Justice
When Cities Fought the Feds Over Apartheid
In 1986, the city of Baltimore battled the Reagan administration over its local anti-apartheid ordinances—and won. How they prevailed may have important lessons for cities trying to resist Trump today.
Earlier this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reiterated his threat to withhold federal funding from cities deemed as providing sanctuary for immigrants, this time bending language in the law to make it easier for him to penalize recalcitrant jurisdictions. In his May 22 memo to “All Department Grant-Making Components,” Sessions wrote:
And just to show that he’s not playing around, Sessions emphasized in the memo that this threat applies to “any existing grant administered by the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services…”—a possible ploy to wedge police departments against their own city governments by conditioning law enforcement grants on city compliance with Trump’s immigration demands.