Sherrod Brown Praises Defund the Police HUD Nominee

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has vocally supported the nomination of Solomon Greene, a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) nominee who has called for defunding law enforcement agencies.

Brown hopes to get reelected in Ohio, a state that has drifted increasingly more right-wing in recent elections. Brown has been cited as one of the more vulnerable Democrats up for reelection during the 2024 election cycle.

The Ohio Democrat’s advocacy for controversial nominees as the Senate Banking Committee chairman may complicate his reelection in a state that just elected a vocal anti-woke politician, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH).

During a nomination hearing in mid-April, Brown praised Greene’s record, calling him “qualified” and applauded his “breadth of experience and knowledge.” The Ohio Democrat submitted letters of support for Greene from 31 different organizations.

Despite Brown’s strong praise for Greene, the HUD nominee has a history of incendiary commentary, even advocating for “recapturing funding from the police,” or defunding the police.

In a blog post for the Urban Institute, Green and Margery Austin Turner called for doing more than “recapturing funding from policing”:

Reversing these inequities requires more than recapturing funding from policing. We remain convinced that bold action is required to tear down the legacy of separate and unequal neighborhoods. Communities across the country need to dismantle exclusionary barriers and rebalance spending to invest more equitably across neighborhoods. Though these goals may be ambitious, they are essential to our nation’s democracy and shared prosperity, and they are long overdue. [Emphasis added]

In the days after George Floyd’s death, Greene tweeted out a link to a New York Times op-ed titled, “No More Money for the Police.”

In a letter to the Senate Banking Committee, the National Association of Police Organizations called on Brown to oppose Greene’s nomination:

…it is profoundly concerning to us that a nominee to be Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at HUD has harbored such an openly hostile and defamatory viewpoint of police. If Mr. Greene is confirmed to this position, there is no way to assure those views will not be perpetuated, which would negatively impact public housing community views against the officers who serve them.

The National Sheriffs’ Association wrote to Brown during the last congressional term:

Mr. Greene continued this “defund the police” tweet thread by stating that two vocal advocates of defunding the police—Neighborhood Funders Group and Funders for Justice—“had it right all along!” Similarly, last spring in the midst of violent demonstrations throughout the country, Mr. Greene tweeted that “Violent protests are not the story. Police violence is.

This is not the first time that Brown has supported a nominee who has espoused controversial Black Lives Matter-style views.

Brown vocally supported the confirmation of Dr. Lisa Cook to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Cook has a history of Black Lives Matter bullying and radical monetary policy beliefs.

Breitbart News reported:

Cook gave a presentation in support of legislation that would create a commission to study and develop reparations proposals.

The Federal Reserve nominee also agreed with calls to have the Federal Reserve focus on targeting its federal funds rate to improve the black unemployment rate instead of the national employment rate.

Cook also called on the University of Chicago to fire its economics professor, Harald Uhlig, in June 2020 after Uhlig criticized the Black Lives Matter movement for its support of defunding the police. Cook accused Uhlig of “racial harassment.”

She claimed that “free speech has its limits.”

The Ohio Democrat has said that Cook, as the first black woman Fed governor and her background as Ph.D. in economics, would bring a different perspective to the Fed board.

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.