President Joe Biden on Tuesday will sign a series of executive orders that are intended to advance racial equity, including action to phase out the federal use of private prisons.
Mr. Biden is expected to sign four orders in the afternoon, administration officials said. He will also deliver remarks on the need to address inequities in the country’s social and economic systems.
“America has never lived up to its founding promise of equality for all, but we’ve never stopped trying,” the president tweeted Tuesday morning. “Today, I’ll take action to advance racial equity and push us closer to that more perfect union we’ve always strived to be.”
Senior administration officials said Mr. Biden will sign a mandate directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to examine housing policies that disproportionately impact people of colour. And he will take action to end the Justice Department’s use of private prisons in a return to an Obama-era policy. Another action calls on the federal government to consult with Native American and Alaska Native tribes as it develops policy.
He will also issue a presidential memorandum disavowing racism and xenophobia that will be directed at Asian Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic, officials said.
Mr. Biden will call on the Justice Department to bolster its prevention of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Since taking office last week, Mr. Biden has signed a flurry of executive actions that range from steps to tackle the coronavirus to reinstating Obama-era initiatives such as U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Accord.
Mr. Biden also rescinded some of former President Donald Trump’s policies, including a ban on travel to the U.S. for residents of several Muslim-majority and other countries, and Mr. Biden revoked a permit approved by the Trump administration for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Mr. Biden’s initial moves have also signaled an immediate shift away from the Trump administration’s approach to issues of race.
On his first day in office, Mr. Biden revoked an order signed by Mr. Trump barring agencies and federal contractors from engaging in diversity and inclusion training that explored systemic racism and privilege. Mr. Biden also dissolved the 1776 commission, a panel stood up by Mr. Trump that called for a “patriotic education” and critiqued efforts by some schools to bolster their curriculum around the legacy of slavery.
Addressing racial inequities became a prominent theme of Mr. Biden’s campaign following the killing of George Floyd by police officers and subsequent protests across the country.
On Tuesday, administration officials said, Mr. Biden will order his attorney general not to renew Justice Department contracts with privately operated prisons and detention facilities. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department in 2016 announced a similar plan to phase out the use of private prisons, saying those facilities had more safety and security problems than those run by the U.S. government.
Mr. Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, reversed that policy, saying the Federal Bureau of Prisons needed to be able to contract with private companies to meet its future needs, as he enacted policies that led to longer sentences for some defendants.
Mr. Biden’s decision to reverse the Trump administration’s move likely affects a small percentage of the nation’s prisoners—most are held in state prison systems—but could signal a broader effort to get states to follow suit.
The federal prison population—now roughly 152,000 inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons—has fallen sharply due to a number of factors, mainly the coronavirus pandemic that has led to early releases, home confinement and deaths of hundreds of inmates. About 14,000 inmates are held in privately managed facilities.
The Biden administration is also examining a number of policies related to policing. Officials are reviewing the use of a program that supplied grenade-launchers, high-caliber weapons, armored vehicles and other surplus U.S. military gear to local departments, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Obama administration had set limits on the program in 2015, amid an outcry over the police response to protests after police killings of Black men in Ferguson, Mo., and other cities.
Mr. Sessions restored departments’ ability to obtain the equipment, drawing praise from police groups. Biden officials are again considering limiting access to the gear, the person said, over the objections of some law-enforcement organizations.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL