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TRUMP’S NEWEST EXECUTIVE ORDER “UNLEASHES” THE COPS—AND
FLIRTS WITH MARTIAL LAW  
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Elie Mystal
April 30, 2025
The Nation
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_ The new order effectively allows police to get away with murder.
And that’s just the beginning. _

Donald Trump displays a signed executive order in the Oval Office of
the White House in Washington, DC., Samuel Corum / Sipa / Bloomberg
via Getty Images

 

Holding police officers accountable when they commit crimes or violate
the constitutional rights of those they’re allegedly here to
“serve and protect” is one of the most difficult things to do in
law. The police are protected by powerful, well-funded, and
well-lawyered unions. They are protected by the judicial doctrine of
qualified immunity, which prevents them from being personally sued for
monetary damages when they damage or destroy property or lives.
They’re protected by prosecutors and district attorneys who work
alongside them and are often reluctant to charge them with crimes. And
then, even when police officers are charged with crimes, they are
often protected by sympathetic (white) juries who give the cops a pass
when they brutalize or harass unarmed citizens. The entire system is
designed to help cops get away with crime.

Now, Donald Trump has issued an executive order that will make it even
harder to hold cops accountable—and flirts blatantly with martial
law. Named the dystopian
[[link removed]] “Strengthening
and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and
Protect Innocent Citizens,” this new order purports to “unleash
high-impact local police forces; protect and defend law enforcement
officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials; and
surge resources to officers in need.”

The aggressive language in the order could be cribbed from any
military police state in the annals of history, and that’s clearly
the kind of polity that Trump would like to create and lead. The order
instructs the secretary of defense to put down the bottle long enough
to “determine how military and national security assets, training,
non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be
utilized to prevent crime.” It also instructs the Department of
Homeland Security to “advance the objectives of this order.”

Careful readers will note that this sounds an awful lot like the
prelude to martial law, a framework where national military assets are
deployed in American cities to enforce the president’s priorities.
That would, of course, be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act
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which prevents the president from using the American military as a
domestic police force. But I think it’s well established that
Trump has never watched _The West Wing_
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respect the rule of law in this country anyway.

The most charitable view of this provision is that it
will _merely_ enable the federal government to make unused military
equipment available to local law enforcement (then again, presidents
already have the power to do this and it’s the reason why police
often look like they’re heading into Fallujah every time a SWAT team
shows up). The most dangerous read is that it will lead to army
divisions patrolling our streets to quash dissent and, ultimately,
“protect” Donald Trump’s reelection to a third term in office.

If they weren’t dripping hypocrites, conservative “states’
rights” aficionados would be rending their garments over this
unconstitutional nationalization of the local police power. But I
think most people reading already know that the states’ rights
people only care about the concept when it comes to owning slaves and
forcing pregnant people to give birth against their will. Apparently,
all Abraham Lincoln needed to say was that he was sending Union troops
to the South to “fight crime,” and then they would have been
welcomed with open arms by the Confederacy. I wonder why he didn’t
think of that.

Still, while the martial law concerns are significant, we are probably
two or three unconstitutional executive orders away from that. The
more immediate thrust of this order is to make it nearly impossible to
hold cops accountable for crimes. Toward that end, it calls for
officers to be indemnified by the federal government when they
“unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during
the performance of their official duties to enforce the law.” This
essentially extends the concept of qualified immunity to the criminal
sphere. Now, even a cop who is held criminally liable can have their
expenses paid for.

Cops will also get free lawyers, and not the kind of overworked,
underpaid, noble attorneys who work for legal aid. Trump has been
bullying law firms to provide pro bono services for conservative
causes, but he didn’t really define exactly what those causes were
supposed to be. This executive order closes that loop: “This
mechanism shall include the use of private-sector pro bono assistance
for such law enforcement officers.” As if cops didn’t already have
access to the lawyers provided to them by their labor unions, now
apparently they can make Wall Street lawyers work on their behalf for
free.

No pro bono lawyers will be made available for the people the cops
murder, beat up, or otherwise harass.

The order also directs the Department of Justice to go after state and
local officials who “willfully and unlawfully direct the obstruction
of criminal law, including by directly and unlawfully prohibiting law
enforcement officers from carrying out duties necessary for public
safety and law enforcement.” I can’t say for sure what this
provision means, given that it is already a crime to “obstruct
justice,” but I bet Hannah Dugan knows what Trump is talking about.
Dugan is the Milwaukee judge who was illegally arrested in her own
courtroom
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refusing to let ICE arrest a defendant in that very courtroom. I can
only assume that we’ll see more of that because of this executive
order.

Finally, the EO instructs the attorney general to “review all
ongoing Federal consent decrees, out-of-court agreements, and
post-judgment orders to which a State or local law enforcement agency
is a party and modify, rescind, or move to conclude such measures.”
This is a provision straight out of Project 2025
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It means that the Trump administration can and will remove any ongoing
accountability or restrictions currently faced by police forces
arising out of their prior bad behavior.

I cannot help but understand this order through its potential impacts
on my lived experience. Let’s say a cop pulls me over for
driving-while-Black. After he hops out of his M1-Abrams tank, he uses
a military grade stun-gun on me because I gave him the side-eye while
searching for my vehicle registration. I “resist” by saying things
such as “Ow!” or “What the hell!” and he proceeds to beat me
to within an inch of my life.

I’d want him to face criminal charges, but the prosecutor doesn’t
want to take the risk. Even though I have a good case, they’re
worried that if they press charges against the officer, they will face
charges from the Department of Justice. Even if I can marshal
considerable public pressure to get the prosecutor to file charges,
the cop is now being defended, for free, by Brad Karp at Paul, Weiss
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some other wealthy Biglaw attorney who has decided to be complicit
with fascism. The trial proceeds, but let’s say I win (because
corporate attorneys are not necessarily the best courtroom
litigators). Even then, any damages I receive for being Tiananmen
Square’d by the racist cop are covered by the government. The cop
returns to the force soon after, because any accountability measure
like a consent decree is also no longer available during the Trump
administration.

Like all of Trump’s executive orders, this one can be rescinded by
the next president (if we are allowed to have one). But unlike some of
the others, I don’t necessarily trust that a future Democratic
president will go back and rescind this particular order. Democrats,
at least in my lifetime, have been almost as deeply committed to
brutal police practices as the Republicans. It would take a Democrat
uniquely committed to criminal justice reform to go back in and take
away the indemnification Trump has provided, and one can only imagine
the stink the police unions will make if such a Democrat takes it
away.

During the campaign, Trump promised to give police officers immunity
when they commit crimes. This executive order doesn’t do that, but
it’s close enough. If you _want_ to commit crimes in this country,
the single best thing you can do for your criminal career is join the
police. Trump is making it easier for police to get away with murder
than ever before.

Pretty soon, we might not even be able to distinguish between an
American police force and a hostile occupying army.

_Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist.
He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. His
first book is the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A
Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution,
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Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie v.
U.S.” here [[link removed]]._

_Copyright c 2024 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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* Donald Trump
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* Police
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* Martial Law
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* rule of law
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* Department of Justice
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* Project 2025
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