Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's threat to punish cities with ongoing protests, calling them "anarchist jurisdictions " and threatening to pull federal funding, has little legal backbone, several constitutional law experts said. This will be in ads and we'll never hear about this again," said Neil Eggleston, the former administration Obama White House counsel. Mayors of New York City, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, DC, immediately denounced Wednesday's memo revoking federal funding as an overreach into their governments. The legislation proposed by Ernst would withhold federal funding from local governments where demonstrators had declared so-called autonomous protest zones. At the start of his presidency, for example, Trump threatened to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities.

Source: CNN September 03, 2020 21:56 UTC