Heidi Grover, covering today’s speech by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray for The Stranger:
Today, as President Donald Trump issued plans build a border wall with Mexico and crack down on cities that offer refuge to undocumented immigrants, vows to fight back were issued by city, county, and federal officials from Seattle.
“I am willing to lose every single penny to protect those people,” Murray said of immigrants, refugees, and Muslims, groups that have been the targets of Trump’s onslaught of executive orders in recent days. One of Trump’s executive orders, issued today, takes aim at “sanctuary cities,” like Seattle, that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Trump has said he plans to cut federal funding to such cities as a way of coercing them to cooperate with deportations or punishing them if they refuse. Another order will restrict immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries.
Seattle stands to lose over $80 million in federal funding if Trump successfully makes good on his threat to revoke federal funding to sanctuary cities.