Republican Bad Faith Stalls The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act In The Senate

Back in early March, Democrats in the House Passed the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act. The goal was to enact this law by Memorial Day, the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

Then the mythical “bipartisanship” reared its ugly head in the Senate. A bipartisan group of senators has told us every couple of weeks since March, that “we are close to an agreement.” It was naive optimism based upon the mythical “bipartisanship.”

Republican senators, led by their sole Black member Tim Scott (R-SC) – as if this imbues this conservative Republican with respectability and credibility on “Black issues” just because of his skin color – were never going to agree to rein in the Supreme Court created legal doctrine of qualified immunity for police officers who engage in criminal misconduct and violate the civl rights of citizens. This is the hill that Republicans were always willing to die on.

If Democrats want to reform policing in this country and end qualified immunity for police officers, they are going to have to end the Senate filibuster and do this on their own without any Republican support. Just keep in mind that Black Americans are a core constituency of the Democratic Party, and Democrats do not win elections without their vote. Democrats promised to deliver on this issue, and now it is time for the Senate to pass the House passed version of the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act. No more time wasted on bad faith Republican negotiators. Just get it done.

NBC News reports, Bipartisan police reform legislation talks end without a deal, Sen. Booker says:

Once-promising negotiations for a sweeping bipartisan police reform bill have broken down and Democrats will now “explore all other options,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Wednesday.

Booker and Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., had been trying to work out a deal with Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., since the House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in March, legislation that lacked enough Republican support to clear the Senate.

“We made it clear from the beginning of our negotiations that a bill must ensure true accountability, transparency, and the policing standards necessary to bring an end to horrific incidents of violence Americans are routinely seeing — like the murder of George Floyd. After months of exhausting every possible pathway to a bipartisan deal, it remains out of reach right now,” Booker said in a statement.

Booker called Scott just before noon on Wednesday to tell him the negotiations were over. The call came after a meeting on Tuesday between the trio where Booker and Bass presented a drastically scaled-back proposal, which Scott rejected, according to fours sources familiar with the negotiations.

The proposal included the minimum that Democrats were willing to accept and left out controversial provisions like qualified immunity, the criminalization of excessive use of force and no-knock warrants. The proposal included provisions to address mental health for police officers, a database of police misconduct and terminations, the militarization of police departments and would also make an executive order former Trump signed into law.

Earlier: The talks had been dragging on for months with more setbacks than successes. They came to a critical juncture in June when Booker reached an agreement with the Fraternal Order of Police on changes to qualified immunity. But Scott walked away, saying that he couldn’t support it because the sheriffs balked.

Scott rejected the Trump Executive order because he didn’t want the attorney general to have a role in holding police departments accountable, but wanted the standards to be set at state and local levels [the old Southern segregationist code of “states rights”], one person familiar said and Scott’s office confirmed.

Scott in his statement [falsely] suggested that Democrats wanted to defund the police. The bill actually would have added millions of dollars to police departments to help with data collection and mental health resources. But a spokeswoman for Sen. Scott says that “disqualifying departments from grants cuts off a crucial funding stream.”

“Unfortunately, even with this law enforcement support and further compromises we offered, there was still too wide a gulf with our negotiating partners and we faced significant obstacles to securing a bipartisan deal,” Booker said.

“The time has come to explore all other options to achieve meaningful and common sense policing reform,” he added.

It was unclear what the other options could be since passing legislation in the Senate is likely to require some Republican support.

Pro Tip: End the goddamn Senate filibuster rule, and just pass the Democratic George Floyd Justice In Policing Act already passed by the House. Problem solved. Thank you.

This conservative shill Tim Scott, whose task it was to disingenuously use the mythical “bipartisanship” to talk this bill to death, tried to blame Democrats for his rejection of the drastically scaled-back bill, which he was never going to accept in any event, demonstrating his bad faith. Even if he had accepted it, he would not have had the support from his own white nationalist Sedition Party. (What does one say about a Black man who carries the water for a white nationalist party?)

Scott said he was “deeply disappointed” by the announcement, and said “Democrats have once again squandered a crucial opportunity to implement meaningful reform to make our neighborhoods safer and mend the tenuous relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. Crime will continue to increase while safety decreases and more officers are going to walk away from the force because my negotiating partners walked away from the table.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki blamed the breakdown on Republicans and said President Joe Biden may take executive action on the issue.

“Republicans rejected reforms that even the previous president had supported and refuse to engage on key issues that many law enforcement, were willing to address and so we’re disappointed. The president is disappointed,” Psaki said.

Biden said in a statement that “I still hope to sign into law a comprehensive and meaningful police reform bill that honors the name and memory of George Floyd because we need legislation to ensure lasting and meaningful change. But this moment demands action, and we cannot allow those who stand in the way of progress to prevent us from answering the call.”

Biden added that the White House would continue to work with lawmakers “who are serious about meaningful police reform” [not Tim Scott] while also consulting with civil rights leaders and law enforcement about potential executive orders.

Vice President Kamala Harris called the lack of Republican support “unconscionable.”

“Millions of people marched in the streets to see reform and accountability, not further inaction,” she said in a tweet. “Moving forward, we are committed to exploring every available action at the executive level to advance the cause of justice in our nation.”

Jennifer Rubin at The Post writes:

The Post reports: “Bipartisan negotiations on overhauling the nation’s policing practices to stem the killings of Black Americans collapsed Wednesday, a stalemate emblematic of a divided Congress.” As was long suspected, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was immovable on reforms to qualified immunity, which protects police officers and other officials from civil suits even when facing the most egregious set of facts, such as those in the murder of George Floyd.

In a frosty statement, the White House decried Senate Republicans who “rejected enacting modest reforms, which even the previous president had supported, while refusing to take action on key issues that many in law enforcement were willing to address.”

Even if Scott had struck a deal, there is every reason to believe that other GOP senators would have filibustered any meaningful police reform. Republicans have made crystal clear that they reject the existence of systemic racism in policing (there’s that reality thing, again). Therefore, they cannot bring themselves to hold police who kill, harm or discriminate against African Americans accountable, or to provide any significant restraints on their conduct (e.g., banning chokeholds).

Paul Waldman of The Post adds, The death of police reform shows why bipartisanship is impossible:

When anyone wants to argue that searching for bipartisanship in Congress is futile, it’s natural to point to the actions of Republican leaders … What happens when Democrats find a Republican who seems sincerely inclined to cooperate toward meaningful reform, because it’s the right thing to do?

The case of the attempt at police reform shows what happens: It dies.

[To] be more accurate, we’re talking about one Republican: Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. He was the only Republican willing — at least until now — to work with Democrats to try to come up with legislation.

And he seemed like the Republican who would negotiate in good faith. Though extremely conservative, Scott isn’t a nasty bomb-thrower. The lone Black Republican in the Senate, Scott once gave an eloquent speech describing all the times he has been pulled over, accused of stealing his own car, approached by an officer with a hand on his gun, even stopped by Capitol Police demanding his ID.

Scott was working with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) for months on a bill. So why did it die? According to Booker and Bass, they kept making concession after concession, such as dropping any changes to qualified immunity, which makes it impossible to sue individual officers for misconduct. But as Bass said in a statement, “every time, more was demanded to the point that there would be no progress made in the bill that we were left discussing.”

And what was Scott’s rationale? That making federal funds contingent on the adoption of policies such as a ban on chokeholds would amount to “defunding the police.”

But if not through federal dollars, how else could the feds encourage local police departments to change? As The Post reported, “Scott did not publicly detail any alternative manner of compelling departments to meet federal standards.”

In other words, Scott made reform impossible, then retreated to a ludicrous talking point meant to produce resentment and fear in the Republican base. Well done, senator.

But in this case, Scott might have been the only Republican in Congress who would have voted for an agreement anyway. The GOP sees no political advantage in police reform[.]

At this moment, creating White racial resentment is a foundation of the Republican political project. While they campaign against the phantom threat of critical race theory, the most popular figure in conservative media, Tucker Carlson, delivers nightly rants about a conspiracy to “replace” what he calls “legacy Americans” with dark-skinned foreigners, a message about an inch removed from what you’d hear on the average neo-Nazi web radio show.

Scott is no fool; he knows what his party is and where its votes come from. He knows what kind of poison his constituents are imbibing every night on Fox News. He knows his fellow Republicans aren’t interested in bipartisanship on much of anything, but especially not on police reform.

So maybe the next time anyone is tempted to ask why Democrats aren’t doing more to reach across the aisle, we can remember what happens when they do.

Finally, The Post’s Eugene Robinson concludes, Republicans prove they never really wanted police reform. They’re on the wrong side of history. (excerpt):

The announcement Wednesday that attempts to craft a bipartisan reform bill had failed, following more than a year of talks, came as no surprise. The nation may indeed be ready for a genuine reckoning on race and policing, but the GOP — under the leadership of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and the malign influence of former president Donald Trump — clearly is not.

The Republicans chose as their lead negotiator Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), the only African American GOP senator. Scott has spoken with some eloquence about his own mistreatment by police. At times I’ve entertained the possibility that he might actually be sincere in wanting to get a reform bill passed. The cynical and misleading statement he released Wednesday, however, disabused me of any such notion.

“Despite having plenty of agreement, Democrats said no because they could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement,” Scott claimed. That is a lie.

[Sen.] Booker said that two powerful police unions, the National Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, had agreed to “some pretty incredible things” in this area “that would have improved the profession, that would have protected police officers.”

But Republicans did not want to be at odds with the National Sheriffs’ Association, which took a more hard-line position against meaningful changes to existing protections. Sheriffs play a particularly powerful role in Scott’s state.

So is this the end of the line for police reform? In terms of federal legislation, the disgraceful answer seems to be yes, at least for now. But that doesn’t mean that nothing has changed — or that further change is impossible.

Under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department once again has a Civil Rights Division worthy of the name. The Justice Department has opened “pattern and practice” investigations — looking for patterns of unlawful or unconstitutional policing — Such probes usually end with departments agreeing to specific reforms.

But it is hardly efficient to try to change discriminatory or lethal police practices city by city. And while the Justice Department has banned chokeholds and limited no-knock entries by federal law enforcement agencies, these curbs have no impact at the local level. Biden promised to take “further executive actions” but said he still believes “we need legislation to ensure lasting and meaningful change.”

How such legislation might reach Biden’s desk, however, is now unclear … I am disappointed but I refuse to despair. I continue to believe that this nation was changed by Floyd’s killing, the demonstrations that followed and the conviction of his murderer, Derek Chauvin. Republicans in Congress have chosen to make a stand on the wrong side of history.