WASHINGTON, DC – This week, MeidasTouch hosted a virtual town hall featuring California AG Rob Bonta, Illinois AG Kwame Raoul, and Massachusetts AG Andrea Campbell. The Democratic AGs took questions from the audience and addressed the importance of their work fighting the Trump administration’s lawlessness.

“We have built together, the 23 Democratic attorneys general, a legal fortress around the rights and freedoms of Americans, protecting and defending them,” AG Bonta told Ben Meiselas. “A wall of protection that we will stand on and guard and never let the unlawful president cross.”

• “The takeaway for me for this past year and as we look forward to the next year is when we fight, we win,” AG Bonta opened. “When we fight together, we win even more. And I’m proud to work side by side with a total of 23 Democratic attorneys general pushing back against the lawlessness, the blatant, the brazen, the consistent, the frequent lawlessness coming out of the Trump administration and delivering time and time again.”

• “It’s it looked like defending and protecting $168 billion dollar worth of funding that Trump improperly, unlawfully, illegally tried to take away from us,” AG Bonta said. “We protected it. We’ve secured that funding. It’s looked like protecting rights and freedoms like the right to birthright citizenship.”

• “I wish we didn’t have this fight that we didn’t have a president of the United States who breaks the law, who tramples over the Constitution, who tramples over rights and freedoms,” AG Bonta added. “But if that is his decision, we will meet him at the bounds of his authority every time. He cannot do unlawful things. Period. Full stop.” 
• “That collaboration has been important to the work that we’ve done over the course of the last year,” AG Raoul said. “And of course we connected way before the inauguration of President Trump in his second term realizing that we needed to be prepared and that preparation has really paid off. As AG Bonta has said, we are challenging these actions of overreach in court, and we are being successful in doing so.”

• “We do this work in collaboration every day along with our incredible Democratic AG colleagues from all across the country,” AG Campbell said. “And sadly, as we stand up to hold the president accountable and to do it in such a way not only upholding the rule of law and the constitution, but to protect our residents and our state economies, not one Republican AG has joined our efforts.”

• “So all of us as we do this work, we are truly winning,” AG Campbell said. “Folks should recognize that they should have a sense of hope and joy even in the midst of this darkness and to know that their Democratic AGs have their backs as we do this Trump work of holding this administration accountable.”

• “We’re running a parallel track in many ways to protect our people and their rights, to hold up the Constitution and the rule of law to ensure the economy continues to operate and most importantly address the issue of affordability,” AG Campbell added. “And I’m proud to be doing that with my colleagues because we do not have a federal partner at all when it comes to the issue of affordability and the cost of living crisis that folks are experiencing every single day. And so we’ll keep doing the sense the work with joy, integrity, and most importantly serving folks regardless of what letters by their name.”

• “Right now in this moment we’re focused on the tools that we can effectively use in this moment to fight against some of these unlawful actions,” AG Raoul said “And one of the unfortunate outgrowths of the federal overreach and the audaciousness of this administration and its violation of the law and historic policies and practices and that it undermines the collaboration of local, state, and federal law enforcement.”

• One of the things to be clear is I came in halfway through Trump’s first tenure as president and on the local level we had we have had great collaboration with the US attorney’s office as well as the FBI, the DEA, ATF, Homeland Security Investigation, Secret Service and other agencies on fighting crime, real crime,” AG Raoul said. “Those efforts have been undermined by the loss of prosecutors, the loss of FBI agents…” 

• “This dysfunction that we’re seeing from the Department of Justice, the lack of integrity, the lack of exceptionalism in doing our work, the lack of just trust between that agency and the public not only undermines our entire system of justice which is built on trust and transparency and of course accountability,” AG Campbell stated.

• A lot of this work is has been personal for me,” AG Raoul said. “When we started out with the first case being led by Massachusetts and Washington on birthright citizenship. It’s personal to me as a child of Haitian immigrants and having a mother who was not yet naturalized at the time of my birth. Our case with NIH grants that deal with medical research for things like Alzheimer’s and cancer. Making sure that the funding would flow as Congress set out and they partnered with AG Campbell on leading that. That’s personal to me as a cancer survivor of the cancer that killed my father and both of my grandfathers.”

• “It’s important for people not to be numbed by the wide variety of actions, audacious actions that are being taken by this federal administration, numbed into thinking that I’m tired of hearing about all this, because your rights are on the line,” AG Raoul stated. “It’s important that we go back to understanding civics as we were taught in Schoolhouse Rock, the separation of powers.”

• “And so I’m proud to continue to stand up with AGs to fight back to protect the interest of Massachusetts, but it’s bigger than Massachusetts because in addition to birthright citizenship, I reflect on SNAP benefits and us coming together on SNAP,” AG Campbell said. “I grew up poor in the city of Boston. I was on SNAP benefits. I would not be here without the privilege and also without government working to help my family. So we’re fighting back against administration and a government that is looking to harm families, not help folks. All of this work for us is personal and this is why we are fighting even with targets on our back to protect the democratic values of this country to protect the rights and privileges of all of us and most importantly to do this work for future generations.”

• “And please know that I and my fellow Democratic attorneys general, we have a full tank of gas,” AG Bonta said. “We’re full of energy. We’re ready for whatever comes next and we will continue to be your defenders, your protectors, defend you, protect you, your rights, your freedoms, our democracy, our democratic institutions, and law.”

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