Rep. Ilhan Omar is siding with Sen. Bernie Sanders on one part of the renewed “defund the police” debate, but her agreement comes with an important qualification.
The Minnesota Democrat said Sanders was right if he meant that serious candidates are not currently putting forward legislation to defund police departments. Her response followed Sanders’ argument that the slogan should not be treated as a defining position of the candidates he supports.
The timing has given the exchange added political weight. Sanders made his comments shortly after progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, another victory that has intensified attention on democratic socialism and the policies associated with candidates on the party’s left.
Sanders Draws a Line Between Candidates and Activists
Sanders confronted the issue during an August fifth podcast interview focused partly on El-Sayed’s victory and what it could mean for the progressive movement.
He was asked about democratic socialist candidates who have discussed ideas such as abolishing prisons, defunding or abolishing police departments, and eliminating borders. The question was whether those positions could damage the larger political movement Sanders has spent years building.
Sanders pushed back.
“No serious person that I know who is running for office believes in quote-unquote ‘defunding the police,’” he said.
He did not argue that police departments should be immune from reform. Sanders, who served eight years as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, said officers have difficult jobs while also arguing that racism within departments needs to be addressed.
The distinction is central to his position. Supporting police reform, shifting some responsibilities away from officers, or spending more money on social services is not necessarily the same thing as campaigning to defund or abolish police departments.
Sanders also argued that political opponents can take a position expressed by one person on the left and present it as though every Democrat supports it.
That problem becomes especially important during general elections, where candidates often have to answer not only for their own platforms but also for controversial ideas associated with organizations or activists in their political orbit.
Omar Says Minneapolis Lived Through a Different Debate
Omar approached the question from a much different political and personal vantage point.
Her congressional district includes Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s 2020 murder by police officer Derek Chauvin triggered protests across the country and pushed arguments about policing, race and public safety into the center of American politics.
During a Friday televised interview exchange, Omar said Minneapolis residents had been forced to have a deeper discussion about what public safety should look like after Floyd’s death.
She also argued that the original conversation became harder to understand once it was transformed into a national political slogan.
“When that conversation becomes nationalized, then you sort of get the kind of messaging that gets sort of lost in the void,” Omar said.
The interviewer then pressed her on Sanders’ specific claim. Was he right that no serious candidate was actually running on defunding the police?
Omar narrowed the question to governing rather than rhetoric.
“When he says that, I think he’s talking about someone putting forth a piece of legislation,” she said. “And to that regard, I would say that he is right.”
She also said she had seen no comparable legislation since 2020 that would carry out the kind of sweeping police defunding being discussed.
That answer does not erase the fierce arguments of 2020. Instead, it separates what activists demanded during a period of nationwide protest from what elected officials are now attempting to enact.
Minneapolis Chose Reform Rather Than Eliminating Police
The experience in Minneapolis also shows how complicated the debate became after the slogan took hold.
The city did not eliminate its police department. Instead, Minneapolis entered a court-enforceable settlement agreement with Minnesota officials in 2023 that created a framework aimed at lawful, nondiscriminatory policing and broader public safety improvements.
The reform process includes changes involving policies, training, accountability and oversight. Independent evaluations and progress reports remain part of the effort.
That history gives Omar’s remarks more context. Her argument is not that the concerns raised after Floyd’s murder disappeared. She is saying the political shorthand used to describe those concerns often became disconnected from the policies that followed.
For supporters of police reform, that distinction matters because they can favor major changes without necessarily supporting abolition.
Critics can point to a different problem: some organizations influential within progressive politics still openly support much more sweeping changes.
The DSA Platform Keeps the Argument Alive
That is where Sanders’ statement becomes more complicated.
The Democratic Socialists of America’s current national political program goes considerably further than the position Sanders described.
Under a section addressing incarceration and police immunity, the program calls for demilitarizing departments, weakening the power of police unions and redirecting police funding toward public services.
It describes those policies as “steps towards fully abolishing” the police and prison system. The platform also supports ending qualified immunity and giving civilian oversight bodies greater authority over police.
That does not mean every democratic socialist candidate supports every part of the national platform.
Sanders himself has already demonstrated that divide. When confronted with another DSA proposal to restructure the federal government, he rejected abolishing the Senate, even though the idea appears in the organization’s new program.
The result is a political argument with two layers.
Sanders and Omar are asking voters to look at what candidates are actually proposing and what legislation they are prepared to support. Critics of the movement are likely to keep pointing toward the written platforms and previous statements of organizations connected to those candidates.
Neither question is likely to disappear simply because the slogan itself is heard less often.
Progressive Victories Bring More Scrutiny
Recent progressive wins are making that distinction harder for candidates to avoid.
When democratic socialist candidates compete in heavily Democratic districts, ideological disagreements inside the movement may carry fewer electoral consequences. A competitive statewide contest creates a different test.
El-Sayed’s Michigan victory puts a Sanders-backed progressive into precisely that environment. His campaign and others like it could face sustained questions about where they agree with the broader socialist movement and where they break from it.
For Sanders, the answer appears straightforward: judge serious candidates by the policies they actually advocate.
Omar’s response moves in the same direction, while still defending the deeper public safety debate Minneapolis experienced after Floyd’s murder.
The unresolved question is who gets to define a political movement. Candidates may insist that their platforms speak for themselves, while opponents will continue examining the organizations, activists, and ideas surrounding them.
As democratic socialists win more consequential races, that tension may become just as important as the old “defund the police” slogan itself.
