BOSTON — Mayor Michelle Wu is once again trying to turn Boston into the command center of the national anti-Trump resistance — this time by backing a Minnesota lawsuit over what she calls a federal “occupation” of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

In a Facebook post, Wu accused the Trump administration of “ongoing occupations of peaceful American cities” that are “unconstitutional and illegal,” and announced Boston is “leading a coalition of cities” supporting Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul in court over “Operation Metro Surge,” a major federal enforcement push in the Twin Cities.

Wu called the operation a “politically-motivated invasion,” claimed it has brought thousands of masked and armed federal agents into the region, and argued the result is effectively a “military occupation.” She also tied the operation to the death of Renée Nicole Good, saying aggressive federal tactics have fueled unrest and caused injuries — including to children — and “led to the death” of Good. Public accounts around that death have been disputed, with investigations and competing narratives still circulating.

Wu then invoked the Tenth Amendment, arguing Washington can’t “commandeer” state and local resources for federal purposes — a familiar line in sanctuary-city politics, and one that fits neatly into her long-running posture of refusing to turn local government into an extension of federal immigration enforcement.

But the timing is doing a lot of work here.

Back home, Boston isn’t exactly floating on easy headlines. The city is still wrestling with a shaky downtown recovery, soft commercial real estate values, and the unpleasant math that follows when office buildings lose value: the tax burden doesn’t disappear — it shifts.

That’s the whole “commercial tax shift” problem in plain English: Boston raises a set amount of property-tax revenue, and when commercial values drop relative to residential values, a larger share of the bill lands on homeowners and renters. It’s why people have been staring at painful residential increases even as the commercial side struggles.

Wu’s answer to that dynamic was to seek temporary permission to push more of the burden back onto commercial property — essentially increasing how far the city could lean on the business class to blunt the shock to residential taxpayers.

Beacon Hill’s answer was a public humiliation.

Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Senate rejected an amendment mirroring Wu’s plan by a 33–5 vote — a rout so lopsided it functioned less like a policy disagreement and more like an institutional message. The chamber passed a separate “tax shock” relief bill, but the specific mechanism Wu had been pushing was the one that got steamrolled.

So as property owners brace for higher bills driven by this commercial-to-residential shift — and as City Hall’s spending pressures keep climbing — Wu is now out on Facebook portraying Minnesota as a “peaceful city” under “occupation” and casting Boston as the lead city in a national legal coalition against Trump.

In political terms, it’s a familiar play: when the local math is ugly, the national villain is convenient.

Wu’s supporters will call it leadership. Others will call it something else — an attempt to keep the public debate focused on Trump, ICE, and a courtroom battle in Minneapolis, rather than on what residents here can see in black-and-white: their own tax bills, a fragile local economy, and a mayor whose signature tax plan just got buried 33–5 on Beacon Hill.