Justice
Jeff Sessions Just Picked a Fight With COPS
The Attorney General’s threat to “claw back” federal funds from sanctuary cities would imperil the grants program that local police have been clamoring for.
This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions doubled down on his Trump-ordered threat to pull federal funding from cities and counties (and states) that he deems uncooperative with his mission to root out undocumented immigrants, explaining that his Justice Department will “take all lawful steps to claw back any funds” from “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
This isn’t really about public safety—sanctuary cities have lower crime rates, as my colleague Tanvi Misra has reported. Indeed, it’s likely to make cities more dangerous: The specific funds that Sessions is threatening to pull are those that local police departments have been begging the Justice Department to increase for years.