There was a program that might have stopped Dallas and Baton Rouge—and Republicans shut it down

Rss@dailykos.com (mark Sumner) · Wednesday, July 27, 2016, 5:19 pm

The police shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge represent a tragic loss of life. They added a new level of divisiveness and finger-pointing for those who were already inclined to be suspicious of protests against racially-biased police violence. And they threatened police programs, like those underway in Dallas, that had been genuinely effective in bringing together police and communities.

But the events in Dallas and Baton Rouge have more in common than just police as targets. There’s another factor in these two events, and in some others across the nation. Not just that the targets were police. Not just that the killers used assault weapons. It’s a factor that might have been addressed, if Republicans hadn't gotten in the way.

As the right-wing outrage machine would have it, the shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge by U.S. military veterans were the fault of President Obama. “How many law enforcement and people have to die because of a lack of leadership in our country?” Trump recently wrote in a Tweet.

As it turns out, those law enforcement officials may have died because of an actual lack of leadership. In Congress.

... seven years ago, when a little-known division in the new president’s Department of Homeland Security sought to explore the potential violence of returning veterans—one that might have aided local law enforcement with intelligence in Dallas and Baton Rouge—it was Congressional Republicans who succeeded in pushing to shut the program down.

Why did Republicans cut off the funds? Because they didn’t like how the results of those studies implicated right-wing groups in generating an environment of fear and distrust.

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