Image by Getty

On the down low, reality television star Kim Kardashian West has been currying favor with Jared Kushner for months. And not just about how to stay calm and svelte on camera. Kardashian has been angling for a pardon from President Trump for a woman, Alice Johnson, serving a life sentence for a first-time drug offense. Kardashian West happened upon Johnson’s story on Twitter, and has made it her mission to help her out.

Jared Kushner knows a thing or two about prisons. His father, Charlie Kushner, spent time in a federal prison camp after being accused of a multitude of white collar crimes like tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering. For years, Kushner carried around a wallet his father had crafted for him with his bare hands — a reminder of what his father had gone through.

While Kushner has abandoned many of the other ventures he once professed loyalty to, prison reform remains at the top of his bucket list. From hosting movers and shakers at the home he shares with Ivanka Trump, to getting Republicans to cosign his ideas, Kushner’s passion for prison reform has not run out of steam.

And that’s a good thing: The First Step Act, a bill Kushner pushed in Congress, allows for nonviolent offenders to serve out the ends of their sentences in halfway houses and prepare inmates in prison for re-entering the world. The vote was 360 people in favor and 59 against. The House passed it.

Kardashian West will not be bringing her husband, Kanye West, her camera crew, or one of her sisters. Instead, she will be confronting the injustice of the modern penitentiary system on her own.

Is prison reform the issue that will bridge the divide between liberals and conservatives, and the one thing that can unite the likes of milquetoast Jared Kushner and human brand synergist Kim Kardashian West?

Only time will tell.

Shira Feder writes. She’s at feder@forward.com

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount