In the US, who gets compensated when the government wrongs them?

6/19/202610 min

It's Juneteenth – the holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S.

The team at NPR's Code Switch team has been looking at a question tied to this day: Who actually gets compensated when the government wrongs them?

NPR's Gene Demby joins host Ailsa Chang to discuss that question -- and how the Trump administration's 'anti-weaponization fund' is connected to it.

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This episode was produced by Erika Ryan and Karen Zamora.

It was edited by Courtney Stein, Ashley Brown and Tinbete Ermyas.

Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning.

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Clips

First 90 seconds

Mary Louise Kelly· Host0:00
It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, who in America gets compensated when the government wrongs them? Well, if you ask President Trump, he would say...
Donald Trump· Soundbite0:13
People have des- have been destroyed by crooked politicians, and they should be reimbursed for that.
Mary Louise Kelly· Host0:20
Here he is speaking with NBC's Kristen Welker earlier this month. He's talking about the nearly $1.8 billion fund that was going to reimburse people who claim they were targets of politicized prosecutions, including people who stormed the US Capitol on January 6th. The DOJ now says it is not moving forward with the fund, but Trump personally hasn't ruled it out.
Donald Trump· Soundbite0:44
Well, it's, look, if it was up to me, I'd pay them the kind of money that they deserve.
Mary Louise Kelly· Host0:51
Money that they deserve. By contrast, we'll note that while the Trump administration was pushing this anti-weaponization fund, a bill to study slavery reparations has failed to advance for decades. Consider this: Not every group that's been harmed by the government gets compensated. So who counts? [gentle music] From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.
Speaker 31:23
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