The White House says that President Joe Biden would veto a Republican-sponsored resolution that aims to block a D.C. police discipline and accountability bill, should it reach his desk. That represents the opposite stance he took less than two weeks ago when he sided with a congressional resolution that overturned D.C.’s revised criminal code.

The news was first reported by Reuters, which quoted an anonymous official as saying that “Congress should respect D.C.’s right to pass measures that improve public safety and public trust.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later confirmed the news on Biden’s intentions.

“The president believes that building community trust is integral to fighting crime. That’s something that you’ve heard him say,” she said at a press briefing. “The president believes we should fund the police and give law enforcement the resources they need for effective, accountable, community policing, and at the same time should not weaken penalties for gun crimes. While he does not support every provision in the D.C. policing bill, he will not support congressional Republicans’ efforts to overturn common sense police reforms.”

The announcement comes a day after a Republican-led House committee voted on partisan lines to approve a resolution sponsored by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia) that would block the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act, a police accountability and discipline bill the D.C. Council first passed on an emergency basis after George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020 and has now moved to make permanent.

The bill requires that body camera footage from police shootings be made public within five days, bans the use of chokeholds, limits the use of tear gas and chemical sprays during protests, removes disciplinary matters from collective bargaining with the police union, creates a public database of sustained police misconduct cases, and strengthens the independent Office of Police Complaints, among other things.

The bill has been in effect in one form or another for almost three years, with the most evident provision being the one that speeds the release of body-camera footage after police shootings. Prior to the bill’s initial passage in the summer of 2020, the release of such footage was largely at the mayor’s discretion.

The bill’s principal opponent has been the D.C. Police Union, which represents some 3,300 police officers and has vehemently opposed the provision that removes disciplinary matters from collective bargaining. The union has fought that latter provision tooth and nail, unsuccessfully waging a legal battle that nearly went all the way to Supreme Court. More recently, the union took broader aim at the whole police accountability bill, saying that it has “brought policing to a grinding halt in our nation’s capital.” The union has also expressed its support for the Clyde’s resolution, which would block the bill altogether.

Speaking during a four-hour-long House hearing on Wednesday, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson defended the bill, saying that it is “not an attack on police or a threat to public safety… rather, it promotes police accountability.” On the provision removing the police union’s ability to negotiate on disciplinary matters, Mendelson said it was “based on research which shows that police-union-negotiated discipline is bad for public safety, bad for accountability, and bad for oversight.”

Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, disagreed, saying that “progressive policies from the D.C. Council continue to hamstring district officers and needlessly place them in an unsafe situation” and that the bill would only make it harder for the city to hire new officers.

The Republican resolution is headed to the full House for a vote, but it doesn’t yet have a sponsor in the Senate, where it will also need to be voted on. The 60-day congressional review period for the bill is expected to end in early June.

Biden’s apparent threat to veto the resolution, should it clear Congress, is a bit of whiplash for D.C. officials and advocates, who earlier this month reacted angrily to his announcement that he supported the congressional effort to block the D.C. bill that revised the city’s century-old criminal code. They said they were even more frustrated because only weeks before, the White House said that it opposed Republicans’ efforts to block the revised criminal code bill.

On Thursday, though, they expressed support for Biden’s position.

“This disapproval resolution doesn’t respect D.C.’s autonomy or home rule rights. Instead of Congress focusing on acting as overlords of the District of Columbia, they should focus on issues their constituents back home care about,” said Patrice Snow, the communications director for D.C. Vote.

The primary difference between the police accountability bill and the revised criminal code is that Mayor Muriel Bowser vetoed the latter, which Biden cited in his own justification for not stopping it. While Bowser and D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee and Bowser have raised concerns with some provisions of the council’s police accountability bill, earlier this month Bowser and Mendelson presented a united front opposing the effort to block it in a letter sent to congressional leaders.

“We encourage you to see this legislation for what it is: a package of reforms not unlike reforms under consideration elsewhere, including the United States Congress. Regardless of the substance, we are united in opposition to H.J. Res 42 because it offends the basic democratic principles of self-determination and local control,” they wrote. “Not only should our policy decisions not be overturned by officials not elected to represent our residents, but piecemeal interference hurts our ability to confront crime and improve public safety in the District of Columbia.”

Congress has only blocked four D.C. bills in the half-century that the city has had an elected mayor and council.