Rob Bonta

Yeah.

The Trump administration from, as you mentioned, from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0 has used a common, I call it a move, an approach to try to unlawfully force states, mostly blue states, democratic states, let's be clear about it, to change their policies consistent with Trump.

what the federal government wants.

And they have used coercive funding approaches, basically threatened to withhold literally billions of dollars worth of funding, funding for transportation, funding to provide cybersecurity or fund counterterrorism, or to even support victims of crime, that they would pull that funding.

That, by the way, the branch of government

the legislative branch, Congress, in Article 1 has already appropriated.

They have the power of the purse, and they already said that funding should flow.

But over there on the Article 2 executive branch, the president is saying, you're not getting the funding that you've already been appropriated if you don't engage in immigration enforcement the way we want you to.

And trying to change the policies that we have in California and in other states, the so-called sanctuary policies.

And there is an ability to encourage or incent certain behavior.

The federal government can do that with its funding, but it can't coerce or compel when pressure turns into compulsion.

then it violates the rules of federalism and violates the 10th Amendment and the spending clause.

And there's a set of cases that the US Supreme Court decided where a modest incentive, for example, in South Dakota, there was a federal government said, you're not gonna get 5% of the state federal highway funding that we would normally give you unless you raise the drinking age to 21, because that'll make the highways more safe.

that was allowed.

It was 5%.

It was probably, you know, less than one half of 1% of South Dakota's overall budget.

And then later when there was a policy from the federal government to withhold all of a state's Medicaid funding, if it opted out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, that was found to be coercive.

It was essentially a gun to the head and it left no real option.

But to do the bidding of the federal government and that

under the 10th Amendment and the spending clause rules could not occur.