On Thursday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes held a briefing to announce her lawsuit against the Trump Administration.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Okay, we're going to have to fix this a little bit.
00:27She touched her mic!
00:41Need more tape?
00:42That's why I put mine on top.
01:09Okay, good morning everyone, I appreciate you joining us today.
01:30Yesterday the U.S. Department of Education laid off 1,300 employees, nearly half of its
01:40workforce.
01:41This is not just an administrative shake-up, this is part of a deliberate effort, Murphy's
01:54Law at work today.
01:55This is not just an administrative shake-up, this is part of a deliberate effort to dismantle
01:56public education in this country.
01:57And it is going to hurt students, families, and schools, especially in rural areas that
01:58rely on federal support.
01:59And let us be clear, there is no way that this is going to work.
02:00This is not just an administrative shake-up, this is part of a deliberate effort to dismantle
02:01public education in this country.
02:02And it is going to hurt students, families, and schools, especially in rural areas that
02:03rely on federal support.
02:04And let us be clear, there is no way that this is going to work.
02:05This is not just an administrative shake-up, this is part of a deliberate effort to dismantle
02:06public education in this country.
02:07And it is going to hurt students, families, and schools, especially in rural areas that
02:08rely on federal support.
02:09And let us be clear, there is absolutely no way that the Department of Education can perform
02:29its legal obligations with half the workforce.
02:35The federal law requires this agency to oversee student loans, enforce civil rights protections,
02:41support students with disabilities, and administer billions of dollars in funding to schools.
02:49You cannot fire half of the people responsible for these programs and pretend that nothing
02:59will change.
03:01That is not streamlining, that is sabotage, and that is why I once again sued the Trump
03:10administration.
03:11This action is another violation of the separation of powers in the United States Constitution
03:17and the Administrative Procedures Act, and we are seeking a preliminary and permanent
03:25injunction against it for those reasons.
03:29If the President wants to reform the Department of Education, he can do so through Congress
03:37and as the Constitution requires.
03:41And let's be clear, this isn't just about job losses in Washington, D.C., this is about
03:49what happens to real people in real communities when you've got the agency responsible for
03:58keeping our education system running.
04:03The Department of Education is responsible for health grants, work-study, and student
04:10loans, among other things.
04:13With fewer employees handling financial aid, students who rely on federal assistance to
04:22attend college will face delays, confusion, and uncertainty about their futures.
04:30The individuals, there are a number of programs who are going to be affected by this, and
04:41I want to talk about those programs.
04:46The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, the IDEA requires that the federal
04:58government fund 40% of the extra costs of special education.
05:09It has never even come close to meeting that promise.
05:14And now, instead of fixing that failure and really supporting students with special needs,
05:21the Trump administration is making it worse with fewer staff, fewer resources, and more
05:29students left behind.
05:32Title I funding helps schools with high numbers of low-income students, many of them in rural
05:41areas.
05:42Cutting staff means less oversight and less money reaching the schools that need it most.
05:50Approximately 135 of Arizona's 223 public school districts are in rural Arizona.
06:04They serve about 35% of all students in the state and over 23% of Arizona's rural students
06:12live in poverty.
06:15Rural communities depend heavily on their local public schools to provide many, many
06:22services beyond education.
06:25Unlike urban and suburban districts, rural districts are not able to rely on tax credits,
06:33bond overrides for funding, and that makes them even more reliant on federal grants and
06:41Title I funding.
06:42And I really want to emphasize that.
06:44We're talking about a dramatic impact as a result of this executive order on our rural
06:53school districts who really are at a disadvantage when it comes to being able to rely on bond
07:00overrides to fund schools.
07:02So they more disproportionately rely on this federal funding.
07:08Teacher training grants provide professional development to help schools recruit and retain
07:14educators.
07:15We have already seen some of these grants go away, which has led to teacher layoffs
07:24here in Arizona.
07:25Just last week at the town hall that I co-hosted with my fellow attorneys general, we heard
07:33directly from an Osborne district teacher who will be laid off at the end of the school
07:39year because of the DOJ cuts, and these firings will only make that situation worse.
07:46What other functions of the Department of Education are at risk as a result of this
07:52action being taken by the Trump administration?
07:55Let me name a few really big ones.
07:59Vocational rehabilitation programs, which help people with disabilities train for and
08:07find jobs.
08:09Adult education and literacy grants fund GED programs, workplace training, and English
08:19language instruction.
08:22Career and technical education programs help students get job certifications for in-demand
08:29trades and industries.
08:32These are critical programs for working adults and students looking for good-paying jobs.
08:41Defunding them means fewer opportunities for economic mobility.
08:47CTE programs in Arizona help students gain skills in the construction trades, engineering,
08:55plumbing, and nursing, among others.
08:59They are a pipeline to good-paying jobs for students across our state.
09:04The Office for Civil Rights within DOE investigates discrimination in schools with fewer employees
09:14to enforce the law.
09:16Students facing discrimination and harassment will have fewer protections.
09:21The Department of Education runs the nation's report card, which tracks student achievement.
09:30Without that data, we have no way of measuring how our schools and our students are doing.
09:43The Department of Education isn't just some office building in Washington, D.C.
09:50It helps keep Arizona's public schools running.
09:55It ensures students with disabilities get an education and helps families afford to
10:03send their kids to college.
10:07Defunding it and indiscriminately firing half of its employees doesn't fix problems.
10:15It creates a whole lot of nuance.
10:18It hurts students, weakens our rural schools, and takes away opportunities from the people
10:27who need them the most.
10:30And let's not pretend that this is about making government more efficient.
10:35It's not.
10:36It is destruction.
10:38It isn't about better education policy.
10:42It is about tearing down public education by those who want to privatize it for profit.
10:52That is what this is fundamentally about.
10:55And as Arizona's Attorney General and a proud graduate of Arizona's public schools,
11:03including Prescott High School, I am not going to stand by and let that happen.
11:10So I would be happy now to take any questions that you have about the lawsuit that we filed,
11:18but I wanted to make those initial points.
11:20A.G. Mays, Superintendent Horne supports the move, says that he'd like to control federal
11:25dollars to Arizona schools.
11:27How realistic is it that his office could take on all these services?
11:30It is absolutely, utterly absurd.
11:33I saw those comments that he made on KTAR yesterday, and I couldn't believe it.
11:38Literally, my jaw dropped and I almost fell on the floor.
11:43The Arizona Department of Education is already massively underfunded.
11:49It is already incapable of even competently administering the voucher program.
11:57And the idea that Tom Horne and the Department of Education is going to be capable of administering
12:04all of the programs that I just laid out is ludicrous and ridiculous.
12:12So I don't know why he said that Tom Horne knows better.
12:17He's been the superintendent long enough to know better, but that's not what's going to happen.
12:23What's going to happen here, and we're already seeing some evidence of this, is that the
12:31U.S. Department of Education has been gutted and has lost basically half of its workforce,
12:39and the programs that they administer are not going to be administrable.
12:47So we're going to see students have problems accessing student loan programs.
12:57We're right up on a time when kids and parents who are going to college are about to apply for student loans,
13:06and now we have a U.S. Department of Education that has been cut in half.
13:12I mean, and by the way, this is not exactly a bloated agency.
13:21We're talking about an agency that has a little more than 4,000 employees.
13:26I mean, my office has 1,000 employees.
13:29This is a federal agency that handles all of these programs for the entire country
13:34and for all of these school districts in Arizona.
13:37So, no.
13:38And what I suspect is really going on here is what they want to do is basically block grant,
13:47although they haven't technically said this yet, who knows what their plan is,
13:51but I think they probably want to try to privatize all this, block grant it back to all the states,
13:57and try to have it become a part of the voucher program.
14:02But, again, what happens to our rural school district?
14:06What happens to our parents who have children with special needs?
14:10Just think about that.
14:12A lot of this funding, so much of this funding goes to, number one,
14:17Title I schools who are serving kids who are low income,
14:22and number two, it goes to help pay for teachers and aides for students with special needs.
14:30Kids living with autism.
14:32If I were a parent with a child with autism in Arizona right now, in public schools,
14:39I'd be really worried about this.
14:41Because the funding for their teachers, for the special needs teachers in our school districts,
14:48comes from the Department of Education.
14:51And so, so many reasons that it's worrisome.
14:57So, anyway, yes.
14:59This is the seventh lawsuit that you and your office have filed against the Trump administration.
15:04Is this taking away from the job that you and your office have been tasked with?
15:10Yeah, it is absolutely not.
15:14So, what I would say is that, as you know, we are very busy in other areas.
15:25Just yesterday, we filed a lawsuit against a number of entities in the real estate industry for alleging consumer fraud.
15:35My office has seized more fentanyl in my first two years of office than my predecessor seized in his last two years of office.
15:46And I could go down the line.
15:49As you guys know, you've been in this room enough times to know that we are really active.
15:55And I have a fantastic social general's office who are handling these lawsuits.
16:01The other thing I would say is we're working in tandem with other states and other state AGs.
16:08And so the work gets divvied up and we're able to handle it that way.
16:13But, you know, is this my preference to have to be suing the Trump administration now seven times?
16:20No.
16:22I wish the President of the United States would follow the Constitution and the law.
16:26But I took an oath. I took an oath.
16:29I raised my right hand and I put my left hand on a Bible.
16:32And I said, it's my job to uphold.
16:35I promised to the people of this state to uphold the United States and the Arizona Constitution and to protect them.
16:43And that's what all of these lawsuits have been about.
16:46They're about protecting the people of Arizona.
16:49And in this case, it's about protecting the students and parents of this state who are really going to be devastated if this action is allowed to stand.
17:01Hopefully we will stop it.
17:03We're seeking a preliminary injunction against it.
17:08But it's really, really important.
17:11How many states are joining you in this lawsuit?
17:15I believe the count was 20.
17:1820. 20 plus us.
17:2020 plus us, so that would be 21 total states are on just a particular lawsuit.
17:27Other questions and answers?
17:30I have a question not pertaining to this, but I was hoping you could answer, Senator.
17:33Everett Burr has requested an audit from the state legislature into the opioid settlement funds.
17:38Specifically, the more than $100 million allocated to the Department of Corrections over concerns about those funds being misused.
17:44Would you support an audit into the opioid settlement funds?
17:47And do you have any concerns that those funds at the DOC are being misused and not used for the funds that they're intended for?
17:54So to answer the second question first, yes, I'm absolutely still extremely concerned that the opioid funding that was swept from my office last year is being misspent.
18:06I believe that it is.
18:08That's why I personally asked the Department of Corrections for more information about how they're spending the money.
18:17The way they have given it to us for the dashboard that we operate was insufficient and inadequate the first time they gave it to us.
18:27So we asked the governor's office to provide proper documentation.
18:34So I support Senator Burr's call for an audit.
18:41I hope it's an audit by an entity that is truly independent and something we are interested in.
18:49We're coming up on what could be, frankly, a constitutional crisis about this because I have no intention of allowing this money to once again be misspent.
19:02It is clear from both the governor's budget and the legislature's budget that they intend to try to sweep another $40 million this year.
19:13And I think it's gross.
19:19I think it's offensive to the people of Arizona who desperately need detox centers in their communities,
19:25who desperately need more Narcan in their communities,
19:28who desperately need education and rehabilitation programs.
19:33This is about saving lives.
19:35And stuffing hundreds of millions of dollars into a budget backfill for the Department of Corrections is not saving lives.
19:46You know, I've got to go back and look at that.
19:51I'll get you to follow up with that.
19:53They did provide additional detail.
19:55It didn't change my mind about the fact that I think they spent the money inappropriately.
20:02And so I've got some serious decisions to make.
20:05I mean, I watch this space.
20:08We are actively discussing this and what our next steps are going to be.
20:15It's not off the table.
20:17I feel that strongly about this.
20:20Well, what happens when Senators fly?
20:24What do you do?
20:25I mean, is anybody else stepping up to the plate?
20:28With Barbara Wendler?
20:30No, with Senator Birch.
20:32Oh!
20:33Yeah, well, I would say I don't think she's the only person in this Senate that's concerned or in the legislature that shares my concern about this.
20:44This is something that I have spoken with the Democratic leadership about already.
20:51I had a meeting with them probably a month or so ago.
20:55I'm going to continue to talk to them.
20:57I'm going to continue to ask them to hold firm and to not support any budget that includes a sweep of these opioid funds again.
21:07And I'll talk to any Republican.
21:11I think there's Republicans out there who would like to see this money spent appropriately in their districts.
21:17I mean, keep in mind, we are losing lives in the individual districts of all these legislators,
21:23many of whom, for some reason, it seems okay to allow the Department of Corrections to sweep this money.
21:30It's not okay for me.
21:32Do you, by chance, in filing your lawsuit, know how much the Department of Education gets from the federal government?
21:38Yeah, I was just going to – thanks for that question.
21:41So federal funds make up about 19% of public school funding in Arizona,
21:50and that means that one in every $5 that we spend on education is supplied by the U.S. Department of Education.
22:01Arizona received $2,500 in federal funding for every K-12 student.
22:11And then I think the other thing to note is that Arizona schools receive a higher share of funding from federal sources,
22:24including the Department of Education, compared to other states.
22:28So we received the 7th most in total federal funding when compared to all other states.
22:40We were the 7th highest recipient, in other words, of U.S. Department of Education funding.
22:46Of all U.S. funding.
22:48Of all U.S. funding, sorry. Thank you.
22:50Of all U.S. funding, among all states.
22:53So we actually get more back from the Department of Education than we send to the federal government, proportionally, and relative to other states.
23:08And then, last statistic, in all, Arizona received $2.8 billion in federal funding for the 21-22 school year.
23:21And in the 2021-2020 school year, Arizona had over 1,150 schools that received Title I funding.
23:34So this is particularly important for Arizona.
23:38Is that number, the 19% statistic, is that inclusive of all the schools, including universities, or is that just default?
23:45We'll follow up on that.
23:49Universities are also going to be impacted by this, especially as it has to do with student health funding.
24:00Some people might see these lawsuits as a way to disagree with the president or the president's administration.
24:10What would you say to people who believe that these lawsuits are just Democratic AG offices who are going against a Republican administration?
24:22Well, what I would say is, you know, it has absolutely nothing to do with politics.
24:28If Donald Trump were doing all of these things in the appropriate way, the AGs would have nothing to sue about.
24:38This is about upholding the rule of law.
24:42Donald Trump has every right to try to achieve his policy goals by going through Congress.
24:54What he doesn't have a right to do is violate the separation of powers.
25:00We have three branches of government in this country at the federal level.
25:06Congress, the legislative branch, the executive, and the judiciary.
25:12It's sort of civics 101, right?
25:15And the president does not have the authority, as we state in all of our lawsuits, to basically override Congress.
25:26And that's what he is doing by slashing and almost eliminating the Department of Education.
25:32The only branch of government that has the right to do that is Congress.
25:38And so it's my job and the job of every AG, frankly, both Democratic and Republican,
25:44I don't know why the Republicans aren't standing up for the Congressional branch,
25:49to uphold the Constitution and uphold the rule of law.
25:55And once we lose the rule of law, we will have lost our country.
26:01And so, you know, I think that is why we're seeing so many outraged Arizonans,
26:08so many people speaking out about this.
26:11I cannot tell you, well I could, I could probably calculate it for you,
26:15but we have had hundreds if not now thousands of people calling this office,
26:20saying, why is Elon Musk and Doge getting access to my social security numbers inside the Social Security Administration?
26:31Why are they getting access to my personal data inside the Treasury Department,
26:36which, by the way, we won a TRO against.
26:39So we were able to block Elon Musk inside the Treasury Department.
26:43We have another lawsuit, the Acquaintance Clause lawsuit,
26:46that would seek to block him and kick him out of all the other federal agencies,
26:50where who knows what he's doing.
26:52Who knows whether he's hoovering up the private data of Arizonans and Americans inside all of these agencies.
27:00And so, Arizonans are really, really concerned.
27:06I did a town hall last night, a tele-town hall with Congresswoman Ansari,
27:10that 13,000 people got on.
27:1413,000 people got on a town hall concerned about what's going on in their country and in their state,
27:21and whether or not they might be about to lose Medicaid, Social Security, or Medicare,
27:28because they're on the verge in Congress of passing a budget that could slash any or all of those things.
27:37And so, you know, that is the kind of thing that I think Arizonans are so very concerned about.
27:45Does that include people across all party lines?
27:48Yeah. I mean, trust me, we're getting, the calls would very much appear that we're getting at least,
27:55and the people who turned out for that town hall,
27:57we had more than 400 people turn out for the town hall that the other AGs came to,
28:02appeared to me to be pretty equally divided.
28:05Republicans, Independents, and Democrats.
28:08This thing is affecting people of all political stripes.
28:12Let me put it to you in terms of this lawsuit.
28:16These cuts by the Department of Education, or at the Department of Education, as I mentioned,
28:23are going to disproportionately impact rural Arizona.
28:26Who lives in rural Arizona?
28:28Republicans live in rural Arizona.
28:31I know. I'm from rural Arizona.
28:34I was born and raised in Yavapai County.
28:36And I spent most of my adult life as a Republican.
28:41And so the people who are going to be most dramatically impacted by this
28:47are rural school districts where the children of many Republicans go to school.
28:53And so I am fighting for Republicans just as hard as I am fighting for Democrats.
29:00Because it's every single Arizonan who is going to be impacted by these education cuts.
29:06Every single Arizonan, regardless of your political stripe.
29:10So it's not about politics.
29:13What is about politics, it would seem, is what Donald Trump is doing.
29:18It seems very ideologically driven to me.
29:21Because, for instance, the slashing of the Department of Education has been on the agenda
29:27of the Heritage Foundation and the Republicans for decades.
29:32But for decades, Republicans decided that they needed to follow the Constitution.
29:38It's just Donald Trump who has decided that he can just leapfrog right over the Constitution
29:49and leapfrog right over Congress.
29:51And so the attorneys general are going to continue to stand up for the law.
29:55I can only surmise at this point that you probably are getting all your ducks in a row
29:59for any lawsuits against Social Security cuts and Medicare cuts out of the ashes.
30:04Yeah, I mean, we're keeping a very close eye on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.
30:10We are seeing things happening inside the Social Security Administration
30:16that are very concerning related to DOJ.
30:18I just read reports yesterday.
30:22You probably have as well, indicating that DOJ has shut down
30:28or is trying to shut down the phone system inside Social Security,
30:32which would make it very, very difficult for our older Arizonans
30:37who don't have access to a computer to find out information about their Social Security payments.
30:43On last night's town hall, we had a number of seniors call in
30:49and very worried about their Social Security payments.
30:52And then if you look at the budget that the House passed in the last few days,
30:58it's unclear to me how they could actually pass that budget without slashing Medicaid
31:05or a couple of these other major programs.
31:08And if they succeed in this budget, how soon will these cuts go into effect?
31:13I don't know. That's a great question. I'm not sure.
31:17But it might not pass.
31:18Yeah, it may not pass. We'll see.
31:20I mean, remember, the Senate plays a role here.
31:23So we've got to keep our eyes on that over the next couple of days.
31:31The Senate, obviously, they've got to get to 60 votes to pass.
31:41And I passed some sort of resolution that would keep government open,
31:46but the House passed is obviously unacceptable
31:49and would allow Elon Musk to continue to engage in this kind of sledgehammer approach
31:56to cutting our government and destroying our Constitution.
32:00Any updates into the investigation into the ESA program
32:04and the couple of cases of people who have been indicted as well?
32:10Yeah, well, I mean, we have no real updates.
32:17We obviously have the two convictions, and one was resolved in a different way in court.
32:27But we can follow up with you.
32:29Yeah, they settled it that way.
32:31Last question.
32:33What would you say for people who are wondering what exactly these lawsuits are accomplishing?
32:40So what they're accomplishing is we are stopping some of the worst repercussions of the executive orders.
32:52We were able to stop the federal funding freeze,
32:58which would have had huge impacts on our state because we wanted TRO.
33:05That federal funding freeze, as you guys know, would have cut wheels on wheels, head start.
33:12It would have demolished my efforts to go after the Mexican drug cartels by defunding JAIDA.
33:18It actually defunded the police.
33:20It would have cut Phoenix Police Department by $39 million.
33:25It would have potentially eliminated funding for things like the raising of Roosevelt Dam,
33:37which is vital for our survival as a state.
33:40I mean, I could go on and on and on.
33:42Our being able to get a TRO against that, I think, saved what would have been cataclysmic cuts to the state of Arizona.
33:53The NIH lawsuit, we were able to stop, at least for now,
33:58the cuts to our universities that were doing critical research on things like cancer.
34:04That NIH action by President Trump would have meant that Banner Health would have had to stop doing its Alzheimer's research.
34:14That's what we're talking about.
34:17We're talking about human lives that will be forever impacted by these actions by Donald Trump.
34:25And that is why I'm fighting so hard.
34:28That is why we are going to continue to file these lawsuits to protect the state of Arizona.
34:35And I could go on and on and on and on.
34:38We were able to stop the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order, which was blatantly unconstitutional.
34:45And Donald Trump apparently thought he had the right to override Article 14, Section 1 of the United States Constitution with an executive order,
34:57which states that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States.
35:04And we got a TRO in that case from a Reagan-appointed judge who took 25 minutes to declare it blatantly unconstitutional.
35:13We also got a TRO, as I mentioned, against Elon Musk and Doge for infiltrating and getting inside of the Department of Treasury
35:24and getting access to people's personally identifying information.
35:27And I would add, the reason that I have said and used strong words about this being a coup against our country
35:35is because on at least once, but maybe twice, the Trump administration has actually violated several of these court orders from a federal judge.
35:47And that is a Rubicon that we have rarely, if ever, seen crossed by a United States president.
35:58And when a president starts ignoring the orders of federal judges, that is when we are in uncharted constitutional territory.
36:13And at the end of the day, these cases that we're filing are going to wind up at the United States Supreme Court.
36:22And at the end of the day, the United States Supreme Court is going to have to decide whether it still believes in America,
36:30whether it still believes in separation of powers, whether it still believes in the appointment clause,
36:37whether it still believes that we have a constitution in this country that governs the way we operate.
36:51So, ultimately, it's going to come down to the United States Supreme Court, and we'll see.
36:56I still believe in them.
36:57Thanks, everybody.
36:58Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.