View the San Francisco for Thursday, February 27, 2025
City Attorney David Chiu, seen in January: “To keep up this pace, we need additional resources to increase our capacity.” In San Francisco’s fight against President Donald Trump, the City Attorney’s Office — not the mayor — has taken the lead.
But with The City facing a huge budget deficit and potential state funding hanging in the balance, whether and how it will be able to continue the effort is anyone’s guess. In combating Trump’s barrage of executive orders and actions that have the potential to withdraw federal funding or harm LGBTQ people and members of other groups, City Attorney David Chiu and his team have already been active. His office has filed briefs and signed onto several lawsuits against the new presidential administration. “We have been working around the clock to stand up to Trump’s illegal actions and protect our city’s policies and residents,” Chiu told The Examiner in a statement. “To keep up this pace, we need additional resources to increase our capacity.” The City had hoped it would get state funding to support its work, but that dream appears to have fizzled, at least for now., two days after Trump won the presidential election, state legislators appropriated $25 million to fund California’s legal efforts against the new president. Newsom’s action anticipated the barrage of executive orders the new president started signing immediately after taking office last month. Those orders, doing everything from ordering a freeze in federal funding to attempting to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the nation, have raised the hackles of state and local leaders. During the special session, state Sen. Scott Wiener sponsored a bill that would have provided an additional $10 million to city attorneys and county counsels in California to combat Trump administration policies that affected them. But the measure couldn’t garner enough support to pass, leaving The City on its own to fund its legal battles against the president.“As we’re seeing in just the first month of the Trump Administration, our own San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is playing a crucial role in defending our values and upholding the law,” Wiener said. “We will try again, as part of the regular budget process, to provide support for our city attorneys and county counsels,” he said in a statement. Chiu was quick to voice support for Wiener’s proposal when the latter unveiled it in November. In a statement to The Examiner, he echoed Wiener’s hope that the legislature will include the additional funding when it approves the state budget later this year. The funds would be welcome in the City Attorney’s Office. With San Francisco facing a mammoth budget deficit of about $876 million in its next fiscal year, there’s likely little wiggle room to spend more on sending attorneys into courtrooms to take on Trump. But Chiu said he sees fighting the new president’s policies as a necessity, in part because not fighting them could also be costly. The federal government’s attempts to pull funding from San Francisco pose a financial risk, he said. “The threat Trump poses to the rule of law is existential, and protecting our federal funding is crucial to seeing San Francisco through painful budgetary times,” he said. While many state attorneys general —including California’s Rob Bonta — are also suing to stop the new administration’s policies, that doesn’t mean cities can just defer to them, Chiu said. Cities have their own role to play in subverting the Trump plans they believe to be illegal, and their efforts don’t necessarily duplicate those of the states, he said. The administration is threatening to withhold billions of dollars in funding that doesn’t pass through the states, but is sent directly to cities and counties, he said. “Local jurisdictions have a unique perspective and are best situated to provide facts and articulate harms to our communities, Chiu said.Under Chiu, The City last month was among the first in the country to sue to block Trump’s executive order that sought to. That right, enshrined in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ensures that — with few exceptions — individuals born in the United States are citizens. Chiu’s office also signed on to a lawsuit filed early this month by Doctors for America over the Trump administration’s erasure of public health data used by researchers, including those in The City’s Department of Public Health. Federal health agencies removed the data in response totargeting transgender people. That order demanded an end to what he called “gender ideology,” including by requiring agencies to “use the term ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ in all applicable Federal policies and documents.”The legal actions by Chiu’s office are reminiscent of those The City undertook during Trump’s first term in office. In 2017, San Francisco sued Trump and successfully blocked his administration from pulling funding from sanctuary cities. Now, it’s fighting the— have taken the leading role in taking on Trump on behalf of The City. Mayor Daniel Lurie declined to even mention the president’s name when responding to Trump’s Presidio Trust proposal and has takenNancy Pelosi, seen in October: “Don’t let anything they’re doing out there with their shiny objects distract you from the fact that what they want to do is to cut these initiatives.” Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is dead-set on dodging distractions from President Donald Trump — even when they land in her backyard or bear her name. Even as everyday Democrats are calling for her and her party to fiercely fight Trump on every front, political experts said they think the Democratic Party would be wise to follow her lead. At an event in San Francisco last week, Pelosi articulated a clear strategy for navigating the first two years of Trump’s second administration. Her advice: Focus on what matters most. Pelosi argued that Trump’s threat to reduce the size of San Francisco’s Presidio Trust and potentially sell off federal buildings — including the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in SoMa — are a distraction from his and his party’s real agenda. What Republicans are really focused on is making steep cuts to the social safety net, including“Don’t let anything they’re doing out there with their shiny objects distract you from the fact that what they want to do is to cut these initiatives,” Pelosi said at the event.“In my view, attacking President Trump for his views on the Presidio Trust would be a little like criticizing Mussolini for having bad breath,” said James Adams, a political science professor at UC Davis. “The criticism might be valid, but you’re missing the big picture.” Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill was fond of saying “all politics is local,” but political scientists have documented a trend of, with voters paying greater attention to happenings at the federal level over the local, said Joshua Darr, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse University.If Pelosi were to highlight a local issue such as the Presidio Trust battle, it could “nationalize a local issue in a way that probably would not work,” he said. It’s not even clear that The Presidio battle would resonate in San Francisco. Although the park is beloved in The City, many residents are likely unaware of how it’s actually governed. After Trump announced plans last week to scale back the functions of Outside San Francisco, even fewer people are likely to place the protection of The Presidio at the top of their priority list, Adams said. Nationally, voters are much more likely to key in on Republican plans to cut Medicaid and gutTrump is adept at drawing attention to himself, be it in a positive or negative manner. Whether he nominally wins or loses a fight can be beside the point, if he’s able to draw attention to himself, according to Adams. “Commanding center stage and invariably setting the terms of the debate and being the center of attention ... makes you appear to be strong and effective,” Adams said. That’s true, he said, even if to much of the public “the way you’re commanding the attention ... may appear outrageous.” The president is also canny about selecting his fights and choosing his political enemies, Adams said. The president’s political base hates San Francisco Democrats, particularly Pelosi, and fight with the Presidio is likely to rile them up. For Pelosi, “a fight over the Presidio is the wrong fight over the wrong issue by the wrong people — San Francisco Democrats,” Adams said. A much better battle to highlight might be the one between Trump and the federal workers he’s fired, said Christian Grose, a political-science professor at the University of Southern California. Admittedly, Pelosi is in a somewhat sticky position. Despite stepping down as leader of House Democrats in 2022, she maintains a national profile, forcing her to represent — and try to balance — both the Democratic Party’s interests nationally and the local concerns of her San Francisco constituents. Additionally, she and other elected Democrats are facing calls from their voting base to more aggressively counter the Trump administration, even as they lack a single national figurehead and a On the flip side, some prominent party strategists are openly calling for Democrats to largely sit back and look on asThat passive approach may well be in the Democrats’ best interest, Grose said. When casting their ballots, voters tend to judge elected leaders on recent history.It makes sense that the party is still trying to figure out the right way to counter Trump, said Darr. There is a long history of opposing parties trying to find their footing in the first weeks and months of a new administration, he said.“I don’t think they’re particularly flat-footed,” Darr said of Democrats. “This is different. The whole Musk angle and the firings is very different.” While left-leaning citizens have sharply criticized the party, Democratic officials aren’t just standing idly by, Darr said. Instead, individually and collectively, they’ve been picking lanes to focus on, he said..” And state attorneys general have already taken Trump to court dozens of times since his second inauguration. Thus far, they’ve — at least temporarily — blocked more than 30 of his policies or orders, according to a trackerFor her part, Pelosi is focusing her attention on where she believes the outrage will be most acute — the impact of the Republicans’ planned budget cuts on the everyday people who would be affected by them. “By voting for this cruel bill, you are betraying hardworking Americans by raising costs for all those already struggling to make ends meet,” Pelosi warned her Republican colleagues on the House floor on Tuesday, speaking about their budget bill. “The President said he was going to reduce the cost of living — he didn’t. Reduce inflation — he didn’t. Indeed, a vote for this budget is a vote against Medicaid, ripping away health care from children, people with disabilities, and seniors.”The International Pride Orchestra said it had been in negotiations to perform in Washington, D.C., at the Kennedy Center — seen in 2019 — since July. San Francisco’s International Pride Orchestra says it was “disinvited” from presenting a summer Pride Celebration Concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — the same day that President Donald Trump took control of the national cultural institution as chairman of its board of directors. The abrupt termination of seven months of engagement negotiations came on Feb. 12, dashing expectations after an invitation to perform as part of one of the Kennedy Center’s programs had been extended, according to an orchestra representative. That was days after Trump, in separate posts on his social media platform Truth Social, accused the Kennedy Center of hosting “Drag shows specifically targeting our youth” and vowed that there would be “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”, replacing Biden-appointed Kennedy Center directors with people of his own choosing and firing center president Deborah Rutter. She was replaced on an interim basis with Richard Grenell, former U.S. ambassador to Germany in Trump’s first administration. An International Pride Orchestra spokesman said that since July, the organization — which stages one show per year — had been in standard negotiations with the Kennedy Center for a performance. Then the Kennedy Center sent a “curt” email stating simply, “We are not in a position at this time to advance a contract,” according to the orchestra’s founding artistic director, Michael Roest, in a press release. “We were heartbroken when we learned that our concert would no longer be welcome at the Kennedy Center,” Roest said.“Sadly, to read something like this from the present president of the United States is not surprising, but is in itself profoundly un-American and therefore disheartening,” said International Pride Orchestra board member and conductor Christine Brandes. “His actions further embolden us in our purpose.” The International Pride orchestra says that as a result of the Kennedy Center rejection, it will perform a show with various conductors at the Music Center at the Strathmore arts organization on June 5 in Bethesda, Md., for Pride Month, a time of celebrating LGBTQ pride, culture and history. “The LGBTQ+ community has always shown resilience in the face of discrimination, and this concert will be a vibrant expression of that enduring spirit,” Roest said. Peaches Christ, aka Joshua Grannell, a well-known San Francisco-based drag performer and filmmaker who has appeared with the orchestra at its two previous shows, is slated to serve as the concert’s host.is to bring together “LGBTQIA+ musicians from around the world to present concerts, celebrate community and raise funds for LGBTQIA+ causes.” It had its The 80 members have been known to dress in varied costumes, from full military uniform to couture drag for events that bring together “queer and ally musicians hailing from more than 32 states across the U.S. and beyond,” its press statement said. Roest expressed gratitude to the Music Center at Strathmore, saying “their willingness to host our Pride Celebration Concert ensures that our message of love, pride, and resilience will be heard on the doorstep of the nation’s capital.” Even as Roest contended that the International Pride Orchestra had been “disinvited,” at time of writing the Kennedy Center’s website. It promises a “celebration of diversity and unity, weaving together performances, exhibitions, and experiences for all ages,” with details to come. The Kennedy Center event links to WorldPride’s site, which gives the event dates as June 5-8 with further details to come. The WorldPride calendar lists numerous events set to occur in the nation’s capital from March through June. The Capital Pride Alliance is the host of WorldPride 2025, which is billed as the 50th Anniversary of Pride celebrations in Washington, D.C. A spokesperson said the organization was not immediately ready for comment.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. 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