Trump Moves to Cut Federal Funding From Democratic Cities

A furious Mr. Cuomo, in an evening conference call with reporters, said the president’s letter was “another attempt to kill New York City,” where the president was long a resident and developer before officially moving to Florida last year. “Everything that he could possibly do in his power to hurt New York City he has done,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding: “The best thing he did for New York City was leave. Good riddance. Let him go to Florida. Be careful not to get Covid.”

Mr. Cuomo also derided the president as thinking he was “a king.”

“It’s cheap, it’s political, it’s gratuitous, and it’s illegal,” the governor said of the memo. Mr. Trump, he said, “better have an army if he thinks he’s going to walk down the street in New York.”

Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle said in an interview that the president’s call was a tactic that would further divide Americans when the country desperately needed leadership that could bring people together. She said she did not believe that the president could “defund” cities, calling the actions unlawful.

“It seems the only place where there is no respect for the rule of law is the White House,” Ms. Durkan said.

Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland tweeted that Mr. Trump “continues to believe that disenfranchising people living in this country to advance his petty grudges is an effective political strategy.”

“The rest of us know it is dangerous, destructive, and divisive,” he wrote.

Violent crime always increases in the summer, but the rise has been extreme this year in New York. Since May, the city has recorded 791 shootings, an increase of more than 140 compared with the same period last year. The 180 murders recorded from May to August is more than 50 percent above the same period in 2019.

In August alone, there were 242 shootings in New York, compared with 91 the same month last year, and the number of murders rose to 53 from 36. As a result, the city surpassed 1,000 shootings before Labor Day, making it the worst year for gun violence since 2015, with four months left to go.