Grits for Breakfast 2/3/2020
It's a sign of changing times that two Super Bowl ads ran yesterday (worth >$5 million each) related to criminal-justice reform. One was from the NFL (on police shootings), which I suppose could be considered a house ad. But the more surprising one by far was a new
commercial from President Donald Trump's re-election campaign touting his clemency for Alice Free and passage of the First Step Act, which among other things shortened sentences for thousands of presently incarcerated federal prisoners.
Having spent more than $5 million on a Super Bowl ad, it seems highly likely we'll see this message quite a bit more in the coming weeks and months. The only reason you spend that kind of money is to launch a broader campaign. So this is a signal the First Step Act will be a central focus of the president's re-election message for at least part of the year. That can only help downstream reform efforts.
Grits found Trump's ad a bit odd and overstated, but from a big-picture perspective, I'm thrilled he ran it. As I
wrote following the First Step Act's passage, the president's endorsement makes it harder for state-level Rs to adopt anti-#cjreform rhetoric and easier to embrace it. Now, "With Donald Trump's full-throated endorsement of the First Step Act, and with his son-in-law championing it in his administration, conservative Republicans supporting #cjreform are aligning themselves with the president headed into the next election."
More:
https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2018/12/takeaways-for-tx-legislators-and.html
