The onslaught of government actions rising from President Donald Trump’s second administration — a few of which have aimed to completely reshape the federal authorities — has had attorneys for Santa Clara County and San Francisco working at breakneck tempo.
The counties are on the forefront of the resistance towards the second Trump administration’s insurance policies which have put billions of federal {dollars} they sometimes depend on in danger. Proposed cuts to Medicaid, canceled public well being grants and threats from Trump of withholding federal funds have created huge budgetary challenges.
Each Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti and his San Francisco counterpart, Metropolis Lawyer David Chiu, agree: Trump’s second time period within the White Home is drastically totally different than the primary.
They’re seeing the “muzzle velocity” — a time period coined by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon — wherein the administration seeks to overwhelm opponents with the sheer quantity of adjustments. In his first 100 days, Trump issued 142 government orders, in comparison with the 162 that President Joe Biden authored in his complete four-year time period.
In separate interviews this month, LoPresti and Chiu expressed their issues about the way forward for democracy in the USA, the partnership they’ve shaped, and the way their places of work have been working across the clock to file lawsuits and defend their pursuits in federal court docket.
“We are putting up one or two defenses a day, while the Trump administration is ripping apart civil society and federal government on an hourly basis in ways that are blatantly unconstitutional and illegal,” Chiu stated, referencing the greater than 200 lawsuits filed nationally towards the president and his allies. “I think the constitutional blitzkrieg with which this administration is engaging has been extremely challenging.”
Santa Clara County has filed 5 lawsuits towards the second Trump administration — a quantity that’s anticipated to surpass the seven filed through the president’s first time period. San Francisco has been a associate in most of them. The lawsuits problem varied government actions carried out by Trump, together with orders to chop off funding to jurisdictions which have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for immigrants dwelling within the nation illegally and makes an attempt by Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity to put off federal staff in mass.
The partnership between the Bay Space’s greatest county, Santa Clara, and one in all California’s most recognizable cities, San Francisco, dates again many years.
Santa Clara County Govt James Williams, who served as county counsel throughout Trump’s first time period, stated each localities are among the many few within the nation to have affirmative litigation packages that pursue lawsuits which might be within the public curiosity. In 2000, the county and San Francisco, together with eight different California counties and cities, efficiently sued paint producers for selling lead paint in properties regardless of the identified dangers.
“We had those pre-existing relationships in place when Trump took office the first time,” Williams stated. “We immediately recognized that there was going to be a need to stand up for really essential rights, especially rights for local governments to make the decisions that we need to be able to make in terms of our own policies and our own resources and the needs of our own local communities.”
LoPresti, who began working on the county in 2018 and assumed the function of county counsel in 2023, stated that working with San Francisco and different teams to file lawsuits towards the Trump administration permits them to “leverage our limited resources to effectively respond.”
The authorized panorama, he stated, has additionally modified because the first Trump administration, making it essential for the county to collaborate with others and be listed as a celebration in a lawsuit.
“I think we’ve seen an increasing hesitance from federal judges and federal courts when it comes to issuing nationwide injunctions,” LoPresti stated. “What that means is oftentimes you have to be a party to a particular lawsuit in order to ensure that the relief that you win in that lawsuit applies to your jurisdiction.”
Paul Nolette, director of the Les Aspin Middle for Authorities at Marquette College, stated that native governments suing the federal authorities is a “relatively new phenomenon.” It’s largely been sparked by cities and counties not getting what they felt was their justifiable share of a 1998 settlement with tobacco corporations – a lawsuit filed by state attorneys common.
“I think municipalities really want to carve out their way now, not fully trusting the state to advance their legal policy interest,” Nolette stated.
The political science professor has been monitoring lawsuits filed by state attorneys common towards Trump. From the president’s inauguration in 2017 to Might 31 of that yr, Nolette stated there have been 5 multistate lawsuits filed by state attorneys common. However from the beginning of Trump’s second time period to the current date, he stated, greater than two dozen have been filed. Within the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, the state of California alone has been submitting lawsuits towards the feds at nearly twice the tempo of his first time period, in keeping with a latest evaluation from CalMatters. The state has filed greater than 20 lawsuits since Inauguration Day.
Because the deserves of a authorized swimsuit can take years to type out, Nolette stated that a few of the technique is to delay as soon as preliminary injunctions have been issued.
“If you delayed the policy, and a Democratic president is elected in 2028, we’ve done exactly what we want to do. It’s as good as a win,” he stated. “That’s going to be a big part of the thinking over the next three and a half years, is to what extent can we continuously delay implementation of these policies until Trump’s out of office?”
For Chiu, his workplace and LoPresti’s workplace in Santa Clara County function the “first and last lines of defense against the Trump administration.” Their public hospitals, county jails and different companies depend on the federal funds that he stated are in danger.
“What we are seeing unfold every day is akin to what has happened in too many democratic societies that have slipped into authoritarianism in recent decades,” Chiu stated. “I’m extremely concerned about the existential threat to American democracy, and this is why it’s so important for city attorneys and county counsels to step into the breach and defend our jurisdictions and the rule of law.”
Each attorneys say that partnerships and the power in numbers are in the end one of the simplest ways to defend their jurisdictions’ values and funding towards Trump’s assaults on democracy.
“In moments of crisis you want to hunker down and work with the folks that you trust the most, that you believe in the most and that you know you are going to be able to form a powerful coalition with you, a powerful partnership with you in pursuing what your legal roles are,” LoPresti stated. “That’s been San Francisco for us.”
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