WH: DC Crime Bill That Biden Blocked Reduces Penalties for Murder, Carjacking, Armed Robbery, Armed Home Burglary, Sexual Assault
(CNSNews.com) - The White House on Friday defended President Biden’s decision not to veto a Republican attempt to block parts of a D.C. crime bill, despite pushback from the left on sovereignty issues.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed out that even if the president blocked the GOP measure, it would not make D.C. a state, which Biden supports.
Furthermore, the bill reduced maximum sentencing for crimes like armed robbery, armed home invasion, armed carjacking, and certain sexual assaults among other things.
When asked whether the president gave House Democrats a heads up about his decision on the matter, Jean-Pierre said, “So first let me just say that the White House notified the members at the House retreat as you know that was earlier this week or is still happening in Baltimore. So that’s number one.
“Number two, I do want to lay out that the president and the administration has a very close relationship with House Democrats and Senate Democrats as well. We have worked together,” the press secretary said.
“The president has worked very well with the members on delivering bold historic pieces of legislation in his first two years of the administration and is very proud of the relationship that he has with them, and our teams are constantly in communication with them, and so I’ll leave that there. This is a very strong important relationship for all of us here including the president,” she said.
“I also want to state that look, the president supports D.C. statehood,” Jean-Pierre said. She referenced the SAP, which stands for Statements of Administration policy.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) uses SAP to communicate the administration’s position on certain legislation on the House and Senate floor.
“That is something that you saw in his SAP for this particular D.C. crime bill, and if Congress sends him a bill making D.C. a state, he’ll always, always be sure to sign it, because he’s been talking about that for the last two decades, but vetoing the bill heading to his desk now won’t make D.C. a state, and so those are the things that the president has been really clear about when it comes to D.C. and their statehood, and so I’ll leave it there,” the press secretary said.
“But as it relates to the House, as it relates to Senate Democrats, it is a very important relationship for us, and clearly, very important, and with the Democratic Caucus as you know when he met with them yesterday, he provided what he was going to do and made it very clear to them and they had that discussion,” Jean-Pierre said.
REPORTER: Biden and the Democrats have talked a lot about the need to stem rising crime but also the need to reform a criminal justice system that’s still disproportionately affects black Americans so why not engage in some sort of compromise or why not let the D.C. bill - because you know the mayor vetoed the criminal code, but she also proposed some changes that would make the system better as a whole?
The press secretary responded by detailing what crimes would have penalties reduced in the D.C. crime bill, which D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser opposes.
JEAN-PIERRE: Just want to be very clear here, and if you look at the D.C. bill itself, and I know that there was a little bit of - I was asked a couple of questions of what else does it do besides carjacking, and I don’t normally go line by line on legislation, especially legislation that we haven’t introduced, but I did talk to the team, and we have a couple of things that I just want to lay out for all of you on what the D.C. bill does.
It reduces maximum penalties for offenses like murders and other homicides, armed home invasion burglaries, armed carjackings as I mentioned, armed robberies, unlawful gun possession, and some sexual assault offenses, and so look, the president has been very clear. We need to do more to reduce crime, to make communities safer, to save lives, and that’s why he put together– he put forth his Safer America plan that does just that, that we believe does exactly that.
So the way that we see this bill it doesn’t actually reform policing practices, That’s not something it does, reform like the ones the president has put forward at the federal level. You know about the executive order when it couldn’t be done on the Senate side moving forward with police reform.
The president put forth a historic piece of executive order to try to do what we can at the federal level, and so we believe that this bill does not actually do that.
Sen. Lee: 'It's Time to Designate Mexican Drug Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations'
(CNSNews.com) -- Citing data that nearly 110,000 Americans died from fentanyl-poisoning deaths in 2022 alone, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said it is time to designate the Mexican drug cartels "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" (FTOs).
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin. The chemicals needed to make fentanyl are transported from Communist China and India to Mexican drug cartels, who make the drug and then smuggle it into the U.S. The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, both in Mexico, provide the "vast majority of fentnayl" that enters the U.S., according to the DEA.
Fentanyl is sold as a pill but it is also mixed with other drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and Xanex, to increase the potency. Many people do not know they are buying a fentanyl-laced drug and end up overdosing and dying.
"It’s time to designate Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, given that they were responsible for the fentanyl-poisoning deaths of 110,000 Americans in 2022 alone," said Sen. Lee in a Mar. 2 tweet.
"If a foreign sovereign did this to us -- poisoning and killing 110,000 American civilians -- it would be an act of war," added Lee. "In fact, it would likely be a war crime. The fact that Mexican drug cartels aren’t foreign sovereigns shouldn’t let them off the hook."
He also tweeted, "The Secretary of State has the power to designate them as FTOs under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act."
Lee is not alone. At least 21 states have called on President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate the Mexican drug cartels as FTOs.
In a Feb. 8, 2023 letter, 21 state attorneys general called on Biden and Blinken to classify the cartels as FTOs. They cited the illegal actions of the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels and noted that their smuggling operations have spread far beyond the U.S.-Mexico border to places such as Virginia, "where fatal overdoses have increased by forty percent since 2021."
"The Mexican drug cartels threaten our national security beyond the sale of these deadly drugs," reads the letter. "Over the past decade, Mexican drug cartels have developed well-organized armed forces to protect their reprehensible trade from rivals and from the Mexican government. The existence of such forces just across our southwestern land border, and the Mexican government’s inability to control them, pose a threat to our national security far greater than a typical drug-trafficking enterprise."
The letter also notes that DEA Administrator Anne Milgram has declared that "fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever faced," and that the Washington Post has reported, “an estimated 196 Americans are now dying each day from the drug -- the equivalent of a fully loaded Boeing 757-200 crashing and killing everyone on board.”
"The same cartels who produce and traffic this dangerous chemical are also assassinating rivals and government officials, ambushing, and killing Americans at the border, and engaging in an armed insurgency against the Mexican government," states the letter. "This dangerous terrorist activity occurring at our border will not abate unless we escalate our response."
According to the CDC, between Jan. 31, 2020 and Jan. 31, 2021, overdose deaths involving opioids rose 38.1%. During that same period, overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl), "rose 55.6 percent and appear to be the primary driver of the increase in total drug overdose deaths."
Among all overdose deaths in 2020, synthetic opioids were the main driver in 82.3% of the cases reported, said the CDC.
The U.S. Secretary of State is responsible for designating a foreign entity as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Under that law, "terrorist activity" is defined, among other things, as hijacking, sabotage, detaining, threatening to kill, assassination, the use of any biological agent or chemical agent, to conspire in such activity, or to solicit funds for the activity. The law also covers "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents."
Some of the groups designated as FTOs over the last 10 years include ISIS, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the al-Nusrah Front, Boko Haram, and the Army of Islam.
On March 2, Sen. Lee also tweeted, "A record 110,000 Americans died of fentanyl poisoning last year, as fentanyl manufactured in Mexico is flooding into our country. This is nearly as many lives — lost in 2022 alone — as the 116,000 Americans killed in World War I."
He further said, "While 110,000 Americans were killed by fentanyl from Mexico in 2022 alone, fewer than 8,000 civilians have died in the war in Ukraine since February 24, 2022."
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