After historic uprisings against racist police brutality last summer, House Democrats introduced a bill to ban chokeholds, prohibit racial and religious profiling, and limit no-knock warrants like the one that resulted in the murder of EMT worker Breonna Taylor last year.
The Bill is called the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, named for the George Floyd whose murder by police sparked a nationwide reckoning of the power bestowed upon law enforcement to kill American citizens—particularly Black Americans—often with little or no accountability.
Republicans have strongly opposed the bill, claiming it's radical and limits the police's ability to do their job.
One such Republican is Congressman Lance Gooden of Texas, but Americans wouldn't have known that if they looked at his initial vote on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House this past Wednesday. At first, Gooden was the only Republican in the House to vote yes.
In a now-deleted tweet, Gooden said that his "yes" vote on the bill was a mistake, and that he accidentally pressed the "wrong button."
Gooden wrote:
"I accidentally pressed the wrong voting button and realized it too late. I have changed the official record to reflect my opposition to the partisan George Floyd Policing Act."
After deleting the initial tweet, Gooden posted a photo of his vote change and claimed he was "arguably the most conservative/America First" representative in Congress.
Gooden certainly hasn't hidden his so-called America First values—his Twitter banner is a photo of him and former President Donald Trump—but that didn't save him from mockery.
People were surprised to see which values made him proud.
They also took issue with his framing of the bill as "anti-police."
The bill now heads to the Senate, where it will need 10 Republicans to support it.
