NEW YORK (AA) – New York City will take legal action if the Donald Trump administration delivers on its pledge to require all Muslims to register in a database, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.
"We will sue to block it," the mayor told hundreds of supporters at the Great Hall of the Cooper Union where Abraham Lincoln delivered a famous anti-slavery address in 1860.
"The president-elect talked during the campaign about the movement that he had built. Now its our turn to build a movement, a movement of the majority," the Democratic mayor said.
Republican nominee Trump won surprisingly easily in a tight race against Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, but lost the popular vote by almost 1.5 million votes.
Coming off a bitter campaign that targeted immigrants and minorities, Trump’s election has led to protests across the United States with ordinary citizens chanting "not my president" in opposition to many of his policy positions.
De Blasio’s remarks come a day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed to combat an "explosion of hate crimes" across the state.
"I wish I could say our beautiful state of New York was immune from this poison but it’s not," Cuomo said as he listed examples of hateful rhetoric, including fliers of racist extremist group Ku Klux Klan found on Long Island and swastikas, one in Manhattan and another in Wellsville, surrounded by the words "Make America White Again".
The governor said a special police unit would be established to investigate hate crimes, and promised a legal fund for immigrants who can’t afford their own defense.
During the presidential campaign, Trump controversially called for the U.S. to bar Muslims from entering the country, later watering down the proposal to prevent those from "terror-prone regions" to come to the U.S.
Last week, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a federal investigation into whether a rash of alleged crimes across the country in the wake of Donald Trump's election victory are hate crimes.
A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a prominent legal advocacy group, said 437 incidents of intimidation took place in the week after the country’s presidential election, that targeted blacks, Muslims, immigrants, women and members of the LGBT community.
The group also said the rate of hate attacks was even higher than post-9/11.