Politics and Current
A year after Biden declared April “Second Chance Month,” have his criminal justice reform efforts lived up to the expectations of black voters?

Before the 2020 presidential election, then-candidate Joe Biden campaigned on “strengthening and reforming” the criminal justice system. Perhaps the most publicized step he has taken to this point was his proclamation last year declaring April 2023 Second Chance Month, an attempt to provide a second probability for formerly incarcerated people.
“I believe in redemption, but with the hundreds of thousands of Americans released each year from state and federal prisons, or the nearly 80 million people with arrest or conviction records, that is not always easy to achieve.” President Biden’s proclamation was read.
“Three-quarters of formerly incarcerated people remain unemployed one year after release, and unemployment is a leading predictor of recidivism,” the statement also said. “We don’t give people a real second chance.”

Broad reform is very crucial in the criminal justice system to address racial disparities. Data show African Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of white Americans. It is subsequently clear why, during the 2020 election season, Black voters expected elected officials to take lively steps to reform the criminal justice system and support decarceration.
In the first two years of Biden’s presidency, his criminal justice reform (and crime prevention) efforts have included: investing in community-led initiatives to reduce gun violence, appointing more Black and Latinx people as court judges federal and the appointment of 37 American lawyers, of whom 20 were black.
Many Black activists and other people who voted for Biden wanted to see more done to fulfill his campaign guarantees, so his administration’s support for last year’s Second Chance Month left many optimistic.
Now that Second Chance Month 2024 is upon us, let’s have a look back at what Biden’s initiative included and what impact it has – or hasn’t had – over the past year.
What is Second Chance Month and what has the Biden administration done?
While the White House has paid more attention to Second Chance Month in 2023, it is a movement that began with a national movement in 2017 led by the faith-based nonprofit Prison Fellowship (the initiative was recognized by the U.S. Senate this year). It goals to “raise awareness, break down barriers and unlock a second chance for the 1 in 3 people with a criminal record in America.”
Following the Biden administration’s declaration of Second Chance Month, a multi-year strategic plan for alternatives, rehabilitation and re-entry was released in late April. The plan is to “strengthen public safety by reducing unnecessary interactions between the criminal justice system so police officers can focus on fighting crime; supporting social rehabilitation while serving a prison sentence; and facilitating successful re-entry.” – we read in the statement.
Biden also participated in commuting the sentences of 31 Americans serving sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.
What has been the mood since then?
While last April’s efforts were hailed as a step in the right direction, the Biden administration has taken no motion toward making campaign guarantees for a progressive criminal justice system a reality, Vincent M. Southerland, faculty director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law, assured Atlanta Black Star.
Southerland noted that while the Biden administration has invested in mental health and community violence interventions, this has been achieved by allocating more resources to policing.
“History clearly shows that investments in law enforcement exacerbate inequities in the criminal justice system,” Southerland said. “This allows more people to have contact with police officers. This in turn leads to an increase in the number of people arrested, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned.”
A 2015 report from the nonprofit The Sentencing Project: “Black Lives Matter: Eliminating Racial Inequities in the Criminal Justice System”, outlines 4 key features of the criminal justice system that exacerbate underlying inequalities. One particularly found that criminal justice policies exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities by imposing additional consequences on individuals with criminal records and by diverting public spending.
Nearly a decade – and two presidencies later – the same problems with America’s criminal justice system remain.
“The slow pace is not surprising,” William J. Drummond, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s journalism school and writer of “Prison Truth: The Story of the San Quentin News,” told Atlanta Black Star. “Any policy changes have to go through a huge bureaucracy. Racial bias permeates the entire criminal justice system, at all levels. “Prison is a by-product of the inequalities that exist in society.”
Non-profit organization Prison Policy Initiativewho conducts research documenting the harms of mass criminalization, racial discrimination in housing, sentencing and policing, often explains why the data shows stark disparities in African American involvement in the justice system.
“Race and racial inequality are features, not bugs, of the criminal system,” Southerland added. “Executive action could reduce the influence of race on the application of criminal law. However, the diverse ways in which the criminal justice system works in practice mean that no single actor or arm of government can eliminate the racial harms caused by the system.
“Unfortunately, due in part to these dynamics, the Biden administration’s policies have failed to have an undue impact on the deep racial disparities that plague the criminal system.”
In fact, the Department of Justice under Biden has continued harmful past practices, including prosecuting the death penalty, contrary to then-candidate Biden’s campaign promise to end the federal death penalty.
Southerland added that if there’s one vibrant spot, it’s Attorney General Merrick Garland issuing a memorandum which, amongst other things, included guidelines for more proportionate sentencing and encouraged federal prosecutors to seek alternatives to imprisonment.
“These are steps in the right direction. Time will tell how rigorously these policy directives will be implemented.”
Election year politics
In February 2024, the White House stated that the United States was safer than before due to historic declines in crime. He attributed this to the three-part approach in his statement: “funding an effective and accountable police force; investing in intervention and prevention strategies; and keeping particularly dangerous weapons off our streets and out of dangerous hands.”
According to recent media reports, polls show former President Donald Trump gaining popularity amongst black voters on this year’s presidential election. Trump claimed the support was because Black people “embraced” his photo, knowing what it’s like to have criminal cases against them, something he himself experiences.
What more than likely represents the interests of Black voters when it comes to criminal justice reform this election season is printed in two recent polls: About 75 percent of Black voters imagine that mass incarceration causes many of the problems that lead to unsafe communities ; in addition they want federal and state governments to take motion on criminal justice reforms.
Politics and Current
HegeSeth directs 20% cut to the highest military managerial positions

The Secretary of Defense Pete HegeSeth on Monday ordered the military lively service to lose 20% of 4 -star general officers, when the Trump administration moves forward with deep cuts, which he thinks will promote performance, but critics that worry may cause more politicized strength.
HegeSeth also told the National Guard to lose 20% of his highest positions and recommend the military to reduce an extra 10% of his general and flagship officers of their forces, which can include one star or official with an equivalent rank of navy.
The cuts are at the top of over half a dozen of the best general officers that President Donald Trump or HegeSeth released from January, including the chairman of the joint heads of the staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr. They also released only two women serving as 4 -star officers, in addition to a disproportionate variety of other older officers.
In earlier rounds of shooting, HegeSth said that the eliminations were “a reflection of the president who wants the right people around him to perform the approach to national security that we want to take.”
As the head of the Pentagon, HegeSeth advertised his efforts to upload any programming or leadership, which support diversity in ranks, tried to end members of transgender services and commenced sweeping changes to implement a uniform fitness standard for the fight position.
In the note announcing the cuts on Monday, HegSeth said that they might remove “unnecessary forces to optimize and improve leadership.” He said that the goal was to free the army from “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. Marine, who served in Iraq and is now in the Armed Service Committee, said he perceived HegeSetha as trying to politicize the army.
“He creates a formal framework to slow down all generals who disagree with him – and president,” said Multon AP in Capitol.
He said that actually every organization can search for performance, but HegeSeth has been clearly clearly expressing its program. “He wrote a book about it. He wants to politicize the army,” said Multon. “So it’s hard to see these cuts in any other context.”
Multon warned against the fall of the soldiers. “It is necessary for our soldiers to understand that they receive constitutional orders, not political orders,” he said, “otherwise you have no democracy, otherwise you have an army that works well for one or another political party.”
Adding to the confusion in the Pentagon, HegeSeth in recent weeks I actually have released or moved many close advisersstrongly narrowing his inner circle. He also handled questions from each Democrats and Republicans about coping with sensitive information and the use of applications for sending signal messages.
There are about 800 general officers in the army, but only 44 of them are 4 -star general or flag officials. The army has the largest variety of general officers, from 219, including eight 4 -star generals.

The variety of positions of the general officer in the army is set by law. Congress members didn’t receive a notification upfront, which they might normally receive in cuts, but in the afternoon they received a “very short warning”, according to a congress worker, which spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that weren’t made public.
The cuts were first reported by CNN.
The Pentagon is under pressure to reduce expenses and staff as a part of wider cuts of the federal government pushed by the Department of the Government of Trump and Ally Elon Musk.
HegeSeth last week ordered a sweeping transformation Army to “build a slim, more deadly force”, including connecting or closing the headquarters, shedding outdated vehicles and aircraft, cutting up to 1,000 employees of the headquarters in the Pentagon and transfer of staff to units in the field.
Also last week, the army confirmed that it could be Military Parade for Trump’s birthday In June, as a part of the celebration of the 250th birthday of the service. Officials say it would cost tens of tens of millions of dollars.
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Associated Press Writers Lisa Mascaro and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

(Tagstranslat) troops
Politics and Current
Metro Atlanta City of Decatur to start the compensation task group

The city of Decatur in Metro Atlanta unanimously approved the creation of a compensation task group.
According to Decatur City Commission adopted a resolution On May 5, the 11-person task group will publish a report in three years, including recommendations regarding policy for black city residents.
The message appears a yr after the city leaders signed a contract with Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights to “discover the heritage of racial damage” in Decatur. The alliance managed research work in the field of compensation, organizing community meetings and listening sessions about how racial injustice has financially and systematically hurt these residents.
Their research described the role of decatur in slavery and segregation, in addition to red and real estate against the black community. Decatur also showed many monuments of the confederation, especially one earlier in the court of Dekalb.
The city not only recognized its oppressive tactics towards its black inhabitants, but additionally apologized for the actions that suppressed their progress.
“The city of Decatur formally recognizes its earlier role in the systemic oppression of people of African origin through enslavement, trafficking in human beings, conviction, discriminatory zones and development, underestimation in African -American communities, school segregation, racist police operation, destruction of African American estate, business and institutions and erosion and erosion and erosion and erosion, population, population population, population, population, population, population and culture – we read in resolution.
The city goals to designate 11 members, with the help of Beacon Hill Black Alliance, in the next 60 days. They will bring a various specialist knowledge group, and members consist of historians, legal experts and youth supporters. Over the next three years, the Task group will develop records regarding the loss of black land and real estate, being attentive to economic resettlement, while interviewing the descendants of those to which these oppressive tactics affected.
City officials added: “The city is expanding the full and public apology to the black residents of Decatur – Past and Present – and their descendants for its role in consolidating discrimination, pressure, subordination and the resulting damage, drawing on the principles rooted in the white supremacy system.”
The Compensation Task Group may even propose the commemorative projects sponsored by the city, economic tools and other investment strategies and community initiatives to treatment its racist past. This move will happen from other communities, even in the Atlanta Metro, which introduced initiatives regarding the repair of black residents. In the neighboring Fulton, his task group will resume the meeting this yr.
While the plan appears amongst the domestic shuffle of anti-dei attributable to the Trump administration, local leaders remain involved in the same efforts of the judiciary that began before taking office by Trump.
(Tagstranslate) compensation Task group
Politics and Current
Social media reacts to a series of funny faces of George W. Bush during the inauguration of Trump, when Barack Obama jokes that “he could barely behave

Former President Barack Obama jokingly told the reporter that former President George W. Bush “barely” behaved during the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Monday.
When there have been presidents and other noteworthy VIP guests waited for the USA ceremony to sit in the US Capitol, a member of the staff asked 78-year-old Bush if he “behaved” and 63-year-old Obama at the back to answer on behalf of Bush with “No”.

A brief, viral clip shows briefly looking around the Capitol and smiling at the members of the audience during the inauguration, which the viewers considered funny.
When Obama left the American Capitol Rotunda after the ceremony, the same post reporter quickly asked Obama if Bush behaved and Obama replied: “barely” during a smile.
The viewers had a day in the field with many Bush faces. One person joked: “Bro was beyond his mind”
The secular behavior of former presidents was, unlike incorrect boos imposed on Obama by Trump’s supporters watching the ceremony from the rally at the Capital One Arena in the center of Washington. Bill and Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Trump Mike Pence was also not spared heavy Boos.
The first lady Michelle Obama was noticeably missing amongst the chosen group of former residents of the White House, who confirmed that she wouldn’t participate on the days before the inauguration.
About her absence, unidentified source he said People: “There is no exaggeration of her feelings about (Trump). She is not one of the plasters on a pleasant face and she pretended that the Michelle protocol does nothing, because she is expected, protocol or its tradition.”
The source said that Michelle “no longer feels the need to be public” and added that the verbal attacks of Trump on Obama and his offensive rhetoric addressed to colourful people could even be a factor wherein she decided to skip.
In addition to Michelle, every living former president and the first lady was present, including former President Joe Biden and his wife Dr. Jill Biden, George W. Bush and Laura Bush, in addition to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s swearing in the US Capitol for the first time in 40 years, the presidential inauguration took place, ignoring the customary configuration outside the Capitol, wherein 1000’s normally observe from the national shopping mall.
Officials stated that the polar vortex, which brought dangerously low temperatures to the part of the eastern coast, was the most important reason why the ceremony was moved inside.
The last time the inauguration was moved in the room, when former President Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his second term in 1985.
(Tagstranslate) Barack Obama
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