The Daily Signal - White House Takes Action to Address Racial Disparities

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

The Trump White House is moving ahead to implement needed reforms and institute more opportunities for minority communities to succeed and overcome challenges.  Ashley D. Bell, White House policy adviser for entrepreneurship and innovation, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to explain how the president is taking steps to strengthen underserved communities economically and institute needed police and criminal justice reforms.  We also cover these stories: President Trump’s plan to end his predecessor's DACA program is blocked by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision.  In an interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, former Trump national security adviser John Bolton says the president isn’t fit for his office.  Twenty-eight Democrats in Congress sign a letter asking the Department of Education to allow biological males to compete in girls sports. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, June 19th. I'm Rachel Dahl Judice. And I'm Virginia Allen. The White House is moving ahead to implement needed police reforms and institute more opportunities for minority communities to succeed and overcome challenges. Mr. Ashley D. Bell, White House Policy Advisor for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, joins the podcast to explain how the president is working right now to strengthen historically underserved communities. Don't forget. enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. President Trump's plan to end DACA was

blocked by the Supreme Court in a four to five vote on Thursday. The deferred action for childhood arrivals program known as DACA was instituted by President Obama and provides a legal avenue for some 700,000 young people who came to America with their parents. as illegal citizens to avoid deportation. The program also allows illegal immigrants to apply for work permits, access health insurance, and acquire driver's licenses. Chief Justice John Roberts was the deciding vote that blocked the repeal of the program. In response to the ruling Heritage Foundation, Laura Reese, Hans von Spockovsky,

and Cully Stimson wrote in a statement, the court's ruling is a major mistake and is Justice, Thomas says, it will hamstring all future agency attempts to undo actions that exceed statutory authority. And they continued on saying, this will only encourage more unlawful executive action circumventing the rule of law and will of the people as expressed through the legislative branch. President Trump tweeted in response to the ruling, writing, these horrible and politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or conservatives. We need more justices or we will lose our Second Amendment and everything else.

Democrats are praising the Supreme Court's ruling that won't allow dreamers children brought to America illegally to get legal status to be deported. Here's what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said about the ruling. in a speech on Wednesday via Schumer's office. I cried tears of joy a few minutes ago when I heard the decision of the Supreme Court on DACA. These wonderful DACA kids and their families have a huge burden lifted off their shoulders. They don't have to worry about being deported.

They can do their jobs. And I believe, I do believe this, someday, someday soon, they will be American citizens. I've met so many of these beautiful children and their families. Now many have been grown up. They came to America's little kids, and all they want to be is Americans. They work hard. I met many of them.

I met some of them during the COVID crisis in New York, risking their lives. On Thursday, President Trump took to Twitter to call for new Supreme Court justices. The recent Supreme Court decisions not only on DACA, sanctuary cities, census, and others tell you only one thing. We need new justices of the Supreme Court, the president tweeted. And he continued, if the radical left Democrats assume power, your Second Amendment, right to life, secure borders, and religious liberty, among many other things, are over and gone. Trump also pledged over Twitter to create a new election. list of conservative Supreme Court Justice candidates, which he will choose from for future open seats. In an interview with ABC's Martha Radditz, President Trump's former national security advisor,

John Bolton, says the president isn't fit for his office. Bullton is the author of a forthcoming book called The Room Where It Happened, which covers his time working for Trump as national security advisor in the White House. The White House is suing to block the book's release due to concerns over classified information. Here's what he had to say in an exclusive interview which airs fully this weekend via ABC News.

You described the president as erratic, foolish, behaved irrationally, bizarrely. You can't leave him alone for a minute. He saw conspiracies behind rocks and was stunningly uninformed. He couldn't tell the difference between his personal interests

and the country's interests. I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job. there really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's reelection. You say that you were astonished by what you saw, a president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation? Well, I think he was so focused on the reelection that longer-term considerations fell by the way.

side. So if he thought he could get a photo opportunity with Kim Jong-un at the demilitarized zone in Korea, there was considerable emphasis on the photo opportunity and the press reaction to it, and little or no focus on what such meetings did for the bargaining position of the United States. Democrats are trying to block President Trump's plan to withdraw a large number of U.S. troops from Germany. Trump announced on Monday that he would like to cut back on the number of American troops serving in Germany. Currently, there are between 34 to 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany, a number that Trump would like to see reduced to 25,000. In 2014, Germany and other NATO countries agreed that by the year 2024, they would be spending 2% of their annual GDP on defense.

Germany is not on track to meet that deadline. On Thursday, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Democratic Representative Elliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced a new bill that would block federal funding to bring American troops home from Germany. Though the congressional effort is being led by Democrats, 22 Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee wrote to the president last week urging him to reconsider his course of action due to fears that a troop withdrawal in Germany would not be in the best interest of national security and would allow for Russia to take advantage of weakness in the region.

28 Democrats in Congress signed a letter asking for biological males to be allowed into girls' sports. Representative Johanna Haynes, a Connecticut Democrat who led the Wednesday letter, wrote in a press release that, The decision of the Department of Education to issue a determination targeting transgender student athletes on the eve of Pride Month is not coincidental. It is a transparent example of their campaign against the rights and dignity of LGBTQ plus children. Hayes is referring to a ruling from the Department of Education announced May 15th that says that public schools that permit biological boys into girls' sports

are going against the safeguards put in place in Title IX, the federal law that protects people from discrimination based on sex and education programs, or activities that receive federal financial assistance, according to the agency's website. Hayes added, Title IX was never meant to be used as a tool to threaten schools into discriminatory practices in order to preserve critically needed federal funds. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ordered portraits of four past House speakers who were members of the Confederacy to be removed from the U.S. Capitol Building. Pelosi made the announcement on Thursday, per the Hill.

Tomorrow, June 10th, the clerk will oversee the removal of those Confederate speakers from the House. As I've said, before, there's no room in the hallowed halls of this democracy, this temple of democracy, to memorialize people who embody violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Mr. Ashley D. Bell, White House Poplar, Policy Advisor for entrepreneurship and innovation as we discuss policy reform and how the president is working to strengthen minority communities right now. I'm Amy Swearer. And I'm John Carlo Canaparo.

And if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court, be sure to check out SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast. We take a look at the cases, the personalities, and the gossip at the highest court in the land. It's SCOTUS 101. I am joined by Mr. Ashley D. Bell, White House Policy Advisor for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Mr. Bell, thanks so much for being here today. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.

President Trump announced earlier this week that he is issuing an executive order that will strengthen the relationship between law enforcement and the communities that they serve. This is, wow, this is such a critical step. Can you tell me a little bit more about the components of this executive order? Yes, it absolutely is a critical step in the right direction. And I think the president did what he does best. He was able to pull together a coalition of leaders to gather around to reason together and figure out how we can make our streets safer, our communities more secure. And he did so by putting the necessary critical pieces of the puzzle together.

We had law enforcement around the table as well as families that have been victims of excessive force from bad cops. And I think that what was able to happen is that the president was able to do exactly what Tim Scott said, very recently his press conference on this issue, is that to show that there's no binary choice between supporting underserved communities and communities in color and law enforcement, that you can do both, that you can have a table where law enforcement leadership sits, as well as families that have lost loved ones at the hands of excessive force. No one wants bad cops off the street more than good cops. And so we look at that commonality, and the executive order was able to do a couple of key things, and one was able to open the door for social workers and those with specialized skills to go out on patrol with police officers.

This can help in de-escalating incidents with people with mental health challenges that our officers just may not be in a position to really and equip to deal with. It also creates national standards for certification and make sure that there's a standard that we all are applying ourselves to every local jurisdiction in the state when it comes to training and making sure officers have the necessary understanding of how to de-escalate situations and how to properly use excessive force and banning chokeholds unless their life is threatened. And then also another very critical step is making sure that our officers, aren't allowed to go from one city to the next and not have their record reported to that city. You don't want to go from Atlanta to Charlotte and have an officer who's already been adjudicated as having used excessive force inappropriately and not have those officials in that city have that understanding. So the president said, look, I'm going to tie federal funding to you reporting these incidents. So if you want federal dollars, which many of these institutions do, because the president believes that we should. fund, we should fund the police and not defund the police, that if you want those federal funds

to aid in your efforts, then you need to report to us to this national database at the Department of Justice if you have officers that have been adjudicated as not being, as having used excessive force. And so wherever they go, that people know that. That way you can't just jurisdiction pick and go places that ignore those standards. And you mentioned Senator Tim Scott. He's leading the effort and then congressional Republicans to pass that police reform legislation that is very complimentary of the president's executive order. What do you think about Senator Scott's legislation? Well, first, you know, Senator Scott is a very unique leader, someone who I've considered a mentor for a long, long time since before his time in the Senate. And what he brings

to the Republican caucus is a breadth of different perspective, someone that has been racially profiled as recently as this year, someone who has been pulled over. and who understands what it's like to be an African-American to be suspected of doing something you may not have, you haven't done anything. And so I think that that sort of perspective is humbling for his fellow senators to understand of his worldview. And he also understands that we need to also support our police and not have a binary choice of supporting people of color or supporting the police. And so I think what he's doing is reflecting the president's approach of building a coalition. I think the reason that you see the president's approach with this executive order going farther than the previous administration, which they may have been well-intentioned in the 21st century policing task force, but none of the jurisdictions around the country adopted it. It was very, it was less than 20 out of 18,000 jurisdictions when conversely the president had virtually every major police union supporting his executive order.

And I think even you saw on the news, even from people on the left, saying, you know, what the president did is that he was. brought people to the table that the left just couldn't bring because he respects what the role that the police play, and he understands any solution that we come up with has to involve police and have their perspective and their interests also at the table as well as everyone else. And so I think Senator Scott's approach reflects that, that coalition building. I think more than that, I think there's a trust with this president that you haven't seen because this president has led coalitions, despite how divisive politics may be. This is a president that out of the gate passed the most overhauling, you know, criminal justice reform legislation at 30, 40 years,

and he did so in a bipartisan fashion despite how much the other side may not like him. Everyone who, every senator who decided they wanted to run for president voted for it. When you look at creating opportunity zones and going into underserved communities many times or minority communities and offering them an opportunity to have capital and capital gains flowing these communities, which never would have happened before, he's saying. no Johnny come lately to these issues or these communities. And so I think he approaches it and steps up to the plate with a record, with a history of caring and delivering solutions. And I think that's what he's trying to focus to American people on now. What are the solutions

to the unrest? What are the solutions to the anguish that America's fear right now, they have right now? And I think he's offered that list of executive order, a path forward, a path together that has law and order, but also compassion for people who are victims of bad cops and making sure that good cops can help us reach the results we want, which is a fair and just system where every citizen, including police officers, are enabled due process. And you are working with Ben Carson, Geron Smith, and others in the administration to focus on some of those ways to really uplift and revitalize minority and underserved communities in America. Could you just tell me a little bit more about the work that you all are doing?

Absolutely. The president created as a part of the Tax cuts and Jobs Act with Opportunity Zones were created through that legislation. Once again, an idea that was proposed by Senator Tim Scott. This issue was brought to the forefront that we needed to have a vehicle to bring resources

to these underserved communities. And that vehicle was going to be opportunity zones, but we needed to make sure that the ground that these opportunity zones encompassed also had federal resources from a lot of different areas. Because there are issues in these communities that have

been cyclical. They're generational. The poverty there is deep and is rooted in some challenges that we have to hit head on. And it starts with education and extends to health care, it extends to crime and public safety. And so it extends to access to jobs and small businesses being to develop. So the president created what's called the White House Opportunity and Revivalization Council, a council that I serve as entrepreneurship policy advisor on. This council was formed in order to bring in 17 federal agencies with resources and grants to help these communities have more resources for policing, to have more resources for entrepreneurship, health care, and housing, a portable housing key, which is why Secretary Carson is to chair, because every dream

for every family starts with a place to live that they can call their own. And so now that we've hit the pandemic, and the pandemic has, you know, shocked this country's the economic system and it's been just a new challenge for us. The president retasked that same workforce that was operating to promote opportunities only in the middle of the greatest economy the world has ever seen. And now that we've hit COVID, the president said, look, you already have the footprint. You've built these relationships with these communities. Now I want you to focus, turn your focus, to making sure that we can recover as quickly as possible. But I want to make sure that those communities that are the hardest hit have a special task force focused on making sure that we're

if they can recover at the same rate as everyone else. This is the president keeping his promise to remember those forgotten communities. Yeah. And you recently traveled to Dallas with the president for a roundtable event to discuss solutions around economy, health care, justice disparities, and so forth. Can you tell me a little bit about that conversation in Dallas and who was at the table? Well, that conversation was an important one. Obviously, Secretary Carson was there.

The attorney general Barr was there. Scott Turner, Geron, my colleague, and several local pastors, local business leaders, and police chiefs were there as well. And I think it was a great opportunity for the president to continue to listen. This president has, like many CEOs around this country and many business owners around this country, I've had to take a pause and say after the death of George Floyd, let's have a conversation about how do we make America better and how do we listen to each other? and find ways of commonality to do what America does best, which is in the face of crisis,

we innovate and we pull together and we come up with American solutions that are unique to us and unique to the liberties that we hold so close to our heart. And he had a meeting with, before Dallas, he had a meeting with myself and the several key African-American leaders, just like many CEOs are doing. A lot of CEOs around this country have had to pause and talk to. African-American staff and their entire staffs and say, you know, here's the values of our company. Let's make sure we're reflecting the values of everyone here and make sure that we're addressing any needs that can help us be a better place to work. And I got to thank the president

for being, like most of these CEOs, being a good boss, and we had a chance to talk personally in the Oval Office with our staff, you know, no cameras, just to have a hard-to-heart talk about what we see of the challenges because many of us, you know, we're Americans, but we're also fathers. We're also sons and daughters. And I really appreciate the president as being our leader and the CEO of our government and our country is giving us a chance to reflect on that. And I appreciated that. And out of that, we saw Dallas. Dallas was him extending that same courtesy to leaders around the faith-based community and the business community to share their stories and to share their hopes for a way forward. And this president has been consistent. His response

to these trials is always going to be based on. less find solutions. And he put together the groundwork after listening, the framework for which you eventually saw, the executive order is the action president. He's going to listen to the problem. But after he hears what the problem is, he's going to say, who is with me to move forward to fix it?

And the folks that trust him stood up to the plate. And it was the law enforcement officers. It was the faith-based community, It was a small business community. It was the housing advocates, and everybody said, look, we need a policy in place. They can let the American people know that we don't have to pick sides. But there's only one side.

There's a side of America. And America is as great an idea that it was at its founding. It's never going to be perfect. But what every generation is called to do is to seek perfection in our best and truest way, with our hearts and with our faith. And we're doing that right now, as you see this country, begin to come together around solutions. You've been working closely with the president for the past several weeks.

I want to ask you, how is President Trump doing right now as he's facing really such a historic time in history, still trying to deal with aspects of the coronavirus pandemic and yet now also address police reform and racial tensions? Well, he's a special man called her the special time. No doubt about it. Every president has had very unique challenges. But this president is, I think, ideally suited to deliver solutions. I think anyone, the matter if you agree with them or not, you can look at this record and say, you know what, despite how the challenges may be, he has found a way of leading by coalition. This is the president that reformed criminal justice with a bipartisan record, bipartisan votes.

The president of reformed NAFTA and brought U.S.MCA to bring jobs back home with large bipartisan support. This is the president that found funding for historically black colleges and did it with large bipartisan support. He passed the CARES Act, one and two and three, and is bringing our economy back with large bipartisan support. In crisis, this country, both sides, as much despite the rhetoric, they turned to President Trump to make a deal happen. that can lead this country forward, and he's not let us down. Every single time he's been challenged, we see results. Despite everything and all the negative about what's going on with the pandemic, time and time again, he's led a bipartisan effort to deliver and to keep this economy going.

The reason we saw 2.5 million jobs created the other week during that month was because the president led the way with the payroll protection plan to make sure that we saved American jobs, millions of American jobs, and we're starting to see those jobs return now. And that's what this president's about. It's despite, you know, the crisis and the news that you may see, this president sees through the fog, through the moment, and is surrounded by the heat of history, knowing that what will matter at the end of the day is what did he do during these challenges?

What would the solutions he offered and he was able to execute? And I think it's hard to be hard pressed to not look at his record and say he delivers and he knows how to put together a coalition of good ideas, American value-based ideas that are good for our economy and good for the safety of our communities. Mr. Bell, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate you joining the podcast. No, thank you for your time. Appreciate you having. Talk to you soon. And that will do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. We appreciate your patience as we record remotely during these weeks.

Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify. And please leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts. and give us your feedback. Stay healthy and we will be back with you all on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.