Republican Crime and Safety Platform, Democrats' Plans To Keep Biden Off Ballot

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Republicans are linking migrants to a broad range of crimes and also fentanyl use and

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rule.

If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.

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again.

And that theme echoes a common refrain of former President Donald Trump over the years.

He often claims that we live in a society plagued by widespread violent crime and contrary

to evidence that immigrants perpetrate those crimes.

Crime is rampant.

And the Democrats have handed over control of my state, Arizona's border, to the drug

cartels.

Ted Cruz.

The speakers often talked about immigration, violent crime, and the fentanyl crisis as

if they were one and the same.

and NPR's Meg Anderson, who covers criminal justice.

All right, Sergio, let's start with you.

A lot of the speeches talked about migrants pouring into the country.

Do a little fact check for us, if you could.

of people crossing into the U.S. without authorization.

But that number has really gone down since January.

In June, there was a 24% decrease in arrests at the border in comparison to May.

So no, there has not been a quote-unquote open border or invasion at the southern border.

to vote.

What about that one?

last night repeatedly falsely said that Democrats want to allow unauthorized migrants to vote.

And you know, this is in line with the longstanding Republican rhetoric that elections in this

country are rampant with voter fraud, although there's no evidence for that.

What do we know about that link?

She was murdered on a trail in Maryland last year.

And a man from El Salvador, who is in a country without authorization, has been charged with

her murder and rape.

You know, this is very tragic.

This is horrible.

But it is not emblematic of any particular trend, even though Republicans did try to

frame it that way.

Multiple studies have found that migrants are less likely to commit a crime than people

born in the U.S.

For example, Stanford University found that immigrants are 30% less likely to be imprisoned

than white Americans.

Right.

directly related to President Biden's border policies.

We heard that multiple times throughout the night, including from Ann Fundner, the mother

of a teenager who died by fentanyl poisoning in 2022 in California.

But what we know from Department of Homeland Security data is that most fentanyl smuggled

through the U.S.-Mexico border happens through ports of entry by U.S. citizens.

Let's turn now to Meg Anderson, covers criminal justice for NPR.

What about what was said more broadly about crime, Meg?

What stood out to you?

So in addition to everything Sergio just touched on, several speakers pressed for harsher consequences

for crimes in general.

They also criticized calls from the left to defund the police.

Here's Randy Sutton.

He's a former police lieutenant who spoke last night.

The last few years have been devastating for our police.

The war on cops is very real and it's getting Americans killed.

so much on how much is spent on police, but rather how police are using their resources.

And actually, the big elephant in the room about crime and policing that speakers did

not mention is that right now, crime is actually falling.

And that's something that you wouldn't necessarily know from listening to that clip from Sutton.

But the most recent data from the FBI indicates that violent crime, including murder, rape,

robbery, aggravated assault, is way down after a surge in 2020.

Those numbers are preliminary.

They only cover about three quarters of the country.

But other analysts have found similar results.

Of course, these are national numbers.

Some cities have seen increases.

Others have seen decreases.

Dallas was offered as an example last night.

That city has seen declining crime for the last few years.

And the city's mayor, Eric Johnson, a former Democrat who switched parties last year while

in office, was quick to take credit for that.

But I spoke to Ernesto Lopez.

He's a researcher at the Council on Criminal Justice about this.

He cautioned against trying to pin rising or falling crime rates on any one political

party.

So it's really unclear how you would even start to untangle all those different layers.

towns big and small, red and blue.

It happened in the Midwest, the South, the Northeast, all over.

and Republicans, though more among Republicans.

So why is that the case if crime is down?

Surveys show that people in the U.S. just tend to think crime is up nationwide, even

when it's not.

And, you know, of course, there is a difference between perceptions of crime and safety and

actual crime rates.

That's according to Insha Rahman at the Vera Institute of Justice, which that's a criminal

justice research organization.

say more open air drug use or homelessness, they conflate that with crime being up because

it taps into a sense of disorder.

on her street. Those are real social problems, but they aren't necessarily indicators that

into that to magnify people's fears.

Thanks to you both.

a second term.

I know how to do this job.

And I know the good Lord hasn't brought us this far to leave us now.

off the ballot.

They're afraid he's going to lose and drag the whole party down with him.

And there's an important deadline just around the corner that's worrying Democratic

with more. So, Tam, after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump

talk of trying to get Biden to drop out of the race has seemed to, you know, just fade a

little bit. But you have some reporting that it has not gone away.

My colleague Deirdre Walsh and I obtained copies of a draft letter that has been

circulating among House Democrats.

It's a letter to Democratic National Committee members, the people who govern the

party. And it's about the roll call vote that would officially make President Biden the

party's nominee.

This year, the party has decided to hold it early ahead of the convention in Chicago in

August. And normally this kind of obscure party technicality wouldn't get noticed.

But these are not normal times.

performance last month.

And the deadline to get Biden's name on the ballot in the state of Ohio was causing

concern. If they waited until the convention, there was a chance that Ohio would have

kept his name off the ballot.

So the DNC decided to hold this early virtual roll call vote to get around the

Ohio's GOP controlled legislature eventually passed a fix for that law.

So these Democratic lawmakers say there's no longer a need for an early virtual roll

call vote. They say the party can and should wait for the convention like usual.

And they accused the DNC of sticking with the plan for political reasons, because the

vote would likely mean that Biden is the official nominee well before delegates show up

in Chicago next month.

That would make it much harder for any sort of last minute challenger or floor fight.

accelerated for political reasons.

And when pressed on it, Biden deputy campaign manager Quentin Foulkes said the

campaign just doesn't trust Ohio Republicans on this ballot situation.

We move forward. We instituted this before they had a fix and we're going to continue on

that path because we're not going to leave it up to them to change the rules again.

insistence by the DNC and Biden campaign rubs people the wrong way.

And with regards to this letter, it hasn't been sent yet and it isn't clear who will sign

it. But the lawmakers circulating it said if the party sticks with this early vote, it's

going to hurt morale in the party.

There are two DNC committees that are meeting on Friday and Sunday to set the rules and

the date. As it stands right now, this effort to boot Biden still faces serious

obstacles, like finding a candidate willing to put their neck out and say they want to

replace Biden and also Biden himself, who's repeatedly said he is staying in the race

and thus far this pressure campaign isn't working to get him out.

Thanks a lot, Tam.

I'm A. Martinez.

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