Washington (CNN) — U.S. President Joe Biden will host George Floyd’s family at the White House tuesday to mark the first anniversary of his death at the hands of police, a White House official confirmed cnn.
The white house visit occurs when lawmakers are likely to fail to meet the initial May 25 deadline set by the president to pass a bipartisan police reform bill. Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the White House has “confidence in negotiators,” but did not offer a concrete schedule for when Biden wants a bill at his desk, and only said he would like it to be “as quick as possible.”
Biden first met with the Floyd family in June 2020 when he traveled to Houston to offer his condolences before George Floyd’s funeral. The president has spoken to family members on some occasions over the past year, including a conversation last month with George Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd after a jury convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of the murder.
Black Lives Matter is a historical, specialist process 1:38
Psaki had said this week that the White House will commemorate the anniversary of Floyd’s death, and told reporters that “it was a moment that shocked millions of Americans and certainly the president on a personal level.”
Biden spoke to Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey on Friday afternoon as the self-imposed May 25 deadline approaches to pass police review legislation, according to a senior White House official.
The official said Booker told the president that while negotiators are not on track to meet the deadline, progress is being made.
Biden had set the anniversary of Floyd’s death on May 25 as his goal during his joint address to Congress in April, Psaki said, “because he feels it’s important to be bold, ambitious, and that’s exactly what he feels is where we’re going.”
Derek Chauvin’s reaction to the verdict 1:17
But with the House of Representatives entering a period of work on Thursday and not returning to Washington until June, the passage of the George Floyd Law on Justice in the Police is almost impossible before that deadline. The Democratic-led chamber passed the measure in March, but it was never approved by the Senate.
The legislation includes provisions to establish a national register of police misconduct, the prohibition of racial and religious discrimination by law enforcement, and the review of qualified immunity.
Earlier this week, one of the key points left was Section 242, the federal law that sets the standard for criminal prosecution of police. Some progressive Democrats have resisted the idea of any compromise on key issues such as Section 242 and qualified immunity.
Betsy Klein, Maegan Vazquez and CNN’s Jasmine Wright contributed to this report.
