The Trump Department of Homeland Security cutting $178 million in counter-terrorism programs for New York under the phony guise of immigration enforcement is an affront to the truth and the NYPD.
Now it’s Donald Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem who are defunding the police.
So much for any federal partnership with state and local law enforcement to keep communities safe. And this slashing is not part of the government shutdown or some sort of practical reorientation, but only because Trump is upset that his home state has not gone along with his anti-immigrant and anti-DEI agendas, claiming falsely that we are required to toe the federal line.
New York City is the bad guys’ No. 1 terror target. There’s a place Downtown called Ground Zero if Donald and Kristi need a reminder. It was the 9/11 attack that spurred the creation of Noem’s department. But that doesn’t matter when political retribution is afoot.
If the terror threat to New York was gone, then the funding could decrease, however the administration is not interested in actually having conversations about law enforcement efficiency. And for the rule of law related to immigration, it has embarked on an unprecedented nationwide effort to have agents profile and pursue people in ways that seem to clearly violate the Fourth Amendment, as they are now looking to expand those tactics.
It’s also particularly ironic for a president who made such hay of the notion that the city’s streets and the subway are so dangerous. So, then it makes sense to cut funding from critical law enforcement functions? It’s even more galling that he’s doing so at least in part to try to compel New York to participate in his immigration crackdown, an effort that local law enforcement agrees is detrimental to public safety by generating skepticism of the police and discouraging people reporting or acting as witnesses to potential criminal activity.
For all of Trump‘s lies about crime rates in cities, including New York, we have historically low and declining rates of violent crime, at least in part because our strategy, including our sanctuary provisions, have been working. So, in essence, Trump is engaged in an effort to make New York less safe as a punishment and cudgel for the state refusing to make New York even less safe still.
To state the obvious, the president does not actually possess the power to simply redirect appropriated federal funds as he wishes. Throughout his whole term, Trump has been treating the federal government — whether that’s federal agents and prosecutors, independent regulatory agencies or the federal budget itself — as his own personal domain, or as if he were the CEO of the United States as opposed to a representative of the public with heavy constraints and an absolute mandate to uphold the Constitution. That’s why at least one federal judge has already frozen the efforts to pull the funding.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Trump tried to do this exact same thing during his first term and was similarly slapped down by the courts, yet has apparently not learned his lesson. Once more, upholding the law is only possible if officials face consequences for breaking it.
