Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg: “On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki argued during her briefing that Democrats have supported police departments and that Republicans are the ones who have actually defunded them… as Psaki pointed out, Democrats in Congress have recently secured massive amounts of funding for state and local governments, over Republican objections, with a fair amount of that money specifically intended for local police departments that pandemic-strapped cities couldn’t afford.”

“Republicans reacted to Psaki with… I don’t quite know how to describe it. Outrage? Disbelief? They’re just incredulous that Democrats could consider their support for directing federal funds to local police departments – and Republican opposition to those efforts – relevant to the question of defunding the police. They aren’t claiming that the money didn’t actually go to the police; they just seem to consider ‘defunding the police’ a sort of metaphysical position that has nothing to do with actual police-department budgets. Sure, symbolic politics can be important, but here symbolism is blocking out everything else. All of this is, to be sure, related to the Republican Party’s difficulty in fashioning public policy. It’s also related to the Republican war on budgeting; having classified aid to state and local governments during the pandemic-induced recession as some sort of boondoggle intended to support Democratic politicians”