PHOENIX – Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Monday her barrage of lawsuits against the Trump administration has saved the Grand Canyon State $1.5 billion.
“That’s money for Meals on Wheels, Head Start, Americorps, HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas),” Mayes told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show after announcing Arizona’s 29th multistate legal action against the federal government this year.
Mayes, a Democrat, acknowledged that the number of lawsuits might seem unusually high. But she defended them as necessary and said she’d also sue a president from her own party who violated the law.
“This is a president who violates the Constitution all the time. … And I know it seems weird, because it is weird. And so, I’m going to call him out on it,” she said of President Donald Trump.
Mayes added that Republicans should care about the lawsuits, too.
“Because if we don’t stand up to this now under a Republican president, it sets a precedent for a Democratic president to do the exact same thing,” she explained.
What’s the topic of Arizona’s new lawsuit against the Trump administration?
In the federal complaint filed Monday, Mayes joined 21 other Democratic attorneys general to sue the Department of Education (DOE) for restricting eligibility for its Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF).
The DOE finalized new rules last week that expand its power to ban organizations deemed to have a “substantial illegal purpose” from PSLF, which was created by Congress in 2007 to encourage college graduates to pursue public sector jobs.
The updated policy is aimed primarily at organizations that work with immigrants and transgender youth, according to The Associated Press.
While she believes the policy will be harmful to both graduates and prospective employers, Mayes said that’s not the reason she is suing to stop it.
“This is about the law. It’s about whether a president can essentially overturn Congress’s prior decisions,” she said.
Have Arizona’s lawsuits against the Trump administration been successful?
Mayes said 80% of her lawsuits against the Trump administration have been granted temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions, although they aren’t necessarily
fully decided. In some cases, Mayes said Trump “is basically slinking away” by deciding not to appeal.
“That’s not the case with stuff that he seems to really care about, like tariffs. He seems to really, really want tariffs, which are taxes on the American people, and so he will take that all the way to the Supreme Court. Same with like birthright citizenship,” Mayes said.
The first-term attorney general said it’s important for Arizona to participate in so many lawsuits because judges are only offering relief to the plaintiff states in some decisions.
“So, the states that are getting screwed are the ones with Republican AGs,” she said. “They don’t get the relief. … If you care about all these issues, you need me as your AG because if I don’t bring these lawsuits, Arizona won’t be covered.”
Arizona involved in lawsuit over SNAP benefits
Mayes was a litigant in the high-profile multistate lawsuit filed last week to stop the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from suspending the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food stamps to help about 900,000 Arizonans buy groceries.
A judge in the case, as well as one in a similar federal lawsuit, ruled Friday that the federal government must tap into contingency funds to keep the food aid program running. The rulings applied to the entire country, not just the plaintiff states.
“Even Donald Trump in the past had used the contingency funds when there was a shutdown, right? This time he decided to not use the contingency funds as sort of a hammer or a Damocles sword over the heads of the Democratic members of Congress, holding hostage all of those people. Two federal judges … said he can’t do that. He’s got to release those moneys.”
The details of how much SNAP money will be distributed and when recipients will see it in their accounts are still being worked out.
“The Trump administration filed an affidavit with the court saying we are going to release the SNAP funds but they’re only going to release about half of it,” Mayes said. “So, it looks like Arizonans will get half of their SNAP benefits. That’s going to be tough on Thanksgiving dinner.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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