Charge to implement unprecedented Police Reform to curb Police Brutality and racial profiling and eliminate qualified immunity as part of the justice in policing act, or as it is going to be renamed, the George Floyd Justice in policing act. Now the hard part. Getting these historic changes past. Congresswoman, so great to see you. Thank you for being here. Chairwoman bass thanks for having me on. Jonathan lets talk about atlanta and the shooting of rayshard brooks. Shot twice in the back according to the medical examiner. How does this fit in with george floyd in minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in louisville . Chairwoman bass this was such a tragedy and it leaves everybody distraught. , hebig difference is clearly engaged in a fight and then he ran and he turned around , at least it looks as though he turned around with his taser, but the question here is, why were the Police Involved at all . , he hadhad done was fallen asleep in a takeout line. Why did they call the police on to, and why did it escalate the point of them engaging in a fight . You saw the community reaction. It pains me every time i see the violins, but i do think it raises questions about policing, which is one of the things about the bill. The bill will hopefully raise discussions about standards of accountability, etc. Jonathan can we talk about training . I dont know, maybe the police are trained differently than the rest of us. Im sure they are. But it seems common sense that you would go tap on the window and say, are you ok, or call a tow truck. Address Police Training in such a way that it either mandates or recommends that Police Departments train the officers in deescalation as opposed to what seems to my mind, always jumping to some sort of force in dealing with the public . Chairwoman bass i think the first thing they were trying to do is establish whether he was under the influence. Im not sure why. They could have just told him to pull over. A lot of Different Things could have happened there. But you hit on several points. The bill really is an attempt in one way to get at Police Culture. It does call for training, but it calls for standards, accountability. Why is a chokehold ok in one city and not another . I had a rather long meeting with the fraternal order of police and they are very supportive of National Standards and asked for our help. From their point of view, there are 18,000 Police Departments around the country and they have been trying to get the departments to buy interNational Standards and accreditation, but they have been doing it on a retail basis. So they say, you come along and pass this legislation, it will really help us. Jonathan speaking of the fraternal order of police, i am a former New York Daily News editorial writer, and the Police Unions in new york are powerful. The Police Unions in cities around the country are powerful. Does the George Floyd Justice in policing act address any issues related to Police Contracts where accountability comes into play . Chairwoman bass it doesnt address the union contracts. They unionsld know, are definitely contacting us. They are interested in reform. This is a critical moment in our country. And i think they understand that people around the country, 70 believe that the protesters have a legitimate reason to protest. People want change. The door is open a little bit and we absolutely have to rush through. People are protesting every day and i feel as though we have got to deliver and that was also how i felt when the shooting happened in atlanta. It makes me feel that we have to work even faster. We have to show people that we are serious. This is a bill that we need to pass into law. Right after we introduced it, i heard from many of my republican colleagues. We were in discussions over the weekend. I talked to kevin mccarthy, the republican leader. There is tremendous interest and we have to strike while the iron is hot. Jonathan when i talked to you last week, you mentioned to me that various aspects of this bill have been sought after, particularly by the Congressional Black Caucus, for the last 40 years. When the bill goes for markup in the judiciary committee, do you have any indicator of which pieces will come out of committee, or is the goal to get all of it out of committee on wednesday . Chairwoman bass this bill will be passed out of committee on wednesday, all of it together. Im hoping that some of my republican colleagues come on board, but i think it is too soon for them. I would love to say we would have republican support, but i do think it is going to take a little time. Hoping we can garner some republican support. Tim scott is introducing his bill. One of my colleagues in the house is introducing a bill that is close to that. Hopefully we will be able to come together. Jonathan i dont know if you mentioned it when you were talking about the bill. The bill would start a federal registry of Police Misconduct and require states to report to the justice department. I have a question from john murphy, who wanted to know, when will the house lift the funding ban on Gun Violence Research . Is that part of the discussion . Chairwoman bass it is not. We dont deal with that in this particular bill. We did deal with it in earlier legislation, though. Jonathan and you were just talking about how youve heard from House Minority leader kevin california, but no other House Republicans have been in touch, have signed on . Chairwoman bass we dont have any republican cosponsors right now. Ive been in conversations with lots of republicans. Weve been talking about it. A couple of my colleagues were former Law Enforcement officers or children of Law Enforcement officers. A couple things they feel strongly about is the national registry. From my point of view, i think this is a bill that supports Police Departments. I dont think any Police Officer wants to work next to somebody who is correct. But Police Culture doesnt really allow them to intervene. You saw the 75yearold man who was not down. The Police Reported that he was tripped. He did not. He was pushed. An officer went to render aid and another officer stopped him because that is the culture. For the young man who drowned and a Police Officer went to help him and another officer pulled him away and allowed him to drown. It is that kind of culture we want to get at. If you think about police, that is the one profession that can kill. You would think that a professional of that power would be accredited. Accredited. List is why shouldnt the Police Departments be accredited . That is where i have found the most support from Police Unions and the National Association of police chiefs. Jonathan part of the conversation when it comes to Police Reform, the three word mantra, defined the police. Part of the conversation has now become, dont take it literally. Everyone has a different interpretation of what that means. You said already that you are what is your definition . What is a better alternative . Chairwoman bass i told some friends that that is probably one of the worst slogans ever, but anyway, Police Officers are the first ones to say that they are Law Enforcement officers, not social workers. In health, invested social, and economic problems in communities, and we leave the police to pick up the pieces. In my city, on any given night, we have over 40,000 people who are homeless. Why should the police be involved in that . If you are talking about substance abuse, intellectual challenges, why should Police Officers have to clean up societies problems . One of the main points i think the movement is making is that cities and states, their priorities are lopsided. A large percentage of the city budget goes to Law Enforcement. Why doesnt the city deal with social problems so not so much money would have to go to Law Enforcement . Within the bill, we have a Grant Program where communitybased organizations can apply to come up with Innovative Solutions or strategies about Law Enforcement in their particular communities. Jonathan you mentioned your city, los angeles. I want to talk about seattle. Republicans have been targeting the autonomous protest zone in seattle, asking if this is what citizens want in their cities. What do you think of that . Seattlean bass i think doing that is ok, but seriously, a city cant run that way. If you have a small corner of the city that chooses to do that , but i do believe the mayor and the chief of police certainly no and see that that autonomous zone will last for a very short time. If the neighborhood wants to experiment with that, i think that is fine, but you cant run a city without making sure everyone is safe. Although i am a proponent of the budget being better and society investing, you do need police. You do need someone to help. But what we have done is divested and then we leave the police in a very unfair position. One of the main reasons why police getting physical conflicts that have terrible results is because they are interacting with people who have Mental Illness or are challenged. It is not fair. Jonathan lets talk about President Trump. Seattle, he has called the folks there ugly anarchists and implied he would move in, sort of in the way that he threatened to do a couple weeks ago, during a lot of the protests over the killing of george floyd. What is your view . Is this helping or hurting your bill getting past . Chairwoman bass i dont know that any of us are paying attention to him. We are working on the bill and i do not see my republican colleagues repeating that. I think my republican colleagues are looking for a constructive path. Right now i think it is best to ignore him. What concerns me is that hes notorious for fanning the flames. Hes getting ready to give a speech on race and i dont know what good can come of that because i dont know what he can say that would be positive. I hear it is being written by stephen miller, so what is that going to bring us except for an antiimmigrant message . I guess what hes going to do is talk about africanamericans and all the wonderful things hes done for us and then try to pit us against immigrants. Jonathan i want to come back to President Trump in a second. But have you heard, as a result of working on the George Floyd Justice in policing act, have you had any communications with the white house . Chairwoman bass yes. And i do believe there are people there who want to see a solution. Variety of a proposals out there. We will see where we land. Jonathan so now President Trump intel set. You did a great preview of what you think he might say in that speech, which was originally scheduled for juneteenth, but moved to june 20. You have a clear view into what the president might say because you were one of the delegations before you were chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, to go to the white house, to meet with President Trump. With, i willd in call it a black agenda, but what you thought the president should focus on, talk about that meeting and talk about what progress, if any, has been made on that list of things you handed to the president. Chairwoman bass if you remember the origin of that meeting, he was asked by a supporter if he had contacted right. So we went. What he said during his campaign is, what do you have to lose . We did a document that said, first of all, we began with black history, but we have a variety of bills we wanted to see if the white house was interested in, and we wanted to followup the meeting with cabinet secretarys. After that meeting, there was no communication. Tomade numerous requests meet with various cabinet secretaries and that never happened. Jonathan do you think the president , by choosing his first rally after the quarantine of the siteus in tulsa, of the tulsa massacre, do you think he is dog whistling or do you think he is just pulling out a straight on bullhorn to send a white supremacist message to some of his followers . Chairwoman bass it is very hard not to see that as able horn. I do know in the beginning maybe they didnt understand the significance of june 19, but it was quickly pointed out and they were going to continue. It wasnt until there was tremendous pushback, that they decided to change the date. Jonathan before i forget, i want to bring up something we are reporting in the Washington Post about what happened in Lafayette Square when the president had protesters pushed for to go to st. Johns that photo op. The post is reporting more of the details, planning, and execution. As Law Enforcement personnel from the secret service, park police, national guard, we are learning there were guards from a u. S. Penitentiary in hazleton, west virginia. Is Congress Going to investigate this . And could you talk about why it is troubling that federal penitentiary officers were involved in what happened in Lafayette Square . Chairwoman bass first of all, congress is going to investigate. That is not a committee i serve on, but it will be the oversight committee. What i think was even worse was the fact that people did not know who those folks were. There were a lot of Law Enforcement officers there who had no identification whatsoever. You didnt know if they were Law Enforcement or rogue militia. That is a very scary thing. Why they would bring them in, i have no idea. They had the national guard. I dont know why they needed to bring anyone else in. Tulsa,n back to coronavirus, one of the things we also know is that tulsa pleading,have been please dont come here with this rally. Is the United States opening up, our states opening up too soon, and is that putting the American Population at risk . Talk about what this means for africanamericans who have borne the brunt of this pandemic. Chairwoman bass what i really think is going on is, i think the administration is not being public about this. I think they are adopting a herd immunity standard, which means, let everybody get exposed. What we used to do years ago with chickenpox. When you had a child, you would expose them so they could get the virus. I think that is the policy the administration has adopted. That is frightening because they are not actually saying that. We know that the death rate has been extremely disproportionate among africanamerican, latinos, asians, and pacific islanders, so you have heard the president say, the people that are getting sick are people who are older, who have a lot of other health conditions. It is shocking and so tragic to me that he doesnt seem to be able to muster any empathy at losing over 100,000 americans, dead, in the last three months. You kind of have to say that a couple times to let that register. Jonathan and with a new report out of harvard predicting that we could have another 100,000 dead by the end of the summer, emails revealed in a lawsuit last week, including emails showing the politicization of the cdc response after the president was upset when the top doctors were saying the coronavirus will spread in february what can you and congress do to ensure that the Health Information from the cdc is not tainted . Chairwoman bass we are trying to get the Health Information. We passed the cares act. From a Congressional Black Caucus perspective, weve been concerned about the death rate and believe there needs to be a specific intervention in communities where there is disproportionate. The problem is, where do you intervene to know where the intervention is needed . We did pass legislation that requires the cdc to come forward with some of the demographic information, and the head of the cdc had to publicly apologize for the report, because it basically has no information. How damaging would it be if the United States had to lock down, have everyone stayathome, shut down the economy again . Chairwoman bass it would be very damaging, but again, over 100,000 people we have lost we need to do something extreme. Here you have the United States, the richest country in the world, and we never got a handle on this in the beginning, which is why it is so bad. One of the things that happened in the Obama Administration was, we faced a potential pandemic with ebola. What did obama do . He mobilized the entire world and ebola didnt even spread in africa. The World Health Organization predicted a Million People would die. 11,000 people died. People, theyllion have had 6000 people died. There is no reason except for the fact that this pandemic was handled inappropriately from the very beginning, it ballooned, and weve never been able to get control of it. Jonathan congresswoman, we are running out of time. I cant let you go without talking politics. We are in president ial election season. Vice President Biden is the Presumptive Democratic nominee. Who do you think he should pick for Vice President . He says hes going to nominate a woman. Should it be a black woman . Chairwoman bass of course i want it to be a black woman. I think at this time in our country, where you have such an awareness the majority of the people out on the streets in some cities are white and i get excited by seeing them where black lives matter tshirts. I think that a black woman would not just galvanize the black community, but i think it would galvanize this movement. Im excited. I said at the beginning of the year, if we didnt fix this in november, we would have to pay for the next generations. Jonathan congresswoman, what do you think of people who say vice President Biden has to choose between someone who can help him win the midwest and someone who can help him with enthusiasm among africanamericans . Are those two things mutually exclusive . Chairwoman bass i dont think they are mutually exclusive at all. The Vice President needs to pick somebody who he is comfortable with, who can help lead the nation. Jonathan there have been three stories in the last three days about what is happening with the Vice President ial search. Demings,oman val senator kamala harris, ambassador susan rice, Stacey Abrams name has not been in those stories, but there might be other people who are being arent beingo talked about. My question to you, have you fromcontacted by anyone the Biden Campaign to talk about vp . To be clear, you. Chairwoman bass let me just tell you that i have been really honored that ive heard my name come up in the last few days, but the answer is no. Jonathan it is not an unreasonable question. You are the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Is this your fifth term now . Chairwoman bass 10 years. Jonathan but also, you were the speaker of the California Assembly when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor. It is understandable that people would think, what about karen bass . If they were to call you, would you be interested . Chairwoman bass of course i would take the call and i would be extremely honored. Ask,han ive got to congresswoman karen bass, california chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, thank you very much for being here today. Chairwoman bass thank you very much. President trump a Campaign Rally in tulsa, his first such event since march 2, after which rallies were curbed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Watch that live at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, cspan. Org, or the freeseas fan you. The president , from public affairs. Available now in paperback and ebook. President , of every organized by their rankings by noted historians, from best to worst, and features perspectives into the lives of our nations chief executives. Visit our website, cspan. Org, to learn more about each president , and order your copy today. Wherever books and ebooks are sold. Spangler is the washington correspondent for the detroit free press. He talks about what is motivating michigan voters in the president ial race. He also talks about President Trumps message on trade. Host Todd Spangler for the detroit free press. Give us a sense of the Political Landscape right now. Todd the Political Landscape in michigan is not promising for President Trump and his reelection efforts in michigan. Right now it looks like the state he was able to flip in 2016, michigan is the furthest out of reach. It has looked that way all along, but it is far more seen in the polling now. The most recent poll we have
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