Trump Made the Law Enforcement Baronial Class His Best Friend
April 29, 2025
Note: While the post for this went up yesterday, it did not email. So I am resending it. Thank you all.
Last night, Donald Trump issued an executive order unsubtly titled, “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens.”
There’s a lot of unpack right there – noting the “innocent citizens” – but I wanted to address some of the substance of the executive order based on what law enforcement lobbying agencies have been demanding since the Biden administration.
While it might seem to some people like these EOs are coming out of nowhere, they are, in fact, derived from pro-law enforcement lobbying demands that were agitating throughout Biden’s presidential administration. Very little was written about this during the Biden years – largely because the Democratic party moved so far to the right on immigration and “law and order” – but Trump is proving himself to be the greatest president representing the Law Enforcement Baronial Class this country has seen.
To recap what I mean by “Law Enforcement Baronial Class” – with this term, I refer to the bipartisan project to make law enforcement agencies untouchable by any civilian agency, including civilian oversight, civilian budget processes, and democratic elections. Law enforcement are not just soldiers for capitalism or white supremacy, but they are a class unto themselves, so powerful that they are deserving of extra protections and additional benefits mere mortal will never receive. (Scholars Brittany Arsiniega and Matthew Guariglia call a similar phenomenon “police as supercitizens.”)
The project is bipartisan because Democrats and centrists have funded the police and urged reforms that merely allow law enforcement to do more harm, more policing, and more jailing. This including funding civilian oversight, body cameras, equipment, training, consent decrees, and higher salaries. The GOP and Trumpists have actually not sought to fund the police – Trump actually defunded law enforcement during his first term and is focusing only on immigration enforcement 100 days into his second – but Trump has made it plain that he wants law enforcement to operate with impunity. This has included pardoning law enforcement accused of bad acts, eliminating or reducing the size, staffing, and funding for the Department of Justice and other oversight bodies, effectively ending investigations into law enforcement accused of violating people’s right, and modeling, through his own actions, how law enforcement agencies can operate as unitary executives all on their own.
The project is also based on removing civilian involvement and reverting back to a military-like structure and attitude. This is not surprising. Think of the militias who rallied to support law enforcement during the 2020 protests. Their support was based on a perceived alliance between militia members (proto-military organizations in which members see themselves as engaging in public service, placing them above civilians) and police (a proto-military organization in which the world is divided into super citizens, victims like those “innocent citizens”, and “bad guys” like the “criminals” in the EO).
The Executive Order purports to do a few things. I’m going to cover what I think are the main points, but, of course, there are likely others:
(1) Punish civilians who dare to question or rebuke the police through democratic elections, journalism, advocacy, and protest activities.
The Trump administration, in its relentless pursuit of anti-wokeness, seeks not only to end all practices that might pretend to be oversight, including diversifying local police forces; the executive branch also wants to punish anyone who dares to question (or even report on) how police operate. This is all about the protests of 2020, which not only garnered intense backlash from police but also triggered enough high-profile Democrats and centrists who used the media, academia, and advocacy to argue that “defunding the police” was a terrible idea.
One of the resistance tactics during the first Trump administration was to use local democracy in order to implement “sanctuary city” policies – basically, policies that prevented local police from cooperating with ICE. (It should be said that those efforts were both insufficient, ineffective, and produced an outsized backlash, but they were also well intentioned.)
“Sanctuary city” policies take various forms but largely focus on limiting information-sharing so that people who are arrested for “low-level crimes” or who report a crime to police will not be taken into custody because of potential immigration concerns. However, they all excluded “serious criminals” from their policies, so, in reality, they were designed to protect only some immigrants (the “good, hard-working” immigrants) -- never all. This was enough of a flaw to make the entire policy plan ineffective because it relied upon law enforcement discretion. Some counties, for example, elected sheriffs who promised not to work with ICE. These policies, however, did not really prevent most deportations; most available data shows that sheriffs, regardless of political party, cooperated with ICE about the same amount. They did make Tom Homan and other anti-immigrant advocates very angry. So, of course, this has become a target for the Trump administration.
We’ve already seen that this administration is quite willing to harass and arrest lawyers, judges, and public advocates. It’s hardly a stretch to think they will include public officials who argue in favor of sanctuary policies and advocates who argue against police power.
(2) Support bad actors in law enforcement to set an example of the kind of policing welcome in this country.
Trump has already made it a habit to pardon law enforcement accused of violence and deception. Now, he will just fund their legal battles and make it easier for police to win, which will naturally make it harder for prosecutors to bring these cases in the few instances where they brought them at all.
This was also a part of Project 2025, which railed against “progressive prosecutors.” The Claremont Institute and the Manhattan Institute have also produced innumerable papers and “reports” opining that the real problems today are political entities trying to hold bad police accountable.
(3) Require coordination between federal law enforcement agencies, the military, and other parts of the national security apparatus. In other words, create a fusion state in which there is a super-police force that all civilians fear to cross.
One of the parts of this EO that is the most concerning is its promotion of cooperation between law enforcement agencies on the state, local, and federal level and the military.
Here, I wanted to point to some demands that law enforcement leaders were making during the Biden administration. In December, a group of law enforcement officials testified in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security. The whole thing went under the radar for the media, but it drew my attention because of what law enforcement was asking for – namely, information sharing between agencies (including DHS and the military), as well as additional surveillance capacities that local agencies usually cannot afford (or know how to use) on their own. (See this recent piece on New York using AI technology to “spot” problem subway riders.)
Sheriff Mike Chapman of Loudon County, VA, for example, spoke about the need for local law enforcement to assist federal agencies (including ICE) and asked that the federal government provide more national security-style assistance to local LEOs. He not only urged an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to Tren de Aragua, he asked specifically for more surveillance and information sharing among agencies:
Our requests consist of the following:
1. Congress must prioritize our efforts to secure the border, enforce immigration laws, and strengthen information sharing among federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement.
2. Congress must increase our access to technological investigative tools among law enforcement agencies. For example, facial recognition software, license plate readers, and social media analytical tools are integral to generating investigative leads and preventing crime and acts of terrorism.
3. Congress must support and adequately fund federal law enforcement agencies to partner with, and aid local law enforcement in solving crime.
4. Finally, all of us involved in enforcing the law and supporting our enforcement of the law, must work together in the fight against cartels and illicit drug trafficking, and provide enhanced funding for federal, state, and local narcotic enforcement efforts.
5. Only by working together toward a common goal can we make America safer.
John Thompson, the president of the National Sheriffs Association, made a similar ask. The demand was not for MRAPS or guns, but for surveillance and information sharing. He asked for “funding and resources” for local law enforcement as well as “portable, high-tech screening devices that use laser technology to identify potentially dangerous substances” and “lawful access” to “encrypted communications.”
While many right-wing organizations are less enamored on NatSec, groups like the Claremont Institute have long advocated for a more aggressive military response against protestors, immigrants, and whoever else is unfavored at the moment, including, as Jeremy Carl wrote, the ability to “legally fire, where necessary, on anyone invading US territory.”
All of this is terrifying and difficult to fathom. One thing is clear: the bipartisan project to increase jailing, fortify policing, and ramp up surveillance poses, as it always has and now only more, an immense danger to all of us in this country, even the “innocent citizens.”
American Gleichschaltung. Coordination of federal, state and local law enforcement and custody systems into a single apparatus.
This is a great analysis. Thank you!