The law-and-order crowd sure has a problem with law and order

America is a nation of laws.

Sure — as long as those laws don’t apply to the only protected class that seems to matter. No, not some “DEI hire,” but the powerful (read: usually white) and privileged (read: usually white men).

Let’s start at the top: Hours into his second term, President Donald Trump buried accountability under a mountain of pardons for some 1,500 of his fellow criminal cronies who tried to violently overturn the 2020 election. These are not just adjudicated criminals. They are members of Trump’s personal militia who violently assaulted police officers at the U.S. Capitol. Some of those officers later died.

It was just one obscene act in Trump’s no-holds-barred attack on lawfulness. As I type this, 22 states are challenging his executive order limiting birthright citizenship, a legal principle enshrined in the Constitution. Fortunately, a federal judge in Washington state, nominated by another Republican, Ronald Reagan, has thumbed through a copy, and put a temporary halt on Trump’s assault on fellow citizens, calling the order “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Meanwhile, several of his cabinet nominees, many of whom still won’t admit Trump lost the 2020 election, are primed to break the law — any law — on behalf of their Dear Leader.

But this is hardly just a Washington problem.

The law-and-order gag runs through every Main Street in our country, and hypocrisy, like politics, is local.

While the self-described “president of law and order” is dismantling any shred of accountability, Philadelphia’s local embodiment of law and order — the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 — is busy pushing for less transparency (and, consequently, less trust) in its latest contract negotiations.

A recent story by my Inquirer colleagues laid out how the police union wants to end the police department’s nearly 10-year-old policy of releasing the names of most officers involved in shootings, as well as restrict access to the kind of records The Inquirer used in 2019 to expose how the FOP uses the arbitration system to get bad cops out of trouble. (Spoiler alert: It did so often, and successfully.)

The union also wants to keep the Citizens Police Oversight Commission from investigating police misconduct, and its officers to be able to run home to New Jersey or Delaware. But if they do stay put in Philadelphia, the FOP wants the poorest big city in the nation to give $100,000 interest-free loans to any officer who purchases a home here, and for each year of service, the city — in other words, you, me, and the rest of the taxpayers — would forgive $10,000 of that loan.

Look, I get that we’re dealing with a shortage of cops, and we need to make a hard job more attractive. But making it possible for officers to be even more disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect and serve — along with increasing distrust among those communities — is not the way to do it.

To recap: It’s law and order — as long as it’s not for me and mine.

The oversight commission’s executive director, Tonya McClary, called the FOP’s initial proposals a “significant step back.”

“It’s a little alarming,” she said.

Oh, no, Tonya, it’s a lot alarming.

It’s almost unbelievable that George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer was just in 2020. Remember the calls for reform?

But that was back when people in power were cosplaying at remorse and atonement — at least until everyone got back to justifying unjust systems, an act that’s only been made easier with Trump’s attack on diversity and inclusion.

Exhibit A: Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who, like many Republicans, cheered the pardoning of American traitors. “Jan. 6 was a long time ago,” Moreno said, while having the audacity to add, “Nobody is a stronger supporter of law enforcement than President Trump, myself, or JD Vance.” Doesn’t that sound like the kind of unsolicited thing you say when you know it isn’t true? (In a too-little-too-late move, the national FOP — the very same union that endorsed Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 — recently denounced the president for pardoning the Jan. 6ers who assaulted police officers.)

Another favorite target of the law-and-order crowd, immigration, is also having its moment. I mean, how dare these immigrants break the law by crossing the border without authorization to come here and help build our homes, raise our crops, and take care of our children and the elderly (among other despicable lawbreaking activities)?

Once upon a time in Philadelphia, the city literally named for the concept of tolerance and inclusion, former Mayor Jim Kenney’s support of immigrants was — despite some major missteps and flaws — clear and unequivocal.

Today, other than a tepid statement from Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration that Philadelphia’s sanctuary city policy remains in effect, the usually vocal Parker — who campaigned on her own law-and-order message — has been noticeably quiet on how she’ll deal with Trump’s broad crackdown on immigrants, including a directive that now allows federal agents to enter churches, schools, and hospitals.

Mayor Parker, hardworking immigrant Philadelphians — our friends, our families, and our neighbors who call this city home, and who are responsible for much of its growth and vibrancy — are afraid. And rightly so.

The nation’s most powerful and privileged are uniting to unleash unspeakable harm on our most vulnerable, and submerging us in an unrelenting tide of daily injustices.

Right now, we need bold policies by brave leaders to replace the selective, and often deadly, nods to law and order.