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It is a response to the toppling of statues and monuments in recent weeks after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis prompted protests for police reform and social justice.

But the order offers little in the way of new authority. It directs federal law enforcement officials to prosecute “to the fullest extent permitted” people who violate existing federal laws that already make it a crime to damage or destroy a monument or statue.

The order also urges prosecution of anyone who is caught “attacking, removing or defacing depictions of Jesus or other religious figures or religious artwork.”

Protesters across the country have knocked down monuments, mostly of Confederate generals. In Raleigh, N.C., the statues of two Confederate soldiers were torn down. And in San Francisco, a crowd toppled a bust of Ulysses S. Grant, despite the fact that he was a Union general who beat the Confederate Army. (Protesters noted that he was also a slave owner.)

In Washington, protesters knocked over a statue of Albert Pike, the only Confederate general honored in the city, and they tried — unsuccessfully — to take down a statue near the White House of Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president.