'The President Has Again Broken The Law': Peter Neronha Decries Trump Administration Education Grant Freezes

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In a press conference on Monday, Democratic Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha spoke about the Trump administration freezing education grants.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, A.G. Campbell. You know, Rhode Islanders ask me all the time, you know,

00:07how do I decide, how do we decide as a team? We've built a strong team here across our

00:13respective states in the District of Columbia. How do we decide when to bring an action against

00:17the Trump administration? And the answer to that question is really simple. The first

00:23question we ask ourselves is, has the president broken the law? If he has, have Rhode Islanders

00:28and Americans been harmed? That's the second question. The third question is, do we have

00:33legal standing to bring an action against the administration? And on the conduct here,

00:39this was not a decision that we really had to wrestle with. In fact, it was very simple,

00:46very simple, easy decision to make to bring this lawsuit. Plainly, the president has again

00:51broken the law. We've seen this story before where the president ignores the will of the Congress

00:58its principal power, the power that schoolchildren all across America learned and are learning

01:05today, the power of the purse. Only Congress can decide how our tax money is spent. The money that

01:15we as Americans send to Washington to be directed, to protect us, to support us. Only Congress can decide

01:23precisely how that money is spent. It's the president's job to faithfully execute the law,

01:29including the spending laws, the budgets passed by Congress. So we've seen the president violate this

01:35over and over and over again. We brought lawsuits, several of them right here in Rhode Island,

01:41where this lawsuit is also being brought, but elsewhere in Massachusetts and across the country,

01:47because the president simply just doesn't have that power. So clearly, he's violated the law.

01:52Has he harmed Rhode Islanders and the residents of our states and the District of Columbia? Of

01:57course he has. He's taken money out of the hands of educators and children to work toward some

02:03purpose, which is in some ways obvious, to allow him to be able to afford, they are affordable under

02:11any circumstance, the tax cuts he wants to give to rich Americans. But the effects that he will have

02:17on America as a whole by ignoring the importance of education in the public schools is incalculable.

02:26We know that our economy, the success of our economy, both in the present and long term,

02:32depends on the education of Americans and Rhode Islanders. And every step that the president takes

02:38to harm education harms not only individuals, but our overall economy. And of course, we have standing

02:45the third question to bring this action, because the president is taking money from our state budgets.

02:52It is impossible for states to effectively budget for an upcoming school year through their

03:02departments of education and through our departments of education to our local communities,

03:06when the president takes the football away from us, like Lucy in a Charlie Brown cartoon.

03:14So when this happens, as has happened before, we're going to bring actions. And frankly, we're going to

03:19win. We have yet to lose one of these funding cases, because what the president is doing is so

03:25palpably wrong. So I'm proud to stand with my colleagues from Colorado and California and Massachusetts

03:30and across this country and file this action in Rhode Island, where I have no doubt that we will be

03:36successful. And we will continue to fight for Rhode Islanders and Americans where the president

03:42violates the law in this way.

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