Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a 2020 White House hopeful, announced on Thursday that he would initiate a clemency process on his first day in the Oval Office for an estimated 17,000-plus nonviolent drug offenders serving “unjust and excessive sentences.”
Booker’s Restoring Justice Initiative comes as he makes reducing racial inequities a cornerstone of his presidential campaign. The New Jersey Democrat led the effort to pass the First Step Act, which, among other things, reduced mandatory minimum drug sentences and allowed resentencing to be applied retroactively to individuals convicted of crack cocaine offenses before 2010.