As Vice President Joe Biden passes the ceremonial meme torch to VP nominee Tim “Cool Dad” Kaine, Americans are all wondering the same thing: what, pray tell, will he do next? The answer, apparently, lies in a Dick Wolf police procedural whose on-air run will outlive us all.
As local affiliate CBS New York reported, Biden is scheduled to tape an upcoming episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU on Friday, according to White House representatives. The plot of the ep will explore the backlogging of unprocessed rape kits which—despite the efforts of both lawmakers and activists—can go untested for years due to lack of funding and bureaucratic red tape.
Biden’s forthcoming guest stint on SVU isn’t exactly arbitrary: the vice president has collaborated in the past with one of the series’ stars, actress Mariska Hargitay, to promote awareness about the prevention of violence against women, as well as rape kit backlogging. The Joyful Heart Foundation,founded by Hargitay, was responsible for spearheading the End the Backlog campaign, an initiative to advocate for backlogging reforms. Their endeavors ultimately helped spur the White House to award roughly $41 million in grant money to test unprocessed rape kits in New York City last year.
In May 2016, the foundation also honored Biden for his continuing work in domestic violence awareness, which began when the current VP authored the Violence Against Women Act over two decades ago.
Most recently, Hargitay introduced Biden at the 2016 Democratic National Convention before he gave an address to the audience at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday. During the intro, which was aired in the form of a biographical video, the actress lauded his longstanding record on combating violence against women; she subsequently followed it with a tweet posted to her personal social media account, in which she stated that Biden had “done so much 4 women, 4 survivors, 4 this movement 2 end violence [sic].”
As of now, the White House has not released an air date for the episode.