Rob Bonta
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
That's what we follow.
And we know that if we had something like occurred in Minnesota happening in California, I hope it doesn't.
It was terrible.
It was tragic.
It was disgusting and unacceptable.
We know what our rights are.
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.