| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from from Jesús Rodríguez, Jesse Naranjo, Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz
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The screen at the Smoothie King Center honors Tyre Nichols before an NBA basketball game between the New Orleans Pelicans and the Washington Wizards in New Orleans, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP | What up, Recast family. The Biden administration is set to end the Covid health emergency by May, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas says the new migrant parole policy is responsible for decline in illegal border crossings and the GOP-led House begins its slew of investigations. First, we focus on the continued fallout from the Memphis police tapes. The nation is still grappling with the visual evidence that Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man — a father who had a love of skateboarding and photographing sunsets — should be alive today, if not for an ill-fated encounter with law enforcement. The gruesome videos released Friday evening show Nichols was pursued, tased, kicked, pepper sprayed, beaten with batons and verbally berated. Perhaps most gut-wrenching, Nichols served as the narrator of his own imminent death, at times telling the group of officers inflicting the brutality, “You guys are really doing a lot right now” and “I am on the ground” as officers barked conflicting orders at him, followed by his futile screams for his mother to rescue him. It’s prompted condemnation across the political spectrum and, for many Democrats, renewed calls for lawmakers to enact federal policing reforms. For Republicans, as my colleague Mike DeBonis points out in the POLITICO Playbook Daily Briefing podcast this week, there appears to be no appetite to tackle such a measure anytime soon. For evidence, look no further than the toothless statements and remarks offered up in the wake of the videos going public. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.): “This footage is jarring and unnerving. We cannot let the pain of the Nichols family be in vain,” he said in a statement. “Let it serve as a call to action for every lawmaker in our nation at every level. The only way to bring light from darkness is to be united.”
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Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) speaks during a Senate hearing, Feb. 3, 2022, in Washington | Pool photo by Ken Cedeno | Notably absent from his statement is any mention that he is the GOP point person on police reform. Scott was a lead negotiator on a police reform bill named after George Floyd that passed in the Democratic-controlled House (albeit without a single Republican vote) only to have those talks with Senate Democrats dissolve in the fall of 2021. Some of the main sticking points included the Democrats’ push for limiting qualified immunity, which shields law enforcement from being sued for violating a citizen's constitutional rights — which could be a key issue in the Nichols case. Scott’s proposals focused on training and emphasized deescalation tactics. When Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was asked about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this Sunday, he seemed to reject the measure outright, while offering no concrete examples about what kind of legislation he would accept. “I don't know that that's the answer,” Jordan said. “But, again, we'll look at what we think makes sense to help this, to make sure they have the proper training. But no amount of training's going to change what we saw in that video.” On Saturday, during a kickoff event in South Carolina for his 2024 White House campaign, former President Donald Trump, who while in office encouraged law enforcement to engage in rough tactics with suspects, described the Nichols footage as “pretty graphic” and “a rough thing to watch.”
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Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the South Carolina Statehouse on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, in Columbia, S.C. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo | But when pressed by my POLITICO colleague Meridith McGraw on whether the Nichols incident would spur reform, Trump deflected. “Well … you have to stop crime,” Trump said, adding, “You have to get the right people that know when you have to be tough and when not to be tough. This was a case of being very, very tough, overly, overly crazy. And it was sad to watch.” (We’ll leave the comments by conservative sports and culture pundit Jason Whitlock, who is Black and appeared to blame Nichols death on what he deemed “baby-mama culture,” for another day.) There are conservatives pursuing public safety solutions who argue there is some middle ground on the issue, if there was actual political will for a bipartisan remedy. Ja’Ron Smith, a former adviser in the Trump White House who helped pass the First Step Act, says there’s a way forward “that’s not necessarily a ‘get tough’ policy, but it isn’t ‘defund the police,’” referring to a phrase used by those on the left that largely calls for reallocating funds away from law enforcement to other governmental agencies. Smith, who is Black, last year helped launch the Public Safety Solutions for America coalition, which among other things calls for “properly funding the police.” He says resurrecting the bill named after Floyd is politically fraught. He agrees with Jordan that the top-line items in that legislation — like banning federal law enforcement from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants in federal drug cases — would not have saved Nichols’ life.
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Ja’Ron Smith, White House director of urban affairs and revitalization under former President Donald Trump, prerecords his address to the Republican National Convention, Aug. 27, 2020 in Washington. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images | Where Smith differs from Jordan: He supports the establishment of a federal database, which would track complaints of excessive force levied against law enforcement officers “On its face, the executive order that Biden did has things in common with the executive order that Trump did on the database for bad police, on co-responder services, on accreditation standards,” Smith tells The Recast. “So there's areas of common ground, I think, that really moves the needle.” One can only hope that he’s right, because there are lives, in particular Black lives, that are depending on lawmakers to get it right. No doubt, we’ll continue to follow this to see if any progress can be made.
All the best,
The Recast Team
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| Power dynamics are changing.With The Recast, you'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy. Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Subscribe to the newsletter here.
| | | CINCY MAYOR’S PROCLAMATION GONE WRONG Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval is learning, in a very public and somewhat playful way, the danger of writing a check your mouth can’t cash, as is illustrated by this famous and NSFW social media meme. This past weekend was the pivotal AFC Championship Game, where his Cincinnati Bengals were going head-to-head with the Kansas City Chiefs for the chance to go to the Super Bowl. Riding high on optimism and swagger because his hometown team had beaten the Chiefs in the previous three matchups, the mayor issued a proclamation, which included trash talking phrases like: “Whereas Joseph Lee Burrow [the Bengals quarterback], who is 3-0 against [Patrick] Mahomes, has been asked by officials to take a paternity test to confirm whether or not he’s his father.” | 
Twitter | It was a nail-biter of a game, but Cincinnati fell short with the final score 23-20, as the Chiefs connected on a late-game field goal to secure their trip to play in Super Bowl LVII on Feb. 12. During the postgame celebration, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce had a message for Pureval. “I got some wise words for that Cincinnati mayor: know your role and shut your mouth, ya jabroni!
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Twitter | In good fun, Pureval responded: “Yeah. Deserved that.”
| | | ICYMI @ POLITICO
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Reelected Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel holds a gavel while speaking at the committee's winter meeting in Dana Point, Calif., Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. | Jae C. Hong/AP Photo | McDaniel Wins Again — The embattled RNC chair survives an insurgent campaign to oust her from the committee’s top spot and in the process earns herself a rare fourth term. POLITICO’s Natalie Allison breaks down why the race grew very messy by the end. WATCH: DHS Secretary Mayorkas claims credit for drop in illegal border crossings
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| Tracking All the House-Led Probes — Hunter Biden, Mayorkas and the border, the DOJ and Covid origins (oh my!). POLITICO’s Jordain Carney ticks through what to watch for as Republican investigations get underway in earnest this week. Santos Watch, Literally —The Hill’s most truth-challenged denizen announced today he’s stepping down from his committee assignments. The Recast’s Jesús Rodríguez chased after him last week to get a glimpse into the pandemonium that may have forced his hand. Jesús writes, “Between the congressman’s non-answers and the sweet nothings I witness over 16 hours and 27,000 steps following Santos around the Hill, one thing is becoming abundantly clear: The political purgatory where this merchant of fables finds himself is an increasingly brutal place to inhabit.” | | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS The Hulu adaptation of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “The 1619 Project” — reexamining American history by centering slavery and its legacy — premiered Thursday.
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| Cheuk Kwan’s “Have You Eaten Yet?” takes the reader on a world tour of Chinese restaurants, weaving stories of migration, identity and community. Vanity Fair writer and novelist Delia Cai chats all things internet in a new “Embedded” Q&A. (Best quote: “Ninety percent of my phone tabs are Chrome searches for pasta types.”) We’re way late to the game on this, but this live concert of Anderson.Paak is very much a vibe. Eddie Murphy, Lauren London, Nia Long, Jonah Hill and Deon Cole star in “You People,” a comedy about an interracial couple, out now on Netflix.
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| Tiny Desk teams up with globalFEST to bring you nine unique performances filmed in musicians’ homelands across the world, from Mauritania to Brazil to China. Watch the three installments here, here and here. “The Voice” alumni Libianca releases a visual for her smooth Afrobeats track “People (Check On Me).”
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| TikTok of the Day: Cute!
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