- The D.C. City Council’s new reform bill, enacted over it own Democrat mayor’s veto, has been labeled so soft on crime that even President Biden said he wouldn’t — and likely couldn’t — stop congressional Republicans from stepping in and overruling it.
- The GOP-controlled House was the first to flag the measure and vote to overrule it.
- The District of Columbia, as the nation’s capital city, has the autonomy to make its own laws, under what is known as “home rule,” but Congress has oversight on such much and control of its budget.
- Thirty-one Democrats in the lower chamber vote in support of the GOP’s disapproval resolution, giving it so much momentum to pass in the Democrat-led Senate that Biden said he wouldn’t veto the resolution if passed by both chambers.
- D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson told the Senate on Monday that he wanted to withdraw the measure before a Republican vote to block it. But the leading Republican backing the push to nix the criminal code changes said Mendelson’s attempt to avoid a Senate vote was futile.
- “This desperate, made-up maneuver not only has no basis in the D.C. Home Rule Act, but underscores the completely unserious way the D.C. Council has legislated,” Tennessee GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty said, according to The Hill newspaper. “No matter how hard they try, the Council cannot avoid accountability for passing this disastrous, dangerous D.C. soft-on-crime bill that will make residents and visitors less safe.”
