On Monday, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D) said he was “just getting started” with legal actions against the Trump administration. He joined dozens of state officials to mark the beginning of Trump’s second month back in office.
“Has anybody here lost the will?” Tong asked them, to the resounding sound of “No.”
“This fight is on right now,” he replied.
Tong has joined other attorneys general in suing the Trump administration for their executive orders on birthright citizenship, gender-affirming care and the federal funding freeze.
“If we had not acted, we would not have a state budget,” Tong said. “And I shudder to think what would have happened to municipal budgets as a result, and I can only assume that my Republican colleagues would be content just to let it happen. So, one month in, this is where we are. This fight is just beginning.”
According to Tong, the funding freezes have stopped some cash flow to the state's transportation, energy, and environmental protection departments. But he said it’s hard to keep track of just how much money has been held up while the administration “floods the zone” with EOs.
“There's so much chaos because a lot of this data is being held by the federal government and Elon Musk and DOGE, and it's hard to keep up with it all,” Tong said.
State officials said they were working on a way for residents and businesses to report the financial impacts of the administration’s actions.
“The treasurer and I and OPM are currently working through a mechanism through which we could begin to try to total what that exact cost may be, and how people in the public can report that to us, so that we can have a full picture of what's going on that,” State Comptroller Sean Scanlon (D) said. “[That] would both inform our work and the work that the attorney general is doing, the work that the legislature will be doing.”
In fiscal year 2024, state agencies and municipalities received around $14 billion in federal grants.
At Monday’s event, Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas criticized the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which its sponsors say would stop non-citizens from voting — but Thomas said it would create unnecessary hurdles for eligible Americans.
The bill would ban online and mail-in voter registration and require people to bring their birth certificate or passport to the Registrar of Voters to prove their citizenship.
“That means married women who may have changed their last name after getting married, but not their birth certificate, oh no, don't show up at the registrar's office, you won't be eligible,” Thomas said.
“Let's think about young people away at college at age 18, thinking about registering and voting for the first time. ‘Oh, no, you better call home and get them to send you that birth certificate.’ That means voter registration drives on college campuses or community fairs would be eliminated,” She continued. “And let's just hope you have not had misfortune befall you, like a house fire or basement flood, and your documents are destroyed and there's an election coming. You're just out of luck.”
The act passed the House last summer but didn’t get called for a vote in the Senate. President Donald Trump has voiced his support for the legislation and would likely sign it into law.
