Attorney General Peter Nerohna talks about suing Trump and the future of Rhode Island - Part Two

One of the first things Pam Bondi [told DOJ lawyers] is, "You can't use paper straws anymore." I'm not joking. They got a memo. No more paper straws. This is where the priorities are?

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha was in South Kingstown on Sunday to talk about the “battles he’s waging to protect civil rights, public safety, and government accountability,” according to organizers from the South County Social Justice Coalition. Over 90 minutes, Attorney General Neronha answered questions about the multiple lawsuits he and 22 other attorneys general have filed against the overreach of the Trump Administration. Jonathan Pitts-Wiley, artistic director of Mixed Magic Theater, moderated the event.

Because the transcript is too long for an email, I divided it into two parts.

Here’s Part 1.

Here’s the video:

Audience Question 1: For many of us, it’s not beyond imagination to think that the Department of Justice and the FBI, in particular, may be compromised into a loyalist organization. Should we reach that point in our country, and should we also reach the point where the current regime decides to defy court orders, what would you recommend Rhode Islanders think about as alternatives and ways of pushing back?

Peter Neronha: There are two parts to that question. First, do I think the Department of Justice will become a loyalist organization? I have less insight into the FBI, although I worked with many FBI agents over the years, and I knew those guys well. Frankly, they tend to bend conservative, but they don’t bend against the rule of law. I think most federal agents, if they are asked to do something that is blatantly unlawful, like engage in warrantless arrests or warrantless searches, I don’t believe the majority of them will do it. I don’t believe most DOJ prosecutors will help them do it.

Federally, to get a written warrant, you have to go to court, unlike in the state system, where the police can draw it up on their own. Federally, we used to go over and see the magistrate judge. We had to have facts, and we had a probable cause. If we didn’t have it, we didn’t get the warrant. They could only do it by doing warrantless searches and seizures and warrantless arrests. I think that would be a bridge too far for the administration. Will they walk to the edge and beyond what is right? Yes. As an administration, no question about it. But I don’t expect to see the worst because the men and women working there are career employees.

The second part of the question is what happens when the administration ignores court orders. I think that they’re on the precipice of that. I believe they’re doing it in a passive-aggressive, but not open, way at the district court level. There are the federal district courts at the lowest level, the appellate courts at the next level, and the Supreme Court. I think they’re being passive-aggressive because they know that flatly saying, "I’m not going to follow Judge McConnell’s order," would be a bridge too far for many Americans, even those who have supported the president. This is the creeping authoritarianism that I worry about. To play your scenario out, if the Supreme Court disagrees with the administration on birthright citizenship, that is a clear case where they should, but I don’t know if they will. We should win that case - I think we should win the funding cases. Those are clear-cut. Were the president to ignore them? I mean, the only president in history, to my knowledge, who has openly ignored a Supreme Court directive is Andrew Jackson, who led to the Trail of Tears. That was a long time ago. It’s horrible, but a long time ago. At that point, Americans are in the street and not to the tune of 10,000 in Providence. There would be 50,000 in Providence, two million in New York, and a nationwide labor strike. Our friends in labor at that point have to be energized for a nationwide strike or things of that nature because we, as Americans, can’t accept the President overturning what Chiefice John Marshall decided in 1803 - that the Supreme Court, whether we like it or not, has the final word on what the law is.

And there were lots of times I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it in Dobbs, but I accepted it. I didn’t like it in Bruin, but I accepted it. I didn’t like it in Bush v Gore, but we accepted it because it was the Supreme Court, and we accepted it. This time, if the president doesn’t accept it, then he has broken with the rule of law in our Constitution. And at that point, everything is on the table. Any way that we can push back as Americans will be necessary. And I don’t think that most Americans and more won’t agree with that view. I could be surprised, but I think that for most Americans, far more than the majority, that’ll be a bridge too far.

Audience Question 2: About Anchor Medical Associates and what’s happening with our healthcare system, why are Rhode Island’s reimbursement rates so much lower than those of our surrounding states?

My second is about the governor. I wrote to him and said that I wanted him to work with you, but I didn’t have any specifics about what to ask him for other than threatening him about the next election. Can you give us some ideas?

Peter Neronha: Well, if threatening him about the next election doesn’t move him, nothing will.

I’ll start with the healthcare question, which is hard to answer. It’s not hard to answer, but it’s hard to see a solution unless we change what we’re doing dramatically. For those of you who don’t know, Anchor Medical is an excellent primary care pediatrics practice serving about 25,000 patients in Rhode Island. They’re located in Lincoln, Warwick, and Providence are closing. Under state healthcare regulations, they put an ad in the Providence Journal yesterday that they’re winding down and will stop seeing patients in 90 days.

That’s 25,000 patients, including children, who won’t have a doctor. If I asked you for a show of hands, how many of you have had difficulty finding a primary care doctor? My wife hasn’t taken a new patient in a long time. It used to be I could ask her to take a friend here and there, and she’d be okay with it. Now, I’m afraid even to ask her because the response I get is not friendly.

It’s a serious problem. And it goes beyond primary care, [it’s about] our healthcare systems. There’s a reason why Roger Williams and Fatima Hospital went into bankruptcy. We were fortunate. Sarah and her cohorts squeezed $50 million out of the private equity firm that wants to own the hospitals and give that pot of money to them. It’s a start for them. They don’t have an endowment like South County Hospital does.

Two things that drive an insufficient amount of revenue into our healthcare systems for primary care providers and hospital systems. First, we have a high number of people on Medicaid because our economy isn’t where it should be. If our economy were better, we’d have more people on commercial insurance.

As a result, because our economy isn’t where it should be, we have a lot of people who are working, men and women, who are on Medicaid. This notion that if you’re getting Medicaid, you’re not working that’s not true. There are a lot of people on Medicaid who are working hard, but the only place they can get insurance is Medicaid because the little clothing store they work in doesn’t provide insurance for the men and women who sell clothes in that store, and they’ve got to buy on their own. So, we have a high Medicaid population. We’re also older. We have a lot of Rhode Islanders on Medicare. Commercial insurance is reimbursed on a sliding scale; it gives more money back to the provider than Medicare and Medicaid do for the same work.

If you have a lot of Medicaid patients rather than commercial patients for everything you do, you’re getting less money.

Problem number two is that for each of those three buckets, commercial insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare, reimbursements are less in Rhode Island than in other states like Connecticut and Massachusetts. Medicare reimbursement rates are higher in Connecticut and Massachusetts than in Rhode Island. The same is true for Medicaid and commercial.

When you put those two things together, we have a lot of Medicaid and Medicare patients, we’ve got less commercial, and the rates for all three are lower than our neighboring states. That means that the revenue coming into the system is lower than in those states. This is how you know what I said is true. Lifespan, now Brown Health, bought two community hospitals that were struggling. Where were they located? Massachusetts. Two community hospitals here in Rhode Island were struggling, Roger Williams and Fatima, but they had no interest in those. Why? Because a Massachusetts patient is worth more than a Rhode Island patient. By buying hospitals and getting revenue over there, they make more money and balance out what they’re not making in Rhode Island.

How do we fix it? First of all, we must acknowledge it’s a problem. We can’t fix the primary care shortage by building a medical school at URI. As the head of Anchor Medical told me, and I thought this was great, he said, "That’s telling the patient to have a seat in the waiting room. The inexperienced doctor will be with you in a decade."

That’s not going to solve the problem. The governor talked about $400,000 for loan forgiveness. I have a son who went to medical school. $400,000 is like two doctors. That’s not going to solve our primary care shortage when Anchor had 26 to 30 providers that would be in the wind if they didn’t stay in Rhode Island. If you can go across state lines and make 30% more, why wouldn’t you? I don’t know why they’re coming here. They couldn’t recruit doctors. Surprise! Those doctors get paid more if they live in Stonington or Westport. Why would they come here? If we don’t get this fixed, we will all be heading into neighboring states to get our healthcare, and that’s already happening. My neurologist is in Westerly. If I need something done, I’m going to Yale New Haven.

That’s where we’re headed with healthcare unless we fix it, and we can’t fix it, but healthcare is hard, and not everybody understands it. Our leaders don’t understand it the way they should or don’t spend the time on it the way they should. I’ll give the Senate President and the Speaker something of a pass. They’re not full-time people. But I don’t give the executive branch - the governor and his team - a pass because they’re not doing enough or moving fast enough. We’re doing too much planning and not enough doing. What does doing look like? My office is trying to come out with some practical solutions, and among them is we have to spend more on Medicaid to get more money from the federal government - that was before Trump took office, so that’s more of a wild card - but if you’re not even going to try that the way our neighboring states are -

We get back two dollars from the federal government for every dollar we spend. We’ve got to put more Medicaid money out of our state budget into the system, but $2 comes back. Think about that - more revenue into the system.

That’s one example. We propose streamlining our state healthcare agencies because they’re scattered around state government. If we streamline that, we can develop better data and planning. We’re trying to do more strategic thinking in the office when we have time. We had more time until Trump took office. One of our challenges is that we don’t have access to the data we need the way they do in Massachusetts.

We can build a comprehensive plan to address this healthcare problem quickly, but our government lacks that level of imagination.

How can you help me with the governor? I’m going to be fine, so don’t worry. That’s why I was a little reluctant to talk about it. I talk about it at the State House because I’m talking to the budget leaders, and the press picks that up and runs with it, but I’m going to get the positions I need. I’ll pay for them myself. I’ve got the money to do that. I’m going to have the people to work on it. But it is disappointing that the governor would prioritize his animus over what’s best for Rhode Islanders. Frankly, that’s consistent with who he is, and I don’t say that lightly. I love the fact that you sent the letter, so thank you. I have a great healthcare team now, much better than when I started.

Audience Question 3: Can the present administration simply terminate federal contracts, which is happening to me and, I suspect, other Rhode Island federal contractors at this time?

Peter Neronha: My general answer to that is no. One of the things that we have tried to do is represent as many Rhode Islanders as possible. What do I mean by that? When we bring lawsuits, one of the things that may not have come through as clearly as I should have made it is that we can sue on behalf of all of you collectively. Something that impacts all of you the same way - birthright citizenship, public health, and funding the federal portion of our state budget. In the first case, we brought, for example, nonprofits who had obligated funds but did not get their money through the state.

There were three pots of money there: money that came to the state directly, and the state used it, and money that came to nonprofits through the state—meaning they went to the state and the state sent it directly to nonprofits. As we read his order, Judge McConnell did not include nonprofits, so nonprofits brought their own case some days later because we can’t sue on behalf of an individual nonprofit.

Regarding your situation, if you’re a federal contractor - I can’t give you legal advice - that’s my legal disclaimer - but a contract is a contract. We have a network of lawyers who have approached us to say, "We’re willing to do pro bono work." We can connect you to one of those lawyers.

Audience Question 4: This week, we have been projected to have a very active hurricane season, which, of course, could affect everyone in this room and the entire state. [In the face of future budget cuts to FEMA,] are we protected? How secure can we feel in the event we take a hit?

Peter Neronha: When I talked about future funding, I meant this: our view is that anything that Congress has already appropriated, meaning it’s come up in past budgets, our view is that Trump can’t change it without going back to Congress. For example, take the public health funding allocated to the states three years ago, and the states draw it down. They don’t give federal money to you in a big account and never contact you again. They like you to draw it down, file a report, tell them what you did with it, and ensure you didn’t misspend it. Sometimes, funds are stacked up for years. So, anything that Congress has already said you’re going to get, our view is Trump can’t change it without going back to Congress. He can go back to Congress through the rescission action, but he hasn’t chosen to do that. As far as I know, it may be difficult to do that- it hasn’t happened often. A

It’s another example of him not caring what Congress says. I don’t know enough about FEMA funding to be able to tell you how much FEMA funding we have going forward, but the real issue for all of us is in the coming congressional budgets. If the new Republican-controlled Congress decides they’re going to cut all FEMA funding across the country by 75%, there’s very little we’re going to be able to do about that. That’s not something we can solve in the courtroom. We have to solve that at the ballot box.

Audience Question 4: Do they have the ability to not declare a federal disaster area out of vengeance?

Peter Neronha: That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that, but we’re going to get it. We’re going to get the answer to that. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s a good question. Let’s say the 1938 hurricane came through here again, and we had the same amount of damage back then - more because there are more of us and more coastal infrastructure. Could the federal government not declare a federal disaster and, by doing so, not allow us to draw down the money? I’m pretty sure we’d go to court on that. I don’t know if we’d win, but we’d figure out a way to go to court on that. I can promise you we’d be in court. I have to think about it more, but I have to believe there are regulations about when the government can declare those. That’s interesting. As you point out, I love being a lawyer, but it has real impacts.

Audience Question 5: There’s an article on Yahoo about social security and how we might be asked to verify our identity if we’re receiving benefits, and our accounts might be transferred from our current online accounts to something called login.gov. Are you familiar with this?

Peter Neronha: We are closely following the new requirements involving social security. I’ve asked the team to take a very close look at that. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but if a lawsuit comes, and I think the odds are pretty high, I want to file it here because social security matters to me. Both of my parents are effectively living on it, and I know what that means when you’re 96 years old and 89 years old, as my parents are. They loved to work. My dad was a bus monitor into his nineties, before covid.

We’re following that very closely, and to the extent we need to litigate anything involving social security, we will do it here. For example, my parents don’t have access to a computer, and Social Security recipients [shouldn’t have to] do difficult things for them. If anything needs to be done there, we will do it. This is true of voting, too. By making things more difficult, they’re trying to impact some group of Americans who, for whatever reason, have targeted in some way - or states they’re targeting. Because you’re on the Social Security roles, that doesn’t mean you’re getting social security. This whole thing about 150-year-old people or something was pretty thoroughly debunked.

Audience Question 6: To follow up on the first question, you answered that if the administration doesn’t follow a court order, we take to the streets and, hopefully, the workers strike. Is there no government agency the courts can call on to enforce a court order?

Peter Neronha: No, and Judge McConnell said that. [Were that to happen], that’s an unprecedented time in American history when we would all have to do things that we have probably never contemplated. As a lawyer, I am reasonably imaginative. I am sometimes more imaginative than my staff likes because I come up with crazy theories they have to debunk when I want to do something. I do not doubt that the people in this room would devise creative ways to let the country know that that was a bridge too far. However, as Judge McConnell said when he was handling either a motion to enforce or maybe it was the main part of the case, “I don’t have an army outside to enforce my orders.”

He doesn’t even have the marshals to protect the judges. They are a function of the executive branch; the president appoints the marshals. So, no, there is no military or police force that the courts can call on to enforce their judgments. That’s why it’s been so important throughout our history that we accept what John Marshall said in 1803, that the court, not the president, is the last word on what the law is the court. That’s what our system of government is.

When the President gets to that point, we’re no longer a democracy. We are an authoritarian government. And Americans will have to decide how we won’t let that happen. Collectively, we’ll figure that out. I hope we never get there, but we’ll figure it out.

But it’s not wrong to be thinking about it. It’s not wrong to be scared, and it’s not wrong to be dismayed because we talk about that amongst ourselves as Attorneys General, and sometimes we’re scared and dismayed. There are no easy answers to that one because it is unprecedented in our history. Would the Congress impeach? Yeah, if they had the numbers. They should, but would they have the numbers, and would they? The unwillingness of Republicans to push back when they’ve sidelined themselves as the Congress is remarkable. The only person I’ve seen any sign of life out is Noah Hawley, who I have to say I have very little respect for otherwise, but he’s voted with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. They weren’t the majority, but he voted with them and had some problems with something else the administration was doing. Maybe that will trickle out as more of this comes down the pike. We’re going to have to wait and see who’s next.

Audience Question 7: Michael Moore, in his Substack, said that the leaders of the new revolution were involved in the Hands-Off protests. I want to acknowledge that some heroes here today are also leaders, including local leaders, who will be standing up.

My concern is immigration and some of the stuff related to that. What is Rhode Island’s response to that? The questions have been about authoritarianism and tyranny—with people not being given due process—and there is that question about U.S. citizens also being disappeared. What shocked me was seeing it happen in New England, where we are sanctuary cities. Could you speak a little about what we’re prepared to do?

Peter Neronha: There are a couple of aspects to that. First and foremost, I find it frustrating that my office can’t represent an individual. For example, if ICE picks up somebody at the courthouse, we can’t go to court to do anything about that. I know my colleague in Massachusetts, Andrea Campbell, is very concerned about what happened to not only the Brown doctor who got turned around at the airport but the Tufts student. She reached out to me about the Brown doctor early on before some of the other information started coming out, which made it a much harder case for the doctor.

We always ask ourselves three things: is what the Trump Administration is doing unlawful? Is it harming Rhode Islanders? Question three is, do we have standing? For those of you who aren’t lawyers, can we go to court on behalf of that person? It can be mind-numbing, particularly if you are like me and want to go, but if we don’t have standing, the staff sometimes has to bind me in. I don’t even view myself as a lawyer so much anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve argued in a courtroom.

But there are areas where we will be able to act. What we see coming is, and I mentioned it earlier, is [the Trump Administration saying] you only get law enforcement grants if you cooperate, as the administration defines it, with our immigration enforcement efforts. What does that look like? As a practical matter, that means the Fusion Center, which protects us from domestic and foreign threats, run by the state police and funded by the federal government, doesn’t get the funding it needs to exist - that’s been around since 911 - unless state troopers are sworn in to do immigration work. I can see that fight coming.

I don’t believe that that’s lawful. I believe the states have the right to determine what their policies will be and how they will express their powers. There is an amendment that reserves powers to the states that aren’t reserved by the federal government. That is a fight that’s going to play out in immigration and law enforcement, and there are going to be similar fights about other conditional funding - diversity, equity, and inclusion, [for example].

I might not get federal funding unless I remove my Clifton Clerkship program, which provides legal scholarships to second-year law school students from mostly Black and brown backgrounds because they often don’t find their way into my office. It’s a way for me to recruit more diverse candidates as lawyers because we find, many times, that interns in our offices come back and apply to be permanent or full-time lawyers. We weren’t getting those candidates because they didn’t have any knowledge of the office, and we didn’t know them. I’m not going to get rid of that because the Trump administration tells me I won’t get federal funding for my Medicaid fraud unit, which is 75% federally funded. That’s going to be a lawsuit. We will be pushing back in those areas, which will affect Rhode Island writ large. ICE has so many agents in Rhode Island. When I was U.S. Attorney, they had maybe 30. For ATF, we have maybe 10.

Even if they grab the ATF agents, it’s not like they can swarm Rhode Island. But if you add 300 troopers on the road with what they call 287 immigration authority - that’s a very different way of doing business than how we’re doing it right now. Those immigration fights are coming, and we’ll be ready for them. We’re already looking at those.

Audience Question 8: I’ve been reading that from day one, Trump has set up the possibility of martial law within 90 days - I believe it had to do with border security. If he does declare martial law, what does that mean? Would that be for the border? Would that be for the whole country? Would that mean we can’t protest?

Peter Neronha: I suppose it could mean in all of those things, but we would be in court very quickly on that, and I’m confident that would not withstand judicial scrutiny. I don’t want to understate it because people are being picked up by ICE, for example. I don’t want to say they’re not out there because they are. I worked with the FBI, excellent agents. They were our police force when I was a federal prosecutor before I became a U.S. Attorney. They’re excellent, but there aren’t that many of them. There’s way more of us than there are of them. They are not a frontline police force the way the South Kingstown Police Department is. I’m not sure who would enforce martial law. I have 110 lawyers. The U.S. Attorney’s office has like 20.

Audience Question 8: Doesn’t the military do that?

Peter Neronha: The National Guard would have to be nationalized, and I don’t see it happening. I don’t. The military is a volunteer military. That’s what, a million strong? There are about 280 million people in this country. You saw what happened in Korea when the Korean president tried to declare martial law. That thing was over in a hot minute, right? People got out in the street, and that was it. The military is not going to take on the citizens of this country. Maybe that’s what I mean when discussing being in the streets. Do we think that the National Guardsman from Warwick is going to aim a gun at us because Donald Trump asked him to do it? I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think that’s the tipping point if we ever get there, and I think we won’t. But the way this administration has gone, I understand why any of us might think that anything is possible, but that’s not on the checklist of things I’m worried about. I’m not there yet.

Audience Question 9: My name is Jocelyn Foye. I’m the executive director of The Womxn Project. I work in collaboration with a lot of people here. We’re doing so great. The Womxn Project and a lot of folks passed legislation that protected the right to abortion in Rhode Island in 2019, and then we made that right real for Medicaid recipients and state workers in 2023. But if a national abortion ban were to come to Rhode Island, one of only a few states that’s well protected, can you give us a quick lesson on if a national abortion ban comes, how does that affect states that have codified it into law? What protections do we have to act on our right to healthcare in that instance?

Peter Neronha: Certainly, if that happened, we would do everything we could to ensure the right of Rhode Island women to make choices about their reproductive freedoms. That said, I worry that a national abortion ban, under the supremacy clause, would take precedence over our state statute, but I don’t know.

Sara Rice: There is a scenario in which that would be the case - where it would be preempted. But I think there are many things we could try to do before that or to argue that it was not. It would have to be a national abortion ban that was passed by Congress and enacted - it couldn’t be something that came through executive order, any restriction on funding, or other mechanisms that are purely executive.

Peter Neronha: I hope that answers your question.

Audience Question 9: Many of us don’t know the law the way you all do. If we’re told that it’s not available because of a national ban, what does a hospital administrator providing that care have to do? Do they have to stop by law? Can we say to our friends that the care is still available until the corporations choose to stop?

Peter Neronha: No. In the worst-case scenario, that’s the fear. The supremacy clause says that when a federal and state statute comes into conflict, federal law governs. Preemption is at least another way of saying the same thing: federal law preempts the states from legislating in that particular space. What a national abortion ban would mean is that no one can get an abortion anywhere in the country. Would we try to fight back? Yes. We would try to fight back by saying, "Federal law does not preclude Rhode Islanders from collectively deciding through their General Assembly or their Constitution to do something else." But I will not lie and tell you that that’s an easy fight—the opposite.

Audience Question 9: We know that fight well.

A national abortion ban would be something that we would want to fight very hard against because that would put us in a very difficult position here. But Sarah’s point is worth remembering: it would have to pass both houses of Congress. Look, no question, we’re not in a good place with the Congress right now. But it couldn’t be Trump with a stroke of a pen, so there’d be a lot of debate before we got there.

Audience Question 10: The 2026 elections feel very far off, and I’ve been reading a lot, probably too much, about what a great chance the Democrats have of getting back the House, and then I read other places, "How quaint. Do you think we’re going to have another election? Trump’s going to call off elections." I’m aware that elections are administered through the states. We have so much to be worried about right now. Is this one of the things I need to be worried about?

Peter Neronha: I would say no. There will be elections in 2026, and as someone who is term-limited, I don’t know if I want it to come fast or not. In some ways, I enjoy what I do very much, and I enjoy working with my team, but I won’t lie to you; these are tough times. I could have done eight years of being ag without covid and Trump, but I guess you get what you get. Overall, I feel I’m luckier than most.

Audience Question 11: I’m a retired nurse. I worry that all of us baby boomers are coming of age, and we need to worry about how we will be paid. We paid into Social Security and Medicare. Is he considered a robber? I think he’s stealing from us.

Peter Neronha: I understand. We’re certainly going to fight back when it comes to Social Security and Medicare. Right now, things are fine. There haven’t been any changes. If there are any, we’re going to fight. Even for him, it would be dumb to go after those two programs.

Audience Question 11: He is!

Peter Neronha: I know he is. I heard it. We’re not paying attention to it. I understand why that would concern someone in retirement, but right now, I would not worry too much about that.

Audience Question 12: As most people know, many of our federal agencies are being gouged out, and thousands of federal employees are here in Rhode Island. One is a family member as one. I have neighbors who are as well. I know what’s happening to them, and it’s not good. We have not, as Americans, felt the effect of this, but we will very soon. The National Institute of Health, particularly, concerns me. I think thousands will die. Collectively, as Attorneys Generals, is there anything you can do to counter the mass disruption of these agencies legally?

Peter Neronha: There is, and that’s why we brought the lawsuit here in Rhode Island about those three smaller agencies. There’s a lawsuit in Massachusetts about the Department of Education. They laid off, I think, nearly 50% of its workers. That’s filed in Maryland, where we went to court with our colleagues. The court issued a temporary restraining order in that case.

I am not dialed into where each federal agency is regarding these administrative layoffs or reductions in force or riffs. All the actions we have participated in are on our website at riag.ri.gov. If you go to that website, you can see all the cases, their status, where they’re filed, and links to the documents.

Here’s Part 1.