The US House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to pass historic criminal justice reform, sending the sweeping package to Donald Trump in a major bipartisan victory for the president.

The measure, which cleared the Senate earlier in the week, paves the way for the most significant change to America's justice system in decades.

The First Step Act includes provisions to ease heavy sentences for certain offenders, give judges more discretion in sentencing low-level criminals, and improve prison conditions for women, among others.

"Members of Congress came together to write a bill that reduces the impact of draconian mandatory minimums, and makes progress to address discriminatory sentencing laws," top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi said.

The legislation "will bring hope, healing and renewal to thousands of lives."

Trump has said he will sign the measure into law.

"America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes," Trump tweeted after the Senate passed the bill earlier in the week.

It passed the House by a vote of 358 to 36.

"These reforms to our criminal justice system will not only reduce recidivism and make communities safer, but they will help people into lives of purpose," said outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan.

One element of the bill would make retroactive the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which altered sentencing guidelines to treat crack and powder cocaine offenses equally. According to government figures, that alone would impact over 2,600 inmates.

But the bill will only affect America's federal inmates, of which there are 180,789, according to the latest figures from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total US incarcerated population was over 2.1 million at the end of 2016. </s> Washington (CNN) Senators of both parties on Thursday moved forward their long-odds legislation to enact some degree of reform for the federal criminal justice system.

By a vote of 16-5, and amid protests from some senators that the bill would likely face hurdles too high to pass, the Senate Judiciary Committee backed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a package to reduce some of the strictest federal sentencing rules along with reforms for the federal prison system.

Ahead of the vote, Chairman Chuck Grassley expressed anger with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who he called a friend, for coming out against the bill.

"I'm really irritated that he would send that letter considering the fact that he was very controversial before this committee to be attorney general, considering that most of the assistant attorney generals have been sent up here have been very controversial and difficult to get through this committee, considering the fact that the President was going to fire him last spring and I went to his defense," the Iowa Republican said. "I don't think that's something that somebody should do to friends."

Sessions wrote in a letter CNN obtained Wednesday that the Justice Department was against the bill and he warned that it would increase violent crime and hamstring federal law enforcement.

Read More </s> Washington (CNN) Senators of both parties on Thursday moved forward their long-odds legislation to enact some degree of reform for the federal criminal justice system.

By a vote of 16-5, and amid protests from some senators that the bill would likely face hurdles too high to pass, the Senate Judiciary Committee backed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a package to reduce some of the strictest federal sentencing rules along with reforms for the federal prison system.

Ahead of the vote, Chairman Chuck Grassley expressed anger with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who he called a friend, for coming out against the bill.

"I'm really irritated that he would send that letter considering the fact that he was very controversial before this committee to be attorney general, considering that most of the assistant attorney generals have been sent up here have been very controversial and difficult to get through this committee, considering the fact that the President was going to fire him last spring and I went to his defense," the Iowa Republican said. "I don't think that's something that somebody should do to friends."

Sessions wrote in a letter CNN obtained Wednesday that the Justice Department was against the bill and he warned that it would increase violent crime and hamstring federal law enforcement.

"Passing this legislation to further reduce sentences for drug traffickers in the midst of the worst drug crisis in our nation's history would make it more difficult to achieve our goals and have potentially dire consequences," Sessions said.

Thursday's markup showed Grassley staking his position on a comprehensive approach, rather than moving forward the Corrections Act, which is a vehicle for prison reform without the sentencing component.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who is one of the lawmakers backing the prison reform approach, opposed the comprehensive package and said he did not think sentencing reform would make it into law given the current political landscape.

"Call it a concession to the brevity of life," Cornyn said.

The House Judiciary Committee has similar legislation available, both sentencing reform and a bill that would reform the Federal Bureau of Prisons in the mold of several states around the nation. It is unclear when the House panel might move forward or with what approach.

Cornyn and Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island expressed skepticism a week before the committee markup that the comprehensive package would make it into law, given Sessions' express opposition.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Sessions' opposition "can't be excuse for inaction," and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that of the two major components, "I don't see how you do one without the other."

"I am for prison reform, but I am also for reform of why people stay in jail so long," Graham said.

What the bill would do

The bill would seek to lessen the impact of mandatory minimums, legislatively enforced minimum sentences that prevent judges from setting sentences below a certain threshold. It would also move to make reforms in the Fair Sentencing Act -- a 2010 law backed by then-Sen. Sessions to reduce the disparity in sentences between crack and powder cocaine -- retroactive for some convicts, pending court approval for those people.

On the prison reform side, it would enact the provisions of the Corrections Act, which seeks to mandate that the Bureau of Prisons put in place a new approach to re-entry and anti-recidivism programs for prisoners, like education.

The powerful National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, along with several other law enforcement groups, has come out against the bill, expressing opposition similar to Sessions'. The association claims that reducing mandatory minimums, among other sentencing provisions, would lead to an increase in violent crime.

For many advocates, the bill is an acceptable compromise to implement reforms that have struggled to make it into law for years.

Kevin Ring of Families Against Mandatory Minimums said he wanted the comprehensive package, and worried that prison reform alone would be ineffective for a range of reasons.

One of his worries, he told CNN ahead of the markup, was that if prison reform were unsuccessful or inconclusive, opponents of criminal justice reform more generally would use that as a reason not to make further changes.

"Our biggest concern is if they call this reform and it's not meaningful, that's going to harm prospects in the future," Ring said. </s> After the US Senate overwhelmingly voted on Tuesday to reform certain parts of the criminal-justice system, a move lauded as a remarkable bipartisan victory under the Trump administration, even its supporters are warning that the legislation will ultimately be toothless if it's not followed up with stronger reforms.

The passage of the bill, known as the First Step Act, marked the first major legislative win in decades to address mass incarceration at the federal level.

The bill overhauls certain federal sentencing laws, reducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug felonies and expanding early-release programs. In a major win for prison-reform groups, the bill also makes retroactive a 2010 federal sentencing law reducing the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

The bill also aims to lower recidivism by offering more rehabilitation and job-training opportunities, and it includes provisions intended to treat prisoners humanely — banning the shackling of pregnant inmates, halting the use of solitary confinement for most juvenile inmates, and mandating that prisoners be placed in facilities within 500 miles from their families.

But even the advocates and lawmakers who pushed the bill forward are urging caution in celebrating too soon. Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, tweeted at length about the shortcomings of the bill on Monday before saying she ultimately decided to vote for it.

Read more: Prison reform legislation is moving through Congress with the help of an unlikely alliance: Trump and the ACLU. Here's what it would do.

She criticized the legislation for not applying all of the sentencing reforms retroactively, not going far enough in applying earned good-time credits, failing to crack down on the private-prison industry, and not reining in the use of electronic monitoring.

"To be clear, the FIRST STEP Act is very much just that — a first step," she said. "It is a compromise of a compromise, and we ultimately need to make far greater reforms if we are to right the wrongs that exist in our criminal justice system."

And though most of the major criminal-justice-reform advocacy groups supported the bill — including the American Civil Liberties Union — some shied away entirely.

The National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, an organization representing dozens of Protestant denominations, criticized the bill for relying too heavily on electronic monitoring to surveil released prisoners and for failing to make its mandatory minimum sentencing reforms retroactive, a key provision that law-enforcement groups had demanded before pledging their support.

"Despite current bipartisan enthusiasm for any move toward criminal justice reform, the First Step Act is insufficient toward that end," Rev. Steven Martin said in a statement. "While compromise is a necessary part of consensus-building around legislation, this bill will have harmful consequences, which will be more difficult to correct later."

Meanwhile among conservatives, the strongest opposition from the right came from Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, who assailed the bill as "misguided and dangerous" in a recent National Review op-ed and criticized his conservative colleagues in the Senate for their support.

"The First Step Act provides hundreds of new rights and privileges to federal prisoners. More phone time, reduced sentences, 'compassionate release,' and early release credits," he tweeted. "There is not a single benefit in the bill for the victims of these criminals."

Cotton and Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana proposed three major amendments that were widely criticized for exempting broad swaths of prisoners from the bill's early-release provisions, effectively defanging much of the bill's benefits for prisoners.

Liberal groups criticized the amendments; #cut50, an initiative to reduce the prison population, called the amendments "attempts to derail a bill that prioritizes public safety and rehabilitation." All three amendments were resoundingly struck down.

"The bipartisan coalition stuck together and won. Tom Cotton's scare tactics were a resounding failure," Jessica Jackson Sloan, national director of #cut50, said in a statement. "The overwhelming rejection of his amendments shows a clear mandate for federal criminal justice reforms."

The bill is expected to pass the House of Representatives and move on to the White House, where President Donald Trump has vowed to sign it. </s> As expected, the lenient sentencing bill — “The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act” — pushed by a bipartisan group of Senators cleared the Judiciary Committee this week. Unexpectedly, at least to me, five Republicans voted against it, including Majority Whip John Cornyn, who sponsored the legislation two and a half years ago.

The vote was 16-5. In addition to Cornyn, Sens. Hatch, Cruz, Sasse, and Kennedy voted no. Six Republicans voted yes: Chairman Grassley and Sens. Graham, Lee, Flake, Crapo, and Tillis.

With committee Republicans this divided and the administration opposed to the bill, it seems certain that Majority Leader McConnell will not bring up the leniency legislation. I think it is dead this year, which may explain Chairman Grassley’s angry and misguided attack on Attorney General Sessions.

The defection of Cornyn had to be devastating to Team Leniency. But the Majority Whip has always been concerned primarily with prison reform — the corrections portion of the bill — not sentencing reduction. Cornyn seems to have concluded that his quest for federal prison reform is best served through stand alone legislation on the subject, rather than by inclusion in a highly controversial bill whose chances of enactment he must have thought were slim.

Cornyn is right. Indeed, the White House has expressed support for federal prison reform legislation. Here’s an opportunity for true bipartisanship.

Unfortunately, the prison reform provisions of the current bill would bring reduced sentencing in through the back door. Federal prisoners could obtain substantial reductions by participating in various rehabilitation programs.

If this loophole is closed, the remaining prison reform provisions in the soon-to-be-stalled leniency legislation will be worthy of support. Whether Democrats would support such paired down legislation is another matter. They specialize in demanding almost the whole loaf, even when in the minority. </s> Feb. 15 (UPI) -- The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced bipartisan legislation seeking to reform the criminal justice system Thursday.

The committee voted 16 to 4 in favor of advancing the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act focused on lessening the impact of mandatory minimum prison sentences.

The bill, backed by Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, reduces mandatory minimum penalties for nonviolent repeat drug offenders, eliminates the three-strike mandatory life in prison rule and gives judges discretion to sentence certain low-level offenders below the 10-year mandatory minimum.

It also creates new mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving interstate domestic violence providing weapons and other defense materials to prohibited countries and terrorists as well as a five-year sentencing increase for trafficking heroin laced with fentanyl.

Addressing prison reform, the bill would also enact provisions of the Corrections Act, which calls for he Bureau of Prisons to implement a new approach to re-entry and anti-recidivism programs for prisoners.

Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas co-sponsored the bill the last time it was considered by the committee in 2015, but called for Senators to vote down the bill in favor of focusing on prison reform.

"I believe, as I said last week, that's a subject upon which I think we can get a presidential signature and pass it into law," Cornyn said.

Prior to the vote Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote a letter to Grassley, obtained by CNN, stating the Department of Justice opposes the bill and warning it would increase violent crime and hamstring federal law enforcement.

"Passing this legislation to further reduce sentences for drug traffickers in the midst of the worst drug crisis in our nation's history would make it more difficult to achieve our goals and have potentially dire consequences," Sessions wrote.

Grassley expressed frustration at Sessions' comments while referring to the attorney general as a friend.

"I'm really irritated that he would send that letter considering the fact that he was very controversial before this committee to be attorney general, considering that most of the assistant attorney generals have been sent up here have been very controversial and difficult to get through this committee, considering the fact that the President was going to fire him last spring and I went to his defense," Grassley wrote. "I don't think that's something that somebody should do to friends." </s> (Screenshot: YouTube/The White House)U.S. President Donald Trump announcing his support for the FIRST STEP Act on prison reform in Washington D.C. on November 14, 2018.

The U.S. Senate voted 87-12 to pass the First Step Act, a major prison reform bill, which has received evangelical support but also some Christian opposition.

Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, tweeted his thanks to the Senate for the vote on Tuesday.

"The #FirstStepAct has been a long time in the making, and it is a good and needed development," Moore wrote.

The ERLC added in a tweet of its own that "this criminal justice reform bill has been a key part of our legislative agenda and we are thankful for the broad coalition that led to this victory!"

Prison Fellowship, America's largest outreach to prisoners, and one of the biggest Christian ministries to push for the bill, applauded the Senate for passing the First Step Act.

"This legislation will help reduce recidivism by preparing men and women to fulfill their God-given potential through restorative programming, including improved substance-abuse treatment programs, life-skills classes, and vocational training — building job readiness to fuel local economies. This is about getting smart on crime by giving men and women, made in the image of God, the tools to change their lives," saidJames Ackerman, president and chief executive officer of Prison Fellowship.

Craig DeRoche, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy, added: "Today, the Senate refused to double down on the failed policies of the past. The FIRST STEP Act's passage reflects America's growing demand for smarter and more restorative solutions to crime."

The bill includes efforts to reduce the federal recidivism rate, and offers time credit incentives for federal inmates to participate in rehabilitative and vocational training programs.

Among the other notable provisions, it reduces the second strike mandatory minimum of 20 years to 15 years, while the 3rd strike goes down from a mandatory minimum of life in prison to 25 years.

"This bill in its entirety has been endorsed by the political spectrum of America," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill, one of the legislation's main backers.

"I can't remember any bill that has this kind of support, left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican," he added, according to ABC News.

The New York Times pointed out that one of the major effects will be that thousands of inmates will become eligible for immediate sentencing reductions, while thousands of new offenders will receive reduced sentences.

"We're not just talking about money. We're talking about human potential," Senator John Cornyn, R-Tex., said on Tuesday.

"We're investing in the men and women who want to turn their lives around once they're released from prison, and we're investing in so doing in stronger and more viable communities."

Despite the strong bipartisan backing and evangelical support, more liberal Christian bodies, such as the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, which includes various mainline Protestant denominations, had argued that the changes do not go far enough.

"The United States is home to 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population. The current mass incarceration crisis was birthed out of racist intentions, and we must be just as intentional about addressing the embedded racism if we are to have any meaningful reform. This bill does not move us any closer to justice on either issue," the NCC had argued earlier in December.

One proposal in the bill that the NCC strongly opposed was the use of electronic monitoring as a form of surveillance for released prisoners.

President Donald Trump meanwhile took to Twitter to explain his support for the First Step Act, which he backed in November.

"America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes. Congratulations to the Senate on the bi-partisan passing of a historic Criminal Justice Reform Bill," Trump tweeted on Tuesday.

Read more about the prison reform bill on The Christian Post. </s> WASHINGTON (CN) – The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a broad, bipartisan criminal justice reform bill, sending it on to an uncertain future before the full Senate.

The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017 reduces mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, giving judges greater discretion to take a defendant’s criminal history into account during sentencing.

The bill would allow inmates to petition courts for reconsideration of their sentence while putting in place higher penalties for crimes of domestic violence and trafficking in heroin laced with fentanyl.

The bill also provides for new programs in federal prisons designed to make it easier for inmates to reenter society after their release. Certain inmates who take advantage of the programs would be eligible for reductions in their sentences.

The Judiciary Committee sent the bill to the floor by a 16-5 vote on Thursday, first striking down an amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that would have changed how the bill handles sentences for criminals with gun charges in their past and removed the bill’s retroactivity provisions.

The bill only requires courts to hand down mandatory minimum sentences to people who used a gun during a crime of violence or drug crime if they have in the past been convicted and served a sentence for a gun charge.

Cruz said he is concerned the bill would be too lenient on violent criminals, though the bill’s supporters noted courts would not automatically apply the changes retroactively, but would first need to consider a petition from the defendant and evaluate the case record as a whole.

Still, Cruz predicted the bill would not come to the floor without his amendment and promised to vote against it if it did.

“From my perspective, I would happily and enthusiastically support a bill that lessened mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders, but as written I cannot in good conscience support this bill and I have real concerns that it could result in violent criminals being released from prison early who would go on to commit other crimes,” Cruz said.

A similar bill stalled in the Senate during the final year of the Obama administration, in no small part due to the efforts of Sessions, who was then a senator from Alabama. Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Sessions sent a letter to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee and a lead sponsor of the bill, opposing the legislation.

Grassley was frustrated with Sessions’ statement, saying at Thursday’s meeting that he would not allow a member of the executive branch to dictate which legislation his committee would consider.

“He’s now attorney general and he’s charged with executing the laws that Congress passes, not interfering with the legislative process,” Grassley said. “Certainly we value input from DOJ, but if Attorney General Sessions wanted to be involved in marking up this legislation, maybe he should have quit his job as he talked about last November and be in a Republican Senate seat now held by a Democrat from Alabama.”

Grassley was also frustrated because Sessions condemned the bill even after the senator told President Trump he would not consider a new attorney general nominee at a time of rampant speculation that the president wanted to fire Sessions.

“I’m really irritated that he would send that letter, considering the fact that he was very controversial before this committee to be attorney general, considering that most of the assistant attorney generals that have been sent up here have been very controversial and difficult to get through this committee, considering the fact that the president was going to fire him last spring and I went to his defense,” Grassley said. “I don’t think that’s something that somebody should do to friends.”

Last week Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the number two Republican in the Senate, urged the committee to consider severing the sentencing reform portion of the bill from the sections directed at prison reform, saying he does not see a path forward on the legislation as written. Cornyn said the White House does not support the sentencing reform portion of the bill, but that it would be open to prison reform legislation.

Cornyn added that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would be hesitant to bring up any bill that does not have broad support within his caucus. While the sentencing reform portion of the bill does not have such support, Cornyn said the prison reform package likely would.

Cornyn voted against sending the bill to the floor on Thursday, saying he wants the committee to approve a bill that has a chance of becoming law. Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Ben Sasse, R-Neb., John Kennedy, R-La., and Cruz joined Cornyn in opposing the bill Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Grassley said he has not received assurances from McConnell that the bill will get a vote before the full Senate.

“That’s the next step, we’ve got to take it a step at a time and we have a few steps to take,” Grassley told reporters Thursday. </s> The “permanent campaign” made some Republicans fear being cast as soft on crime.

Though it’s a fairly modest measure with exceedingly broad support, the criminal-justice bill passed by the Senate on Tuesday evening barely made it out alive. Its near-demise illustrates how extreme partisanship and the permanent campaign have made reform legislation require a perfect storm in Washington. “It has died a thousand times and had life breathed back into it a thousand and one times,” said Brett Tolman, a Republican who was Utah’s top federal prosecutor in the late 2000s but has advocated for many of the bill’s changes since 2010. When it was finally called up, the First Step Act sailed through the Senate, with 87 senators in favor and just 12 Republicans opposed. The bill would trim mandatory minimum sentences and expand credit for inmates who participate in programs meant to prepare them for life after prison. It prohibits the shackling of female inmates during childbirth and bans virtually all solitary confinement for juveniles.

Federal inmates participating in “evidence-based recidivism-reduction programs” would be able to earn credit to leave prison more quickly, and the sentencing reforms would trim future mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and let prisoners sentenced under the old crack-cocaine rules petition for a reduced sentence in line with the recent reforms. It would also allow some inmates to serve their sentences under house arrest or in halfway houses, and those incarcerated would be sent to prisons within 500 miles of their families. A House vote is expected Thursday, and President Donald Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to signing the legislation, which he said would “keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it. In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved.” “It’s the most sweeping reform in a generation,” said Kevin Ring, president of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “It’s also very modest … If people think we are even close to scratching the surface of the inequities in the federal criminal-justice system, they’re kidding themselves.” The bill, in fact, would affect only the federal prison population of about 180,000, which accounts for less than one-tenth of the more than 2 million inmates nationwide, a sum that makes the United States the world leader in incarceration rates. And as recently as a week and a half ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was saying there wasn’t enough time to consider the bill, which was “extremely divisive inside the Senate Republican conference.”

Many elements of the First Step Act floated around Capitol Hill for the past decade as concern grew on both the left and the right about the personal and fiscal costs of mass incarceration, a legacy of the war on drugs and the lock-’em-up approach of the 1970s and 1980s. In 2010, Congress passed a bipartisan law reducing the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity that disproportionately affected African Americans, but further legislative reforms sputtered after that, leading Barack Obama to use his commutation power broadly in the last years of his presidency. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. The first condition for this week’s vote was one-party control of the federal government, which facilitates cooperation among the president and the chambers of Congress. Parties don’t want a president from the other side of the aisle to claim credit, and base voters punish incumbents seen as too conciliatory. Congressional leaders will do more to help a president of their own party. That’s why unified control of government now seems a prerequisite for substantive change; Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote, and last year’s tax cuts were enacted without any Democratic support. Once the GOP reclaimed the House in 2011, Obama’s legislative agenda nearly ground to a halt. Next month, Trump will see the end of his unified-government honeymoon. Efforts to pass legislation similar to this year’s bill died in 2015 without a vote in the Senate, partly because McConnell did not want to give President Obama a legislative victory. This year, advocates had to overcome some Democratic resistance to giving President Trump a bipartisan win. “They were able to look past giving Trump a victory,” Tolman said. “They rolled up their sleeves and dug in.” The bill’s passage also depended on timing, in at least two ways. First, if the First Step Act had not passed in this brief lame-duck session, advocates expected their window of opportunity to close. “Saying that we’ll do it next year is tantamount to saying this just isn’t going to get done,” Senator Mike Lee, the libertarian-leaning Utah Republican, told The Wall Street Journal last month. A Democratic House majority might have demanded more than Trump was willing to accept, leading Republicans to withdraw their support, and the new Senate would have been slightly less favorable.

The lame-duck session also offered the best chance to get Republicans to support criminal-justice reform that primary opponents could use to tar incumbents as “soft on crime.” Members of Congress may have always resisted risky votes close to an election, but the inexorable creep of the permanent campaign has broadened the definition of “close to an election” to cover more and more of the 24 months between balloting. Rank-and-file members ask the leadership to shield them from votes likely to encourage a primary challenger or demotivate their core supporters, as some Republicans had been pressuring McConnell to kill the bill. It used to be that odd-numbered years offered the best chance for significant legislation, while campaigns dominated election years; now the time for ambition may be the few weeks immediately after elections, when voters are paying the least attention and politicians have the longest amount of time possible to let unpopular votes fade into the past.

Trump’s support gave the bill the boost it needed to get back on track after McConnell’s dilatory tactics. The “Nixon to China” factor comes into play whenever a president with a strong reputation on one side of an issue oversees a policy shift in the opposite direction. Nixon was known as a hawk who was tough on communism, so he had the credibility to build a relationship with China’s communist leaders. Trump had spent the fall blasting Democrats as soft on crime (as well as immigration, trade, and a litany of other issues), but soon after last month’s midterm elections, he announced his endorsement of the prison-reform measure. “Trump wasn’t a leader in the last couple of years, but in the last couple of months it did help,” said Marc Mauer, director of the advocacy group the Sentencing Project. Tolman, the former prosecutor, said the president’s backing helped persuade more Republicans to support the First Step Act, since GOP primary opponents will now have a harder time casting supporters as bleeding hearts. Trump tweeted his desire for McConnell to bring the bill to the floor. Finally, there was the Jared factor: The real Trump-administration power behind the bill came from Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who made prison reform a priority after seeing his developer father as a federal inmate for tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. The pressure, along with increasing support among GOP senators, helped persuade McConnell to reverse course and schedule a vote. The First Step Act does mark a significant bipartisan accomplishment, but it came together only amid a rare alignment of conditions, structural and political. It’s likely to remain the exception to the rule of partisan gridlock. The forecast doesn’t call for another perfect storm anytime soon. This article originally appeared in The Atlantic.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee backed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a package to reduce some of the strictest federal sentencing rules along with reforms for the federal prison system, by a vote of 16–5.