Historically, it’s never been a good sign when Joe Biden’s decided to get “tough on crime.” The former Delaware senator’s decades-long crusade against crime led him to become one of the leading architects of mass incarceration — a set of policies that he was, in part, elected president to fix.

So it’s an ominous development that just as he prepares to officially announce his reelection bid, and with Republicans controlling the House for the foreseeable future, Biden has abruptly folded to GOP pressure over the issue. This most recent controversy relates to the president’s flip-flop over a Republican push in Congress to overturn the District of Columbia’s recent rewrite of its criminal code: Biden first opposed the GOP bill, now he says he’d sign it into law.

The reason for the backpedal is that the Right has successfully cast the DC bill as a soft-on-crime giveaway to offenders. With West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) signing onto the Right’s effort and numerous Democrats in conservative districts voting for the bill, Biden abruptly turned around and vowed to go along with it, reportedly in part thanks to the recent drubbing taken by outgoing Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot.