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Cotton, Trump at odds on criminal justice overhaul
The majority leader also remains skeptical over the bill that divides his caucus.
By ELANA SCHOR, BURGESS EVERETT and ELIANA JOHNSON 11/15/2018 02:13 PM EST Updated 11/15/2018 05:14 PM EST
A bipartisan criminal justice overhaul backed by President Donald Trump ran into a formidable political obstacle in the Senate on Thursday: Tom Cotton, normally one of the president's closest allies.
The Arkansas Republican is a longtime critic of the sentencing reform provisions that negotiators added to a less divisive prisons bill, forming the compromise that Trump endorsed this week. But Cotton on Thursday stepped up his public potshots at what he's called a "jailbreak" proposal — a counter-campaign that one fellow senator believes came at the request of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“We've had productive conversations all year long. If in the end we have a principled disagreement on it, then that’s where we’ll end up," Cotton said of his talks with the president and his allies.
The hawkish Cotton also published an op-ed slamming the compromise and needled Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chief author of the criminal justice compromise, with a push for a public hearing on the legislation — a version of which already has passed Grassley's committee.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/15/criminal-justice-republicans-trump-993292