The House will vote on a sweeping police overhaul bill Thursday, one month after the killing of a Black man by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a nationwide movement for systemic reforms of the criminal justice system.
Nearly every Democrat is expected to vote for the package, which was drafted by the Congressional Black Caucus in a matter of days amid multiracial demonstrations in dozens of cities seeking justice for George Floyd’s death.
The bill would crack down on excessive police force and ban chokeholds, enforce national transparency standards and push accountability for officer misconduct with a national database to track offenses.
“Exactly one month ago George Floyd spoke his final words, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and changed the course of history,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the steps of the Capitol Thursday. “Today we are standing here for justice.”
But few, if any, Republicans are expected to support the bill, arguing that it was drafted by House and Senate Democrats without GOP input. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled he will not take up the package, leaving virtually no hope it will become law.
“Today, we are missing an opportunity to pass an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill. We are missing an opportunity for a police reform bill to actually become law,” said Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), the sole Black Republican in the House, who Democrats had worked closely with in an attempt to secure at least some bipartisan support.
Hurd signaled on the House floor shortly before the vote that he would not support the bill: “We are missing an opportunity to do our part to prevent another Black person from dying in police custody.”
Thursday’s vote also comes one day after the Senate failed to advance a narrower policing bill — leaving the two chambers at a stalemate even as the nation faces a reckoning on race and police brutality.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only Black Republican, was the lead author of the Senate’s police reform bill. But many Democrats dismissed the legislation, calling it a “sham” that only paid lip service to the systematic changes they say need to take place.
“The Senate bill is [a] sham, fake reform,” said House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) alongside Pelosi. “It gestures, using some of the same words, but it does nothing real.”
Other Democrats, like Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, a former CBC chairman, were slightly gentler in their criticism.
“I have a lot of respect and admiration for Tim Scott … and so I believe that he tried to get as good a bill as he thought he could get with the Republican-led Senate,” Cleaver said in an interview.
“I think he did the best that he could with the Republican legislature,” he added. “I just don’t think many people in the Senate quite understand the magnitude of this time.”
But Democrats, particularly senior members of the CBC, say the passage of their bill will be a monumental step forward for a Congress that has allowed legislation to ban chokeholds or demilitarize the police to languish for years. In one sign of the enormity of the moment, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — who represents Minneapolis, including the block where Floyd died after a police officer put his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes — will preside over the vote on the floor.
“Thank God for the activists. Thank God for the screaming from the streets that has awoken a lot of people to how the severe disregard for life and racism has been playing out every day in America,” Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) said in an interview. “We need transformational change.”
The House bill has won endorsements from a slew of prominent advocacy groups, from the NAACP to the AFL-CIO to the American College of Physicians. A long list of entertainment industry celebrities have signaled support as well, from Lizzo to Justin Bieber to Ariana Grande. On Thursday, the measure also earned backing from another set of powerful voices: the parents of African Americans killed by police.
“The unjust killing of a loved one, especially at the hands of law enforcement, is a pain too many families have been forced to endure,” said Gwen Carr, John Crawford Jr. and Samaria Rice — the parents of Eric Garner, John Crawford III and Tamir Rice, respectively. Backers of the bill noted that Rice would have turned 18 on Thursday. “We are proud to support this effort because it’s the right thing to do.”
Lawmakers added that it can’t be the last legislative attempt to confront systemic racism.
“All of those who are saying, ‘We should do more.’ I say to them, we will make a difference.” Lawrence said. “This bill is making a difference, we’re not done. That’s one thing I want the people to know. We’re not done. We’re going to have to continue to fight.”
Some Democrats and Republicans had initially hoped to send legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk before the July Fourth holiday — a scenario that is now unlikely.
Democrats have refused to scale back the central components of their bill, such as banning chokeholds or abolishing the “qualified immunity” doctrine that protects police officers from lawsuits. Republicans, meanwhile, have said they will simply move on to the rest of their summer agenda until Democrats signal a willingness to back down on some of those elements.
The lack of GOP support on the House vote is a blow to Democrats after their weekslong outreach effort, led by the CBC, to bring Republicans to the table. Several Democrats had been quietly working with moderate Republicans like Hurd and Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan.
But the two sides could not find a compromise on one major issue: whether police should be held personally liable for misconduct on the job. Trump has also publicly urged GOP lawmakers to oppose the bill, and few in the party are eager to cross him.
Within the Democratic Caucus, the package ran into remarkably little resistance, which has historically faced some internal divisions between its moderate and progressive factions. Some Democrats in swing districts had initially been hesitant to support the bill for fear of blowback from powerful police unions, but virtually all have since signed on to the bill.
“The people in the streets are saying, ‘We are not going to go away, this issue is not going to fade,'” Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) said in an interview.
“I think our moment is going to continue, like I said,” he added. “If the Senate refuses to negotiate, that will reverberate against them, I believe, in the November elections.”
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.