The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden Rolls Out Limited Racial Equity Actions, Says More To Come

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

President Biden signed new executive actions today attempting to address racial inequity. For activists, these initiatives feel like they are lacking and do not tackle critical concerns like policing. The administration says this is just the beginning. This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Casey from Oslo, Norway. I'm about to take my dog, Fish, out on our afternoon walk. This podcast was recorded at 210 Eastern on Tuesday, January 26th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but it will most likely still be wet and cold over here. Enjoy the show. Is his dog's name Fish? That's what I heard.

That's fun I heard. That's fun. Yes. And we got a little snow over this way. So it's been kind of wet and snowy over here. Speaking of dogs, we haven't addressed it in the podcast yet. Joe Biden's two dogs moved to the White House over the weekend. So they are also going out in the cold here in D.C. Hey there.

It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent. So today is the latest in a series of executive actions being rolled out and signed by President Biden. Today, he is focusing on racial equity. In a tweet this morning, Biden said, quote, America has never lived up to its founding promise of equality for all. And today he's taking action, as he put it, to push us closer

to that more perfect union. Ayesha, let's start with what was in the orders that Biden signed today. Yeah, so basically what President Biden was doing today, he directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to advance fair housing laws. It seems like what Biden is trying to do is bring back some Obama era policies protecting against discrimination. He's also going to direct the attorney general not to renew contracts for privately run prisons. So this is a part of kind of the criminal justice piece of this. He's also committing to respect tribal sovereignty. And also the other, the last piece of this is fighting the rise in harassment and violence against Asian Americans, especially in wake of

the coronavirus pandemic and some of the language and rhetoric used by the prior administration regarding that. So I'm really, really curious what both of you think about this, because both of you cover different aspects of these stories and have for a while, you know, the White House clearly rolled these out with the goals of headlines that they are taking big steps on something they've said is a big priority. But what do you both make of the substance of what Biden has signed here? Is this a big deal or not really as big of a deal? It seems to me this is more of a symbolic action than anything else. There are two areas in particular that do require a change, but the change would be restoring a policy from the

Obama years. The first is this fair housing issue and a return to disparate impact, which allows people to prove discrimination, even if they don't have evidence of intent, they can do it through data and other means. And the other thing was the closure or the phasing out of contracts with private prisons, which they describe as a clear move because the inspector general of the Justice Department in 2016 found evidence that private prisons are a little bit less safe than ones run by the federal government. And so those are both things that we saw the Obama years do, but President Trump, former President Trump, promptly overruled or changed those policies. And I suppose the next president could change them right back. And that's the thing,

you know, the thing about the private prisons piece, you know, I talked to an activist yesterday and one concern that was raised was that this rule or this direction will only apply to the Department of Justice. It will not apply to the Department of Homeland Security, which runs detention centers like those that the public saw during. And this wasn't just during the Trump administration, but obviously you had family separation. You saw people staying in these crowded detention centers. There were all these reports about abuses and things happening at certain detention centers. And so that is not going to be addressed. I think we will be hearing more from activists raising that concern that this only applies to the Department of Justice. You know, while these executive orders, these four executive orders may have been a little

bit more about symbolism and messaging than about prompt and direct action, I will point out that civil rights advocates across the board have had a ton of praise for some of President Biden's nominees for top jobs. That includes people like Vanita Gupta to be the Associate Attorney General and Kristen Clark, another civil rights advocate to lead the Civil Rights Division at Justice. But it also includes people who are not Senate confirmed. There are people like Katherine Lehman, who led the Commission on Civil Rights before she went into the White House to be a deputy working on domestic policy. And longtime civil rights before she went into the White House to be a deputy working on domestic policy. And longtime civil rights lawyers like Sasha Sandberg-Champion, who's now at HUD, and Sam Bagenstoss from the University of Michigan, who's now the top lawyer at the Office of Management

and Budget. These are not naturally places where you'd see veterans of the Justice Department civil rights community, but the Biden administration has named really civil rights experts to a lot of these jobs, which may mean that we're going to see more action and more important action down the road. We're going to talk more about the possible future policies that we'll be looking for after the break. But before we get there, just going back to the private prisons, Aisha, this is something that obviously a lot of advocates have been calling for for a long time. But I was looking at the language about not renewing contracts rather than outright canceling contracts. How quickly could some of these prisons start to shut down or no longer take federal inmates if they're waiting for contracts to come up?

Well, that's the other part of this that makes it not something that's going to be immediate, because it's basically saying that these contracts have to expire first and then they just won't renew them. Now, I'm sure if you talk to government policy people, what they may say is, because you have a contract, you can't just end it immediately. There are terms of the contract. Maybe the government would have to pay or the other contract holders could sue. I'm sure Kerry could speak to that more. But that means that this isn't something that is going to happen immediately that, you know, this could be years in the making. And unless you put this, unless this is codified by Congress, you know, this is something that is

passed in the law, it could be something that continues to be this, what is it, a football, a table tennis, a ping pong, going back and forth between Republican and Democratic administrations, which happens on certain policies. That means that it doesn't have the long-term impact that it might. Yeah, I remember sitting in the Justice Department in a beautiful conference room in 2016 as then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates rolled out her policy to end contracts with private prisons, and then the election happened, and that didn't happen. So, you know, elections have consequences, and executive orders can be overturned with the stroke of a pen. Right. All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we will look down the

road a little bit and talk about some of the policies that were not in today's orders, but the Biden administration has flagged that they will address in the near future. We are still in the middle of this pandemic. And right now, having science news you can trust from variants to vaccines is essential. NPR Shortwave has your back. About 10 minutes every weekday, listen and subscribe to Shortwave, the daily science podcast from NPR. And we're back. And today, Susan Rice took the lead in rolling these policies out. She is known as the former National Security Advisor during the Obama administration. In the Biden administration, she's going to be focusing on domestic policy. She's now the director of the Domestic Policy

Council. And she came well armed for some of the pushback that we were talking about in the first part of this podcast, that some of the details here were not exactly sweeping reforms. She was making the point, this is the seventh day of the Biden administration. I think you've seen that we have rolled out an unprecedented number of early executive actions. And as you've heard Jen say, and many of my colleagues say, this is just the beginning. We have fourteen hundred and fifty four more days left in President Biden's first term. And so give us a little something to do over the next few days. Obviously, they are going to be facing a lot of pressure because they, you know, have this administration has been touted for being experienced having you know that they are going to hit the ground running and so they're they're going to have their feet held to the fire on that

but they're trying to make the point look this is early days we have a lot more time and a lot more things that the administration can do i do you know i will point out that the nominee for Attorney General Merrick Garland has not been confirmed yet, but there was some expectation that today that you might see more action on policing and things of that nature. And what Susan Rice seemed to be signaling is to basically stay tuned, that some more action, including on policing, will be coming in the coming weeks. And it's not action on policing, but actually, as we were talking just now, I'm just seeing that President Biden is speaking, and he announced another step that the administration is rescinding the Trump administration's 1776 commission report. This is something that came out in the final days of the Trump administration and boiled down to a criticism of any sort of understanding of U.S. history that points out that the U.S. has had some flaws, namely even addressing the fact that slavery was a massive

part of the early days of this country. So Biden said, unity and healing must begin with understanding and truth, not ignorance and lies. So obviously more steps to come. Carrie, on the area of criminal justice, what are the top policies that you've heard kind of signal that they might take place? And what are you going to be keeping an eye on? Yeah, some of these things, Scott, could happen relatively quickly and via executive action. Things like the new attorney general or DOJ leadership telling prosecutors, you no longer need to seek the most serious charges against somebody that you can prove. You can use some discretion. So it's to reduce the number of people who go to prison in the first place and how long they have to spend there.

Things like trying to limit the defense department program that provides military style equipment to local police departments, part of this trend of militarization of police that has gotten activists so upset and enraged in recent years. And then things that are, you know, certainly top of mind in the COVID-19 pandemic, like making sure that elderly people who no longer pose as big a threat to society can leave prison early. Scott, to my view, some of the most significant things Biden has pledged, including some of the stuff on policing, would require potentially congressional input. That means reducing disparities in sentences for drug crimes. That means getting rid of other so-called mandatory minimum sentences for people convicted of a whole bunch of different stuff. And there is a group

called the Council on Criminal Justice that is advocating for policing changes, things like reducing the number of no-knock warrants that are granted, or making sure that police understand, in some cases, that they have a duty to intervene when they see another officer engaging in abuse or excessive force, kind of a national standard of force for police. Those are all things really near the top of the civil rights advocate community's bucket list. And Biden has not taken action on those. There's been some talk, but not yet concrete steps. And there was also this pledge that President Biden said, or candidate Biden

said, that after everything happened with George Floyd and all the protests, that he would set up a commission on policing. There has been some concern about that because there was a commission on policing during the Obama administration. So there's a sense of, does the government actually need another commission to do some of those things that Kerry was talking about? I think activists are saying they feel like the government knows what needs to be done and that it doesn't really need to be studied at this point. But that is something that he pledged to do. And I would expect because he made a pledge that will happen in, you know, coming weeks and months that there will be a commission set up to look at some of those issues.

All right, that is a wrap for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. We're planning on focusing on the Biden administration's new climate policies tomorrow. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.