Explaining Trump's Pro-Police Executive Orders

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At this level, even writing about how President Donald Trump’s second administration has been an oppressive, authoritative, diet-fascist, white nationalist moist dream feels redundant. From his propaganda-reliant warpath on DEI and Black and Latino immigrants (whether or not they’re right here legally or not) to his legally questionable DOGE workplace gutting the federal authorities of, effectively, just about something Trump and his MAGA klan of bumbling idiots have determined they don’t like for varied, largely non-factual causes, this administration is making America regress once more with each new government order Trump indicators.

Anyway — since protecting Trump shenanigans is a needed job no matter how exhaustingly tedious it’s — let’s check out the pro-police EOs which were signed by the 34-time felon who has been discovered chargeable for sexual assault and who pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who brutally attacked a number of law enforcement officials. (Yeah — maintaining with Trump’s obtrusive hypocrisy can be a full-time job, however we gotta do it.)

First, for all of the individuals on the market who declare Democrats and Republicans are precisely the identical, it’s value noting that solely a type of events fights tooth and nail to undermine any and all makes an attempt at police reform regardless of how affordable they’re and the way demonstrably needed. And that’s why it ought to have shocked completely nobody when Trump didn’t let a full day of his second time period go by with out instantly removing Biden-era police reform measures in addition to some that have been carried out throughout his first time period.

From the Brennan Middle For Justice:

After the Senate failed in 2021 to cross a bipartisan bundle of regulation enforcement reforms — the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — the Biden administration sought to implement as a lot of the laws as doable via government order. Signed Might 2022 on the second anniversary of George Floyd’s homicide, the motion aimed “to advertise secure and accountable policing” in myriad methods.

Take into account the order’s highlights. It permitted federal police to make use of pressure solely as a software of final resort. It curtailed when federal police may enter a house with out knocking and asserting themselves and once they may use chokeholds. It mandated physique cameras. It restricted the switch and sale of federal army tools to state and native regulation enforcement. It required the Division of Justice to launch a nationwide misconduct database for federal police. And, recognizing that almost all policing is native, it inspired reform of state and native policing via varied grants.

Throughout his first time period, Trump championed many of those measures. Take, for instance, the Nationwide Legislation Enforcement Accountability Database. It’s a nationwide repository of substantiated misconduct claims and disciplinary information of federal law enforcement officials. It was created largely to handle the issue of the “wandering officer” who shuffles from division to division after resignation or discharge on account of misconduct. Biden, as a part of his policing order, directed the DOJ to create the database, and the division did so. In December 2024, the DOJ reported that the database, since its debut one yr earlier, has been searched practically 10,000 occasions to tell federal policing employment determinations.

However earlier than there was Nationwide Legislation Enforcement Accountability Database, there was Trump’s 2020 directive to, primarily, create it. Trump’s model would’ve been comparable however not the identical. It will’ve included policing misconduct but additionally “regarding situations of extreme pressure.” And in contrast to the present database, Trump’s problematic-officer registry would’ve aggregated and anonymized details about officers and made it publicly out there — a function some advocates nonetheless need to see.

And but, simply hours after Trump was sworn into workplace on Jan. 20, he signed an order to take down the database, which tracks for a president who, throughout his marketing campaign, promised law enforcement officials blanket “immunity from prosecution” and mused that the nation ought to permit for “one actual tough, nasty day” the place law enforcement officials may freely commit acts of police brutality. In truth, Trump justified the absurdity of giving cops immunity and a get-out-of-an-excessive-force-charge-free card by mendacity about cops not being allowed to do their jobs even once they catch a legal within the act of committing a criminal offense.

“What the hell is occurring?” Trump requested on the time. “See, we now have to let the police do their job. And in the event that they must be terribly tough. And , the humorous factor with all of that stuff, take a look at the shops — identical factor — they stroll into it. You see these guys strolling out with air conditioners —with fridges on their backs. The craziest factor. And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re advised when you do something, you’re gonna lose your pension, you’re gonna lose your loved ones, your home, your automobile.”

In fact, Trump by no means bothered to quote a single occasion the place an on-duty police officer misplaced their pension, home, automobile and household for doing the one factor they’re legally obligated to do once they visibly catch somebody committing theft. I imply, why hassle with a pesky factor like proof when your following of ignorant bigots who in all probability can’t learn previous a sixth-grade stage will take every little thing you say at face worth?

Trump additionally signed the Restoring The Dying Penalty And Defending Public Security government order, which, amongst different issues, requires the loss of life penalty for individuals convicted of killing law enforcement officials, which is bound to appease the “Blue lives matter” advocates who faux law enforcement officials aren’t already handled like a protected class with legal guidelines that allow far steeper penalties for crimes dedicated in opposition to cops than when the identical crimes are dedicated in opposition to civilians.

Trump’s police brutality and overreach-friendly government orders aren’t simply certain to disproportionately impression Black and Latino People — which anti-police reform insurance policies at all times do — they’re additionally aimed toward making the lives of undocumented (and documented) migrants harder, fearful and depressing. In keeping with NBC Information, simply a few weeks after Trump signed his first collection of MAGA-pleasing EOs, he signed an order that may rescind sanctuary insurance policies for migrants. In different phrases, Trump’s administration vowed that migrants would not be secure from ICE whereas inside locations like church buildings, faculties, and home violence and catastrophe reduction shelters.

The order additionally expanded the departments that would police and examine doubtlessly undocumented migrants in order that it isn’t simply ICE that’s tasked with such efforts. Now, the FBI, DEA, ATF, the U.S. Marshals and the Bureau of Prisons have been ordered by the Division of Justice to “evaluate their information for figuring out data and/or biometric information referring to non-citizens situated illegally in the USA.”

Trump and his cohorts would have us consider these EOs have been all about cementing the GOP because the “occasion of regulation and order,” but when that have been the case, Trump could be going simply as onerous in opposition to white-collar crime, wealthy, white rapists and sexual abusers, or, on the very least, a bunch of home terrorists who beat and tased law enforcement officials on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overthrow the federal government, impressed by Trump’s personal election fraud propaganda. As a substitute, Trump’s orders are all about cracking down on poor individuals, Black individuals, migrants and the the remainder of probably the most susceptible, marginalized individuals within the nation.

The cruelty is the purpose, and each government order Trump indicators reinforces that time.