President Joe Biden will host George Floyd’s family at the White House next Tuesday, confirmed the family’s attorney.
The president will use this occasion to promote the Democrat-supported George Floyd police reform bill, banning law enforcement from chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and end qualified immunity for police officers.
Senate negotiations over the bill continue, but it is unlikely the bill will pass in time for the one-year mark of Floyd’s death.
“We MUST prevent the suffering the future marginalized POC by passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act!” wrote the Floyd family’s attorney Ben Crump on social media Saturday, confirming the news.
Biden’s relationship with the family has grown since meeting them in the Summer of 2020.
Biden spoke about Floyd’s death throughout the campaign as a significant inflection point for America.
“Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did,” Biden said in June 2020.
The president called the family after the guilty verdict was announced in the Chauvin trial.
“You’re an incredible family. I wish I was there to put my arms around you,” the president said.
He also used the occasion to condemn the “systemic racism” in the United States.
“It was a murder in the full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism … that is a stain our nation’s soul,” Biden said in a speech after the trial.
Biden said he would fly the family to the White House on Air Force One to mark the George Floyd police reform bill’s signing if it ever passed.