I don’t believe that the good people of Indiana sent Mike Braun, a pro-Trump businessman, to Congress in order to strip America’s police forces of qualified immunity. The Senator has introcued a bill that is a complete non-starter, and unsurprisingly, he has zero co-sponsors.

A lone Republican senator, Mike Braun (R-Ind.), will today unveil a new bill to reform qualified immunity for law enforcement.

The move sets up a potential collision course with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is throwing his weight behind another Republican police reform bill that does not tackle this issue — and President Trump, who opposes revising the 50-year-old legal doctrine that shields police from civil lawsuits.

Braun insists that now is the time to move ahead with this bill — even without co-sponsors — given the mass protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody. “It’s a watershed moment,” the freshman senator told Power Up in an interview ahead of the bill’s release. [Washington Post]

This bill would be a complete and unmitigated disaster for public safety, and completely unjust to good and honest police officers. The International Association of Chiefs of Police explains:

Qualified immunity provides police officers with protection from civil lawsuits so long as their conduct does not violate clearly established law or constitutional rights of which a reasonable officer would have known. Further, qualified immunity does not prevent individuals from recovering damages from police officers who knowingly violate an individual’s constitutional rights.

Qualified immunity is an essential part of policing and American jurisprudence. It allows police officers to respond to incidents without pause, make split-second decisions, and rely on the current state of the law in making those decisions. This protection is essential because it ensures officers that good faith actions, based on their understanding of the law at the time of the action, will not later be found to be unconstitutional. The loss of this protection would have a profoundly chilling effect on police officers and limit their ability and willingness to respond to critical incidents without hesitation. [IACP – PDF]

Ending qualified immunity is strongly opposed by President Trump, Attorney General Barr, and Senator Tim Scott.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany reiterated Wednesday that President Trump considers ending qualified immunity for police officers “a non-starter” as discussions about police reform continue in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

McEnany’s comments come after she said Monday that qualified immunity — which shields cops from being sued in court for violating a civilian’s constitutional rights, unless their actions violated “clearly established federal law” — was not something the president would consider.

“You had AG Barr saying this weekend he was asked about reduced immunity and he said, ‘I don’t think we need to reduce immunity to go after the bad cops because that would result certainly in police pulling back,’ which is not advisable,” McEnany said, referencing an interview Barr gave to CBS News’s Face the Nation. “I don’t think you need to reduce immunity to . . . to go after the bad cops, because that would result certainly in police pulling back,” Barr told Margaret Brennan.

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Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.), the lone black Republican in the Senate, has been tasked with leading the GOP effort to pass a police-reform bill before July 4, and has also ruled out reforming qualified immunity. [National Review]

Ending qualified immunity is favored by cosmopolitan elites on both the left and the right. Once again, the globalist elites, most of whom are comfortably sitting in their fancy upper-middle class homes and working on their computers, are completely out of touch with the common, working American. Senator Mike Braun himself is an extremely wealthy businessman, with a net worth of at least $37 million. We congratulate the Senator on his hard work and entrepreneurial success, but we also urge him to consider the needs of his constituents who cannot afford the luxurious security he enjoys.

If you’d like to politely contact Senator Braun and let him know what you think about his bill, you can find his contact info here:

Contact Form – Click Here

Washington, DC Office: 202-224-4814

Indianapolis Office: 317-822-8240