No sanctuary from politics
Don’t think that President Trump has lost his capacity to create distractions in the rush to blunt the coronavirus pandemic. As Washington dickers over the next stimulus package aimed at states seeking aid and the number of infections reaches 1 million and growing, the president is tossing out a political hand grenade that plays to his base.
Trump is pressing for a tradeoff: If states want billions in aid, they may need to make “sanctuarycity adjustments.” The allimportant specifics are missing. The notion may yet be yanked back by a mercurial leader who flips out ideas like cards in a deck.
His new spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, kept the threat alive Friday in her first White House briefing. Asked if the president was ready to withhold funds from communities with laws to protect undocumented immigrants, she called it “a negotiation item” that the president “will bring up.”
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the White House is pulling out its political playbook that points away from Trump’s shortcomings in confronting the outbreak and warms up a divisive issue as his November reelection looms. With his polling numbers down, the president is looking to change the landscape.
The implications are significant since sanctuary laws are in place in 11 Democratic states including the most populous, California, and two others hardest hit by the pandemic, New York and New Jersey. Cities in other states have their own protection laws that rule out cooperating on immigrant roundups.
Trump’s playing with fire, once again. He’s called the infecting agent the “Chinese virus” and cut off money for the World Health Organization to shift blame and stir up antiforeign feelings. He’s pushing intelligence services to come up with more evidence to cast blame on Chinese authorities, a diversion as the death and infection toll rises on his watch.
Now he’s resurrecting his domestic crusade to hunt down and deport more than 10 million longstanding immigrants here without legal documentation. In his remarks this week, he once again said, “A lot of bad things are happening with sanctuary cities.” It’s a rerun of claims about a crime wave generated by migrants, and McEnany accentuated that point Friday.
The president is in a powerful position. His party controls the needed Senate votes for state bailout money. The courts have given him wide leeway on immigration rules, though sanctuary laws remain in place.
It’s important to note that some of those sanctuary policies — such as assuring that immigration status is not a factor in testing or treatment — advance the fight against the coronavirus. The president’s threat serves neither the economy nor public health.
President to punish states Trump’s that threat provide protections and services to undocumented immigrants does not advance the interest of public health in the U.S.