Above the Boulevard Hollywood, overlooking the emblematic TCL Chinese Theater and the masked wonders to prowl the Walk of Fame, an elite “League of Justice” met on Tuesday to prepare for battles that were waiting for us.
They consider their opponent – President Trump – as being more powerful than ever. Now the Avengers agreed, they were the “last defense bastion” for the masses.
“The stakes could not be higher right now,” said New Jersey Atty. Gen. Matthew Platkin. “What we see is a scope and a scale and an illegal and unconstitutional rhythm of activity that has not been seen in American history.”
For Democratic Prosecutors Assn., A political action committee transformed into a judiciary of the best progressive cops, the Hollywood policy conference was a chance to plot their next decision in a continuous dam of prosecution against the Trump administration.
Their declared objective is to thwart a constitutional crisis that many believe that it is already underway.
“This is only the start,” said Illinois Atty. General Kwame Raoul. “We speak daily about how we fight on this attack on our Republic, this attack on our Constitution and the attack on the rule of law in great.”
Delaware Atty. General Kathy Jennings stressed that calls emerging from Trump supporters so that the president ignores unfavorable justice decisions in order to implement his program.
“I think it’s already a crisis,” said Jennings. “What if we have done everything we can do and they still don’t obey?” This is the existential threat.
Their host was more measured.
“I think our system is durable,” California Atty. General Rob Bonta said. “We are tested on stress, but we are durable.”
The AGs are not looking for a fight, they insisted.
However, barely three weeks after the start of Trump’s second presidency, 23 of the country’s most powerful lawyers had deposited together at least six of the more than 60 prosecutions against the Director General and his allies.
Defending the Constitution is not what Bill Lockyer had in mind when he helped to train Daga with a small cohort of AG sharing the same ideas in 2002.
“We were very modest when we started,” said the former California attorney general, who left office in 2007 after almost three decades in public life and is now working for the law firm Brown Rudnick. “The democratic side is generally overwhelmed, so they must try to work together to overcome this obstacle.”
The prosecutors general republican had organized their own affinity group in the 1990s. Under the former speaker of the Newt Gingrich Chamber, the GOP moved aggressively to make state offices more partisan, pumping species in Ballots races.
“I was one of the many who thought there should be a counterpoint,” said Lockyer.
Assn’s republican prosecutors. did not respond to the request for comments.
The Democrats Association remained quite loose, increasing a few million per year until 2016, when the group moved to DC and hired full -time staff. During the next electoral cycle, he raised double what he did the previous year and quadruple his annual socket before 2015.
Last year, Daga pulled nearly $ 20 million, from Stephen Spielberg and communication workers from America. Elon Musk’s X and Tiktok also contributed both.
In February 2024, its members already presented an emergency plan for a second Trump presidency. They traveled the 2025 project, the 900 -page political manual written by the former Trump and other wonks on the right, in the hope that he could telegraph the first movements of the administration.
“We must always anticipate what could be a threat,” said Mass. Atty. Gen. Andrea Campbell. “Because we were prepared, we were able to respond quickly.”
During their November political conference in Philadelphia, they hardened their defenses. California alone posed $ 25 million at the Bonta office “Trump’s test”.
“It would have been a breach of our homework for not having spent the time we spent preparing,” said Platkin.
To their Hollywood conclave, dressed in silk ties and enamel state pins, the lawyers of the people exchanged inside jokes and warm embraces, even though they were preparing to face to an existential threat.
“We are really friends and colleagues,” said Jennings.
For many, Reunion had the feeling of a last stand.
“(During Trump’s first term) I never felt that we lose our democratic system, our separation of powers, our three branches of the government,” said Jennings. “I think we are in this crisis now. And it’s very different.
A subject of debate was how to defend the rule of law while bringing their high principles to earth.
“There was a collective passion (within DAGA) to respect the rule of law in our constitution and bring the average person to understand why this was important,” said Campbell, the Massachusetts AG. “It is not only that it is the constitution – it is a contract between the government and you.”
Campbell said that she and her colleagues strategically include the city of San Francisco in their challenge to Trump ordering citizenship of the right of birth. They wanted to establish a tangible link with Wong Kim Ark, the man of San Francisco, whose Supreme Court affair of 1898 extended the rights of the 14th amendment to the children of immigrants.
US district judge Leo Sorkin tried on Thursday in their favor in Boston, by prohibiting the order which had already been blocked by federal judges in Washington, New Hampshire and Maryland.
Daga members won other early combinations before the district court and were convinced to win again in those who qualified for the liberal circuits where most had been deposited.
“(Even) the judges appointed Republicans defended the rule of law,” said Jennings. “It was a judge named Reagan who made the decision in the case of citizenship of birth law (in Washington) and he only took 25 minutes to declare the executive order of President Trump, manifestly unconstitutional . ”
But the GAs were concerned about what could happen if one of their challenges arrived at the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority and its three judges appointed Trump sometimes set aside a precedent for the president’s agenda.
“At one point, the United States Supreme Court will be tested,” said Mayes. “Does the United States Supreme Court believe in the separation of powers?” Does the United States Supreme Court believe in the rule of law? And this moment arrives very soon.
California Daily Newspapers
