The US Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would help combat the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a bipartisan denunciation of such violence during the COVID-19 pandemic and a modest step toward legislating in a chamber where most of US President Joe Biden’s agenda has stalled.
The measure would expedite the review of hate crimes at the US Department of Justice and provide support for local law enforcement in response to thousands of violent incidents reported in the past year.
Police have seen a noted uptick in such crimes, including the February death of an 84-year-old man who was pushed to the ground near his home in San Francisco, a young family that was injured in a Texas grocery store attack last year and the killing of six Asian women in shootings last month in the Atlanta area.
The names of the six women killed in Georgia are listed in the bill, which passed the Senate on a 94 to 1 vote.
Biden applauded the measure, writing on Twitter that “acts of hate against Asian Americans are wrong, un-American, and must stop.”
The US House of Representatives is expected to consider similar legislation in the coming weeks.
US Senator Mazie Hirono, the legislation’s lead sponsor, said that the measure is incredibly important to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “who have often felt very invisible in our country, always seen as foreign, always seen as the other.”
The message of the legislation is as important as its content and substance, she said.
Hirono, the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate, said that the attacks are “a predictable and foreseeable consequence” of racist and inflammatory language that has been used against Asians during the pandemic, including slurs used by former US president Donald Trump.
US Senator Tammy Duckworth, a former US Army helicopter pilot who lost her legs during a 2004 attack in Iraq, said that she had been asked what country she was from while wearing her US military uniform.
Duckworth, the first member of the US Congress born in Thailand, said that there is more work to be done, but the bill’s passage tells the community that “we will stand with you and we will protect you.”
It is unclear whether the bipartisan bill is a sign of things to come in the Senate, where Republicans and Democrats have fundamental differences and often struggle to work together.
Under an agreement struck by Senate leaders at the start of the year, Republicans and Democrats pledged to at least try to debate bills and see if they could reach agreement through the legislative process. The hate crimes legislation is the first byproduct of that agreement.
Republicans last week said that they agreed with the premise of the legislation and signaled that they were willing to back it with minor changes, an unusual sign of comity amid frequent standstills in the polarized Senate.
Hirono worked closely with US Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, to incorporate some additional provisions, including better reporting of hate crimes nationally and grant money for states to set up hate crime hotlines.
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