'A track record': Attorneys general prep for battle as last line of defense in Trump era

18 November 2024

FILE PHOTO: Donald Trump attends a campaign rally, in Salem, Virginia, U.S. November 2, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

After Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017, Democratic attorneys general in the U.S. quickly started conference calls every Tuesday morning to strategize and map out legal steps.

Within weeks, that quickly turned into legal action, when Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson launched a lawsuit challenging Trump’s travel ban that barred most people from predominantly Muslim nations from entering the U.S., even if they had valid visas. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum joined the lawsuit, which led to a court action that blocked Trump’s executive order within about a week of its passage.

As Trump prepares for a new term in office, 23 Democratic attorneys general will be a watchdog against any Trump-led initiatives that they believe are unconstitutional, illegal or both. The landscape has changed: Rosenblum is retiring from the role and former Oregon House Speaker Dan Rayfield will become the next attorney general. Ferguson was elected governor of Washington. The two are the last Democratic attorneys general who were in office when Trump started his first term.

In the second Trump term, attorneys general now have a four-year history of court actions that their predecessors took on wide-ranging issues like immigration, health care and the environment. And they often prevailed in court, an outcome that highlights the remarkable power that attorneys general have, through the court system, to unravel executive orders and directives from the most powerful elected leader in the world.

“We kind of have a track record and a set of expectations of how he has operated in the past,” Rayfield said in an interview with the Capital Chronicle. “The attorneys general are just a check and balance on that power. When he oversteps and pursues, whether it’s discriminatory or unlawful policies, you are that backstop for that.”

Oregon worked closely with Washington and other states during the first Trump term, as Democratic attorneys general collaborated. Ferguson sued the first Trump administration nearly 100 times, losing only three times, the Washington State Standard reported. Oregon joined many of those cases, as did other states.

Among the cases, all with more than a dozen states participating: Oregon sued in 2017, when Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency head delayed a designation of what regions of the country met new ground-level ozone pollution standards. In 2018, Oregon sued to block the federal government from asking people about their citizenship status during the 2020 census. Oregon also joined a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s immigration policy of separating children from families that crossed the border of Mexico without documentation.

During that first Trump administration, there were a lot of things that just came out of the blue. So you have to be ready under those scenarios.

– Oregon Attorney General-elect Dan Rayfield

Rayfield said the legal fight for states to set stricter emissions controls for vehicles than federal standards — opposed by Republican attorneys general — is an example of an issue where he would fight for Oregon’s right to do so.

Another key issue is reproductive health and preserving access to care, including the abortion medication mifepristone, Rayfield said.

Attorneys general also serve as a watchdog of federal actions regardless of whether a member of their party is president. For example, Rosenblum and other attorneys general have sued the federal Food & Drug Administration during the Biden administration for its restrictions on mifepristone.

Rayfield said he understands the fears about what impact a Trump administration will have on immigration. It’s one issue among many that he’ll keep tabs on with his Oregon Department of Justice attorneys.

“Those concerns are very real and scary in those communities,” he said. “But what I’d like to do is be able to see where Trump begins to move in that direction, and then see how that unfolds.”

At the same time, Rayfield said his role as attorney general is not simply to be a foil to Trump. The role exists regardless of who the president is, he said.

“You have to be firing on all cylinders,” he said.

That’s because the attorney general does much more than decide when to sue the federal government. Oregon’s attorney general leads the Oregon Department of Justice, which has nearly 1,500 workers statewide and an annual budget of about $406 million. The attorney general defends state agencies from lawsuits and advocates on behalf of residents in areas like consumer protection, help with collecting child support and raising public awareness about scammers.

Yet Rayfield said it’s important to be ready for the unexpected.

“During that first Trump administration, there were a lot of things that just came out of the blue,” he said. “So you have to be ready under those scenarios. I think it is a state of really knowing what our values are here in Oregon, and then being ready to partner with other attorneys general to make sure that we’re upholding those values. Because it is a team effort in kind of being that last line of defense.”

It was a lot of tweets. We weren’t really used to a president that personally tweeted, so we had a lot of clues from that and, of course, the executive orders themselves.

– Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum

Rosenblum reflects

For Rosenblum, the early days of monitoring the Trump administration in 2017 quickly showed the need for organization. Rosenblum, who served as co-chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association during the Trump administration, helped lead those early efforts.

The organization hired a staffer to help track policy changes coming from the White House. And of course, Trump’s prolific tweets — before the social media company now known as X banned him — offered hints about what was ahead. Current owner Elon Musk, a Trump supporter who the president-elect named as head of a quasi-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency,” restored Trump’s account in 2022, but Trump continues to primarily use his own social media company, Truth Social.

“It was a lot of tweets,” Rosenblum said. “We weren’t really used to a president that personally tweeted, so we had a lot of clues from that and, of course, the executive orders themselves.”

The group realized that to preserve resources, they needed to work together and coordinate on cases.

“We realized that, ideally, in order to conserve resources and also to address issues that were not specific to our states, but that were harming our own constituents in terms of their rights and their freedoms, that we needed to really step it up and work together,” Rosenblum said. “So we did that on pretty much everything that came our way.”

That helped keep costs down during the four-year Trump term, and Rosenblum said her office never needed to hire outside legal counsel to handle the cases. It also helped to have help from states with better-staffed offices, including Washington, California, New York and Illinois, she said.

The weekly conference calls continued, even after Trump exited office and during the Biden administration. Rosenblum said they were a good way to communicate and collaborate on potential national lawsuits and other issues.

Rosenblum said she expects the office will have a smooth transition through Rayfield. Like Rayfield, she said the role of watchdogging the federal government does not replace an attorney general’s role in pocketbook issues like consumer protection.

“You definitely don’t stop doing your daily bread and butter work of what being attorney general is, and that’s really important to the people of Oregon,” Rosenblum said.

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Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and X.

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