Northwest now is supported in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And my only message to the president of the United States is to follow the law.

As fast as blue states can sue the Trump administration fires out new executive orders.

The battle between the established federal law, presidential power and state law have resulted in a crisis of governance.

Tonight, we sit down with Washington's attorney general, Nick Brown, the man working the legal system in hopes of curbing what this state's elected leaders clearly view as executive overreach.

That's next on northwest.

Now.

You.

Nick Brown was elected as Washington's attorney general last November, taking office in January.

Brown is a Harvard graduate and served as an attorney in the Army Judge Advocate General's Office.

He was an assistant U.S.

attorney and then became former Governor Jay Inslee's general counsel for four years.

Then Joe Biden appointed him back into the U.S.

Attorney's office, this time as the new chief for the Western District of Washington.

Nick Brown, thanks so much for coming to northwest now.

Great to have a discussion with the sitting attorney general here in Washington State.

I guess the first question I have for you start with a little levity.

How does this compare with survivor?

You appeared in what was a season 2 in 2001.

Yeah, it's about the same deal, isn't it?

Well, they're now on season, season 49.

So I was definitely one of the originals.

In reality TV.

And I was much younger at the time.

You know, this job is entirely different, but I look back at playing that game with a lot of fond memories and it still comes up.

No matter where I go.

Yeah, it is a little bit of an episode of survivor lately.

Big picture taking the 30,000ft view.

How many pieces of litigation have you either instigated or are a signatory to, or a part of when it comes to the Trump administration?

Have you been counting?

Do you have a tally?

Yeah.

Well, now we actually have a website or a page on our website that details every single case that we filed against the administration.

It shows the relevant documents, it shows the status, it tracks our victories, it tracks our setbacks.

And so we want it to be as transparent as possible with the public so they can track all these cases.

We're now, just over eight months into my term as attorney general, we filed 37 lawsuits against the administration we're leading and co-leading, and more than two dozen of those cases, but in general are joining with other states across the country.

And those are really important.

There are issues that we're tracking that are both illegal or unconstitutional and that are harming Washingtonians.

And when those things line up, we're generally going to be involved in litigating.

So it's a lot of cases.

I'm really glad you brought up the website and talked about there being a control panel there.

Shameless plug.

What is that website or at least the main site they should go to?

Sure.

It's just arteaga.gov.

That's our main page.

And there's a link on there that shows our federal litigation tracker.

Okay, perfect.

Strangely enough, I've, covered state government in six states.

And, you know, I want to be transparent and tell you I bring my own views about the nature and the role of the attorney general into this thing.

Sure.

I've always felt it.

In a perfect world, that it would be a nonpartisan job without a D or an R attached to it.

And I also feel that, too.

The real opportunity for the attorney general is a quality of life emphasis in whatever state we're talking about when it comes to consumer protections and anti elder abuse and, crime and safety, where a lot of those are originated locally, the charges and whatnot.

But the state I feel like the state can use its bully pulpit and really influence the climate and culture of, of a state for the quality of life of its citizens.

Where does that role if you buy into my, admitted bias, if you buy into that fit in with going to war with the administration nationally, being involved in national politics and being part of the resistance.

Well, I buy in with a lot of what you said.

I mean, obviously our Constitution dictates the terms of the office and whether or not that Partizan or nonpartisan, of course, what I've learned is that every office of attorney general across the state differs dramatically depending on our own laws or own state constitutions.

And, you know, the vast majority of the things that get the most public attention are federal litigation.

But it's actually a really small fraction of the work that we do.

You know, we have over 830 lawyers that work for the attorney General's office, and only about 30 of those lawyers are actually involved in the cases.

They get the most headlines and attention.

But importantly for me, every single case that we bring against the Trump administration is not national politics.

It's not some part of the resistance.

It's us identifying things that are illegal or unconstitutional and that are harming us or our state or our agency.

It's feed back in, right?

Right, right.

So a good example is when the administration illegally cuts funding to Washington, we could either do nothing or we could fight back against that.

And we only engage when it's impacting Washington.

If there's something that comes from D.C.

that doesn't impact us.

Or maybe my legal theory is different than one of my colleagues.

We don't engage, but we are doing things every day that have nothing to do with the president or Washington, DC.

We're doing that consumer protection work.

We're doing, antitrust cases.

We're doing criminal justice cases.

Although, as you know, we don't have a regional right to action jurisdiction over most of those cases.

So we're doing a lot of things that I think really get to the bread and butter.

You know, we've been trying to focus more and more on issues around housing and the housing crisis, going after people that are abusing senior citizens, veterans, discriminating in housing or using algorithms to falsely raise housing prices here in Washington state.

But both our work here, that's sort of the work that you highlight.

And our national work we do that because of the impact on people or institutions in Washington state.

You alluded to your staff size.

And that reminds me, I just want to, I'm not pushing you for exact numbers because I know it's a big department, but I remember and during the budget process, the budget process in the legislature, there were some talks about cuts, some furloughs, layoffs.

How did that all end up?

Did you end up keeping your same staff size or you down a little?

Up a little?

Where did we settle on that?

We're at the same staff size.

So there were some budget proposals from the legislature, from the governor's office to reduce some of our funding.

You know, we do have a real serious budget crisis here that we need to continue to be mindful of.

But we took some cuts to our general fine.

But we weren't able we weren't, forced to cut people.

We had to change some of our programs and move some money around for other purposes.

But we remain the same size, and that's because of all the important work that we're doing across the state.

And all of our affirmative work is funded by the work that we do on behalf of the people.

So when we bring a consumer protection case or an antitrust case and we recover penalties and funds, that's the money that we use to continue to do the affirmative cases, including the federal cases.

To an outside observer with me just kind of looking at the, the palette of things that are being litigated, the common theme, really, it's not a hard and fast rule, but the common theme is federal funding money that the state of Washington is receiving in a big pot for a bunch of different programs and all the things that we received money for it.

I think a total something my notes say, like, $27 billion in the last fiscal year, about a third of the state budget is federal money.

So what is the argument when it comes to stopping those funds and saying, you know something you're not doing the way things we want things to be done.

We don't like the I whatever it is.

What is the argument that you're making that the executive doesn't have that power?

That no, it's Congress with the power of the purse to break that legal argument open for me a little bit.

Well, the common theme is whether the conduct is illegal or not.

I mean, that is the tie that binds all of our cases together, regardless of the substantive area, is when the president or his administration is acting unconstitutionally or acting illegally.

And that's usually because they're ignoring, state sovereignty.

They're ignoring the separation of powers.

They're ignoring the fact that Congress has authorized certain money to come to Washington state.

You know, it's one thing we should all have a robust disagreement about policy, and we should have debates, and we should work through our elected representatives to work those out.

But just because Donald Trump comes in and has a different idea about the types of programs we fund, he still has to work with Congress.

And the fact that he's ignored congressional power, Supreme Court precedent and state sovereignty.

Those are the general underlying issues that we litigate about.

But substantively, it's been sort of two big buckets.

One, it's pure what I would categorize as civil rights issues.

You know, our very first case is was challenging the president's illegal order around birthright citizenship, trying to rewrite the Constitution.

When it comes to how do you define how you become American in this country, that's illegal.

It's unconstitutional.

It's counter to at least four Supreme Court cases, and it really gets to the fabric of who we are as a country.

And so we litigated in that case.

But the vast majority in terms of numbers has been opposing illegal funding cuts.

And we are a target of the administration, like so many states in this country, because of our work supporting LGBTQ people, environmental policy, D-I support for undocumented people in Washington.

And so take me to law school then, because that was my next question about those sovereignty issues.

Take me to law school.

Why shouldn't executive power trump state power?

Well, it does in certain areas, and executive power absolutely has more authority in certain areas.

But we still have three separate co-equal branches of government.

And so a good example is Congress authorized funding to Washington state and many other states to fund electric vehicle vehicle infrastructure programs to build up the charging stations all up and down the West Coast.

Because we are, whether we like it or not, going to an economy and going to a transportation transportation system that relies on electric vehicles, that was authorized by Congress, it was money appropriate to Washington, California, Oregon, many states.

President Trump came in and simply canceled that.

We just can't do that.

Congress passed a bill, a law authorizing money.

We relied on that promise from Congress and that money that we were guaranteed to get.

And if the president wanted to change that, then he should go to Congress and say, no, I have a different idea.

Here's my proposal, or we're going to reduce funding or change funding.

But because he simply ignored Congress and steamrolled them and they don't really put up much resistance right now, we needed to litigate because we had relied on that promise from Congress, and that's why it's illegal.

So here we have, what the Trump administration wants to do, Washington state policy with the people of the state who have voted and indicated that they want to do, we're in court over this entire thing.

Most of it involving boatloads of money.

When you get down to it, that leads me, I guess, naturally, to another large question.

Do you assess are we in a constitutional crisis in this country?

Well, you know, I get asked that question all the time, and I think it's a very valid question.

And people should be asking and for, you know, the first six months or so, I would have said, absolutely not.

And that is because, you know, in the vast majority of cases that we bring, they do something we find illegal.

We litigate, we go to court, lawyers on both sides show up, judges make decisions.

And for the most part, the administration was following those decisions.

And I think for the most part, they continued to follow those decisions.

There have been other cases where I've seen where it looks to me like the president or his administration is simply ignoring judicial orders, particularly in the immigration context.

But in most of those cases, we weren't involved.

And so I'm not as familiar with all the intricacies of those cases.

But for the most part, I think the system is working the way it should.

I am increasingly, less confident in that, and not necessarily because of our cases, but because of what I view as really an abuse of power, authoritarianism coming from the white House.

You know, even in just the last few days, we're seeing a lot of, crackdown on things like free speech, freedom of expression and things that you just would never have contemplated, not simply from the president, but from the attorney general of the United States and some of the things that she has said and done today.

You know, and there was a moment a few months ago, and I grew up professionally in the Department of Justice.

I have a lot of respect and admiration for that agency.

There was a moment a few months ago where A.G.

Bondi talked about finding and rooting out people that disagreed with the president.

This is from the most powerful law enforcement figure in America.

And the fact that she would say that, you know, hunting people down in their jobs because of their political beliefs and, you know, because there's so much of that coming out of the administration, it would made a blip in the news.

And then we moved on.

Yeah.

And those are the types of things that make me worried, about what we're seeing from from the white House.

So here we are with this, with this increasing concern that you have as you see what's going on.

I guess the next question that flows out of that is who or what institution is responsible for for letting this happen for or for stopping it?

Is it the body politic?

Who who do we point the finger at and say, step up?

I have my opinion.

What's yours?

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's easy to point the finger and blame, right?

And, I'm very reluctant to do that.

You know, I'm a I'm a Democrat.

I believe in our democratic principles.

But we have a lot of problems that we need to solve collaboratively.

You know, it would be nice if we had leadership in DC that was talking about what are the things that we can solve together.

Well, Congress, isn't it?

Well, it's Congress, certainly from my perspective, not doing their job.

At the end of the day, it's people, though, you know, we have the power of the people to elect our representatives, to elect our president, to hold those people accountable for following our wishes.

And we also have an obligation outside of politics, just in our day to day lives, to continue to lead with love and honesty and, you know, community.

And it is very easy in this moment to feel like we can't talk with people that we disagree with.

And as much as we focus on DC, I would always remind people that the things that we most care about, worry about, think about.

Those decisions are being made in our city hall and our county government, our state capital, and there's a lot of impact that we can have there.

But it's also how we just show up in our schools, in our churches, in our communities, you know, do we help our friends and neighbors and people that we don't know?

And that's what's going to be important moving forward.

And that provides a nice segue into another 30,000ft question.

I know that you're the attorney general and you probably don't even take a look at this, or maybe you haven't even thought about it, but I want to propose it to you.

With this division and the importance of our local ties and who we associate with and how we treat each other, and how we come to consensus on thorny issues, are you at all concerned about what's being described as sort of the great sword in this country?

Whereas if I don't want my AG pursuing 37 lawsuits against the Trump administration, I'm moving to Idaho.

And if I'm in Idaho and there are certain things I want because I have a son or daughter who's identifies as LG, T, BQ, and I need an environment where I can operate, a little more in the corner.

I got to move to Washington.

Is is that a threat that you see to our democracy?

And what role, if any, does the law and how we codify behaviors and policies play into that?

This is this is your master's thesis here in the law.

But you're a Harvard guy, so I thought I'd take advantage of it.

You know, I first I think to a certain extent that's always happened, right?

We moved to places, neighborhoods, communities where we feel like we're represented, where our values are appreciated.

And, I think now, given our social media age, given how pervasive politics seems to be in our day to day lives, that people are much more aware of those differences.

And I certainly know that there are people moving to various places because of those issues.

I still think it's a fairly small migration.

Both directions at the end of the day would be very unfortunate if we had states whose political identities were so locked in and ingrained where people wouldn't feel comfortable.

Expressing their viewpoints.

But, you know, as you know, like if I am a parent of a child who's LGBTQ or if I'm living in a state that disregards my humanity, and I do think we are seeing laws passed in states where you're not only talking about policy or political differences, you're talking about an erasure of humanity.

If I am someone contemplating having a child, and I'm living in a state that doesn't have the type of health care that I need, or access to abortion or doing things like providing safe vaccines in my state, I would make those decisions like, I can't live here anymore.

You know, the state of Florida is no longer going to require childhood vaccines.

It can't be good for a more perfect union.

Look, I'm not a doctor.

Yeah, and I don't understand how a state would make that decision, but I would not begrudge anybody living in Florida thinking about.

But that's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

Contemplating making that move and fracture further fracturing the body politic.

Yeah.

And I again, I don't know how many people are actually uprooting physically.

What I'm more concerned about is how we communicate and interact in the state that we choose to live in.

Are we shutting off dialog, or are we only getting news and information from our small bubbles of people who agree with us?

You know, it is hard because when you're facing criticism or attacks or engaging with people that you know are opposing some of the things that you believe in, it is hard to lean into that.

But I think it is more important than ever in this state.

Conservatives and Republicans feel that way.

They don't feel they're represented.

They don't feel they have any hope.

They're they're underwater politically.

Is that a good thing or.

No?

We need a loyal opposition.

We need to have we need to have those ideas kicked around or no, this is a good thing because the right side is winning.

How do you look at it?

Well, I think, you know, for me, I certainly believe in what the democratic principles generally are.

We have a lot of faults.

I'm not 100% on board with all the sort of the larger policy objectives.

And so I certainly want to advance those in the most as possible, because I think we are talking about things that get at the root of what makes America great, what makes our country safe, what makes Washington State strong.

But I think we need to continue to have those debates.

And I want to be an elected officer who is always willing to gauge, always willing to hear opposing viewpoints.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

It's not personal.

It's always going to be professional.

And so I will always lean into those, you know, and I sometimes I'm, I'm troubled by the loyal opposition because they don't seem to want to really have legit policy debates.

You know, if you go to this state Republican, Twitter account, the number of things that they call me personally, Twitter, I don't think you can look at Twitter as a barometer of anything.

Right?

No, but it's it is it is the official count of the state parties, you know, and when they are referring to me as a Marxist or a communist, which is just laughable, it's really hard to engage, you know, it's hard to have those substantive debates.

And I think it's unfortunate that so much of our public persona, our social media persona has become who can be the nastiest.

Yeah.

You know, I try to find the joy and humor as much as possible as I can and that.

But I want to have an opposition.

I have friends and colleagues who don't agree with me on a whole host of things, and we can have robust debates.

But I want that party to be strong because I think the final product is better when there is a robust debate.

In our last six minutes here, I want to go through some of the just bullet point items litigation.

We went through all of them.

We'd have to preempt every program tonight.

That's why we have a website and go go to midnight, but just want to hit a couple of them.

We talked before we started taping on on Hanford.

I know you just started looking at this, but they're talking about, I mean, after what, 30 years of building the vitrification plant over there?

Yeah.

About not processing, hazardous waste.

My gosh, what are you thinking about that what your response to D.o.e.. Where do you go?

Well, I think like the governor, we were both fairly surprised to see the federal government appear to back away from the agreement that we've had that's been in process now for 30 years.

The tripartite agreement between the federal government, US, and the impacted parties is very important.

It is my obligation on behalf of the state to make sure that we enforce those orders and enforce that agreement.

And so we will look very closely at any retreat from that and make sure that we're protecting Washington's Washingtonians.

Another big one of the bullet points here, suing DHS over the cancellation of funds, that help shelter migrants with pending asylum or immigration cases worth about 4 million bucks.

I mean, some of these are relatively small dollars.

But to that particular agency, you know, obviously, it's crucial Washington state put up $25 million toward this.

And the nonprofits and the agencies that were coming in to support were supposed to be reimbursed out of that find.

Of course, they're left high and dry.

But, you know, the counterfactual to that is, shouldn't we have to foot the bill if we want to be a sanctuary state?

I mean, what's the right answer there?

Well, the right answer is to make sure we follow the law.

And if we see the administration retreat from their legal obligations or from congressional, approved funding, then we need to hold them accountable.

I continue to have that policy debate going forward.

Another big one is the loss of tax subsidy subsidies for the ACA.

This is a huge one.

You know, rates are going to go up substantially for a lot of people.

And actually to some people that won't be able to afford it will end up without health care.

The exchange they're talking about losing something like 10 million in revenue with $100 million of uncompensated care, landing on hospitals and uninsured costs.

So a lot of the smaller rural hospitals are talking about being in some trouble.

So, you know, here's another devil's advocate problem or thing I'll propose.

We've got this tiny fraction of the population when it comes to gender affirming care, holding up funding for this kind of impact on the health of Washingtonians.

I know you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, you folks are on your own because we need the money.

That doesn't sound good, right?

But we are.

We're we're saying no to a lot of money.

Well, the federal government's making that decision.

It's not us changing our policies or our priorities.

It's the federal government retreating from what their obligations are.

And we're going to continue to make sure that we provide health care for the people that need it and follow Washington state law.

And so if we're seeing adverse effects of that, it's on.

I would lay the blame on the administration from changing course.

And as you know, this is going to make people less healthy.

It's going to lead to increased medical expenses.

The Congress over many, many years had a robust debate and litigation around the Affordable Care Act.

Our system has been working well, and we want to make sure we continue to provide those benefits for people here.

Another lawsuit, is regarding FEMA's Brook program and, shameless promotion here for me.

We were running a special that we shot this summer called, fire on the horizon.

And it has a substantial, impact at just the wrong time.

I think when it comes to climate and some of the some of the areas that we're developing and things when it comes to wildfire, prevention, thought about what are your thoughts about the impacts of those cuts?

And again, this is money Congress approved, right.

You're trying to get.

Yeah.

No, it falls into that same course of actions that we were talking about earlier.

I mean, my job is to protect my state and enforce the law.

And when we see Congress and or the administration doing things that are harming us, we need to act.

And, you know, whether we like it or not, we have a climate crisis here.

Things are not getting better in many ways, are getting worse, I think exacerbated by some of the conduct we're seeing from Washington DC now.

But we have communities all across Washington, particularly coastal communities and many of eastern Washington communities.

They rely on that funding to protect the environment, to prepare for some of these natural disasters.

And when that money is illegally just cut, we can either just sit on our hands and do nothing and just say, or we have to deal with the consequences, or we can fight back and make sure that we're protecting and enforcing the law.

And that is important not only for the substance, but for the you know, what it means for to have the rule of law in this country.

Last 60s here, as we head into election season, vote by mail, of course, was made controversial by the Trump administration and remains there.

He wants to to challenge that and challenge states that are that are doing vote by mail.

What is is there any litigation?

I think there is some litigation on that.

What is the status of that litigation?

Might it be, acted upon prior to this election or what's going on with that?

So we're litigating over the the president's first executive order that purported to try to change some of our voting systems.

Every state's a little bit different.

Washington, Oregon are actually very similar.

So we're co litigating that case with them because, you know, if there's a lot of debate about some of the cases that were involved in when it comes to voting, it is very clear states have the ability to control their own election systems.

The president cannot change those.

Washington state has one of the highest voter participations in the nation in general elections.

I think it's over 80%.

Our system has been audited and checked.

It's very secure.

There's no reason to change our system.

And the president doesn't like it because he has all sorts of wild theories about election insecurity.

He still claims he won the 2020 election.

And we have a really important midterm coming with no evidence proffered, by the way.

None.

No, I mean, he's lying.

I, I don't want to, you know, begrudge this, but the president is lying.

He continues to lie.

The fact that he lied so repeatedly, I think, is, for me, the thing that makes me most sad about what we're seeing from Washington, DC.

But when it comes to voting, it is, you know, the wind, the door to democracy for so many people.

We need to encourage more voting, not try to limit it, but states get to decide that, not Washington DC.

Great conversation.

Nick Brown, thanks so much for coming in northwest.

No, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

If you're a true blue progressive, Nick Brown is hitting every mark, adding legal teeth to the resistance.

But if you're a moderate or a conservative, there's still something in this for you.

And that is what is shaping up to be a titanic battle between the executive and judiciary branches, with a heavy dose of states rights thrown in.

The bottom line the founders put Congress in the primary position from day one, but a critical mass of the members of that body walked away starting decades ago.

And so here we are.

I hope this program got you thinking the talking.

You can find this program on the web at kbtc.org, stream it through the PBS app or listed on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest.

Now until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

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