Tangle - Biden's executive order on police.

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

The order came on the two-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd and after Congress failed to pass bipartisan legislation to address policing. It was overshadowed by news of the shooting in Uvalde, so we thought it'd be important to revisit now. Plus, a listener question about why the media is still so focused on Trump.A special shoutout today to our friends at Braver Angels. Check them out here.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the latest Biden executive order on policing, which is pretty interesting. I think kind of got overshadowed by some of the horrible news from last week.

So we're going to jump in and discuss that a bit today with some views, as always, from across the political spectrum. Before we jump in, though, I want to give a quick shout out to some of our friends over at Braver Angels. For those of you unaware of Braver Angels, this is a really interesting organization that has been pointing some of their listeners to Tangles. You might be here because of Braver Angels, and I'm a huge fan of their work. And so I told them I'd give them a shout out on the podcast because, frankly, what they're

doing is really hard. It's a lot harder than what I'm doing. They are not just having people from across the political spectrum read views they may not agree with. They're organizing ways for those people to interact with each other, to step into each other's shoes, read them, consume the news that each other consume, maybe even sit down and talk. In non-COVID times, they do a lot of really cool summits. In non-COVID times, they do a lot of really cool get-togethers where people from across the political spectrum can interact. They do stuff online, obviously, in COVID times. If you're interested in that kind of thing, I highly recommend checking out their podcast where they bring on people with different political views to debate certain topics or go to their website.

You can find all of that by just searching Braver Angels online. It's a really cool organization. They've had me on their podcast before. I've interviewed a member of Braver Angels, Kieran O'Connor, here on my podcast. And so I want to make sure you guys are aware of their work. All right. That's it for the shout out. And now to our quick hits for today. First up, Israel and the United Arab Emirates signed a free trade agreement yesterday, a first of its kind deal between Israel and an Arab nation,

after the country's established trade relations in 2020 under the Abraham Accords. 2. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked a new social media law that prohibits social media platforms from removing content based on a user's political viewpoint. 3. A federal jury acquitted Michael Sussman of lying to the FBI about his work with the Clinton campaign in 2016. The charge stemmed from John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. Number four, Shanghai ended its two-month lockdown, though citizens still have to present a negative COVID-19 test to enter certain public spaces. COVID-19 test to enter certain public spaces. Number five, Supreme Court clerks were asked to turn over cell phone records in a probe of the leaked draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson.

U.S. President Joe Biden, as you just saw, signed an executive order aimed at reforming federal police practices. Judy, the president's executive order, among other actions, revises use of force policies for federal law enforcement and creates a national registry of officer misconduct. It also encourages local agencies to change their practices regarding use of force and no-knock warrants. We also know this executive order is no substitute for legislation, nor does it accomplish everything we know must be done. The president and I call on the United States Senate to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. And once again, we vow that we will do everything

in our power to protect public safety, to support law enforcement, and to address this issue of racial injustice wherever it exists. Last Wednesday, President Biden signed an executive order on policing. The order came on the two-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd and after Congress failed again to pass bipartisan legislation to address policing. It was overshadowed by news of the shooting in Uvalde, so we thought it would be important to revisit now. Among other things, the executive order creates a national registry of officers who are fired for misconduct and calls for certain data on disciplinary actions to be made public. It directs all federal agencies to revise certain

use of force policies. It bans the use of chokeholds and carotid restraints unless deadly force is authorized. It requires officers to intervene when excessive force is being used and render medical aid. It restricts the use of no-knock entries to a very limited set of circumstances. It creates grants to encourage state and local police to restrict the use of chokeholds and neck restraints. It requires all federal law enforcement to wear and turn on body cameras during activities like arrests. It restricts the transfer and purchase of military equipment to local police departments. It directs the National Academy of Sciences to study the impact of face recognition technology and predictive policing

algorithms. It requires the DOJ and HHS to publish best practices for officer wellness. It calls for the development of a new evidence-based anti-bias training. It requires full implementation of the First Step Act passed under Donald Trump. You can read a White House fact sheet about the executive order. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. Importantly, the order will cover about 100,000 federal law enforcement officials, including those in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshal Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The most immediate impact on state and local departments will be the restriction of military equipment, but the White House hopes that grants and other incentives

will push the 700,000 state and local police officers to follow the new federal rules, even though the executive order doesn't explicitly apply to them yet. In a moment, you'll hear some reactions from the left and the right, and then my take, and you can find our previous coverage of police reform with three links in today's newsletter. Hey guys, this is Isaac here. If you are listening to this podcast, it's probably because you're interested in finding some common ground. If that's the case, I have a great recommendation for you. It's a new podcast called Let's Find Common Ground. They are trying to do the opposite of what a lot of other news organizations do, which is seize on fear, anger, distrust, and division. Remarkable, innovative people who are

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about finding common ground on race, the environment, criminal justice reform, and all the other controversial topics you can think of. New podcast episodes are released every two weeks, and you can join host Richard Davies and Ashley Milne-Tight for Let's Find Common Ground. You can find episodes at

commongroundcommittee.org slash podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. That's commongroundcommittee.org slash podcasts. All right, first up is what the left is saying. The left is happy that the order happened, though they acknowledge it is limited in scope. Some say Biden can't fix policing on his own and it has to happen bottom up. Others criticize the order for being too little, too late. The Washington Post editorial board said there is only so much Biden can do. Even as he signed the order, Mr. Biden admitted it was insufficient, the board wrote. It directly affects only 100,000 federal law enforcement officers. Most policing occurs

on the state and local level. Only Congress or state and local leaders can overhaul law enforcement on a larger scale. The president's action is an accomplishment, but it is just as much a reflection of how much more the nation must do. This is not to say that Mr. Biden's order is useless. It restores Obama administration restrictions on the transfer of military equipment to police departments, with exceptions for gear needed for disaster-related emergencies, active shooter scenarios, hostage or search and rescue operations, and anti-terrorism efforts. It mandates body cameras for all federal officers, restricts chokeholds, and curtails no knock warrants. It sets narrow limits on when force is permitted and requires officers to intervene to stop excessive force and to render medical aid. Part of the point is to set high

standards that local police departments might adopt voluntarily, the board said, but the order also envisions the Justice Department providing more oversight of local police through pattern or practice investigations, which the Trump administration had put on ICE. And it requires more information to be reported on police misconduct and use of force, including the creation of a new database to which all federal agencies must contribute. Simply getting reliable numbers on policing in the United States has long been a challenge, in part because local departments have failed to report to an FBI use-of-force database. The order directs federal authorities to help local agencies report their numbers. In NBC News, Matthew Goroglia said Biden's order can't fix policing.

A few major problems would prevent these changes from having any real impact on the lives of people in the U.S. who live in fear of police violence, he wrote. First, the executive order applies mainly to the more than 100,000 federal law enforcement officers. This is not insignificant, especially as federal law enforcement officers, like those of the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have had increased their presence on the streets and at protests. But it's still a far cry from reforms that would apply to the local county and state police that most people deal with daily. Policing cannot simply be reformed by policy, he added. Unfortunately, policy on the books often means very little on the ground. As has been argued many times by activists and academics, one of the key ways to

lessen the harm that policing has had on communities is simply to limit the number of daily interactions people have with police. You do that by limiting the number of police, taking away responsibilities from departments or both, and many more options. To that end, the executive order shows a glimmer of hope in a commitment to identify federal resources for alternative responder models. Hopefully, this means more non-policing support for response teams popping up around the country, teams that send unarmed professionals to respond to calls pertaining to unhoused people or people in the midst of a mental health crisis rather than armed officers who may escalate the situation. In the Black Wall Street Times, Ezekiel J. Walker said

the order was two years too late. The family of Floyd, who died after he was pinned to the ground by a Minneapolis police officer, was at the White House for the signing. The families of other Black people killed by police in recent years, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Amir Locke, and Atiana Jefferson, also attended, a senior administration official said. Much like politicians this week who espoused fake sentiments over yet another school shooting, President Biden performatively waits until the second anniversary of George Floyd's murder to introduce these essential measures, Walker said. While there was no expectation for President Trump to sign any such measure in 2020 because

of his inherent racism, Biden campaigned heavily on police reform, Walker added. Yet, what was stopping the Biden administration from making this a day one priority? Have black people stopped being murdered by police? No. Then why are we constantly fed crumbs and told to behave like we're full? Perhaps next year they'll get around to addressing qualified immunity, though it's highly doubtful. However, what is more predictable is that with the slow pace of change coming from the White House, incremental measures such as this executive order will not address the actual reason George Floyd was murdered. Until this systemic racism is rooted out of the historically radicalized police departments in America, their press knee on our necks will continue to squeeze the breath out of us.

All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to the right's take. The right says the order is mostly redundant and vilifies police. Some criticize it for reinforcing false narratives about police being racist. Others point out that some local departments are ahead of Biden already. In City Journal, Dorothy Moses-Schultz said Biden is playing catch up on police reform. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The order illustrates the tightrope the president finds himself walking, she said. Though the White House press release touts it as an historic move to build public trust and strengthen public safety, it promises more

than it delivers. The word federal appears in the text of the order 19 times, while state and local show up only twice. Many provisions will make only a small impact outside the federal policing community. This is because presidents have little direct authority over the nation's 18,000 non-federal law enforcement agencies. According to Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the order will mostly affect the approximately 100,000 federal officers, one-seventh of the roughly 700,000 police officers in the United States. Two major police organizations, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police, endorsed it, she added. The IACP emailed its 31,000 members, including me, a policy fact sheet reinforcing the point that the order applies

almost exclusively to federal law enforcement, but also citing its guidelines and best practices for state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement, including recruiting and retaining officers, focusing on officer wellness, including suicide prevention, and developing accreditation standards. None of these is a new area for reform. Law enforcement's warm response could owe to the fact that, since Floyd's death, state and local laws have already instituted most of the executive order's guidelines, often more strictly than the order itself. In Fox News, Liz Peek said Biden's lies about crime and race are hurting America. Just recently, President Biden signed a mostly toothless executive order designed to reform police in our country, mainly by tying them up in red tape, Peek wrote.

His executive order applies only to some 100,000 federal law enforcement officials in the U.S. He hopes the 700,000 local cops who work to keep our cities and towns safe will adopt the best practices laid out by the White House. The president's executive order was signed on the two-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder in an attempt to revive the anger and activism inspired by that event. Because, as Biden himself noted, there's a concern that the reckoning on race inspired two years ago is beginning to fade. Biden is right. Polling shows crime is more important than race for American voters today, and especially for black voters. Support for the defund the police movement and bail reform

measures that put hardened criminals back on the streets is waning, Peek said. Biden also argues that it is systemic racism perpetrated by white people that has held black people back in our country. This damaging narrative encourages more hate and violence from those who perceive themselves to be victims as it denies them hope. It also prevents any investigation or amelioration of other reasons that black achievement lags that of Hispanics and whites, like perhaps our corrupt public education system which fails so many minority children. In Heritage, Zach Smith said the executive order is a political statement designed to satisfy the left-wing base. If there's any doubt about its political purpose, look at what Biden himself tweeted shortly before signing the order. He said,

I've called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, but Senate Republicans have stood in the way of progress. He went on to say, that's why I'm taking action. Never mind that the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act was a deeply flawed piece of legislation. Never mind that Senator Tim Scott, the Republican from South Carolina, put forward his own policing reform bill, which Democrats blocked. And never mind that Biden's order continues many of the same problematic provisions that an earlier leaked draft contained, which caused an outcry from law enforcement. The root of many of the problems with this executive order stems from the Biden administration's view that our nation's criminal justice system is systemically racist. It's not, Smith said.

As my colleagues John Malcolm and Coley Stimson have previously pointed out, these overbroad, inflammatory claims peddled by elites and academics are false. Quote, Current statistics indicate that 13.3% of police officers in this country are African Americans, a slightly higher percentage than the percentage of African Americans in the general population. Many major police departments are now headed up by African American chiefs of police. Of the roughly 375 million police-civilian encounters every year in this country, a minuscule fraction result in a civilian being killed,

and most of those involve legitimate uses of appropriate force. In 2019, for instance, police officers fatally shot 1,003 people, 235 or 23% of the total of whom were African Americans, only 14 of which, it turns out, were unarmed. Alright, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So there are plenty of political apples to pick here, but I'd like to focus on the executive order itself. So I'll tell you what I like, what I don't, and what I'm mostly ambivalent about. First, I should just say, I've written and spoken here a lot about police reform. My position has always been pretty left or libertarian depending on your political persuasions. I don't think all cops are bad or racist or inherently violent. I have

friends whom I love that serve as police officers. These issues are complicated, but for a long time my priority has been raising the levels of police accountability and reducing the number of police citizen interactions. To that end, my stated desires have mostly been about bringing an end to qualified immunity. You can read my past writing on that in many places, there's links to it in today's newsletter. And I want to improve police training, I interviewed a former cop about that on this podcast, and I want to focus on police responses on violent crime, not on mental health crises or cats in trees or domestic disputes. This order doesn't really touch on any of these things, which in some sense may be an indictment on the quality of the order.

But in another sense, it is expected. This is an executive order from a president, and along with having limited power and a vacuum, it's also literally out of Biden's jurisdiction, as most police reforms need to happen on the state and local levels. What I like about the order is its focus on building a misconduct database, further implementing the First Step Act, and restricting no-knock warrants. The data collection practices the order lays out won't

be hugely impactful right away, but it's a nice additional layer on top of what exists. About 3% of all police, or roughly 21,000, are so-called wandering cops who move from department to department even after being fired for disciplinary reasons. States are currently improving their definition of when to flag officers for decertification, which state certification allows a cop to get hired at another station even after being justifiably terminated, so decertifying cops is a good way to stop that from happening. And they're also improving how the data is shared. This should exist at the federal level too, and the more data we have, the better. A call out to the First Step Act is also great. That was the bipartisan criminal justice reform

bill passed by Congress and signed by Trump, which aimed to reduce recidivism rates, decrease the prison population, and reform federal prisons. Key parts of the law, like reducing harsh sentencing, have been working as promised, though others, like evidence-based recidivism reduction, are not, mostly because of staffing and lack of transparency. Biden doubling down on his predecessor's work is both the kind of bipartisan action he ran on and good policy. It's a solid piece of legislation, and committing to implementing it fully is smart. The no-knock warrant restrictions, it's not an all-out ban it should be said, though it should eliminate them nearly all the time, is also welcome news. I wrote about the absurdity of

no-knock warrants when Breonna Taylor was killed. Given that federal agencies are also keen on using them, this should have an immediate impact. Hopefully, state and local departments will follow suit. Anyone who believes police should not be able to kick Hopefully, state and local departments will follow suit. Anyone who believes police should not be able to kick down your door and barge in with guns should be happy. What I don't like are the anti-bias training. We have a good deal of evidence that anti-bias training is ineffective or worse, a source of backlash. The general thrust of the evidence we have is that anti-bias training actually makes officers more biased and more antagonistic toward the minorities they are supposed to be unlearning their biases about. I'm not sure this avenue is worth pursuing much longer. There are much better reforms on the

table. The military equipment order is good, but it's also overdue and the timing just reaffirms that. Biden could have done this on day one and it's unclear why he didn't. Obama limited the type of equipment that could be transferred to police in 2015. Trump wrongly reversed that order. Biden has had two years to reverse Trump's reversal. Doing it now as part of this order seems a bit theatrical, so while I'm glad it's done, I'm left wondering why it didn't happen much sooner. The rest of the order is mostly redundant or I just don't have strong feelings about it. Obviously, emphasizing police wellness is good. I think studying the impact of face recognition technology is also good. I think a lot of these things are already happening in a

lot of spaces, but on the whole, it's just a little bit redundant. Biden managed to please some activists with a little bit of movement, had the executive order endorsed by two police groups, gave a hat tip to former President Trump's legislation, and brought some attention back to the important issue of policing in America. I think it's a net positive, even if it isn't moving the needle as much as the administration wants. All right, that's it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. Larry from Greenville, South Carolina said, Why do you think the left of center media is so focused on Trump? The right of center media does not mention him nearly so often.

To me, it is if the left side Democrats have already decided the 2024 election mantra is anti-Trump barrage. I am slightly right of center and do not want him to run again. So I think this is for a few reasons. One, Trump is good for ratings. Whether people hate him or love him, they tune in. Two, I think Democrats want the 2024 election to be about Trump again because they believe he is more beatable now. Whether Trump is running or not, the more he defines the Republican Party, the more Democrats think the center will break with them. It's the same reason Fox News and others on the right still obsessively report on Hillary Clinton, even though she hasn't held an actual government job in nine

years. I think Trump's grip on the party truly is growing stronger, so it's fair for Democrats and left-leaning media to focus on him. That being said, I'll just push back on your assumption in one sense. While it's definitely true that left-of-center media loves talking about Trump, conservative media does too. Fox News still has him on often as a guest, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages are filled with Trump content, and he's all over further right-wing news outlets like Newsmax or OAN. Just last night, a Newsmax anchor interviewed Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and asked him if Russia would have invaded when Trump was president. Zelensky declined to answer, but it's a good example of how Newsmax kind of keeps Trump in

the news. Weirdly enough, I think both sides actually believe Trump benefits them, which is why you see media outlets that lean one way or another, perfectly willing to center their coverage around him. Alright, that's it for your questions answered, which brings us to a story that matters. Starting last December, about 1,000 respondents each month were asked about the last time they shared a meal with someone from a different racial, ethnic, or political group. Just 50% of Americans say they have had a meal with someone of a different racial, ethnic, or political group. Just 50% of Americans say they have had a meal with someone of a different race, ethnicity, or political party in the last month, according to the survey. And only 38% of Americans say they have something in common with someone from a different race, ethnicity, or political party. The survey,

being run by Axios and Ipsos, is a vivid portrait of a divided country. You can read more about it with the link in today's newsletter. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of police shot and killed in 2021, according to a Washington Post database, is 1,055. The percentage of those people who were armed is 15%. The percentage of those shootings captured on body cameras is 20%. The number of non-federal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. is 18,000. The number of civilians killed in no-knock raids between 2010 and 2016 is 81. The number of law enforcement officers killed in no-knock raids between 2010 and 2016 is 13. killed in no-knock raids between 2010 and 2016 is 13.

All right, last but not least, your have a nice day story. Coffee is associated with longer life. Yes, you read that right. In a follow-up of a behavioral study, those who drank coffee, even with sugar, were as much as 30% less likely to die than non-coffee drinkers in the following seven years. That's according to a new study published in the Annals of Eternal Medicine.

The study focused on people drinking 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day. The latest research lines up nicely with previous studies showing coffee is associated with a lower risk of death, but those studies didn't differentiate between coffee with sugar and coffee without. risk of death, but those studies didn't differentiate between coffee with sugar and coffee without. Sure, there are some studies saying coffee isn't good for you, but I like those studies a lot less, so whatever. Axios has the story. There's a link to it in today's newsletter if you want to check it out.

All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. Before you go, don't forget, readtangle.com slash membership. That's the best way to support our work and keep this podcast running. If you don't subscribe, we're gonna die or something. So do that, please, come on. And don't forget also, go check out Braver Angels when you get a chance,

an awesome organization. We wanna make sure we are giving them some love today. We'll be right back here, same time tomorrow. Peace. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness

to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.