Crooked Media - What A Day: Bipartisanshipwreck

Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and of the revival of a protest movement that’s still waiting to see Americans’ shifted attitudes towards policing reflected in federal legislation. 
 

• Floyd’s family met with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House, as well as with the lead negotiators of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. A series of events honoring Floyd in Minneapolis, MN, was briefly disrupted by a shooting in George Floyd Square, lest America’s police-violence problem upstage America’s gun-violence problem. One person was hospitalized with a non-life-threatening injury. 
   
• Congress missed Biden’s symbolic deadline to pass the police reform bill, as Senate Republicans capped off a year-long racial-justice reckoning by continuing to oppose new limits on qualified immunity—the federal legal doctrine that protects abusive cops from civil liability. On Monday, the lead negotiators issued a statement saying they’re still optimistic about reaching a compromise, and Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) told reporters she felt it “essential” that the bill address qualified immunity.
   
• It’s a good time to recall that last summer, that sentiment actually had bipartisan agreement. Lawmakers from across the spectrum co-sponsored the House’s Ending Qualified Immunity Act, Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) introduced his own reform bill in the Senate, and a number of Senate Republicans signaled that they were open to the possibility. Then the Trump administration called qualified immunity reform “a nonstarter,” the Fraternal Order of Police kicked and screamed, and Republicans hastily scurried back up Trump’s pantleg. 

In the absence of federal action, states and cities have enacted a patchwork of new reforms over the past year.
 

• Individual jurisdictions can’t abolish qualified immunity without a ruling from the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly texted back the “I pretend I do not see it” meme. But a few have found workarounds. Colorado passed the first law that allows people to sue cops for misconduct in state court, and bans police from using qualified immunity as a defense in those cases. While New Mexico and New York City have followed suit, the patchwork method only goes so far: Similar efforts in at least 17 states have failed or stalled over the past year.
   
• It’s the same story with other flavors of police reform. More than half of all states have passed reform bills since Floyd’s death, but many of those laws have been reversed, held up in court, or watered down. That said, there is real progress afoot, often at the local level. More than 20 of the country’s largest cities have voted to reduce their police budgets, Portland, OR, has created a powerful new community police-oversight board, and a few cities, including Minneapolis, have moved to fundamentally rethink the role of armed officers.

The most hopeful sign of enduring change may be that the public hasn’t looked away. A recent AP/NORC poll found that 45 percent of Americans see police violence against the public as a serious problem—down just three points from the height of the 2020 protests. An overwhelming majority still believes the criminal justice system needs a major overhaul. One year later, the problem of police violence hasn’t evaporated, but neither has the will to fix it.

This week on America Dissected, host Abdul El-Sayed is joined by Professor Ibram Kendi to discuss the presence of systemic racism in the American healthcare system and what steps it will take to root it out. New episodes of America Dissected drop every Tuesday, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Negotiations for a bipartisan infrastructure deal appear close to collapsing more dramatically than our nation’s crumbling bridges, with the White House and Senate Republicans still worlds apart as next week’s unofficial deadline approaches. Republicans are set to introduce a counteroffer that inches closer to $1 trillion, President Biden’s stated minimum acceptable amount, to be paid for with repurposed coronavirus relief funds instead of corporate tax hikes. In anticipation of Democrats correctly alley-ooping that “compromise” into the trash, a small bipartisan group of senators has begun scrambling to draft an alternate plan. Democrats are increasingly antsy to stop watering down the proposal and go it alone: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on Monday that Biden is “entitled to his judgment on this but if I were in a room with him, I’d say it’s time to move on.”

• Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) issued a joint statement on the necessity of forming a January 6 commission, and begged Republicans to work with them on reaching a(nother, even worse) compromise. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell flipped ‘em the bird, so if they really think the commission is important, it’s filibuster-abolishing time. 
   
• Great news for Sinema: The Arizona Democratic Party overwhelmingly passed a resolution in support of ending the filibuster. Perfect filibuster-abolishing conditions out there.
   
• Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has convened the grand jury that will decide whether to indict Donald Trump, and/or other Trump Organization executives, and/or the Trump Organization itself. 
   
• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy found the time to scold Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for comparing public-health measures to the Holocaust, while in the same breath claiming that antisemitism is a Democratic problem, actually. Anyway, here’s a newly-surfaced video of Greene saying she wouldn’t support taking down a statue of Hitler. 
   
• Texas Republicans have approved a bill allowing people to carry handguns without a license, background check, or training, and Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has said he’ll sign it. Sick of It Being Easier to Vote Than Own A Murder Machine? Texas!™
   
• The Justice Department has released part of a Trump-era memo that then-Attorney General Bill Barr used to justify clearing Trump of obstruction in the Russia investigation, but will fight to keep most of the document under wraps.
   
• The Department of Homeland Security will regulate cybersecurity in the pipeline industry for the first time, after the pipeline industry clicked on a weird link and clogged the east coast’s fuel supply with pop-ups.
   
• The New York federal prosecutors investigating Rudy Giuliani goofed up on their redactions, so we now know that they also seized materials from a number of Ukrainians connected to him. 
   
• This is a wild story about militias that have fueled a recall effort in a red Northern California county, with a (now obsolete) dispute over public-health restrictions standing in for a larger culture war.
   
• An overweight, arthritic alligator somehow escaped from a Wisconsin zoo, but did not pose much of a threat to the public because, the zoo owner stressed, nobody moves less than this alligator. The unathletic excuse for an alligator has been safely returned.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has signed an unconstitutional, unenforceable law imposing fines on social-media companies that ban politicians—essentially a vanity law for Donald Trump and his base. The law also enshrines conservative conspiracy theories about social-media censorship (lol) in a provision stating that platforms can’t remove or prioritize content from a “journalistic enterprise,” a response to Facebook and Twitter limiting the reach of unproven stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop. An amazing last-minute amendment exempts companies if they own a theme park larger than 25 acres, in careful deference to Disney. Since the legislation conflicts with both Section 230 and the First Amendment, it’s bound for a series of losing court battles, but it gave DeSantis a chance to kiss up to the far-right: Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe attended the signing as his honored guest.

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Half (half!) of all American adults are now fully vaccinated. 

The Senate has confirmed Kristen Clarke as the first Black woman to lead the DOJ’s civil rights division.

Moderna announced that its vaccine is highly effective in 12- to 17-year-olds, and plans to ask the FDA for authorization for that age group in early June.

The Biden administration announced that it will open up parts of the California coast to offshore wind farms.