Democratic governors are in a tricky spot. If they defy President Trump, they are liable to find themselves retaliated against, as happened last week to Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, whose state become the subject of a Trump-administration investigation after she sparred with the president during the annual National Governors Association meeting over his executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. But appeasing or ignoring an emboldened Trump leaves them vulnerable to an increasingly angry Democratic base that wants to see their elected officials fight back.
Among those trying to find the right balance is Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts. Healey is a former civil rights lawyer who, in 2015, became the nation’s first openly gay state attorney general. During the first Trump administration, she sued the federal government dozens of times from that perch. In 2022, she was elected governor, and she recently announced that she will be running for another term.
While Healey may not have the same national profile as some of her colleagues — like JB Pritzker of Illinois or Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania — she is known as being very influential in the party. She was the first Democratic governor to publicly urge former President Joe Biden to step aside after his disastrous debate and more recently was part of a group that privately pushed Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, to be more aggressive in opposing Trump. As part of a series of conversations I’m having with Democrats, I wanted to talk to Healey about how she views her role as the governor of a blue state in this new Trump era, and how she thinks her party can pick its battles and rebuild its brand.
You just returned from D.C. for the annual National Governors Association meeting, and you attended an event with the president, along with other Democratic and Republican governors. What did you discuss with the other governors while you were there? Well, you go to the White House with the expectation that you’re going to hear the president articulate some vision for the future. It’s supposed to be an opportunity to talk about how governors and states can work with a new administration. That wasn’t what this was about. The meeting began with an address by Stephen Miller, and then later the president came out and began by recounting that he’s got the highest approval rating of anybody this early in his tenure, that he won the election not once, not twice, but three times, and then continued with a litany of conspiracy theories and false information. So it was unfortunate because I’m there as governor thinking: Let’s have a conversation about maybe where we can work together, right? How can we focus on the needs of everyday Americans? But unfortunately, we didn’t see any of that. What was also upsetting is that we saw him attack another governor.
The governor of Maine. The governor of Maine. Now remember, a few weeks ago he attacked Illinois and Governor Pritzker. He attacked Governor Hochul in New York recently. He’s now very gratuitously, in a way that seemed very manufactured in the moment, attacked the governor of Maine.
This was about his executive order to do with transgender rights, and he called her out, and then she responded, basically, that she would follow the laws of her state. And the federal government.
And the federal government, and that she would see him in court. And that didn’t seem to go down well. No. And it was about transgender rights, but it wasn’t about transgender rights. He is doing what he has typically done, which is, I am going to throw out some issue. Let that be the distraction. Let that distract everyone from the fact that my poll numbers are tanking, people don’t like what Elon Musk and DOGE are doing and let’s get everybody’s eye off the ball. So let me go pick on this particular governor about an action that she hasn’t even taken. She has not even taken an action around transgender issues, and yet he manufactures something, and she appropriately says, I’m going to follow state and federal law, Mr. President, which I think is the right answer. You want your elected officials to follow state and federal law. What I saw as so upsetting in that exchange was when he looked at her, and I was sitting at the table, and he leered at her, and he said, “We are the federal law.”
What did you hear when he said that? I heard somebody who thinks he’s king. Congress makes the laws. I may not agree with everything Congress does, but that’s a democracy. That’s how our system works. Congress makes the laws. The judiciary enforces the laws and determines the application of the law. And the executive, and I’m an executive, my job is to faithfully apply and execute the law. And so, that’s a problem. He doesn’t believe that Congress makes the law. He believes that he makes the law. That’s what he said. The other thing he said: You will see no federal funding. Which, again, is counter to the way our system operates. Congress appropriates funds. Congress debates and figures out where funding is going to go. And the idea that he’s going to withhold, weaponize funding is terrible.
Until now, you’ve not been as publicly combative as perhaps other governors have been. And I’m wondering if that’s because Trump is seemingly more willing to be punitive, or is it because his policies have been popular? What are you weighing when you’re thinking about how to talk about this administration? Look, I was attorney general throughout the Trump 1 presidency and joined and led many cases suing him, so I’m not unfamiliar with the way he operates. It’s incredibly important for A.G.s to continue to be in the courts. They are having success. How I look at things — it’s been consistent for me: If the president is going to work and support the state of Massachusetts, I will work with the president and the federal administration. When he is not, then I will be the first to stand up and fight for the people of Massachusetts. I think that is probably the attitude of most Democratic governors.
As you mentioned, you were A.G. Are you confident that the courts can constrain this administration? Well, I have great hope in the courts. They’re one of our pillars of government. So I want to remain ever optimistic about the role of and the responsibility of the judiciary. I can’t predict how it’s going to go, but those lawsuits, where there’s a violation of the law, those A.G.s need to continue to sue. But it’s not just up to the A.G.s. I think about senators like Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz, out there articulating in very real terms what the harm of Trump’s actions are to everyday Americans. You see more and more Americans speaking up, too, and that’s really important because I think it’s been overwhelming for a lot of people. I mean, it’s only been a month, right? And people have been hit with a lot.
It did seem to catch Democrats by surprise. We’ve seen Democrats take a beat and have trouble coming to an agreement about what kind of resistance or opposition they’re going to pose. You’ve talked a little bit about what’s happening publicly. I’m curious what has been happening privately, because one of my colleagues reported that you were part of a group of Democratic governors in January who privately urged Senator Chuck Schumer to fight harder, or at least differently, against Trump. What were you wanting to see that you weren’t seeing? I thought at the outset it was very important for leadership in Congress to be out every day with members talking about the things that Trump is doing. Why? Because what he’s been doing from the beginning is taking away Congress’s power. All of his action has been him saying basically, Congress, I am usurping your authority. Which is why I thought at the outset, members of Congress each day have got to be out there explaining to the American people: This isn’t right. This isn’t legal.
Do you think the leadership in Congress is the right leadership to enact what you’re envisioning? I’ll leave that for members of Congress to decide. I’m a governor. That’s not my call. What I can tell you is we need leadership that is aggressive, that is proactive and that is speaking to everyday Americans.
It sounds as if you’re eliding the question. I don’t mean to elide anything. I’ll say that part of what got the Democratic Party in trouble this last election is the fact that there was a perception that leaders within the Democratic Party were not actually seeing and feeling people’s pain. I think it’s a perception that lived out to a certain extent among Democratic leadership, that they just didn’t have their finger on the pulse, that they’re talking about issues that weren’t bread-and-butter core economic issues that resonate. They allowed themselves in some ways to be caricatured as only caring about X, Y and Z issue. Which isn’t true, by the way.
I did want to get your temperature on the Democratic brand writ large, because polling is showing that it’s really underwater regardless of what’s happening with Donald Trump and what’s happening in the White House. The losses were steep in the last election. You are the governor of a solidly blue state. What was your big takeaway about why the Democrats did so badly? Well, there’s definitely a brand problem. There’s a big brand problem. I don’t pretend to speak for the party. But I can tell you as a Democratic leader what I’m going to do. I’m going to focus on driving what I believe is a Democratic message. Let’s take this moment and redefine the brand. To me, the Democratic brand should be about delivering for everyday Americans. We have the chance to do that, with the foil of Donald Trump cutting all these programs, cutting our military for God’s sake, to free up funding that will pay for the tax cuts he wants to give to billionaires. So what can we do as Democrats? Where do I think we need to go? If I was going to offer advice, it’s to every day, have your north star be: What am I doing for everyday Americans?
I think if you talk to any Democrat, the Biden administration on down, they would say that that was their focus. They would say that that is precisely what they did during the last four years. I am curious how you see that message being different from what happened before. I think there are differences. I told President Biden directly a few years ago that he needed to be active on the border, that he should take executive action on the border. I knew that as an attorney general, and as a former prosecutor, that there were things that could have been done, and I wish that he had done that. I also think it’s important to fight back. When there was all this talk and denigration of D.E.I., I don’t know why the response wasn’t: You know what? It’s actually good to have women and people of color in the military. It’s good to have women and people of color in the work force. It’s good to have women and people of color going to colleges and universities. Like, what’s wrong with that? And put it back on them instead of it being allowed to be this attenuated, caricatured conversation about quote “D.E.I.” Some of it’s about how you match the mischaracterization and how you match really offensive but effective attempts to strike down certain things or to pit people against each other. If you’re getting bullied and you don’t respond with force, the bully’s going to win — always.
Do you blame the Biden administration for part of the failure to defend the Democratic brand, to articulate the vision? Because you were the first Democratic governor to publicly urge President Biden to exit the race in July of last year. I mean, how much do you think it hurt the party that it seemed as if Democrats were hiding president Biden’s failing acuity? I think that President Biden did so much for this country and pulled us through a pandemic, pulled us out of a really dark economic time, got us on really solid footing. I think the party was hampered by having President Biden as the communicator in chief, if I’m being honest. He wasn’t the strongest communicator in chief, and that hurt us because they weren’t able to sell all of the important accomplishments effectively.
Do you think the party is adequately reckoning now with the effects of what happened? I just saw one of Biden’s senior advisers, Mike Donilon, say that the Democratic Party “lost its mind” after Biden’s poor debate and basically threw an incumbent under the bus, and that cost them the election. I hadn’t seen that comment. Are we grappling with what happened and having to deal with it right now? You better believe it. We’ve got Donald Trump in the White House. I think it was very hard for Kamala Harris, who I thought ran a fantastic campaign, to be able to overcome the disadvantage within the time that she was allotted. And I think it would have been a different story if the president had decided a few years ago that he was going to do what he said he would do, which is serve one term. Then we’d have the opportunity for full engagement in a primary and the like. That didn’t happen. I have no interest in further spending time on it, revisiting history. I’m focused on the now.
The No. 2 issue in your state is immigration, which is something that plagued Democrats in the last election; 2023 was the year when states like yours saw a big surge in migrants, and that’s also when you became governor. Can you tell me how you’ve seen this particular issue play out? This was something that I inherited. It was underway when I became governor, and it only grew during the first year or so of my administration. It goes back to something fundamental. We have not had comprehensive immigration reform in this country. We need it. I was so upset when Donald Trump killed that border bill, which would have provided a pathway for our Dreamers, would have provided a pathway for people who are living here, working here, raising kids here, paying taxes here to become citizens. It also would have provided the kinds of resources for more border agents, more immigration judges, more resources at intercepting fentanyl and other drugs from coming into the country. It’s been a challenging situation to say the least. And my frustration has been, you know, as a state governor, I am inheriting the problems caused by federal inaction.
One of the most visible strategies Republican governors adopted during the height of the migrant crisis was sending buses and planes of migrants to blue states like yours — memorably to Martha’s Vineyard. It was a stunt, but you could argue that it worked. It made immigration enforcement into a blue-state issue, which it had not been. Shouldn’t it always have been, though? I mean, is it not fair to say that Democrats really did not take this issue seriously? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t see it that way. I think Democrats in Congress were the ones who, time after time, were pushing for immigration reform. That’s what I saw. It was a stunt — the buses to New York, to Illinois, to Colorado. I think the Republicans did a really effective job of making this an issue and frankly, of scaring a lot of people. Massachusetts is ranked the safest state in the country. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have ongoing law-enforcement work. We do. And that’s a reason why it is so safe. We just had a takedown of a gang here a week or two ago, a gang that has recently been cited by the new ICE director. It’s also the case here, with the migrants who came in — and by the way, they were fleeing the worst conditions imaginable, right? I saw them. I met with many of them. We got them work authorizations. They’re working, they’re paying taxes, these are all people with lawful status now, their kids are going to school, they’re contributing to our economy. That’s what I chose to do. Ron DeSantis chose to put people on a plane and use them. Greg Abbott chose to put people on buses and use them to make a point. I’ll tell you the difference of being a Democratic governor: We actually found a way to take care of these people, get them jobs, get them working and get them contributing to our economies.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, singled out Boston at CPAC last week. He called out Boston’s police commissioner, who said because of state law, he won’t be enforcing immigration orders against migrants. Homan then said, and I’m quoting here, “I’m coming to Boston, and I’m bringing hell with me.” And I’m wondering what your response to that is. First of all, I don’t really even know what he’s talking about. I’m somebody whose state police regularly work with Homeland Security, A.T.F., F.B.I., D.E.A. on the investigation and prosecution of folks, including folks who are undocumented, who are committing crimes, drug trafficking, gun trafficking, human trafficking. That was the way before Trump. It will be the way after Trump. So I don’t really know why he singled out Boston.
Your police commissioner said basically that they weren’t going to help ICE remove people, as happens in many sanctuary cities. I think there’s a lot of talk and semantics out there, and this guy Homan is just making up a bunch of stuff and trying to start something, trying to pick a fight. Look, that’s not productive. Because as a former law-enforcement official, if you care about law enforcement, the best way to secure the safety and well-being of states, our nation, is for local, state and federal law enforcement to work together. So it seems to me you shouldn’t be threatening to bring, what was it, hell?
Yeah, hell. Yeah, OK, whatever. No, you should come here with support and resources, to help us address any public-safety issues we’re experiencing. And I can tell you that Massachusetts law enforcement, state and local, continue to work with federal law enforcement when it comes to the investigation and the prosecution and the apprehension of criminals. The real thing that’s going on at ICE is that the numbers have gone down at the border. The number of crossings at the border were going down during the end of the Biden administration, and so I think they’re scrambling to figure out how they can keep this going. Weren’t there reports just today of the number of National Guard people on the border sitting around doing nothing? I mean, let’s put people to work. We’ve got governors who are dealing with severe floods, severe fires. There’s plenty of places that we need federal resources and help as states.
Would you meet Tom Homan if he came? Of course I would. It sounds like I might need to explain a few things to him as somebody who investigated and prosecuted crimes, including with federal authorities, for a number of years here. Maybe he doesn’t have the benefit of that knowledge.
Another place where the federal and state governments are linked is on education. President Trump has made rolling back D.E.I. — diversity, equity and inclusion — central to his political project. He has said that he’s going to be cutting federal funding for schools that include it. You’ve said that Massachusetts schools are going to “stay true to themselves.” What do you mean by that? We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing. I am the first woman in Massachusetts history to be elected governor. I happen to be the first gay person elected governor. I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have support and legal protections against discrimination my entire life. I was born in 1971, so just around the time of Title IX. And I had a career as a professional basketball player before I went to law school. I think about all that was made possible for me, as a woman, because there were state and federal laws in place that said, you know what, we should treat everybody fairly. I’m not giving up on that.
Even if it means pulling federal funding? I just think people need to speak to why that’s such a bad thing. Talk to any C.E.O. of a major Fortune 500 company. They’ll tell you that their bottom line, dollar wise, does better when there’s more diversity in the room.
But many of these companies are ditching their D.E.I. programs. And I don’t know why. I don’t know why. I mean I think I know why. I think they feel the threat of Elon Musk. They feel the threat of Donald Trump, which is sort of one and the same. But I think that that’s what they’re responding to. It’s not right. It’s not a winner for this country. It’s not going to help us be more competitive around the world by removing or doing things that hinder talent in this country and the success of individuals.
Why do you think we’re seeing such a backlash to D.E.I., though? People have expressed that they do feel that mandated diversity, equity and inclusion hasn’t been beneficial to relations among races and ethnicities, and there is a feeling, specifically on the right, that this has become a sort of left-wing orthodoxy. It’s interesting at a time when the co-president, Elon Musk, is giving us Hitler salutes, and espousing anti-Semitic things, I just find it ironic that we’re going to have this debate over D.E.I. and whether it’s effective. All the while this is going on over here. I mean, seriously. So we can talk about D.E.I. and whether there are some approaches or aspects that people want to look at more, maybe need reform, or there should be more flexibility in certain things, but do not tell me that we are going to condone and go down a path in government or in corporate America that says women and people of color are no longer at the table, and not only no longer at the table, but will not be supported anywhere along the way. I think, unfortunately, what’s happened in the moment, we’ve seen a lot of capitulation. We’ve seen a lot of people trying to hedge their bets. You mean to tell me that’s good for America? Come on.
You were the country’s first openly gay state attorney general. Before that, you worked in the civil rights division of the Massachusetts A.G.’s office, where you led the first successful challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act. I sued President Obama.
You did. There is some concern among Democrats that after Roe v. Wade, we are going to see Obergefell, the Supreme Court’s decision that made gay marriage legal at the federal level, overturned next. Do you worry about that? I do. I mean, how can you not? The Supreme Court constituted as it is — it seems like anything is possible. It is, again, up to everyone to speak out and articulate why it is so important to hold on to precedent. I thought we’d done that with Roe. And look what happened there.
Were you surprised to see the level of importance that trans rights had in this election? Do you think Democrats misread the electorate on the issue, as Seth Moulton, the representative from your own state, said? To me, it’s just so sad that we are talking about such an infinitesimal portion of the population. But Trump and the Republicans intentionally made that into a mountain, right? We’re talking about such a small sliver of the population, and on athletics, it’s even smaller as a percentage, but they did an incredibly effective job of making that an issue. That and immigration.
And D.E.I. What I keep on hearing you say is that they’ve managed to get the upper hand. Well, the other thing was the economy. And at the end of the day, it’s the economy that ended up doing Biden and Kamala Harris in.
Barring a change to the Constitution, President Trump can’t be re-elected — But that’s a real thing there, right? There are people talking about it. He’s got a group talking about a third term.
Are you worried about that? I am. I am worried about that. I have a pretty sober view of the situation. I was talking to a historian who I called on Presidents’ Day to ask for some guidance, to help me provide a context for this moment that we’re in. And she said to me: I can’t. We’ve never seen anything like this before in American history. You asked me that question, and my legit, genuine answer is, Yeah, I’m worried about that.
You know, when I speak to Democratic voters, there is an enormous amount of anger toward the Democratic Party that allowed this to happen. They say it was the failure of the Democratic Party that opened the door to Donald Trump coming in. And I just wonder, as a sitting governor and a Democrat, how you respond to that. I agree. I empathize with that position. Now, is it all attributable to one president and his team and his administration in the form of Joe Biden? No, I’m not suggesting that. But there are things that could have happened that should have happened that didn’t happen, and here we are. I became governor because I care about people. I want to serve people. I want to see the people in Massachusetts served. My colleagues I have the privilege of working with, the Democratic governors, believe in America, believe in the needs, the wants of everyday Americans. So it’s upsetting to be here having this conversation with you at this moment. And I, too, ask, how the hell did we get here?
This interview has been edited and condensed. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music or the New York Times Audio app.
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