WASHINGTON President Donald Trump has long boasted of his strong support for law enforcement officers and called himself a law-and-order president. But he made a little-noticed appointment Tuesday night that has alarmed the nations top police union: He named a top Justice Department appointee who built his career opposing federal funding for local law enforcement.

Trump named David Muhlhausen, a veteran analyst from the conservative Heritage Foundation , to head the National Institute of Justice, DOJs research and development agency. Muhlhausen, a former manager of a juvenile correctional facility who joined Heritage in 1999, is a longtime opponent of the Justice Departments Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which has distributed billions of dollars to local law enforcement over the past two decades.