Starting at noon yesterday there were some big changes at the White House web site and they’d obviously been in the works for a while. One of the first items which sent liberals to the fainting couches was the disappearance of the climate change page under the issues section. (The old URL is now just a broken link.) This was viewed in some quarters as a sign of the End Times approaching. The page’s apparent replacement with the America First Energy Plan only poured salt in the wound.

But that wasn’t the page which first caught my attention. Also in the White House issues section was a bold proclamation having to do with the nation’s law enforcement officers and it has nothing to do with finding more efficient ways to lock up cops. The title reads, Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community and it’s a doozy.

One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community. A Trump Administration will empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence. The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.

If you’re sitting at home and finding yourself shocked by this then you either weren’t paying attention during the campaign or you really believed that Trump was just another politician who would forget everything he said on the campaign trail and settle in for business as usual after being sworn in. This message is precisely the one the President preached on the campaign trail and it is now official White House policy. The “dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America” has been a topic of conversation in conservative circles for the past eight years and pretending it doesn’t exist anymore isn’t going to solve anything.

The official page also seems to carry a not terribly subtle message for the “peaceful protesters” who burn down the cities after lethal force encounters with the police. (Emphasis added)

Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter, or the violent disrupter. Our job is to make life more comfortable for parents who want their kids to be able to walk the streets safely. Or the senior citizen waiting for a bus. Or the young child walking home from school.

This may be the first hopeful sign in terms of stemming the rising tide of violent crime in the cities. (Statistics for this phenomenon are also included on the page.) The era of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch saw an unprecedented move to blame the police first and ask questions later. While certain practices instituted under Obama will actually prove productive in the long run (such as the increased use of body and dash cams) the majority of “investigations” tended to center on painting all cops with the same broad brush after the discovery of a few bad apples who needed to be weeded out from the ranks.

Assuming the Democrats don’t find a way to gum up the confirmation process (unlikely in my opinion), we should be seeing a very different attitude coming from Jeff Sessions and the Trump Department of Justice. And if he can somehow bring down the crime rate in our largest cities and make them safer places to live and work, the mostly Democratic mayors of those urban centers are going to have a lot of questions to answer from the voters going forward.