Trump signed EO 14288 directing DOJ to rescind police-reform consent decrees and threaten prosecution of local officials for DEI policing

On April 28, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14288, "Strengthening and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens," directing the Attorney General to review all DOJ Civil Rights Division consent decrees and similar police-reform agreements and to rescind or modify those deemed to "unduly impede law enforcement functions." The EO also directed the AG to pursue "all necessary legal remedies" against state and local officials who "willfully and unlawfully direct the obstruction of criminal law" or who "unlawfully engage in discrimination or civil-rights violations under the guise of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' initiatives" — language that directly threatened federal prosecution of local governments for DEI-based policing policies that courts had consistently found lawful. A separate provision directed the Department of Defense to identify how "military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel" could be used for domestic crime prevention and to accelerate transfers of military equipment to local law enforcement.

The Biden administration had been enforcing 17 court-mediated consent agreements with police departments nationwide, including agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville that resulted from documented patterns of unconstitutional force. The Civil Rights Division had an additional 12 cases pending. Consent decrees are federal court-supervised agreements — requiring the approval of both DOJ and the local jurisdiction — that emerged from investigations finding constitutional violations; they are not administrative discretion but binding court orders. The EO treated these as impediments to policing rather than as accountability mechanisms created to remedy specific, judicially-confirmed abuses.

Implementation moved quickly. The Civil Rights Division dismissed pending consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, retracted reports finding constitutional violations in Memphis and five other departments, and approximately 70 percent of Civil Rights Division staff were expected to resign or be forced out as the agency's civil rights enforcement function was operationally hollowed out. The threat to prosecute local officials for "equity" policies framed lawful civil-rights compliance as a potential federal crime — creating a chilling effect on policing reforms across jurisdictions that had no existing consent decree relationship with DOJ.

EO 14288 weaponizes the Justice Department in two simultaneous directions: outward, by threatening criminal prosecution of local governments for policies courts have found lawful; and inward, by directing the dismantling of a congressionally-supported accountability function the Civil Rights Division has exercised since the 1990s. The executive branch cannot unilaterally nullify court-supervised consent decrees or criminalize local governments for exercising their own lawful authority, without going through Congress.