Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has bowed to pressure and decided that he has to allow the Senate to act on policing reform legislation. More to the point, McConnell has recognized that he can use the urgency of this moment to screw Democrats. He's going to hold a vote on the Republican bill next week, but he made it clear in the announcement of that legislation Wednesday morning that it's really a dare to Democrats to oppose it and prevent it from advancing to a full vote. Because the bill does nothing to stop police brutality, it likely won't get Democratic support.
McConnell showed his hand on this by letting Sen. Lindsay Graham loose in a snarling performance that was remarkable even for him, and wildly inappropriate for this issue. His only purpose there was to attack Democrats and suck up to Trump. He blasted Democrats for their "shopping list" of policies and said he was tired of Trump getting blamed for everything. "You had eight years," he snarled, to act on policing reform under President Obama. As if we've all forgotten that the House was Republican after 2010 and the Senate after 2014, and that he and his fellow Republicans blocked every goddamned thing Obama tried.
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Even Sen. Tim Scott—the South Carolina Republican who McConnell put in charge of this effort since he's the only Black guy in the conference—had to go on offense against Democrats. "If we don't have the votes on a motion to proceed," he said, "that means that politics is more important than restoring confidence" in the police in communities of color. Then, on the floor following the bill announcement, McConnell doubled down on the politics: "I'm going to file cloture on the motion to proceed and our Democratic friends, if they want to make a law, and not just try to make a point, I hope they'll join us in getting on the bill and trying to move forward in the way the Senate does move forward when it's trying to actually get an outcome," McConnell said. "A law." Any law, doesn't matter if it actually accomplishes anything.
Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer didn't bite. "This bill will need dramatic improvement," he said. "Let me be clear: this is not about letting the perfect being the enemy of the good, this about replacing what's ineffective with what's effective." Sen. Kamala Harris, the California Democrat who is one of the lead authors of the bill Democrats released last week, the Justice in Policing Act, called this bill a "baseline for negotiation" on a final package. "We obviously want a broader package. […] The environment is so much more ripe for legislation than it is for the First Step Act."
This Republican bill is barely that. It doesn't not ban chokeholds. It doesn't not ban no-knock warrants. It would "incentivize" departments to do it themselves by restricting some federal grants to departments that bar the tactics and creates data collection on the use of force. It tell police they have to keep and update disciplinary action on officers to share with other departments the cops might be seeking jobs at, but does not create a national public database to expose the bad apples. It actually gives more money to the police for more training and equipment, as if that hasn't been tried repeatedly and proven to have failed. It would fold in the anti-lynching bill Republican Sen. Rand Paul has been blocking and creates a commission to study issues impacting Black men and boys, including education, incarceration rates, wealth disparity, and homicide rate. (As if Black girls and women haven't also been persecuted by the police system.) It does not include qualified immunity or police officer liability.
The Democrats' bill, while not nearly as far-reaching as justice demands, is vastly stronger. It does strictly ban police chokeholds and carotid holds. It does ban no-knock warrants for drug cases. It does reinstate Obama's limits on the transfer of military-grade equipment to police departments. It does reform qualified immunity for cops and it does make it easier for victims of police violence to sue individual officers and departments. It does create a national database for the public to see police misconduct. It makes racial profiling by law enforcement covered under civil rights protections. It mandates departments use existing federal funds to require the use of dashboard and body cameras. It beefs up federal oversight, giving the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power in investigations into problematic police departments, and it also gives states’ attorney generals grants to conduct independent investigations.
There are some real teeth in that bill, teeth that Democrats need to fight for and make very clear—right here, right now—that McConnell is delivering none of them. That his bill is basically a political stunt designed to corner Democrats. They need to come out of that corner, starting with Sen. Dick Durbin, who told CNN's Manu Raju: "I think we really need an understanding from Sen. McConnell: Is this a high noon moment, one and done moment, take it or leave it moment?" Three guesses. He told Raju Democrats need assurances that McConnell is not just trying to "embarrass Democrats" by setting them up to block the bill so that it fails.
It's McConnell. At this point everyone knows that's what he's doing. Don't pretend like that's even a question, Durbin. Tell the world you know that's what he's doing. Don't play the good faith game with him, because he sure as hell isn't going to reciprocate.
This moment, this movement is far too essential to allow McConnell to play politics with this way. Democrats need to show the Black community and everyone who has taken to the streets to say “Black Lives Matter” that they get it.