According to a report from Politico, a Donald Trump crime bill that he believed would woo Black voters and swing voters when he signed in 2018 has been memory-holed by GOP lawmakers after it flopped.
As Politico’s Meredith McGraw wrote, the former president signed the First Step Act designed to reform the criminal justice system two years after being elected based on the expectation that Black voters would see his administration was listening to their concerns.
However, that did not translate into Black votes for the GOP and, now that conservatives are back to scaremongering about crime as the 2022 midterm elections looms, they are turning their back on the bill that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) recently called a “deadly mistake.”
According to the Politico report, at the time the bill was passed it was believed it would indicate “…the beginning of a major shift in GOP politics, one that would move the party past the 1980s tough-on-crime mindset to a focus on rehabilitation, racial fairness and second chances.”