Trump’s Push for Law and Order Shows He’s No Longer Encumbered by Government Guardrails
President Donald Trump was telling a Rose Garden audience about his efforts to quell violence in the nation’s capital when, as if on cue, his words were drowned out by the wail of sirens from passing vehicles.
“Listen to the beauty of that sound,” Trump said, grinning. “They’re not politically correct sirens.”
Coming as it did during an otherwise somber event to posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the moment encapsulated how Trump’s law-and-order-at-all-costs push has become a centerpiece of his second term.
He’s deployed troops to Democrat-majority cities and directed federal officials, often with their faces obscured by masks, to round up people living in the country illegally. He’s suggested urban areas could become military “training grounds” and toyed with invoking the Insurrection Act so political opponents can’t use the courts to foil his plans.
Unchecked Power in Trump’s Second Term
Now settled into his second term, Trump has embraced the kind of tough-on-crime approach he has always campaigned on but was unable to achieve with the naysayers who often checked his most extreme instincts during his first four years in office.
In the process, his Republican administration has sometimes trampled law enforcement norms, and critics say Trump has weaponized the Justice Department, using it to go after political opponents.
On Wednesday, he touted the results of a crackdown named “Operation Summer Heat.” Flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi in the Oval Office, Trump said the FBI made 8,000-plus arrests.
Trump said he’d talked about crime during his campaign last year but never expected it to be such a major second-term focus.
“Now it’s like a passion for me,” he said, describing his actions as “many, many steps above” what he’d pledged. “And we’re just at the start.”
From New York Real Estate Roots to Federal Crackdowns
It’s in some ways the full realization of the mindset Trump has had since his early days as a real estate mogul in 1970s and ’80s New York, when crime was rampant and residents clamored for crackdowns.
Trump’s efforts have drawn resistance from local leaders. His plans to send soldiers to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have been thwarted by legal challenges. He has said he’s confident he’ll win on appeal but hasn’t ruled out using the Insurrection Act as a workaround if needed.
Elsewhere, his moves have dramatically altered daily life. Earlier this year, he took control of the California National Guard in response to protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles and sent the National Guard into Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee.
Trump has also mused about taking similar action in Baltimore, New Orleans and New York, and threatened Boston, suggesting World Cup games set to be played in nearby Foxborough next year could be moved if law enforcement actions aren’t intensified.
Echoes of “Bring Back Our Police”
Trump’s eagerness to embrace the hardest possible line against crime suspects — guilty or not — has long been public. He stirred racial tensions by calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers wrongly convicted of rape in 1989.
Trump took out full-page newspaper ads under the headline “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” Those convictions were vacated in 2002 after evidence linked a serial rapist to the crime. Activists now cite the case as proof of systemic racial bias.
“That’s the very same spirit that’s at work now,” said the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner of the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. Turner said Trump had “demonized” and “targeted” Memphis, which is 62% African American and has a Black mayor and county leader.
Trump “seems bent on seeing us in the way he has seen other persons of color throughout his first term — and possibly throughout his public life,” Turner said. “We have this president unleashed in this second term.”
First-Term Flirtations with Authoritarianism
Trump covered some of the same political ground in his first term during the protests sparked by George Floyd’s 2020 killing, when he sent troops to Washington and Portland. His advisers at the time opposed many of his calls to more broadly deploy the military to quell unrest.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper later told CBS’ 60 Minutes that Trump asked during the protests whether the National Guard could be tougher on demonstrators. “‘Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs, or something,’” Esper recalled Trump saying.
Still, Trump’s first term included a bipartisan criminal justice reform measure in 2018, meant to reduce federal prison populations after lobbying from advocates including Kim Kardashian.
That accomplishment was largely abandoned by 2024, when Trump’s campaign leaned hard into rhetoric calling for the death penalty for drug dealers and those who kill police officers, while railing against bail reform.
“We’re Going to Save All Our Cities”
Trump now sees his hardline crime agenda as a winning political message heading into midterm elections.
“We’re going to save all of our cities, and we’re going to make them essentially crime-free,” he said Wednesday.
The shift reflects a Trump no longer restrained by chiefs of staff, generals or advisers who once curbed his impulses — all replaced by loyalists.
“This time around, he has people around him that are not simply supporting what he’s doing, they’re encouraging him,” said Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. “It’s completely terrifying that any of this stuff is going on.”
Polling from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found Trump’s “law and order” approach remains one of his strongest issues, even as Americans express frustration over his handling of the economy and immigration.
Eighty-one percent of Americans see crime as a “major problem” in large cities, despite data showing violent crime has dropped since its pandemic-era spike.
The White House Defends Trump’s Actions
The White House insists Trump’s crackdown has nothing to do with race, saying the National Guard is deployed for different reasons in different cities.
Washington’s operation, it said, was requested by Tennessee’s Republican leadership as a model for Memphis. In Portland and Chicago, the goal was to protect federal personnel working on immigration enforcement and other priorities.
“The president’s bold actions in cities across the country are making all Americans safer,” said spokesperson Abigail Jackson, calling Trump’s efforts the fulfillment of a campaign promise.
Still, Trump’s use of troops allows him to cast Democrats as soft on crime while overstating how bad urban violence actually is — and how effective his interventions have been.
He has falsely claimed Portland was “on fire” and that Washington crime “fell to zero.”
Critics Warn of Political and Racial Motives
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Trump’s agenda extends his brand of “using race overtly to drive division, consolidate a base and usurp power a president does not have, or should not be deemed to have.”
Indeed, Trump now routinely describes criminals as beyond redemption.
“They’re sick,” he said recently. “And we’re taking them out.”
