As Wu’s Congressional Hearing Looms, Experts See a High-Stakes Showdown

As Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 prepares to testify over the city’s sanctuary policies on Wednesday before the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government, she is bracing for House Republicans to go on the offensive — potentially setting her up for a grilling like the one that undid former Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Wu, who is set to compete for her second term in mayoral elections this November, has stood by city policies that prevent Boston law enforcement from asking for a person’s immigration status and using their resources to assist federal immigration enforcement.

“We want immigrants to know that it is safe for everyone, to be able to feel comfortable reaching out for emergency services, to report a crime, to ask for help, and generally to be part of our community,” Wu said in a November interview with WBUR.

That stance has put Wu at odds with top figures in the Trump administration who say undocumented immigrants represent a fundamental threat to public safety. President Donald Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration and deporting undocumented immigrants a key issue in his first month in the White House.

Boston citizens “have suffered due to sanctuary policies,” Rep. James R. Comer (R-Ky.), wrote in a letter to Wu and the mayors of Chicago, Denver, and New York City — all of which are sanctuary jurisdictions. Comer also accused the cities of an “abject failure to comply with federal law.”

The hearing will, in some ways, parallel the hearing of Gay, the former Harvard president — who, like Wu, sat alongside a panel of her peers in a grilling that put the fate of her career at risk and escalated threats against her institution’s funding,

In late 2023, Gay was called to testify before a congressional committee over allegations of antisemitism at the University, in wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. At the hearing, Gay resisted claims by Republican members that the University had failed to acknowledge and punish instances of antisemitism by pro-Palestinian protestors.

Backlash ensued and ultimately culminated in Gay’s resignation, launching Harvard into a historic leadership crisis.

Wu has taken the stakes seriously. WCVB, Boston’s ABC affiliate, reported that the city expects to pay up to $650,000 to the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel, which it retained to help Wu prepare for the hearing.

Few experts seem worried that Wu’s career may be in peril — and some have even argued the hearing may be a boon in her reelection campaign — but the Boston mayor may still see potentially devastating results if Republican members of Congress or the Trump administration follow through on threats to revoke funding.

On Wednesday, Republican committee members released a video on X promising that “Sanctuary Mayors” would be “Held Publicly Accountable on March 5.” The video includes Comer saying, “If they’re going to continue to disobey the law, then I think we should cut as much of their federal funding as we can cut.”

If such cuts are implemented, they “can certainly affect the city and give it net less money, less wiggle room, and a lot more headaches,” said HKS professor Linda J. Bilmes ’80.

“Federal cuts can hurt cities in terms of the amount of money they have up for their operating budget,” Bilmes said. The cut would affect “federal aid to the states for education, which means that then the state would have less money for schools and could give less money to the city.”

Bilmes added the federal government could also cut funding for healthcare programs as well as emergency funding from the American Rescue Plan, a program set to expire in 2026 to aid the country’s recovery from Covid-19.

Although the city relies primarily on its own capital budget and money from the state, “the state gets assistance from the federal government for building things,” Bilmes said, meaning major infrastructure projects including housing, schools, and bridges may become more difficult to complete. The city and state may be forced to look for funds elsewhere, including through increased borrowing, according to Bilmes.

“Those things get funded on multi-year plans,” Bilmes said.

“We’re supposed to spend $4.7 billion over the next five years on something like 400 projects that are supposed to be started or completed,” she added, referring to Boston’s fiscal year 2025-2029 Capital Plan.

Cambridge, like Boston, is a sanctuary city. Though the city has yet to face direct threats to its federal funding, Cambridge officials said at a Monday meeting that lost research funding could endanger the city’s education- and biomedicine-based economy.

Despite statements from congressional Republicans, however, many legal experts say sanctuary policies do not violate federal law, arguing that cities have the right to withhold local law enforcement support for federal immigration actions. That makes it less clear how serious the threats to cut federal funding are.

“We feel that we are on solid legal ground as we are following the law every single day,” Wu told reporters at a Jan. 25 press conference after being called to testify on Capitol Hill.

Even if the government attempts to make such cuts — which it has already been doing across the federal bureaucracy — it is unclear whether and how they would come to fruition.

While some attempts to cut funding, including by eliminating the United States Agency for International Development and restricting NIH funds, have been at least partially blocked, significant amounts of federal funding have already been halted or delayed. In mid-February, the Healey administration announced that Massachusetts was unable to access more than $165 million in federal funding allocated for green energy initiatives for low-income households.

Ultimately, the uncertainty surrounding the future of federal funding is enough to throw a wrench in the city’s plans, even if such threats are not carried out, according to Evan Horowitz, executive director of the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University.

“If you’re uncertain about whether you’re going to get the money, then it’s very difficult to do the planning, to commit to the planning — and then when the money comes, you may not be ready if there’s uncertainty around it,” Horowitz said.

“Even if some of these dollars show up, the effect of the uncertainty may be permanent in some cases,” Horowitz continued.

—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen

—Staff writer Frances Y. Yong can be reached at frances.yong@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @frances_yong_.