Two Republican U.S. House members, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Andrew Garbarino of New York, introduced a joint resolution Thursday that would block several police reforms passed by the D.C. Council last year.

Axios DC first reported the news. The Daily Caller also reported on the resolution.

It’s the second move by Congress in less than 24 hours to interfere in D.C.’s lawmaking on criminal justice matters. The resolution comes just a day after the U.S. Senate blocked a D.C. bill that would overhaul the city’s century-old criminal code — an effort led by Clyde. The vote marked the first congressional disapproval of a District bill in three decades. (The disapproval measure will now go to the desk of President Biden, who has said he won’t veto it.)

In Dec. 2022, the D.C. Council passed the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment — making permanent several police reforms measures that were instituted on an emergency basis in 2020, following the protests against police brutality after George Floyd’s murder. Among the emergency measures made permanent was a requirement that body camera footage be released publicly in use-of-force incidents, limiting the use of tear gas, and a prohibition on neck restraints. The 2022 bill also introduced new changes, like creating a database of police discipline files that would be available for open-records requests. The database is scheduled to go live at the end of 2024, and is expected to be a major transformation in the public’s ability to see how and which officers were disciplined internally for misconduct.

The reforms had drawn criticism from the D.C. Police Union (which supported the congressional effort to block the criminal code revision). One piece of the reform package would bar discipline from the collective bargaining process, making it easier for the department to fire police officers accused of misconduct. (A 2021 investigation by DCist and Reveal showed just how difficult it is for the department to fire officers who have been determined to commit criminal offenses, even when internal investigators recommended their firing).

The D.C. Police Union tried to challenge that provision in court, but ultimately lost. On Thursday afternoon, the D.C. Police Union issued a statement in support of the Clyde’s and Garbarino’s resolution.

“The passage of this new House Joint Resolution is necessary to protect public safety in our Nation’s Capital,” wrote D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton in a statement Thursday. “This Act is laced with bad policies with real-world consequences that delay justice for families and victims.”

Clyde himself also commented on the legislation Thursday.

“As the MPD grapples with D.C.’s ongoing crime crisis amidst a historic staff shortage, the D.C. Council is determined to enact a deeply flawed bill that prevents officers from effectively protecting Washington,” he wrote on Twitter. “I’m fighting to block this anti-police law.”

Violent crime in D.C. is down 9% from 2022, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, though homicides are up by about 30%, and property crime is also up. A Washington Post poll published Thursday found that three in four District residents feel they are “very” or “somewhat” safe from crime in their neighborhoods.

While the police union pushed back against the measure, some advocates for police reform argued the council’s legislation didn’t go far enough, asking lawmakers to end qualified immunity for officers, and further curtail the powers of special police officers. Patrice Sulton, director of the D.C. Justice Lab who also worked on the commission to revise the criminal code, said the resolution Tuesday is another example of an exercise of federal power “that betrays our shared values as a city.”

“We are learning the importance of speaking in a unified voice,” Sulton said in an interview with DCist/WAMU Thursday afternoon. “The closer we can get to speaking the truth about what we’re doing, what we want to do and what we deserve, the easier it will be to get everybody on the same page.”

Unlike the criminal code reform pushback, which she said drummed up misinformation about what the bill actually did, Sulton said the resistance to police reform measures is rooted in misinformation about why those changes are needed.

“I think people understand what the policing provisions do — and they either like them or they don’t — but we still have the same misinformation circulating about what is the impact of that kind of change,” Sulton said. “If you go into a community…remove men in mass, put them in cages for years, torture them and send them back, we do not end up with less violence than before. That shouldn’t be shocking, it shouldn’t be controversial.”

D.C. councilmembers condemned the resolution as another attack on D.C.’s autonomy. Ward 6 councilmember and former chair of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Charles Allen called this a “red alert” moment, and Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto, current chair of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, described the resolution as a Republican attempt to stoke misinformation under the guise of public safety.

“This most recent attack on D.C. legislation shows Congressional Republicans are not actually serious about public safety,” Pinto said in a statement Thursday evening. “Republicans’ goal isn’t safety, it’s using misinformation to score cheap political points.”

Chairman Phil Mendelson, in a lengthy statement, said it was clear the D.C. Police Union — struggling to win political points locally or in the courts — was behind the Congressional move to impede D.C.’s reforms.

“They already took it to court. And lost,” Mendelson said. “They ran cable TV ads against it last year. Now they are going to Congress — and misrepresenting it — as a last, desperate attempt to avoid accounability.”

Axios DC reported that Clyde and Garbarino’s bill has 15 co-sponsors in the House.

This story has been updated with comment from D.C. Justice Lab director Patrice Sulton and D.C. Councilmembers.