AGs Will Seek Contempt Order if Trump Keeps Defying Courts (1)

If President Donald Trump continues to defy court orders, Democratic attorneys general will move to hold him in contempt of court, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings said Tuesday.

“Many people have asked me, what if he ignores the judges, what if he doesn’t listen? What do we do then?” Jennings said during a Los Angeles Q&A hosted by the Democratic Attorneys General Association. “And that’s really an existential question for this country.”

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration on Monday to immediately unfreeze all $3 trillion in federal funds, finding he violated a temporary restraining order by keeping some of the dollars paused.

Jennings said that if Trump refuses to comply with the motion to enforce in Rhode Island the next step “is to move to hold him and others in contempt for not complying.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said the Trump administration’s executive order on birthright citizenship, which three courts have halted, was a “full frontal” assault on the US Constitution.

But he appeared to break from the majority view of the group of seven attorneys general by saying he believes the US is not in a Constitutional crisis—yet.

“We’re going to court within hours, and getting orders in our favor within hours,” he said, adding, “I believe our system is durable. We are being stress-tested, but it is durable.”

However, he said he’s “not naive” about Vice President JD Vance’s (R) statements that judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” including by telling “a general how to conduct a military operation,” and Louisiana House Speaker Mike Johnson’s statement that federal courts should back off.

Judges should “absolutely not stand down,” Bonta said. “They should lean into their duty to interpret the law, let the chips fall where they may, based on the law and the facts presented to them, by us and others. That’s their job. That’s their duty. There’s no standing down.”