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President Trump hadn’t even begun his takeover of Washington D.C. before bringing up the other cities he plans to turn into police states. He mentioned New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles: Democrat-led cities with sanctuary laws that Tom Homan, Donald Trump, and Stephen Miller hate.
Democracy Now! reported something else that the cities on Trump’s list have in common: Black Mayors. His militarized secret police force is still in LA with the National Guard. In fact, a group of masked ICE agents showed up outside the location of Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent press conference where he talked about gerrymandering.
Newsom also called Trump out for his attempts to redraw maps in several states in order to gain more Republican seats in Congress.
Responding to Trump’s threats, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson tells Democracy Now! that his city will not “cower or bend or be intimidated by these attempts to divide and conquer our communities.” He says that unlike Trump’s militarized approach, Chicago has been investing in mental health services, raising wages and building affordable housing as part of a larger campaign to improve quality of life. Contrary to Trump’s claims, violent crime is down in Chicago.
“We’re building the safest, most affordable big city in America, the most pro-worker city in America, and we’re doing it in a very collective way,” says Johnson.
The Trump administration is escalating its takeover of the Washington, D.C., police force. Attorney General Pam Bondi has named the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration as D.C.’s emergency police commissioner, but D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb have rejected the order.
In addition, Bondi has ordered an end to Washington, D.C.’s sanctuary policies, which restricted D.C. police from aiding federal immigration enforcement. This comes days after Trump deployed 800 National Guard to Washington, D.C., as he declared a crime emergency in D.C., even though violent crime is at a 30-year low. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress is continuing to withhold a billion dollars taken away from Washington, D.C.’s budget earlier this year.
President Trump is also threatening to take action against other Democratic cities.
Trump:
“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. And we have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore.
They’re so — they’re so far gone. We’re not going to let it happen. We’re not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C., and we’re going to clean it up real quick. Very quickly.
And if we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster. We have a mayor there who’s totally incompetent. He’s an incompetent man. And we have an incompetent governor there.”
