Punishing Blue Cities Was Always On The Agenda

Yahoo

5 hours ago

The Trump administration's decision to federalize the California National Guard to crack down on protesters demonstrating against ICE detentions in the city, absent a request from the state's governor — and even despite assurances from local law enforcement that things were, for the most part, under control — is itself the convergence of two threats Trump made on the campaign trail.
There is, of course, Trump's vow to deploy the military domestically, an impulse he has been itching to act on since he first came back to office. Throughout the 2024 campaign cycle he repeatedly floated the idea of deploying soldiers against protesters. When he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris last fall, he daydreamed on Truth Social about his desire to bring in 'military assets' to help with his mass deportation agenda.
He signed an executive order soon after his return to the White House that expanded the use of the military within U.S. borders, just one component of his early actions to push ICE to more swiftly round up and deport migrants — both those with legal status and undocumented immigrants. That came under the guise of a crackdown on supposedly violent gang members who entered the U.S. illegally, a blanket justification that has, of course, resulted in innocent people getting nabbed off the street daily for the past three months.
When he issued the order over the weekend, purporting to federalize the California National Guard and directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy 2,000 troops to Los Angeles, it was the culmination of this vision he's held onto for years: bringing in the military to create a grand spectacle of immigration enforcement.
But there's another Trump II agenda item the deployment ticks off by undermining the authority of California state officials and local officials in LA to determine when and how they might request backup in the face of unrest. The Trump administration has been searching for ways to punish blue cities and blue states since before he returned to office. Back in November, the Washington Post reported that Trump and his advisers were discussing how the then-president elect might strip federal funding from Chicago and other blue cities as punishment for getting in the way of his planned deportation program.
One of the first actions taken by the new Trump Justice Department after the President was sworn in in January sought to warn local and state officials against protesting the new administration's immigration crackdown. In the memo, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove warned that state and local officials who don't cooperate with Trump's deportation efforts could face federal prosecution.
In late April, the administration sought to make good on that early scheme to strip funds from sanctuary cities when he signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Krisi Noem to pull together a list of 'States and local jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws (sanctuary jurisdictions).' In the order, Trump also directed his OMB Director Russ Vought to 'identify appropriate Federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions, including grants and contracts, for suspension or termination, as appropriate.'
That list of supposed sanctuary cities was published last week, only to be taken down days later due to backlash — the administration had cast an overbroad net and included many municipalities that were not, in fact, sanctuary cities, angering local officials.
Those are just some of the recent actions the administration has taken to punish state and local municipalities that refuse to cooperate with any one element of Trump's outrageous and sweeping deportation mandates. The effort, months back, to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams was reportedly couched in a scheme to force Adams to allow ICE to roam free in protected spaces across the city.
Even Trump's allies in Congress have taken Trump's threats against blue cities into their own hands, as Republicans on the House Oversight Committee drag in blue city mayors to testify under oath about their cities' sanctuary policies, part of a messaging effort to turn the public against an attempt to make communities safe for migrants seeking asylum or working toward other forms of legal status.
California in particular has been in the Trump administration's crosshairs. On Friday, before the decision to federalize the state's national guard was made, CNN reported that the Trump administration had been preparing to announce a sweeping cancelation of federal funding for the state over a litany of perceived crimes such as allowing a trans athletes to participate in a sporting event and having a governor whom Trump dislikes.
The events over the weekend simply gave the President an opening to take another swipe at the blue state, and make a spectacle out of its largest blue city.
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As we've been reporting for some time, it's unclear how willing Republican members of Congress will be to take up and pass the rescissions package that the White House sent to Congress last week. The package includes a small portion of the billions in federal funding that Elon Musk either canceled or rescinded in the last few months of DOGE's rampage through the executive branch, plus a few other Republican pet projects, like cutting PBS and NPR off from federal funds.
Some whispers of resistance to the idea have surfaced in recent days, as some Republicans in the House facing tough reelection prospects raise issue with the sweeping foreign aid cuts outlined in the package. And at least one Republican is going to bat for public broadcasting. Per The Hill:
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) on Monday urged the Trump administration to reconsider a request to Congress for public broadcasting cuts, warning of the potential impact some local communities face if funding is yanked back.
In a joint statement, Amodei and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), co-chairs of the Public Broadcasting Caucus, defended public broadcasting funding, saying local stations' ability to 'continue offering free, high-quality programming would be eliminated if the federal funding is rescinded.'
Senate Finance Committee Democrats sent a letter to Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) on Friday demanding he schedule a public markup 'so that the members may serve their role in considering' the committee's portion of the reconciliation bill before it moves to the Senate floor.
The Finance Committee is in charge of the part of the text that is causing the most tension among Senate Republicans, including cuts to Medicaid, the clean energy tax credits and other key tax breaks.
'If Trump and Republicans in Congress are going to deprive millions of Americans of their health care so that millionaires and rich corporations can get massive tax cuts, it should not be done in secret backroom negotiations. It should be done in the light of day, including through a full markup in the Senate Finance Committee,' Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote in the letter.
The letter comes amid questions around if Senate Republicans will hold traditional, open-to-the-public markup hearings or skip markups altogether and bring the revised version of the reconciliation package straight to the floor.
'My opinion is the reason they haven't wanted a markup is because they know that they'll walk into the committee and try to defend the indefensible,' Wyden told reporters on Wednesday, just two days before the letter was sent. 'And the American people are going to be furious.'
'Their positions on Medicaid are indefensible, their positions on clean energy tax incentives, which I wrote, are indefensible,' the Oregon Democrat added. 'These kinds of issues are going to be what they'll have to deal with in an open markup, and that's why they're doing such somersaults to do other things.'
— Emine Yücel
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