“The rest of us need to rethink prisons and punishment. The next time you hear someone saying there are too many people in prison, ask them how many thugs they’re willing to relocate to their neighborhood. The answer: None.” ~Donald Trump, “The America We Deserve”

The House Judiciary Committee has passed a number of good bills protecting public safety that haven’t see the light of day on the House floor. The committee passed comprehensive interior enforcement – the Davis-Oliver bill – which deals with sanctuary cities and dangerous criminal aliens. It has also passed a bill reforming asylum loopholes. These bills address the most pressing issues of our time and the biggest priorities of the president, and they all passed committee months ago. Yet when the same committee passes a terrible jailbreak bill that will hurt public safety, it is fast-tracked onto the House floor today with the president’s support, just two weeks after passing the committee.

Too many members might not know what this bill does

People with an agenda about prisons, in a vacuum, are pushing this terrible bill that will retroactively release thousands of people early, including 4,000 who will be released immediately. Earlier this month, I wrote an outline of some of the most egregious provisions of the bill, but the more important question today is: Why? Why, of all things, are they rushing to get Trump to violate one of the strongest principles of his campaign without any effort to pass all the conservative things he is pushing that this same committee passed in two successive sessions of Congress?

This is an issue on which Trump has articulated the most consistent support for the conservative position throughout his career. For his entire career, he has stood opposed to the leniency agenda that has now monopolized both sides of the political aisle. In particular, he promised to get tough on the drug traffickers who will all be eligible for multiple avenues of retroactive release under the bill he is now supporting.

Sadly, it appears that, just as with the terrible omnibus bill, many members of Congress and perhaps even the president don’t really know what’s in this bill. They are being told that this is some “prison reform” and “job training” for prisoners. It’s as if they think this bill is about granting prisoners better-quality food or mattresses. They were never told of the multiple retroactive early release provisions, the unworkable relocation of thousands of prisoners, and the endless lawsuits that will empower liberal judges to unleash the very crime wave that Trump warned about.

In fact, writing in “The America We Deserve,” Trump used the crime issue more than any other to advocate for electing judges. “Criminals are often returned to society because of forgiving judges. This has to stop. We need to hold judges more accountable, and the best way to make that happen is to elect them. Whey they hurt us, we need to make sure we can vote them out of the job.”

It would be one thing if along with this bill, Congress would pass numerous other bills to strengthen sentencing on heroin and fentanyl dealers, as the president promised. It would be one thing if we’d crack down on the loopholes allowing judges to release murderers. But this bill applies the good-time credits to almost every prisoner. When all of the leniencies are combined, a heroin trafficker sentenced to 10 years in prison could be released after 5 years and 7 months. While some will suggest that Attorney General Sessions would not use his discretion to approve of releasing violent people, remember that Trump will not be president forever, but this statute will live indefinitely.