Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city isn’t expecting any new grant funding from the federal government and is battling the Trump administration in court to keep what has typically been received from prior administrations.
While the Trump administration’s attempts to cancel some of the city’s “legally binding” contracts are creating uncertainty for her proposed $4.8 billion budget, Wu said Boston, which just this week joined a lawsuit challenging cuts to federal housing and homelessness prevention funding, won’t change its approach.
“What is clear is that we cannot let the strategy of fear and confusion divide us,” Wu said at a Friday press conference at the Museum of African American History. “That is by design the hope of, I believe, intimidating individual communities from speaking out. … Conversations in this room over the course of history have taught us that now is the moment to stand up collectively.”
Wu and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley laid into the Trump administration, specifically to condemn the president’s “attacks on museums” and “brazen attempt to whitewash history,” at both a roundtable discussion and related press conference that were convened Friday by Pressley and included cultural institution leaders.
While the event was centered around Pressley’s recent call for an investigation into “the impact of Trump’s harmful executive order attacking Smithsonian museums, Wu spoke generally about what the city is doing to address potential federal funding cuts, in response to a reporter’s question.
Wu said early last month that her proposed $4.8 billion city budget for fiscal year 2026 may need to be adjusted down the line depending on the outcome of potential federal funding cuts, some of which the city had already been challenging in court. She has said the cuts could lead to City Hall layoffs or a hiring freeze.
“We’re not counting any new grants from this administration,” Wu said at Friday’s event. “They’ve made it completely clear that they don’t believe in government as a force for public good. They don’t believe in public education. They don’t believe in public health or science, or so much of what Boston has stood for, for nearly four centuries.”
Wu said her team has worked closely with the city’s Congressional delegation, which includes Pressley, to “codify” federal grant funding it has typically received from prior presidential administrations, “in legally binding contracts so those would be solid.”
“There are still attempts to cancel and rescind and withdraw those, although they are against the law,” Wu said, referring to what she described as Congressionally-appropriated funds. “We have similarly been going to court.”
The mayor specifically mentioned what this week’s lawsuit that Boston joined seeks to prevent: the cancellation of a $48 million Continuum of Care Program grant, administered through Housing and Urban Development, that the city uses to “address homelessness and housing stability.”
Wu said she has been meeting with Attorney General Andrea Campbell, as part of weekly meetings Campbell has been holding with cities around the state that are centered around providing guidance “on which grants not to apply for, or how to read between the lines on different grant applications as we map out next steps.”