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The Biden Agenda

Biden vows to heal the

nation’s racial wounds, but
doing so will take more than
words
Scholars warn that the president-elect faces a tough road as he tries to
address police reform and racism in an increasingly divided nation.

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A police officer recovers an American flag on Aug. 24 during riots over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in
Kenosha, Wis. (Joshua Lott for The Washington Post)

By Tim Craig, Mark Berman and Amy B

Wang
JANUARY 11, 2021

   

For nearly two years, President-

elect Joe Biden has sold himself to
American voters as the man best
able to heal a nation sundered by
racism and partisan distrust. He has
vowed to rein in police abuse,
reform criminal sentencing and
inject fresh resources into low-
income communities battered by
inequality.

But accomplishing these goals,

never easy, has been made
immeasurably more difficult by last
week’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, a
stark display of White anger and
violence. With liberals demanding
bold action on issues of race and
inequality and moderates urging
caution, Biden will have to navigate
sharp divisions in his own party, as
well as the gulf between Democrats
and the Republicans who retain
control of half the seats in the
Senate.

Beyond politics, the cultural

challenges facing Biden are
unprecedented in modern times,
scholars and political analysts say.
In addition to intense debates about
policing, his administration will
confront the growing threat of
armed, far-right extremist groups
and a national discourse
increasingly marked by racial
rancor. To be successful, they say,
Biden must find words and policies
that can address decades of unequal
treatment without provoking a
backlash in the large swaths of the
nation that did not vote for him.
Supporters of President Trump storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington
Post)

“What Joe Biden is inheriting is the

legacy of the cultural wars that
began in the 1960s but still beset
the country today,” said Leonard
Steinhorn, a professor of
communication and an affiliate
professor of history at American
University. “And Joe Biden didn’t
run as a policy candidate, he ran as
cultural candidate — as someone
who could restore the soul of the
country. … The question is: How
does he do that?”

The nation’s divisions over racial

equity, criminal justice and policing
are likely to be among the most
fraught domestic issues facing
Biden and Vice President-elect
Kamala D. Harris, the first woman
and first person of color to hold the
job.

Over the past year, after the killing

of George Floyd, Americans
watched as Black Lives Matter
turned into one of the largest
protest movements in U.S. history.
The country’s reckoning on racism
and police violence rippled through
corporate boardrooms, school
curriculums, sports and seemingly
every facet of American life.

Although Floyd’s death at the hands

of Minneapolis police in May
appeared to many to be a watershed
moment that might lead to lasting
change in policing, it was followed
by several other high-profile
incidents of Black Americans being
killed or seriously wounded by
police, including Jacob Blake in
Kenosha, Wis., and Walter Wallace
Jr. in Philadelphia. The crowds that
flooded the nation’s streets in
protest were often belittled by
President Trump, who called them
“thugs,” and many of his
supporters.
Thousands of peaceful protesters rise their fists and kneel near a memorial for George Floyd in
Minneapolis on June. 5. Floyd was killed while in police custody. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The past four years also saw a surge

in activity by white supremacists,
which Biden repeatedly stated was
one of the reasons he decided to
enter the presidential contest.
Groups on opposite sides of the
political and cultural spectra
continue to clash — sometimes
violently — at rallies and protests.

Last week, in a stunning assault on

democracy, a group of Trump’s
most fervent supporters stormed
Congress as lawmakers were
certifying Biden’s victory. Biden
immediately condemned the rioters
who forced their way inside the
Capitol as “insurrectionists,
domestic terrorists,” a sign that his
administration will take seriously
the threat posed by homegrown
extremists.

The next day, Biden introduced U.S.

appellate judge Merrick B. Garland
as his nominee for attorney general.
Garland said the chaos at the
Capitol made clear that “the rule of
law is … the very foundation of our
democracy.” And he pledged that, if
confirmed, his priorities will range
from "ensuring racial equity in our
justice system to meeting the
evolving threat of violent
extremism.”

Still, the sight of White rioters

breaching the Capitol and freely
roaming its marble halls raised
fresh questions about unequal
treatment by law enforcement
officials. When the Floyd protests
reached their peak in early June,
the airwaves filled with scenes of
police using significantly more force
against diverse crowds of
demonstrators lawfully gathered in
public streets.

At the time, scattered incidents of

violence and looting infuriated
conservatives and led to a
resurgence of the “Back the Blue”
movement. Hobbled by Trump’s
sloppy handling of the coronavirus
pandemic, the president’s campaign
seized on the opportunity to shift
the message to law and order,
warning suburban voters that the
protesters — and their Democratic
supporters — threatened their
“American Dream.”

Initially, Biden struggled to

respond. When protesters started
demanding that cities “defund the
police” and shift government
resources to social programs,
Biden’s message was at times
unclear — although he
unequivocally condemned the
violence.

“No, I don’t support defunding the

police,” he told CBS News in June.
“I support conditioning federal aid
to police, based on whether or not
they meet certain basic standards of
decency and honorableness. And, in
fact, are able to demonstrate they
can protect the community and
everybody in the community.”

Biden also was firmly in the

moderate lane on several policy
fronts. Although he supported
ending capital punishment and
mandatory minimums in federal
sentencing, privately-run prison
contracts and cash bail, he opposed
other policies supported by some of
his Democratic rivals, including
allowing people to vote while
incarcerated. And Biden said he
favored letting states decide
whether to adopt “red-flag” laws,
which create a process for police or
family members to obtain court
orders temporarily restricting
access to guns by people who pose a
danger to themselves or others.

The Biden Agenda

Explore other justice-related stories

Overview Policing

It will take more than words Biden, lo

to ‘heal’ racial wounds will urge

Biden has proposed ramping up

Justice Department investigations
of police departments accused of a
“pattern or practice” of abuse,
which can lead to court-ordered
reform agreements called consent
decrees. The Justice Department
opened more than two dozen such
investigations under the Obama
administration, but quickly
abandoned them under Trump.

A comprehensive criminal justice

plan Biden released in July also
called for ending the disparity in
federal sentencing for crimes
involving powder and crack cocaine,
decriminalizing marijuana and
shifting government resources from
incarceration to crime prevention.
A woman prays beside a police car in the rain on 16th Street in Washington on June 7. (Evelyn Hockstein
for The Washington Post)

Since winning the election, Biden

has avoided speaking in detail about
criminal justice reform. In a Dec. 8
call with leaders from seven civil
rights groups, he questioned
whether an immediate “push” on
police reform would disadvantage
Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff,
the two Democrats then seeking to
oust Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler
and David Perdue in a special
runoff election in Georgia.

“I also don’t think we should get too

far ahead of ourselves on dealing
with police reform in that, because
they’ve already labeled us as being
‘defund the police,’ ” Biden told the
civil rights leaders, according to
video of a Zoom meeting obtained
by the Intercept. “That’s how they
beat the living hell out of us across
the country, saying that we’re
talking about defunding the police.”

Last week, Warnock and Ossoff

prevailed, handing Democrats
control of the Senate and vastly
expanding Biden’s options on a
range of legislative fronts. Unlike
his plans to contain the coronavirus
pandemic, however, Biden has not
specifically outlined his priorities
on criminal justice reform, beyond
creating a national police oversight
commission within his first 100
days. The Biden transition team
declined to comment, pointing to
his past speeches and statements.

Although the Fraternal Order of

Police and some other law
enforcement groups strongly
backed Trump during the
campaign, police officials now say
Biden is particularly well-
positioned to help bridge the divide
between law enforcement and
civilians pushing for change.
Biden’s long-standing ties with law
enforcement — including his work
on get-tough provisions of the 1994
crime bill, which made Biden
suspect in some corners of his party
— could help him advance the cause
of police reform, they said.
President Bill Clinton hugs Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden (Del.) after signing a $30
billion crime bill outside the White House in Washington on Sept. 13, 1994. (Dennis Cook/AP)

“President Obama had the respect

and support of the civil rights and
justice groups, but he didn’t have a
lot of support from the policing
profession,” said Terry
Cunningham, deputy executive
director of the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, who
has met with Biden transition
officials. “For Trump, it was the
reverse. … We think [Biden is]
uniquely positioned.”

Among the areas ripe for

compromise, according to law
enforcement officials, are improved
police hiring practices, greater
participation by local departments
in the FBI’s new database of fatal
police shootings and police use of
force, and nationwide certification
for police officers.

“The U.S. has the most

decentralized policing of any
country in the world,” said Jim
Pasco, executive director of the
Fraternal Order of Police. “There
are 18,000 police departments,
roughly, and nobody knows exactly
how many police officers there are."

Improving interactions between

police and the communities they
serve would go a long way toward
easing racial tension, political
observers say. However, doing so
would require Biden to clear some
significant hurdles in a country
increasingly splintered along lines
of education, religion and class.

Steinhorn, who has studied the

1960s extensively, said the job that
awaits Biden exceeds even the
challenges that faced presidents
John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson, who were tasked with
“changing discriminatory laws” to
comply with federal court decisions
to give African Americans equal
rights. Black Americans today, he
said, are looking to Biden “to root
out systemic racism” from
government agencies, private
enterprise and other institutions —
a much more difficult job.

[Biden’s Obama-era Cabinet picks

frustrate liberals, civil rights
leaders]

“What we are facing now is

institutional and systematic racial
bigotry that is sort of woven into the
very cloth of so many institutions
whether it’s the financial industry,
whether it’s the housing industry,
whether its educational systems,
and certainly in policing,” Steinhorn
said.

“And those are much harder to

articulate than when you see Bull
Connor there with his German
shepherds and fire hoses or when
you see people being completely
denied the right to vote because
they can’t guess the exact number of
jelly beans in a jar,” Steinhorn said,
referring to the infamous public
safety commissioner in
Birmingham, Ala., who opposed
civil rights for Black citizens and
one of the many Jim Crow era
schemes used to keep them from
voting.

[Biden’s agenda may rest on

centrist Republicans — and the
return of a bygone Senate era]

The rise of far-right extremist

groups, some of which are openly
threatening to take up arms against
the government, including on
Inauguration Day, further
complicates the challenge. Some
progressive activists are urging
Biden to designate groups such as
the Ku Klux Klan and the Proud
Boys as terrorists, although that
would require a change in federal
law.

Brian Levin, director of the Center

for the Study of Hate and
Extremism at California State
University in San Bernardino,
cautioned that a legislative debate
about the definition of domestic
terrorism could prompt resistance
from free-speech advocates and
others concerned about broad new
federal powers. Instead of getting
bogged down in that debate, Levin
said Biden should consider
empowering the Justice
Department to investigate far-right
 threats while investing in
prevention strategies.

Even that approach could be

hampered, Levin said, by the close
relationship between the
Republican Party and some
extremist groups. Many members of
the pro-Trump mob that stormed
the Capitol bore insignia of the
conspiratorial QAnon movement,
which has been embraced by at
least two incoming Republican
lawmakers.

Police officers speak to supporters of President Trump, including a man wearing a shirt referencing the
QAnon conspiracy theory, as they demonstrate on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol near the entrance to
the Senate after breaching security on Jan. 6. (Mike Theiler/Reuters)
Such an approach also risks stirring
a dangerous pot: Before he was
executed for killing 168 people in
the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma
City federal building, Timothy
McVeigh, a member of the far-right
militia movement, said he was
motivated by anger about the
Justice Department’s siege of the
Branch Davidian compound in
Waco, Tex., two years earlier.

Biden “has to thread the needle,”

Levin said, and make sure that
“conservative people of goodwill
and career public servants” are in
prominent positions in the Justice
Department and other law
enforcement agencies. In the Biden
administration, he said, “the
intelligence community has to be
viewed as nonpartisan."

Bob Dohnal, publisher of the

Wisconsin Conservative Digest and
a longtime GOP activist in the state,
said he doubts that many Trump
supporters will give Biden space to
attempt to unify the nation. He
compared today’s divisions to what
the country’s earliest leaders faced
when trying to chart a path after
British colonialism.
“Does a country ever really heal?”
Dohnal asked. “It’s got various
factions, and they are going to fight
for what they want.”

Many liberal activists are also

skeptical.

The Biden Agenda

Explore other topics in the series

Immigration Foreign

Kwame Osei Jr. is a founder of

Enough is Enough Fort Worth, a
group dedicated to fighting the far-
right extremists and promoting
racial justice. This summer, he and
other members of the group began
carrying semiautomatic rifles to
Black Lives Matter and anti-
Confederate demonstrations to
defend protesters from attack.

Osei said he and other activists will

judge Biden on his response to
groups such as the Ku Klux Klan
 and the Proud Boys, as well as his
ability to quickly boost funding for
social programs in low-income
urban communities.

Chanting "White lives matter," "You will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us," several hundred
white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches march in Charlottesville on Aug. 11, 2017,
during the Unite the Right Rally. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)

“We’ve got to keep our foot on the

gas and remain active … to keep
bringing our demands and
expectations to the forefront, and
let the Democratic Party know what
is at stake if they don’t fulfill for the
people who supported them,” Osei
said, adding that he doubts that
Black Americans will continue to
support Democratic candidates if
Biden governs as a moderate.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson

urged Biden to appoint a senior
adviser focused exclusively on racial
justice and police reform. The
adviser should report directly to
Biden and have the power to
communicate on his behalf across
all agencies of the government, he
said.

Johnson, who was on Biden’s Dec. 8

call with civil rights leaders, said the
president-elect needs to figure out
how to set a new “tone of inclusion”
while also being willing to push
back against conservatives should
they question his policies.

“He’s got to be able to address

people’s fears, but not allow fear
mongers to exploit those fears,”
Johnson said.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), who

represents Baltimore and has
known Biden since the 1980s, said
the president-elect understands
that tone and communication skills
alone will not be enough to move
the country beyond the racial
animosity of the Trump era.
Mfume, a former head of the
NAACP, said Biden has always
believed that policy and legislative
changes — even if they come
through compromise — are the
things that will define whether he
has been successful.

“This is not going to be a president

who says, ‘Okay, I am going into
office and I will do four years and
let history judge me afterward,' ”
Mfume said. “This is going to be a
president who goes into office and
then every six months is going to
look back and say, ‘What did I do?’
and ‘Did I make a difference?’

“And he may not be the panacea for

all the ills that trouble us,” Mfume
continued. “But at least with Joe
Biden, you feel like you have a
fighting chance.”
Vice President Joe Biden crosses the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., with civil rights leaders
and lawmakers, including Rep John Lewis (D-Ga.), on March 3, 2013. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Tom Jackman contributed to this

report.

The Biden agenda

President-elect prepares to reverse Trump administration policies with an ambitious Day One
to-do list
Updated Jan. 11, 2021

Immigration: Overview | Border wall | DACA | Enforcement | Travel ban | Asylum |

Refugees | Migrant caravans | Visas

Foreign policy: Overview | Russia and China | Iran nuclear deal | Venezuela and
Maduro | The ‘forever wars’ | Strained transatlantic ties | The North Korea threat | A
new Middle East

Health care: Overview and the pandemic | Affordable Care Act | Tackling
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inequalities | Opioids epidemic