Transcript - Simon Rosenberg Interviews Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield

Simon Rosenberg:
Today, joining me is the Attorney General of Oregon, Dan Rayfield. Welcome, Mr. Attorney General.

Attorney General Rayfield:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Simon Rosenberg:
So listen, I wanted to start by saying, you know, we’ve interviewed six of your colleagues. I think one of the most important and least understood stories in American politics today is how you all have worked together… to become this powerful bulwark, very successful bulwark against the Trump administration’s authoritarian desires, as I call it, or fantasies. Can you just talk a little bit about how you’re all organized and what you think now looking back over this past year have been your most important victories?

AG Rayfield:
Yeah, I think as you think back over a year, and I think that’s where it all started on Inauguration Day, on January 20th of this last year, that’s real easy to look in a calendar and calculate those months and say, okay, Democratic attorneys general have been working incredibly hard in that time. I know the state of Oregon, our Department of Justice has been a part of 49 lawsuits. Pretty wild when you think about it. But that partnership and cooperation started much earlier than the inauguration day of the president. You had a president who was going around this entire country during an election cycle talking about all the things that he wanted to do, his vision for the country. The big problem with his vision is a lot of the things that he talked about, anybody who had a law degree could have told you, hey, that’s going to run afoul of our Constitution or pre-existing statutes. And so we had a lot of room to prepare as attorneys general across this country to be ready for that moment on inauguration day when he took office –– for all of those unconstitutional orders, those executive orders where he was trying to do a lot of various things that were the antithesis, I think, of what we really know America to be.

Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and so… all of you have hit the ground running. You had been organizing and meeting, and now you meet several times a week, I guess on Zoom, all together to plan strategy. Talk a little bit about how that works every day. I think it’s such an incredibly powerful story in the way that we have to organize ourselves differently to fight this fight that we’re in with Trump and his regime.

AG Rayfield:
Yeah, absolutely, Simon. So this started again prior to the election in 2024. Democratic attorneys general’s offices… we were all collaborating, having conversations, not only just amongst the Democratic attorneys general, but also amongst our staff to talk about what are the assets that we have individually as offices? And how can we combine those to be more effective? You got to think about it, right, if you had one attorney general office across the country that was solely in charge of pushing forward these lawsuits, that would be an incredible burden and strain upon that office. And so very early on, it was about targeting resources for outcomes and values. And that conversation started off.. so when you had the president talking about birthright citizenship, right, a constitutional amendment that has been interpreted for more than 100 years, numerous presidential administrations… there’s a handful of offices that raised their hands and said, hey, we’ve got the expertise, let’s dig in on the research before the election even occurred, before the inauguration of the president already occurred. So you’re prepared for those inevitable moments they’re talking about in the Constitution. Then on Inauguration Day, some issues come up, right? And we start having conversations that the president hadn’t necessarily talked about before. And then we start deciding amongst ourselves who’s going to lead on these lawsuits, who’s going to be out front, really kind of collaborating together. We have meetings pretty frequently during the week amongst the attorney generals, but more frequently amongst our staff as well.

Simon Rosenberg:
And when you look back on the past year, I know you were a lead on the tariffs, the tariff suit, which is now sitting in front of the Supreme Court. What do you think are the most important victories, when you look back, the most consequential and meaningful victories that you’ve had over the past year?

AG Rayfield:
Yeah, and it’s tough to choose, right, as you think about the degrees of success that we’ve had. So for context, for people to remember, right, you think 49 lawsuits, boy, they must be losing some of these. In truth, when we have sought immediate relief on most of these cases, almost in every single one of them, we have been successful in court.

Here in Oregon, we’re protecting about $4.5 billion of federal money coming into the state. So depending on how you’re situated, right, if you’re someone that relies on food assistance, that might be the most important case to you. If you’re someone that is on a fixed income and you’re seeing the prices of goods go up throughout the year, the tariffs case might rise to the top. So it’s a handful of cases, I think. Right now, I mean, when I talk to people, the affordability, cost increases across our state is something that everybody cares about. So the tariffs case for me is something where here in the state of Oregon, I heard small businesses being impacted. I heard consumers being impacted by it. And then when we talked to lawmakers here in the state of Oregon, we would see our own economic analysis, revenue projections for the next two years… I mean, it went down to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And that’s hundreds of millions of dollars that the state won’t have because of tariffs, that won’t go to decreasing your student-to-teacher ratio, that won’t go to food assistance and things like that.

Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah… and the Supreme Court has, as you know, moved quickly on some things and a lot slower on other things. What’s just the general, the latest thinking about what’s going to happen with the tariffs case in the Supreme Court?

AG Rayfield:
Yeah, I mean… that’s the thing. Each attorney general and each legal scholar has their own, you know, crystal ball in the way we’re looking at it. When you sat in that courtroom, I think for Americans to really realize… you had a Supreme Court that was grappling with some foundational principles that our government has relied upon when the founders drafted the Constitution. So it was very humbling to be in that courtroom, to hear these justices seriously considering what should they do? How do you consider co-equal branches of government, this concept of non-delegation, which is where one branch of government just can’t give its powers to another branch of government. Pretty heavy stuff. I think when you kind of started counting the justices and the skepticism from the questions, right, if you’re inferring, reading into those things, you would tend to think that the federal government does not have a majority to continue abusing the emergency powers as they have. But again, it’s easy to sit there and listen to the justices. It’ll be another thing to read their opinion.

Simon Rosenberg:
You know, one of the things we talk about, because we’ve spent a lot of time on the tariff issue and we are lobbying the Congress to roll them back. And as you’re aware, the Senate just a few weeks ago voted to roll back the tariffs in a successful effort led by Tim Kaine, the senator from Virginia. One of the things that I often say is that when you go back and look at our history and the history of the founding of the country, of all the powers that our founders would not have given to an executive, unilateral tariff authority would be at the very top of the list, right? So it’s not only an affront to the law, it’s an affront to the entire kind of story of the founding of America, which makes this even more egregious. I’ve often called it the the greatest abuse of power by a president in all of our history because of the consequences of it, right? What it’s done to the country.

AG Rayfield:
But Simon, I think you bring something up. I mean, most of the folks, I mean, we’re just living day to day, right? And walking through our communities, going to work, coming home, figuring out what we’re going to put on the table. We don’t really think about tariff power. You know, that seems something so far away from our homes, frankly, hundreds of years away from when this Constitution was drafted. I don’t think most Americans remember that, you know, sole power to tariff was given to Congress. And only Congress can delegate some, but not all, with some real constringent sideboards to the president. And that’s just something we’ve forgotten. And frankly, I think a lot of us, we’ve been existing for more than 100 years with an income tax, but that’s not how we funded our government when we started out, right. So some foundational historical things that we as Americans, I think, are becoming more in tune with because of this last year.

Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah, anyway, thank you for your leadership on this issue. This has been very important to our community. It’s been central to our work. But now let’s talk about Oregon because you’ve had your own unique set of issues. You’ve had the national battles that you’ve been in, but you’ve had your own unique issues in your wonderful state. Just give us an update on what’s the latest in your fight to protect the civil liberties and rights of the people of your remarkable state.

AG Rayfield:
Yeah, so Oregon’s a wonderful place to live, raise a family. And what you saw this year was a president who really started creating this public narrative based off of social media about what the conditions are here in Portland, here across the state. In doing so, he then started following suit, right? So you had the deployment of the National Guard in California, had it in Washington, D.C., he was talking about it in Memphis, he was talking about it in Chicago, and then he tried to do it here in Oregon. And we wanted to be really out front kind of with this primary value that we hold as Americans that the U.S. military does not belong on our streets.

When it comes to protecting U.S. citizens, we rely upon our sheriffs, we rely upon our city police, we rely upon our state police. We don’t need the National Guard walking the streets of our cities. This isn’t a third-world country. So we were very vehement to get in front of a court as soon as possible to have this conversation, talk about the real facts on the ground, and we were ultimately successful on the merits of that case. Not only just the immediate relief but on the merits of the case with a judge, frankly, a judge that had been appointed by President Donald Trump, who looked at the facts and said, hey, Mr. President, you have not met the statutory requirements for you to be able to federalize the National Guard here in Oregon. And I got to tell you… it’s incredibly humbling again to be in this situation, then to be amongst Oregonians who could have been very angry in the way that we reacted to the president’s commands to bring in the National Guard. But instead, we did it in a way that only Oregonians can do. We tried to have humor with it. You had frogs in inflatable suits really demonstrating how silly it was, how silly the president was to even try and bring the National Guard into these circumstances. I think right now what we’re grappling with, right, is this role of the federal government that was frankly antagonizing an already peaceful condition here in Oregon. And I think we’ve done remarkably well. And I think that’s kind of why you’re seeing a little bit of the retreat from the federal government trying to continue to push down this road of federalizing the National Guard here in Oregon.

Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and one thing I’ll just throw out to you, as we all think about how not just to respond… but when we’re in a position to go on offense, is that I think one of the most dangerous things that I’ve witnessed, and I live in DC, a city that has had the National Guard here, is this attempt by the federal troops of whatever brand to call themselves police and to have this fake symbol, fake name on their uniforms. Because “police” connotes something where there is local accountability and control, and it has a very specific meaning in our system. We actually don’t have a federal police force. On purpose. You know, you talk about rock-bed kind of theories of how a democracy should operate. And I have found that one of the things I hope that all of you bring up in your future litigation and laws that can be passed is that it should not be okay for federal troops, either National Guard or DHS, to falsely represent themselves as police. Because this is I think creating some of the confusion on the ground about what is really happening here and what’s going on… and I really believe this is one of the most malevolent manifestations of Stephen Miller’s kind of terror regime in our communities across the country… confusing people about what police really represent… in our own particular journey with police, by the way, as Americans…

I just throw it out there as something that has come up in our conversations that I think we, in our national discourse, we need to do a better job at trying to really dissuade the federal government from falsely representing what their representatives are in the cities because they aren’t police. Police are something very specific.

AG Rayfield:
Well, I mean, exactly to that point, one of the real interesting things that we had happen in Oregon was just this calamity of a lack of training and education as it unfolded. So you had the federal government bringing in additional resources here into Portland, and you look at the interactions with the Portland police, and you started seeing friendly fire between federal forces and the Portland police where they accidentally hit Portland police officers with ammunition. And then even more embarrassing… talk about this… they hit themselves. That’s how silly this is. And it’s incredibly important that you have the appropriate people that are trained for the job that they’re doing, right? You have to set your folks up for success. You have to set them up for success in a way that creates safety for all of those that they’re engaging with. This became such a calamity that myself and three local district attorneys had to send a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary Noem to say, you must cease and desist your unconstitutional behavior where you are engaging in excessive force. We had officers from the Portland police demonstrating and outlining how excessive force was being used… these situations where they were engaging with the public without the proper training, creating greater safety risks. And you can often imagine how that could escalate issues.

And so that’s kind of this odd place that we’re in right now where you have attorneys general’s offices that are monitoring and watching what’s going on with federal forces. And it shouldn’t have to be that way.

Simon Rosenberg:
And I also want to thank you on behalf of everybody across the country for the frogs and for the inflatables. Because mockery is incredibly important as a tool. And I think all of you… it was around the time that Jimmy Kimmel was sort of having his battle… and all of a sudden we had mockery and comedians and all this. It was a very important moment, I think, in the evolution of our response. And so on behalf of the American people and Democrats and pro-democracy forces all across the country, let me thank you for the frogs and the inflatables. I think it’s actually been an incredibly important contribution and a very Portland kind of contribution to this whole thing.

Let me ask you one last question as just a way to close out. We often think about the way the Founders set up our federal government to be split into three branches where the power of the government was separated out in order to prevent there from ever being a mad king or an executive out of control. But I think we’ve learned this other really important lesson… you’ve talked about relearning lessons of history today… that the other way that our Founders created a bulwark against authoritarianism… is through federalism itself. And I’m just wondering if you could reflect on this because this has, I think, been a really kind of profound learning of the last few months with all of you, the attorneys general, being at the very forefront of really reminding us… that states and local governments are equal to the federal government. They’re sovereign governments, elected by the people. This has been… when people wonder about how fast we will fall…. into tyranny… we’ve seen other societies fail, one of the things that has been essential has been federalism itself.

AG Rayfield:
Yeah, I think this is one of the questions that we ask ourselves each day, given these new set of circumstances that are presenting in front of us. What is our role? What is our responsibility to meet the moment? And that might be holding federal officers accountable when they’re violating people’s rights and stepping outside of their natural immunity that is granted to them.

It might mean filing lawsuits. But I think what this last year has shown all Americans is that we are stress-testing our democracy, and those institutions, for the most part so far, are holding up. It remains to be seen. I don’t expect the Trump administration to stop pushing, to stop these unconstitutional actions. But what I do expect is that Democratic attorneys general will be in court when he does so. And we’re going to be forcing that question in front of a judge, making them make an independent decision. I think the other thing that we forget, and because we haven’t had to think about these things for a long time, when you have an executive that really pushes their bounds, right, sometimes you can lose a court case. So, take tariffs, for example, right? We’re pushing forward. We don’t believe that any president can just make up an emergency and just levy tariffs at any amount for any length of period of time. However, if the courts didn’t side with us… I’m going to be disappointed. I think that’s going to increase costs. It is increasing costs. However, it gives information to Congress. And it gives information to Congress in a way that they can react and curtail the powers that the courts will have then given the president under those circumstances. So there is this give and take. And that has gone on throughout the history of our country. Think about how we curtailed executive powers under Nixon. So these things go on, and I expect them to continue. But right now, I mean, I try and be as optimistic as I possibly can that these systems, these structures are working. Not exactly to, I think, any of our liking, but they’re being pushed and they’re being responded to.

Simon Rosenberg:
Listen, I want to thank you. You’ve really been one of the great heroes of this moment. I mean, you’ve been fighting national fights and very consequential fights in your hometown. And just want to say, as a fellow patriot, just thank you for your leadership and for stepping up in the time. You’re working, all of you, the Democratic attorneys general have done an incredible job for us. And just I want to just end today by saying thank you.

AG Rayfield:
Well, thank you, Simon. And I’m curious… I want you to list the six other attorneys general that you interviewed before me. And then now, then you have to make up for that. I have to come back before any of them get a second shot. How about that?

Simon Rosenberg:
[Laughs.] Okay. Let me see if I can. I’m going to cheat a little bit here by going to my YouTube channel just to make sure…

AG Rayfield:
They weren’t that memorable, Simon?

Simon Rosenberg:
No, no, I just don’t want to make a mistake… it’s an important question. We started with your colleague Kris Mayes from Arizona…

AG Rayfield:
She’s amazing.

Simon Rosenberg:
She’s amazing. It was a great interview. It got us excited about this series. And then we had Keith Ellison, who I know from Washington, who did a phenomenal job. And then we met a new friend, Raúl Torrez, who I didn’t know, from New Mexico.

AG Rayfield:
He’s great.

Simon Rosenberg:
Incredibly impressive guy… and really was very exciting, and then we had Phil Weiser, your colleague from Colorado.
[ + Dana Nessel (Michigan) and Andrea Campbell (Massachusetts) ]
And so that’s been the group so far. We have other requests out to your colleagues. But we’ve done this because… and we wanted to keep this series going… because honestly, as I said at the very beginning, this is one of the most important least understood stories in this pro-democracy movement. And I want to do what I can to shine a light on the incredible work that all of you have been doing. Because I think what happens is we just know that these cases are being tried in court. We don’t know where they’re coming from. And what I came to believe early on was that, yes, some of the big cases are being tried by private interests or by nonprofits or on behalf of a single individual. But having governments themselves be the ones bringing the cases to court was always going to be one of the most powerful tools that we had. And all of you have done an incredible job at realizing that opportunity and executing against it with incredible vigor and incredible success.

AG Rayfield:
I mean, it’s very simple, right? All of those attorneys general that you mentioned and all of the other Democratic attorneys general are just looking in their communities and saying, are people being harmed? And when the answer to that is yes, right, you say, is it due to an unconstitutional action or an unlawful action? And that’s how all of these things start. Sometimes it starts with the tariffs case. A.G. Mayes and myself saying, “Can the president do that?”
“We don’t think he can.”
“Let’s look into it.”
Some of these conversations start that simply… but it’s incredibly meaningful to be in this role at this time. Although I think all of us would rather have it be a little less meaningful.

Simon Rosenberg:
[Laughs.] From your lips to God’s ears. And listen, thank you for your incredible work. And I promise that, you know, we’ll keep you in the rotation and make sure you come back. [Laughs.] And we won’t jump the line for you. And listen… thank you so much and good luck and keep up the fight.

AG Rayfield:
[Laughs.] Okay, sounds good. Thank you. Talk to you soon.

Simon Rosenberg:
Talk to you soon. Okay, everybody. I hope you liked that. Hit like, share with everybody you know, subscribe to Hopium. And if you have a Democratic attorney general in your state… one of the most inspiring parts of the rising up of the American people in 2025. And they deserve our thanks, as we did today. But as politicians will tell you, elected officials will tell you, they always really value the thank you calls in addition to the calls that come in that are expressing something other than thanks…

Thanks, everybody. Keep fighting.