Tangle - The Washington D.C. crime bill.

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Today, we're breaking down the debate over the Washington D.C. crime bill and Biden's decision to oppose it. Plus, a reader question about my most extreme political views.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (0:53), Today’s Story (2:45), Right’s Take (6:35) Left’s Take (11:41) , Isaac’s Take (16:40), Your Questions Answered (22:00), Under the Radar (24:13), Numbers (24:50), Have A Nice Day (25:40).You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the Washington, D.C. crime bill and President Biden's decision to let Republicans and some Democrats in the House essentially block that bill from going into effect. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits.

First up, former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said he will not run for president, removing the anti-Trump Republican from the field. Number two, former President Donald Trump won a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC, with 62% of the vote. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came in second place with 20% of the vote. Number three, China set its annual GDP growth target for around 5%, the lowest target it has set in three decades. Number four, President Biden said he had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a common form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma. No further treatment is necessary. Number five, around 35 people were arrested after clashing with police at a controversial police training center that is under development just outside Atlanta.

Police say demonstrators threw rocks, Molotov cocktails, and firecrackers at police. Democratic divisions on display as the party grapples with the politics of rising crime, with President Biden telling Democrats he's not going to veto a D.C. crime bill that's been backed mostly by Republicans. Congress and the White House appear poised to meddle in D.C.'s laws. The target is D.C.'s new criminal code, which has not had an overhaul in more than 100 years. Yeah, the GOP-controlled House has already voted to block it. And with the Senate expected to follow suit, multiple sources tell News 4, President Biden will not overrule Congress with a veto. The president tweeted, I support D.C. statehood and home rule,

but I don't support some of the changes D.C. council put forward over the mayor's objections, such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. council did, I'll sign it. On Thursday, President Biden said he would sign a Republican bill to overturn what D.C. counsel did? I'll sign it. On Thursday, President Biden said he would sign a Republican bill to overturn changes made to Washington, D.C.'s laws that critics claim would reduce the penalties for some crimes. Washington, D.C.'s city council passed a bill to modernize its criminal code, which hasn't been rewritten since 1901. Included in the proposal was language that reduces or eliminates mandatory minimum

sentences for some offenses and reduces the maximum penalties for certain kinds of burglaries, carjackings, and robberies. The bill would allow for more specific classification of crimes and more clearly delineates between things like third-degree robbery, i.e. unarmed pickpocketing, and first-degree violent armed robbery. It would also allow for defendants to request jury trials in misdemeanor cases. The city's mayor, Muriel Bowser, vetoed the bill, citing concerns that it could lessen sentences for certain crimes that are on the rise in the city. The city council then overrode her veto with a 12-1 vote. However, the federal government has the authority to overrule laws in the Capitol

under the Enclave Clause of the Constitution. In 1973, the D.C. Home Rule Act gave more power to local politicians for residents to govern themselves, but still allowed laws created by the local council to be overridden by Congress. Though legal, exercising such authority is rare. The federal government has not used their power to overrule local changes to law since 1991. Republicans passed a bill to block the changes to the criminal code with support of 31 Democrats in the House, including Representative Angie Craig, the Democrat from Minnesota who was recently mugged inside her apartment building in Washington, D.C. Senators Jon Tester, the Democrat from Montana, and Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia, said they would support the House bill overruling the changes if the bill made it to the Senate,

where a simple majority would be enough to ratify it. Now, President Biden is saying he will not stand in the way of blocking the city council-backed changes, and more than 20 Senate Democrats are expected to vote for it. Biden, who has long said Washington, D.C. should be able to set its own laws free of Congress, appeared to change his position in order to stop the new crime bill from becoming law. I support D.C. statehood and home rule, but I don't support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the mayor's objections, such as lowering penalties for carjackings, Biden said on Twitter. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C.

Council did, I'll sign it. Biden's decision to allow the bill to move forward drew fury from House Democrats and members of Washington, D.C.'s city council. A lot of us who are allies voted no in order to support what the White House wanted, and now we're being hung out to dry, one House Democrat told The Hill. F-ing amateur hour. Heads should roll over at the White House over this, end quote. Today, we're going to take a look at some reactions to both the crime bill and Biden's decision from the right and the left, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Many on the right criticized the city council's crime bill, saying it would lessen criminal penalties at a time when crime is on

the rise. Some argued that Biden took a cowardly path in opposing the bill, doing so discreetly. Others wrote about Biden's hypocrisy in suddenly supporting a check on the D.C. City Council by outsiders. In City Journal, Rafael A. Mangual criticized the timing of the overhaul. The Democratic City Council in Washington, D.C. voted to move forward with a plan to rewrite the city's criminal code, all but doing away with mandatory minimum sentences, extending the right to a jury trial to misdemeanor cases, expanding the rights of convicts to petition judges for sentence reductions, and lowering the maximum penalties for various serious offenses such as burglary, robbery, and carjacking on the rise for some time in the nation's capital. While the proposed rewrite is not yet a done deal,

the public should be disconcerted that things have gone this far. Revamping the criminal code isn't the only thing that D.C. City Council aims to do. The council just voted to pass a new package of policing bills that make permanent reforms passed in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, including a ban on police uses of neck restraints and restrictions on police use of tear gas. The package also includes new provisions that will require publication of police disciplinary records, Mangwell said. Absent from the council's agenda is addressing the city's struggle with police hiring. The D.C. Metro Police Department's chief,

Robert Conte, recently told Fox News that his force was down 300 officers since he took his post in 2021, and a spokesperson said that as of August 2021, the department had close to 500 fewer officers than the 4,000 positions budgeted. Nor does D.C. City Council seem keen to address rising crime, despite the city averaging more than 205 homicides a year since 2020, 60% higher than what the city averaged between 2010 and 2019. The Washington Examiner editorial board called it a cowardly flip-flop. At first, when House Republicans scheduled their vote on the measure, President Joe Biden promised his Democratic allies in Congress and in the district government that he would intervene

with his veto, preserving the D.C. Council's special favor to local violent criminals, the board said. Thanks in part to the recent savage criminal attack against Representative Angie Craig in her Washington apartment building, the House voted on a bipartisan basis to block the crime bill. Right after the House voted to scrap the bill, Biden did an about-face, not publicly though. Instead of taking charge of the issue and making a speech, Biden revealed his flip-flop in private to Democratic senators, who then leaked the news to the press. Some people, understandably feeling threatened by escalating crime in the district and in many other cities, might feel gratitude toward Biden for this brief episode of wisdom. Has he turned over a new leaf?

Will he seriously challenge the Democratic left's consensus in favor of coddling criminals while demonizing parents, law-abiding gun owners, and taxpayers? Sadly, Biden has had no epiphany, they said. Rather, what he shows by failing to keep his veto promise is that he will do the bare minimum to spare himself from the political consequences of his party's growing anti-police and pro-criminal policy consensus. In National Review, Jim Garrity called out the hypocrisy of Biden for his change of position. The new law indeed reduces the mandatory minimum sentence for carjackings, but also creates more classifications of the crime. The argument of the commission and the council is that reducing the mandatory minimum won't necessarily reduce the

time served, and that under current law, few felons serve the maximum time anyway, he said. But Mayor Bowser argued that the new law would result in shorter sentences. If the penalty is high and the usual sentences are somewhat lower, if you take it down, then doesn't it stand to reason that the sentences get even lower? Yes, it does, and that's what we know, she said. In Democratic circles, the fact that a mostly white Congress can overrule and reverse the decisions of a city council in a mostly black city is considered an antiquated, undemocratic abomination. Democrats largely tout the importance of home rule and allow the District of Columbia to make its own decisions. In fact, you've heard Democrats, including Joe Biden, argue that D.C. should become a state. As president, Biden declared less than two years ago

that, quote, this taxation without representation and denial of self-governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our nation was founded, end quote. Unless, of course, two years before a democratic president runs for re-election, the D.C. City Council passes a law that Republicans could use to paint Democrats as soft on crime, Gary said. Then, apparently, the president is happy to jump on board with a Republican-led effort to reject software criminal penalties. President Biden's position, as I summed up yesterday, is that he supports D.C. statehood home rule and the District of Columbia making its own decisions right up until the moment the D.C. City Council makes a decision that could hurt the Democratic Party's image as a whole.

All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is divided on the issue, with some saying Biden is smart to back Republicans and others arguing he is betraying D.C. residents. Some say Biden needs to take a moderate position on crime and should protect residents in D.C. Others. Some say Biden needs to take a moderate position on crime and should protect residents in D.C. Others say Biden is stabbing the D.C. residency and its Black majority in particular in the back by mischaracterizing the changes. Matt Lewis said Biden is smart to fight the changes. The president deserves kudos for saying he will sign a Republican-led resolution blocking a Washington, D.C. crime bill that would lower penalties for, among other things, carjacking and illegal possession of a firearm. Make no mistake,

although Biden's decision is both substantively and morally right, it is still a brave move. First, Biden has plenty of cover. D.C.'s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, opposes the bill, and 31 House Democrats voted last month against the soft-on-crime bill as well. Second, the crime issue is salient. Look no further than Lori Lightfoot, who this week became the first Chicago mayor in four decades to lose re-election, and as the Associated Press noted prior to her loss, concerns about crime have dominated Tuesday's mayoral election. Third, there is no disputing that crime is on the rise in our nation's capital. The Washington Post reports that D.C.'s homicide rate is up 40 percent over the last year,

and the Wall Street Journal notes that D.C. has seen a 109 percent increase in auto theft, according to local police data. In the wake of demonstrably increasing crime rates, which invariably harm the poorest communities most, the D.C. City Council chose this moment to pass this bill. In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern said Biden stabbed D.C. in the back. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web,

his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average

of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at flucellvax.ca. His action will perversely make the district less safe, preserving an outdated 122-year-old criminal code whose ambiguities actually make it harder for prosecutors to charge violent crimes. Just as importantly, Biden's decision will empower congressional Republicans to continue overriding D.C.'s democratically enacted legislation, including progressive laws expanding the rights of immigrants, abortion providers, LGBTQ people, and other vulnerable groups. The president has, in effect, declared open season on the district's democracy. The chief complaint about the measure is that it would lower penalties for violent crimes. That is, in every meaningful sense, just not true. What the bill really did was align penalties with the sentences that judges are already handing down. The Criminal Code Reform Commission obtained

data from the D.C. Superior Court covering every adult case from 2010 to 2019, crunched the numbers to identify what sentences D.C. defendants really faced, then base its revisions on these figures. Take carjacking, which Biden cited as an excuse to nullify the measure. Under the current code, the maximum sentence for armed carjacking is 40 years, the same as second-degree murder. No one, not a single person, is sentenced to 40 years for armed carjacking in D.C., or anything close to it, Stern said. The absolute harshest penalties for the offense today run about 15 years, so the new code reduced the maximum penalty from 40 years to 24 years. That's still nine years longer than the lengthiest sentences handed down today. If the new code took effect then, there's no reason to believe that actual sentences for

armed carjacking would go down. Judges would be free to continue imposing the same exact penalties that they have for decades. In the Washington Post, Perry Beacon Jr. said Biden is putting re-election over his principles. Democratic presidents in the past have done troubling and at times truly terrible things to appease centrist white voters and win elections. President Biden shouldn't continue that legacy, and I am becoming increasingly worried that he will. First, whatever the merits of the crime policy, it was adopted by the D.C. government in a totally appropriate process. Biden's decision to override it completely contradicts the goals of D.C. home rule and eventual statehood, which the president claims

to support, he said. Biden also purports to support criminal justice reform, but by opposing D.C.'s provision, he is likely to embolden opponents of such reform across the country. Third, in a tweet announcing his decision, Biden suggested that he had to step in because of changes to the criminal code, including the reduced penalty for carjacking. This is very misleading, Beacon Jr. said. The new maximum penalty for first-degree carjacking is 18 years, down from 21. It's not as if the D.C. council doesn't care about carjacking or wants to encourage it. It was very disingenuous for the president to imply he cares more about crime in D.C.

than the 12 of 13 members of the council who back these changes. I think these decisions are largely about electoral politics. A big part of Biden's 2024 strategy is to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin again. These states are disproportionately white and have a lot of swing voters, but I'm still not convinced these moves are good politics. Republicans are going to cast Democrats as too lenient on crime and immigration no matter what. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I think there are two separate arguments to make about this crime bill.

The first is the home rule argument, which is whether Congress should be able to override the DC City Council at all. The second is over the actual merits of the crime bill the D.C. City Council passed. On the home rule issue, I'm pretty firmly in the camp of D.C.'s right to self-governance. I don't think that is necessarily a right or left position, as sides will flip-flop based on whether or not they like what the city government passes. Biden has long been an advocate of D.C.'s agency to make its own laws, and has even advocated for D.C.'s statehood. His turn here is clearly one of political expediency and hypocrisy. You either support D.C.'s ability to make its own rules, or you don't. You don't get to change your mind when they do something you don't like. Of course, the idea that D.C.'s local government should have agency is in line with the state's rights concept many conservatives embrace, i.e. local leaders know what's best for their constituency and the prioritization of local

over federal government is supported by the Constitution. Since the federal government is located in the city in question and the Constitution explicitly gives Congress authority here, this is obviously a little different. I'll concede there's even a good argument that in a scenario like this, where the city council and the mayor are at odds, maybe Congress should have a well-defined role in settling disputes. But I still don't think the federal government should be the party making this call precisely because of what we are seeing now, which is the nationalization of this debate. D.C.'s city council was nearly unanimous in passing this bill. The changes to the code were developed over 16 years

and were fleshed out in hundreds of pages of recommendations with thousands of pages of commentary and justification by the committee assembled to update the criminal code. I sincerely doubt many, if any, members of Congress engage with that content. I presume they are taking stances based on the nationalization of the crime debate. Why do I think that? Well, for starters, the bill does seem to be a lot more nuanced than the national debate is making it out

to be, which brings me to the overhaul itself. First, it should be noted the criminal code needs to be updated in Washington, D.C. The current code still has prohibitions on ball games in city alleys and lays out mandates for feeding livestock. On top of being 120 years old, it's considered one of the worst in the country in terms of consistency of application and is a sentencing nightmare for prosecutors, a reality best embodied by the fact you could face a harsher punishment for threatening to destroy someone's property than actually destroying it. It is plainly absurd that D.C. residents are still living under such a code. Consequently, many of the proposed changes seem unambiguously good to me. For instance, the bill will help delineate more clearly between crimes committed when

someone is armed versus when they aren't, or when violence is committed and when it isn't. The overhaul also expands the Second Look Amendment Act, which allows people who were convicted for long prison terms when they were under the age of 25 to petition for an earlier release, which is the kind of second-chance judicial system that I've long supported in this newsletter. While it is plainly true that some of the maximum sentences are being reduced for some crimes, it's also true that those maximum sentences were never even being issued. As Stern noted, nobody is getting 40 years in prison for carjacking, and frankly, nobody should.

The highest sentence that actually gets issued is something like 15 years. To bring the maximum sentence down to 24 years, which is what this bill did, is to bring the criminal code in line with reality, and it's still well above what any carjacker will ever be hit with. Do I think that is going to meaningfully make carjackings worse? No, I don't. Carjackings in DC have been skyrocketing recently under the current criminal code with its 40-year maximum penalty, and I don't believe changing the code will meaningfully impact that trend. Carjacking and crimes like it are probably on the rise because of absurdly stupid social media trends, the blowback of COVID-19 on teenagers, and all the other pressures that typically drive up crime, like drug use,

lack of police presence, school absenteeism, poverty, etc. Separately, the new code will also allow for stacking sentences to increase the severity of punishments if prosecutors want to. So, while it's true to say in general that maximum sentences are being reduced and the minimum sentences are being lessened, it's not true to say this will definitively lead to shorter sentences. It's more accurate to say more serious crime and more violent crime will probably be treated more harshly, while less serious and less violent crime will be treated with more leniency. There are other things in the bill, like forcing jury trials for all misdemeanors, that I simply don't know enough about to make a judgment on.

It seems possible such a change could create huge backlogs and prevent many crimes from being tried at all. But it also seems fair to argue that everyone should get their day in court in front of a jury, even for smaller petty crimes. Mayor Bowser, who vetoed the bill, said she agreed with 95% of the provisions in it, which begs the question, how did we get here? If D.C. needs to compromise and close the gap on that 5%, that's what it should do. Perhaps that means allowing mandatory minimums to stay in place or lessening the reduction of maximum penalties. Either would be better than letting Congress intervene, having this bill fail, and the current code remaining in place. Local leaders should have the autonomy to solve the issue without congressional intervention, and it's hard

to describe what we have now as anything other than a failure of governance. All right, that is it for my take today, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Bennett in New York, New York. Bennett said, your opinions on daily topics are normally very centrist with good reason, as things are often complex enough to warrant nuance. Are there particular topics where you lean heavily to one side or the other? And if so, what are they? So it's a good question, Bennett. Given the difficulty of defining what is left or right anymore, I think it's hard to say which of my positions are really strongly on one side of the political spectrum or not, but there are obviously some things that I feel really strongly about. For example, I would say that I am something

approaching a free speech absolutist. I oppose basically all kinds of censorship, both by the government and by major corporations, and I'm strongly in favor of deliberating on ideas, even really terrible ones. Hence my arguments for letting misinformation spread and my belief we should stop calling everything a conspiracy. In today's political dichotomy, I think a lot of people would say that's a right-wing position, but conservatives have also performed a lot of censorship in recent years, and it's a traditionally liberal political position to take. So I'm not really sure where that puts me. Another one that comes to mind is actually relevant to today's issue.

I often say that my most radical political position is on criminal justice. I'm pretty much convinced that locking human beings in cages is not a good way to rehabilitate them or to punish them. And I think our system, where we imprison millions and still have a lot more crime and violence than our contemporaries, is basically proof of that. I think our prisons are corrupt, broken, and inhumane. Most would probably call this a left-wing position, but a lot of my views on criminalization most neatly align with libertarians, who are often considered

on the right side of the political spectrum, read limited government. So I don't know where that puts me either. Those are two examples that immediately come to mind when I think of positions I have that are very strongly partisan or evoke a lot of emotion in me. I'm not entirely sure what part of the spectrum either of those positions really puts me on anymore, but I think they're the kinds of things that get me the most riled up and entangled on a daily basis. All right, next up is our under the radar section. Early on in the pandemic, hotels, bars, and restaurants were hit hardest while many jobs in the tech sector took off. Now, the leisure and hospitality industry is booming while the business and tech-related services are slowing down. Bars, hotels, and restaurants are now the fastest growing employers

in America. They added around 128,000 workers in January, according to the Labor Department. The change has helped keep the unemployment rate at a record 53-year low. The Wall Street Journal has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. 31% was the increase in homicides in Washington,

D.C. from the same time last year. 99 is the number of carjackings in Washington, D.C. so far this year. 73% is the percentage of arrests in those carjackings that were of juveniles. The maximum number of years someone can be sentenced for armed carjacking in Washington, D.C. right now is 40 years. The new proposed maximum sentence is 24 years. The average sentence handed down in years for unarmed carjacking in Washington, D.C. from 2016 to 2020 was 7.25. The average sentence handed down in years for armed carjacking in Washington, D.C. from 2016 to 2020 was 15 years. The number of House Democrats who voted for the Republican-backed bill to stop the overhaul was 31. All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story today. Two 81-year-old friends

are proving that it's never too late to try and see the world. Sandy Hazlip and Ellie Hamby, who say they were inspired by Jules Verne's novel Around the World in 80 Days, are attempting to visit all seven continents, all nine man-made wonders of the world, and 18 countries in less than three months. The two have already visited Antarctica and seen Mount Everest from a plane. Knee replacements and family concerns haven't slowed them down either. My daughter is not too concerned, Hamby said. She just says, well, if mom wants to fall out of the hot air balloon in Egypt or off of a mountain, that's fine.

She's living the life she wanted to live and I'm happy for her. CBS has the story about the two friends and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to retangle.com slash membership and consider becoming a member.

We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Vekova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.