New York City is one of three places that "have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities," leading to its designation as an "anarchist jurisdiction," the Justice Department said Monday.

Rather than idle words, the designation has potential financial consequences. President Trump issued a memo earlier this month directing the DOJ to identify jurisdictions that, in its view, were not enforcing the law appropriately. Designated cities could lose their federal funding.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo minced no words in responding to the DOJ assessment.

“I understand the politics, but when you try to manipulate and distort government agencies to play politics, which is what the Trump administration has done from day one … this is more of the same," Cuomo said on a conference call with reporters. “The president can’t supersede the law and say I’m going to make those funds basically discretionary funds, which is what he would have to do.”

“If they actually do this, we will challenge it legally, and they will lose once again," he added.

Trump's Sept. 2 order gives the director of the Office of Management and Budget 30 days to issue guidance to federal agencies on restricting eligibility for federal grants for the cities on the DOJ list. Such grants make up a huge portion of NYC's already strapped annual budget -- more than $7 billion in fiscal 2021 alone, or 7.5% of the city's projected total revenue.

In justifying its decision, the DOJ cited New York City's rising gun violence, cuts to the NYPD's budget, and moves by various district attorneys not to prosecute charges related to protests earlier this summer. Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington were also hit with the same designation.

“We cannot allow federal tax dollars to be wasted when the safety of the citizenry hangs in the balance. It is my hope that the cities identified by the Department of Justice today will reverse course and become serious about performing the basic function of government and start protecting their own citizens," Attorney General William Barr said in a statement.

Both the city and the state have previously threatened to sue the federal government over the possible DOJ classification, which Mayor Bill de Blasio reiterated Monday.

“I was out in Elmhurst Queens this morning, I saw peace, tranquility, I saw people going about their business, people excited that it’s the first day of school – I saw anything but anarchy. This is just another one of President Trump’s games,” De Blasio said at his daily news conference. “It’s insulting to the people of New York City and his effort to withhold our funding is unconstitutional.”

...The idea that New York City resembles an "anarchy"—or that any city has become an anarchy due to this summer's spike in crimes and riots—is fundamentally absurd. It is true that New York City, like many major American cities, has seen a spike this summer in gun violence and homicide. But by historical standards, the overall violent crime rate remains fairly low. We aren't exactly in The Purge yet.

Nor is New York anarchist in the ideological sense of the word. The place still has plenty of oppressive policing and regulation. New York state recently banned flavored e-cigarettes, and it still has not managed to hammer out a plan for marijuana legalization. City health officials even banned the use of cannabidiol (CBD) in food and drinks, even though CBD itself is legal to sell and consume in the Big Apple.

Is it anarchy when state liquor inspectors raid a Staten Island pub right after it files suit against the city and state over oppressive lockdown regulations? Is it anarchy when New York City cops beat up a homeless man on a train for taking up more than one seat on a mostly empty subway train? (One positive result of this summer's angry police protests: They finally pushed New York state to change the laws that concealed records of police misconduct from the public.)

New York City's school system actually does appear to be in anarchy, if only because its administration, apparently beholden to the teachers unions, abruptly canceled plans to reopen schools this week. The problem here is not, as Barr claims in his release today, that the schools have booted the police out.

New York City's leadership regularly treats its citizens like subjects. The point of the protests was, in part, to highlight the oppressive impact of overpolicing on New York's poorest. At times New York Police responded by aggressively assaulting and arresting the peaceful protesters while others rioted unabated.

But the Justice Department thinks New York didn't bust enough heads, and it doesn't like that the city said no when the federal government offered to come in and bust even more heads. Barr's summary today complains that "the Manhattan and Brooklyn District Attorneys have declined to prosecute charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly arising from the protests, and the District Attorneys in Queens and the Bronx have declined to prosecute other protest-related charges." Note that the complaint doesn't say prosecutors have refused to charge people who engaged in actual violent or destructive rioting (which is a separate law in New York from disorderly conduct)....