“The Tables Have Turned”: Sen. Hawley Grills Former Director Of Gun Violence Over Defunding the Police

An uncomfortable Washington moment made the rounds this week: Sen. Josh Hawley pressed former White House gun-policy official Gregory Jackson Jr. on whether his own “policymaker playbook” promoted defunding police and funding “safe-space initiatives.” In a clip highlighted by Breaking 911, Hawley read back passages he said appeared “on page after page” of Jackson’s report and then asked a now-infamous question: “What’s two-spirit?” When Jackson struggled to answer, Hawley snapped that the recommendation sounded like “gobbledygook” while diverting money from cops who keep communities safe.

The Biden-Era Office In The Spotlight

Braden Langley of Langley Outdoors Academy provides the backdrop: Jackson, he says, served as one of the co-directors of the Biden White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an operation Langley argues acted as a centralized entry point for gun-control advocates to influence policy. He names Gregory Jackson and Rob Wilcox as the leaders, and frames the office as part of a broader push that touched guns, policing, immigration, and speech. Whether you agree with Langley’s politics or not, his core contention is clear: the office helped steer the policy ship, and Congress is now asking where it tried to take it.

Hawley’s Opening Salvo

In the exchange circulated by Breaking 911, Hawley accused Jackson and allied Democrats of first backing policies that “failed and led to the deaths of millions of Americans,” then denying any connection to defund-the-police rhetoric when confronted. “Your own report recommends it,” he said, before pivoting to the spending priorities he claimed Jackson endorsed. The senator’s broader point was unmistakable: if you starve police budgets, you shouldn’t be surprised by rising violent crime – and you certainly shouldn’t replace cops with buzzword-laden programs.

The Two-Spirit Flashpoint

The hearing turned from budgets to vocabulary when Hawley quoted a recommendation to fund “safe-space initiatives led by lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, trans, and gender non-conforming people.” Pressed to define “two-spirit,” Jackson replied, “I…don’t know exactly,” and later said he wasn’t “completely aware of the language” in the passage. Hawley pounced: “You wrote the report.” Jackson tried to steer back to “violence intervention outreach workers” and “victim services,” but the moment had already calcified into a soundbite about priorities – and preparedness.

Safe Spaces Or “Gobbledygook”?

Hawley’s “gobbledygook” line resonated because it captured the feeling of a hearing gone sideways: if an invited expert can’t explain a term in his own document, the rest of the recommendations start to look cosmetic. To be fair, “two-spirit” is a real term used by some Indigenous communities to describe a gender identity; it’s not a punchline. But in a hearing about crime and budgets, unfamiliar jargon without a crisp policy connection is political gasoline. My take: if you want to shift money away from sworn officers to community programs, you have to make a concrete, data-driven case – and you have to own your language.

Langley’s Theory Of The Case: Manufacture Crisis, Seize Rights

Langley’s analysis goes further. He argues the Office of Gun Violence Prevention helped defund police, then used the resulting disorder to justify new gun restrictions. He calls the arrangement a “concerted effort” to route dollars into NGOs and “safe space” projects while blaming firearms for what were, in his view, predictable consequences of policy choices. Whether you find that too conspiratorial or not, it’s a coherent theory – and it’s gaining airtime precisely because hearings like this one put the funding trail under a microscope. 

GOA’s “Hype Video” Moment

Gun Owners of America amplified a separate clip of Jackson listing Trump-era actions that, from GOA’s perspective, read like a brag list. In GOA’s words, Jackson’s remarks “are basically a hype video for all the pro-gun actions President Trump has taken.” Jackson said the Trump administration shut down the White House gun-violence office, defunded federal law enforcement “including the ATF,” terminated $1 billion for mental-health resources and $812 million for community-violence programs, defunded CDC firearm-injury research, and dismantled “zero tolerance” rules for gun dealers. GOA’s spin is simple: thank you for the receipts.

What The Fight Is Really About: Priorities, Not Slogans

Strip away the viral moments and you hit the real policy fight that Jackson described and Hawley attacked. On one side: policing and prosecution first, with targeted resources for school officers and detectives, and skepticism about grants to advocacy groups. On the other: violence-intervention and public-health approaches, data collection, and stricter federal oversight of licensed dealers through “zero tolerance” rules. Jackson framed those as evidence-based strategies; Hawley called them euphemisms for taking money from cops. Reasonable people can debate the mix – but lawmakers owe voters clarity about what gets cut and what gets funded, and what metrics will judge success.

Did The Office Actually Push “Defund”?

Langley insists the office “weaponized” federal policy against local police departments; Hawley says Jackson’s own document proves it. Jackson countered that the “focus is on investing in violence intervention” and that his side didn’t aim to discriminate against any nonprofit that helps prevent violence. I haven’t seen the full report they were arguing about, and this article is drawing on the clips shared by Langley, GOA, and Breaking 911. But one thing is beyond dispute: if a federal playbook recommends diverting public-safety dollars, its authors should anticipate, and be ready to defend, that choice in plain English. 

Language, Credibility, And Accountability

As a matter of communications, this hearing was a case study. Policy professionals love inclusive checklists; senators love sharp cross-examination. If you can’t explain a term like “two-spirit” or tie a “safe space” line item to a measured reduction in shootings, you lose the narrative – and probably the vote. My opinion: public-safety documents should read like field manuals – what, why, who, how much, and how we’ll know it worked – not campus brochures. That’s doubly true when any reallocation from police is on the table.

The Electoral Undertow

Langley predicts Republicans will keep making crime the midterm lodestar, pointing to frustration over “catch and release” prosecutions, staffing shortages, and broken-windows realities in schools and transit. The Hawley-Jackson clip is catnip in that environment: it compresses a complicated budget debate into a striking contrast between cops and committees. If Democrats want to avoid being painted as the party of “defund,” they’ll need spokespeople who can speak fluently about both arrests and outreach – and show results. 

Let the Public Judge

Sen. Hawley used the hearing to force a reckoning over priorities. Gregory Jackson Jr., described by Breaking 911 as “Biden’s Director of Gun Violence Prevention” and by Langley as a former co-director, tried to pull the discussion back to violence-intervention outcomes, but he wasn’t ready for the definitional ambush or the charge that his playbook starved police. GOA, meanwhile, seized the moment to celebrate the prior administration’s rollback of the very programs Jackson praised. Everyone played to type. 

What should come next is the part that never goes viral: publish the full report, itemize the dollars, disclose the metrics, and let the public judge whether moving money from cops to community groups reduces shootings – or just reduces accountability. 

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