“It has allowed dangerous people who have reoffended and really, really hurt a number of people,” DeSantis said on The Ben Shapiro Show, suggesting that prisoners should not get early release and serve their full prison sentence. “So one of the things I want to do when I’m president is go to Congress and seek the repeal of the First Step Act.”

GOP candidates targeting the criminal justice law is, to a degree, an illustration of how the party views crime as a major election issue and a useful cudgel to bludgeon Trump with. It allows them to go after one of Trump’s signature achievements without, necessarily, needling his base.

But the politics of it are not so cut and dry. Some of the individuals criticizing it now were promoters when the bill was passed.

Steve Cortes, a spokesperson for the pro-Desantis super PAC Never Back Down, penned a commentary last week slamming the “misbegotten law.” He accused Trump of having “acquiesced to the lobbying of Hollywood celebrities like Kim Kardashian as well as his liberal New York son-in-law [Jared Kushner, a senior advisor to the ex-president].” As a Trump surrogate in May 2019, however, Cortes defended the First Step Act on CNN, remarking that “conservatives actually occupy the high ground,” and emphasizing that “conservative Republican governors” were “closing prisons in America.”

Cortes didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Pence, meanwhile, worked alongside Kushner to help push the First Step Act with skeptical Republican lawmakers on the Hill. But during his CNN town hall the day of presidential campaign launch, Trump’s former vice president said it was time to “rethink” the law.

“Now more than ever, we ought to be thinking about how we make penalties tougher on people that are victimizing families in this country,” he said.

Even Asa Hutchinson, a former DEA chief who has praised the First Step Act’s reduction in federal sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine, said it “moves us in the right direction,” but said as president would be open to making changes.

Crime remains a top issue for Republican voters. For candidates seeking the GOP nomination, it’s a time-tested strategy to rail against the “lawlessness” in big, Democratic-led cities like Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

Republican pollster Adam Geller says he understands the strategy behind why DeSantis and others are arguing against the First Step Act as a way to differentiate themselves from Trump. But he said he doesn’t see it as an effective message to win over voters or members of Congress who any future president would have to work with.

“On the assumption that you become president, who exactly you’re going to solicit to overturn this legislation. Republicans voted for it. So did Democrats,” Gellar says. “When you say you’re going to overturn that, with who?”

Alice Marie Johnson, who was featured in a Super Bowl ad for Trump after he commuted her drug-related federal life sentence in 2018, became something of an avatar for the First Step Act. Now a criminal justice reform activist leading Taking Action for Good, which works to uplift stories of clemency and reentry programs, she said she was appalled by the movement against the law.

“What they’re doing is dehumanizing the people,” she said. “The uptick in crime is not because of the First Step Act. I say … shame on them for mischaracterizing this.”

Ja’Ron Smith, a Trump White House policy adviser who worked on the bill, pointed out the law has had a measurable impact.

“The First Step Act was focused on lowering recidivism, which it drastically did,” Smith said.

According to the Department of Justice’s most recent assessment of the law, which came in April 2023, of those convicted of federal drug crimes, less than 13 percent went on to reoffend. The recidivism rate for inmates convicted of weapons charges or those serving sentences for federal homicide or aggravated assault crimes reoffended roughly a quarter of the time.

The stepped up assault on Trump’s signature criminal justice reform law is being waged largely from the DeSantis camp, as the Florida governor is looking to chip away at the former president’s sizable double digit lead over him in national polls.

Brett Tolman leads Right on Crime, an advocacy group pushing for conservative solutions to reduce crime and lessen the justice system burden on taxpayers. He says arguments against the First Step Act are turning a positive and compassionate development into a political wedge issue.

“[DeSantis] has calculated that he can use all of that rhetoric and all of that fear that the country has that we’re turning more lawlessness and use it against his number one opponent,” Tolman says.

He also notes that DeSantis and others are blaming a law that only address modest changes to the federal system — one of the smallest with less than 160,000 inmates serving — compared to the estimated 1.7 million incarcerated individuals serving in the entirety of the U.S. prison system which consists of state, local and federal and tribal prisons.

Trump allies are punching back, though not in defense of the legislative achievement but to call out DeSantis for waffling on the issue.

“Ron DeSantis ran his campaign on Donald Trump’s America First Agenda … Now, he is attacking President Trump on those very same issues proving that he’s just another flip-flopping politician who will say whatever it takes to win,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson with MAGA Inc., a Trump-backed super PAC, said in a statement.

DeSantis voted for an early version of the bill that passed the GOP-led house in 2018 when he was a member.

That bill supported rehabilitation programs that inmates take part in, but made no changes to reduce the length of prison sentences. Trump signed a version into law that went further, enacting measures that reduced some federal mandatory sentences and boosted the number of so-called good time credits an inmate can earn for good behavior.

DeSantis, having secured the GOP gubernatorial nomination, resigned his House seat in September 2018. Trump didn’t sign the final version, with the bipartisan add-ons, until December of that year.

During his State of the Union address two months later, Trump said it was proof that “astonishing strides for our country” when Democrats and Republicans work together and added it helped Black Americans who are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system.

“This legislation reformed sentencing laws that have wrongly and disproportionately harmed the African-American community,” Trump said during his 2019 address to the nation. “The First Step Act gives non-violent offenders the chance to re-enter society as productive, law-abiding citizens.”

Trump and his previous election team thought the First Step Act would produce a wave of support among Black voters for his reelection campaign.

It didn’t materialize. Joe Biden won more than 90 percent of the Black vote, according to an Fox News exit poll.