Congress discovers a bill with bipartisan support that the president will sign

TOUGH, ANTI-CRIME rhetoric has been part of Donald Trump’s public persona for decades. Well before he ran for office, in 1989, he took out full-page ads in New York papers that said, “Muggers and murderers…should be forced to suffer, and when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.” He announced his candidacy by inveighing against Mexicans “bringing crime”, then courted support from rank-and-file police officers. His first attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, was a hoary drug warrior who reversed Justice Department efforts to help police departments reform and to send fewer people to prison. William Barr, Mr Sessions’s prospective replacement, has similar views. In 1994 he chaired a commission in Virginia that recommended longer imprisonment and the abolition of parole.

But Mr Trump has also been receptive to personal arguments against harsh criminal-justice policies. At the urging of Kim Kardashian, a fellow reality-television star, he commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old woman imprisoned for money laundering and drug trafficking. And at the urging of his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, he has become an unlikely champion of the First Step Act, a criminal-justice bill with bipartisan support. Reversing an earlier decision, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said he would bring it up for a vote before the end of 2018. Despite gripes from some on the right who deem it too soft on criminals, and some on the left who feel it does not go far enough, its passage looks likely. That’s right: a bipartisan bill will probably make it through Congress and then be signed by the president.