ATTORNEY GENERAL/JEFF SESSIONS/SANCTUARY CITIES: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday [7-25-17] moved once again to punish so-called sanctuary cities, announcing that cities and states could lose millions of dollars in federal grants unless they began cooperating with immigration agents.
Only hours before, President Trump had issued his latest public rebuke of Mr. Sessions, amplifying the criticisms he had leveled on Twitter against his attorney general in a Rose Garden news conference at which the president said that he was ‘very disappointed’ in Mr. Sessions’s performance. Asked about Mr. Sessions’s future employment, Mr. Trump said: ‘Time will tell. Time will tell.’
Mr. Sessions did not address the unfavorable performance review on Tuesday — it was ‘business as usual’ at the Justice Department, a spokeswoman said — but the sanctuary city announcement signaled that he was far from giving up on the immigration agenda he has zealously pursued since he was a senator from Alabama…
But it was not clear that he could hold cities to such conditions. Earlier this year, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from withholding funding over sanctuary policies, a ruling the judge, William H. Orrick of United States District Court in San Francisco, recently reaffirmed over the objections of the government, which argued that only a small pool of grants was at stake. On Tuesday evening, officials in sanctuary cities reacted to the announcement with skepticism and hostility.”
-Vivian Yee and Rebecca R. Ruiz, “Sessions Once Again Threatens Sanctuary Cities,” The New York Times online, July 26, 2017