Governor Cuomo was not happy on a conference call. And that is because the governor, who was once hailed as the best leader during the shutdown, not only has come under fire for nursing home deaths, rioting and looting, and being seen in public without wearing a mask, he now may face heavier effects than expected.
President Trump has ordered a memorandum to the Office of Management and Budget to look at federal funds to cities like New York, Seattle, Portland and Washington, DC. The review will limit funding to “anarchist jurisdictions in the recent of Federal grants that the agency has sufficient lawful discretion to restrict or otherwise disfavor anarchist jurisdictions from receiving.”
As President Trump completely leans into becoming the law and order president, he is trying to use his powers to force Democrat-led city leaders and state officials to clamp down on the peaceful protests that often turn into riots. The result has been thousands of dollars in property damage, as well as physical injuries as parts of cities are essentially shutdown. In a tweet, he wrote, “My administration will do everything in its power to prevent weak mayors and lawless cities from taking Federal dollars, while they let anarchists harm people, burn building, and ruin lives and businesses. We’re putting them on notice today.”
For Cuomo, this will particularly hurt. Last month, he urged his rich friends to come back to New York City, and has said the state will be in serious trouble if they don’t receive federal funding to help with an increased deficit due to the virus shutdown. On the conference call, Cuomo complained that Trump was trying to punish New York City. The governor wrote in a tweet, “President Trump has actively sought to punish NYC since day one. He let COVID ambush New York. He refuses to provide funds that states and cities MUST receive to recover. He is not a king. He cannot “defund” NYC. It’s an illegal stunt.”
The word “defund” is an interesting choice, as Mayor de Blasio defunded the police by $1 billion, and left it open if the amount would increase. New York City has been hit by a serious uptick in crime since the shutdown, with hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers leaving since the beginning of the virus to take refuge elsewhere, on top of a limitation to the NYPD’s abilities in the city to keep the peace.
And this isn’t Cuomo’s only problem. The Justice Department is also weighing in on whether to investigate states that allowed nursing home members to be readmitted after the virus broke out in the United States, an action that many say resulted in the unneeded confirmed deaths of over 6,000 elderly in New York State.
Democrat-led city leaders have been overly vocal in their criticism against President Trump, and at the same time have been overly tolerant for anarchist zones like CHAZ to exist for weeks. New York City, in particular, saw nights of looting of stores across Manhattan, with almost no repercussions for the perpetrators. In the Upper East Side alone, crime has gone up by over 280 percent.
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