On Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker pretended that Democrats had never supported defunding the police.
In response to a nonbinding amendment proposed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville that would block federal funds from localities that defund their police departments, Booker mockingly said , “There’s some people who have said that there are members of this deliberative body that want to defund the police, to my horror, and now, this senator has given us the gift that finally, once and for all, we can put to bed this scurrilous accusation that somebody in this great, esteemed body would want to defund the police.”
Except, while there may be no Senate Democrats who are for defunding the police, there are many loud voices in the Democratic Party who are for doing so.
From Los Angeles to Oakland to Minneapolis to Atlanta to Washington, D.C., to New York City, all Democrat-run cities, police have been or are in the process of being defunded.
In Congress, the so-called “Squad” of Democrats is for defunding the police. In June, one Squad member, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, introduced the Counseling Not Criminalization In Schools Act. It would defund federal dollars for police officers in schools. Such policy is dangerously out of touch with the needs of cities that are facing spikes in gun violence.
Another Squad member, Rep. Cori Bush, had a Marie Antoinette moment last week when she had this message: Security for me but not for thee.
“There are too many people that need help right now for me to allow that. So, if I end up spending $200,000, if I spend $10 more on [security], you know that I get to be here to do the work,” Bush told CBS News. “So, suck it up. Defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police and put that money into a social safety net.”
Calls to defund the police threatened the Democratic Party’s House majority in 2020, as rightly vented by Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger. I would bet that the party’s continuing anti-police rhetoric will contribute to Democrats losing the House and the Senate in 2022.
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