Trump pledges to work ‘hand-in-hand’ on police reform with Congress, signs order
President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to work “hand-in-hand” with Republicans in Congress on a police reform package, despite persistent disagreements with lawmakers over how far their efforts should go.
Signing an executive order tying federal grants for police departments to their records on use of force training, Trump said he expected Republicans to find common ground 0n a bill moving through the Senate that would expand on his executive action.
“Go back and see if you can get something done,” Trump told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who attended the Rose Garden signing ceremony. “We are going to be pursuing it, and we are going to be pursuing it strongly.”
“They’re going to be working together on a Senate bill that can go hand-in-hand with this,” Trump said. “If they can go back and add to what we’re signing today, it will be a big moment.”
Yet, despite pushing for a Republican Senate bill that the party could unify behind — and speaking out against violent maneuvers like the chokehold that lawmakers from both parties want to ban —Trump has offered little indication that a bipartisan push for reform will be successful during this election year.
The White House is refusing to consider a reduction in civil liability for police officers who take actions on the job that are not explicitly prohibited by law. Elimination of the legal standard that is known as “qualified immunity” is a major pillar of the Democrats’ policing bill. A bipartisan coalition in Congress supports reforming qualified immunity.
No Democrats were at the executive order signing ceremony, and the president took the opportunity to criticize the Obama administration — and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee — saying they “never even tried” to implement policing reforms because they didn’t know what they were doing.
“Many of the same politicians now presenting themselves as the solution are the same ones who have failed for decades on schools, jobs, justice, and crime,” Trump said.
Former President Barack Obama in 2014 issued an executive order, following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., that established a commission that made policing reform recommendations, which were voluntarily adopted by some departments.
Trump’s executive order comes in response to nationwide protests over the death in police custody of George Floyd, a Black man who became unresponsive after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Deaths like that of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot and killed by police while they executed a no-knock search warrant on her Louisville apartment, have also inspired lawmakers to pursue policing reforms.
Trump said that the Democratic-led House of Representatives could “possibly” take up Republicans’ efforts, but did not indicate any effort to jump-start negotiations.
“Hopefully they’ll all get together and come up with a solution that goes even beyond what we’re signing today,” he said.
Scott is expected to release a bill on Wednesday that will require police departments to provide more information on tactics like no-knock warrants that lawmakers can use to assess the policy and determine whether it should be outlawed. His bill is also expected to cut funding for police departments that allow their officers to use chokeholds and similar techniques to subdue suspects.
White House officials stressed Monday that Trump does not support efforts to defund, or reduce funding for, the police.
“You’re never going to solve this problem by demonizing the police. You have to solve this problem by working with law enforcement and with the police to make progress together,” a senior official told reporters while previewing the executive order.
Trump and Scott have spoken by phone twice recently and White House officials met with the senator about his bill last week on Capitol Hill.
A spokesman for Scott told McClatchy on Tuesday that the senator’s bill does not include anything on police certification, or decertification, but he is interested in addressing the issue in a final bill.
Scott’s bill does not currently include funding for a co-responder program called for in Trump’s executive order to allow social workers to accompany police when they are called to handle issues like homelessness and drug addiction, either.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to the president who is helping to craft Trump’s policy on policing reforms, said the discussions on Capitol Hill are “fluid” and that measures the president proposed such as the co-responder program could be funded in final legislation.
“Nothing’s preventing that issue coming up. We’re certainly making that recommendation to Congress,” he said of funding for the social worker program.
Smith, who previously worked for Scott, said the senator supports the proposal. “He told me that’s one of the biggest outcomes out of this executive order. So I don’t think those conversations are off the table.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a Fox News interview after the executive order signing that the president is working “in close coordination” with the South Carolina senator on policing reforms.
Scott joined the president in the Oval Office prior to the executive order signing for an emotional meeting with families who lost loved ones to police violence, McEnany said.
Even as the president pushed for the creation of new police accountability measures on Tuesday, he argued that only a “tiny” percentage of police need to be reined in and most require better training and funding for non-lethal weapons.
He told an audience of lawmakers and law enforcement representatives that nobody needs strong policing more than distressed communities.
“Americans want law and order — they demand law and order,” Trump said. “Some of them don’t even know that’s what they want. But that’s what they want.”
Updates with comments from McEnany and Smith of the White House.
This story was originally published June 16, 2020 at 3:42 PM.
