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Mass. leaders gather in Washington to support Wu before congressional testimony
Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and other lawmakers offered their unified support to Mayor Michelle Wu ahead of her congressional testimony.
Members of Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation gathered in Washington Tuesday afternoon to show their support for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and to rail against the actions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Wu is set to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Wednesday morning. She will be grilled on Boston’s immigration enforcement policies, alongside the mayors of New York City, Chicago, and Denver.
Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Reps. Katherine Clark, Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Stephen Lynch, and others joined Wu to address the media inside the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The lawmakers, all Democrats, offered nothing but glowing praise for Wu.
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“We are going to fight Donald Trump. We are not going to allow him to loot the future of Boston to pay for billionaire tax breaks. That’s just not something that is acceptable to our delegation, to our state, and I know, to Mayor Wu,” Markey said.
As the leader of a major Democratic city and a champion of sanctuary policies that limit cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities, Wu has found herself in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. Executive orders and GOP-backed legislation threaten to cut off federal funding to the city due to these sanctuary policies, not to mention the verbal attacks lobbed at the Wu administration by Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan.
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Wu, even-keeled and relatively soft spoken, is beginning to criticize the Trump administration more explicitly.
“We are the city where people come to do good in the world, at a time when this administration seems dead set on the opposite. We are a city that opens our arms and offers a hand, when this administration is more interested in turning its back,” she said Tuesday.
In Boston, immigrant advocates and elected officials, including City Council members, will gather Wednesday outside City Hall to show their support for Wu and protest Trump’s policies.
Wu will undoubtedly face hostility Wednesday from Republicans on the Oversight Committee. To prepare for what some call a “punching bag hearing,” the mayor has turned to an outside law firm, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, according to The Boston Globe. They are reportedly charging the city a rate of $950 per hour, and Wu has had about a dozen prep sessions.
The Oversight Committee includes Republican firebrands like Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
But Lynch and Pressley are also on the committee. Wu has used social media to poke fun at House Republicans for making a “trailer” teasing the hearing like it is an upcoming blockbuster movie. While Lynch said that he hopes for a “productive dialogue” during the hearing, he cited the video as a reason for skepticism about his Republican colleagues and their commitment to operating in good faith.
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“The Republican chairman and other members of that committee are raising money, fundraising off of the spectacle that they’re putting out there,” Lynch said. “They’re ginning this up so they can raise money off of it.”
The hearing will offer plenty of risk for Wu. But it will also provide opportunities to raise her political profile and publicly stand up to Republican lawmakers in a way that could resonate amongst Boston’s overwhelmingly liberal electorate. She is running for a second term but faces a potentially tough test against Josh Kraft.
“I will never back down from an opportunity to defend Boston, to defend our residents, and to defend all that we have accomplished together,” Wu said.
Watch the full press conference below:
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