WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0is ready to talk up his crime prevention plans during a visit to Pennsylvania, where Democrats and Republicans are looking for ways to gain leverage on the issue ahead of\u00a0November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s Biden\u2019s first of three trips in the coming week, underscoring the state\u2019s role as a key political battleground, and it comes days before former President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0hosts his own rally there on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House said Biden will use his Tuesday visit to call out Republicans for opposing his proposal to restore a ban on assault-style weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both parties worked together in a rare effort to pass\u00a0bipartisan gun safety legislation\u00a0earlier this year after massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, but Biden has repeatedly said more needs to be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a U.S. senator, Biden played a leading role in temporarily banning assault-style weapons, including firearms similar to the AR-15 that have exploded in popularity in recent years, and he wants to put the law back into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA majority of Americans support this … the NRA opposes it,\u201d White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. \u201cSo we\u2019re going to hear from the president about the importance of making sure we protect our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden\u2019s speech at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre comes as Democrats try to blunt Republican efforts to use concern about crime to their advantage in the midterms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a particularly fraught issue in Pennsylvania, a key swing state where a U.S. Senate seat and the governor\u2019s office are up for grabs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Republican candidate for governor,\u00a0Doug Mastriano, accuses Democrat\u00a0Josh Shapiro\u00a0of being soft on crime as the state\u2019s twice-elected attorney general, saying at one recent event that crime has gone up on his opponent\u2019s watch and that Shapiro \u201cstands aside\u201d as homicides rise across Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Homicides have been increasing in Pennsylvania, but overall crime seems to have fallen over the last year, according to state statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As attorney general since 2017, Shapiro has toured the state discussing the need to crack down on gun trafficking and ghost guns, and to recruit more police officers. Last December, he said that state agents and Philadelphia police officers working together had reduced the number of shootings in areas that were confronting gun violence related to drug trafficking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shapiro plans to attend Tuesday\u2019s event with Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Republican U.S. Senate nominee, heart surgeon turned television celebrity Dr.\u00a0Mehmet Oz, has tried to portray the Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov.\u00a0John Fetterman, as extreme and reckless on crime policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fetterman has endorsed recommendations that more geriatric and rehabilitated prisoners can be released from state prisons without harming public safety. Oz and Republicans have distorted that into the claim that Fetterman wants to release \u201cdangerous criminals\u201d from prisons or that he\u2019s in favor of \u201cemptying prisons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fetterman does not plan to be in Wilkes-Barre with Biden, but he\u2019s expected to march in Pittsburgh\u2019s Labor Day parade when the president visits Sept. 5. Biden also will be in Pennsylvania on Thursday for a prime-time speech that the White House said will address \u201cthe continued battle for the soul of the nation\u201d and defending democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s unclear whether crime will end up as a pivotal issue in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only 11% of U.S. adults named crime or violence as one of the top five issues they consider most important for the government to work on in the next year, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in June. That\u2019s unchanged since December, and it\u2019s well below the percentage naming many of the other top issues for Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden has tried to balance his approach to crime by acknowledging voters\u2019 fears and praising law enforcement, but also urging\u00a0more accountability for officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s rejected the activist slogan \u201cdefund the police,\u201d which Republicans have used as a cudgel against Democrats in general, by calling for more money for cops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jean-Pierre said Monday that Biden will speak in Wilkes-Barre about the \u201csimple basic notion that when it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer isn\u2019t to defund the police, but to fund the police.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden also plans to talk about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the role that law enforcement played in defending Congress. He previously focused on that issue\u00a0in a virtual address\u00a0to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives on July 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe police were heroes that day,\u201d he said. \u201cDonald Trump lacked the courage to act. The brave women and men in blue all across this nation should never forget that. You can\u2019t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden\u2019s trip to Wilkes-Barre was originally scheduled for July 21 but\u00a0was cancelled\u00a0when the president contracted COVID-19 and went into isolation while he was contagious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden has laid out a $37 billion plan for addressing crime and boosting law enforcement resources. He wants Congress to spend $13 billion to help communities hire and train 100,000 police officers over five years. Another $3 billion would go to clearing court backlogs and resolving cases involving murders and guns, and $5 billion more would go to support programs that could help stop violence before it occurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, Biden is looking for $15 billion to provide grants to initiatives for preventing violent crime or creating public health responses to nonviolent incidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0is ready to talk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1782,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions\/1782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}