WASHINGTON — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is joining his Democratic colleagues across the nation in preparing to battle in court to try to stop Trump administration policies they deem unlawful.
For Ellison, and fellow Democratic attorneys general, the past is prologue. They banded together to sue the first Trump administration more than 130 times, with a win rate of 83%, according to a database compiled by Marquette University political scientist Paul Nolette.
This time, they are even more important to a Democratic Party that has been weakened by its electoral losses.
With Republican control of both chambers of Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the nation’s Democratic attorneys general are now the strongest counterweight to the political power Trump will hold in his second administration.
Ellison said the 23 Democratic attorneys general who will serve when Donald Trump is inaugurated Jan. 20 have already been strategizing.
But he did not want to divulge many details of their plans, saying, “I’m not about to tell our potential rivals everything we are going to do.”
The rival camp will consist of GOP attorneys general, and most likely the U.S. Justice Department, as challenges to Trump policies play out in the nation’s federal courts.
The Democratic attorneys general were able to derail and stall some of Trump’s immigration initiatives in his first term, with lawsuits against the use of unappropriated government funds to build his wall along the border of the United States and Mexico, his travel ban on citizens from a number of Muslim countries — including Somalia — and his program to separate immigrant parents from their children at the border.
Ellison was elected the state’s attorney general two years after Trump first assumed the presidency. In the ensuing years, Ellison joined his Democratic colleagues in a number of lawsuits targeting Trump policies, including an attempt to leave undocumented migrants out of the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau count, and efforts to curtail environmental review of federal actions, cut food stamps to certain recipients and allow doctors to deny medical treatment based on personal and religious views.
Trump’s vow to declare a national emergency and begin mass deportations on his first day of his next term is now top of mind for many Democratic attorneys general.
Ellison predicted that campaign “would be bloody.”
“That’s not my word – bloody – Trump said ‘bloody,’” he said.
Ellison said legal challenges to the deportations would “depend on how they do it, who they pick up and who they leave behind.”
He said there has been outreach to immigrant communities that would be affected. “We’re building lines of communication and we’re ready to make sure the federal government obeys the law,” he said.
Delay, delay, delay
Besides pushing back on new Trump immigration initiatives, Ellison also alluded to possible lawsuits to counter “dramatic actions against public health” and rollbacks of federal education programs that give female athletes the right to equal opportunity in sports. He also said he’s “concerned about some of the trans things we see.”
“They’ve signaled a lot of things,” Ellison said of Trump and the nominees for his Cabinet and advisers. “There’s a lot of good reason to believe they’ll do what they said.”
In his first term, Trump also tried to withhold federal funds from “blue states” that resisted his initiatives. Ellison said he expected that effort, which was largely unsuccessful, to be attempted again.
He also indicated he does not fully embrace his new role.
“I did not run for re-election to fight with Trump,” he said.
Ellison is not the only Democratic attorney general to say he’s ready to take on Trump administration policies in the courts. So have New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and others say they are prepared to take Trump on, too.
Marquette professor Nolette said the tactic will be to win lawsuits outright, or halt Trump administration proposals until the mid-term elections, which traditionally have favored the party that’s out of power.
“One lesson about parties that have full control of government is that it doesn’t last,” Nolette said.
Meanwhile, the Democratic AGs will play defense. “Even if they can’t succeed in overturning a particular law, they can delay its implementation for some time.”
In fact, Nolette’s database’s “win rate” for Democratic attorneys general during Trump’s first term in office includes both cases that were won and those that successfully delayed initiatives.
Nolette predicted that district courts that are favorable to the Democrats will issue nationwide injunctions against some Trump policies.
Meanwhile, the strategy of Republican attorneys general will be to rush appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court in the hopes of favorable rulings.
Besides having a friendlier Supreme Court in place, Trump may also benefit from the success in his first term in confirming conservative judges to the federal bench.
President Biden — who is trying to rush as many judicial nominees through the Senate as possible before the chamber changes hands to the GOP — also won confirmation for many judges. But Biden’s judges tended to replace sitting Democratic-appointed judges, while Trump was able to bring ideological shifts to several federal courts.
“Overall, the Biden administration has not been able to make the headway Trump did in his first term,” Nolette said.
