Washington, DC — On Monday, the Trump administration lifted a ban on military surplus hardware being transferred to police departments across the United States. The controversial 1033 program became a source of citizen outrage after images of police armed with military grade weaponry, including grenade launchers and armored MRAPs, were beamed into people homes across the country during the battlefield-style police response to the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

As many Americans noted, Ferguson, Missouri looked like a war zone, with police kitted out in Marine-issue camouflage and military-grade body armor, toting short-barreled assault rifles, and rolling around in armored vehicles — virtually indistinguishable from US soldiers.

Shortly after the American public became widely aware, and largely outraged, over the extreme militarization of their local police forces, President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) that blocked large-caliber weapons, armored vehicles, grenade launchers and other heavy military hardware from being repurposed from battlefields across the globe to small town USA.

This was one of very few notable pro-liberty moves by the Obama admin, and now it's gone.

The new Trump plan goes into effect immediately and completely rolls back the EO that blocked state, county, and local police departments from obtaining military weapons of war. Unsurprisingly, drug warrior extraordinaire, Attorney General Jeff Session led the charge to reinstate the program.

The administration's action, first disclosed by USA TODAY, would restore "the full scope of a longstanding program for recycling surplus, lifesaving gear from the Department of Defense, along with restoring the full scope of grants used to purchase this type of equipment from other sources," according to an administration summary of the new program recently circulated to some law enforcement groups.

Civil rights advocates were quick to warn that the 1033 program's reinstatement threatened to inflame tensions in minority communities where such equipment has been deployed in the past.

"It is both exceptionally dangerous and irresponsible for the administration to lift the ban on the transfer of certain surplus military equipment to state and local law enforcement organizations," Janai Nelson, associate director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told USA Today. "Just a few summers ago, our nation watched as Ferguson raised the specter of increased police militarization. The law enforcement response there and in too many places across the country demonstrated how perilous, especially for black and brown communities, a militarized police force can be."