This is the lead editorial in today’s Daily News. The opinion is direct and correct. The sarcasm is delicious:
White House anarchy
The three anarchist jurisdictions previously known as the cities of Seattle, New York and Portland sifted through the smoldering remains of their toppled civilizations and discovered some old tattered law books that hadn’t been burned for warmth. They found a few people among the roving, starving packs who remembered the lost skills of literacy. And they managed to somehow put together a complaint to the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.
The lawsuit lays to waste the incoherent wail disguised as federal policy that President Trump and his toadie Attorney General Bill Barr have advanced these last few months to punish cities that made them mad.
Heaven and earth and the federal bureaucracy have moved because of a Trump temper tantrum, and now the federal government could cut off billions in funding. This is rooted in no law. It is supported by lies about police told to stand down and crime run amok. It is illegal, violating the Administrative Procedure Act, and unconstitutional, offending the separation of powers and core principles of federalism.
Trump ordered his budget director to “issue guidance to the heads of agencies on restricting eligibility of or otherwise disfavoring, to the maximum extent permitted by law, anarchist jurisdictions in the receipt of Federal grants.”
That was due on Oct. 2; it hasn’t arrived, which wouldn’t be the first time this administration skipped a step or three.
That didn’t stop someone in the guts of the civil service bureaucracy of the Federal Transit Administration from adding a warning that applications for grants from a $10 million pot to research COVID-19 spread on public transit would consider the anarchist jurisdiction label, a clear implication that Seattle, New York and Portland are disfavored.
That’s enough to sue. And kill Trump’s nonsense.