Protests continued throughout the United States to condemn the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police, while a discrepancy emerged between the White House and the Pentagon over dealing with the turmoil in the country.
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has sought to distance himself from President Donald Trump's stances toward the protests, and he has not advocated activating the federal law authorizing the president to call in and deploy the armed forces in American cities to establish order.
Esper's comments relate to the so-called 1807 rebellion law, which was last used in 1992 to quell the turmoil that followed the brutal police assault on black citizen Rodney King.
The minister said he did not see the current situation as calling for the deployment of the army, and stressed that the working forces should be used only as a "last resort."
Esber believed that racism in the United States was "real", stressing the Defense Department's commitment to work to end it, and described Floyd's killing by white police officers as a "horrific crime."
He said that the Pentagon faces a major challenge in trying to keep its position away from politics in light of the approaching US presidential elections.
Visiting the church
The defense minister also distanced himself from Trump's move last Monday when security forces dispersed crowds of protesters in front of the White House by force, and the president was able to leave the White House and go to a neighboring historical church, whereupon he raised the gospel in front of the media lenses.
"I would like to clarify some of the misunderstood things about what happened on Monday evening ... I know that after the president's comments that evening, many of us wanted to go with the president and look at the damage in Lafayette Park (opposite the White House), but we didn't know where we were going," Esber said. Exactly, and what will happen next. "
He added, "All that General Melli (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and I wanted to do is meet the National Guard and thank them for their work, which is what the President wanted to do as well ... I spent some time with the National Guard and toured various locations there."
Trump has pledged to deploy the military in US cities to quell the unrest based on the "insurgency law" if a city or state refuses to take the necessary measures to confront violence and looting.
But he said yesterday evening, Wednesday, that he did not think that the situation would require sending the Federal Military Forces to the cities to quell the protests.
Nevertheless, Trump stressed in his statements during an interview with former White House spokesman Sean Spicer that "the nation needs law and order ... There is a bad group of people invoking George Floyd and they use a lot of other people to try to do some bad things."
Is Esper gone?
The discrepancy between the White House and the Pentagon has sparked speculation that Trump wants to remove Esber from the post of defense secretary.
White House spokeswoman Kylie McKinney denied knowing the president's position on the secretary of defense’s comments about his refusal to apply the rebellion law.
"If the President loses his confidence in Minister Esber, you will be the first to know this ... Until now, Minister Esber is still the Minister of Defense, and if the President loses his confidence in him, we will know that all of us," McKinney said in response to reporters' questions.
Meanwhile, protests continued over the death of Floyd despite the imposition of curfews and the deployment of the National Guard in many US states, which are members of the reserve in the American army, and are not considered armed armed forces.
Federal and local security forces closed a street parallel to the White House, which witnessed protests over a week.
The authorities have pushed for additional security reinforcements from units of the Federal Forces, National Guard forces, and local police in Washington, to reinforce the security shield around the White House.
New York protests and
in New York, protesters gathered in front of the US President's Trump Tower, condemning the killing of Floyd. The protesters later marched through most of Manhattan to continue the protest.
New York police announced that one of its members had been shot, and that another policeman was stabbed in the Brooklyn neighborhood before midnight, but it was not clear if the attack was linked to the protests.
The police did not reveal the condition of the policemen, but media outlets said the injuries were not serious. The New York Post said the alleged attacker was also shot.
New charges
On the other hand, on Wednesday, the Public Prosecution filed new charges against the four Minneapolis city police officers who participated in the arrest of George Floyd.
Last Friday, the authorities arrested the officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on his neck on Floyd, 46, on charges of third degree murder and manslaughter.
But the prosecution yesterday brought to Chauvin a new, more serious charge, second-degree murder, and the other three officers joined the case and issued arrest warrants against them on charges of aiding and abetting the commission of a second-degree murder.
The new charge carries a prison sentence of 40 years, which is 15 years longer than the maximum penalty for a third degree murder charge.
Mattis speaking
In the context of criticism directed at President Trump over the protests, former Defense Secretary James Mattis - who resigned in protest at the withdrawal of his country's forces from Syria - launched an unprecedented attack on the president, accusing him of seeking to "divide" the United States.
"Donald Trump is the first president in my life not to try to unite Americans, but he doesn't even pretend that he is trying to do that," Mattis said in a statement posted on the magazine "The Atlantic" on its website. "Rather, he is trying to divide us."
He believed that what is happening in the country is the product of three years of deliberate effort to partition and without mature leadership, stressing that there is a possibility to unite the Americans without Trump.
Trump soon replied to Matisse via Twitter, where he wrote that the former Secretary of Defense was the most overrated general, and that the only thing he might have in common with former President Barack Obama was that both "had the honor to sack James Mattis."
Obama thanks the protesters
On the other hand, former President Obama spoke again about the current developments, as he thanked the protesters across the country.
But he said - in a speech during an online seminar on police violence - that the protests were not enough, calling for a heavy vote during the upcoming elections.
He said, "I heard some hadiths mentioning voting in exchange for protest ... politics and participation versus civil disobedience ... Things are not going this way either this or that, and the matter here should be a combination of the two."