The mayor of Phoenix is making news in that he’s asked Trump to please not show up for what is effectively a campaign rally next week. If the leaders of a city were all in agreement that they don’t want a Presidential visit, how much could they interfere with the visit actually occurring?
Some thoughts I’ve had so far:
Stop the plane from landing at the airport. Not going to work, as it’s under Federal control.
Not renting out the desired space. Presumably if it’s publicly-owned, they can’t stop someone from renting it. So not going to work. And presumably there’s somewhere privately-owned that could handle and would want to host the visit.
Refusing local police (and other service) support for the Secret Service. This might actually work, as there is no way the Secret Service by itself can fully secure everything as expected.
Various “mysterious problems.” Along the lines of “Sorry, the HVAC is on the fritz.” “Sorry, there’s too much strain on the grid so we need to shut down the electrical.” Or any other sort of “unforeseen issue.” Might work.
Obviously, such an action would be pretty well unprecedented. But it seems to me like there’s got to be enough local control that it’s at least possible in theory.
Yeah. Also, AF1 is a military airplane and can go wherever the hell it wants, even if the FAA isn’t fond of the idea.
Even if the venue is publicly owned, there are a number of valid reasons why they could decline to rent it out. “Safety concerns” is perfectly cromulent.
This could be done, but at a rather substantial political cost. It would cause relationships to sour with other federal law enforcement agencies, and local police tend to take a dim view of being used to make political statements. They also don’t like being told to not do their jobs.
Sure. Or you could just pull a Mayor Daley and demolish the building in the middle of the night. Just say it had bedbugs or something.
2 runs into first amendment issues. A local city government can’t discriminate against anyone, let alone the president, on the basis of his viewpoints.
3 is probably the most likely of your suggestions but I don’t know whether the police chief would refuse to do his job at the behest of the mayor. If so, it would come down to whether the mayor wanted to fire the police chief and find a replacement to do his bidding.
4 would inconvenience Trump when he arrived but not really stop him from coming. I don’t think it accomplishes the mayor’s objective. I also doubt the power grid is in the mayor’s control. The city my parents live in has municipal power that is somewhat under the mayor’s control but I can’t imagine any mayor inconveniencing and endangering his entire constituency just to score cheap political points. This idea seems silly.
There’s another answer – make Trump feel unwelcome. Organize big protests against him. He’ll get the idea and choose not to go. It’s happened before.
My first question would be WHY?
Disagreement and dislike of the president is a terrible reason to stop a visit. Wouldn’t efforts to have a dialog with him, or at least to voice opinions directly be better?
Wasn’t the time to be against him election time?
Seems like there’s some room between “the entire PD has the day off” and “the entire PD is at your disposal, Mr. President”. They could continue to do their jobs, but traffic control, security, escort, everything related to the event is the responsibility of the Secret Service.
And it seems like this has to have happened before. Even ignoring political opposition, some cities probably just don’t have the budget for a Presidential visit. How were those handled? I’d imagine the President would normally just schedule his event in another city, but this President might take it as a personal offense, and who knows what he’ll do then?
They can’t? Aren’t they refusing permits to some hate groups to assemble? A local city government can deny a permit they feel will cause significant disruption or lead to violence. As the President’s unpopularity grows and people stop being respectful when he shows up, they might have a case for denying a permit.
It’s a statement. You hear all the time about unpopular groups being denied permits to assemble.
The President doesn’t need a permit to visit, he needs a permit to close the streets and rent a convention center or somewhere to actually meet at. The city could theoretically refuse him.
Fair enough. I was debating placement when I posted it.
It seems like there’s agreement that at least some actions are possible, but pretty unlikely without a lot of cooperation and being willing to burn connections that might be wanted later.
Maybe because it’s damned expensive to have the President visit your city. Both in actual cost, and in political cost to the local elected officials.
As mentioned before, it occupies a whole lot of your police force protecting him. So they’re not out there protecting the citizens & taxpayers (who are paying overtime wages to these cops).
The Secret Service usually insists on blocking off the roads his motorcade will travel from all other vehicles, throwing much of your local traffic grid into deadlock – and pissing off all those local citizens, who are the ones who vote in your local elections.
All the local media concentrate on his visit, ignoring the local elected officials. They get mentioned only when they are on stage with him – that only helps them if he is popular with the local voters. And in most US cities, he isn’t.
generally, it’s a big hassle & expense for the local city, with little to show for it.
From a legal standpoint, the municipal government of Phoenix has no power to stop any American citizen from visiting Phoenix. That includes you, me, and Donald Trump.
The municipal government can decline to offer its support for such a visit. But I’m assuming the federal government has enough resources to visit Phoenix without having to depend on local resources if it chooses to do so.
If the municipal government really wanted to make a point, it could refuse to allow the President to use city-owned property like public parks. But the rental of a privately owned location would get around that obstacle.
When I was a littler Nemo, President Ford made a visit to my area. I think it’s safe to assume that Plattsburgh, NY (a city of 20,000 people) wasn’t able to provide all that much as the host city to a President.
President Clinton made a visit to the small town I was living in at the time. We’re talking < 30k people, so I think our local PD wasn’t pulling much of the weight during that time. There were helicopters circling over my house (he was dining a few blocks away) until past midnight (when I assume he left).