With help from Brakkton Booker, Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala, Jesse Naranjo, Jesús Rodríguez and Teresa Wiltz

What’s up, Recasters! I’m filling in for Brakkton today, and we’ve got a lot to unpack. The Jan. 6 committee refers four criminal charges against Donald Trump to the DOJ, the Supreme Court delays the lifting of Title 42 and lawmakers avoid a government shutdown with a massive spending bill. But today, we’re talking reparations. Let’s get into it. 

Cities and states frustrated with Congress’ lack of action on reparations are taking matters into their own hands.

California is taking the lead with an active reparations task force. In New York state, a group of lawmakers are forming a coalition to push for a reparations bill. Separate reparations measures are being discussed or passed in at least five cities across the country, including St. Louis and Boston.

Such simultaneous efforts on reparations for Black Americans “break new ground” in our history, said Ediberto Román, a law professor at Florida International University and an early pioneer of reparations discussion.

“The only other example I can think of is Special Field Orders No. 15 — 40 acres and a mule, which was immediately overturned by President Johnson after Lincoln's assassination,” he said.

Román is, of course, referring to Gen. William T. Sherman's order. Back in 1865, at the urging of prominent Black ministers, Sherman set aside 400,000 acres of confiscated Confederate land for newly freed Black Americans. But the order — the first attempt at reparations for the formerly enslaved — was rescinded and Black families were evicted from the land, leaving many with just one choice: to work as sharecroppers for former slaveholders.

Today’s reparations initiatives at the state and local level are similar to H.R 40, first introduced 33 years ago, which calls for a congressional commission to research the issue. It’s stalled in Congress, despite President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to “study how reparations” may be part of “major actions to address systemic racism.”

Creating a commission is the first step toward legislating a comprehensive reparations measure, experts say. To date, the only federal reparations success story is the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that addressed Japanese internment during WWII, which first gained momentum when the Japanese American community started pushing for a congressional commission in 1978.

California has taken that first step with its nine-member task force established in June 2021. It has since launched an investigation into the state’s long history of systemic racism, published an extensive report and put a tentative pricetag on addressing housing discrimination at $569 billion, or $223,200 for each eligible Californian who descended from enslaved Africans.

One of these case studies laid out in the 485-page report is the Fillmore District in San Francisco, a once-thriving Black neighborhood nicknamed “the Harlem of the West” for its music venues that hosted jazz shows of the giants such as Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. In 1956, the city government demolished Fillmore after declaring it “blighted.” The blitz of “urban renewal” displaced 4,729 households, destroyed 2,500 homes and closed 883 businesses. The city left the vacated lots idle for many years, without pursuing new housing developments or compensating many of the former residents.

The story of Fillmore is not an aberration, the report argues. It fits into a national pattern of federal, state and local governments actively engineering racial segregation and economic disadvantages targeting Black Americans up until the 1970s — through redlining practices that shut out homeownership from Black residents and interstates running straight through vibrant Black neighborhoods.

Local politicians in St. Louis, Boston, Providence, R.I., and Asheville, N.C., are carrying the torch handed over by the likes of Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb and Florida state Sen. Randolph Bracy, who pushed for a reparations measure in 2019 that failed to gain enough momentum. In 2021, Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb, became the first U.S. city to pass a reparations measure, providing $25,000 to direct descendant of its Black residents who faced the consequences of the city’s discriminatory housing policies between 1919 and 1969.

“After George Floyd, we’ve reached a point in which we come together and acknowledge that the lives of Black Americans are equally as important,” said New York State Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, who is leading the reparations efforts in the state. “We all now have the opportunity to reflect and say, ‘Hey, let’s address those wrongs. Let’s invest in Black citizens and get them back on an even playing field.’”

One of the most contentious topics for California’s reparation task force is the question of eligibility: Who should qualify? Some believe all Black Californians, even those from an immigrant background, are eligible because their national origin does not exempt them from discrimination. Others prefer limiting the remedy to direct descendants of those enslaved in the U.S., arguing that such non-racial criteria could be better defended in courts.

Data backs up that distinction, according to Jovan Lewis, a UC Berkeley professor and reparations task force member. A breakdown of data often shows Black citizens with Caribbean or African immigrant backgrounds have a clear advantage over Black people whose ancestry is traceable to American slavery. In fact, the median household wealth for naturalized Black citizens in Los Angeles is $72,000; for U.S-born African Americans, it’s $4,000.

“While it is appropriate to recognize the broad impacts of anti-Blackness, in dealing with reparations, we have to give particular consideration to the community [that was] discriminated, disenfranchised, marginalized and, in many ways, exploited,” Lewis said.

As always, we’ll be watching to see how this all plays out.

All the best,
The Recast Team

Power dynamics are changing. With The Recast, you'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy.

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THE INTERVIEW

Black Americans and Puerto Ricans share a history of oppression, racism and exclusion. The former suffers from the vestiges of slavery and systemic discrimination; the latter, as a territory of the U.S., still lives under a quasi- colonial government. (It should be noted that Puerto Rico, like most of Latin America, has its own troubled history of slavery as well.) The ongoing reparations debate for African Americans would be a “stepping stone” for future Puerto Rican reparations and decolonization, said Román, a U.S.-born Puerto Rican and an author of “Reparations and the Colonial Dilemma.”

In the 1900s, the Supreme Court decided the constitutional and political status of the residents of the nation’s new colonial possessions: Today, that means Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa.

In a series of decisions known as the Insular Cases, the Court decided that the rights spelled out in the Constitution do not necessarily apply everywhere the United States plants its flag. In April, the Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens, and other residents of U.S. territories, don’t have a constitutional right to some federal benefits. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress — which does not have a voting representative serving the island — dictates the rights and government benefits Puerto Ricans receive.

POLITICO’s Minho Kim talked to Román on how future discussions on Puerto Rico reparations could play out.

THE RECAST: Why do Puerto Rican people deserve reparations?

ROMÁN: Puerto Ricans are still financially inferior, in terms of every government largesse — including Social Security and Medicare. Those are hundreds of billions of dollars over a nearly century. The median household income in Puerto Rico is less than half of that of Mississippi, the state with the lowest figure. However, [to solve the recent debt crisis] Puerto Rico is under austerity measures, instead of economic stimulus.

More tangible one is the bombing of Vieques, a U.S. military base. Imagine [an area right next to] your home gets bombed every morning with plutonium-tip bomb. That was the reality in parts of Puerto Rico until recently. In the 1950s, the U.S. policy to address the Puerto Rican economic crisis was forced sterilization of the women in Puerto Rico.

Recently with Hurricane Maria, nearly 3,000 people died as the U.S. failed to provide assistance. That would be just intolerable in the U.S. mainland. With respect to Hurricane Katrina, there were congressional committees and government oversight, but none with Puerto Rico.

[Editor’s note: There have been congressional hearings in the last couple of years, including last month, under Democratic control probing the federal government response in Puerto Rico to Hurricane Maria. But some would say that hasn't gone far enough.]

And this is what the Supreme Court said over 100 years ago: that [Puerto Ricans] are “foreign in a domestic sense.” Democratic and Republican presidents have repeatedly made the reference, “our friends in Puerto Rico.” But they are not friends. They are American citizens.

THE RECAST: Last week, the House passed a bill that would enable Puerto Ricans to decide its own political status. How could such non-financial measures function as reparations?

ROMÁN: I think of Puerto Rico reparations as allowing people to have sovereignty, to decide and to have a binding referendum that the United States commits to follow. If the people decide on statehood, for instance, then the United States should accept that vote. My reparations proposal is to first follow the people’s will, then the [recognition] that the wrongs have occurred and, finally, the remedies.

One of the most effective reparations measures in history was what Britain did in Trinidad and Tobago. In the letters of agreement was a financial commitment to assist the transition from a colonial state to an independent country. It was binding for the former colonial ruler to provide [support] for Tobago’s people to pursue their self-determination both in terms of economy and governance.

If people don’t want independence, then that's a real question. What would be the remedial measures that level the floor? The guiding principle should nevertheless be equality and the commitment to support Puerto Ricans in light of failed U.S. programs.

ICYMI @ POLITICO

The Trust Gap — Joanne Kenen and Elaine Batchlor investigate distrust in health care systems among Black communities for POLITICO Magazine, taking evidence from legacies of “organ theft,” the Tuskegee experiment and sub-par care among other discriminatory practices.

SCOTUS Hits Pauseon Title 42 Ending — Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday temporarily stayed a lower court’s ruling that required the policy to be lifted by Wednesday. The pandemic-era restriction has prevented millions of migrants from entering the U.S. during the Trump and Biden administrations. POLITICO’s Myah Ward and Josh Gerstein have more.

Party Season — POLITICO’s Meridith McGraw reports on the glitz and glamor of the Log Cabin Republicans’ 45th anniversary party. The conservative LGBTQ organization’s event was ironically timed, happening just days after the Respect for Marriage Act was signed into law by Biden.

THE RECAST RECOMMENDS

CBS airs a Christmas-themed Mariah Carey special tonight at 8 p.m., filmed at Madison Square Garden. It’s timely viewing, as “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has reached the top spot in the charts once again.

“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” chronicles a Mexican journalist’s journey from his home in Los Angeles to his native country, posing existential questions. It’s streaming now on Netflix.

Mohsin Hamid’s “The Last White Man,” Yiyun Li’s “The Book of Goose,” Hernan Diaz’s “Trust” and more must-reads appear on the New Yorker’s essential books of 2022.

Spend a busy 24 hours with Pretty Little Liars actor Shay Mitchell.

Your late-night Christmas Day viewing is sorted with the finale of Ziwe Fumudoh’s eponymous variety show airing 11 p.m. Sunday.

PinkPantheress drops a new EP and a visual for “Do you miss me?” that melds with the track’s delicate, warm vocals. “I wanted to give a Christmas gift for anyone in need of some upbeat music,”said the artist.

Kendrick Lamar brings in Helen Mirren as his therapist in his new video for “Count Me Out.”

TikTok of the Day: Meet Rihanna’s baby