Are Republicans still the Law and Order Party?
Who should law enforcement endorse? Biden or Trump?
On April Fool’s Day former President Trump made the claim on a Milwaukee radio station that he was supported by “just about every law enforcement agency” in the United States. “I think, maybe every one,” he added, spuriously. The claim is naught else but utter nothing. One hundred and forty officers were assaulted in the January 6th riot; more than 1100 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds on that terrible day. Trump is far more likely to be supported by adult undergarments than by every law enforcement agency in the country.
That having been said, several police unions -- believe it or not -- have endorsed Trump, some even after his conviction in New York. Because of this it is instructive to look at the issue in some detail. Among the police unions that have endorsed Trump: the International Union of Police Associations, the Florida Police Benevolent Association (Florida’s largest law enforcement union, which originally endorsed DeSantis) and the 12,000-member Police Officers Association of Michigan (POAM). The National Fraternal Order of Police — the largest police union in the country -- which supported Trump in 2020, has yet to announce its endorsement. Also, the Police Benevolent Association, which represents 24,000 NYPD officers and endorsed Trump in 2020, has not yet made any endorsements for this election cycle. It will be curious to see if the PBA endorses Trump in the wake of his guilty verdicts as well as the NY sexual assault liability.
That Trump gets these endorsements, despite the fact that he plays at campaign rallies a version of the national anthem recorded by the J6 Prison Choir and has teased the notion of pardoning all rioters bewilders the mind and vexes the imagination. Which leads me to the point of this Substack — Is the Republican Party still the law and order party? And — how can it be, after the full-fledged January 6 denialism? Seven people died as a result of the riot. One officer suffered a heart attack from the beating by the rioters.
In recent years past, the Republican Party was considered to be the “Daddy Party,” complementary to the Democrats as the “Mommy Party.” In the context of that division of labor, Democrats were seen as emphasizing matters of health care and education and equality and overall fairness. Republicans, by contrast, appeared to be laser-focused on fiscal responsibility, “competitiveness of industry” and of security, which is just another way of saying law and order.
What a difference four decades make! After being found guilty and convicted of 34 counts by a jury of 12 Americans last week, a clearly rattled Trump seemed to hint immediately afterwards at a “breaking point” of democracy. What breaking point, pray tell? The legal system worked just fine, in fact, proving itself quite capable of convicting a former POTUS. Trump’s Republican Party, unfortunately, has proved itself unable to serve as a check upon the former President’s natural inclinations towards lawlessness and shamelessness. In fact, his party actually changed its 2020 platform into that of a non-platform. How Zen is that, dear reader? Trump -- at one with the RNC platform! Further, that foolhardy decision was made in order to allow Trump all the rhetorical maneuvering room necessary to prevail on the campaign trail. “It is hard to read this ‘platform’ as anything other than ‘we stand for whatever Donald Trump wants,” wrote Tom Wheeler for Brookings. “And we know how Donald Trump interprets such a blank check.”
If the 2022 midterms are any indication of what is coming down the pike, the Republican party looks to be in better shape than the opposition when it comes to law enforcement endorsements. “Reuters spoke to nine police unions and trade associations across the United States ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, of whom six said their members were endorsing more right-wing candidates than in previous elections,” Jarrett Renshaw wrote in 2022. “The groups said Republicans had offered greater support to police in the wake of 2020 protests over police killings of Black people.”
Ah, yes -- who can forget Black Lives Matter? After the high-profile killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the thick of COVID lockdowns, modest police reforms were put forward. Because work had all but stopped, America questioned police aggression. The Ending Qualified Immunity Act, Justice in Policing Act of 2020 and The George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act were all given, up to a point, a fair hearing, before largely evaporating. The law enforcement response was not a rigorous self-reflection about police interactions with citizens, but rather the wholesale endorsement of Trump and Republicans. “My agenda is anti-crime and pro-cop all the way, and that's what it's got to be,” Trump said in August 2020, accepting the endorsement of the Police Benevolent Association. Words; words; words. It was a missed opportunity for us to become a less cruel society.
Steve Chapman writes in the Chicago Tribune (subscription required):
Trump has long portrayed himself as the best friend cops could have. In a 2019 speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago, he declared: “Every day of my presidency, I will be your greatest and most loyal champion. I have been, and I will continue to be.”
He scorns the idea that they should exercise restraint. “Please don’t be too nice,” he told an audience of cops in 2017, lamenting that they are expected to protect suspects from hitting their heads when being placed in squad cars. His first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, denounced the consent decree that was created to address documented abuses in the Chicago Police Department.
But does Trump deserve their support? The job of police is to enforce the laws, catch and arrest criminals, and uphold public safety. Trump has made it his business to undermine law enforcement, encourage political violence and subvert the Constitution.
The Capitol insurrection should have put to rest the notion that Trump has the best interests of cops at heart. The rioters attacked some 140 officers with fire extinguishers, flag poles, hockey sticks, bear spray and other weapons. One of the officers, Michael Fanone, was shocked with a Taser and beaten unconscious, suffering a heart attack and traumatic brain injury.
What did Trump do that day? He sat in the White House, spurning pleas that he tell the mob to disperse. Nearly three hours passed before he finally did so — while avowing: “We love you. You’re very special.”
The title of the above article is “Will Police Endorse a Convicted Felon for President?” It is a fair question, particularly in the wake of his own convictions and the run-up to the election. Trump’s cozy friendship with police unions stem, in part, from the Republican party’s longtime backing against calls for reform or even something as simple as oversight. Republicans historically have also used inflammatory rhetoric on the crime issue and, when in office, give blank checks to the police. A CATO report found that a majority of Republicans went so far as to support the “militarization” of police. In 2020, Trump was endorsed by nearly 200 current and former law enforcement officials.
Finally, President Biden will not go down without a fight on this issue. The incumbent has had longstanding relationships with police and firefighter unions throughout his long and stories political career. The President has been relentlessly moderate -- some might say too much so -- in opposing “defund the police” calls from his left flank. And though the Trump campaign and right-wing news organizations have tried to portray the United States as a dystopian hellscape with runaway inflation, all major indicators show that we are recovering nicely from the era of COVID, now firmly in the rearview window. “Recent FBI data showed significant drops last year in almost every crime category, including homicides and violent crime, from their COVID pandemic-era highs,” Renshaw writes. “But a Gallup poll, opens new tab last fall found that 63% of Americans said crime nationwide was ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ serious, up from 54% in 2021 and the highest in the survey's history.” The President has his work cut out for him countering the idiot wind of misinformation, no doubt soon to be amplified by Trump’s friends in Russia.
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“Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian nationals have bought up $6.3 billion in existing and in-development properties in Dubai, a group of economists with the EU Tax Observatory and Norway’s Centre for Tax Research estimated in a recent report. The influx of Russian investment into Dubai real estate in the past few years has been previously documented but newly leaked property records from 2022 now provide a snapshot of its scope. The records were obtained as part of Dubai Unlocked, a recent collaboration by ICIJ and 70-plus media partners led by Norwegian financial outlet E24 and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. The six-month investigation into the UAE’s booming and secretive property market shows how politicians, alleged criminals and suspected sanctions evaders — from ‘cryptoqueen’ Ruja Ignatova to accused drug kingpin Daniel Kinahan — bought real estate in some of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the Middle East.” (Carmen Molina Acosta and Eiliv Frich Flydal/ICIJ)_
“But any potential Black supporter will have to carve out an exception for Trump’s tradition of racist rhetoric, dog-whistling, ‘fine people on both sides,’ and constant appeal to white fear and white identity. Almost at the hour that Eric sent out his bizarrely racist (in spades) cross-racial appeal, his Dad was doing some racist fear-mongering from the lobby of Trump Tower. In his first post-conviction no-questions press conference, he looked wobbly and unleashed a demented rant that veered between the two poles of his appeal - portraying himself as persecuted and fomenting fear of incoming brown hordes. The comprehensibility bar for his speeches is so low that the media entirely overlooked a nonsensical and yet utterly racist aside: ‘Congo, Africa, has just released a lotta people from jail,’ he said. ‘A lotta people, a lotta people from their prisons and jails and brought ‘em into the United States of America. That’s what’s happening to our country.’ Congo, Africa. Whistle, whistle, here little doggie. Trump seems to have added the anecdote to his repertoire this spring, spewing it often enough that the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo felt moved to issue denials. In March when he started flinging it around, journalists looked into it. ‘Everything he is saying isn’t true,’ Democratic Republic of Congo spokesperson Patrick Muyaya Katembwe told CNN.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“A meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a group of Arab officials about a month ago flew off the rails after an unusual shouting match between the UAE foreign minister and a senior adviser to the Palestinian president, according to five sources with knowledge of the incident … According to the sources, during the meeting al-Sheikh said the Palestinian Authority is conducting reforms and created a new government as the U.S. and Arab countries asked, but it isn't getting enough political and financial support. Toward the end of the meeting the Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed pushed back and said he hasn't seen any significant reform inside the Palestinian Authority, the sources said. According to two sources, the Emirati foreign minister then called the Palestinian leadership "Ali Baba and the forty thieves" and claimed senior officials in the Palestinian Authority are ‘useless’ and therefore ‘replacing them with one another will only lead to the same result.’ ‘Why would the UAE give assistance to the Palestinian Authority without real reforms?’ he asked. Al-Sheikh shouted back at the Emirati foreign minister and said nobody will dictate to the Palestinian Authority how to conduct its reforms, the sources said. According to the sources, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud tried to cool down the heated exchange and said reforms take time. But the meeting had already gotten out of control with both sides shouting at each other and the Emirati minister leaving the room in anger.” (Barack Ravid/Axios)
“Nearly a decade into Trump’s political career, there is no evidence that he is compromised by Putin or any other foreign power. But as he runs for reelection, Trump is indeed compromised in a way he never has been before. Desperate to avoid prison—and needing cash to win reelection, so he can pardon himself—Trump is selling his administration’s domestic and foreign policy to the highest bidder. It’s hardly a conspiracy, either. As we speak, he is traveling from billionaire to billionaire with hat in hand, making explicit promises to sell his presidency. Trump has raked in campaign contributions in the wake of his conviction last week on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records—$60 million alone in the 24 hours after the jury delivered a guilty verdict, nearly half of his total $141 million haul in May. But even with that sizable pot, his campaign is still trailing Biden’s. And given Trump’s use of campaign contributions to pay attorneys representing him in his numerous criminal trials, much of that money is being spent on legal rather than political expenses.” (Alex Shephard/TNR)
“The president and his aides are working to make sure Netanyahu is feeling the squeeze from all sides to quickly bring the war to an end. Biden is getting more combative himself, pushing rhetorically and behind the scenes to increase pressure from regional powers, the United Nations, aid groups, Israeli citizens and Netanyahu’s political allies and foes alike. There’s a fear among many U.S. officials and others caught in the crisis that this could be the last best shot to bring home hostages held by Hamas and wind down the war without significantly more casualties. In many ways, the Biden team is going beyond its past efforts to persuade Netanyahu to act on U.S. advice, turning to more people and institutions than usual so that the Israeli prime minister feels the heat no matter where he turns. ‘It feels a bit like a blunt-force instrument,’ said Jonathan Lord, a former Defense Department official. Of course, the pressure campaign also targets Hamas, but Netanyahu is in some ways the more complicated decision-maker, and the one that the U.S. has more power to directly influence. The Israeli leader is facing pressure from within his government to abandon the cease-fire plan. Depending on what he does, he could lose his job and potentially land in prison. Such consequences make it hard for him to simply agree with U.S. pleas to support the deal, even though it is, technically, an Israeli proposal in the first place.” (Nahal Toosi/Politico)
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