- Although critics have bemoaned the Democratic response to President Trump as inept, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has been working around the clock to fight Trump’s policies in court, with some success.
Michael Newman, head of the civil rights enforcement section in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, was exhausted.
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Newman and his legal team had just worked all weekend, straight through that Monday and overnight into Tuesday on a growing pile of legal challenges to the Trump administration, and were overdue for some sleep.
But on his drive home, he was alerted that the administration “cut half the Department of Education’s workforce,” Newman said. “And it’s like, ‘OK, well … That’s not happening.’”
The team went back to work, along with others in Bonta’s office, and by Thursday joined with other Democrat-led states to file a new lawsuit to block the firings.
“That’s kind of an idea of what life is like for the litigators,” Newman said. “Just when you think it’s safe to log off from your laptop, you get the text that [says], ‘Did you see this newest order that just came out?’”
For months now, President Trump’s pace of pronouncements, executive orders and dramatic policy shifts has been so swift, their reach so sweeping, that many Trump critics have felt overwhelmed and alarmed. They have also bemoaned the Democratic response as inept, haphazard and ineffective, particularly in Congress.
But since Trump’s January inauguration, attorneys in Bonta’s office — and in the offices of Democratic attorneys general nationwide — have been in an all-out sprint to keep up and push back. They’ve been carefully planning for even longer, including by reviewing litigation from Trump’s first term; listening to Trump’s promises on the campaign trail; assessing lawsuits against the Biden administration by conservative states; and culling through Project 2025, the controversial game plan for the president’s second term.
The result has been a rapid-fire slate of lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies, including his order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the American-born children of immigrants, his attempt to cut off trillions of dollars in federal funding already appropriated by Congress for programs in California and across the country, and his firing of federal probationary employees in veterans programs, national parks and other agencies.
They also have sued to block cuts to National Institutes of Health funding for universities and other research institutions, the termination of K-12 teacher training and preparation grants, billionaire Elon Musk’s informal but prominent role in federal government and access to sensitive data by his Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a real government agency.
In addition to their own lawsuits, Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general have supported challenges to Trump administration attacks on transgender service members, refugees, immigrants, a National Labor Relations Board official, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and law firms that have angered Trump with their legal work.
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