Donald Trump has been president for 119 days as of Monday. That comes out to a lawsuit in which Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha is a lead plaintiff or participant roughly every six days since the new Trump administration began.
In fact, Neronha has joined so many multistate challenges to the federal government that his office’s website now features a page titled “Federal Action Response” to track his 19 litigious efforts against the commander in chief.
The page includes detailed information on every lawsuit Neronha has led or joined, from a birthright citizenship case filed in the New Jersey District Court the day after Trump took office, to the latest pair of victories last week.
Both of last week’s wins happened on Neronha’s home turf, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Overall, seven of the 19 lawsuits Neronha has joined against the Trump administration have managed to temporarily block executive orders, federal funding cuts, or agency regulations issued by Trump’s cabinet members.
“Since day one, the Trump Administration has taken actions that extend far beyond the President’s constitutional authority,” the landing page reads. “These actions are impacting the rights of Rhode Islanders in real time. But we’re ready.”
On Friday, May 16, District Judge Mary McElroy granted a request for a temporary court order and ordered the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reinstate federal funding while the case is pending. Rhode Island is one of 24 plaintiffs challenging the agency’s abrupt termination of $11 billion in pandemic-era public health grants.
On Tuesday, May 13, Chief Judge John McConnell’s preliminary injunction against a Trump executive order targeting library programming and other federal initiatives went into effect. McConnell issued the injunction on May 6, backing the 21 states that rallied against the executive order that led to the Institute of Museum and Library Services placing 85% of its staff on administrative leave.
“Americans have quickly grown weary of their government attacking them instead of working for them,” Neronha said in a May 14 statement after the injunction became effective.
Neronha joined 21 other attorneys general in the library funding lawsuit, which sought to block an executive order that led to staff reductions and grant cancellations at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which helps mediate labor disputes.
“Above all else, as attorneys general, we have an obligation to protect the residents of our states from harm even when, perhaps especially when, it comes from the federal government,” Neronha’s statement continued. “With this order and many others, we are stopping this President in his tracks, and we will continue to fight every single step of the way.”
The executive order also designated the United States Agency for Global Media, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund as targets for spending cuts (although these agencies were not part of the state attorneys’ efforts). The EO mandated these federal initiatives “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function” — in other words, abolish any programming not explicitly required by law.
But McConnell wrote in his May 6 ruling that this executive maneuver “has effectively usurped Congress’s lawmaking and spending authority — without constitutional or statutory authority permitting them [the federal government] to do so.
McElroy’s ruling came in a lawsuit first filed in April and deemed that HHS had violated both the Administrative Procedure Act and congressional spending authority.
“The power that HHS has asserted here is a broad one: terminating $11 billion worth of funding based on its determination that the money is no longer necessary,” McElroy wrote in her ruling. “The Court cannot see how it can claim that power based on the history of congressional action described above.”
The pair of rulings reflects the overall legal strategy of Neronha and his blue state counterparts during the second Trump era: to hastily respond to the executive branch’s equally speedy policymaking. Across the 19 lawsuits, states have argued that the Trump administration has repeatedly violated the Administrative Procedure Act, ignored congressional powers, and imposed wide-ranging but often unclear policy and budgeting directives on shaky legal ground.
“A hacksaw approach to government reduction will never yield positive results for the American people, and we will continue to fight, and win, in court to minimize the harm the Trump Administration is causing the people of this country,” Neronha wrote in a statement after the May 16 ruling. “When the Trump Administration attempts to dismantle these agencies, it is making a targeted, concerted effort to prohibit everyday people from accessing their full potential.”
Six of the 19 cases in which Neronha has participated have been filed U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, including the two most recent filings from May 13: Illinois v. FEMA, and California v. Department of Transportation, both of which challenge immigration enforcement as a prerequisite for federal funding.
Neronha has been especially busy in April and May, getting involved in 12 of the 19 cases during those two months.
A full list of the 19 cases, with court documents included, is available on the AG’s website.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
