Pelosi orders portraits of Confederate speakers to be removed from House on Juneteenth

Speaker says House will vote on Democrats' policing reform bill before its July 4th recess, setting up showdown with Senate

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ordered the House clerk to remove from the Capitol portraits of four speakers who also served in the Confederacy as part of Democrats' response to the recent killing of George Floyd in police custody and protests of black people dying while interacting with white police officers.

The clerk will take down the portraits on Friday, which is Juneteenth, when many people commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.

The California Democrat announced a bill crafted mostly by her party but not condemned loudly by House Republicans that would institute new policing reforms will be on the House floor "before July Fourth."

It is expected to pass. Ms Pelosi expects the Senate will pass a GOP-crafted, and more modest, policing reform bill.

From there, the two chambers would take their bills to a conference committee and try to hammer out a compromise version that Donald Trump would sign into law – though it is unclear just what he might support.

Even before either chamber takes it its version of policing reform legislation, there are several major differences. And there are several provisions in the House measure that the White House already has rejected.

The House bill would reform "qualified immunity laws" to make it easier to prosecute and sue police and other government agencies for misconduct, a proposal the Trump administration has dismissed as non-negotiable.

House Democrats' bill would also ban choke holds and no-knock warrants in drug cases, and create a national database of police misconduct so problematic officers cannot simply move to a different part of the state or country and get a new policing job, among many other provisions.

Mr Trump has taken both sides on the choke holds debate, saying late last week he would support a federal ban but also saying they might be necessary in some situations. He called it a local issue to be resolved outside Washington. Earlier this week, he announced a policy that would ban choke holds unless an officer believes his or her life is at risk, tying the matter to federal grant funds.

But his stance on qualified immunity, which shields officers from most civil lawsuits, is crystal clear. And if House and Senate Democrats are insistent on changing it to allow victims' families to sue individual officers, it might sink a compromise bill.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday laid down a few markers spelling out just what Mr Trump might sign into law.

Notably, she put the president's endorsement behind the Senate GOP legislation, calling it a "great bill."

She also again dismissed the notion that Mr Trump would sign any bill that nixed or altered qualified immunity because such a move would "not allow police [officers] to do their jobs."

Calling that a "complete and total non-starter" if lawmakers want to garner Mr Trump's signature on a potential compromise bill, Ms McEnany said "our streets would not be safe" without it on the books.

She also panned House and Senate Democrats' bills, saying it "undermines due process rights" for police officers because the White House has concluded it would allow complaints against officers to be made public before those matters were investigated and ruled upon by law enforcement leaders.

A complete summary of the House and Senate bills can be found here.