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Second-largest redlining settlement in history. The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that it came to an agreement with Trident Mortgage Co., owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, to resolve claims of redlining discrimination in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
In 2018, then-Reveal reporters Aaron Glantz and Emmanuel Martinez found that Trident and other mortgage companies owned by Buffett had directed their lending toward White borrowers and White neighborhoods, even in population centers where a majority of residents were people of color.
For example, in Philadelphia, Trident made 1,721 conventional home purchase loans in 2015 and 2016, with only 47 of them to African Americans and 42 to Latinos.
“As part of the agreement with the government, Trident will have to set aside $20 million to make loans in underserved neighborhoods,” the Associated Press writes.
Glantz and Martinez’s reporting was part of our coverage on modern-day redlining in America. Read it here.
A new chapter for the ATF. Steven Dettelbach was sworn in as the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives earlier this month. The agency has had temporary leadership for the last seven years, and he is “only the second ATF director to win Senate approval since confirmation was required in 2006,” Politico writes.
Dettelbach’s confirmation comes at a time when the number of people killed in mass shootings and gun homicides continues to rise. Guns are also the No. 1 weapon in domestic violence killings in the United States. We previously reported that the ATF, the chief federal agency for enforcing our nation’s gun laws, does not track the number of people prohibited from possessing firearms who then go on to kill their intimate partners. And no agents specialize in domestic violence.
The reauthorized Violence Against Women Act aims to expand the ATF’s reach by allowing the attorney general to deputize local and state law enforcement officers to act as ATF agents to investigate abusers who break federal firearms laws. It’s a provision that came about because of our reporting.
We also know the agency has had a track record of secrecy. In our May show on gun violence and reform, The Trace’s Alain Stephens told us the ATF honors fewer public information requests than agencies like the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and even the CIA. More from our coverage on guns.
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