GEOFF BENNETT: After years of protest and advocacy, a new executive order from the Biden administration seeks to bolster the military's ability to deal with sexual assault.

But how far-reaching are these changes?

And will they make a difference?

Laura Barron-Lopez conducted this conversation earlier today.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: On Friday, President Biden signed an executive order codifying changes to the military justice system over how to handle sexual assault in the ranks.

Those changes were mandated by Congress last year, and were supposed to usher in significant reforms that survivors and their advocates have demanded for years.

For that, we turn to Retired Lieutenant Colonel Rachel VanLandingham.

She was an Air Force attorney and now teaches at Southwestern Law School.

And Army veteran Lindsey Knapp previously served as a victim advocate in the military and is a lawyer continuing her work against sexual assault.

Lindsey, I want to start with you.

So, this executive order creates a team of special prosecutors that are going to be called the Offices of the Special Trial Counsel.

It moves some authority over sexual assault, rape and murder cases to this new team.

How significant is this executive order by the president?

LINDSEY KNAPP, Lawyer and Sexual Assault Victim Advocate: Well, doesn't do what we hoped it would do.

So, the analogy I like to use, it's like, I got my foot and ran over and I got shot in the chest.

And then, here, the military was kind enough to give me a cast for my leg, but completely ignored that I have been shot in the chest.

So what we have to do is, we have to hope that the service member, after they have reported this assault, that it somehow makes it to the special trial counsel.

But I represented a number of service members who, when they reported the sexual assault, command told them that it was consensual, so no law enforcement investigation occurred.

And there would never have even been an opportunity for the case to even make it to a special trial counsel so they could action it.

So, again, so, now we're talking about this chest wound that the military is just pretending doesn't exist.

And then, once we do get it to the special trial counsel, then the commander has all of these other -- other things that they can do, right?

They can decide whether or not witnesses can or cannot be made available.

And that's really, really important, because that commander's decision is final.

And so the commander can decide that this person is too mission-critical to testify, and we're not going to pull them out of wherever he or she is at in order to prosecute this very, very serious crime.

Now, there are millions of service members serving today, and there's no one human that is irreplaceable, because, if they were, then they wouldn't be sending us essentially to die, right?

As a veteran myself, that's what they trained me to do.

They trained me to be replaceable.

So, the idea that we can't make these witnesses available or that the commander has this authority to stop that is just wild to me.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Rachel, how significant, how seismic of a change do you think this is for the military justice code?

LT. COL. RACHEL VANLANDINGHAM (RET.

), Southwestern Law School: Well, the actual changes that Congress mandated at the end of 2021 to remove a specific number of crimes from the commander's purview, where they have been since before the founding of this country, to independent military lawyers, actually is the largest seismic shift since the creation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1950.

However, it's a half-measure that leaves in place a very broken system.

It still leaves in place a commander-run system.

Command -- there are no standing courts, like in federal court, or like downtown Los Angeles -- Los Angeles, where I am.

They are pop-up courts that a commander -- even if a special trial counsel sends a charge, a sexual assault charge, for example, to trial, a commander is still the one convening in the court.

A commander is still the one picking the jurors.

And that's really something I want to talk about.

Congress mandated just last year that jury selection be randomized.

This new implementing instruction is problematic, because it still leaves with commanders the authority to pick the universe of these jurors.

And then they send a list of hand-selected jurors to a judge to -- quote, unquote -- "randomize."

That's not randomization.

That's superficial window dressing.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But, Lindsey, under the executive order, will these independent lawyers within this Office of the Special trial Counsel still be influenced at all by commanders?

LINDSEY KNAPP: In my view, absolutely, because what we see is that folks in the military, like these attorneys, they're going to be rotating to different career assignments.

So the idea that they're not going to be vying for maybe a special career assignment, maybe working for that commander in a special unit or in special operations or in a place that might be very favorable to them, we can't imagine that that attorney is not going to be thinking about that while they're trying to zealously prosecute these offenses.

And that's a problem that we currently see now, right?

So that these junior attorneys, and even some of these senior attorneys, they are still trying to get promoted.

They're still going to be advising a commander.

And they're hoping to maybe advise a commander at the two-, three- or, four-star level.

All of those commanders that all of those levels have attorneys advising them, and those attorneys want those jobs.

And so how zealously are they going to prosecute sexual assault cases, when they're thinking about that in the back of their mind, if that's a commander that they may be making an adverse ruling towards?

So that's a huge concern for us.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Rachel, on what more the White House could potentially do with the powers that Congress forwarded to it, I should note that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office told us that they're very pleased with this executive order, that they are going to be monitoring the implementation closely, and that if they think that further reforms are needed, they are going to be really pushing for those.

But do you think that the president has more authority, based on what Congress gave him, that he didn't use here?

LT. COL. RACHEL VANLANDINGHAM: Yes, so for example, the president has the maneuver room for ordering pretrial confinement.

Right now, the new implementing regulations leave it vested in commanders.

But the president can decide who qualifies as a commander.

They could have a military magistrate, someone that's more independent and impartial from the chain of command, making the decisions regarding confinement, just like judges do in the federal civilian arena.

And I did mention that I thought this was a seismic change that doesn't go far enough.

The reason that's a seismic change, because it's the first time in over 200 years in this country in which commanders have actually lost a little bit of power.

It's a huge admission that the system doesn't work.

But it's a half-step.

It's a half-step because the commanders cannot be trusted to make a decision regarding whether murder should be prosecuted, sexual assault should be prosecuted or manslaughter, which are now going to independent military lawyers.

Why do commanders have authority over any offenses, offenses including capital offenses?

And I would like to highlight what Lindsey said and reiterate that commanders still own this system.

What was the most disappointing component of the hundreds of pages that were released on Friday is one line.

That one line says, oh, by the way, commanders, despite the fact that the special trial counsel has exclusive authority over covered offenses, if you, any commander, feel that there will be a detrimental impact on national security or the prosecution of a war, you're to go VFR direct to the secretary concerned and state your concerns.

There's already a formal process to give those concerns.

Instead, this just seems like a tangible symbol that hey, by the way, everybody, this is a reminder, commanders are still in charge here.

And it doesn't matter if a special trial counsel decided to prosecute.

They can go around them.

And that's actually in the regulation.

And that was not mandated by Congress.

And that clearly shows where the Pentagon's head is.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And, Lindsey, lastly, I do want to ask you.

You represent as well sexual assault victims.

And do they see any hope in this -- these actions that were taken by Congress and the White House?

LINDSEY KNAPP: I mean, a lot of them are cautiously optimistic, but they're experienced -- experiencing retaliation in real time, right?

And so the military is reporting that 64 percent of all service members are being retaliated against after they report a sexual assault.

And they're in that group.

And so I'm not quite sure how a special trial counsel is going to help them from the retaliation that they're experiencing now to get their report to law enforcement to have it adjudicated properly.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: That's retired Lieutenant Colonel Rachel VanLandingham and Army veteran Lindsey Knapp.

Thank you so much for your time.

LT. COL. RACHEL VANLANDINGHAM: Thank you so much.

LINDSEY KNAPP: Thanks, Laura.

GEOFF BENNETT: Just before air tonight, we received this statement from a White House official disagreeing with our guests' conclusions.

It reads: "For cases of sexual assault, rape or other covered offenses for which the special trial counsel has decided to proceed with prosecution, commanders no longer have any authority over that case, and determinations made by special trial counsel are binding.

This pertains to all phases of a case, including adjudication, sentencing, and also pretrial confinement matters.

Commanders also do not have any control over producing witnesses in these cases."

The White House official added that commanders have no ability to hold up a trial on the basis of national security concerns.

The "NewsHour" will continue to report on this topic.