US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Names of Confederate figures 'have to go'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the names of Confederate figures "have to go" from the U.S. Capitol building and military bases.

She spoke Thursday as a GOP-led Senate panel approved a plan by Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would remove the names of Confederate figures from military bases and other Pentagon assets.

President Donald Trump, however, is vowing not to change names like Fort Bragg and Fort Hood. Confederate monuments have emerged as a flashpoint since the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

Pelosi says the President "seems to be the only person left who doesn't get it."

Republicans in the Senate, who are at risk of losing their majority in the November elections, aren't with Trump on this issue.

Protesters decrying racism have targeted Confederate monuments in multiple cities, and some state officials are considering taking them down.

But it's up to the states to determine which of their historical figures to display. Jefferson Davis, a former U.S. senator from Mississippi who was president of the Confederate States of America, is represented by one of two statues from that state.

Pelosi noted that Davis and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, whose statue comes from Georgia, were charged with " treason against the United States."

Pelosi also bashed the election on Tuesday in Georgia that was plagued by problems that, combined with a massive influx of mail-in paper ballots because of the coronavirus, delayed results.

The speaker blamed Republicans saying  "It looks like part of a pattern" of voter suppression in the state, adding that the problems for precincts in parts of the state with minority communities is "all part of the republican playbook because they're afraid of the voters. They're afraid of the vote."

In her opening remarks, the California congresswoman vowed to pass la bill House and Senate Democrats proposed to overhaul of police oversight and procedures, a potentially far-reaching legislative response to the mass protests denouncing the deaths of black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.