One year of suing the Trump administration

Since President Trump took office a year ago, Oregon has sued the administration more than 50 times, often teaming up with other Democrat-led states.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield has held a series of town hall meetings with other state attorney generals to discuss their efforts and ask for feedback. We ask Attorney General Dan Rayfield about what he has learned from these events.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. It’s now been one year since President Trump began his second term. In that time, Oregon has sued the administration 53 times, often teaming up with other Democrat-led states. It’s meant a lot of coordination between Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and his counterparts across the country. He’ll be talking about these legal battles at 6 p.m. tonight at an event at Portland’s Revolution Hall, alongside the attorneys general from California, Hawaii, Maine and Minnesota. He joins us now for a preview. It’s good to have you back on the show.

Dan Rayfield: Always fun to be here.

Miller: So 53 legal challenges to the Trump administration in 52 weeks. A lot of those issues are well known, and you and I have talked about some of them over the last year. People may remember suits about tariffs, or birthright citizenship, or the intended deployment of National Guard troops in Portland. But are there cases that you think have flown under the radar that the public should be more aware of?

Rayfield: Well, I think it is this co-occurrence of a lot of different events that are going on nationally right now. You have a Republican Party in Congress and in the presidency that is taking steps to pull back health care accessibility, pull back on food assistance to those most neediest in our communities. And so you have lawsuits that are partnering up on the other side of those things. We had SNAP assistance benefits to make sure that funds continue to flow, it’s incredibly important moving forward. At the same time, they’re moving back on consumer protection. In this space, they were defunding a critical agency that does this work, and you have Oregon leading on these lawsuits. In fact, we have 10 lawsuits filed here in Oregon alone on some of these really critical issues that, I think you’re right, fly a little bit under the radar.

The only other thing I would tell you that flies under the radar is in a lot of these cases, the federal government has waved the white flag, and in a lot of our funding cases, the funding has continued to flow again. So there’s some real positive things that have gone on through these cases, although I think we all can agree we’d prefer not to have to do this.

Miller: How big a toll has it taken on the resources of your office, all of these suits? My understanding is that, as you said, you’ve led 10 of them. So in the majority, I imagine you’re not spending hundreds of hours of Oregon attorney time on this. But it’s still some outlay of person power and resources. What has that meant for the work that you can’t do in your office?

Rayfield: Well, anyone that knows me knows that the word “can’t” is not a word that I like. We talk about that often in our office. Very early on, what I want to look at is about the structural barriers we have to do the work that Oregonians expect us to do, and can’t is never an option. If I sat there and I went to my neighbor and said, “boy, I’m not able to work harder on organized crime,” that’s not gonna fly with my neighbor, nor is it gonna be if I’m turning down consumer cases.

So we did, very early on, build a special team of attorneys and staff that were going to be focused on the federal oversight and accountability, because also not leading on these issues as the state of Oregon was not acceptable to us at the Oregon Department of Justice. So we created a specialized team that is focused on these federal issues, which is why we’re able to lead on the tariffs lawsuit. The state of Oregon had not been in the United States Supreme Court in more than a decade, and we were in the Supreme Court with a winning argument within the first year.

These are things that I’m very proud of, excited. And when I say that “I’m proud of,” I’m proud to be a part of a team of amazing attorneys and staff that have dedicated their lives to public service and working all hours of the day – you think about that National Guard case. So it’s a privilege to be a part of their team and people that just work so hard for Oregonians.

Miller: As I mentioned, you’re doing an event at Revolution Hall tonight with a number of other Democratic attorneys general. I’m particularly interested in the conversations you’ve had with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in recent weeks; that state, and he, have been at the center of federal attention for a while now. What have those conversations been like? What have you talked to him about? What have you learned from him?

Rayfield: I think the real specifics of the conversations that we’re having as attorneys general is that we’re all experiencing different things at different times. And the value of those relationships, and being able to share the experiences and what you’re learning in different states is incredibly important for us to better represent Oregonians. And that’s not just in this federal landscape. It’s how we tackle crime, it’s how we tackle consumer cases, because there’s a lot of partnerships that go on. I think the attorney general space is one of the last areas of politics where you see so much cooperation across the aisle.

Specifically, I think what you were talking about, is the federal counterpart, the ICE involvement, the shootings, the things that are going on in Minnesota, and how does that relate here? We continue those conversations to learn about their experiences, their level of cooperation, but just as much as we were learning in the National Guard case. You got to remember that California had made decisions on how they were going to attack their National Guard issue, kind of this normalization of the military in our communities by the president. And we took a very aggressive approach, a little bit of a different approach, and I’m not saying one’s right or wrong. Our goal was to get into the court within 12 hours and make sure that the National Guard weren’t on our streets.

So these types of conversations can inform strategy, they can inform how to better represent Oregonians. That’s why tonight is fun to have four different AGs, four different perspectives outside of the state of Oregon, to talk about some of these things,

Miller: Has your office been able to get access to the information you need from federal officials about the Portland shooting of two Venezuelan nationals by Border Patrol?

Rayfield: That is an ongoing investigation on multiple law enforcement fronts: one by the FBI, one by the Oregon Department of Justice, and obviously the Portland Police Bureau is involved as well. So where we’re at right now is we’re in our evidence gathering phase, and we are hopeful, and I remain hopeful, that when we are done, that we will have all of the information available here at the Oregon Department of Justice to be able to come to conclusions at the end of this.

Miller: Finally, yesterday news broke that the Trump administration served subpoenas to the offices of the Minneapolis mayor, the Minnesota governor and the Minnesota attorney general – all Democrats. What went through your mind when you heard that?

Rayfield: First thing that I think we have to do in a democracy and in our country is never weaponize our law enforcement arms. Very important. We should never weaponize for political purposes. I have not seen the substance of those subpoenas, I have not seen any of the details, so I cannot comment on whether those subpoenas were needed for some investigation that I’m not aware of. But what I can say uniformly, the concern that goes through my head, especially with this administration looking at the past actions that they have indeed taken that are undisputable, that they are not above politicizing the way that they are attacking criminal justice issues. And that is my number one concern. The moment we start doing that – and I believe it has already happened in this country – the moment we continue this and continue to normalize it, that is an incredibly dangerous path to be on as a country.

Miller: Dan Rayfield, thanks very much.

Rayfield: Thank you.

Miller: Dan Rayfield is Oregon’s Attorney General.

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