Boston Mayor Michelle Wu stated town isn’t anticipating any new grant funding from the federal authorities and is battling the Trump administration in court docket to maintain what has usually been obtained from prior administrations.
Whereas the Trump administration’s makes an attempt to cancel among the metropolis’s “legally binding” contracts are creating uncertainty for her proposed $4.8 billion finances, Wu stated Boston, which simply this week joined a lawsuit difficult cuts to federal housing and homelessness prevention funding, gained’t change its method.
“What is clear is that we cannot let the strategy of fear and confusion divide us,” Wu stated at a Friday press convention on the Museum of African American Historical past. “That is by design the hope of, I believe, intimidating individual communities from speaking out. … Conversations in this room over the course of history have taught us that now is the moment to stand up collectively.”
Wu and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley laid into the Trump administration, particularly to sentence the president’s “attacks on museums” and “brazen attempt to whitewash history,” at each a roundtable dialogue and associated press convention that have been convened Friday by Pressley and included cultural establishment leaders.
Whereas the occasion was centered round Pressley’s latest name for an investigation into “the impact of Trump’s harmful executive order attacking Smithsonian museums,” Wu spoke usually about what town is doing to deal with potential federal funding cuts, in response to a reporter’s query.
Wu stated early final month that her proposed $4.8 billion metropolis finances for fiscal yr 2026 could must be adjusted down the road relying on the result of potential federal funding cuts, a few of which town had already been difficult in court docket. She has stated the cuts might result in Metropolis Corridor layoffs or a hiring freeze.
The mayor has tangled with the Trump administration over immigration and different insurance policies.
“We’re not counting on any new grants from this administration,” Wu stated at Friday’s occasion. “They’ve made it completely clear that they don’t believe in government as a force for public good. They don’t believe in public education. They don’t believe in public health or science, or so much of what Boston has stood for, for nearly four centuries.”
Wu stated her group has labored intently with town’s Congressional delegation, which incorporates Pressley, to “codify” federal grant funding it has usually obtained from prior presidential administrations, “in legally binding contracts so those would be solid.”
“There are still attempts to cancel and rescind and withdraw those, although they are against the law,” Wu stated, referring to what she described as Congressionally-appropriated funds. “We have similarly been going to court.”
The mayor particularly talked about what this week’s lawsuit that Boston joined seeks to stop: the cancellation of a $48 million Continuum of Care Program grant, administered by way of Housing and City Growth, that town makes use of to “address homelessness and housing stability.”
Wu stated she has been assembly with Lawyer Basic Andrea Campbell, as a part of weekly conferences Campbell has been holding with cities across the state which might be centered round offering steering “on which grants not to apply for, or how to read between the lines on different grant applications as we map out next steps.”
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