House Democrats delay votes on police, guns after internal infighting

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% :Majority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Wednesday that it's likely the House comes back into session in the second week of August to pass a Senate-approved climate, health and tax package and that it will probably consider the public safety bills then.
54% : Members of the Congressional Black Caucus also met Tuesday evening to discuss their support, expressing to leadership that any package including funds to police must have legislative language that holds law enforcement to account for cases of police brutality.
53% : Leaders had hoped to tack the ban onto the tranche of public safety bills, which included police funding as well as community policing measures and mental health response teams, to ensure it could pass this month.
46% : The recent string of mass shootings across the country - particularly after 19 children and two teachers were killed at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school - motivated many Democrats to reignite a push to vote on an assault weapon ban for the first time in decades.
46% : Members of the liberal wing have previously voted against bills that had funded law enforcement, a threat that remained ahead of any possible votes this week.
45% : But there was uncertainty that an assault weapon ban has the votes in a chamber where Democrats only have a razor-thin four-member majority.
44% : Their threat to sink the public safety package would hurt their chances to pass the assault weapon ban, which they support.
43% : But the push to increase police funding has infuriated liberals who would rather see such money redirected to community policing, as well as Black lawmakers and civil rights groups who want accountability and transparency measures attached to police funding.
42% : House Democrats postponed the consideration of a package of bills that would address public safety and ban assault weapons, exposing the fracture lines that exist within the caucus and sinking the desire by many members to leave Washington with fresh legislative wins to motivate voter turnout as they hit the campaign trail.
42% :Vulnerable members in swing districts, known as front-liners, who remain most at risk of losing their seats during the midterm election have spent the last several weeks pushing leaders to vote on legislation that would help fund local law enforcement to counter GOP attacks that Democrats are soft on crime - an argument that probably cost the party seats in 2020 and created animosity between different factions of the party.
40% : Liberals and some Black lawmakers and their voters have been highly critical of additional funding for law enforcement without new policies governing policing practices following the killings in recent years of Black Americans in high-profile cases involving allegations of and convictions for excessive force.
38% : But leadership's decision to pull the public safety bills until there is a compromise has made it difficult to vote on just the assault weapon ban, since it relies on all but four Democrats to support it.

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