Republicans and police groups are fighting against President Biden’s pick for a top position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who has a history of supporting the far-left “Defund the police” movement.
Solomon Greene, currently HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for policy development and research, was nominated in January for the post of assistant secretary in the same division.
But Greene’s progress has stalled in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs as his past publications and social media posts are scrutinized.
On May 30, 2020, days after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, Greene tweeted out a link to a New York Times op-ed titled “No More Money for the Police.”
“Here’s another idea,” Greene wrote, quoting the piece. “Imagine if the money used to pay the salaries of police officers who endlessly patrol public housing buildings and harass residents can be used to fund plans that residents design to keep themselves safe.”
The post was later deleted.
Two days later, as cities across the nation picked up the pieces from a weekend of rioting following Floyd’s death, Greene shared a Vox.com article titled, “Violent protests are not the story. Police violence is.” That post was also deleted at a later date.
Biden first nominated Greene for the assistant secretary position in 2021, but the choice died in committee in part due to pressure from Republicans over his statements. Undeterred, Biden renominated Greene for the same post weeks after the new Congress was sworn in.
The first time Greene was nominated, former Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), then the Banking Committee’s ranking member, specially requested that then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey release Greene’s incendiary tweets, along with others by Mark Colón, nominated for HUD assistant secretary for community planning and development.
Colón — who referred to former President Donald Trump as a “P—y A– B—h” in one of his posts — was never confirmed and his nomination was returned to the White House in January 2022.
When Greene was asked in 2021 about his statements by Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), he answered, “I do not support defunding the police,” claiming that the phrase “No More Money for the Police” had auto-populated when he shared the Times article.
“I regret if that is interpreted as my opinion,” Greene said. “When I tweeted it, at the time, I don’t think it would have been interpreted that way.”
In a June 2020 article published by the left-leaning Urban Institute, however, Greene and co-author Margery Austin Turner said “too many families of color” had been “endangered by over-policing” and pushed government officials to go beyond “recapturing funding from policing” in their pursuit of equity.
“Today, we are seeing increasingly passionate — and actionable — demands to divert funding from policing and mass incarceration and reinvest those funds in the assets proven to make neighborhoods safer and more prosperous,” Greene and Turner wrote.
Greene has also boosted radical organizations like Neighborhood Funders Group and Funders for Justice — both of which have backed the “defund” movement.
On May 30, 2020, Greene followed up his sharing of the Times op-ed by saying: “Also: @nfg_org and @Funders4Justice had it right all along!”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is the Banking Committee’s new ranking member and is leading the charge against Greene’s confirmation.
“Mr. Greene has made numerous public statements disparaging the police and advocating for defunding the police. Because of his extreme anti-police statements two national police groups have publicly opposed Mr. Greene’s nomination since he was first nominated in 2021,” Scott said in his opening statement at Greene’s confirmation hearing on April 18.
“Worse yet, instead of taking responsibility for making such statements, he pointed fingers and apologized for our taking offense, attempting to deny his anti-police sentiment,” he went on.
“Having grown up in a single-parent household and in poverty and being all too familiar with the negative impact that happens in so many of these [devastated] areas, I think some things are not political,” Scott added.
“Some things are just so personal that it is impossible to deny the actual impact of fewer officers, not more officers in some of the most challenging areas. And so, I take great offense on behalf of those who today suffer under the weight of crime that is burdening their communities.”
“Solomon Greene has demonstrated time and again that he has nothing but disdain for our law enforcement, explicitly calling to defund the police,” another committee member, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), told The Post Thursday. “There is no room for these far-left, radical bureaucrats in Washington. I urge my colleagues to oppose his nomination.”
A spokeswoman for Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who sits on the committee, told The Post: “Senator Hagerty believes that rising crime is a nationwide epidemic, and the Biden Administration should not be nominating an individual who has called for defunding the police to a senior housing and urban development position.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said in a statement: “Mr. Greene’s anti-law enforcement comments are extremely concerning and should disqualify him from overseeing policies that would affect our police protecting public housing. Our brave men and women in law enforcement deserve support from their federal government—not a radical ‘defund the police’ nominee.”
“Solomon Greene has vocally supported radical calls to ‘Defund the Police’ and in 2020 specifically advocated for removing police patrols from public housing. This is dangerous, especially given the role for which he has been nominated. I will not support his confirmation.” Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) also said in a statement.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who also sits on the committee, voted against Greene in the Banking Committee markup last Congress, according to the senator’s office.
The National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) and the National Sheriffs’ Association — which advocated against Greene in 2021 — have urged Brown and Scott to again oppose the Biden nominee.
“Mr. Greene has a significant record of supporting anti-law enforcement statements in his writings and on social media, including calls to ‘defund the police,’” NAPO said in a March letter to the committee leaders. “This shows an anti-police bias that should disqualify him for a prominent role in the federal government.”
Brown, who decides when to put Greene up for a committee vote, did not respond to a request for comment.
