Tag: private

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Business

Left within the Lurch by Personal Loans From For-Revenue Faculties

Left in the Lurch by Private Loans From For-Profit Colleges

Ms. Clarke remembers college staff giving her instructions on how to get a loan direct from school during the enrollment process. Colleges sometimes encourage students to sign up for loans without the students realizing what they are taking out.

“It’s really helpful to think of this as an important part of the marketing process, as well as a student loan,” said Mike Pierce, policy director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on student debt.

Unlike Ms. Clarke’s federal loans, which didn’t accrue interest until after graduation, her Lincoln Tech loan required payments when she started class, and the interest accumulated while she was still in school. Lincoln Tech administrators projected an attitude of “We’re going to get our money, and we’re going to be in debt, and they’re going to have to pay us back,” Ms. Clarke said. “I just feel like a money pit.”

Peter Tahinos, senior vice president of marketing at Lincoln Educational Services, said in an email that he was unable to comment on individual students but added that staff “provide guidance on the best ways to fund their education.” Lincoln charges 7 percent interest on its loans. Students can choose to start making payments immediately, with interest accruing immediately or after leaving school.

Some colleges increase the burden by introducing high interest rates. In contrast to federal loans, which currently have an interest rate of 2.75 percent for undergraduate borrowers, loans direct from schools can far exceed this. A 2020 report by the Student Borrower Protection Center revealed interest rates of up to 19 percent on loans offered by some schools.

The examination of this practice is still low at both state and federal level. A survey of 75 agencies in all 50 states – including college regulators, attorneys-general, and finance or banking departments – by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit educational news organization, found that few places tracked information about school loans. In fact, in the vast majority of states, college authors do not require colleges to report plans for such programs.

The Universal Technical Institute, a publicly held chain of 12 locations in eight states, told investors in its 2020 annual report: “Changes in law or public order could adversely affect the profitability of our proprietary loan program and cause us to end the program delay or suspend. ”

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Politics

Schumer and a Academics’ Union Boss Safe Billions for Non-public Colleges

Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Boss Secure Billions for Private Schools

WASHINGTON – Tucked into the $ 1.9 trillion pandemic bailout bill is a surprise coming from a Democratic Congress and a president who has long been considered an advocate of public education – nearly $ 3 billion for Private schools.

More surprising is who got it there: Senator Chuck Schumer from New York, the majority leader whose loyalty to his constituents deviated from his party’s wishes, and Randi Weingarten, the leader of one of the most powerful teachers’ unions in the country, who recognized that the Federal government was committed to helping all schools recover from the pandemic, including those who do not accept their group.

The deal, which came after Mr Schumer lobbied for the powerful Orthodox Jewish community in New York City, angered other Democratic leaders and public school attorneys who have beaten back years of efforts by the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans to get federal funds to private individuals forward schools, including in the last two coronavirus relief bills.

The Democrats had struggled against pressure from President Donald J. Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to use pandemic relief laws to support private schools just to do it themselves.

And the offer to private schools came about even after House Democrats specifically tried to cut those funds by capping coronavirus aid to private education to about $ 200 million in the bill. Mr. Schumer struck home in the eleventh hour and staked $ 2.75 billion – about twelve times more funds than the house had allowed.

“We never expected Senate Democrats to proactively choose to push us straight down the slippery slope of private school funding,” said Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director at AASA, the School Superintendents Association, one of the groups sending letters to Congress wrote to protest the carving -from. “The floodgates are open and now, with the support of both parties, why shouldn’t private schools charge more federal money?”

Mr Schumer’s move led to significant conflict between the parties behind the scenes as Congress prepared to pass one of the most critical public education funding bills in modern history. Senator Patty Murray, the chairwoman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, reportedly was so unhappy that she advocated a last-minute language in which money would go to “non-public schools that have a significant percentage enrolled is, “stated that low-income students are those most affected by the qualifying emergency. “

“I’m proud of what the American bailout plan will bring to our students and schools, and in this case I’m glad the Democrats have better focused those resources on students who have been most harmed by the pandemic,” Ms. Murray said in one Explanation .

Jewish leaders in New York have long sought help for their sectarian schools, but resistance in the house led them to turn to Mr. Schumer, said Nathan J. Diament, the executive director of public order for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America . who claimed that public schools had nothing to complain about.

“It’s still that 10 percent of American students are in closed schools and are just as affected by the crisis as the other 90 percent, but we’re getting a much lower percentage overall,” he said, adding, “We, I am very much grateful for what Senator Schumer did. “

Mr. Schumer has been pressured by a number of executives in New York’s private school ecosystem, including the Catholic Church.

In a statement to Jewish Insider, Mr. Schumer said: “With this fund, private schools like Yeshivas and others can receive support and services that cover Covid-related costs that they incur without taking money away from public schools. They offer their students a high quality high quality education. “

The amount of total education funding – more than double the school funds allocated in the last two aid laws combined – played a role in the concession that private schools should continue to receive billions in aid. The $ 125 billion funding for K-12 education requires districts to set aside percentages of funds to correct learning losses, invest in summer school and other programs to help students avoid educational disabilities during the pandemic can recover.

The law also targets long-underserved students, allocating $ 3 billion to special education programs under the Disability Awareness Act and $ 800 million to identifying and assisting homeless students.

“Make no mistake, this bill provides generous funding for public schools,” a spokesman for Mr Schumer said in a statement. “But there are also many private schools that serve a large percentage of low-income and disadvantaged students who also need help from the Covid crisis.”

Proponents of the move argue that it was just a continuation of the same amount given to private schools – which also had access to the state’s small business aid program at the start of the pandemic – in a total package of $ 2.3 trillion passed in December had. However, critics noted that the Republicans controlled the Senate and the Democrats had signaled that they wanted to go in a different direction. They also claim that Mr Schumer’s decision was at the expense of public education, as the version of the bill that originally passed the House allocated about $ 3 billion more to elementary and secondary schools.

Mr Schumer’s move surprised his Democratic colleagues, according to several people familiar with considerations, and spurred aggressive efforts by interest groups to reverse it. The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union and a powerful ally of the Biden government, objected to the White House, according to several people familiar with the organization’s efforts.

In a letter to lawmakers, the association’s director of government affairs wrote that, while he applauded the bill, “We wouldn’t be sure if we didn’t express our deep disappointment with the Betsy raising $ 2.75 billion for private schools DeVos era through the Senate – despite multiple opportunities and funding that were previously made available to private schools. “

Among the Democrats unhappy with Mr Schumer’s reversal was California spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, who told him she preferred the provision that the Democrats secured in the house version, according to people familiar with their conversation. They also said that House Education Committee representative Robert C. Scott was “very upset” with both the content and process of the revision of Mr. Schumer and that his staff said he was “offended”.

Ms. Weingarten was an integral part of the influence of the Democrats, especially Ms. Pelosi, as several people said. Ms. Weingarten repeated in the speaker’s office what she said to Mr. Schumer when he made his decision: not only would she not fight the determination, but it was also the right thing to do.

Last year, Ms. Weingarten led calls to reject Ms. DeVos’s order to force public school districts to increase the amount of federal funding they share with private schools beyond what is required by law to help them recover.

At that time, private schools were going out of business every day, especially small schools that looked after mostly low-income students, and private schools were the only ones still trying to keep their doors open for face-to-face learning during the pandemic.

But Ms. Weingarten said Ms. DeVos’ guidance “donates more money to private schools and undercuts aid to the students who need it most” because the funding could have helped wealthy students.

This time Mrs. Weingarten changed her melody.

In an interview, she defended her support for the determination, saying it was different from previous efforts to fund private schools that she protested under the Trump administration, which aimed to carve out a larger percentage of the funding and promote it the private sector to use school fee vouchers. The new law also has more protective measures, such as requiring it to be spent on poor students and stipulating that private schools will not be reimbursed.

“The non-wealthy children who are in parish schools, their families have no funds and they went through Covid the same way public school children did,” Ms. Weingarten said.

“All of our children need to survive and recover from Covid, and it would be a ‘Shonda’ if we did not provide the emotional and non-religious support that all of our children need now and after this emergency,” she said and used a Yiddish word for shame.

Mr. Diament compared Mr. Schumer’s decision to Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s move more than a decade ago to include private schools in emergency funding when they served students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Mr Diament said he did not expect private schools to see this as a precedent for finding other forms of funding.

“In emergency situations, whether it’s a hurricane, an earthquake or a global pandemic, these are situations where we all need to be part of it,” he said. “These are exceptional situations and that’s how they should be treated.”

Categories
Health

Biden administration faucets personal firms, enterprise teams for assist in Covid struggle

Biden administration taps private companies, business groups for help in Covid fight

United States President Joe Biden speaks about the 50 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine administered in the United States during a landmark event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC on February 25, 2021.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

On Friday, White House officials will unveil a new partnership between the administration and senior business groups to help with the national Covid-19 response and vaccine roll out, said Andy Slavitt, White House Senior Advisor on Covid Response, known.

The partnership includes the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and executives at Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American and other minority companies, Slavitt said.

The purpose of the partnership, a White House official told CNBC, is to urge businesses of all sizes to “promote public health actions to remove barriers to vaccination for employees and public health reporting related to masking.” and to improve vaccinations for their clients and communities. “The New York Times previously reported on the partnership.

Outside of the partnership, Walgreens and Uber are starting a pilot program to offer pharmacies free rides to get the Covid-19 vaccine. Other companies like Dollar General, Best Buy, and Target have announced that they will provide paid time off to compensate their employees for the vaccine.

Slavitt added that Lyft is partnering with CVS and the YMCA has also teamed up to offer 60 million free or discounted trips to help people get vaccinated. And Ford and The Gap have vowed to donate more than 100 million masks for free distribution.

“I wouldn’t portray these as a federal effort,” Slavitt said. “I would portray this as efforts by organizations across the country that we encourage others to take stock of in some cases.”

The White House, with its new business partners, will push more companies to do the same, Slavitt said.

Slavitt said administrative officials would be making calls to corporate groups over the next few weeks asking them to help with the federal response to the pandemic. He said the White House will urge them to oblige staff to follow public health precautions and educate the public about the importance of vaccination.

“First, masking and social distancing must be required to protect workers, customers, and others on the premises,” Slavitt said. Second, reduce barriers to vaccination. Make a plan to vaccinate employees and make it easier for employees to vaccinate by providing incentives such as paid time off or compensation for employees who get vaccinated when they attend Row are. “

Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, said “no American is safe from COVID-19 until all Americans are safe,” said a statement. The group represents more than 12 million employees and 130,000 companies. “Manufacturers are proud to join the Biden administration in this call to arms.” He said the group and its members are determined to help end the pandemic.

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Health

She Beat Most cancers at 10. Now She’ll Be a part of SpaceX’s First Personal Journey to Orbit.

She Beat Cancer at 10. Now She'll Join SpaceX's First Private Trip to Orbit.

Hayley Arceneaux, 29, had hoped this would be the year she would achieve her goal of visiting all seven continents before she turned 30.

However, she won’t have time for it.

She goes into space.

Ms. Arceneaux, a medical assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, will be one of four people on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off from Florida. It’s slated to launch later this year and be the first crewed mission to orbit Earth where no one on board is a professional astronaut.

“I asked, ‘Will I get a passport stamp to go into space?'” Ms. Arceneaux said. “But I don’t think I’ll do it. So I’ll just draw a star and the moon in one of my passports. “

This adventure is led by Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old billionaire who announced in January that he had bought the rocket launch from SpaceX, the space company founded by Elon Musk. Mr. Isaacman said at the time that he wanted the mission to be more than an outing for the super rich and that he had given St. Jude two of the four available spots.

One of them will go to a random winner of a sweepstakes competition to raise money for the hospital, which treats children for free and develops cures for childhood cancer and other diseases.

The other seat, Isaacman said, is occupied by a front line health worker in St. Jude, someone who symbolizes hope.

On Monday, St. Jude and Mr. Isaacman officials announced that Ms. Arceneaux was the person they had selected.

Ms. Arceneaux could be the youngest American to ever travel to orbit. She will also be the first person to go into space with a prosthetic body. She was a patient in St. Jude nearly 20 years ago, and metal bars replaced parts of the bones in her left leg as part of her treatment for bone cancer.

In the past, this would have kept her firmly on the ground and would not have been able to meet NASA’s strict medical standards for astronauts. But the advent of privately funded space travel has opened the final frontier to some people who were previously excluded.

Dr. Michael D. Neel, the orthopedic surgeon who installed Ms. Arceneaux’s prosthesis, says that while artificial leg bones mean she can’t practice contact sports on Earth, they shouldn’t limit her on this SpaceX trek.

“It shows us that the sky is not the limit,” said Dr. Neel. “It’s Heaven and Beyond. I think that’s the real point of it all, that it has very few restrictions on what you can do. Unless you’re playing soccer up there. “

Ms. Arceneaux said she hoped to inspire patients at St. Jude.

“You will be able to see a cancer survivor in space, especially one who went through the same thing as you,” she said. “It will help you visualize your future.”

Richard C. Shadyac Jr., president of ALSAC, the St. Jude fundraising organization, said of Ms. Arceneaux, “If anyone was a symbol of hope, it was Hayley.”

Mrs. Arceneaux herself did not find out until early January that she would take a seat on the rocket. Hospital officials had vaguely told her there was an opportunity they wanted to talk to her about. She said she thought “maybe it would be a commercial or maybe give a speech somewhere.”

Instead, it was an opportunity to become an astronaut.

“I even kind of laughed,” said Ms. Arceneaux. “I thought: what? Yes. Yes, please, that would be great. “She added,” Let me talk to my mom. “

Her mother had no objection.

Ms. Arceneaux first stepped on St. Jude in 2002. She was 10 years old. She had earned her black belt in taekwondo shortly before, but complained of pain in her leg. Her mother saw a lump sticking out over her left knee. The pediatrician in the small town of St. Francisville, La., Where they lived not far from Baton Rouge, told them it was a cancerous tumor.

“We have all fallen apart,” said Mrs. Arceneaux. “I remember being so scared because by the age of 10 everyone I knew with cancer had died.”

In St. Jude, doctors gave the good news that the cancer had not spread to other parts of the body. Ms. Arceneaux had chemotherapy, prosthetic leg surgery, and long sessions of physical therapy.

Already at this young age, bald from chemotherapy, Ms. Arceneaux was helping with fundraising for St. Jude. The next year she was recognized by Louisiana Public Broadcasting with one of its Young Heroes Awards.

“When I grow up, I want to be a nurse in St. Jude,” she said in a video shown at the 2003 ceremony. “I want to be a mentor to patients. When they walk in I’ll say, “I had this when I was little and I’m fine.”

Last year Ms. Arceneaux was hired by St. Jude. She works with children with leukemia and lymphoma, such as a teenager she recently spoke to.

“I informed him that I had also lost my hair,” said Ms. Arceneaux. I said to him, ‘You can ask me anything. I am a former patient. I will tell you the truth, everything you want to know. ‘And he said,’ Are you really going to tell me the truth? ‘ And I said yes. “

His burning question: “Are you the one who goes into space?”

Mrs. Arceneaux had to evade. “I said, ‘Well, we’ll see who gets announced.'” She said. “But I think he knew because then he and his father said,” Yes! “and fifty.”

Ms. Arceneaux and Mr. Isaacman visited SpaceX’s California headquarters three times to meet with engineers and plan the trip. Unlike the missions SpaceX flies for NASA, it won’t go to the International Space Station, but will orbit the earth for three or four days before splashing off the coast of Florida.

“She has an adventurous spirit,” said Isaacman of Ms. Arceneaux. “And now she’s allowed to travel to the stars, which is pretty cool.”

It will be a few more weeks before they know who their companions will be.

The St. Jude Sweepstakes, featured in a television commercial that aired during the Super Bowl two weeks ago, will run until the end of the month. Around $ 9.5 million has been raised to date. That appears to be way below the $ 100 million Isaacman himself pledged for St. Jude, or the overall goal of $ 200 million. But Mr. Isaacman and Mr. Shadyac said the fundraiser was going beyond the sweepstakes and that they were happy with the progress.

“This is going to be a campaign that will last until launch,” said Shadyac.

The competition is structured in such a way that the amount of donations is effectively limited. Entry is free. A minimum donation of $ 10 buys 100 entries, and each additional dollar donated buys 10 additional entries, up to $ 1,000 for 10,000 entries.

There were some more expensive options that are now sold out. For example, Mr. Isaacman will give a donor who has donated $ 100,000 a ride on the Russian-built MiG-29 jet fighter he owns. The donor will also be given a trip to watch the launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But that donor still only has 10,000 entries in the contest, just like someone who donated $ 1,000.

Mr. Isaacman said this was a deliberate choice to prevent a wealthy person from trying to win the grand prize of a trip to space by buying millions of items.

“Will it represent everyone on earth and not just rich whites?” Mr. Isaacman said.

The fourth SpaceX seat goes to the winner of a competition sponsored by Shift4, Isaacman’s company, that sells terminals and point of sale systems for credit card processing to restaurants and other businesses. The “Shark Tank” -like competition calls on entrepreneurs to design an online shop with the Shift4 software and then publish a video on Twitter describing their business.

As of last week, fewer than 100 people had submitted full entries. “It means that once you’ve created and entered a Shift4 store, your chances are pretty amazing,” said Isaacman.

Categories
Business

Biden Strikes to Finish Justice Contracts with Personal Prisons

Biden Moves to End Justice Contracts with Private Prisons

WASHINGTON – President Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday to terminate the Department of Justice’s contracts with private prisons and step up government enforcement of a law to combat discrimination in the housing market. This is part of the new government’s continued focus on racial justice.

Mr Biden also signed orders making it a federal government policy to “condemn and denounce” discrimination and relations between Americans from Asia and the Pacific, who have been harassed from China to the US since the coronavirus pandemic spread US to strengthen government and Indian tribes.

The steps are incremental parts of Mr Biden’s broader pursuit of racial justice – an initiative that is expected to be a centerpiece of his administration, and that follows an ordinance last week instructing federal agencies to review policies to combat systemic racism. Government efforts are led by Susan E. Rice, who heads the Home Affairs Council.

“I don’t promise we can end it tomorrow, but I promise you we will keep making progress to eradicate systemic racism,” Biden said before signing the orders. He added that “every branch of the White House and federal government will be part of this effort”.

The orders are an escalating rejection of President Donald J. Trump’s policies and attitudes toward racial relations. In separate executive orders, Mr Biden last week lifted a Trump administration’s ban on diversity training in federal agencies and disbanded a Trump-created historical commission that issued a report aimed at promoting the nation’s founders who were slave-owners to give a more positive effect.

On a conference call with reporters, a senior White House official described the Trump administration’s “hideous” Muslim ban, saying that certain minority groups had been treated with “a profound level of disrespect for political leaders and the White House.”

During a press conference on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki accused the Trump administration of exacerbating racial inequalities over health. “The previous administration’s actions to destroy the Affordable Care Act in every way did not help any American, and it certainly did not help the color communities,” she said.

During the same briefing, Ms. Rice made it clear that the administration was moving in a new direction, highlighting these differences rather than ignoring them – and that appointing a woman of color to oversee the initiative was part of that approach.

“Americans of color are infected and are more likely to die from Covid,” she said, noting that “40 percent of black-owned businesses were forced too close forever during the Covid crisis.”

A descendant of immigrants from Jamaica, Ms. Rice called herself the living embodiment of the American dream and stated that “investing in equity is good for economic growth” and “creates jobs for all Americans”.

The new Washington

Updated

Jan. 26, 2021, 8:40 p.m. ET

One of the orders signed on Tuesday called on the Justice Department not to renew contracts with private prisons and reverted to policies first adopted in the Obama administration when Mr Biden was Vice President and which Mr Trump reversed.

The order does not end all government contracts with private prisons – administrative officials confirmed it would not apply to other agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement that are contracting private companies to detain thousands of undocumented immigrants.

“There is broad consensus that our current system of mass detention places significant costs and hardships on our society and our communities and does not make us safer,” the regulation says. “To reduce incarceration rates, we need to reduce for-profit incarceration incentives by phasing out the federal government’s dependence on privately operated prisons.”

The Housing Ordinance instructs the Department of Housing and Urban Development to tighten the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which aims to discriminate against home purchases. This includes asking the department to review the actions taken under Mr Trump that have sought to weaken some of that enforcement. Last year, as part of Trump’s attempted appeals to suburban white voters, the department rolled back an Obama-era program aimed at combating segregation in housing.

“This represents a clear change of direction that will get us back on track to comply with fair housing law,” said Julián Castro, who served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama. “It’s a very strong signal that it’s a new day when it comes to fair living and that HUD will be aggressive again. In some ways, this is the easy part, but it’s a powerful first step. “

Mr Castro said the housing division is still lagging behind in the number of staff needed to enforce fair housing law and that nonprofit groups across the country dealing with fair housing issues have federal funding and others Resources should be preserved. Given the fact that the action took place on the sixth day of the new administration, this is a “clear rejection of Trump’s scare tactics” about low-income apartments invading white suburbs.

Mr. Biden’s jail warrant was lauded by the American Federation of Government Employees Prison Officials Council, which represents 30,000 federal prison workers across the country, and groups working to reduce the mass incarceration of blacks and other Americans.

“Eliminating the use of for-profit prisons is only a first step,” said Holly Harris, executive director of Justice Action Network, a non-partisan criminal justice organization – but a move with implications beyond the low percentage of federal prisoners held in private prisons. “Everyone misses the fact that they are a major obstacle to reform because they give millions to elected officials who write our criminal law.”

Ms. Harris, who said she was a Republican, added that she “showed a little mercy to the Democratic government and welcomed this first step.”

Categories
Politics

Biden to order DOJ to finish non-public jail contracts as a part of racial fairness push

Biden to order DOJ to end private prison contracts as part of racial equity push

President Joe Biden signs an executive order for transgender people for military service in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, USA on January 25, 2021 when he meets with new Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Kevin Lemarque | Reuters

President Joe Biden will order his Justice Department on Tuesday not to renew his private prison contracts, one of several new planks on Biden’s broader agenda for racial justice.

Biden is ready to sign four more executive measures after submitting his press schedule to the White House at 2:00 p.m. CET according to his press schedule. Vice President Kamala Harris will also attend the event.

Actions are aimed at tackling discriminatory housing practices, reforming the prison system, respecting the sovereignty of tribal governments, and combating xenophobia against Asian Americans, especially in the face of the Covid pandemic.

The actions are just the latest in a comprehensive flex of the presidential powers in the first week. According to a preview from senior administrators, Biden will sign on Tuesday afternoon:

  • An executive order directing Biden’s attorney general not to renew DOJ contracts with privately operated penal institutions
  • A presidential memorandum directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate the impact of the Trump administration’s regulatory actions that “undermine fair housing policies and laws.” Based on this analysis, the memo also instructs the HUD to take steps to fully implement the requirements of the Fair Housing Act.
  • An executive order urging federal agencies to deal with tribal governments regularly and meaningfully
  • And an executive memorandum directing the Department of Health and Human Services and the Covid Health Equity Task Force to publish best practices in their Covid response efforts to promote “cultural literacy” and sensitivity towards Asian Americans and islanders in the Pacific to consider. The memo also instructs the DOJ to work with these communities to prevent hate crimes and harassment against them.

The President’s speech and signatures will be preceded by a press conference at 12:30 p.m., at which domestic affairs adviser Susan Rice is due to appear alongside the White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

“America never kept its basic promise of equality for all, but we never stopped trying,” Biden said Tuesday morning in a tweet from the president’s official Twitter account.

“Today I will take action to promote racial justice and bring us closer to the more perfect union we have always been looking for.”

The White House said in a separate tweet that the new measures will “promote racial justice and support communities of color and other underserved communities.”

Biden put questions of racial justice at the center of his winning campaign against former President Donald Trump. Shortly after he took office, Biden signed an executive order setting his government’s focus on social justice and repealing some of his predecessor’s policies.

In particular, the January 20 action overturned Trump’s September order to restrict federal entrepreneurs’ ability to deliver training on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Biden also ended the Trump administration’s “1776 Commission” which, in the final days of Trump’s tenure, produced a report that was extremely critical of progressive ideologies.

Biden’s command charged the Rice-headed Home Affairs Council with coordinating “efforts to embed principles, strategies, and approaches of justice throughout the federal government.”

“This includes efforts to remove and provide equal access to systemic barriers to opportunity and benefit, identify communities that have been underserved by the federal government, and develop strategies to advance equity for those communities,” it said in this regulation.

Biden is expected to return to the state dining room at 4:45 p.m. to speak about his government’s efforts to contain the Covid pandemic.