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Finally, the bill would allow convicted offenders to reduce the sentencing of crack cocaine powder in 2010 by requiring that their records be reassessed. This provision could change the sentences of several thousand offenders sentenced for drug-related offenses serving long sentences for crack and cocaine offenses. This would help many African-American offenders punished disproportionately for selling crack cocaine, while white drug traffickers would come out more easily for selling cocaine powder.
Tuesday's vote of the vote was the culmination of a five-year campaign conducted at Capitol Hill. Only a few months ago, he seemed out of reach while Mr. Trump was in office.
Most of the same coalition that had advocated the First Step Act had rallied around similar legislation, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015. With Mr. Obama backing up, as well as that of Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and President Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, the larger bill seemed destined to be enacted before Senator Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican and leader of the majority, did and refused to give him a vote in the run-up to the 2016 elections.
M. McConnell seemed to want to prevent the promoters from taking another ball this year, but they found a powerful ally early in Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
During the past year, Mr. Kushner worked with Mr. Grassley, Mr. Durbin and Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah, to draft a compromise that the President could support. With the approval of Mr. Trump, the group brought together a strong majority of Senate Republicans. Last week, under intense pressure from his party and the White House, McConnell yielded. And on Tuesday, in the face of his own fight for the re-election of 2020, Mr. McConnell voted a little unexpectedly in favor of the bill.
For Democrats and Republicans who were in favor of greater change, Mr. Trump's endorsement had a cost: They had to reduce the proposed changes to the sentence. The 2015 bill retroactively made all the reductions in sentences available to people currently in prison, but the bill passed on Tuesday limits most of these amendments to future offenders.
But by gaining the support of an anticriminal president who speaks loudly and is deeply loyal. among Republican voters, the groups believe they have moved the debate to pave the way for further change and elevate the criminal justice debate before the primary democrats of 2020.
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