Walters: Gavin Newsom embraced reparations at first. Now he's slow rolling them.

"George Floyd, a Black man who had been detained by Minneapolis police after a store clerk alleged he had used a counterfeit $20 bill, died as Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, ignoring Floyd's complaints that he could not breathe. A video of Floyd's May 25, 2020 death triggered massive protests throughout the nation and across the globe, energizing the Black Lives Matter movement that had been founded in 2013."

"Four months after Floyd's death, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed three bills to address, he said, the scourge of racial injustice rooted in the legacy of slavery and systemic racism, including one authorizing a nine-member task force to study reparations for Black Californians. As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive, Newsom declared."

"Three years later, in 2023, the task force produced a 1,060-page report that catalogued California's discriminatory treatment of Black people after its 1850 admission as a state that officially prohibited slavery. The report recommended appropriate remedies of compensation, rehabilitation, and restitution for African Americans, with a special consideration for African Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in the United States."

"Compensation should be provided for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, the task force wrote. The report identified a series of reparations amounts for various purposes, with some estimates amounting to $360,000 for each of the 1.8 million Black Californians deemed to have enslaved ancestors. That would total nearly $650 billion about twice the state's annual budget."

George Floyd died after an officer knelt on his neck for over nine minutes following detention over an alleged counterfeit $20 bill, and video of his May 25, 2020 death sparked massive national and global protests that energized the Black Lives Matter movement. Four months later, California enacted bills including authorization of a nine-member task force to study reparations for Black Californians. In 2023 the task force issued a 1,060-page report cataloguing discriminatory treatment of Black people since 1850 and recommending compensation, rehabilitation, and restitution, with special consideration for descendants of enslaved persons. The report proposed various reparations estimates, including $360,000 per descendant for 1.8 million people, totaling nearly $650 billion.

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