President Donald Trump is again targeting a familiar foe: blue cities and states with “sanctuary” policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

During his first term, Trump tried to withhold federal public safety grants from states and localities that refused to allow local law enforcement to share information with federal immigration agents or hand over immigrants in their custody. The policy was struck down in federal court and was set to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. But the justices never decided the case before Trump left office, leaving the door open for him to try again in his second term.

Now the fight is back: Trump issued an executive order in January to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities and counties under US immigration law. The Department of Justice issued a subsequent memo implementing that order.

But there’s a key difference: Last time, Democrats were unified in their defense of sanctuary policies, seeing it as a winning issue. What’s different this time is the lack of uniform opposition from Democratic leadership in some of those cities and states as the party struggles to chart a path forward on immigration.

So far, the courts are siding with local officials. In April, a federal judge again struck down both the executive order and the DOJ directive as unconstitutional, ruling that they violated protections for the separation of powers, Congress’s spending powers, and due process, as well as sought to unlawfully coerce local officials into enforcing federal immigration law.

The court battle, however, likely isn’t over. That’s because Trump issued a new executive order last week directing his government to suspend federal grants to sanctuary cities and states.

This time, he used a more extensive legal toolkit. In addition to invoking federal immigration law and his constitutional authority to protect the US from “invasion,” he accuses sanctuary cities and states of crimes — including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and harboring illegal aliens — as a basis to take away their funding.

A representative from California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, which has been at the forefront of the lawsuits related to sanctuary policies, told Vox that they were reviewing the legality of the order and did not rule out the possibility of a court challenge.

“The Trump Administration is attempting to create a culture of fear by trumpeting executive orders and inhumane policies that target our immigrant communities,” they said. “California is not hiding the fact that we have chosen to focus our resources on public safety instead of........

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