President Donald Trump’s hometown of New York Metropolis is floor zero for his assault on blue cities and states and their establishments.   

The rule of regulation is being changed with the whims of the president, and up to now there’s no signal that any of the Democrats operating to be mayor, together with broken incumbent Eric Adams, are up-to-the-minute of defending town from Trump when wanted. 

Adams is overtly compromised. The opposite candidates have been extra eager about speaking about that or taking whacks on the front-runner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, than in articulating how they’d stand as much as this presidential stress marketing campaign hitting town from all sides. 

The rule of regulation is being changed with the whims of the president.

There’s the $400 million in federal funding being withheld from Columbia College in a legally doubtful transfer, at the least till it complies with a sweeping and nebulous sequence of calls for. These embrace a crackdown on anti-Israel protests and a masking ban on the similar time that masked federal brokers are selecting up campus members and transport them to Louisiana for deportation proceedings. 

Then there’s the chief order, a real invoice of attainder, that threatened to destroy Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, one of many metropolis’s most outstanding regulation companies, for using and dealing on behalf of the president’s actual and perceived enemies. Trump mentioned Thursday he’ll drop the order after the agency’s head went to the White Home, which mentioned he apologized for “wrongdoing” and agreed to offer $40 million in authorized companies to Trump-favored causes over his time period. (Trump ought to replace the title of his best-known ebook to “The Artwork of the Shakedown.”)

Trump additionally imposed the legally doubtful demand to close down New York’s already federally accredited and applied congestion pricing plan, together with blackmail about slicing different federal funding until Gov. Kathy Hochul complies and cuts out what Trump’s transportation secretary whined Thursday is “open disrespect of the federal authorities” in refusing to simply accept its made-up ultimatum. 

Trump’s Justice Division can be suing the state for refusing to let the feds use its DMV database, together with undocumented immigrants with state driver’s licenses, as a de facto deportation listing.

After which there are the threats from Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, about how “I don’t care what the judges suppose, I don’t care what the left thinks, we’re coming” and Homan’s open extortion of Mayor Adams — who’s determined to get a dispensation within the felony corruption case in opposition to him — about how “I’ll be in his workplace, up his butt, saying the place the hell is the settlement we got here to” if the mayor doesn’t ship far more cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, by no means thoughts New York’s sanctuary metropolis legal guidelines. 

Because the hits maintain coming with extra on the way in which, Adams has mentioned he received’t publicly criticize Trump or his administration, overtly humiliating himself and town he’s supposed to steer within the course of. 

New York Metropolis didn’t go crimson in 2024 by any measure, but it surely received notably much less blue as Trump mainly matched his 2020 numbers whereas Kamala Harris fell in need of Joe Biden’s 2020 leads to each single electoral district.  

A message to these Democrat skeptics: You may dislike all or any campus protesters, menacing avenue theater, white-collar regulation companies, congestion pricing, blue state governors, the far left or crooked mayors and nonetheless acknowledge that utilizing the ability of the federal authorities to focus on actual or supposed “enemies” this fashion is deeply disturbing. 

Trump ought to replace the title of his best-known ebook to ‘The Artwork of the Shakedown.’

And that’s earlier than attending to the wild terror claims being thrown round by the feds with out even nominal attribution and the supposed gang members being shipped, with none proof or listening to in a frontal assault on the judiciary and the rule of regulation itself, to a hellhole El Salvadoran jail.

Should you thought the Biden administration was committing “lawfare” and are applauding Trump’s retribution tour, your grievance was not about having an “enemies listing” — simply with who was on it.

Trump’s extortion scheme, demanding tribute from cities and elite establishments as in the event that they had been conquered territories, is about exacting punishment, in fact, but it surely’s largely about compliance. 

Lop off a number of heads and different folks get nervous about lifting theirs up. That goes for protesters and directors and mayors and nearly everybody else. The beatings will proceed till morale improves. 

Trump’s huge concept, if “concept” isn’t too beneficiant a phrase, is to take laborious, wild swings and count on everybody who doesn’t get hit to race to conform earlier than the hammer comes down once more — and to get in an as many swings as he can earlier than courts or lawmakers or anybody else may even react. 

That’s why Manhattan medical large NYU Langone is scrubbing references to its “various college students” and the phrase “marginalized” from its web site and coverage paperwork and reconsidering phrases as innocent as “weak” for concern of incurring Trump’s ire. 

You don’t want to like all issues DEI to acknowledge that govt orders criminalizing an “ideology” with out even defining it are supposed to coerce silence and violate what had been the bedrock American precept that the federal government doesn’t get to select speech winners and losers.

That crude strategy seems to be working. It’s not simply NYU Langone, which was unfortunate sufficient to have its memo leak first. Almost each lawyer is advising the establishments they work for to tone down their language, trim their sails and hope the lightning strikes another person. 

Columbia’s board is reportedly making an attempt to determine methods to meet Trump’s phrases, together with inserting its Center Japanese research division in “educational receivership” regardless of the injury that might do to the establishment’s independence — and even if Trump hasn’t even mentioned he’ll restore the cash if it complies, solely that he received’t negotiate in any respect till it does. 

New York has talked a giant recreation about progressive values, however these are being examined as by no means earlier than.

Solely a handful of different faculties have referred to as out the shakedown, reversing the well-known Benjamin Franklin quip on the signing of the Declaration of Independence about how “We should, certainly, all dangle collectively or, most assuredly, we will all dangle individually.” Most everyone seems to be preserving quiet, hoping another person will get hung first.

New York has talked a giant recreation about progressive values, however these are being examined as by no means earlier than. The remainder of the nation is watching to see how America’s greatest metropolis, and Trump’s hometown, will deal with the powerful years forward as voters resolve whether or not to place up or shut up. 

If there’s a mayoral candidate keen to really lead earlier than voters give them the job by speaking in regards to the powerful instances and laborious selections which are coming because the federal authorities cuts funding to New York Metropolis and pressures whoever’s mayor to conform along with his diktats, that is the time to seek out out if New Yorkers are severe or not about wanting a profile in braveness.

Harry Siegel

Harry Siegel is a senior editor on the newsroom The Metropolis, a columnist for the New York Each day Information and the producer and a co-host of the “FAQ NYC” podcast.