What a time to be alive. What an absolutely ridiculous time to be alive.
Though she has a million more important things to do, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu will testify before Congress on Wednesday morning. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on which sit a startling collection of MAGA kooks, has demanded that Wu, along with the mayors of Chicago, Denver and New York City, appear to answer their questions about so-called “sanctuary cities.’’
If you care about actual governing and genuine public safety, the whole thing is sure to be a monumental waste of time. But the GOP does not care about actual governing or genuine public safety. They care about striking a pose and about the sound bites that their scribes in state media can play over and over. Chair James Comer and members like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, and Jim Jordan offered little but vacant posturing during Trump’s first term. Now they offer even less, given that their majority has willingly surrendered what little was left of Congess’s constitutional power to the orange king in the Oval Office. It will be a wonder if any of the mayors can get a full, uninterrupted sentence out beyond their opening statements.
If you doubt that these legislators are deeply unserious people, check out the bizarre hype video/disaster-movie trailer the committee released ahead of the hearing. It has it all: swelling music, a low-energy Trump talking about sanctuary cities harboring dangerous criminals, a burning constitution, Fox News footage of immigration arrests, menacing dark portraits of the four mayors. There’s border czar Tom Homan, too, all bellicose toad and tough-guy threats: “If that’s a game they want to play, game on,’’ he says.
It’s all so tiresome. Interestingly, though he is one of the four mayors summoned, the video goes easy on New York’s Mayor Eric Adams. Adams, you will recall, made a deal with the feds recently in which he agreed to sell out his own constituents and support the administration’s draconian immigration crackdown so that the Department of Justice would drop corruption charges against him. Expect Republicans to tread lightly with that craven turncoat on Wednesday.
Homan, Comey, and the other zealots are all worked up because they say mayors like Wu — and BPD commissioner Michael Cox — are standing in the way of immigration arrests in their cities. It hardly matters that that isn’t true.
As my colleagues who have been fact-checking GOP claims have written, Boston has not been releasing back into the community undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes. If they’re convicted, they serve time. And ICE can deport them at any point. State and some municipal laws, as well as a US Supreme Court decision, mean the feds cannot force local authorities to enforce garden variety immigration detainers, which are civil matters. But local authorities cannot — and do not — obstruct immigration officers’ own enforcement efforts, either.
It would be nice to think Homan, Comer, and the other jokers know all of this, but that’s giving them too much credit. This country is now run by a cabal of proud ignorami, juiced up on memes and gleeful cruelty.
If Wu gets a chance to speak, she’ll have a different story to tell. Expect her to tout the fact that the city she runs is, contrary to the hysterical posturing, one of the safest in the country, with its lowest murder rate since 1957. She’ll also tout the endorsement of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union — hardly wokesters.
The hearing will be ugly, but it will also be a gift for a progressive city mayor seeking reelection — particularly given that Wu’s only declared opponent so far, Josh Kraft, made a 2022 campaign donation to throwback Glenn Grothman, who is on the committee grilling her (Kraft has said he donated because Grothman is pro-Israel).
But in Washington, nothing Wu says will matter to Republicans on the committee. Because what she and the other mayors are really guilty of is talking about immigrants as if they are human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity, no matter how they came to be here.
In this America, compassion is contemptible.
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.
