Trump’s Legal Showdown With Blue State AGs Is Already Happening

The coming legal clash between blue states and the Trump administration is already hitting courts across the US.

Democratic state attorneys general spent the final week of the Biden administration asking judges for permission to join ongoing fights over immigration, the environment and guns where they fear US agencies will change position once President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in.

Their push on the eve of Trump’s inauguration is a preview of what’s expected to be a bitter relationship between his administration and officials of so-called blue states, whose voters tend to favor Democrats. AGs from such states were a thorn in Trump’s side during his first term and appear eager to reprise their roles.

On Jan. 15, more than a dozen Democratic AGs asked to join a pending case in North Dakota federal court to defend a Biden administration rule allowing non-citizens who came to the US as children to enroll in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

The US government “can no longer be counted on” to represent the states’ interests or pursue arguments about the “proper scope” of the healthcare law, wrote the officials, led by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin.

But these AGs are facing a different political landscape than they did in 2017, including the fact that some of them no longer represent blue states. Trump also appointed three US Supreme Court justices to cement a solid 6-3 conservative majority. Meanwhile, the country appears to have moved to the right on many issues, with the Biden administration polling poorly on immigration throughout the campaign. Stung by Trump’s popular vote win, many Democratic leaders have been calling on the party to mount a more nuanced opposition this time around.

Their Republican counterparts say Democratic AGs are making a mistake by running the same playbook as they did eight years ago.

“I’ve seen this movie before,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said of the planned blue-state litigation. “Democrats have to do a gut check — are they really going to pick fights over something Donald Trump ran on and won?”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York’s Letitia James, representing the two most populous reliably Democratic states, have signaled they’re ready for those fights. James, who won a $450 million civil fraud judgment against Trump for inflating his company’s property values and has been a frequent subject of the president-elect’s vitriol, held a press conference the day after the election, vowing to fight and pointing to her many lawsuits against the first Trump administration.

“As you can see, we know their playbook,” she said.

Meanwhile, California’s Democratic-controlled legislature is expected to boost Bonta’s budget by $25 million specifically to fund litigation against the Trump administration. The state AG said much of his focus was actually on protecting state residents from the incoming president.

“Trump has made clear from his words and actions that he is singling out California to be vindictive, to treat harshly and in unfair ways,” Bonta said, adding, “So we’re prepared for anything.”

Law Over Politics

A number of Democratic AGs said they were standing up for the law, and that politics and voters’ opinions aren’t part of their calculus.

“This is not about preventing the president from putting policies in place that he sees fit, even if I personally disagree with them,” said New Jersey’s Matthew Platkin. This is about ensuring that the law is enforced and that people’s rights that are enshrined in the law are protected. And ultimately, the president, while elected, is not a king.”

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, whose state went for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden before flipping to Trump in November, echoed Platkin.

Trump “has a penchant for violating the law, and we as AGs have a responsibility to those who are striving for justice,” Ford said.

Their push to join cases on the eve of Trump’s inauguration grew out of more than a year of private discussions about how they would respond to a possible Trump victory. It was an unusual level of early planning for the group, with the goal of preparing for an emboldened Trump.

As it was during Trump’s first term, immigration promises to be a major focus of Democratic AGs. States previously helped defeat Trump policies like family separation and his so-called Muslim ban, though the Supreme Court later undid some of their victories.

Trump’s mass deportation threat was cited as the top focus of potential litigation by several Democrats who spoke on the sidelines of a recent National Association of Attorneys General meeting in Washington. Several of the AGs said Trump’s decisive election victory will likely embolden him to pursue his most extreme policies, but they predicted those actions would galvanize the opposition too.

Democratic AGs believe they have a guide to Trump’s policy “wish list” in the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025. Though he distanced himself from it during the campaign, the AGs say they expect him to adopt many of its proposals.

“I expect that this is going to get ugly,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who participated in numerous multistate suits during Trump’s first term.

These include an executive order he tried to implement in his first term that would eliminate civil service protections for many senior federal employees. States like Maryland and Virginia, where many of those workers live, would likely take action to challenge such an order. Project 2025 also proposes restrictions on the distribution of abortion pills across states.

Despite their plans to oppose many Trump policies, Democratic AGs also recognize there are many areas where they’ll have to work with the new administration.

“My hope is that the partisan fights that we do have don’t negatively impact the things that we can work together on,” said Illinois’ Kwame Raoul. “Whether it might be politically unpopular for me to say, I’m hoping to work with the Trump administration.”

--With assistance from Malathi Nayak.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Anthony Lin at alin364@bloomberg.net

Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

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