest in us. We want to strengthen those relations. We want to consolidate relations between the two countries,” he said.

This week, South Africa’s ministers of trade and agriculture, Parks Tau and Steenhuisen, met with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to present the first draft of a trade deal.

In 2024, total goods trade between the US and South Africa amounted to $20.5bn. This included $5.8bn in US exports to South Africa and $14.7bn in South African exports to the US.

However, some observers said that at the heart of the potential trade deal is what South Africa could offer billionaire and close Trump ally, Elon Musk, given his ongoing claims about obstacles he allegedly faces in operating Starlink, his satellite internet company, in the country where he was born due to its transformation laws.

These laws seek to redress past injustices that kept Black people destitute and require businesses over a certain size to have a 30 percent equity stake held by members of previously disadvantaged groups.

Speaking at the Doha Economic Forum on Tuesday, Musk reiterated his assertions about laws he claimed were biased against white people despite experts explaining that most of those only seek to promote racial justice.

“All races must be on equal footing in South Africa. That is the right thing to do. Do not replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws, which is utterly wrong and improper,” Musk said.

“I am in an absurd situation where I was born in South Africa but cannot get a licence to operate Starlink because I am not Black,” he claimed.

Before Wednesday’s meeting, a White House official told the Reuters news agency Trump is likely to tell Ramaphosa that all US companies in South Africa should be exempt from “racial requirements”.

Opposition figure Malema’s party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), threatened legal action after news that the government was considering offering regulatory assurances to Musk’s Starlink. The EFF said the move would be unconstitutional and shows Ramaphosa is willing to compromise the country’s sovereignty to “massage the inflated ego of Musk and Trump”.

Isike said that while trade concessions would be discussed, he doubted the South African government would give up its laws to appease Musk.

“I will be surprised if Starlink gets its way by refusing to follow South African transformation laws, which require 30 percent Black ownership of a foreign company,” he said.

‘Genocide’ claims

Meanwhile, in private talks, Ramaphosa and Trump were also expected to discuss foreign policy issues, including peace prospects between Russia and Ukraine and South Africa’s support for Palestine and its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Some political observers said Pretoria is in the US crosshairs partly because of its actions against the key Washington ally.

Patrick Bond, a sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, predicted before the talks that the US might offer to retract claims of “white genocide” in exchange for South Africa dropping its case at the ICJ.

South Africa is seeking to hold Israel accountable for its assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The US is Israel’s strongest ally and arms supplier.

“We are very rational when it comes to discussing global and geopolitical matters. We will put South African positions first, and our foreign policy positions will be clarified,” Ramaphosa said before the meeting.

As the Gaza genocide case against Israel continues in The Hague, US allegations of a widely discredited “white genocide” in South Africa continue to follow the country’s leadership.

Before Trump and Ramaphosa retreated to private meetings on Wednesday, a reporter asked the US president if he had decided whether genocide was being committed in South Africa. “I haven’t made up my mind,” he replied.

The unfounded claim of white genocide has “taken on a life of its own”, analyst Paolo von Schirach, president of the Global Policy Institute in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera.

It will be difficult for Ramaphosa and Trump to rebound after the Oval Office “ambush”, he said.

A federal judge in the United States has reportedly violated President Donald Trump’s administration’s injunction to deport migrants to South Sudan.

The Trump administration has been repeatedly criticized for ignoring court orders, but the announcement from US District Judge Brian Murphy on Wednesday sets up yet another judicial battle.

Judge Murphy, who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, has not yet disclosed what he will do in response to the glaring violation. That inquiry was put on hold until later.

However, he claimed that the passengers on Tuesday’s flight were not given enough time to file a deportation complaint, which was in violation of Murphy’s April 18 injunction.

A reasonable period of time had been granted to migrants who had been removed from their own country in a third-party country in order to challenge their deportations, according to Murphy’s ruling.

However, the Trump administration has repeatedly refuted claims that it will comply with policies’ arbitrary rules, instead branding judges like Murphy as “activists”.

Elainis Perez, a lawyer for Trump’s Justice Department, declined to confirm the location of the deportation flight during the court hearing on Wednesday, claiming that divulging the information raised “very serious operational and safety concerns.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also held a press conference to discuss the issue and support the deportation flight.

The passengers on board were accused of murder, armed robbery, rape, and sexual assault, according to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons.

Lyons remarked that “his country would not take him back” in the case of one immigrant. He referred to these nations as “recalcitrant.”

The removals were described as a “diplomatic and military security operation,” according to Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson.

She claimed that eight migrants had been deported alone for safety reasons and that they are still in DHS custody despite having actually left the US.

She continued, citing security concerns, adding, “We cannot tell you where these people will ultimately end up.”

However, she did mention the possibility that their lawyers had indicated in court filings that they might be currently in South Sudan.

She continued, “We’re confirming the fact that that’s not their final destination,” adding, “I would caution you to assume that their final destination is South Sudan.”

Lawyers for the migrants claimed their clients were from Myanmar, Vietnam, and other nations in the court filings on Tuesday. They added that their clients don’t understand their removal notices because they only understand it through a translator.

They allegedly received no more than 24 hours’ notice before being deported. She claimed on Tuesday morning that she was informed that her client had been taken to South Sudan, a nation with a turbulent history and a history of human rights violations, as one lawyer attempted to locate him.

Due to the possibility that the migrants might face dangers in the nations they were deported to, Judge Murphy had previously ordered the migrants to have at least 15 days to file a grievance.

He has also ruled that the US government must keep the migrants in its custody and ensure their safety while the hearings take place.

McLaughlin, however, claimed that the “activist judge” was “trying to protect” the migrants, who she described as “some of the most barbaric, violent individuals.”

It is absurd for a district judge to try to dictate the United States of America’s foreign policy and national security, she said.

McLaughlin and the other officials also claimed that the Trump administration was seeking to relocate these people to “safe third countries.”

Because of their barbaric and monstrous crimes, she claimed, “no country on earth wanted to accept them.”

We found a country that was willing to accept custody of these vicious illegal aliens thanks to the courageous work of the State Department, ICE, and the president’s national security team.

As part of its justification for its “mass deportation,” the Trump administration has been accused of raising concerns about immigration-related crime among its citizens.