(Associated Press) Amazon will stop selling Washington Redskins merchandise after the football team said it would undergo a review of its name, which is considered a racial slur.
The Seattle-based online shopping giant informed sellers Wednesday morning that it would be pulling Redskins merchandise from its online marketplace. Other major retailers, including Walmart, have also stopped selling the team’s merchandise.
The recent national conversation on race has renewed opposition to the name, prompting its sponsors to speak up. The name review, which the team announced last week, could lead to a name change.
On Wednesday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson commended Amazon for “taking this swift action to support this long overdue change.” Earlier in the day, Ferguson published a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pressing the company to drop the team’s merchandise.
Facebook on Wednesday said it has removed dozens of accounts linked to the hate group Proud Boys [Editor’s note: Proud Boys describes itself as a racially diverse, pro-West, pro-freedom group that combats hate from left-wing groups such as Antifa], to President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone and to employees of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, among others.
A network tied to both Stone and the Proud Boys had fake accounts post about local politics in Florida, as well as Stone’s books, websites and media appearances, Facebook said. Stone’s own Facebook and Instagram accounts were also banned.
“Roger Stone’s personal accounts and his branded assets will be coming down as part of this network,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, in a call with reporters. “Because we saw them deeply enmeshed in the activities here.”
Facebook said these accounts were most active from 2015 to 2017 and most have been dormant since.
Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison after he was convicted of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election. Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to testify before Congress in July after two of his employees testified that he has politicized the department on behalf of Trump and allowed special treatment of Stone’s case.
The Proud Boys were banned from Facebook and Instagram in 2018, but supporters of the organization have tried to get around the ban by creating new pages or accounts. It’s the third time in recent months that Facebook has announced the removal of accounts and pages linked to the group.
