Power Up: Americans oppose defunding police and removing statues of Confederate generals, poll shows

• Veep watch: The presumptive Democratic nominee suggested four black women are among the possible contenders to be his running mate but he stopped short of pledging to pick one. His search is expected to conclude by early August.

The Campaign

BY THE NUMBERS: President Trump has sought to paint Joe Biden as an agent of the far-left by falsely claiming that his Democratic opponent supports getting rid of police departments, favors lawlessness in the streets, and wants to “abolish the American way of life.” 

Seeking to weaponize the resentment of some white Americans, Trump has doubled down on calling to preserve Confederate symbols — even as many Republican political leaders and conservative institutions move in the other direction as protests against racial injustice and police brutality erupt around the country. 

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll out this morning could shed some light on why Trump calculates this is a winning message. Even as the poll shows that a majority of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement and a record 69 percent of Americans say that black people and other minorities are not treated equally to white people in the criminal justice system, there is “far less support for some other high-profile proposals that have been in the forefront of public debate recently,” Emily Guskin, Scott Clement and Dan Balz write. 

• A majority of Americans do not back liberal activists' calls to “defund the police”: 55 percent of Americans oppose moving funds from police departments to social services; 43 percent say they oppose it “strongly.” 

• Americans broadly don't support removing public statues honoring Confederate generals (52-43): “That includes an 80 percent majority of Republicans and 56 percent of independents in opposition, while 74 percent of Democrats support the removal of these statutes.” There are also divisions by race: “Almost 6 in 10 white people along with just over half of Hispanic people oppose removing statues of Confederate soldiers, while over three-quarters of black people support their removal.”
• Half of Americans oppose renaming military bases named after Confederate generals while 42 percent support the changes. The breakdown: “81 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of independents [are] opposed and 66 percent of Democrats in favor.” There's also a generational split here: A majority of Americans ages 50 and older are opposed to renaming the bases, while a plurality of those under 50 support the change.
• Opposition to the removal of public statues that memorialize former U.S. presidents who owned enslaved people is even greater: 68 percent of Americans oppose and 25 percent support of their removal. But 6 in 10 black Americans support removing these statues.
• And there's not much support for the government paying black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved, with “63 percent saying the government should not pay reparations. Currently, 31 percent favor reparations, up from 19 percent in a 1999 ABC News poll.”

But interestingly, the poll also underscores the political risks of Trump's racial grievance campaign — and how hard it could be to get his desired depiction of Biden to stick. 

• Not only is Biden is the favored candidate to handle race relations: 58 percent of registered voters say they trust the former veep to handle this issue versus 35 percent who pick Trump.
• They also trust Biden to handle crime and safety: 50 percent of registered voters favor Biden versus 43 percent who think Trump is best equipped.
• Biden, who authored a massive crime bill in 1994 with major assistance from the law enforcement community, long cultivated a tough-on-crime persona. “Biden, to the dismay of activists on the left, has refused to back proposals to defund police and, in fact, has called for increased federal spending to bolster the number of police,” Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler notes, despite the Trump campaign spending millions to promote ads boosting this false narrative. 

Also risky: The president's overall posture toward race relations remains out of step with the public sentiment revealed in the poll. "The share of Americans saying that black people and other minorities do not receive equal treatment in the criminal justice system has risen by 15 percentage points from 2014 — and this year marks the first time a majority of whites has held this view.

“When compared with 2014, around the time of the killings of African Americans Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York, larger shares of virtually every demographic group and every age group now say that minorities do not receive treatment equal to white people in the criminal justice system. Today, that view is held by 62 percent of white people, up 18 points from 2014. Among black people, 97 percent now assert there is unequal treatment of minorities, up from 89 percent in 2014. Over two-thirds, 68 percent of Hispanic people, say the same, roughly similar to 2014.”

• And 55 percent say that recent killings of unarmed black people are “a sign of broader problems in the treatment of black people by police.” That's an increase from 43 percent in 2014. But, as our colleagues note, that's “lower than it was just a month ago, when a Post-Schar School poll found 69 percent of Americans — asked specifically about Floyd’s killing — said that episode was a sign of broader problems in the treatment of police. The change has been sharply partisan.”

But: Even though 63 percent of Americans say they support the Black Lives Matter movement (including 62 percent of independents), Trump has dismissed it as a symbol of hate – though he said this weekend he sees it as a freedom of speech issue not unlike the display of the Confederate flag. “When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the south,” Trump told Fox News's Chris Wallace. 

• And in response to questions about the police brutality against black Americans last week, Trump insisted that law enforcement officers kill “more white people.” (This is true in terms of absolute numbers since white people comprise the majority of the U.S. population, but black people are fatally shot at a higher rate than white people.)
• Dueling proposals introduced by Democrats and Republicans have largely stalled and changes made in the wake of Floyd's death are mostly taking place at the local level. Trump signed a narrow executive order earlier in June designed to incentivize police reform but hailed law enforcement.

Trump’s stance on Confederate symbols breaks from where many Republicans and conservative institutions are going, too. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he wouldn't block congressional efforts to rename military bases that were named for Confederate leaders, despite Trump's veto threat. And House minority leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), told reporters he was “not opposed” to renaming bases. NASCAR has barred the Confederate flag from its events and the Department of Defense rolled out a policy that essentially banned the flag from military properties last week. 

On The Hill

GOP'S RELIEF PROPOSAL LIKELY TO MIRROR TRUMP: “The emerging GOP coronavirus relief bill appears likely to embrace some of [Trump’s] key priorities, despite opposition from within his own party, including a payroll tax cut, very little aid to state and local governments, and measures tying school funding to the reopening of classrooms,” Erica Werner, Jeff Stein, Robert Costa and Seung Min Kim report.

But party dissension will likely pale to the coming clash with Democrats: That could happen as soon as today, “when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are set to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer for the first bipartisan talks on what will almost certainly be the last major coronavirus relief bill before the November elections,” our colleagues write. Mnuchin and Meadows will also meet with Republican senators.

Where things stand: Mnuchin said he wants to stick to roughly $1 trillion in new spending, but Democrats' initial offer remains a $3 trillion package that the House passed in May. McConnell is giving Congress just three weeks to find a deal before lawmakers leave for the summer recess, though Pelosi has floated that she would cut those plans short if deal is not reached. 

It's important note that exact details remain fluid: As PK points out, we've only just begun.

The GOP plan for now …:

• Trump still wants a payroll tax cut and “McConnell appears set to include the provision in his bill,” our colleagues write. 
• But not everyone in the Republican conference is happy about it: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) told reporters he's “not a fan," adding such a tax cut would eventually be followed by an increase.
• The GOP plan would give more money to schools: But following Trump's wishes, such funding would be tied to whether schools reopen. The president has repeatedly threatened current federal funding for schools, despite it being pointed out to him that such funds mainly go toward disadvantaged districts and to help support students with disabilities.
• Liability protection: McConnell has said this is his red line. The protections will be for health care providers, businesses and others.

What about unemployment benefits?: Mnuchin confirmed that Republicans want to end the enhanced $600-per-week support, which as we detailed yesterday will soon run out for millions of Americans.

• Meanwhile, many Americans are struggling to get their benefits at all: Hundreds have camped out for in-person events in Oklahoma, where state officials try to help people who have been unable to get their claims through amid surging demands and backlogs, Annie Gowen reports from Tulsa. People started camping out overnight before one such event she observed in the city.

At The White House

CORONAVIRUS BRIEFINGS ARE BACK: “Trump’s announcement that he would resurrect the White House coronavirus task force briefings is the culmination of weeks of debate among his aides about how best to turn around — or explain away — his administration’s failed response to the pandemic,” Toluse Olorunnipa and Josh Dawsey reports.

• “I think it’s a great way to get information out to the public as to where we are with the vaccines, with the therapeutics, and, generally speaking, where we are,” Trump told reporters.
• They start today: “I’ll do it at 5 o’clock, like we were doing. We had a good slot. And a lot of people were watching.”

Vice President Pence has for several weeks privately advocated for the briefings return: “Some administration officials were opposed to the briefings, and others, including communications director Alyssa Farah and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, have called for briefings to take place at the Department of Health and Human Services or elsewhere — with health experts and a health-focused press corps …," our colleagues write.

• Some Republicans want the president to do more: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said “Trump was going to be ‘more involved’ on the virus, and he counseled him to hold events in the Cabinet Room or Roosevelt Room with business leaders, or others, while taking a few questions at the end.”
• “Arguing with a reporter for 30 minutes doesn’t help,” ­the senator told our colleagues, adding that the original format was at times counterproductive. 

It's likely to just remain the Trump show: “Many of the briefings are likely to feature just the president — a departure from previous events where public health officials also appeared,” our colleagues write.

Outside the Beltway

TRUMP THREATENS TO SEND FEDERAL AGENTS TO MORE CITIES: “Homeland Security officials said they are making preparations to deploy federal agents to Chicago, while [Trump] threatened to send U.S. law enforcement personnel to other Democratic-led cities experiencing spates of crime,” Nick Miroff and Mark Berman report.

The president made the threat while defending a federal presence in Portland: “Calling the unrest there ‘worse than Afghanistan,’ Trump’s rhetoric escalated tensions with Democratic mayors and governors who have criticized the presence of federal agents on U.S. streets, telling reporters at the White House that he would send forces into jurisdictions with or without the cooperation of their elected leaders,” our colleagues write.

• Oregon officials say federal enforcement is only exacerbating tensions: “In response to the president calling Portland protesters anarchists and insinuating that local officials were afraid of them, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said, ‘this is a democracy, not a dictatorship. We cannot have secret police abducting people in unmarked vehicles. I can’t believe I have to say that to the President of the United States.’”

In the Media

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Florida's largest teachers union sues over return to in-person classes: “The suit from the Florida Education Association asked a judge to stop Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran from requiring the return of in-person schooling without first reducing class sizes and ensuring that educators have adequate protective supplies,” Matt Zapotosky reports.

• Elsewhere in the state, a sheriff says he can't must enough security for GOP convention: “As we're talking today, we are still not close to having some kind of plan that we can work with that makes me comfortable that we're going to keep that event and the community safe,” Duval County Sheriff Mike Williams told Politico's Marc Caputo. Williams said the lack of officers, finalized planning and funding would make proper security very difficult.

St. Louis couple who aimed guns at protesters is facing felony charges: Mark McCloskey and Patricia McCloskey “who emerged from their mansion in a gated community and aimed weapons at protesters marching past them last month were each charged Monday with one felony count of unlawful use of a weapon,” Tom Jackman report.

• The pair have become a cause celebre for the right: Trump previously attacked the local prosecutor when the couple's guns were seized by St. Louis police officers. The couple appeared at a virtual Trump rally last week and were interviewed by former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle.

A suspect in gruesome shooting targeting a federal judge was found dead: “Federal authorities identified a self-described ‘anti-feminist’ lawyer found dead as the ‘primary subject’ in a shooting at a federal judge’s New Jersey home that killed the jurist’s son and left her husband badly injured,” Tim Elfrink and Devlin Barrett report. “U.S. District Judge Esther Salas was not harmed in the Sunday shooting, which the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and local authorities continue to investigate.”