Washington
CNN
—
President Joe Biden continues his political legacy in his final months in office, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act at the White House on Thursday.
Highlighting the landmark legislation he championed as a United States senator, the president will celebrate the legislation on the South Lawn of the White House with nearly 1,000 survivors, advocates, former employees and allies. be the host The Biden administration is also implementing new measures to combat gender-based violence to coincide with the law’s anniversary, administration officials said.
In a press release Thursday, the president praised the “enormous progress” made over the past 30 years thanks to the legislation and emphasized how the measure has reduced the stigma around domestic violence.
“Back then, society at large turned a blind eye, denied cries for help, or blamed the victims. That was wrong,” Biden wrote in an op-ed Thursday. “I have long believed that ending violence against women requires a major cultural shift—one that brings this hidden disease out of the shadows.”
The push comes as Biden has abandoned his bid for a second term in the White House after Biden entered a unique phase of his presidency. While most of the candidates are on the campaign trail, the president is looking for ways to strengthen important legacies from his time in foreign and domestic affairs.
The Violence Against Women Act, which Biden helped write and first introduced in 1990, is one of the most personally significant measures he has taken in his five-decade-long political career. . The president has long called it his proudest legislative achievement because it extended historic protections and support to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault for the first time.
“He did that, and he brought him out of the shadows,” said former Sen. Barbara Boxer, who worked with Biden on legislation in the early 1990s. “In those years, violence against women, especially in marriages and relationships, was best kept secret. A woman would show up with a scar on her face. She would never say that her husband had done it. It was hardly considered a crime.”
“Joe was furious about it,” Boxer recalled in an interview with CNN. He said, ‘There is no such thing as domestic violence. It’s just violence. And we have to raise this issue.”
The president will revisit the issue on Thursday as he hosts a meeting ahead of the anniversary of the legislation’s signing on Friday. Survivors are expected to share personal testimonies to emphasize why the protections afforded by VAWA are important to those who have experienced abuse.
The Biden administration’s new efforts, which begin Thursday, include announcing $690 million in funding for the Department of Justice to support survivors of gender-based violence and the creation of an office on gender-based violence in the Department of Housing and Urban Development to Solve home problems. survived
The Justice Department is also announcing funding for the National Cybercrimes Against Persons Resource Center to combat “cyberstalking, non-consensual distribution of intimate images, and other forms of technology-facilitated abuse,” according to the White House. to help The agency is also announcing voluntary commitments from technology companies to combat image-based sexual harassment, including content created using artificial intelligence.
“The conversation now is about: How do we move forward? How do we face the next threat?” said Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who previously worked for Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We are now building on the history and legacy of the president’s work at the beginning of this conversation, in implementing this legislation, to encourage this change.”
Biden first introduced the Violence Against Women Act in 1990 as he sought to provide protections for survivors and change the conversation around the issue of domestic abuse.
“This bill has three broad, but simple, goals: to make roads safer for women; to make homes safer for women; and to protect women’s civil rights,” Biden said on the Senate floor in 1990.
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden held some of the first major hearings on domestic violence, in which female witnesses recounted their personal harrowing experiences with violent acts. As they sought to raise awareness of the issue, the Judiciary Committee staff read letters from women who had experienced violence from their partners and women’s shelters and the police department to gather information and Hear personal stories of reports of violence against women.
“It was really an effort to change attitudes and raise awareness to change the conversation about this problem,” said Monaco, who was a junior employee at the time. “It was really about shining a light on a problem, an injustice, and showing what the law doesn’t address and why it needs to change.”
Boxer worked closely with Biden on legislation while she served in the House and later the Senate. In an interview with CNN, she recalled a moment where Biden joined a group of female lawmakers to discuss legislation but let women lead it.
“What Joe Biden has shown over the years is how much he respects women and how much he wants to move us forward,” Boxer said. “He had a feeling in his heart that he wanted to get women out, and he didn’t want to step on us. He wanted to work with us.”
Biden later moved to include VAWA as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994. But it also imposed tougher sentencing laws and provided incentives for states to enforce minimum mandatory standards—parts that many now argue contributed to the era of mass incarceration.
But VAWA provisions changed the protections and supports offered to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. It created a national domestic violence hotline that has fielded more than 7 million calls since 1996. The law provides funding for rape crisis centers, women’s shelters and survivor assistance programs while promoting initiatives to train law enforcement, defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges. Gender-based violence.
With each bill passed, Biden and supporters of the measure have worked to expand its coverage to include those who have experienced historical violence and to include people of any sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as immigrants and Increased support services for communities of color.
The law, which requires reauthorization every five years, has experienced some battles on Capitol Hill. The law expired in 2019 under former President Donald Trump, making it a top priority for Biden as he enters the White House.
“He was really focused on making sure that it was actually reauthorized, that we did it with bipartisan support,” said Jennifer Klein, director of the Gender Policy Council at the White House. “And that we did what had been done three times before, which was to make sure that the law was not only strengthened, expanded, but that every issue that came up was taken into account.”
In 2022, the law was re-enacted and included new protections for LGBTQ+ survivors and individuals in tribal communities and rural areas. It also created new safeguards to prevent online harassment and abuse. Efforts to close the so-called “boyfriend loophole” were scrapped as part of the reauthorization and later included in the bipartisan gun safety legislation passed later that year.
The president has long said that his commitment to the prevention of violence against women is tied to the values instilled by his family.
“My father used to say that the greatest sin anyone could commit was abuse of power, and the greatest sin was for a man to raise his hand to a woman or a child. That’s what this law always does.” is about: abuse of power,” Biden said in 2022.
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