Hours after joining 22 other states in filing a lawsuit aimed at President Donald Trump’s cuts to health services, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul told a City Club of Chicago crowd Tuesday that the legal community needs to stand up against what he described as intimidation and unlawful acts by the White House.
“If people think they’re being safe by being silent, by being complicit, you’re wrong,” Raoul said, after referencing recent executive actions taken by the Trump administration against the law firm Perkins Coie and others.
Raoul’s office has signed on to a flurry of lawsuits and legal fillings against the administration, including Tuesday’s action against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its controversial new head, Robert. F. Kennedy Jr. The suit was filed in federal court in Rhode Island by a coalition of plaintiffs representing 23 states and the District of Columbia.
Raoul has been a part of close to a dozen lawsuits since the start of the Trump administration, as the president’s executive orders come at a “fast and furious” pace, the AG said Tuesday.
Speaking with reporters after the City Club event, Raoul said Trump “absolutely has a right to pursue” policy changes through Congress and other legal actions.
“But for funds that have been appropriated, for funds where there may be a contract already in place, you just can’t rewind the tape,” Raoul said, referring specifically to the cuts challenged in Tuesday’s lawsuit. As it stands now, the Trump administration’s action will have “devastating harms” on people who need services, he said.
The Trump administration last week announced it was slashing more than $11 billion in federal funding to state and local health departments and other health organizations nationwide.
HHS began serving employees dismissal notices on Tuesday that could eventually total 10,000 layoffs, The Associated Press reported.
The cuts could mean “hundreds of millions of dollars” lost in Illinois, according to the attorney general’s office.
In explaining the decision to cut federal funding, HHS has said it “will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”
While the grants were authorized and appropriated by Congress in legislation related to COVID-19, they didn’t solely address the pandemic and instead supported a variety of public health measures, according to the lawsuit against HHS.
The funding cuts that the coalition sued over came with no warning or “legally valid explanation,” according to the attorney general’s office. State health agencies were using the funds for issues such as infectious disease management, mental health and substance abuse services and emergency preparedness, the office said.
The state AGs and governors are seeking a temporary restraining order against the grant terminations.
HHS declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Additionally, the Trump administration slashed $125 million in COVID-related grants to the Chicago Department of Public Health, the city announced last week. That amount is separate from the funding cut to the state health department, a spokesperson at the city said.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said Tuesday that “no decision has been made just yet” on the over 100 jobs that are jeopardized as a result.
“Those cuts are, they’re harsh,” Johnson said in an unrelated City Hall news conference. “The number of people who will be impacted who rely upon our public health system, it’s going to hurt us. … As far as any legal action, of course we’re exploring all different ladders to ensure that the tax dollars that we send as a city to the federal government, that we get a return on those investments.”
The cuts will affect 22 CDPH contracts, which means the department “will no longer have the resources to be able to investigate critical surveillance data and immunization coverage that allows monitoring and rapid response to outbreaks,” according to last week’s announcement.
Given that several of the lawsuits that Raoul has been involved in resulted in some of the Trump administration’s actions being blocked, the attorney general said it was “premature” to say the country was in a “constitutional crisis,” as some observers have argued.
“Just going to this place of declaring constitutional crisis and shrugging your shoulders and saying there’s nothing we can do, we’re doomed — I don’t take that approach,” he said.
Raoul’s plea to the legal community, at a lunch event attended by state lawmakers and other civic leaders, also came after the Trump administration filed an executive order aimed at punishing law firm Perkins Coie for its connections to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
A federal judge has blocked portions of that order.
Amid the legal activity against what Raoul has described as federal overreach, as well as an expected retreat by the federal government from enforcement in certain areas, the attorney general is asking the Illinois state legislature for about $15 million in additional general revenue funds during this spring’s budget negotiations.
Asked about his political future at the City Club event, Raoul downplayed any ambitions to run for U.S. Senate, as Sen. Dick Durbin continues to mull whether to run for another term, asking the media to “take me off those lists.”
There’s a greater opportunity to make an impact on a “day-to-day basis” in the AG’s office, he said.
“I don’t want to be mayor, either,” Raoul added.
The Associated Press contributed.
