Biden Administration Getting Tough on Crime, but Not at the Border

The Senate’s overwhelming vote, 81-14 with one senator voting “present,” overturned a local Washington, D.C., law that would have weakened penalties for homicide, carjackings and other major felonies.

The vote, which included 14 Democrats who joined with the GOP, marked the first time in 30 years that Congress used its authority to repeal a local D.C. Council law. Lower armed carjacking penalties were part of the bill that also sought to reduce maximum sentences for armed robbery, armed home invasion and some assaults. Sensing that the bill was doomed, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson sent a letter to the Senate to withdraw the legislation from its required congressional review before it could become law. Congress ignored Mendelson’s letter and rejected the council’s bill.

President Joe Biden’s change-of-heart decision to allow Congress to nix reforms to Washington, D.C.’s criminal code is his strongest indication yet that he’ll seek re-election. Biden has consistently inferred, if not flatly stated, that he’ll run for a second term. But by putting his influence behind the GOP House-led legislation to thwart what many viewed as soft on D.C. crime, Biden symbolically threw his hat into the ring.

One of the two 2024 pivotal campaign issues will be soaring domestic crime and the slap-on-the-wrist penalties that permissive district attorneys dole out. Doubtlessly, Biden’s advisors pointed him to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s ousting, based mostly on the city’s accelerating crime rate.
Chicago’s registered voters listed crime as the most important issue.

The president’s decision to sign the congressionally passed override contradicts his earlier stance, laid out in a statement of administration policy last month, which said that, “Congress should respect the District of Columbia’s autonomy to govern its own local affairs.” Biden attempted to explain the reasoning behind his flip flop, stating in a tweet from his official account, “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 [Muriel Bowser] – such as lowering penalties for carjackings.”

Tough on crime is a powerful platform. But another issue that voters perceive as out of control, like domestic crime, is immigration, and the border crisis that, by 2024, may have allowed about 8 million migrants to enter the U.S. interior. Multiple polls indicate that voters want less immigration. AP-NORC [at the University of Chicago], Gallup and YouGov.com polls found rising public opposition to Biden’s corporate friendly policy of importing millions of legal, quasi-legal and illegal migrants for jobs and homes that would otherwise go to better qualified and more well educated Americans. Only 28 percent of registered voters believe immigration has been positive for their local economy, and only 38 percent say immigration is good for the U.S., according to an August 12-15 survey of 2,025 registered voters, ironically conducted for a pro-migration advocacy group.

By more than two to one, voters want corporations to “raise wages and try harder to recruit Americans even if it causes the prices of their products to rise,” said a July 20-22 poll by
YouGov.com. Forty percent of Americans want less migration, up from 19 percent in January 2021, said the Gallup poll, released February 13. The 40 percent includes 71 percent of Republicans, 36 percent of Independents and 19 percent of Democrats, according to the poll which did not provide the staggering details of the multimillion migrant invasion via Biden’s open borders, both from the north and the south.

In short, Biden has signaled that he’ll run an aggressive anti-domestic crime campaign but will remain soft on his permissive open border crimes that encourage major felonies, most notably, fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling. The point that Biden misses, however, is that voters oppose tolerance of all crime, not just the ones the White House chooses to prosecute.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Sign up here for free to receive columns in your inbox.