Two members of the far-left "Squad" Democrats were the only House lawmakers to vote against a resolution recognizing fallen police officers.
Democratic representatives Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Cori Bush (Mo.) stood alone in rejecting a resolution to support "National Police Week," which passed 413-2 on Monday. The pair said the measure pushed a "false narrative."
"It is a document intended to advance Republicans’ false narrative around supporting law enforcement and gaslight the public about where they stand," they said in a Tuesday statement.
They said the resolution is "not a referendum on support for the safety of first responders."
Monday's resolution honored 556 law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty.
The Democrats brought up January 6, 2021, as a reason to justify their rejection.
"Far from supporting law enforcement, Republicans are using their majority to actively target agencies that try to uphold the law and hold them and their cult leader Donald Trump accountable for their criminal behavior," Tlaib and Bush said.
Both have supported defunding the police, the Hill reported:
Bush has frequently expressed support for defunding the police. In August 2022, she declared in an interview "defunding the police has to happen,"adding "We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets because we’re trying to save lives."
She defended the use of the slogan in February 2022, telling a group of Black reporters, "’Defund the police’ is not the problem."
"We dangled the carrot in front of people’s faces and said we can get it done and that Democrats deliver, when we haven’t totally delivered," she added.
Tlaib has similarly made comments critical of law enforcement in the past. In April 2021, she said policing in the U.S. is "intentionally racist" and "can’t be reformed" after Daunte Wright was fatally shot in a Minneapolis suburb. She said there should be, "No more policing, incarceration, and militarization."
The vote comes weeks after it was revealed that the "Squad," which includes other far-left House members including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), has spent a combined $1 million on private security despite advancing measures to defund the police.