The NPR Politics Podcast - Politics Wins Over Principle As Dems Axe DC Crime Code Reforms

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

In principle, Democratic lawmakers support the local Washington, D.C., government's power to make laws for the city's residents — who don't have voting representation in Congress.But, facing the political risk of seeming weak on crime, a huge majority Senate Democrats voted to overturn a local criminal code reform that was unanimously approved by the elected city council. This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, political correspondent Susan Davis, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Latoria in Shreveport, Louisiana. I turned 45 about three months ago and began working on a list of 50 things I want to do before I turn 50, like meet Michelle Obama and do the timestamp for the NPR Politics Podcast. This podcast was recorded at... We can definitely help with one of those. It's 117 Eastern on Thursday, March 9th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will have completed one thing from my list. Okay, here's the show. Check. Well on our way. Yeah.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. It is great to pod with both of you. Nice to be here. So here's what we're talking about today. Voters all over the country are worried about rising crime rates. And historically, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats when it comes to issues like law enforcement and public safety.

So when President Biden announced last week that he was going to side with Republicans and block a new D.C. crime law written by a liberal city council, it exposed deep, deep divisions among Democrats over how to handle this issue. And Sue, we're going to start by talking about this and then we're going to broaden it out. But this was a pretty amazing vote in the Senate yesterday. This is a resolution that would block the new D.C. crime bill. And it passed with 81 senators voting in favor. Just 14 Democrats voted against it. I mean, that's wild. It was a fascinating vote. And this is why I think this vote is so interesting from a political standpoint. When Biden made that announcement, he essentially gave the green light to senators to vote however they needed to vote for their own political reasons.

Right. Like this wasn't about political loyalty to the president. He was like, do what you got to do. And over half of Senate Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, decided to vote with Republicans on a measure that otherwise had unanimous support from the D.C. City Council. And let's just back up here because all three of us are D.C. residents. We are pretty familiar with this issue. There's two things we need to contextualize listeners on. First of all, what was in this law? And second of all, the way this works, the way that Congress can. Why they even have a say.

Yeah. So on the substance, the D.C. City Council has been working for years to rewrite the criminal code. It's something like a century out of date. Right. It was badly and needed updating. And this was the result of a years-long process. They'd even noted that they brought in stakeholders from across the criminal justice system to help rewrite this code. As I said, it passed with unanimous support on the council, but it was ultimately vetoed by a Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser. The council

overrode that veto, and it got sent to Congress. Now, we'll talk about the process there. On the substance, the heart of this, most of this bill, not controversial. The two provisions that really drew the most attention was one that would reduce criminal maximum penalties for certain crimes. The one most cited here, including by Biden, was penalties for carjacking, which is a particular problem right now in the District of Columbia, and another that would expand the right to jury trials for certain criminal misdemeanor offenses. Other states do allow this. It's not an unusual concept. But the argument against it is it would probably result or could result in prosecutors just dropping cases versus pursuing them if they had to go to court because the court system is pretty overtaxed as it is. And even though it hasn't happened in literally

decades, Congress gets to weigh in on our local laws here in Washington, D.C. They do. And so Congress has the legal authority to review and reject any laws passed by the D.C. City Council. As you notice, Scott, they don't try to use this power a lot or rarely does the stars align where they have the power in Congress and White House to do it. So it's rarely used, but it's not unprecedented. Samara, my political view of this, there are two disparate thoughts. And one, which we'll talk about a bit later, is that in recent years, Democrats have been more and more vocal about their support for D.C. statehood, more and more vocal about support for the fact that this is hundreds of thousands of Americans who have no say in Congress, who at times are overridden by the federal

government and they should have more rights. But this also seems like quite the layup given the political environment. Democrats say, wait a second, I can voice my opposition to lowering crimes for carjacking. Sign me up. Yeah. politics versus principle. Look, Joe Biden said, I am for D.C. statehood. I am for home rule. But he also is someone who has spent the last couple of years making it extremely clear that he is not a defund the police Democrat. And he's trying to get his party out from under that label, which was used very, very effectively against Democrats by Republicans. Right. And this bill did not address police funding, but it had to do with a lot of other things that could be reduced. The idea that Democrats are soft on crime is decades old. This is nothing new. And we're coming up on election year. And there have been a lot of

warning signs from blue cities that Democratic voters really do care about crime. Lori Lightfoot, the Chicago mayor, was defeated because of this issue. It also led to the election of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He's a former New York City police officer and ran very clearly saying, we shouldn't defund the police, we need to reform the police so that they protect black and brown communities. So when it came to politics versus principle, what is going to help Democrats get elected next year? Biden clearly chose the politics. I have a question for Sue, and she mentioned that he basically gave permission to Democrats in the Senate to vote however they needed to vote for their own politics. Why didn't he do the same

thing for the House? Why didn't he tell them, the House Democrats in advance, that he was going to sign this bill? They ended up, a lot of them, voting against it, and now it's going to become law. That was a failure of execution that I am mystified by. Even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who almost never criticizes anything a Democratic president says or does, said very publicly she wished Biden would have made his position known before the House had taken their vote last month. In that vote, 31 House Democrats broke with the party when they thought they were voting against the White House, right? This was at a time that they thought the president would veto it, which honestly,

in a hyper-polarized House, that's still a pretty big bipartisan vote. We'd love to know what that vote would look like if it was taken again under the 1994 crime bill and he has taken tremendous guff about this from the left wing of his party ever since. But he's never changed. Yeah. And there were points early on in the incredibly crowded Democratic primary where a lot of us thought that would be a big liability for Joe Biden, who, of course, seemed to have overcome it. But, you know, during the general election, he seemed to take every chance he could get to separate himself from defund the police. Oh, in his State of the Union address, he said, we want to fund the police, not defund. He said it about three times.

Right. So this seemed like a moment where Biden was once again giving a high profile statement of, look, I disagree with these elements of my party. But Sue, as you said, it was very last minute. We had been pressing at the White House for days and days for a concrete position on this issue, and the White House wouldn't give any. And it wasn't until Biden met with senators behind closed doors that he said, yeah, yeah, I would actually sign this bill. And then we saw the big shift. Yeah. And also, look, Democratic voters want their neighborhoods to be safe. And this has now been going on, you know, for the last two years. I'm kind of surprised that the White House is still muffing the execution of this.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. There's much more to talk about. We'll be right back. All right. We are back. And again, we're all D.C. residents here. This issue really touched on a sore point for a lot of people who live in our District of Columbia. And that is the fact that we have no voting congressional representative. And Sue, as you talked about, Congress has the ability to veto laws in Washington, D.C. It feels very unfair for a lot of people who live here, but it is also enshrined in law and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. And I mention all of this is because it feels like the idea of D.C. statehood went from a fringe Democratic issue to a central Democratic issue in recent years. But now I kind of wonder if that was all an illusion, because at the first opportunity to score a political point, you know, 80 something senators were very happy to veto D.C. law.

Well, you know, the crime debate is happening in real time, and the statehood one is almost an academic one at this point. D.C. statehood is a Democratic cause, big D Democratic Party cause. If anything, Republicans have almost consistently and unanimously opposed D.C. statehood because, frankly, D.C. is a Democratic stronghold and creating a lot of fundraising emails from Republicans saying D.C. statehood. It's about to happen. They're adding two more Democratic senators. Right. And Republicans would argue it's a power grab. Right. Like the Constitution did not intend D.C. to be a state. And doing so is a way for Democrats to get probably safe to say to Democratic senators for all time. It's hard to see D.C. ever becoming a Republican stronghold as it never has been. But so I think, yeah, it does rub against

that broader cause, which is now probably a pretty mainstream position for most Democrats. I thought it was interesting that Phil Mendelsohn is the head of the D.C. Council, and he gave an extended press briefing this week talking about the politics of this crime bill and why it has to be withdrawn. And he basically just said, you know, if we ever want to get D.C. statehood, we just got to keep Democrats happy. In the 21st century, the reality is that if we're to get statehood, it's going to be the Democrats who help us with it. Unfortunate because statehood, it shouldn't be about partisan politics, but it has been. And so if we have any hope for statehood, we have to want to protect our democratic friends in Congress. And that's where I think the president is. But that's insane. Then why did they pass a crime bill that would put them in this position?

I really don't think and what the DC council members would say is they just didn't see this coming. I think that they looked at their bill that passed unanimously with stakeholders from the district attorney's office, from the court systems. You know, this wasn't just like a progressive activist movement. It was a result of a long process. But I don't think that they had the political understanding. And also, frankly, once a Democratic mayor vetoes this bill and essentially says it's too soft on crime, that is just such a gimme to Republicans in Congress to say, hey, this is legitimate and put the president in a really difficult position. Democrats gave up their principle about D.C. statehood to score a political point.

I would put it a different way. They were trying to protect themselves from a Republican political attack on crime in an election year. They weren't just scoring points. This was totally defensive on their part. That's a fair point. Yeah, but it seemed that, you know, we have heard more and more Democrats actively talk about D.C. statehood. We have seen a D.C. statehood bill pass the House, which is something that did not happen before.

But at this point in time, many Democrats who have been for it, including President Biden, said, yeah, that being said, I'm still going to, even though I think we shouldn't have this power, exercise this power and reject this piece of local legislation. What I think is so interesting is the Democratic Party evolution on the crime issue. The fact that Minneapolis, San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, I mean, yeah, these are Democratic voters. And this is why Joe Biden won the nomination instead of Bernie Sanders because Democratic voters are less left than a lot of people think they are. They want their communities to be safe from crime just like anybody else. Now, the one caveat I would put in here, and I've thought about this a lot too, because heading into the 2022 midterms, voters were consistently saying crime was a top issue, crime was a top issue. And it was part of the thinking behind why a red wave could be possible. And that red wave did not materialize. My word of caution is I don't discount crime as

an issue. And I don't discount people who say they're worried about crime. But whether crime is the determinative factor in how people vote, I think really gets down to local level politics. And I'm a little hesitant to be too predictive about how big of an issue this could be in 2024 because it didn't play out the way many people expected in 2022. That's it for today. We will, I think, actually probably continue this conversation or argument off the air for the rest of the day here in the newsroom. But for now, at least as far as you're concerned, I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.