“Grandma Juneteenth” and the person who contributed to part of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden on the White House on Friday.

They were amongst 19 people, including current and former elected officials, who received the nation’s highest civilian honors.

Known as “Grandma Juneteenth” for her a long time of work to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, Opal Lee is a 97-year-old retired teacher in Texas. After the ceremony, Lee said she “don’t know how to express” the way it felt “to be in the room with all these people who have achieved so much.” Those honored included Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh, broadcast journalism icon Phil Donahue, former New York mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg and Olympic gold medalist Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky.

“Having June 11 as a national holiday was something so many of us have wanted for so long,” Lee said. “There is so much more to do.”

In a packed East Room, Biden called the recipients “amazing people” whose “relentless curiosity and ingenuity, ingenuity and hope have sustained faith in a better tomorrow.”

Other recipients included black luminaries similar to Clarence B. Jones, who was King’s lawyer and helped craft the unique “I Have a Dream” speech, and the late civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

Evers’ award was accepted posthumously by his daughter, Reena Evers-Everette.

Biden praised Evers as “a patriot shot dead by the poison of white supremacy” whose “spirit endures.” He praised Jones for “holding up the pen as a sword and giving words to a movement that has brought freedom to millions of people.”

Biden’s close allies also received the honour, including former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and current Republican Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; former Vice President Al Gore; former Secretary of State John Kerry, who most recently served as Biden’s climate czar; and Rep. James “Jim” Clyburn, D-S.C., to whom Biden credited his presidency.

“I wouldn’t be standing here as president and giving these awards if it weren’t for Jim,” Biden said of Clyburn, 83, who notably endorsed Biden within the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and saved his campaign, which was struggling on the time.

Lee organized the 4.5-mile walk to commemorate the 2 and a half years it took for enslaved black people in Galveston, Texas, to learn that that they had been emancipated by the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln.

In 2021, Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, solidifying June 19 as a federal holiday. When he signed the bill, he handed Lee the primary of many pens used to sign it.

“June 11 is a day of profound significance and power to remember the original sin of slavery and the extraordinary ability to weave together our most painful moments to achieve greater visions of ourselves,” Biden said. “SM. Opal Lee set out to make history, not erase it. We are a better nation because of you.”

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was first established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy. Civilians who’ve received this presidential honor include civil rights activist Rosa Parks, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, former South African President Nelson Mandela, author Maya Angelou, actor Sidney Poitier, activist Bayard Rustin, entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey and athlete Michael Jordan, amongst others.

After the awards presentation, Biden concluded his remarks by saying, “It makes you proud to be an American, right?” to a room full of applause.

Vice President Kamala Harris congratulated the winners on Saturday in a social media post, sharing a photograph of herself with Biden and Lee.

“You represent the best of America,” she wrote within the post.

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In an interview with Donald Trump, the presumptive candidate of the Republican Party, said that he wants to speed up deportations using the US military, deploy the National Guard to suppress protests, gut the US civil service and that he believes white people stand anti-white prejudice, which the 2025 Project also argues for by describing affirmative motion as affirmative discrimination.

IN extensive interview, published on April 30, Trump lays out his vision for America, which some have described as interconnected dreams of a dictator. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley described Trump’s second presidency in the magazine as heralding “the end of our democracy” and “the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

As we reported, President Joe Biden attended the May 1 event he called the long interview a must-read. He told the gang gathered for a Native Asian and Hawaiian Pacific Islander fundraiser on the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.: “Trump gave a protracted interview to TIME magazine. It’s coming out, you will have to read it. This is a must-read. This election is about competing values ​​and competing visions for America,” Biden added. “Trump’s values ​​and visions are anger, hatred, vengeance and vengeance.”

In addition to his tacit support for the goals of Project 2025, the Republican Party’s code-named project to reshape the complete US government in Trump’s image, the GOP nominee has been staunchly opposed to what he has described as anti-white bias.

“If you have a look at the Biden administration, it’s type of anti-everything, depending in your specific views. They are against Catholics. They’re going against plenty of different people… I feel there’s a transparent anti-white bias in this country and that cannot be allowed either,” Trump said. “Honestly, I do not think it might be very difficult to solve. However, I consider that the present law may be very unfair. And education may be very unfair and suppressed. However, I do not think it’s going to be a giant problem. But if you look now, you will notice that there may be absolute prejudice against white (people) and that could be a problem.

The Republican Party as an entire has been engaged in a long-running anti-DEI attack, most prominently exemplified by the controversy the party has generated over critical race theory. Critical race theory is actually a way of American society through the lens of laws and other points of the American social structure that perpetuate systemic racism. Although the speculation doesn’t appear in any K-12 textbooks, it’s mentioned in several K-12 education proposals put forth by Republican governors similar to Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The Republican Party can also be attacking DEI policies and departments at higher education institutions, saying they shouldn’t receive state funding since it is discriminatory.

However, civil rights leaders similar to Alvin B. Tillery, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Diversity at Northwestern University, and Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, see Republican Party activism as a part of a framework that began throughout the days of segregation. Morial said that conservatives “stand for restoring white privilege” and that they “stand for policies that were used during the era of segregation in America.”

An appeals court overturned the conviction of a former Miami police officer found guilty of beating a Black woman in 2019 after she called police for help when her white neighbor pointed a shotgun at her.

Alejandro Giraldo, who once worked as a field training officer for the Miami Police Department, was convicted on March 5, 2019, of battery and misconduct within the arrest of 31-year-old Dyma Loving.

Loving called 911 the identical day after a white neighbor pointed a shotgun at her and her friend, Adrianna Greene. A neighbor, Frank Tumm, began calling them “whores” and using racial slurs as they walked on the sidewalk past his house. According to police body camera footage, when the ladies screamed and called him a “son of a bitch,” he grabbed a gun and pointed it at them.

Cellphone and body camera footage shows multiple officers responding to the decision. One of the officers questioned Tumm, who said he never had a gun. According to reports, he was released the identical day and arrested only a week later, on March 12, when he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

As Giraldo interviewed each women, who vividly described their encounter with their neighbor, he began threatening to commit Loving to a mental hospital and have her arrested if she didn’t “rest.” When Loving tries to clarify that she must call her children, Giraldo grabs her, pushes her against a fence and puts his arm around her head to push her to the bottom, the video shows.

Loving was initially charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Both charges were dropped two weeks after the arrest.

Giraldo’s arrest report, which included his misconduct plea, was crucial to the appeals court’s decision to vacate his conviction.

In the report, he wrote that “Love began to behave aggressively and was disobedient
orders” and through his meeting she became “even more nervous, very irritated and uncooperative.”

“SM. Loving began shouting at us, causing a scene in a residential area. Ms. Loving was asked several times to stop shouting and cooperate. Ms. Loving was informed that the investigation was discontinued due to her screaming and aggressive behavior” – Giraldo – it was written within the report.

The appeals court judges ruled that prosecutors didn’t present a sufficient objective argument to support their claim that Giraldo intentionally falsified the arrest report. They found that Giraldo’s “subjective interpretation” of Loving’s behavior through the meeting was not adequately rebutted and subsequently intent to jot down false statements couldn’t be proven.

“Giraldo’s subjective account of the events depicted does not rise to the level of knowledge or deliberate falsification,” the three-judge panel wrote in its opinion. “After reviewing the footage, it can be concluded that Giraldo’s description is not manifestly false or inaccurate. (…) Because Giraldo’s subjective interpretation was not clearly disproved by objective facts, it did not – and could not – rise to the level of intentional falsity.”

The three-judge panel of Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals in Miami further argued that because prosecutors told the trial court that the false arrest report charge helped establish the battery charge, the second charge was challenged.

“The trial court erred in denying Giraldo’s motions for a judgment of acquittal. “The State acknowledged at the oral hearing that if the motion for acquittal by reason of official misconduct had been granted, it should not have initiated a count of beatings because the arrest would have been lawful,” the judges wrote. “We therefore set aside the final conviction and sentence and forward the motion for a judgment of acquittal in both cases.”

The court dismissed each his misconduct and the battery charges.

Giraldo’s attorney said he was “excited and satisfied” with the ruling. State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle expressed disappointment.

“Based on the Court’s ruling, we cannot reopen the case. While we’re disillusioned by the Court’s decision, we understand and respect its decision,” Rundle said: according to Local 10. “Police officers have a very difficult job and hindsight is 20/20. As a result, the law gives them great latitude, making it difficult to prosecute them for their conduct and actions while performing their official duties.”

Giraldo was fired from the Miami Police Department and convicted on June 22, 2022, on charges stemming from Loving’s arrest. He was sentenced to 364 days in prison and 18 months probation. He was released on bail on the same day his prison sentence began.

His former boss told NBC6 he was surprised by the ruling overturning Giraldo’s conviction.

“While I respect the District Court of Appeals’ decision, I am surprised,” former Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez said in a statement: according to NBC6. “The jury, not the state’s attorney, decided the guilty verdict.”

The Miami Herald reports that Giraldo is predicted to attempt to regain his position as a police officer. To accomplish that, he might want to reapply for recertification as a state police officer.