US President Donald Trump and his allies have seized on calls to “defund the police” as a dangerous example of Democratic overreach as the Republican president fights for momentum amid crises that threaten his re-election.
Key Democrats, including former US vice president and presidential candidate Joe Biden, are distancing themselves from the “defund” push, which some supporters have said is a symbolic commitment to end systemic racism and shift policing priorities rather than an actual plan to eliminate law enforcement agencies.
However, confusion over the proposal’s intent has created an opportunity for Trump, who has struggled to navigate the delicate debate over racial justice, risking support from people of color, suburban women and independents less than five months before the presidential election.
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Facing increasing pressure to weigh in, Biden on Monday addressed the issue in an interview with CBS Evening News.
“I don’t support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency, honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, everybody in the community,” Biden said.
Other opponents of the movement include US Senator Cory Booker, a former presidential candidate and one of two black Democratic senators, and US Representative Karen Bass, head of the US Congressional Black Caucus.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People president Derrick Johnson in an interview also declined to endorse calls to defund the police.
“I support the energy behind it. I don’t know what that substantively means. As I’m talking to people about the concept, I’ve gotten three different explanations,” said Johnson, who has criticized Trump. “We know there has to be a change in the culture of policing in this country.”
Democrats are well-positioned to win over the political center this fall, according to Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who said Trump’s uneven actions and rhetoric at a time of sweeping social unrest are “killing him.”
However, Luntz added that Democrats risk their advantage by embracing policies viewed as radical following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The handcuffed black man died after a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.
Municipal officials in Minneapolis have endorsed the “defund the police” language backed by some civil rights advocates and a handful of progressive US House of Representative Democrats.
Protesters over the weekend also painted “Defund the police” in large yellow letters on a street close to the White House.
However, there was little evidence that the effort was gaining momentum in the US Congress.
Some Democrats described it as bad politics, even if most shared the desire to overhaul policing.
Former US senator Heidi Heitkamp, a white moderate who lost her 2018 re-election bid, said “defund the police” is “a horrible name” that misconstrues the goal.
“By starting with the word ‘defund,’ you’ve left the impression that you are doing something much more radical than what needs to be done,” said Heitkamp, a leader of the One Country Project, which is trying to help Democrats connect better with rural voters.
She said the term left her frustrated that “there’s going to be somebody who’s going to try to find an opportunity in this, especially among the Republican Party, and use it now as an excuse not to address what is a very real problem in America.”
That is largely what played out as the Trump campaign and congressional Republicans sought to link Democrats to the defund effort.
“This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country’s recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police,” Trump tweeted. “Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”
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