Republicans spent the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder trying to vote down a Black woman

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s vote, Republicans had falsely portrayed Clarke as a defund-the-police wacko. Never mind that Clarke had the endorsement of dozens of police chiefs and the Major Cities Chiefs Association. And never mind that Clarke, educated at Harvard and Columbia, has had a storied career with the Justice Department, the New York attorney general’s office, the NAACP and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. So desperate were they for material to use against her that they highlighted a letter she co-wrote 27 years ago, at age 19, to her college newspaper — and even that was taken out of context.