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SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
Hey there. It's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: I'm Ayesha Rascoe. I cover the White House.
JUANA SUMMERS, BYLINE: And I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics and racial justice.
DAVIS: Today marks one year since George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, a year since a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. The entire gruesome killing was recorded by a teenage bystander and sparked months of racial justice protests all around the country. So today we're going to talk about Floyd's death and how it affected our politics and what has and has not changed in the past year.
Juana, there has been so many calls for change in the wake of Floyd's death. Has that happened?
SUMMERS: You know, Sue, I think it depends a lot on who you ask. Look. There's no question that Floyd's killing and the video of the final moments of his life that we have all seen sparked this really big and often painful national conversation about race and justice and policing and really equity across American life. And there's no question that it also led a number of political leaders, including President Biden, who, at the time of Floyd's killing, was a candidate, to promise change. Lots of people called for dismantling systemic racism. There were a lot of promises made, but I think for some people that I've spoken to, a lot of those promises still remain unfulfilled. And a number of people have told me, frankly, not enough has changed in this last year.
DAVIS: I mean, one of the major things that is unfulfilled is the promise to change policing laws. In Congress, lawmakers are still trying to come up with a deal that can pass both the House and Senate. Do you know where things stand on that legislation?
SUMMERS: Yeah. So if you remember back last month, when President Biden gave his first joint address to Congress, he called on lawmakers to pass policing reform legislation by May 25. And that's today. And lawmakers are not going to meet that deadline, something they have spoken more openly about in recent days. Just to kind of remind people what we're talking about here, the George Floyd...
DAVIS: Yeah.
SUMMERS: ...Justice in Policing Act passed the House back in March, largely along party lines. And it's a really big bill that includes a lot of things. A couple of the highlights are that it includes language that would end the use of police chokeholds. It would ban no-knock warrants, which people may remember from the death of Breonna Taylor at the hands of police in Louisville, Ky. It seeks to increase accountability for police misconduct by creating this nationwide registry to help hold problematic officers accountable. And then one of the biggest sticking points that we see in all of this bill is this big debate over ending the doctrine of qualified immunity.
RASCOE: And qualified immunity is the thing that basically allows police officers or shields police officers from facing any real civil repercussions for actions they take on the job. And so that has been a place where there is dispute on how to handle this. This - I mean, this is an issue where Republicans and - or at least one Republican, Senator Tim Scott - and Democrats have really been negotiating. Like, there have been negotiations going on, unlike other issues where it's not real negotiations going on. So there is something happening. It's a question of whether the support would be there even for whatever Tim Scott can work out. I don't know. Are you guys confident that there would be the support there to get this over the finish line?
DAVIS: Among Republicans?
RASCOE: Among Republicans. I mean, Democrats, certainly, but among Republicans.
DAVIS: You know, I think if Tim Scott can sign on to something - and he has been holding out specifically on this issue of qualified immunity. He's a little suspect of going as far as Democrats would like to go on that. But I think if he can get on board with legislation, he would be really hard for a lot of Republicans in the Senate to be on the other side of. He is, obviously, the only Black Republican in the Senate. He has spoken, you know, regularly and pretty broadly about the own racism he's faced in his life. He recognizes that all of these things are problems. And a lot of Republicans have basically already said they're deferring to him on this question. If he can support it, they can support it. So getting him on board, I think, is very critical to getting a deal. If he doesn't get on board, then it's hard to see how anything can get through the Senate.
SUMMERS: And then I think if you look at the other side of the political spectrum - and Ayesha, I think, kind of hinted at this - there is an issue with Democrats here, too. Last week, there were these 10 progressive lawmakers in the House, and they sent a letter to congressional leadership, essentially urging their colleagues in the Senate to support an end to qualified immunity. And I talked to one of them. Her name is Cori Bush. She's a congresswoman representing St. Louis - part of St. Louis City in Missouri. And she, before coming to Congress, was a protest leader in her state, which is, of course, the state where Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo.
CORI BUSH: I believe that eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement officers must be included in any bill that gets passed in the Senate, just like what we did on our side in the House. And it ultimately needs to be signed into law by a president. I have made that a red line. There has to be a clear red line with that.
SUMMERS: And she essentially told me that, you know, she came to Congress because she believes that lawmakers should be in the business of changing people's lives and, in this case, saving people's lives. And she does not seem like someone who is interested in supporting a bill if she sees it as being too watered down. She's someone who wants to see big, broad change, as she described it to me.
DAVIS: So much of getting tough laws like this passed that are at least sort of culturally sensitive are all about timing, right? And last year, there was this time where the country seemed really ready to act. And I thought it was notable today, listening to Congresswoman Karen Bass speak and sort of acknowledging some fears that that timing, that feeling might be slipping away as people's attitudes change about this, and specifically, that voters are saying that they're worried more about violent crime in their neighborhoods. And Bass was pretty clear-eyed that that's a risk to getting something like this done because when people are worried about crime, they're less likely to support changes to policing.
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KAREN BASS: I'm worried about the spike in crime and violence that we're seeing becoming an excuse to say, no, we don't need reforms. We need more police. And when in our country are we going to stop doing the same thing over and over and over again? Crime goes by cycles, and every time we have a cycle, we come up with the same solutions. And I have my fingers crossed that this time, we will not make that mistake.
DAVIS: Ayesha, it's notable that Biden put a deadline on this. He wanted this bill already to his desk because it seems like the White House is sensitive to this idea that time is of the essence on this matter.
RASCOE: And this White House has been very cautious about, you know, underpromising, overdelivering. And this was something that they had to know there was a very good chance that they would not be able to deliver. The fact is that the White House has not delivered when it comes to justice issues. They have not, you know, had executive orders on policing. They haven't - you know, the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, so you do have that. But outside of that, they have not taken a lot of action. They've put everything into this bill. Biden promised action at the federal level, and that has not happened. And so that has to be stated plainly.
DAVIS: All right. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk more about this when we get back.
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DAVIS: And we're back. And members of the Floyd family are in Washington today. They've been meeting on Capitol Hill with top lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and with President Biden at the White House.
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TERRENCE FLOYD: You know, being here today is an honor, you know, to meet with the president and the vice president and for them to show their concern to our family and for them to actually give an ear to our concerns and how we feel on the situation.
DAVIS: Ayesha, it might just be symbolic, but it seems like a pretty important symbol to - for the president to call this family to Washington today.
RASCOE: Yeah. You know, I mean, I noted that at - from the White House, there has not been a lot of action. But when it comes to the rhetoric, when it comes to the focus - and these things take time, so I'm not - I don't want to be too negative or too - I want to make sure that I'm being fair here. These things take time. I think having the family there shows - it does showcase or allow Biden to showcase one of his strengths, even though this is happening behind closed doors - is that he is able to offer condolences and to comfort families who have endured unthinkable loss because he is a man who himself has endured unspeakable loss. And so this is something that allows Biden to do that, to reach out. And he has talked about the family, talked about George Floyd's daughter, talked about the impact that they've had on him.
SUMMERS: I mean, I remember covering him during the campaign and watching him take a knee alongside protesters at one point, hearing him talk so many times about white supremacy and systemic racism and promise, both as a candidate and after being sworn in as president, that his administration would work to make American society more equitable. This is certainly something that's top of mind to him. I know a lot of activists and lawmakers that I've talked to who are Black point to the fact that it was striking, even if it was just symbolism, to hear a white president in his inauguration talk about systemic racism in the way that Biden did...
DAVIS: Yeah.
SUMMERS: ...And had to see him then, as Ayesha's reported, you know, sign these executive orders and focus so overtly on advancing equity. So there - a lot of this is symbolic, but it is, I think - it's something different that we hadn't seen before. And I think it really speaks to some of his motivations and kind of how he views the world and how he views his job as president.
DAVIS: I also think one of the impacts, the political impacts of all this has been about white people, right? I mean, when we looked at a lot of the polling throughout 2020, prior to that and during about racial attitudes, the biggest shifts in this country came from mainly left-leaning white people that - they had thought things were a lot better than they were. And when you combine sort of the triple whammy of George Floyd's murder, the pandemic, which exposed the racial inequalities in so many ways in just society and the presidential race where, you know, Trump said and did a lot of racist stuff - the president was doing a lot of things that inflamed racial tensions, that made white people uncomfortable or have to see stuff that they weren't normally used to seeing in politics.
So when we talk about sort of what changed, I do think that there was a change among comfortable white people that didn't think of race as something that drove their vote. And it did change things in a way. I think it contributed to Democrats and Biden's victory in 2020, especially with sort of center-ish white voters in the suburbs who were really turned away by all the ugliness and racism that they were forced to see.
RASCOE: I think that, you know, I have said and I like to say that I do think it - George Floyd's death, his murder - it rocked the nation. I don't know that it changed the nation. I do think it shocked some consciences.
DAVIS: Yeah.
RASCOE: But when you look at the number of Black people that die at the hands of the police, that has not changed. When you look at the violent interactions with the police, that has not changed. And also, when you look at the politics of - you know, of - the politics of going after this issue of crime and violence and saying those people are out there, they're going to get you, whoever those people are, whether they're Black Lives Matter, antifa, you know, undocumented immigrants, and so we need to crack down or have the police or make sure - you know, if you don't do that, these people are coming to get you - that seems to still be effective because people are still...
DAVIS: Right.
RASCOE: ...Doing it, right? If it didn't work, people wouldn't still use those methods.
DAVIS: Yeah. There's a backlash for sure, right? Like, there is - the pendulum swings in politics, and you can feel that swing coming back a little bit of people being maybe a little bit more circumspect for change than they were a year ago.
RASCOE: Yeah.
SUMMERS: What happened to George Floyd we saw in stark and horrifying detail on that video. But it's a reality that - when I talk to Black people across this country, Black people knew that that was happening. And I think there's a feeling that now everybody else is kind of on the same pages, eyes is open. And now there's just this open question of, OK, we're all seeing the same thing. It's just, you know, what is actually going to be done about it and whether or not that change is something that comes in Washington or it's change that comes in local communities? And that's the question, I guess, that I'm going to keep reporting on and trying to answer.
DAVIS: All right. Let's leave it there for now. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.
RASCOE: I'm Ayesha Rascoe. I cover the White House.
SUMMERS: And I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics and racial justice.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
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