Vermont’s attorney general, Charity Clark, has joined other states to sue President Donald Trump’s administration five times since Trump took office in late January — more than one lawsuit per week of his second term so far.
Clark said her office has been closely reviewing the many executive orders the president has issued since then, and other actions he has taken, to determine if, by the office’s reading, they bear scrutiny under federal law and the U.S. Constitution.
On Thursday, for instance, Clark joined attorneys general in 13 other states arguing Trump’s creation of a “Department of Government Efficiency,” headed by his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, is illegal and gives Musk undue power over the government.
The Democratic attorney general’s office is all but certain to file more lawsuits, with top prosecutors in other states and jurisdictions, in the coming weeks and months, too.
“My goal is to block every unconstitutional or illegal act taken by the Trump administration — full stop,” she said in an interview Thursday morning. “I am not going to tolerate that at all.”
VTDigger has built an online tracker of Clark’s actions that, using data from the attorney general’s office and federal court records, the newsroom will update regularly when new suits are filed and as existing lawsuits make their way through the courts.
Vermont was part of 62 lawsuits against Trump’s first administration starting eight years ago, according to Clark, and won a favorable outcome in 60 of those cases.
Clark was not the state’s attorney general at the time, though was working in the office when Trump began his first term in 2017. She said she’s seen a greater sense of urgency among Democratic attorneys general in other states and jurisdictions to respond to Trump’s actions this time around.
“He would do something kind of crazy, and there would be a moment of disbelief — or people giving him the benefit of the doubt,” Clark said of 2017.
But now, “we’re just playing a very different game,” Clark continued. “He's doing something outlandish and blatantly unconstitutional, and we're responding in a unified fashion — immediately. And we're going to keep doing that.”
Musk’s power, public health funding
Clark’s latest multistate suit argues that Musk, and his “government oversight” entity, also known by the acronym “DOGE,” have no legal authority to cut federal government programs and spending.
Musk has gained access to at least 15 federal agencies, ABC News reported earlier this week, and has already conducted mass layoffs, terminated dozens of federal contracts and, according to Trump administration officials, ended numerous federal programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion, among other actions.
The Tesla CEO’s actions have drawn condemnation from Democrats in Congress, who have staged protests at impacted federal agencies and tried, unsuccessfully, to enter them. Trump told reporters this week that “DOGE” had identified “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse,” though provided scant evidence.
“Unelected billionaire Elon Musk has been wreaking havoc on our government, destroying careers, upending critical programs that support Vermonters, and putting our national security at risk,” Clark said in a press release Thursday. “I am deeply troubled by Musk’s disregard of the legislative branch — and, in that disregard, apparent animosity toward democracy.”
The lawsuit is seeking an injunction barring Musk and other “DOGE” officials “from making any changes to the federal government” and a decision “invalidating” any actions the group has taken so far, Clark said in the release.
Earlier this week, meanwhile, a federal judge hit pause on a Trump administration effort to slash billions of dollars in federal funding for public health research, just hours after Clark and her counterparts in 21 other states sued to stop the move in federal court.
Judge Angel Kelley in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts issued a temporary order restraining the administration’s actions on Monday shortly after the states filed their suit. The White House had sought to cut the allowable percentage of “indirect cost” reimbursements for research institutions that get grants from the National Institutes of Health, which is the largest funder of biomedical research in the country.
Those reimbursements cover expenses that help facilitate biomedical research, such as the cost to operate a building or maintain the medical equipment used inside. Cuts to that funding could result in the suspension of lifesaving and life-extending clinical trials, Clark said in a press release Monday, as well as layoffs and laboratories being shuttered.
Trump’s administration argued that the reimbursement reductions would save the federal government more than $4 billion a year. But in the suit, Clark and the other attorneys general argued the executive branch doesn’t have the power, under federal law, to alter how research funding is allocated.
“This attempt by the Trump administration to claw back federal funding already appropriated by Congress is yet another blatant example of his disregard for the separation of power and the limits of Presidential authority,” Clark said in the Monday release.
A hearing is scheduled for the case on Friday, Feb. 21, at 10 a.m.
