Ex-prosecutor explains whether governors can 'protect their residents' from Trump’s threats
Former US attorney Joyce Vance on Tuesday explained whether Donald Trump could succeed in his plans to defund the Department of Education.
MSNBC's Joy Reid pointed out the "things that Trump is saying he plans to do," including planing "to defund anything with DEI in it, any city or police department that refuses to cooperate with mass arrest and deportations, any public schools that don't follow his patriotic mandates, any schools that recognize transgender students. he doesn't have the power of the purse and that's for the house of representatives."
The ReidOut host asked Vance, "Can he simply defund all of those things on his own?"
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"So I think we have to start by saying Trump has a very aggressive, very broad agenda, and like everyone who goes into government, he will meet the reality that you can only do a limited number of things," Vance replied. "If everything is a priority then you have no priorities. So at some point even Donald Trump will be forced to pick. And then in this specific area that you're talking about using essentially withholding federal funding, you know, Donald Trump tried that before. He has threatened that in the past. He threatened, for instance, the mayor of the city of Seattle with pulling federal funds during the Black lives matter marches, and during that era, and met with very mixed success, frankly, because state and local officials among all of us, are perhaps the most well positioned to push back."
Vance continued, "But if Trump sets a top priority and decides he's going to pull funding say for public institutions, or for more likely private institutions that continue with DEI, then he can probably push that forward with some level of success. There will, however, be court challenges and increasingly we see great signs that the lawyers are well prepared and gearing up to be the heroes again."
Reid replied, "Let's talk about the states. Trump has promised to do mass deportation, but he's got to get people from somewhere and states like California and Maryland are saying they will protect people. How much can a governor like Gavin Newsom actually protect their residents?"
The former prosecutor, "A lot. So I've lived through this, Joy. In 2011 Alabama passed what it billed as a deport yourself law — HB-56 — that criminalized all sorts of previously legal behavior by people who were here without status and American citizens who wanted to help them. And that was a real shot across the bow, but if you had a sheriff in the county who didn't want to call federal agents when they encountered people who couldn't prove their citizenship status, then it was very difficult for the government to engage. And even with willing officials, again, it's a question of resources. How many people can you detain? How quickly can courts process them? You know, there's been some suggestion, it's included in Project 2025, that Trump would bring the military to bear to assist at the border. Well, that's something that has real legal dimensions to it, and although I know we live in an era where many people have lost confidence in the courts, this is something that the lawyers will take to court and unless we really abandon all principle, this inappropriate deployment of American troops on US soil is something that could still be contested successfully in court."
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