Can lawmakers actually 'finish the job' on police reform, as Biden wants?
The parents of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black man who was attacked by Memphis, Tennessee, police officers and later died, were present at Tuesday's State of the Union, where President Biden encouraged lawmakers to "come together and finish the job on police reform."
That may be easier said than done, though. A compromise on a federal policing bill died in the Senate in 2021 and key GOP lawmakers have already expressed skepticism that federal police reform measures would have prevented Nichols's death.
Another issue, though, is that many Republican voters don't think that there's a systemic issue with policing, according to recent polls. A new ABC News/Washington Post survey, for example, found that 72% of Republicans are confident that the police treat both Black and white people equally, compared with just 14% of Democrats. Another survey by the Pew Research Center, meanwhile, found that 70% of Republicans and Republican-leaners said that police across the country do at least a good job at treating racial and ethnic groups equally, while just 18% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners voiced the same opinion.
Of course, that's not to say reform can't happen. Biden and the Congressional Black Caucus are talking about what reforms they want to see passed. But even though some polls show an overall drop in confidence toward the police since July 2020, gains in support for reform, among white Americans in particular, tend to be fleeting. So action on policing is anything but a sure-fire thing.
-FiveThirtyEight's Alex Samuels