Officials and advocacy groups in the two Democratic strongholds are plotting how to use the power of state law enforcement agencies, municipal regulations, and regional bully pulpits, and they’re assembling a wide-ranging apparatus of political opposition that they hope will slow the Trump agenda.
In California, the state legislature has hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to serve as the tip of its legal spear as it prepares for an assault on Trump’s efforts to roll back Barack Obama’s government — a fight that will be led by longtime Congressman and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, who has returned to the state to serve as the equivalent of a wartime attorney general…
But it’s New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has already clashed with Trump during his office’s investigations of the Trump Foundation and Trump University, who is uniquely positioned to needle Trump Tower.
“We are independent, we have tremendous powers under the American federalist system,” he said. “The government of the United States was set up very much with the understanding that states were to be a protective layer, to protect overreach from the newly-created federal government.”
Viewing the attorney general’s role as “the first line of defense,” his office is watching the activities of Trump’s federal agencies closely, prepared to launch suits or serve as a regulator itself at signs of relaxed regulation enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Environmental Protection Agency or Department of Labor, for example.
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