For years, Republicans and fair-minded people have expressed concern about the unequal application of the law in the area of First Amendment protections. For example, churches during the COVID-19 pandemic were famously restricted from meeting, but protests for the “Black Lives Matter” movement were allowed to go forward. Last week marked the courts stepping in to push back and uphold the First Amendment:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in a unanimous 3-0 decision, found that two anti-abortion groups had plausibly alleged that the D.C. government “discriminated on the basis of viewpoint in the selective enforcement of its defacement ordinance.”

The groups, the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America, sued the D.C. government in 2021 after local police arrested two protesters who wrote “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a public sidewalk during an August 2020 demonstration.

The foundation claimed D.C. authorities abandoned enforcement of the anti-graffiti law during widespread protests in the city following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Yet that same summer, the group claimed, the restriction was “vigorously” enforced against them.

In a rare move, President Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign into law a Republican effort to block a radical D.C. law that would have dramatically weakened penalties for serious crimes in the nation's capital.

🚨 BREAKING: Even Biden admits crime is out of control in Democrat-run cities thanks to the Left's soft-on-crime agenda.

House Republicans are forcing a bill to his desk to overturn DC's weak new criminal code eliminating mandatory minimums on violent crime—and he won't veto it. https://t.co/sd6b7sh7H5

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) March 2, 2023

But Biden shouldn't be given any credit for ultimately stopping the radical legislation. This was clearly a move to save face for Democrats who have largely been responsible for a crime crisis sweeping the country:

On Tuesday, the D.C. City Council approved a dangerous crime bill that will radically weaken criminal penalties in the nation's capital. The bill is so bad that even leftist Mayor Muriel Bowser opposes the bill:

The District of Columbia City Council voted to force through revisions of the district's criminal code that will soften penalties on violent crimes, overriding a previous veto from the mayor's office.

A D.C. Council committee has taken a radical step in advancing a measure that would legalize noncitizen voting in the District of Columbia. As John Fund pointed out earlier this year when a federal court struck down a New York City law that permitted noncitizen voting, noncitizen voting is part of the Left's agenda to change the U.S. voting system:

The New York law is part of a nationwide push to blur the very meaning of citizenship and promote noncitizen voting everywhere and for all offices.

On Wednesday, our nation's capital became the latest Democrat-run city to adopt a stringent vaccine mandate. The Washington Post reported:

Voting is officially underway for the 2020 general election across the country.  In states like Pennsylvania, there is concern about how recent changes to state law will affect the election, especially when considering the numerous problems that happened during the primary earlier this year.  In both the District of Columbia and in New York City, voting already seems to be just as fraught with issues as it was during the primaries.