House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has asked the Congressional Black Caucus to lead the process of drafting a legislative response to the protests that have swept the country following the death of George Floyd. Schumer urged McConnell to consider law enforcement reforms legislation by July 4.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked the Congressional Black Caucus to help select legislative proposals to address policing that can pass the House with enough votes without GOP support. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said House lawmakers could be recalled to Washington this month to vote on legislation to address police and other reeforms. The Congressional Black Caucus announced a virtual town hall Friday with civil rights leaders, and House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said the panel is planning a hearing next week on policing, officials said. Cory Booker, D-N.J., among the nation's few black senators post-Reconstruction, spoke of their own childhoods growing up in Civil Rights era, a legacy of the nation's long path toward a more inclusive and representative government.Īt the Capitol still partly closed by the coronavirus, a Congress that has already struggled with the COVID-19 outbreak that is disproportionately striking black Americans, is now confronting a deepening crisis. Using words like “dictator” “fascist” and other terms to describe Trump's actions against the protesters, Democrats pleaded with Americans to stand with those working to improve police treatment of minority populations. One House Democrat probed the Secret Service for any communication about Trump's ordering the clampdown on protesters outside the White House. More than 40 bills - from banning police choke holds and racial profiling to preventing the federal transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement to a long-sought federal anti-lynching law - are now under consideration on Capitol Hill. “You can understand the outrage,” McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, said. Instead, Congress seems to have heard the protesters outside its doors.

Gone are the days when “Black Lives Matter” protests were met simply with “Blue Lives Matter” retorts in support of law enforcement. “We would hope that the president of the United States would follow the lead of so many presidents before him to be a healer in chief and not a fanner of the flame,” Pelosi said.Īs pleas for reconciliation over the country’s long struggle with racial inequality were met with demands for accountability over George Floyd's death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, there was a shifting tone coming from Congress. Bush in the aftermath of the Rodney King unrest and Barack Obama following the death of Eric Garner - as models of the nation's chief executive at a time of crisis. Pelosi invoked Biblical scripture to reject Trump's clampdown on peaceful protesters outside the White House and she drew on past presidents - including George H.W. WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urged President Donald Trump to be a “healer in chief” while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged “racism in America” as the wrenching debate fueling protests over the treatment of black people in the United States arrived in Congress.

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