Minnesota Republicans held a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin at their annual convention in Duluth on Saturday, a gesture that immediately set off outrage because Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd.
The silence lasted about 10 seconds before the day’s official business began. It came after a delegate asked the convention to recognize Chauvin, turning a routine opening into a political flashpoint at a party gathering that was already under scrutiny because it came just days after the anniversary of Floyd’s death.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the move was an act of profound cruelty to Floyd’s family and called it disrespectful to the state’s law enforcement officers. In a statement, Ellison said the decision dishonors Floyd’s memory and wounds his loved ones all over again, adding that Floyd’s children lost their father, his siblings lost their brother and his community lost a neighbor and friend.
The contrast was stark. Chauvin was sentenced in 2021 to 22-and-a-half years in prison for second-degree murder in Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, then received a concurrent 21-year sentence in 2022 for violating Floyd’s civil rights. He knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes during the encounter, and the US Supreme Court rejected his appeal in 2023 after state courts repeatedly turned down requests for a new trial.
That legal history has not kept Chauvin in the past tense for some corners of the right, where he has been treated as a cause celebre and where calls for Donald Trump to pardon him have been amplified by Elon Musk. The convention moment of silence fit that pattern, but it also exposed how far beyond ordinary partisan provocation this case still reaches: it reopened the wound of Floyd’s death in front of delegates in the state where he was killed.
Chauvin is now in a low-security facility in Texas after surviving a stabbing in prison in Arizona nine months earlier, but the Minnesota GOP gesture made clear that his name still carries political force. What remains unanswered is why a delegate wanted the party to honor him at all, and whether the convention’s leaders will explain or defend the decision.
