Washington, DC – Democratic Attorneys General across the country are gearing up for a second Trump administration, laying the groundwork for lawsuits against any forthcoming federal attempt to violate the law or the Constitution. Several Democratic Attorneys General spoke with CNN’s Tierney Sneed on their plans around potential future litigation and what issues they’re focused on in the months ahead.

Key highlights:

• “[Democratic Attorneys General] have been preparing for months, if not years, for what kind of lawsuits they might want to bring against a Trump 2.0 agenda. They’ve done so as the president-elect and his deputies have promised a more sophisticated and less error-prone operation this time.”
• “They’re adjusting the legal strategies that were used against Trump during the first go-around to take into account shifts in court precedent since then, while also acknowledging a political reality that gave Trump a more decisive electoral win than in 2016.” ‘There was a much clearer voice of the people. And one of the jobs I have is to understand what’s behind that,’ Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told CNN. ‘Insofar as the administration pursues policies that are lawful, that’s their right to pursue lawful policies.’”
• “Washington’s attorney general-elect, Nick Brown, has been reading up on how key legal doctrines such as standing have shifted since the first Trump administration. The day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta asked his staff to draft potential strategies for how his state could challenge a national abortion ban.”

• “Democrats are anticipating sharp battles over mass deportation, abortion access, the environment and consumer protection, among other issues. Compared to Trump’s 2016 campaign, the president-elect and his allies have been ‘a little bit more predictable with specifics,’ Bonta said. ‘We expect him to do what he says,’ added Bonta, who was in the California legislature during the first Trump presidency. ‘We’ve been through this once at 1.0 and understand a lot of the places where he broke the law.’”

• “During the first Trump administration, the number of state-brought legal actions against the federal government totaled in the triple digits, and those court fights made national stars of those officials leading the legal resistance. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was the state’s attorney general in 2017, was on the 2024 Democratic vice presidential short list. The Democratic governors in Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, and, come January, in North Carolina and Washington, are former attorneys general who battled the first Trump administration in court as well.”
• “They bring to the governor’s mansion knowledge and experience of how to duel with Trump in court — experience that will benefit the lawyers serving in their current roles. As governors, they can help secure funding and propose other legislation that will buttress the work of state attorneys general. Having former Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey in the governorship for the second Trump term is ‘actually critical,’ the commonwealth’s current attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell, told CNN.”

• “Ferguson, who was elected Washington’s governor, joined his successor, Brown, at a post-election news conference last month at which both Democrats said threats of revenge by Trump would not influence decisions to bring cases […] ‘If people are being harmed, if the law is being violated, we should enforce that, without fear of retribution,’ Brown said.”

• “But that does not mean that Democratic attorneys general plan to fight Trump on every issue. They told CNN that, while they will probably disagree with many of his policies, they’ll only sue when the legal circumstances warrant it […] ‘My office has been able to partner at the local level with these agencies, and I want to preserve that, regardless of who’s president,’ Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul told CNN. ‘I am not going to lash out for the sake of lashing out.’”

• “He and other attorneys general emphasized, however, that when they believe that the incoming president has violated the law in a way that is harming residents of their states, they are committed to taking him to court. ‘To the extent that there was a strong mandate here for the administration, it was specifically on cost of living,” said Josh Kaul, the attorney general for Wisconsin, which went for Trump this year. “I don’t think a lot of folks who voted for the Trump administration did so because they wanted people’s rights to be taken away.’”

• “The relationships that state attorneys general forged among themselves during the first Trump administration continued through the Biden years, and several months ago, those cross-state conversations turned to Trump’s possible return.”
• “The Democratic Attorneys General Association… organizes regular Zoom calls and in-person confabs to keep the dialogue going. The discussions for a potential second Trump term began in earnest at the organization’s February conference in Seattle, DAGA president Sean Rankin told CNN.”
• “Amid all these changes, Democrats are quick to bring up the win rate that their offices had during the first Trump administration, with some states prevailing in 80% or more of the cases they brought against his first-term agenda. That courts so frequently found that Trump had run afoul of the law makes the attorneys general confident that they’ll be successful again in the legal battles they pick with his second administration.”
• “‘‘The circuits have changed. The Supreme Court has changed,’ New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin told CNN. ‘But they’ve also sided with the rule of law in many instances, and I predict they will again.’”

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