Bulwark Takes - “People are Scared” Trump’s Reckless Policies are Damaging Local Governments

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Lauren Egan is joined by Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb to discuss the Trump administration’s chaos on cities and local governments, with funding cuts and ICE raids nationwide, and how mayors are stepping up as Democrats search for real solutions. Also, what’s going on with the Browns stadium drama.

Hey guys, it's Lauren Egan here at The Bulwark. I've got Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb here with us today. Mayor, welcome to The Bulwark. Thanks for having me. So you're the head, the new head I should say, of the Democratic Mayors Association. And I'm curious what your conversations have been like with other Democratic mayors around the country. And I guess, like, how are y'all thinking about this moment in the Trump presidency and some of my colleagues across the country continue to be concerned at how hard it has been to govern with so much uncertainty and chaos coming out of D.C. First, it was the fear and anxiety that we saw with the immigration and ICE raids across

the country. Recently, it has been this erratic terror policy, which is creating so much chaos in our local economy. I've been talking to many employers over the last couple of weeks, and they're concerned about the increasing inflationary pressures that this terror policy is going to have. It's essentially a new national sales tax for our country right now. And then just yesterday, I was meeting with a group of college presidents and their concern about their ability to attract research investment, which creates good paying jobs in Cleveland, but also attract international students to our city. And so this is certainly not the America that I know that I want.

And I know that my fellow mayors across the country feel the same way. So, you know, one thing we've been talking a lot about during the Trump presidency is what can Democrats who aren't in power right now, what can they actually do to kind of fight back and push back against some of these policies? As mayors, what tools do you all feel like you actually have to combat some of these Trump policies? Well, we have a lot of tools at our disposal. And one of the things that I love about being a mayor is that we are on the front lines of these challenges, but we are also at the front lines of the solutions. And our jobs, regardless if it's a big city like Cleveland or a small town like Maslin, Ohio, our residents don't care what political party you are. They want to see results. As the old saying goes, there is no Democratic way to create a job, no Republican way to fix a pothole.

We just have to deliver in this moment. And so our message as Democrats, but especially as Democratic mayors, is we must be that source of stability, that source of hope, and the source of results in our cities. And we're seeing this all across the country. You look at what the new mayor of Austin has done to enact permanent reform to build more affordable housing. You look at what the new mayor of Austin has done to enact permanent reform to build more affordable housing. You look at what we're doing in Cleveland to fast track the ability to get folks off our streets, not living on tents and getting into a home that gives them dignity and hope. You look at the fact that a majority of Democratic led cities across this country have seen dramatic reductions in violent crime and homicides. So we're delivering. And it's important that we continue to make the case, not just as Democrats, but as local elected leaders who are going to

continue to bring that stability, that voice, but really that sense of common sense and reason back to how we get things done in this country. I imagine that there's probably a lot of social services in Cleveland, like a lot of cities that get delivered through nonprofits that rely on federal funding. What's that look like for your for y'all right now uh a lot of uncertainty to be very frank with you um you know just earlier this week i sent a letter to roughly 70 non-profits who rely on community development block grant funding from the department of housing and urban development and that's funding to to make sure that seniors can get their grass cut. It's funding to ensure that young people in our local school district have access to apply for financial aid to go to college or get an apprenticeship. It's funding to remove lead paint from our decaying housing stock in Cleveland.

A lot of mom and pop local nonprofits rely on this funding from HUD. And we have yet to hear from HUD if we're going to get this funding. And if we don't get it by the end of May, I'm going to have to lay off nearly 100 people here at City Hall here in Cleveland. And so it's so unhelpful right now when we don't have an administration in the White House who understands how this reckless approach to governing impacts our ability to deliver for people. And I'm all for cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, but there is a way to do this. And what we've seen over the last several months is not the way to do business in America. Yeah, there's obviously been a lot of focus and understandably so on federal workers who are

losing jobs. I'm sure there are plenty of your constituents who fall into that bucket. But what are the vibes like in City Hall right now, knowing that you might be forced to make similar, similar cuts right now? People are scared. People are, are scared about their ability to continue to get a good paying job. And these are high quality jobs that provide a good pension, that provide amazing benefits. And these are public service workers. These are the people that we should be caring about. These are the people that we should be investing in. And this is not just an urban America problem. You have a lot of small towns in red states across this country who also rely on community development block grant funding. We look at the potential cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. A lot of rural hospitals depend

on that funding. You look at what this administration wants to do with the Department education and cutting 26 million kids funding from free and reduced lunch, special ed programs. That doesn't make any sense. And so I think it's important that we as Democrats continue to make the case on why these cuts are drastic in our cities and towns across the country, but we got to get more aggressive as a party in articulating our alternative vision for the country. And so I'm looking forward to being a part of that conversation. Democratic mayors have a lot of amazing ideas to contribute to the party, especially as we have critical mayoral and gubernatorial elections this year. And we got to work our butts off next year to take back the House so we can put the right accountability in place to hold this president accountable. Yeah, talk to me a bit more about that, because I think the party right now,

the national party sees some cracks in Trump's approval. Obviously, tariffs are not popular. There's a lot of warning signs for him. Do you worry that the party might just be, you know, kind of riding on this expectation that Trump's going to be really unpopular next midterms instead of being more aggressive on what is it? What is an alternative to that look like? What does a Democratic Party alternative look like? And what, you know, what is the Democratic Party actually going to offer you that's different from Trump?

You know, I think the biggest challenge we have in our party right now is we have forgotten how to listen to the American people. And, you know, while I love my brothers and sisters in the legislative branch of Congress in DC, as a mayor, I don't have the luxury of not listening. And I don't have the luxury of passing the buck to the next legislative session. I got to get stuff done now and immediately. And my ability as a mayor and every colleague I have across the country, the way we win, the way we are successful is that we listen. We listen in the barbershops and salons. We listen at our city council meetings. We've listened at town hall meetings, and we use that feedback from our residents to guide how we govern

every single day. So my message and our message for the party and as Democrats is very simple. The American people want to be safe. Let's continue to make strides on keeping our communities safe and secure. The American people want real economic opportunity. So let's make sure that we fight in this new tax bill for more investments to address our national housing crisis. And the American people also want to make sure that the economy that we inherit is better than the one that we currently see

right now. So we got to get ahead of these disruptions in AI and machine learning and really make sure that we are working our butts off to create the economy of the future. And so Democrats are successful when we listen, when we organize, and we take that feedback and articulate a more compelling vision for the American people. And I know my colleagues, my Maryland colleagues across the country are ready for the job. Do you think that there is room right now to work with Trump on some of these issues? How do you think about that? We have no other choice. President Trump will be president for the next several years. And so we have to find ways to get stuff done as a mayor. I have no other choice but to work with whoever is in D.C. to move my city forward. But we will hold him

accountable and we are holding him accountable. And we're going to continue to hold this Republican led Congress accountable, too, as we continue to talk about whether or not we want to cut trillions of dollars in Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security for tax cuts for the billionaire class? Are we going to choose to not invest in education as we see our competitiveness as a country be undermined by our foreign peers and counterparts? We have stark choices ahead. And so it's important that we use our collective voices as Democrats at every level of government to influence policy happening in D.C. You had a fairly, or I should say, really Democratic mayors in general had a pretty close relationship with the Biden administration.

He loved mayors, often got their input on things. What's that been like with Trump? Have you heard, gotten any outreach from the Trump administration asking about how things are going, how these policies are working in Cleveland right now or no outreach? Limited outreach. You know, we've had some tangential outreach from the new secretary of housing around HUD and potential funding cuts to the community development block grant funding. But beyond that, I've yet to meet with one cabinet official from the Trump administration. But when President Biden was president, I had almost every cabinet secretary on speed dial, whether it was Marty Walsh in labor or former Mayor Pete Buttigieg,

who led DOT to Mitch Landrieu, who was the president's infrastructure czar. We had a very good working relationship with the Biden-Harris administration. And that's not a partisan thing to say. This is a good, smart government thing. If we want America to succeed, we need to make sure that our federal government and our president has a good working relationship with America's mayors. And so my plea to this administration is to find common ground issues to work with mayors on to make sure we can move our cities forward. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was at the White House this week. You know, she didn't really look like she was having a great time there, I got to be honest.

But I'm curious, if you were to be invited to the White House tomorrow, would you show up? I would show up. While I may disagree with the president on a host of issues, I do respect the office of the presidency. And I'm sure that in my conversation with the president, we can find some issues that we can work on together. And I think every mayor probably shares, well, I hope every mayor in the country probably shares that same sentiment, because if we continue to let our division guide our politics, nothing's going to change in this country. So we have to find a way to work that because there was a lot of money that was committed to Cleveland during the Biden administration,

not just for infrastructure projects, but environmental cleanup projects. How much of that money actually got out the door before Biden left office? And how worried are you that you're just never going to see some of this money that I'm sure you're counting on for a handful of projects in Cleveland? I'd say right now it's about 50-50. We've gotten about 50% of the funds that we secured under President Biden, another 50% that are in question. One of my biggest priorities as mayor has been to make Cleveland a two-water front city. And we are so blessed in Cleveland to sit on one of the world's largest bodies of freshwater in Lake Erie and the Great Lakes. But for far too long, we haven't had a compelling

vision for lakefront development in Cleveland. And so because of the leadership of Secretary Buttigieg and President Biden, we received over $130 million from the Biden-Harris administration for us to reimagine and redevelop our lakefront. And we're still waiting on that $130 million to be on the ground here. We anticipated having a groundbreaking in 2027. I'm still optimistic that that groundbreaking will occur. We've talked to our entire delegation in Congress about the importance of these investments. So we're making the case. We're aligning our lay front plan to the new priorities of this administration. And I'm optimistic and hopefully we'll see shovels in the ground as quickly as we can. One thing that you have really emphasized

as mayor is, you know, trying to grow Cleveland's population, grow the economy. And I think one of the strategies that you've had is to be a welcoming place for immigrants and for refugees. How has that changed in these first few months of the Trump administration? It certainly has been a challenge. And look, I think we all agree that, you know, we have and continue to have a broken immigration system in this country. We had challenges at the border and it was important that we secure the border to protect our country and our interest. But politics and theater shows of locking up folk and sending them to Salvador without due process ain't the way to do it. And I think it's important for the Republicans to look

to one of their great presidents they look up to, Ronald Reagan, right? And former President George Bush. These were Republican leaders who wanted to see common sense immigration reform. And there is a way to do this in this country where we can secure our border, pass comprehensive immigration reform, give folks a legal pathway to citizenship. Because if we don't do that, our economy won't be competitive. But an erratic policy around rounding up folks without due process only makes my job harder as a mayor. When you have folks that are here legally scared to send their kids to school, scared to go to church, scared to call 911 or EMS, scared to go to the hospital. That's not the American way. And so until we ground this work in common sense and

in truth, we're going to continue to see these challenges at the local level every day. You've said in some recent interviews that you don't think Cleveland will be the center of resistance and that you don't think the American people, well, you said you think the American people essentially are tired of the resistance. Can you explain to me a bit what you meant by that? Yeah. What I see on the ground in Cleveland, obviously right now there's a lot of anger, frustration and pain and fear with the way that Donald Trump has led this country over the last 80 plus days. And I believe in protest.

I think the hands-off protest that we saw several weeks ago was powerful and inspiring. But at the same time, we have to find a way to solve problems as well. And so we can resist, we can protest, we can advocate and defend all day, but we also need to be about the work of doing something to create real, long-lasting change. And so I don't care what you call it, but as a mayor, the people that I serve and fight for every day want to see progress and results. And I think as the Democratic Party works to win more and get more power, we cannot only just resist, but we have to be about what we are going to do to get results for the people that want to see real change and see real hope in this country as well. So tying it back to like the democratic party needs a platform. Yeah. And, and, and this idea of, are you the resistance or not? I think it's a, it's a, a BS false narrative. You know, it's not about just resisting, but it's about what are we doing to move the country forward? You know, one of my heroes

is Dr. King. Obviously, he resisted and protested Jim Crow every day of his life until he was assassinated in Memphis. But he also sought and fought and got real long lasting systemic change. So we need to resist and do and be about the work of the do just as much as we are about the work of the resist. That's my argument for the Democratic Party right now. Before I let you go, I got to ask what's going on with all this stadium drama? Get us up to speed. Our Bulwark Slack channel was popping off about it when you were coming on. I've been fighting the good fight, trying to keep my beloved Cleveland Browns football and playing good or bad football on Lake Erie downtown in our

great city. We offered the Browns a nearly half a billion dollars of financing to stay in the city. Myself and our county executive have been fighting the good fight. And now it's up to the legislature here in Ohio. Are they going to give nearly a billion dollars of funding to billionaires to fund their pet project? Or are they going to embrace our common sense approach to keep the Browns playing football downtown? So we'll see. But right now I'm focused on the Cleveland Cavaliers going all the way and bringing back the Larry O'Brien trophy back to the land this playoff season. Well, what have you been hearing from Republicans in the state legislature about the stadium? I think there are a lot of folks concerned.

A lot of folks concerned about whether or not we should be spending state general revenue fund dollars on about a billion dollars of debt service to fund a project for a family worth nearly $14 billion. And so the Ohio legislature prides itself on being small government conservatives that believe in fiscal responsibility. Let's see if they put their action where their values are. So we've got to wait and see. All right, well, hopefully you'll come back soon and keep us updated on all the stadium drama over in Cleveland.

We'll be happy to. Okay. Thanks, Mayor Bibb. Really appreciate you being here with us. Take care. Hey, YouTube fam. If you want to support The Bulwark, the best way to do it is by becoming a YouTube Bulwark Plus member. The Bulwark is truly independent.

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