"Coming Together" With Oregon AG Dan Rayfield and GovAct's Julia Spiegel

Excited to bring conversations with two vital leaders in our pro-democracy movement to you today.......

Greetings all. One of our core working understandings right now here at Hopium is that in year two of Trump’s second term we must learn how to “come together” to aggregate our power and use it to more effectively block Trump from the damage he’s doing to the US and the world. Year one was successful for us politically and electorally. We won elections of all kinds all across the country, some by enormous margins, and Trump has become a degraded and unpopular leader. My hope is that in year two we build on that success and aggregate our power to more successfully counter his regime.

You can learn more this idea of “Coming Together” in these four recent essays - here, here, here, and here.

Today, I’m featuring conversations with two people leading the charge to help us “come together.” The first is a discussion with Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. The second is with Julia Spiegel, the CEO of a new organization called GovAct, Governors Action Alliance.

Attorney General Rayfield is the 7th Democratic Attorney General we’ve interviewed in the past year, and he, like his colleagues, tells us about what may be the single most innovative and successful collaborative project we’ve seen in Trump’s second term - the work of the 23 Democratic Attorneys General. We’ve spent time exploring and learning about this collective effort in our interviews this past year with Attorneys General Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Kris Mayes of Arizona, Dana Nessel of Michigan, Raúl Torrez of New Mexico, and Phil Weiser of Colorado.

Here is an excerpt from my conversation with AG Rayfield:

Simon Rosenberg:
all of you have hit the ground running. You’ve 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? 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.

On the successes of the Democratic AG’s:

So for context, for people to remember, 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.

The Democratic Attorneys General have banded together and become one of the effective bulwarks against Trump’s escalating authoritarianism so far. Watch our discussion below to learn more or read the transcript here. It’s an uplifting story (and note this interview was completed late in 2025). In this interview you will also learn about AG Rayfield’s other legal successes this past year, including his spirited fight against ICE and Trump’s attempted deployment of the National Guard to Oregon.

Last month, on the anniversary of Oregon’s first multi-state lawsuit challenging federal overreach, Attorney General Rayfield hosted a Federal Oversight and Accountability Town Hall that brought together four other Attorneys General - Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, California’s Rob Bonta, Hawaii’s Anne Lopez, and Maine’s Aaron Frey. Their collaborative spirit is alive and well!

AG’s Rayfield and Bonta

Here’s an excerpt from an article written about the gathering, The state attorneys general are as mad as you are:

The town hall, said Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, was being held so the AGs could hear what people wanted them to focus on in the coming year. But there was one thing he wanted everyone to hear: “We are not backing down. There is no way in hell we are going to let this president continue to chip away at our rights and our democracy at this time. We are going to continue to fight for this entire term and do our job as attorneys general.”

“If the president crosses the line, violates the law, violates the Constitution, we’re gonna fight him,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Period. Full stop. No passes. Every single time.”

“A Republican-led Congress is doing nothing,” Bonta said. “They are supine. They are not a check… but we’re a check. We’re the check when you need the checks and the balances.” The Constitution, Bonta said, was “built for this.”

My next conversation is with Julia Spiegel, the CEO of a new organization called GovAct. Here’s how GovAct describes itself:

Governors Action Alliance (GovAct) is a nonpartisan nonprofit initiative that supports governors in championing fundamental freedoms. GovAct serves as a centralized platform for collaboration across governors’ offices—incubating, launching, and supporting alliances of governors.

So far GovAct has launched three major initiatives across the states - the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, Governors for Public Health, and Governors Safeguarding Democracy.

This innovative alliance of Governors grew out of the response to the Dobbs decision ending Roe. Here’s Julia talking about some of the work of their Reproductive Freedom Alliance:

“[States] also facilitated new ways of doing this kind of work together. So for instance, as medication abortion has come under attack, the governors banded together to say, well, how can we make sure that in this moment of uncertainty, this moment of fear, how can we reassure our people in saying we have your back, you will be able to get the care that you need? And so they creatively banded together to figure out different ways to stockpile abortion medication, so that should anything come up with respect to mifepristone, misoprostol, any other care, that they can say in good confidence, don’t worry. You can get the abortion care that you need.

That kind of proactive coordination, that kind of stockpiling, working collectively, we had never seen anything like that before across state government. And I think it shows to you the power of when you bring these different offices together… what great ideas are born and how you can multiply and span them across the country to such great effect.”

Here’s Julia talking about one of their projects to bring the harms of Trump’s tariffs more directly to the people in the states:

we saw several governors band together to lay bare the cost of tariffs on people in their states. That’s something where you saw parts of corporate America originally saying that they were going to make that transparent, and really show the cost increase that people were facing, and then they backed away from that. And so these governors banded together collectively to say we’re going to direct our administrations to document the impact and lay bare to the American people the true costs… how this is hurting affordability and hurting families and homes in making ends meet. That’s something that I think, again, is so much more powerful when it’s done in a coordinated collective manner as opposed to piecemeal.

Here’s GovAct’s press release on their new Governors Public Health alliance.

The Governors Public Health Alliance will serve as a unified, cross-state liaison with the global health community and will facilitate cross-state collaboration by bringing together regional and other groups to share best practices and surface common challenges, elevating national considerations for vaccine policy and regulatory solutions to keep science front and center.

“At a time when the federal government is telling the states, ‘you’re on your own,’ governors are banding together,” said Maryland Governor Wes Moore. “In Maryland, we believe that everyone should have access to affordable, effective health care. We proudly stand with our peers across the country who share in that vital mission.”

In our discussion Julia talks about the Alliance’s work around vaccines:

an example in the vaccine space is that we helped put together a vaccine toolkit… whatever is happening federally, we’re going to make sure that vaccines for kids and others are still covered by insurance, are still available in our states, and still accessible more broadly. And so we’ve seen states step up. More than 28 of them to date have now done that recognizing the huge need.

Julia and GovAct were featured in this New York Times article, and you can find a recording of our conversation below and a transcript here.

Here’s something I wrote about the importance of our movement learning how to “Come Together” yesterday:

……In my recent posts (here, here, here) I talked about how we should this coming fight over reining in ICE as a single - and deeply consequential - moment in a much larger effort to rein in Trump and his regime this year. I’ve argued that Congressional Democrats must learn from our European allies and learn how to organize ourselves differently to aggregate more power to provide a much more meaningful check on Trump’s escalating authoritarianism. Our leaders should not accept that legislating is the only tool available to them now and “come together” with free state Governors, AGs, and mayors to forge a unified, national front against Trump’s increasingly out of control and dangerous behavior in at least two areas:

• Rule of law must be re-established in America, ICE must be reined in, and Trump’s outrageous plunder and corruption must end

• That he must back off his illegal and destructive territorial ambitions, end all these ridiculous tariffs, and re-commit to the Trans-Atlantic Alliance

For we are much stronger together than apart.

Here’s an example of how we should be thinking now. Last night, incredibly, Trump announced an escalation in his ongoing desecration of national monuments and our Capital. He announced he was closing the Kennedy Center for two years and rebuilding it. Here is what I wrote on Bluesky:

Leaders Schumer and Jeffries could create bicameral workings groups of a small number of members to more forcefully contest Trump’s outrageous flouting of the law and selling out of our interests across many fronts - the tariffs, his appeasement of Putin, his unprecedented corruption, his assault on the integrity of our elections, etc. We can use shadow hearings, daily statements, alliances with the states and even foreign nations to contest, degrade, expose and fight 24/7/365. The success of the Epstein project, driven by House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia, can be a model, as can his bicameral work on ICE’s abuses with Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut……

Enjoy these conversations with two vital leaders in our fight for democracy and freedom, let’s keep working to help our movement to “come together,” and let’s keep working hard everyone!!!! - Simon

Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s 18th Attorney General

Dan's leadership philosophy was shaped by his parents' contrasting worldviews—his mother, a Green Party member, and his father, a Republican. Rather than seeing these differences as obstacles, Dan learned to identify common ground while respecting diverse approaches to achieving shared goals – an attitude that shapes his leadership style.

As Oregon's Attorney General, Dan is focused on strengthening community safety, protecting seniors and working families, and upholding Oregon's values and the rule of law.

In the legislature, Dan spent four years as Co-Chair of the Ways and Means committee before being elected Speaker of the House. His tenure as Speaker was marked by significant achievements and a commitment to advancing the health and economic well-being of Oregonians, from enacting the nation’s strongest abortion protections to unprecedented investments in Oregon’s semiconductor industry, education, and housing.

Dan lives in Corvallis with his wife Amanda.

Julia Spiegel, Governors Action Alliance

Julia is an award-winning attorney who has championed fundamental freedoms at the highest levels of federal, state, and local government. As legal counsel to California Governor Gavin Newsom when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Julia launched the Reproductive Freedom Alliance (RFA), bringing 23 governors together to fight for reproductive freedom in a post-Roe America.

An expert in state and federal policy and impact litigation, Julia earned her J.D. from Yale Law School.

Building on the alliance’s successful model to marshal the collective strengths of governors and their senior staff to protect fundamental freedoms, Julia left government service in 2024 to launch GovAct.