The president expressed concern about the possible consequences of the trial during a private meeting last week with members of the Black Caucus in Congress, people familiar with the session said. For weeks, it has also been a point of concern in talks with Vice President Kamala Harris, aides say, even as the White House faces a cascading wave of mass shootings in America.
As he begins his fourth month in office, Biden presides over a leading country, as protests in several cities over the weekend highlighted the new urgency of a national calculation on racial justice and police reform.
The White House is preparing a week in advance, which could be particularly volatile, with a Thursday funeral for Daunte Wright (another Minnesota man killed by a police officer) along with new revelations of a 13-year shooting involved by the police. -old boy in Chicago, as well as the verdict of the Chauvin trial.
The reason for the events, along with almost daily episodes of major shootings across the country, have only increased pressure on both the president and Congress for police to account for misconduct, a challenge that is unfolding in the context. of the new calls for arms legislation.
The administration’s goal, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, is to ensure “a space for peaceful protest” while acknowledging the community’s “pain, trauma and exhaustion.” black, citing both the trial and other violence, including Wright’s shooting last week.
“After today’s final arguments, they will return with a verdict and we will not advance these deliberations,” Psaki said. “Broadly speaking, we are in contact with mayors, governors and local authorities.”
He did not say if there are ongoing preparations regarding the use of the National Guard, but said there have been “several talks on how to ensure that, regardless of the outcome, there is room for peaceful protest.”
In the short term, the White House is closely tracking events in Minneapolis and beyond this week and is gearing up for a variety of scenarios in one of the most prominent cases of police brutality in the last three decades. Biden is not expected to leave Washington this week, but aides say he will monitor developments and is likely to address the outcome of the trial.
“The pulpit is more than a pulpit,” said Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who is the most African-American member of Congress. “I think the president can help set a tone in the country. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
Preparations underway
Talks between White House, Minnesota authorities and leaders of civil rights organizations were underway when proceedings began in late March. Officials believe that the launch of contingencies can help prevent the emergence of footsteps in the event of violence erupting in cities across the country.
According to officials, the president has been involved in some of the talks and has seen part of the coverage of the trial that has dominated daily television. Biden spoke with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, last week to help gauge sentiment on the ground, officials said, and the White House has been in contact with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
“This was already a spider box,” said a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the thought inside the West Wing. “Every day it becomes more volatile.”
Biden’s aides have already begun studying and drafting statements for the president to deliver, either in writing or in person, once the verdict has been handed down, according to people familiar with the matter. Harris has also been involved in conversations with national black leaders.
“We certainly want to make sure the American people demand justice; we all want to know that these calls are being met,” Harris said in an interview with The Grio. “And we need to be aware of all that when these calls to justice are not met, people rightly express their right of first amendment to demonstrate, to come together and express their concern, their pain, their disappointment, as long as it is peaceful protests. “
In his meeting with black lawmakers last week, Biden called Wright’s shooting a “terrible God” and acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding Chauvin’s verdict.
“Lord only knows what has happened based on whether or not there will be a verdict,” he said.
Biden neither wants to reproduce the heavily militarized response to former President Donald Trump’s protests nor appear absent in the face of violence or riots directed at law enforcement, an official said. He also believes he must directly recognize the systemic racism that pervades criminal justice in the United States, advisers say.
Clyburn, who has often come to Biden’s defense amid criticism from those who have questioned his long history of career and police, said he believes the president is best placed to lead this deep national crisis.
“He doesn’t have enough credit for sensitivity in that area,” Clyburn said.
“It’s in our hands”
Biden’s two predecessors in the Oval Office faced off across the country after incidents of police violence, but faced them in drastically different ways.
Biden will also address the situation from a different perspective than that of President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president to walk a very thin loose rope on race and police issues, and Trump, who was reflexively pro -police and whom Biden criticized as a source of violence.
Biden offered a preview of how he would handle these situations as a candidate last summer by focusing on families and demanding justice. And when he was vice president, Biden was called to act as a mediator during Obama’s “beer summit” with Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer who had detained Gates on his own porch.
But the view is different for an incumbent president.
The decision to run for a commission was made after “close collaboration” with the civil rights community, including the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. , as well as conversations with civil rights leaders and police unions. , said a source familiar with the administration’s efforts.
Civil rights organizations, according to the source, shared with the administration that they did not want a commission because it would take months to set up and produce a report. There was also concern that it would probably be a duplication of Obama-Trump-era commissions.
Still, the deep division over police reforms in the United States has proved annoying and has put many Democrats in a difficult position. The leadership of Biden and Harris will be closely monitored.
Last year, Republicans tried to call Democrats support for divesting police budgets, which is a view only a small minority within the party has. Still, the attack is already re-emerging as an initial issue for the 2022 midterm elections, as Republicans seek to gain control of the House and Senate, even against Democrats who have repeatedly spoken out. against the cry of protest to “waste the police.”
“We need to have police,” Clyburn said.
For now, the president faces the burden of trying to calm a troubled nation and do what he can to deal with rising racial tensions. But Clyburn said the responsibility cannot lie solely with Biden.
“As it ends this is not all in their hands,” Clyburn said. “It’s in all our hands.”