Republican Senator Paul Rand is facing backlash for singlehandedly holding up a bill which would make lynching a federal crime — despite the rest of the Senate being in support of the bill becoming law.
Senate Democrats Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey have sponsored Senate bill 488. If passed as law, lynching would be punishable in federal court by ten years in prison.
According to the Kentucky politician, the hold up is because he believes that the current language is too broad and is preventing the vote on the Senate floor.
“This bill would cheapen the meaning of lynching by defining it so broadly as to include a minor bruise or abrasion,” he said. “Our national history of racial terrorism demands more seriousness of us than that.”
Booker was also outraged, “Tell me another time when 500-plus Congress people — Democrats, Republicans, House members and senators — come together in a chorus of conviction and say, ‘Now is the time in America that we condemn the dark history of our past and actually pass anti-lynching legislation'”.