Trump signs executive orders intended to 'restore safety in America'
President Donald Trump. Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock, Inc.
President Donald Trump signed three executive orders Thursday that underscore his campaign pledge to crack down on violent crime.
Trump signed the orders after U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions was sworn in as attorney general, report the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun and Bloomberg News. Trump said he was signing the orders to “restore safety in America.”
The Baltimore Sun says the executive orders were “relatively tepid, underscoring the limited ability of any president—and the federal government at large—to act on issues generally considered the purview of local government.”
One order, Trump said, is intended to “break the back of the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation and are destroying the blood of our youth.” The order directs federal agencies to identify ways to fight transnational gangs.
A second order authorizes the attorney general to create a task force on crime reduction and public safety that will identify strategies to reduce crime and identify deficiencies in existing laws.
The third order directs the attorney general to develop strategies to use existing federal laws to prosecute violent crimes against police officers at both the local and federal levels. The order also asks for a review of existing federal laws to determine whether they give adequate protection to police.
