'There's a wave of us': Leftist local prosecutors seek change in US courts On the national level, President Donald Trump is appointing judges by the dozens to positions on US federal courts, ensuring a conservative tilt for a generation. But on the local level, a small group of progressive state prosecutors have been elected, and they have big ideas about criminal justice reform. Parisa Dehghani-Tafti is now the top prosecutor in northern Virginia's Arlington county in the Washington suburbs. "My philosophy is that not every social ill should be a crime, that not every crime deserves punishment, that not every punishment should be incarceration, and that not every period of incarceration should be so long and so inhumane that it closes off all possibilities of reform and redemption," she says. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES