Schumer Will Bravely Vote with GOP to Repudiate DC Crime Decriminalization Bill

Schumer was going to vote, along with all other Democrats, to uphold DC's bill decriminalizing crime.

But after a Democratic congresswoman was attacked in the elevator of her own apartment building by a homeless drug addict and career criminal constantly turned out on to the streets to victimize more citizens, Democrats began getting queasy about once again voting in favor of crime, while pretending to not be part of the Defund the Police/Throw Open the Prison Doors left.

Joe Manchin announced he'd vote against the measure in the Senate, and then a Brave Vegetable named Joe Biden reversed his previous statements about fully respecting DC's sovereignty and announced he would sign the bill repudiating the DC council's "crime reforms."

Democrats were ready to vote to uphold the latest BLM/antifa/Soros operation to set murderers free -- but once it was clear they would not win this one, they began bravely defecting.

Schumer now makes it official-- the New Narrative is that Democrats were always against the DC city council's reforms.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters on Tuesday that he will vote with Republicans on overturning a controversial D.C. crime bill that would have reduced maximum penalties for certain crimes, including burglaries, robberies and carjackings.

Asked Tuesday how he would vote and how his party and how the White House "so badly bungled this issue," Schumer said, "I'm going to vote yes. It was a close question. But on balance, I'm voting yes."

Note that "yes" means agreeing to the GOP's bill to repudiate the city council. "Yes" vetoes those "reforms."

The original D.C. legislation would have reduced maximum penalties for certain crimes, like burglaries, robberies and carjackings, along with scrapping some mandatory minimum sentences. It faced backlash from conservatives and some liberals; Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser vetoed it this past January, but the City Council overrode her veto.

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Schumer confirmed Monday that the vote will take place this week.

Democrats are fuming about the sell-out by their leaders:

D.C. Council Chairman Mendelson said Monday that the criminal code had been hijacked by Republicans in Congress, eager to create a hot-button issue that would carry through the 2024 presidential elections.

Mendelson said the controversy was designed to put Biden and congressional Democrats in a political bind; by defending D.C.'s right to self-governance, they would open themselves to charges of being soft on crime at a time of rising crime both in the nation's capital and across the U.S., he said.

"This is about using the District for national political purposes," he said. "Crime lends itself easily to demagogic rhetoric."

"If you complain about crime you're a racist." Weird how they keep saying the same things over and over.

There's a delightful little problem for House Democrats. Now all of the Senate extremists pretending to be moderate can vote against the DC city council's "reforms." When challenged in 2024, they can pretend they were always against allowing these "reforms" to go into effect.

But what about House Democrats? They were made to walk the plank and vote to uphold the "reforms" in anticipation of Senate Democrats and Joe Biden all voting likewise.

Now they're out on a limb that Schumer just cut off the tree.

And the GOP will make them pay for that. Virginia's excellent AG Jason Miyares just slammed the Virginia Democrat Congressmen for voting to legalize crime in DC.

Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is slamming Democratic U.S. Representatives Abigail Spanberger, Jennifer Wexton, Don Beyer and Gerry Connolly for voting to allow D.C.'s controversial criminal code revisions to take effect.

"This is one of the most extreme criminal-first, victim-last measures we've seen across the nation," Miyares told 7News. "The idea that you would get rid of mandatory minimums for things like carjackings, get rid of enhanced penalties for most violent crimes, I just find that astounding at a time which so many cities right now we're seeing what has happened when they've implemented these criminal-first, victim-last policies. It has led to a crime explosion and tragically an explosion of more victims. And so, the fact that what happens in the D.C. metro area does not happen in a vacuum -- D.C. crime absolutely affects Northern Virginia crime -- and the fact that they failed at this aspect of their job, I think was very troubling."

Several major crimes have been increasing in Spanberger's, Connolly's and Beyer's Northern Virginia districts, including in Fairfax County, Prince William County, and Arlington County. 7News reached out to Spanberger, Wexton, Beyer and Connolly for their reaction to Miyares' criticism of their votes.

"The congresswoman believes in D.C. citizens' right to self-governance, regardless of her position on any particular policy itself," Rep. Wexton's spokesperson told 7News.

"I believe in local control," Rep. Connolly told 7News in a statement. "It is not the role of Congress or Attorney General Miyares to meddle in local self-governance and silence the voices of 700,000 fellow Americans who live in Washington, D.C. This is just more shameful demagoguery we have come to expect from Mr. Miyares."

LOL. Yeah, just keep claiming that people's unwillingness to be carjacked, r@ped, or murdered by Democrat voters is just "demagoguery."

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Miyares also blasted D.C. City Council for passing the controversial proposal despite a veto from Mayor Muriel Bowser.

"The fact is just in 2023, so far, we've had 94 carjackings just in the area of Washington D.C., and there's just been this problem with a criminal-first, victim-last mindset and the fact is you had a D.C. Council that passed a measure that was broadly opposed by most rational thinkers, is probably opposed by the vast majority of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. The U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. said this measure would undermine public safety, but for some inexplicable reason, the very leadership in Northern Virginia in which their constituents are the most affected by this voted against it [stopping D.C.'s crime bill]," said Miyares. "I find it inexplicable that they would so much ignore both the recommendations of the Biden Administration, the U.S. Attorneys and so many of their fellow colleagues to vote for an extreme measure."

"D.C. is controlled by the United States Congress," said Miyares. "At the end of the day, they have oversight and is part of your job. One of the worst aspects we have is elected officials that think and assume well if I have good intentions that will guarantee good results. And so they pass bill after bill that actually ends up hurting their constituents, but they're never held accountable. I don't think that's a great mindset. Nobody in the private sector, nobody in the military, or government works that way. Only those that are in elective office that get away with 'I meant well, this was my intention.' What are the results? The results have been a skyrocketing rate of higher crime in D.C. We're seeing an uptick in violent crime in the surrounding D.C. metro area. It's so that's your job. Your job is to provide oversight. D.C. doesn't have statehood yet. We don't know if that ever will happen. But right now, part of your job and part of your role and part of why you're elected as a member of that body, is you have oversight of the District of Columbia. This is our nation's capital. This is a place that is the beacon and should be the beacon for the entire world. The idea that our nation's capital is having a crime wave that is drawing people away from D.C. instead of into DC. I don't think that's healthy. And I think that's part of your job is to step up to the plate provide the proper oversight and accountability that the District of Columbia needs."

As long as government demands that citizens come to state capitals and the national capital to attend to official government business, they have an absolute duty to guarantee that the citizens they force to travel to these hell-holes and murder-pits are safe.

If they want to allow the residents to murder each other with impunity, fine. But then, they must be required to set up special enclaves where the law will be enforced and the local barbarians will be kept out.

They can't force people to come to these places to be murdered, or have their legs ripped off by a career criminal.

Amusingly, Deep State veteran -- seriously, she's CIA -- Abigail Spanberger has been quoted from private meetings in which she has repeatedly complained that the Democrat Party is moving too far to the left for, LOL, "moderates" like herself to get re-elected.

But she voted in favor of the DC City Council's latest Defund the Prisons bill.

And so she'll be a big target for the GOP in 2024.

Of course, the other 172 Democrats who voted to continue allowing Democrat voters to murder law-abiding citizens will also be targeted.

But there's a special sweetness to Spanberger being hoist upon the petard she kept warning of.

Republicans are wielding a new weapon against Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, and 14 other House Democrats -- a proposed revision of the criminal code for Washington that already has driven a wedge between Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. City Council.

Spanberger, now in her third term, has been a longtime target of the Republican National Congressional Committee. It released television ads on Wednesday aimed at her and 172 other Democrats who voted against a House resolution that would allow Congress to use its constitutional prerogative to block laws adopted by the local governing body.

Spanberger is claiming she walked the plank to support the DC City Council's bill, which reduced penalties for murder and carjacking, because it increased penalties for three crimes.

Sure, Jan.

Go f*ck yourself, Jan.

Kevin McCarthy is meanwhile passing bills to force Senate Democrats to walk their own planks. Either they vote with their Woke Base, or they vote to appease centrists voters who have become very, very anxious about Democrats' extremism.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is showing he can play offense against vulnerable Senate Democrats by forcing them to take tough votes, driving a wedge between red state Democrats up for reelection and the party's base.

McCarthy put them in a difficult position last week by forcing them to vote on a GOP-sponsored resolution blocking a Biden administration rule encouraging retirement managers to consider environmental, social and corporate governance -- or ESG -- factors when making investment decisions.

Senate Democrats will take another politically charged vote Wednesday on a House-passed resolution to block a new D.C. crime bill that would lower penalties for carjackings, burglaries and robberies.

The looming vote prompted Biden to tell anxious Senate Democrats at a meeting last week that he would buck his own statement of administration policy and sign the resolution, giving them political cover to vote for it and dodge Republican accusations of being soft on crime.

But it's still a tough vote for Democrats up for reelection who support D.C. home rule and D.C. statehood, such as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who told reporters last week that he was undecided on what he called a "complicated" issue.

posted by Ace at 03:00 PM

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