Late last year then-incoming MAGA House Majority leader Steve Scalise sent out a “Dear colleague” letter outlining a number of legislative priorities, among them a resolution “Expressing support for the Nation’s law enforcement agencies and condemning any efforts to defund or dismantle law enforcement agencies” all of it pretty anodyne, bipartisan-friendly stuff that would almost certainly have met unanimous approval when teed up as planned during this week’s “Police Week 2023.”

That is until some changes were made earlier this month. The new version of H Con Res 40 specifically prefixes “local” to every single mention of “law enforcement,” and according to Punchbowl News, Republicans have blocked every attempt by Dems to change the language to include federal law enforcement. The update was made on May 5th, ten days before the Durham Report’s release, so it’s not even like MAGA hatred of the FBI was particularly spiking at the time.

In addition to emphasizing support for local law enforcement only, the new version is overall much more politically charged with its “Whereas leftist activists and progressive politicians called for the defunding and dismantling of local police departments across the country and actively encouraged resentment toward local law enforcement,” type grievance-mongering bullshit. Hilariously on-brand for Republicans however, it also mentions that “in 2020, the United States tallied more than 21,000 murders-the highest total since 1995 and 4,900 more than in 2019,” not-so-subtly indicating they’re once again forgetting just exactly who was the president in the year 2020. The dumbest fucking part of this story is that it’s just a resolution, it doesn’t actually do anything in terms of federal funding for law enforcement or make changes to their codes of professional conduct or anything like that. It’s a “controversy” over signing onto a symbolic gesture of support for police.