Wu stands up for cities, not just for Boston
'The US attorney general asked for a response by today, so here it is. Stop attacking our cities to hide your administration's failures,' Wu said.
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For Wu, it was an opportunity to revisit her
'We may have said this in D.C. nearly six months ago, and I'll say it again today: You are wrong on the law and you are wrong on safety,' Wu declared. 'Most of all, you are wrong on cities.
'The cities that live in your minds are totally foreign to the residents living in our cities, and we are picking up the pieces of your failures to deliver on your promises under the Trump administration.'
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In typically authoritarian fashion, the White House threatened withholding of federal funds to the city if it doesn't cooperate, and even hinted at criminal charges for officials who won't toe the line.
'You are hereby notified that your jurisdiction has been identified as one that engages in sanctuary policies that thwart federal immigration enforcement to the detriment of the interests of the United States,' Bondi wrote. 'That ends now.'
Resisting Trump's immigration crackdown is, of course, a proven winner for Wu. By a wide margin, Bostonians rightly
Bondi's saber-rattling takes place against the backdrop of President Trump's attempted
Some see these maneuvers as an attempt to distract everyone from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and that may well be a consideration.
But Trump's dystopian view of American cities has long been a matter of record. At
'Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.'
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Carnage is not a word that remotely applies to Boston.
For a native New Yorker, Trump's contempt for the kind of places that spawned him is palpable.
I asked Wu if she worried that mayors could actually face prosecution for resisting the administration.
'I try not to think about it,' she said. 'We're trying to do the next right thing, and it's a cloud or a storm of new headlines and attacks coming at Boston and cities everywhere, every single day. We know what our residents need, and we've been working really hard, making really important progress, getting it done. We're going to continue to do that.'
The
Trump's contempt for Boston has been a huge campaign-season gift to Wu, and the rally Tuesday was another example of that. But it reflected something darker too: an administration determined to rewrite the laws to its liking, and ruthless in enforcing its will.
Boston — and Mayor Wu — are right to resist that with everything it has.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
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