President Trump signed three executive orders on Thursday “designed to restore safety in America” as part of the swearing in ceremony for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The first of the orders aims to reduce crime and improving public safety. The order directs Sessions to create a new Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety and will develop strategies to reduce crime, including “illegal immigration, drug trafficking and violent crime,” according to CNN.
The second order addresses drug cartels and human trafficking, and calls for federal agencies to “increase intelligence” sharing among law enforcement partners, CNN reports. According to AOL, it calls for law enforcement agencies to “make dismantling drug cartels a high priority.”
Speaking on the order, Trump said, “I am directing the Department of Justice and Homeland Security to undertake all necessary and lawful action to break the back of the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation and are destroying the blood of our youth.”
The last order calls for laws on crimes against police officers to be examined—and could mean that in the future, more actions could be prosecuted as crimes against law enforcement. “It’s a shame what’s been happening to our great, truly great law enforcement officers. That’s going to stop as of today,” Trump said at the signing ceremony.
While Trump talked “law and order” a lot on the campaign trail, saying he would crack down on high-crime cities like Chicago, Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas political science professor, told The New York Times that the three executive orders didn’t actually say much about specific policy changes.
“It sounds like he is attempting to make it appear as if he is pushing forward policy positions that he wants to take some credit for,” Buchanan told the Times. “He wants to be in the papers for having endorsed things he is generally in favor of, even though there’s nothing really new.”