Donald Trump has a grievance against New York – and it tells you a lot about his presidency
Masked men roam the neighbourhood and everyone is dressed in black. I write to you from the mean streets of Gotham City, which, along with Portland and Seattle, was officially designated an “anarchist jurisdiction” on Monday by the US department of justice (DoJ). Those of you who still cling to the old-fashioned belief that words have meanings may wonder whether anarchists typically have jurisdictions. Well, New York City anarchists apparently do. They have also got strict rules about alternate side parking and you get fined if you don’t adhere to social distancing protocols. It is not the sort of anarchy that the Sex Pistols sang about, that’s for sure.
America’s official Anarchy List didn’t appear out of nowhere. A few weeks ago, Donald Trump published a memo requesting the DoJ identify cities “permitting anarchy”; this is the axis of evil they came up with. According to the US attorney general, William Barr – the guy who recently likened coronavirus lockdown orders to slavery – the leaders of these cities have cut police funding and given a green light to violence. In order to combat this supposed lawlessness, the government has threatened to block federal funds; in the case of New York that means revoking up to $7bn (£5.4bn). Since a not insignificant portion of that money goes towards the city’s police department, the Trump administration is, rather ironically, threatening to defund the police.
Related: DoJ labels New York, Portland and Seattle 'anarchist jurisdictions'
You know what anarchists do when bullied by the government? Prepare lawsuits, of course. New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, along with the leaders of Portland and Seattle, the other anarchist cities, has promised to sue the Trump administration if it attempts to follow through on withdrawing federal funds. Which it probably won’t: this latest move is less about lowering city budgets than it is about raising liberals’ hackles and pandering to Trump’s base. Threatening to do something unconstitutional and illegal is Trump’s way of reminding voters that he’s the law-and-order candidate. And, of course, it’s a distraction from the fact that the US is nearing 200,000 Covid-19 deaths.
The idea that New York is a hotbed of oatmilk-latte-fuelled anarchy would be hilarious if the motivation behind Trump’s stunt weren’t so sinister. Far from being a law-and-order president, Trump is the grievance president: his job isn’t to come up with policies but to dole out punishments. Last year, the New York Times interviewed Trump supporters about how the government shutdown was hurting a Florida town. “I thought he was going to do good things,” one woman complained. “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” That quote is perhaps the best description you can get of Trump’s electoral mandate: he needs to hurt the right people. Or, perhaps more accurately, he needs to hurt left-leaning people and minorities. He needs to stick it to places like New York.
We often use the phrase “culture wars” to describe the deep divisions in America but I think what’s unfolding might more accurately be described as a cold civil war. Americans may not be shooting each other en masse in the streets (yet) but the Trump administration has made it very clear that it doesn’t care about the lives of people in Democratic states. Trump recently boasted, for example, that America had dealt with Covid-19 well, “if you take the blue states out”. It was also recently reported that boy genius Jared Kushner showed zero concern for New York’s lack of resources when the state was bearing the brunt of the pandemic back in March. “[Cuomo’s] people are going to suffer and that’s their problem,” Kushner is alleged to have said. Trump and his people have made it very clear that if you’re not on their side, you’ll suffer. Trump is not the president of the US – he’s the president of his followers. There’s a word for that sort of thing and it’s not “anarchy” – it’s “authoritarianism”.
