GOP/PRISONS/SENATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Criminal justice reform advocates are escalating their push to shake loose a bipartisan prisons bill backed by President Donald Trump that’s been stalled in the Senate — despite few signs that a long-running GOP rift on the issue has healed. Trump has stepped up his own calls for a deal on the prisons overhaul that the House passed earlier this year, holding two events so far this month. And groups off the Hill say they’re closing in on a path to pass the legislation through the Senate by adding some of the sentencing changes Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) spent years negotiating with Democrats. But interviews with a dozen GOP senators show that those talks remain in a precarious state. That’s because the handful of Republicans who have long protested reducing mandatory-minimum sentences leave Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) without any incentive to call up legislation that would split his conference. One of those longtime critics of adding sentencing to the House-passed prisons bill bluntly predicted Thursday [8-16-18] that McConnell would not ‘bring the bill to the floor any time soon’…Such resistance hasn’t stopped groups on the right and left, including conservative stalwarts Koch Industries and FreedomWorks, from ramping up their efforts to bring the Senate GOP together. Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner is fully engaged in the effort to craft a criminal justice agreement that can pass the Senate, holding his latest strategy meeting with advocates earlier this week.”
–Elana Schor, “Criminal justice deal faces steep Senate hurdles despite Trump’s push,” Politico, August 17, 2018 5:08 am