Progressive 'Squad' lawmaker praises Biden's clemency move

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : Progressive 'Squad' member Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley praised President Joe Biden for commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row on Monday.
44% : During his first term as president, Trump also advocated for the death penalty for drug dealers.
41% : 'Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,' he said.
39% : He said his move is consistent with the administration's pause on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.
38% : The executions were the first federal ones since 2003 with the final three occurring after Election Day in November 2020 but before Trump left office the following January.
37% : The three killers who remain on death row include Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh's Tree of life Synagogue in 2018 , the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.
30% : In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign , Trump called for those 'caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.'He later promised to execute drug and human smugglers and even praised China's harsher treatment of drug peddlers.
20% : In his statement Monday, Biden took a jab at Trump, saying 'In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.'During Trump's first term, there were 13 federal executions carried out, the most under any president in modern history.
19% : Biden on Monday converted the punishments of the 37 on death row to life in prison just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office and is expected to resume executions.

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