The Jamestown Democratic Town Committee hosted a Community Conversation with Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha on Tuesday evening. During the conversation, Neronha explained the series of lawsuits he and twenty-two of his counterparts across the country have filed to block the Trump Administration’s authoritarian efforts to squash democracy.
Attorney General Neronha: I thought I would begin by talking about why we file those lawsuits, why we have been prepared to file them, why we have been able to move so quickly to get them filed and why we have been, I believe, universally successful in the many lawsuits that we’ve been a part of.
We have filed a birthright citizenship lawsuit. We have filed a lawsuit involving the funding freeze that many of you have heard about for state agencies and nonprofit organizations. We have filed lawsuits about the NIH funding freeze that impacts much of the medical research in Rhode Island and beyond. We have filed lawsuits involving Elon Musk, what we call in our community, DOGE One and DOGE Two, because of concerns about Mr. Musk and his troops accessing Americans’ data for reasons we believe are outside the bounds of the Constitution. We brought several lawsuits and the reception from the courts has been very good.
Why? It’s because we’re right on the law. When I was an Assistant United States Attorney, a lawyer worked with us, his name was Jim Lavy, and he told us what the federal judges expected from us when we walked into the courtroom as Assistant United States Attorneys. They wanted to be able to look to us for what we believed in good faith to be the law. We weren’t there to advocate for a defendant or a personal client. We were there to advocate on behalf of the United States. As Assistant United States Attorneys, judges expect us to be right on the law and present the facts. I believe that’s what the federal courts are looking for from us as Attorneys General now, and that’s why the reception [to our lawsuits] has been so good.
Why have we been able to take the action we’ve taken so swiftly and successfully? We have built, my 22 colleagues and I, including the District of Columbia, the best and biggest law firm in the United States. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that that is true. They are extraordinary lawyers. We have the benefit of having some big offices in our group – New York and California being the two largest of course – but I will tell you that the lawyers we have assigned to the case in federal court here in Rhode Island from my office are excellent. They’re arguing the case. Sarah Rice is arguing the case. She’s from South Kingstown. She’s doing an excellent job. Keith Hoffmann is here for my staff. He helps me interface with that group of incredibly talented lawyers.
Until very recently, we were talking every day. We spoke every day from the inauguration all the way through. Today was the first day we went to our three days a week model. The staff lawyers talk more than that. They talk every day, and then we talk as attorneys general together. When I was out in Los Angeles with my fellow Democratic Attorneys General a few weeks ago, we talked about our litigation strategy, what cases we would bring, and where we would file them. As you can imagine, with 23 type A personalities, those conversations can get fierce because of disagreements. I mean, Washington State for whatever reason, has always had this go-it-alone approach. That’s why we have two birthright citizenship cases. I don’t think any of us other than Washington State would think that was ideal, but it’s why we have two of those cases.
But the staffs are extraordinary. I came out of that room, and there were a bunch of people outside. I said, “It’s white smoke. We finally agree on what we will do and our next journey on this road.” This is the most critical piece: When I returned to get my things out of the ballroom where we had just met, 18 to 20 lawyers were sitting around a big table with a computer right in the middle of it. They were having a video conversation with their colleagues. Keith was one of those extraordinary lawyers doing this work, which is more important than ever.
Why bring the cases? What do the cases mean? I think the federal funding cases – the NIH case, which is filed in Massachusetts, and the case that we have in Rhode Island, which involves the broader Office of Management and Budget memo that stopped – or paused – all federal spending for a review tell us what the President’s ultimate motivations are. The President paused funding to the various states and state agencies – money for healthcare, education, veterans, and law enforcement, for example, the high-intensity drug task force in every State in the country, including here, run here by the State Police. They do the state’s significant drug trafficking investigations. That money was frozen. That’s what that case was about.
The case in Massachusetts was about changing the reimbursement rate from 55% – round numbers – to 15% on the overhead for medical and other kinds of research, which changes the dynamics within which places like Brown and URI and others that get research grants from the National Institutes of Health to do the medical and scientific research that makes all of our lives better. By pausing that funding, the President was saying to the Congress, “It doesn’t matter to me what Congress has already allocated to the states.” Remember, we have a compact with our federal government where we pay our federal taxes to Washington, and some of that money is used to run the government, while some comes back to us in the form we’re talking about. Some are direct appropriations, some are formula grants. They are all sorts of very complicated ways that this money comes back to Rhode Island, but it comes back to us because at the end of the day, it is our tax money coming back to us to do the kinds of things that only the federal government can do or finance.
By pausing the money in this way, the President effectively sidelined Congress. Now, I’m not talking about money that will come in the future. That is a separate question that perhaps we’ll get to spend some time on. We’re talking about money already allocated by the Congress. Growing up, we learned that Congress has the power of the purse. If you’re young and learning about what the Congress does, they pass the laws. But their real power, the power that they wield over policy, is the power of the purse. If they don’t fund it, it doesn’t happen. I hear a lot from my friends on the other side of the aisle about the will or the intent of the framers. We hear much from the Supreme Court about how the original Constitution is not a living document. I disagree with that viewpoint, but the argument for those who present that viewpoint is that the Constitution is the will of the framers. Well, here is the will of the framers. If we go back and read the Federalist Papers, the Constitution created tension among our branches of government, which ensures our democracy.
There’s a judicial branch, the legislative branch, which is our Congress, and executive power, which is the President. The tension between those three branches of government, none of which have exclusive power, protects our freedom because when anyone goes too far, the other branches of government are viewed as a brake on extremism.
Think about what Judge McConnell said at the hearing on our preliminary injunction a few weeks ago. “I don’t have an army outside to enforce my decisions, I only have the power of contempt.” When we start ignoring the will of the courts – eventually culminating in the Supreme Court – then the judiciary loses its authority and power because its power is in the power that it has taken upon itself in Marbury versus Madison, the bottom line being that our judicial branch has the power that it has taken for itself. Only as long as we respect that power, is power there. It is the most tenuous power, if you will. It’s only the power that we have given it since 1803 when Justice John Marshall in Marbury versus Madison said that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the law. In the context of the OMB case, the President has taken upon himself the spending power of Congress because he said, “I don’t care what the Congress said. I don’t care if I’ve obligated this money to the States. I don’t care if the states are counting on it.”
Now, you’ll hear that this would never apply to Medicaid. On the night of the OMB memo, our Medicaid office in Rhode Island, this is in a filing from Jonathan Walker from the Rhode Island Department of Administration. The state tried to pull down Medicaid funding but could not do so. The federal contact people, whoever they reached out to, told our folks here in Rhode Island that there was a pause, and it applied to Medicaid. They didn’t know how long the pause would last, and they weren’t willing to put anything in writing. I was a federal prosecutor for a long time. When someone won’t write something, they probably know their actions are unlawful. And this was unlawful.
The President has effectively stolen Congress’s most significant power, taking it to himself. What is remarkable is the silence among some members of Congress, who have lost that authority. I don’t know why. Why go to Washington and serve in the Senate or Congress if your powers are being taken? I don’t understand the lack of outcry. Senator Josh Hawley, with whom I probably agree on nothing, was vocal there for a while, and I haven’t heard much from him since. It’s time for all members of Congress – on both sides of the aisle – to say “This is our power.”
The President has sidelined Congress by taking the power of the purse. Judge McConnell says that very clearly in his decision that the power of federal spending does not lie in the President’s priorities, but in the priorities of the legislature, because that is the will of the American people when it comes to spending. The will is not expressed through the President. It is expressed through the Congress. We have Congress sidelined, and that’s how I described it when I was asked what the president was doing in that case.
We did pretty well in front of Judge McConnell. We got a temporary restraining order. We got a well-reasoned decision, parts of which I just paraphrased back to you. So what happened in the wake of that well-reasoned decision by Judge McConnell? Suddenly, Judge McConnell’s authority is undermined as an activist judge and worse by the Vice President and Mr. Musk. Certain television stations show that Judge McConnell is making decisions based on something other than what he believes the law is. It’s undermining our judiciary branch.
What happens in a democracy when the legislature is sidelined and the judiciary is undermined? Two of those branches of government effectively don’t exist anymore. I believe that President Trump has authoritarian instincts that drive these acts. If the President didn’t like how Congress was spending the money, there’s a procedure by which he could go back and change it. The President could seek a rescission of those funds. Remember, he controls both houses of Congress. It’s possible that the Congress would give him the rescission he was looking for, but he doesn’t care enough about the Congress to go through what the law requires. The funding stopped, which is patently unlawful and unconstitutional, so, the country’s biggest and best law firm, a collection of attorneys general, is winning these fights because we are fundamentally correct on the law.
When I watched the Department of Justice Lawyers oppose our preliminary injunction, I’m not going to say I felt for them because it’s the assignment they’ve taken, and these are not career lawyers doing it. The administration brought in people, but they didn’t have strong legal arguments.
I can’t predict what the Supreme Court will do, but I’m confident that the First Circuit will uphold Judge McConnell.
That’s what I think the President is doing. We brought these cases because we believe we’re right on the law. We’ve been prepared for this moment. We started preparing sometime last summer at a meeting among the attorneys general when we were concerned with the direction of the election. We wanted to be ready in the moment because we knew if President Trump were elected a second time, we would not have the ramping up time we had during his first administration. We had to be ready to go, so the teams have worked very hard.
This is a time for attorneys general. We are prepared for this moment. We have warmed to the fight. We are not shocked or awed by the President’s actions. We are going to fight everywhere we can, not because we’re fighting with the President—while I think his performance with President Zelensky was bizarre and awful, we are not going to take him on when it comes to foreign policy—we don’t have the legal ability to do that.
What we care about is that the law is followed and that this push and pull among the three branches of our democracy continue to function. You can look very narrowly at the cases and think it’s a matter of culture war. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about what the law requires. I worry about losing our democracy to authoritarianism. If you study history, it doesn’t happen overnight. People who become authoritarians are often elected in some form, whether it be Joseph Stalin or other authoritarian leaders in our history. I’m listening to a book on Stalin. Don’t ask me why – my staff makes fun of me – but it does help me put some context into this moment.
And it’s a time for Americans to stand up and remind the President of what we believe in and fought for. My father went to Korea during the war. What our veterans fought for over the centuries is our democracy – built on what the framers intended 250 years ago. It’s not a perfect union, but it’s a system that has, for the most part, worked. That is what we as attorneys general are defending.
Here’s the other thing, and this will play itself out interestingly. Regarding the birthright citizenship cases, we sought a nationwide injunction because we believe that a child born in the United States is a citizen, regardless of whether they were born in a red state like Utah or a blue state like Arizona.
In other cases, we have sought an injunction that only applies to our states. For example, the NIH funding is only for the states that brought suit. If you think about that briefly, red states stand to lose by not being part of these cases. The money will flow to blue states and is flowing to blue states, but it’s not flowing to red states because they haven’t been in these cases. In the federal workers’ case that may be filed, Maryland and DC may bring a case like that in theory, and we may join them. Still, if Virginia doesn’t join them in that case, which is likely, then federal workers who happen to live in Maryland or the District would be covered and not so much in Virginia.
So without giving away a lot of our strategy, red states have to feel it. Soybean farmers in Kansas feel the cutoff of foreign aid because they grow the soy that becomes part of the product produced in Quonset. And so I imagine what my United States Attorney colleague Barry Grissom in Kansas will tell you is that he’s hearing from soy farmers in Kansas that don’t like the President’s policies either, so part of this is to ratchet up pressure on red states to speak out because when they’re not getting the NIH funding, when their money isn’t flowing, the President will perhaps feel some pressure to follow the Constitutionon and give Congress the power of the purse back.
What are the fights ahead? We’ve been talking about existing funding that is already obligated. Grants have been applied for, and you’ve received your notice of award – for example, appropriations that the State expects to get for highway building. The next round will be future funding conditioned on the state or non-state agencies and entities following [executive orders around DEI initiatives, for example]. That battle is already playing out in some ways. Many nonprofits are scrubbing their websites to comply with this federal directive for fear of losing federal funding. Our ability to represent these nonprofits is somewhat tenuous when we are in litigation with the federal government, unlike in an ordinary circumstance when we’re suing a private entity on behalf of all Rhode Islanders. But I see that coming, it’s already here, and will continue to escalate. For example, law enforcement funding, which the State can access only if the State actively participates in immigration work. I will tell you that I’ve prosecuted a lot of serious criminals who have been in the country here unlawfully, mostly who have been deported the first time and have come back and committed a second crime.
It’s part of what we did when I was a United States Attorney. I had no problem doing those cases. But I will tell you that as a state prosecutor, we have 14,000 pending felony cases. I have six or seven investigators – the last thing I need is my investigators and members of the State Police going out and targeting nonviolent offenders, whether they’re legally in the country or not. If you’re committing a serious crime, we’re already doing it, but if you’re not committing a serious crime, that is something that ICE is well prepared to do. I don’t think that 25% of the State Police troopers, as is happening with FBI agents now, need to be detailed to immigration enforcement. That is a tremendous waste of resources in Rhode Island.
ICE didn’t have enough cases to do when I was a United States Attorney, frankly. Why do they need 25% of the FBI, DEA, and Secret Service resources to focus on immigration? I was in my office with members of the Statewide FOP, Statewide International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Fraternal Order of Police, Providence Fraternal Order of Police – law enforcement guys, and all of them don’t love my views on firearms and stuff. They’re not aligned with me on many of my viewpoints, but they’re on the street, and I asked them, “Is ICE going door to door, house to house in Rhode Island?” And the answer is no. People often think it’s ICE when it’s the Pawtucket Police Department.
As a practical matter, I don’t think it’s constitutional, and I think that fight’s coming. It doesn’t make much law enforcement sense, but whether it’s about immigration or diversity, equity, and inclusion, those efforts to strong-arm the states are coming. We’re right on the law under the 10th Amendment and other theories, so while I think these will be difficult issues, you can already see the fallout for non-governmental agencies. They are caught between losing necessary funding to serve Rhode Islanders and conforming with these directives. Some of them already feel the pressure – and frankly have accommodated it.
I will tell you that the work has energized me. Frankly, I’m in my seventh year as Attorney General and I’ve loved the work, but if you can’t get the place going the way you want it by the seventh year, you probably shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. Without Donald Trump, I would’ve felt somewhat irrelevant on most days because the ship operates on all cylinders. But the President’s election and the need to push back hay energized me and the staff. It’s an unintended, but good consequence of the office we’ve built.
Many of you have heard me speak before about what I wanted to do with the Attorney General’s office – and that was to turn us from just defending the State when the State gets sued – to being proactive, willing to get out there and fight on offense on behalf of healthcare, energy, the environment, consumer protection, civil rights, and more. We’ve been able to build this group of firm lawyers in that space and, as you might expect from what I just said, they are well positioned to do this work because they’re the kinds of lawyers who spent their time when Donald Trump wasn’t President getting out on offense for the people in the State. Those skills transfer very well. I didn’t build that part of the office in anticipation of a second Trump term. But the fact that they’re there makes me sleep much better at night because they are extraordinary.
I’ll leave you with this. The night the OMB memo came out, we knew something about it was overreach. We had an internal phone call about whether we wanted to participate in the lawsuit and whether we were willing to bring it to Rhode Island and take on the responsibility because that meant the court would look toward Rhode Island’s assistant attorney general to argue it. After that phone call, there was a staff call from the other states, and they already knew each other. It wasn’t like we had to build it; it was already built, and everyone agreed we would bring the case to Rhode Island. Well, we hadn’t decided on Rhode Island just yet. That came the next day. But Rhode Island was on the table with a couple of other places.
Six states led – Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, California, Massachusetts, and Illinois. So a little state is playing with some of the bigger ones. Having the California team on the west coast bought us some time. Some of our folks had to get a little sleep overnight so California picked up the drafting ball. I’ll tell you the product we filed the next afternoon, and there was some debate about whether to file it in New York, Washington, or Rhode Island. I felt it was essential to file it someplace other than Washington because I didn’t want it to be a Washington case. I wanted a case that impacted Americans, including Rhode Islanders. We were able to file that lawsuit…
Keith Hoffmann: About 19 hours after the executive order dropped.
Attorney General Neronha: And the work is extraordinary. If you see the world the way I do, that should give you some comfort. There is a team there to fight for you. If you believe in the same values that the team and I believe in, this is the attorney general’s time. This is what we were built for. We’re ready. We’re lawyers. We’re fighters. We like being in a courtroom – we’re not afraid of that context. We’re right on the law and not afraid of the President. That’s why you see some of the fighters you see there in Governor’s offices, whether it be Janet Mills, former Attorney General in Maine; Josh Shapiro, former Attorney General in Pennsylvania; Moira Healey, former AG in Massachusetts; or Josh Stein, the former Attorney General in North Carolina; we are ready to go.
