The 2024 GOP presidential primary is about undoing one of the few decent things Donald Trump ever did
DeSantis 'takes aim' at the First Step Act.
As far as I am concerned, Donald Trump did two notably good things during his time as president. (The rest, of course, was a disaster.)
* When the pandemic hit the United States, he launched Operation Warp Speed, which produced a vaccine far sooner than I would’ve thought possible given the history of vaccine development.
* He signed the First Step Act.
As the Brennan Center explains, the law had two main elements. First, it threw the brakes on overly punitive federal prison sentences — and in particular allowed prisoners who received extra-harsh punishments for crack cocaine offenses1 to apply for shorter terms. Second, it aimed to improve prison conditions.
One is by curbing inhumane practices, such as eliminating the use of restraints on pregnant women and encouraging placing people in prisons that are closer to their families. The other is by reorienting prisons around rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Ron DeSantis — among other GOP candidates — wants to undo all that.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it a “jailbreak bill.” Former Vice President Mike Pence said “we need to take a step back” from it. And former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson proclaimed “there’s probably some areas there that can be adjusted.”
All were taking aim at President Donald Trump’s signature First Step Act, a 2018 law that ushered in modest changes to the criminal justice system by addressing over-incarceration and prioritizing rehabilitation and reduced recidivism. It was, for a time, one of the major achievements touted by Trump and his team, hailed as evidence that conservatives could achieve what liberals couldn’t: a reduction in racial disparities in federal sentencing.
As Politico mentions, the First Step Act’s actual accomplishments were modest. But it was also a brief signal from Donald Trump that A) the GOP wasn’t going to be unthinkingly hostile to Black people and B) bipartisan accomplishments were still possible in Trump’s Washington. Its very passage was an “improbable success.”
Naturally, Trump’s chief rivals — trying their damndest to get traction with the Republican base — want to undo that.
Hell, Trump isn’t so hot on it. From 2020:
Trump never really wanted criminal justice reform, according to people who have discussed the subject with him privately. He's told them he only supported it because Kushner asked him to. Though he has repeatedly trumpeted it as a politically useful policy at times.
Trump now says privately it was misguided to pursue this policy, undercutting his instincts, and that he probably won't win any more African American support because of it.
DeSantis is also attacking Trump on vaccines. Which means the two decent things Trump did during his time as president? They’re now seen as a liability among Republicans.
By now it’s pretty established that there’s not a meaningful difference between crack and regular cocaine, but crack carried an association with Blackness and so crack offenses were often punished with much harsher sentences.