Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 stated on Friday that, should he be elected president, he will work toward the repeal of the First Step Act, which is a bipartisan criminal justice reform package that was signed into law by Donald Trump.
In a speech, DeSantis disparaged the bill and said Trump signed a measure that was essentially a jailbreak bill.
Desantis claims it has resulted in dangerous individuals being released from jail. As a result, one of the things he wants to do if he is elected president is to go to Congress and ask for the First Step Act to be repealed. If you are currently detained, you need to complete the allotted term in jail, the Governor said.
He said the belief that they’re releasing people who have been rehabilitated is a huge, huge mistake.
After a prolonged campaign by proponents for criminal justice reform, including celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and her husband at the time, Kanye West, President Trump finally signed the First Step Act into law in December 2018. It has been a goal of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress for a long time to reduce the number of people who are incarcerated in the United States, and this law got support from both chambers.
Senators Chuck Grassley (Republican of Iowa), Cory Booker (Democrat of New Jersey), Dick Durbin (Democrat of Illinois), and Mike Lee (Republican of Utah) worked together to form a broad bipartisan coalition in the United States Senate to pass the measure, which was finally enacted with unanimous agreement.
Both Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Representative Doug Collins (R-GA) have proposed measures in the House that are pretty similar.
According to reports, when President Trump signed the measure, he boasted that it was a significant achievement that would give a second chance to those who earned it while improving community safety.
As the race for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 heats up, many people view DeSantis’s promise to repeal the bill as a continuation of Trump’s conservative credentials being attacked.
