A dry policy debate over bipartisan policing legislation exploded on Tuesday afternoon into a heated and personal clash among three Democratic senators, offering a rare glimpse of the internal fight in their party over how to take on President Trump.
The spectacle started in the least dramatic way possible: Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada and a former attorney general and federal prosecutor, asked for unanimous consent to pass a package of policing bills, including one to reauthorize support for mental health services for law enforcement officers, and another to make recruits eligible for funding for training programs.
It quickly went off the rails when Senator Cory Booker, the progressive New Jersey Democrat, rose to object, accusing Ms. Cortez Masto of being “complicit” with an authoritarian president.
Things got personal and nasty after Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a longtime rival to Mr. Booker who also ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and a cosponsor of some of the measures, noted that he failed to attend a key committee meeting where members debated the legislation and voted unanimously to move it to the Senate floor.
“Don’t question my integrity,” Mr. Booker shouted so loudly his voice could be heard outside the Senate chamber. “Don’t question my motives. I’m standing for Jersey, I’m standing for my police officers, I’m standing for the Constitution and I’m standing for what’s right. And dear God, if you want to come at me that way, you’re going to have to take it up with me. There’s too much on the line right now in America.”
Because the Justice Department was “weaponizing” public safety grants against states and cities that “resist the Trump policy agenda,” Mr. Booker said, Democrats should oppose the bills unless they added language to safeguard any law enforcement grants from politicization.
“This, to me, is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Mr. Booker said. “We’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump to let this pass through, when we have all the leverage right now there is.”
He added: “I say we stand, I say we fight, I say we reject this. When will we stand and fight this president? When are we going to stand up as a body and defend our work, defend our jurisdiction, defend this coequal branch of government?”
Ms. Cortez Masto, in response, gave a competing theory of how to govern as a Democrat when Republicans control a trifecta of power in Washington. What the Trump administration was doing was not acceptable, she said. But that did not mean that Democrats should stand in the way of legislation that all Americans would want them to support.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” she said.
Calmly but firmly, Ms. Cortez Masto, who represents a swing state, told Mr. Booker that he should have proposed his change when the measures were considered by the Judiciary Committee and passed by a unanimous voice vote.
“This is an attempt to kill all of these bills — I don’t know why,” she said.
Ms. Klobuchar, who has competed with Mr. Booker within the ranks of Senate leadership and previously on the presidential debate stage, then turned up the heat by accusing Mr. Booker of skipping the committee meeting, where he could have tried to modify the bills, and waiting to block them when he had the more prominent stage of the entire Senate floor.
“I like to show up at the markups and I like to make my case,” Ms. Klobuchar said. “I can’t help it if someone couldn’t change their schedule to be there. I think these hearings should mean something.”
She also took a dig at Mr. Booker’s motives, noting that he had objected to one of her bills long before Mr. Trump re-entered office.
“This is a long dispute over this type of funding, funding that I think is really important right now,” she said, noting that some of the most progressive and most conservative senators came together to back the package.
If Mr. Booker had already been angry, Ms. Klobuchar’s personal digs about his attendance appeared to send him into a rage, leading him to yell about his integrity being questioned. He noted that he had only missed the meeting because it had been hastily scheduled and he had a conflict.
Mr. Booker, who earlier this year assailed Mr. Trump in a 25-hour speech on the Senate floor that struck a nerve across the country, also vented his frustration with how some of the leaders in his party have chosen to take on Mr. Trump. “What does the Democratic Party do? Comply? Allow him? Beg for scraps?” he said. “No, I demand justice.”
Ms. Cortez Masto, in closing, offered the flip side of the argument.
“I’m not sure the answer here is to stop bipartisan legislation that gives tools to law enforcement across the community to keep our communities safe,” she said, adding that all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, want 911 to respond to an emergency call.
In a statement to The New York Times after the debate, she said hers was the better way to win elections, noting that she had led the Democratic Senate campaign arm in 2020, when they won the majority.
“Standing up to Trump isn’t about long speeches,” she said, “it’s about winning and then legislating and getting stuff done for the American people.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership.
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