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The Logoff: A major blow to police reform
The Trump administration is freezing the Justice Department’s work on police reform.
Joey Sendaydiego for Vox
Patrick Reis was the senior politics and ideas editor at Vox. He previously worked at Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, Politico, National Journal, and Seattle’s Real Change News. As a reporter and editor, he has worked on coverage of campaign politics, economic policy, the federal death penalty, climate change, financial regulation, and homelessness.
Good afternoon, and welcome to The Logoff — the newsletter that gives you the Trump news you need so that you can log off and get back to the rest of your life.
The Justice Department has reversed course on its work monitoring police discrimination, freezing, and potentially unwinding, some of the most significant federal efforts at police reform launched in the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests. The move didn’t dominate today’s headlines — President Donald Trump’s blustery speech in Davos got more attention — but it’s clearly an action with long-term consequences.
Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department’s civil rights division investigated a dozen police forces over accusations of racial bias. Many of those investigations led to consent decrees — legally binding agreements mandating anti-discrimination measures. It was meaningful, if imperfect, progress on police reform.
So what’s Trump doing? According to memos obtained by multiple news outlets, the Trump administration is halting any ongoing investigations and reviewing settlements made with police departments in Minneapolis (where George Floyd was killed), Louisville (where Breonna Taylor was killed), and Memphis (where Tyre Nichols was killed). The department now “may wish to reconsider” the arrangements, which have not been finalized by a federal judge.
Is this normal? To some extent, yes. New administrations routinely change course at the Justice Department, particularly in the civil rights division. But an across-the-board freeze is extreme, experts tell the Washington Post.
Why does it matter? After 2020’s George Floyd protests, there was a national upswell of support for racial justice in policing. But legislative efforts at police reform died in Congress, and so the Justice Department’s work has so far been the most powerful federal lever.
What’s next? We don’t know, exactly: The investigations are frozen, not closed, and the consent decrees may yet survive. But given Trump’s outspoken skepticism of police reform efforts and his calls for hardline policing tactics, the Justice Department’s civil rights division is almost certain to take a radically different tack. The change in course will have ramifications for police forces nationwide — and for the millions of people who live under them.
And with that, it’s time to log off...
Amid a tough week for the transition from gas-powered to electric cars, it’s worth remembering that technological innovation continues to fly forward. Thanks to new advances, electric cars can now run longer and go farther between charges, even when it’s extremely cold. Federal policy matters, but it’s not everything — and human ingenuity can’t be governed away.
