“Senator Paul is now trying to weaken a bill that was already passed — there’s no reason for this, there’s no reason for this,” Harris said.

Emotions ran high as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul held up bipartisan legislation that would make lynching a federal crime.

If passed as it currently stands, the bill drafted by Black senators Booker, Harris, and Republican Senator Tim Scott (N.C.), would increase the penalty for those who commit certain civil rights violations, already set out in federal law, if the violator is found to have conspired with a group.

“I seek to amend this legislation not because I take lynching lightly, but because I take it seriously, and this legislation does not,” Paul said, arguing that “this bill would cheapen the meaning of lynching by defining it so broadly as to include a minor bruise or abrasion.

Harris added to Booker’s sentiments by saying, “The pain experienced not only by that man, that human being and his family and his children, but the pain of the people of America witnessing what we have witnessed since the founding of this country, which is that black lives have not been taken seriously as being fully human and deserving of dignity,” Harris said.