Christina Wilkie, September 3, 2020
President Donald Trump has ordered federal agencies to look for ways to restrict funding to Democrat-led cities, an unprecedented use of federal power that legal experts say is extremely unlikely to be upheld in court.
“It is imperative that the federal government review the use of federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities,” Trump says in a five-page memo released late Wednesday and addressed to Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought and Attorney General Bill Barr.
The memo comes as Trump, trailing Democrat Joe Biden in polls, seeks to shift the national focus away from his administration’s failed response to the coronavirus pandemic and toward racial justice demonstrations against police brutality that have occurred in cities and towns across the country this summer.
