In April, Trump unveiled an executive order titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens” that hands sweeping new powers to police, guts hard-won reforms and punishes cities that refuse to fall in line. Under the facade of “law and order,” it shields law enforcement from accountability, expands their access to military weaponry, and treats organized dissent as a national security threat.
Repression by design
The order targets local governments that place even the most basic limits on policing. Cities with bans on no-knock raids, restrictions on surveillance, or independent oversight boards now risk losing federal funds or facing direct intervention. The message is blunt: let police operate with impunity, or lose the support your community depends on to survive.
It also ramps up legal protections for law enforcement. Officers accused of brutality or murder will now receive taxpayer-funded legal defense through a new indemnity program. At the same time, the Department of Justice is directed to expand immunity policies nationwide. The few mechanisms that made it possible to challenge police violence in court will be systematically dismantled under this executive order.
The order calls for expanding the Pentagon’s 1033 Program, which transfers military equipment like armored vehicles, drones, and riot gear to local police departments. Within 90 days of the order, federal agencies must finalize plans to accelerate those transfers. What this means in practice: police departments in cities and small towns alike will be armed and outfitted for urban warfare, with a license to kill.
A rollback of struggles, not simply policies
Many of the targets of this order–oversight boards, DEI trainings, and use-of-force guidelines in particular–are the result of hard-fought struggles in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd uprising. Over the last five years, millions of people demanded police accountability, racial equity and public safety systems not built on violence. In response, some institutions implemented limited reforms.
The administration now seeks to erase these gains. The stated goal is to combat “discrimination” against police. In practice, that means DEI initiatives are banned in federal law enforcement, with pressure mounting on local agencies, city governments and public institutions to follow suit. Agencies must also report any past or present DEI-related trainings and submit plans to eliminate them entirely. That these programs discriminate against law enforcement is absurd, but the intent is not to convince anyone. Instead, it is to create a pretext for purging reformers and silencing dissent.
The role of police in class society
Even if every reform targeted by this order were left in place, it would not change the essential nature of policing under capitalism.
Police are not neutral enforcers of justice. They are the armed wing of the capitalist state, tasked with protecting private property, enforcing exploitation, and violently suppressing any movement that threatens the status quo. That is why police continue to receive increased funding while school budgets wither, no matter which capitalist party holds power. That is why policing in the United States is not malfunctioning, it is working exactly as intended.
The executive order is not a break with that role, but an affirmation. It strips away the appearance of restraint and grants law enforcement even greater license to act with violence and impunity.
New Orleans: A case study in federal blackmail
Nowhere is the brutality of this executive order more clear than in New Orleans. A majority-Black city with a long history of police violence, New Orleans has operated under a federal consent decree since 2013, a hard-fought, limited reform won through years of grassroots struggle. The order now treats this as an obstacle to be removed.
Federal agencies are instructed to identify these “obstacles” and penalize jurisdictions that refuse to eliminate them. For New Orleans, that punishment could mean losing access to federal housing programs, public transportation funding, Title I education support and disaster response resources.
Among the most appalling threats is the potential loss of federal funding for flood mitigation and levee maintenance. For a coastal city still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, this is not simply a policy decision: it is a calculated act of cruelty. The federal government is threatening to leave working-class communities exposed to the next natural disaster unless they abandon efforts to hold police accountable.
This is more than blackmail. It is the use of environmental catastrophe as a political weapon. And Louisiana’s far-right state officials, who have long sought to override New Orleans’ autonomy, are likely to seize this opportunity. With the weight of federal authority behind them, they now have both motive and cover to accelerate the dismantling of local reforms. The order is a warning shot for any city that dares to prioritize its people over the police.
A call to fight back
This executive order reveals the ruling class’s priorities with chilling clarity. It dismantles reform, criminalizes protest, empowers law enforcement as a central tool of repression, and lays the groundwork for deeper attacks as social movements grow stronger.
But we have faced such offensives before. Every victory, from labor protections to civil rights and housing justice, has been the result of sustained organizing and struggle. The ruling class did not concede those gains willingly, nor will it defend them now. It is our task to do so.