Bloomberg reports: A judge in San Francisco blocked President Donald Trump from withholding funds from so-called sanctuary cities that give safe harbor to undocumented immigrants, marking the administration’s second major policy initiative declared likely unconstitutional.

San Francisco and its Silicon Valley neighbor, Santa Clara County, on Tuesday both won preliminary orders shelving the Jan. 25 edict by Trump, who threatened the budgets of cities nationwide that fail to comply with federal immigration demands.

Trump has declared that sanctuary jurisdictions cause “immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our republic.” But U.S. District Judge William Orrick agreed with the city and county that the the president’s order violated the Constitution in threatening to deprive them of funding for local programs. The federal government may ask the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco to overturn the ruling.

A victory for the city and county could reinforce similar policies in some of the nation’s largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It’s another blow to Trump’s call to tighten U.S. borders and deport undocumented residents. He’s already lost multiple bids to impose a travel ban against citizens of six mostly Muslim countries, with courts finding that both his original directive and a revised version run afoul of the Constitution’s ban on religious bias. [Continue reading…]