While stepping away from my role is bittersweet, I do so with great confidence in the department and in the extraordinary network of partners who help make this work possible. McSpadden thanked Lurie for his leadership and partnership, expressing confidence in his ability to support the department through the transition and in the work ahead.
Even though some White House policies are popular, policy is but one leg of the three-legged stool of political leadership. Rhetoric also matters. So, too, does implementation, especially at the executive level. Without its full complement of limbs, this three-legged stool is prone to tip over and shatter. Communication about public policy is as important as the public policy itself, Jeffrey Brauer, a political scientist at Keystone College, near Scranton, Pennsylvania, told me.
A newly formed Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery will administer reparations in the state of California after Gavin Newsom just approved that bureau's creation, but there's still no word on what the reparations will look like. The City and County of San Francisco discussed the idea of reparations for Black residents for a while in 2023, which drew negative national headlines for the fact that they discussed $5 million lump sum payments for descendants of slaves.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has handed its formal guidance to Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities as well as the education secretary, who must now decide whether to accept it. One EHRC source said that while the decision-making on the guidance was restricted to a small group of people around the group's outgoing chair, Kishwer Falkner, the expectation was that it would closely reflect interim advice released by the watchdog in April.