In order to challenge \u201crepressive federal actions,\u201d state governments need to lead the way, according to the speakers at Edley Center on Law & Democracy\u2019s symposium. The symposium looked into the upcoming book co-authored by UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, \u201cFight Back: How States Can Counter Authoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Held at Booth Auditorium, the symposium featured two panels of legal scholars and a fireside chat between Chemerinsky and Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never seen the extent of corruption that we\u2019re witnessing with regard to this president and this administration,\u201d Chemerinsky said at the event. \u201cIn this context, it\u2019s so important that state and local governments can step up and continue to step up to fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the primary ways to do that is by challenging unconstitutional federal actions \u2014 such as illegally terminating grants \u2014 in court, Chemerinsky said.<\/p>\n
Under Brown\u2019s leadership, Washington has filed 74 lawsuits against President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, challenging everything from tariffs to student loan caps.<\/p>\n
\u201c(I) very quickly realized that 90% of the things that I cared about, and just worried about as a resident of my state, were happening in my state capital,\u201d Brown said at the fireside chat. \u201cHow much taxes I pay, public safety, healthcare, education, traffic \u2014 the things that most of us spend most of our time thinking about \u2014 had nothing to do with Congress, and it had nothing to do with the presidency. It had almost everything to do with state government and local government.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Brown, state attorney generals are winning about 80% of their cases against the federal government. Still, Brown says suing the Trump administration is costly and time-consuming, something he said few states have the capacity to do.<\/p>\n
For Atasi Uppal, a former UC Berkeley Law lecturer, her motivation for attending the event, and concern of rising authoritarianism, stemmed from her family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have children. I\u2019m a mom, in addition to being an advocate. And, for me, the biggest instinct I have right now is to teach my kids to say something if they feel like what they\u2019re seeing \u2014 how they\u2019re seeing others be treated \u2014 is wrong,\u201d Uppal said. \u201cI think the seeds of that are so important to plant right now in our youngest generation because who knows how long the impacts of the last two Trump administrations will last.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In order to challenge \u201crepressive federal actions,\u201d state governments need to lead the way, according to the speakers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[179170,179171,75197,75196,179169,143,145,144,179168,27724,558],"class_list":["post-453415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-atasi-uppal","tag-booth-auditorium","tag-edley-center-on-law-democracy","tag-erwin-chemerinsky","tag-nick-brown","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-president-donald-trumps-administration","tag-uc-berkeley-law","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}