(Bloomberg) -- House and Senate Democrats proposed a sweeping police reform bill on Monday, hoping to turn energy from growing nationwide protests over racial injustice and police misconduct into concrete legal changes that could make it easier to prosecute and sue law enforcement officers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats, before presenting the legislation at a news conference, knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence to honor George Floyd, whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police has sparked weeks of protest.

“The martyrdom of George Floyd gave American experience a moment of national anguish as we grieve for African Americans killed by police brutality,” Pelosi said. Now it is “being transformed into a moment of national action.”

“We cannot settle for anything less than transformative structural change,” she said.

A draft version of the Justice in Policing Act would change the definition of criminal misconduct for police, so instead of “willfully” violating constitutional rights, an officer could be charged after doing so with knowing or reckless disregard. It would also curtail “qualified immunity” that broadly shields police officers from being held liable for damages for rights violations in civil lawsuits.

The bill faces an unclear path through the Republican Senate or the White House. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t ruled out Republican backing for some type of police reform legislation, although the GOP has resisted some proposals in the past.

“It’s something we need to take a look at,” McConnell said last week. “There may be a role for Congress to play in this as well. We’ll be talking to our colleagues about what, if anything, is appropriate to do.”

Attorney General Bill Barr said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” he opposes efforts to make it easier to sue police, arguing it would result in “police pulling back.”

President Donald Trump has seized on calls by some protesters to cut funding for police in order to attack Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The president will hold a roundtable with law enforcement later Monday.

Read more: Trump Uses ‘Defund Police’ as Political Weapon Against Biden

Congressional Democrats are so far not embracing calls to “defund” or “abolish” the police. Instead they are looking to create incentives for reforms by tying existing funding to changes.

According to a Democratic aide, the bill would place new limits on federal funding for local and state police, requiring bias training and the use of de-escalation tactics in order for grants to be approved. The bill would curtail the transfer of military weaponry to state and local police.

The bill would also ban choke-holds like the one used by police in the death of Floyd last month, as well as no-knock warrants such as the one that led to the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville in March.

The congressional bill would make lynching a federal crime for the first time. The law would also require federal officers to wear body cameras and create a national registry of police violations would be created.

Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York are sponsoring the bill in the House. Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California are the leaders of the effort in the Senate.

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