1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

Thank you for voting against the bill advanced in the senate on Tuesday; the one that would fund police departments in some states. As I’m sure you know, Trump crafted the bill to “punish” blue states by denying them funds for local police departments. Five states excluded from the bill (CA, NY, NJ, IL, CT) account for 25% of the US population but will receive 0.00% of the funds for local policing. Before Trump, using national legislation to “punish” those states that did not vote for the winning presidential candidate would have been unthinkable. I hope you heard Senator Booker’s speech, a portion of which I have included below. “It’s time for Democrats have a backbone. It’s time for us to fight. It’s time for us to draw lines… We are standing at a moment where our president is eviscerating the Constitution of the United States of America, and we’re willing to go along with that today. No, no, not on my watch. This is a call, folks. This is a wake-up call…What are the very people here elected to defend the Constitution of the United States saying? Oh, well, today, let’s look the other way and pass some resources that won’t go to Connecticut, that won’t go to Illinois, that won’t go to New York, that will go to the states that [the president] likes. That is complicity with a totalitarian leader. It is time for us to fight and draw the lines.” Off the floor he remarked: “There’s a lot of us in this caucus that want to f-----g fight, and what’s bothering me right now is we don’t see enough fight in this caucus.” Please rise beside him. Senate Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Constitution. Cooperating with them in anything is constitutional suicide, especially so in a bill that punishes states that did not vote for Trump. I am hopeful that you are beginning to hear our frustrations over your passive approach to a five-alarm emergency for our democracy.