Progressives on Thursday lambasted dozens of U.S. Senate Democrats for dealing "a huge blow to commonsense criminal justice reform efforts" by siding with the Republican Party on a resolution to block a criminal code passed by the Council of the District of Columbia—a move that one civil rights lawyer said was transparently made in response to GOP "fear-mongering" about crime, and not in the interest of keeping residents safe.
Thirty-one Democrats and two Independents joined the Republicans in passing a resolution—authored by Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee—to block the Revised Criminal Code Act (RCCA), which was enacted in January and included an elimination of nearly all mandatory minimum sentences and changes to maximum sentences for a number of crimes, making some higher and some lower.
