Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Friday, April 9th. I'm Nyla Boudou. Here's what you need to know today.

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth on her own family's brush with heat.

Plus, how accurate is the movie contagion? But first, today's one big thing, the second week of the trial over George Floyd's death.

Testimony wraps up today to conclude the second week in former police officer Derek Chauvin's trial over his role in George Floyd's death.

Axios' twin-cities reporter, Nick Halter, has been watching for Minneapolis and is here now to catch us up on this week. Hi, Nyla.

Nick, if last week was about emotion, this week was about process, and it started with Testimony from the Minneapolis Police Chief who said Derek Chauvin did not act according to NPD policy.

There were several other police officers who also testified against Chauvin. How significant was that, Nick?

Well, it's certainly a rare thing for police officers to break what they call the blue wall of silence, starting with the police chief.

But as you said, multiple officers, I think that the difficulty is that it lasted for a long time. It was two days worth of Testimony from police officers primarily talking a lot about the use of force.

And there were pool reports out of the court room that one of the jurors had fallen asleep at one point that there's just a general disinterest.

So it certainly is compelling that officers are testifying against Chauvin, but the testimony itself maybe isn't as compelling as we might have thought.

The testimony then shifted to medical experts to establish the cause of George Floyd's death, and one doctor Martin Tobin was particularly memorable.

After there's no pulse, the knee remains on the neck for another two minutes and 44 seconds. After the officers have found themselves, there's no pulse.

What else did we learn from Tobin and the other medical professionals?

He did confirm that there was methamphetamine and fentanyl in George Floyd's system that day, but he confirmed that the cause of death was the knee on George Floyd's neck and back.

This is important, I think, because this is going to be the defense strategy.

And he was a very credible witness who said very explicitly that that it was the knee on his neck that caused him to stop breathing and his heart to stop.

Welcome to next.

Well, it seems as though the state's case is getting near its end.

It makes sense that the last part of their case would be about the medical experts, because that will be the defense of strategy.

This trial was supposed to last two to four weeks, and we're two weeks into it.

So I would imagine at some point, uh, within the next couple days here, we're going to see the defense make its case.

...