Nate Jackson: Pelosi's Chokehold on Police Reform

Her brazen race-baiting lie: Republicans are "trying to get away with the murder of George Floyd."

Republicans are “trying to get away with murder, actually — the murder of George Floyd,” claims Nancy Pelosi. Where’s the Leftmedia’s army of “fact-checkers” for Pelosi’s latest race-baiting lie? The House speaker used this noxious slander to slam, of all things, what she called the GOP’s “unsalvageable piece of legislation” on police reform — written, no less, by black Republican Senator Tim Scott.

Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer was indeed unjust, though we’ve speculated that Minnesota’s radical Democrat Attorney General Keith Ellison isdeliberately overreaching on murder charges so as to “prove” that the system is racist. Regardless, Republicans in the Senate led the charge with the JUSTICE Act, a bill providing thoughtful, careful, and needed reforms for police. It’s certainly not perfect and the federal government has only a limited role (primarily by attaching strings to funding), but it’s a worthy start.

Nevertheless, Pelosi complained that there are irreconcilable differences, like banning chokeholds. “We’re saying no chokeholds,” Pelosi said. “They’re not saying no chokeholds. I mean, there’s a big difference there. What’s the compromise? Some chokeholds? I don’t see what the compromise is.” The truth? Democrats want Congress to enact a blanket ban while Republicans want to incentivize local bans.

Scott would also require much greater data reporting from police departments, but Democrats want even more. “Their goal,” explains The Wall Street Journal, “is to use a paint-by-colors ‘disparate impact’ analysis to show ‘patterns and practices’ of policing. This will make it easier for the Justice Department to sue local police departments under the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.”

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