AG Dan Rayfield reports on 12 lawsuits against the Trump administration

Presenter: Oregon’s attorney general has joined other states in filing 12 lawsuits demanding that the Trump administration follow the Constitution and the rule of law. Speaking at the University of Oregon April 9, Dan Rayfield:

Dan Rayfield (Oregon, attorney general) The Trump administration is steadily and continually taking actions that are negatively impacting communities and lives across our state and across our country. And these actions are being done in a democracy in the dark and without public input.

[00:00:33] It’s these actions—whether they’re aimed at undermining environmental protections, access to health care, stripping away the rights and dignities of vulnerable communities—that have created an atmosphere of fear and have created an atmosphere and a chilling impact across our country.

[00:00:51] Our democracy was meant to have checks and balances: co-equal branches of government. It’s a government that is meant to have public input, free press, an independent judiciary, and all of those should be free from intimidation.

[00:01:09] The president seems to have forgotten this, never understood it, or worse, just plain doesn’t care.

[00:01:16] And that’s why we’re here tonight, to hear from you. Democratic attorneys general across this country are holding town halls to hear from you so we know what is going on, because if the president will not do it, we will do it for him.

[00:01:31] Your voice in this forum does two things. One, it does not allow the Trump administration to hide from the public input when they’re making important decisions across our country.

[00:01:43] Number two, it gives us as elected leaders of the state information so that we can better represent you—in a court of law when we’re holding them accountable to our Constitution, or in the state legislature where there’s an entirely different set of tools for our communities.

[00:01:58] I want to take this moment to also emphasize something that is incredibly important. Right now, the President does not have unilateral power to simply disregard our Constitution or the laws that Congress passes.

[00:02:13] In other words, the president may be an incredibly powerful person, but he cannot jump into some time machine, travel back hundreds of years, become a monarch, and avoid oversight. That’s not how a democracy works. And that’s the whole point here.

[00:02:27] If the president had worked with Congress to accomplish his agenda, we wouldn’t be here today.

[00:02:34] And in response, the Oregon Department of Justice has filed 12 lawsuits to force the president to follow our Constitution and the rule of law. And these lawsuits include preventing mass layoffs, fighting the dismantling of our Education Department, protecting private taxpayer information, defending gender-affirming care, preventing the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to our state.

[00:02:57] A good example is the lawsuit we had to file last week, which was against the National Institutes of Health, threatening funding here in Oregon. More than $240 million are at stake at the Oregon Health Sciences University. And this is stuff for things we all care about: This is about research for HIV. This is about research for cancer, research for opioid addiction, diabetes, among other things.

[00:03:21] So again, tonight, we’re here to hear from you. Your voices and your stories matter. And so we want to thank you for taking the time out of your day, out of your family’s time when you could be at home, to share your stories with us.

[00:03:33] Because democracy only works when we do it together. It only works when we commit to having difficult conversations. And then most importantly, we act upon those conversations.

[00:03:42] Presenter: Speaker of the House Julie Fahey and Representatives Nancy Nathanson and Lisa Fragala accompanied the attorney general, listening to community concerns. From the NAACP, Drae Charles:

[00:03:54] Dre Charles: My name is Drae Charles. He, him, his, I’m the executive director of our local chapter of the NAACP, which is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.

[00:04:04] Our mission has always been to advocate for and protecting the rights of all Oregonians, particularly our Black and brown communities. As you all are aware, the current administration has found some troubling ways to weaponize existing structures intended to protect and support all of us. We have seen federal funds and policies used to target communities engaged in advocacy such as threatening orgs like the NAACP as terrorist organizations.

[00:04:30] We’ve seen civil rights protections meant to protect students of color manipulated to target those same students and those young people. And most recently, as the AG mentioned, the IRS system leveraged to monitor, intimidate our immigrant communities.

[00:04:46] I’d like to hear what will you all do to ensure that we are not only shielded from these harmful actions, but what will all of you do to actively collaborate with our communities? Not for our communities, but with our communities. These communities for the longest time had things dictated to them, things decided for them.

[00:05:05] So what are we going to do to actively collaborate with them so that these communities have active agency and their own decision making, their own outcomes? What are you going to support us to also actively resist this administration? A lot of these communities are stuck in a place where they want to engage, they want to resist.

[00:05:25] Either we’re afraid, we don’t have the resource, we don’t have the support, we don’t know where to go. So what are we going to do as leaders in this fight to bring folks with us into that fight?

[00:05:35] DJ Kelly-Quatrocchi: My name is DJ Kelly-Quatrocchi. I come before you today to urge you to continue to strengthen Oregon’s ability to protect some of our most vulnerable populations under the current federal administration.

[00:05:46] While Oregon does have sanctuary laws of a sanctuary state, it is terrifying to be a brown person, documented or undocumented, living under the Trump administration. I’m deeply concerned for my family and my community, all of which who can and are being targeted, can be taken without due process.

[00:06:06] Since we cannot count on the federal administration to protect all who reside in the U.S., it’s up to individual states and counties to step up. This also means providing protections for our LGBTQ Oregonians.

[00:06:18] As of today, I’ve been with my husband for 15 years, and in June we hit our 10-year wedding anniversary. We got married before same-sex marriage was federally legal, and there is a high probability that I won’t see 10 years federally recognized with my husband.

[00:06:33] I know that in the eyes of Oregon, my marriage is safe. But still on the Oregon books and in the Oregon Constitution, marriage is defined as one man, one woman. So we are still complicit in keeping acts of harm and violence, even within our very liberal, pretty safe state.

[00:06:53] Lastly, we need to do better by our trans Oregonians. Between attacks on access to trans healthcare, livelihood, and their very existence. Our trans community not only deserves, but needs our leaders to stand up and provide more than lip service. We need action.

[00:07:08] Presenter: In response to Drae, DJ, and others, Attorney General Dan Rayfield:

[00:07:13] Dan Rayfield (Oregon, attorney general) How do we uphold our sanctuary promises and our sanctuary laws here in this state? What I can tell you from the Attorney General’s Office, what we have done: If you search the Department of Justice and you search ‘Toolkits,’ we have a section talking to people about what your rights and responsibilities are.

[00:07:29] We’ve been engaging in education, we’ve been engaging in different areas to really make sure that those laws are known.

[00:07:35] What I can tell you is the influx of community groups needing trainings for us to be out in the community so people can know—have only increased.

[00:07:43] I think the challenge that we all face in our communities is safe spaces. And when we have people from the federal government that are trying to come into those spaces, the one thing that I’ll say as a state, as a country. Doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter you’re the president, whether you’re an individual  in law enforcement, you must follow the United States Constitution, in that role.

[00:08:05] Our sanctuary state laws have existed for multiple presidential administration, seven+ Democrats and Republicans, and they’ve done so peacefully.

Follow our sanctuary state laws. We do not believe that those are in conflict with federal law.

[00:08:18] Presenter: Candy Neville:

[00:08:20] Candy Neville: My name’s Candy Neville. The idea of the federal government having an oversight committee about us bothers me. I actually would like to see an official Oregon oversight committee regarding the federal government right now, and I would like to see other states follow.

And I would like to begin with the idea of cutting our funding for fires in this state. Everyone knows, even across the nation, that causes death harm, great distress, and everybody that I can think of loves the forest. They love our national parks. We can get attention and we can get support there.

[00:09:00] Obviously, that is either the most inept thing ever heard. It does not meet our needs, dire needs, or it’s just flat out mean to undermine us. It also affects our economy and it brings highlight to the fact that they are not following Congress procedures and they are taking away from us things we’ve already paid for. They have turned us into beggars for what we already own.

[00:09:28] Presenter: Attorney General Dan Rayfield:

[00:09:30] Dan Rayfield (Oregon, attorney general) Candy, about a statewide committee, I was just going to mention that we do have that. Our Cabinet that is meeting, Dustin Buehler, who is in our office, and Fay Stetz-Waters, are leading that work.

We are going to be doing a new federal oversight and accountability webpage, which will have an ability for community members across the state to really talk about the impacts that they have in their communities. You’ll be able to get access to all these toolkits. That’s in process right now.

[00:09:52] Presenter: Lisa Lindquist:

[00:09:53] Lisa Lindquist: Hi, my name is Lisa Lindquist. I have been a business owner here in Eugene for more than 20 years. I’m very anxious about these whiplash tariffs. Two of the vendors that I work with have paused shipping and others have emailed saying that they’re going to be passing on tariffs to me or reviewing them starting next month. China, Vietnam, and the Philippines are facing 104%, 46%, and 17% tariffs.

[00:10:22] This could be devastating for businesses like mine. Small local businesses provide customer service that’s not available online. We bring character to our community, and as opposed to giant corporations, the vast majority of the revenue we generate stays in our community.

[00:10:37] Nearly all economists, except for those in the Trump administration, think that Trump’s blanket tariffs are a horrible idea. Tariffs should be put in place carefully and judiciously, not by a random question to ChatGPT.

[00:10:50] I haven’t heard that Americans are yearning to bring back garment worker jobs, and it wouldn’t make our country safer, but it would make us poorer. In addition to tanking the stock market, irresponsible tariffs can lead to slower growth, less innovation, and potentially job losses in a recession.

[00:11:05] The power of the purse belongs to Congress and Congress should do something about it. All of the issues I’ve heard this evening are important issues. It’s so frustrating to wake up almost every day to news of a new assault on our democracy, on our relationships with our allies, and our basic human rights.

[00:11:21] Presenter: Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield:

[00:11:24] Dan Rayfield (Oregon, attorney general) The impact of tariffs is another issue that we’re looking into and trying to explore what is the nexus and the powers that the president has under the Emergency Act in those different situations.

[00:11:34] We have Democratic attorneys general across this country that are partnering together to make sure that we’re enforcing the rule of law, make sure that we’re enforcing and holding people accountable to the Constitution.

[00:11:45] Presenter: Jim Bronson:

[00:11:46] Jim Bronson (Third Act): One of the organizations that’s been impacted so heavily by the Trump administration is the BPA, the Bonneville Power Authority: Big workforce cuts, which include linemen, power dispatchers, substation operators, and cyber security experts. And unfortunately, this means that our power is going to be less reliable and it’s going to be requiring more money on our part to pay for it. And the availability is going to be a big question in the future.

[00:12:23] Presenter: Dan Rayfield:

[00:12:24] Dan Rayfield (Oregon, attorney general) Right now, Oregon is a part of 12 different lawsuits and all of them are on some of the same issues, right? You’re seeing that. Most of them are in funding, in different allocations that are going throughout the state. We have one on birthright citizenship. That was the first lawsuit that was filed within 24 hours of the first executive order. We’re gathering feedback from one of the professors that came in and talked about grant money that was frozen today. That was something that we just learned right now.

[00:12:50] Presenter: Bonnie Mann:

[00:12:51] Bonnie Mann (University of Oregon): My name is Bonnie Mann. I’m a professor in the philosophy department here in University of Oregon. And as I hope most folks know, we have four students here legally studying at the University of Oregon who have received notices that their visas have been revoked.

[00:13:07] Our students here are precious, our international students are precious, and we need to bring the power of the state of Oregon to bear in whatever way we can in order to protect these students and reverse these visa withdrawals.

[00:13:25] That legal defense costs money. And these are not students who have that money to hand. There are fundraising efforts going on, on campus for those students, but what can the state of Oregon do? Great to file lawsuits about this sort of thing, but what can the state of Oregon do to materially support these students defending themselves so that they can stay here and finish their degrees?

[00:13:57] I also want to say that there are international faculty, fabulous scholars, precious colleagues who are looking for ways to leave the country right now instead of staying here under these conditions. And international faculty in my own department who are afraid to appear in public at rallies or exercise their free speech. They need our support as well.

[00:14:28] Presenter: Attorney General Dan Rayfield:

[00:14:30] Dan Rayfield (Oregon, attorney general) Bonnie, you asked about the visa withdrawals that just happened. I just learned about this today. Of course, we’re hearing about this nationally. This is the first time I heard about it here in the state of Oregon. We knew this was coming to the state of Oregon.

[00:14:43] It’s unacceptable in the way that these things are going. What I can tell you, in all issues, when we approach them as a state of Oregon, we look at our Oregonians being harmed in this state, people who are here in this state. Do we have standing as a state to move forward and bring a lawsuit or bring some sort of protection in that case?

[00:15:01] I feel very fortunate to be here with you to serve the state of Oregon in this role at such an important time in our history, as we’re facing incredible challenges.

[00:15:09] And again, we’re working to build a resource and a webpage which will allow us to get a better gauge of all the different federal impacts, whether that is Social Security, whether that’s food, assistance grants that are coming into the community. That’ll be a centralized place where we can keep better tabs on what’s going on in our community so that we can better represent you.

[00:15:27] Presenter: Attorney General Dan Rayfield joins local legislators April 9 at the University of Oregon. Field recordings produced by Todd Boyle for KEPW 97.3, Eugene’s PeaceWorks Community Radio. You can find the full session on Todd’s YouTube channel.