Matthew Platkin (3:27)

Thanks so much for having me, Mark.

Mark Joseph Stern (3:29)

So let me set the scene. It's the morning after the election. Donald Trump was just declared the winner. You go to the office, what's the first thing you do?

Matthew Platkin (3:39)

The first thing we did was basically gather together and talk about the work that we had done for the better part of 2024. You know, I'm not somebody who thinks you shouldn't prepare for things that might affect the state of New Jersey that I'm sworn to protect. And we saw throughout 2024, during the campaign, as well as in the 920 page Project 2025 document, that there were a lot of things that President Trump and his associates said they would do that they've in fact done. And so we took that seriously. We and several of my colleagues across the country prepared for what, what was coming. And in fact, we saw that happen, you know, January 20th, day one, when, you know, on 8pm he signed, for instance, the birthright citizenship order. And so I think we basically said, you know, all the preparation that we had done was worth it, and we are now ready to stand up for New Jersey if, in fact, these things come to pass.

Mark Joseph Stern (4:35)

So it Sounds like throughout 2024, you, you were getting ready for this eventuality, and then in November, it happened. What exactly did you do to prepare during that time in case Trump did win? What did those efforts look like within your office? Obviously, you were preparing for something that might not come to pass. Was it difficult to sort of game out exactly how you would react if something happened that you did not want to happen?

Matthew Platkin (5:03)

On the one hand, I think you have to give the Trump administration and his team some credit because they were remarkably transparent about what they would do. I think probably more transparent in one respect than any campaign, maybe in modern American history. Like I said, 920 pages, they really laid out in black and white many, if not most of the things that the first six or seven months of the administration has seen. Now we're starting to see some things that were not in that document, but a lot of it was. And so for me, this wasn't really a question of politics, and it's really not a question of whether or not the President has authority to do a lot of things in his agenda. Of course he does. He's duly elected. And presidents, even if I don't like what they do, have that power. What he does not have the power to do is to violate the law and hurt people, including people in my state. And that is when I have an obligation to step up. And so what we really did is we looked at what he said he would do if elected. We looked at the types of cases that were litigated in the first Trump administration, We looked at the state of the law, and we considered, okay, which of these actions that, you know, he has promised he would do would hurt New Jerseyans and would break the law or violate the Constitution, and which of those do we have standing to step up and protect our residents against? And then from there, we built out our legal strategy, which we've largely been implementing since January 20th.

Mark Joseph Stern (6:33)

So you took him seriously and literally.

Matthew Platkin (6:36)

Look, I. I'm not in the business, like, I think generally speaking, the first Trump administration and the first, you know, six months of this administration. The lesson is he does what he says he's going to do, he does what he says he's going to do, and we have to be prepared for that.

Mark Joseph Stern (6:51)

He campaigned on restoring, quote, law and order and public safety. But you've sued over some policies that you say make your state less safe. One of those cases involves the administration's attempt to essentially legalize machine guns. How does the Trump administration's action here interfere with your fight against gun violence within New Jersey?

Matthew Platkin (7:14)

There's a great irony here that this law and order administration, I think, has been the most anti public safety, anti law enforcement administration in modern American history. You know, in New Jersey, I'll put our record of public safety up against any in the country three years running now, record low number of shootings in our state. And there's a lot of reasons for that which we could go into, including defending our strong gun safety laws. But among those laws are common sense prohibitions against things like machine guns. And so what the Trump administration did under their Second Amendment working group, sort of an Orwellian named operation, among other things, was something that I was genuinely shocked by. They were talking about effectively playing the role of arms distributor and sending about 12,000 forced reset triggers which allow machine or firearms to be converted effectively into a machine gun capable of firing 900 rounds per minute out into the states. They wouldn't tell us whether they would go into New Jersey. They wouldn't tell us who they were giving them to. And so we led a coalition of states that sued. And pretty quickly, I have to say, the federal government backed down on that threat. And they said they're not going to send them to New Jersey. That the main producer of these devices, which had been treated, by the way, by the ATF as machine gun conversion devices for decades, including under the first Trump administration, they were not going to sell them back into New Jersey, and they were going warn everybody who gets them that you could be subject to prosecution if you bring them here. So we were able to keep thousands of machine guns off the streets. But it's still shocking to me that this supposed law and order administration was trying to play this role under the guise of promoting the Second Amendment when no one, even the Supreme Court, doesn't seriously believe you have a Second Amendment right to possess a machine gun.

Mark Joseph Stern (9:01)

That's really interesting because it sounds like you didn't get a sort of nationwide settlement here. There were still some people who got these devices sent to them by atf. They were essentially returned to them after being confiscated. Is that correct?

Matthew Platkin (9:17)

Correct. They were confiscated. And I should note, Mark, it took up to a couple of days of work per trigger device for the ATF to seize these. So there was a tremendous amount of law enforcement work that went into the original seizure of these devices. And the federal government wiped its hands with it and said, we're giving it back to you. We don't care.

Mark Joseph Stern (9:34)

So even as you weren't necessarily able to block this nationwide, you were able to protect New Jersey from the bulk of it. You were able to sort of act defensively and ensure that these were not flooding into the state of New Jersey. I wonder. And this sort of goes to a few other cases that we'll talk about. How you conceptualize defending New Jersey in the midst of these policies that do have nationwide implications. Like, you know, some people who got those devices might take them into New Jersey. How do you deal with that? And how do you sort of balance the interests of protecting people within New Jersey versus your goal within this coalition of attorneys general, to push back more broadly against what Trump is doing.

Matthew Platkin (10:17)

Yeah, look, I think I'm sure we'll touch on the nationwide injunction debate. We were obviously, our office was obviously at the center of the. Of the CASA case when it comes to gun violence. This is the issue that originally drew me into public service. I've been in one way, shape or form involved in the gun violence prevention movement for a couple of decades now. You know, New Jersey. Our consistent challenge is trying to keep guns that originate out of the state from harming people in our state. And we have good ways of doing that. But again, we've the combination of our gun safety laws, our investments in community violence prevention, the affirmative lawsuits we've brought against some, a number of gun manufacturers and retailers have contributed to the lowest levels of gun violence. And so I don't view this case as distinct from any of those other efforts. In fact, I frankly don't view any of our suits as distinct from my general obligation to protect the residents of New Jersey. I really ask two basic questions about any lawsuit that we are considering, whether it's against President Trump or a social media company or a gun manufacturer or somebody causing climate change, or you name it. Are you breaking the law and are you hurting the people of New Jersey? If the answer to those two questions are yes, then it's a very easy decision for me to file a suit. I really don't view these cases as part of an effort to, say, frustrate President Trump's agenda or undermine his presidency. That's not my job. The American people have voted, and presumably, you know, there'll be future elections where they'll get to decide to again. But my job is to uphold the law. I took the same oath that President Trump did and to protect the people of my state. And these cases very much are in line with that.

Mark Joseph Stern (11:54)

So building right on that, you mentioned Trump versus Casa. This is the birthright citizenship case. It's already gone up to the Supreme Court once your office has been at the center of this. Your office led one of the major lawsuits against Trump's attack on birthright citizenship and is still fighting this out in the lower courts after the Supreme Court rolled back the universal injunctions that had previously been issued. Obviously, this is another thing that Trump has done with a nationwide scope. The impact is not limited to New Jersey. I'm curious why you chose to take these proactive steps against the order really quickly. I mean, your office was like, on top of this. The lawsuit was in my inbox before I had even digested the order. Why spring into action then, rather than sort of wait and see what harms it might inflict? You said that one of your key questions here is, what are the harms that New Jersey residents will suffer? What? Why not wait until those harms become clear? Why step into the fray immediately?

Matthew Platkin (12:54)

This one, it was, I think, again, very easy. And it was one that they had telegraphed they were going to do. And at 8pm on the first night of his administration, I think this is genuinely a shocking thing still to this country, the President attempted for the first time since the Civil War to rewrite the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution in a way that, that said babies born on US Soil were not, in fact, entitled to the rights and privileges of United States citizenship. And the order had a very short lead time. It was a 30 day effective date. So we were kind of on the clock anyway. But you're right, we filed 11:00am the next morning. We were clearly ready to go. And I just have to give our Solicitor General, Jeremy Feigenbaum, and our Deputy Solicitor General, Shankrajirswamy. He's handled a lot of the lower courts and our whole team that worked literally through the night that week to get that filing on, along with states from across the country, D.C. and the city of San Francisco, so that we would be in a position to protect our state from harms. And what would have happened would have been devastating for our state. We administer a whole range of benefits, educational benefits, healthcare, a whole range of other social services that depend on your citizenship status. And the federal government, from the first day they issued this order through, as current as I sit here today, has never made any attempt to say how states could possibly administer this type of new citizenship status. They didn't even bother to define people who were born here, but were somehow not citizens of another country, but also not citizens of this nation. And I also think we need to think about the human impact. I mean, think about if you're on January 20, 2025, and you're a pregnant woman, an expectant mother in South Jersey, you know, Pennsylvania's not in a suit, and you're thinking, well, I was going to deliver at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, or I, you know, I shop in Pennsylvania. What if I go into labor? Is it really the case that we want to tell those mothers and those families that their children born on US Soil citizenship depends either on the stroke of a pen of a president or on which state they happen to be in at the time they go into birth. We've never treated citizenship like that. So the, the stakes were really high. And if we didn't act quickly, and if the court didn't act quickly, the consequences would have been devastating.

Mark Joseph Stern (15:17)

I think that this leads into another really interesting aspect of your job that I've been watching from the outside sort of evolve throughout the last seven months. So Trump has made it very clear that he doesn't think Democratic lawmakers really have a legitimate right to Govern. As a D.C. resident, I am acutely aware of that fact right now, as Trump purports to liberate our city from laws enacted by our own elected leaders. New Jersey has more protections as a full fledged state, and you are well positioned to enforce those protections. But the administration has very little respect for state sovereignty. Again, we're seeing that in D.C. we saw it with the mobilization of the National Guard in Los Angeles this summer, and we see it in the federal government's efforts to roll back rights within your borders, including attacks on reproduct healthcare and LGBTQ equality, among other things. You know, these are federal policies that the president is announcing, but they are targeting individuals and institutions in New Jersey. How do you counter that as an attorney general? Beyond filing these lawsuits in federal court, what can you do under state law to try to protect your residents from what's emanating from the White House?

Matthew Platkin (16:27)

I think it's a core question right now, and I think your point is exactly right. This administration has fundamentally disregarded the rights and privileges states have to govern themselves within the authority delegated to states under our Constitution, under our federal structure. And, you know, we certainly saw it in California, disregarding the governor's role and the activation of the National Guard, something that, you know, we opposed. And more importantly, putting I feel for those National Guardsmen and women in the military, putting them in impossible and potentially incredibly dangerous position that they are not designed to be in. But for us, it's very simple. Our state laws, our state Constitution, provides protections, and those protections are clear. And so, for instance, we have the oldest and strongest civil rights law in America. 20 years before we had a federal Civil Rights act, the state of New Jersey had a law against discrimination. One of the first things we did after World War II was codify protections for protected classes in state law. My office enforces that statute and protects people's rights, and it protects a range of rights. Race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion. And we do that regularly. But obviously, the need to protect people's rights and keep people safe and enforce state laws and protections, including, as you mentioned, on reproductive healthcare or so many other issues, has probably never been more important because we're seeing the federal government either engage in a frontal assault on these rights or just pull back from their own enforcement obligations and essentially leave the space open to states. So it now is the case if you live in a state that doesn't enforce these protections where the federal government once did. Unfortunately, your rights and privileges differ from states like New Jersey, where we are protecting people's rights.

Mark Joseph Stern (18:24)

So what does that look like with regard to abortion access? You mentioned Civil rights. There's a clear role for your office in protecting those freedoms under state law. With reproductive rights, it's a little bit different because you have the administration first pardoning those who blockaded abortion clinics, right? Basically declaring open season on legitimate reproductive healthcare centers, telling protesters and anti abortion foes, go ahead, go block them, we won't prosecute you, we'll pardon you if you do get prosecuted. And then we also have the looming threats of the FDA, of HHS, of RFK Jr trying to restrict access to mifepristone. We have the Justice Department potentially making noises about prosecuting doctors who prescribe mifepristone either within their state or across state lines. What is the role for the New Jersey Attorney General's office there? I know this is something that people in blue states are really worried about right now because the fight for, for reproductive freedom is always going to be something that crosses state lines for sure.

Matthew Platkin (19:27)

The reality we know post Dobbs is it left it to the states. And New Jersey, like many states, codified the right to access reproductive healthcare and abortion, which is state law. In New Jersey, the FACE act, federal law that protects access to abortion care centers and reproductive healthcare centers, allows state agencies to enforce that statute. Something. At one point in time, we had a joint collaborative effort. We were the first state in the country to have this with our federal partners in the Department of Justice. Obviously things are different now, but at the state level, we are continuously. In fact, I was on with them last week talking to our health care centers and I have to commend law enforcement in New Jersey who has made sure it remains safe to access our centers. Obviously those pardons, just like the January 6th pardons, were, I think, real gut punches to the rule of law in this country. Regardless of what you think of abortion care, you shouldn't be able to get assaulted by people for doing it. The government should not be giving that type of conduct immunity or allow you to act with impunity in doing that. But reproductive healthcare is the right in New Jersey. It's part of our legal framework. I have protected access to that right, including by giving guidance to doctors about what they can do under the law. We have held some of the largest tech companies accountable for their data practices to make sure people can access this safe and they're not going to be subject to potentially, you know, threats of prosecution in other states. And we know that at the end of the day, people accessing abortion are going through one of the most traumatic experiences they will ever go through. Nobody wants to live through that and what we are making sure is that if they choose to do so here in New Jersey, it is safe, it is legal, and they can access what is their right.

Mark Joseph Stern (21:11)

And now time for a short break.

Podcast Host (Ad Reader) (21:16)

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Mark Joseph Stern (22:40)

And we're back now with more of my conversation with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Plotkin. So much like Trump does not respect state sovereignty, he doesn't really respect Article 1 or the role of Congress either. And unfortunately we're in a moment where Congress keeps capitulating to him. The congressional majority is letting him sort of steamroll all of these responsibilities that the Constitution assigns to the legislative branch. Congress has just abandoned its role in protecting the separation of powers and that has created this weird situation in which states have had to step in to protect Congress's constitutional prerogatives. So your office right now is suing to restore billions of dollars in funding appropriated by Congress that the admin claims it can cancel. This is the so called convenience clause dispute. Can you explain that case and how you litigate it when you're in this strange position of defending Congress's rights as a state attorney general?

Matthew Platkin (23:43)

I think that is genuinely one of the most shocking things of the past seven months. You know, the whole idea of our Constitution that ambition counteracts ambition. Well, it seems like Congress just gave up their ambition. And it's the Republicans in Congress, to be clear, that have just wholly delegated the authority, their principal authority, which is to appropriate funds, to the executive. And that should concern everybody because the way funding decisions are made is Congress passes, you know, an appropriations act and the President signs it into law and funding is distributed. And with limited exceptions, the President essentially has to spend the money that Congress appropriates. And yet, from day one, literally almost the second week of the administration, when they tried to freeze $3 trillion of federal spending based on words that vaguely written in a variety of executive orders, they have tried to essentially usurp that authority. And in fact, Congress has essentially said, go ahead. And it's been states, and let's be clear, it's been a coalition of Democratic attorneys general in states. It should be all 50 states. It hasn't been that have stood up and said, no, no, no, the President can't wake up one morning and say funds for law enforcement or funds for education or funds for healthcare or funds to support our veterans or for a whole range of services that we rely on every day. He can't just decide and not give it to us because he, you know, woke up on the wrong side of the bed. So the case you mentioned, I think is even more alarming because there's a five word phrase buried in the Office of Management and Budget regulations that had never been used in this way. And I don't even think anybody really knew it was there in this way until the Trump administration needed some legal justification to do what they were doing. After they kept losing case after case after case, and courts kept saying, you have to spend the money Congress appropriates. They basically found these five words that say essentially the agency can change its priorities. They've used those five words to justify a whole range of funding freezes or cuts. Things like cutting bias crime investigative support, cutting license plate reader technology, cutting programs that I think they should support, like investigating fraud in our uninsurance, our unemployment insurance funds, cutting food for low income people who are food insecure. I mean, really crazy things to say. These are no longer agency priorities. So in that case, unlike say, some of the other funding freeze cases where we directly challenged and sought an injunction on the agency's particular freeze, we challenged and sought a declaratory judgment that the use of that phrase is actually contrary to the law. And the way that they're employing that regulation, again buried in thousands of pages, OMB regs, they find these five words that they use to have devastating effects on families in New Jersey and across the country. And I think what's most interesting about, you know, I said it's only a Democratic coalition of states that have stood up for New Jersey. It's tens of billions of dollars that we've been able to keep flowing to our state. I mean, I've had colleagues in states that have not joined our suits sort of admit to me that they, they hope we win. And this is where the nationwide injunction question I think is going to be very interesting as it plays out. Because the funding, every state relies on these funds. It's not like we only fund education or healthcare in some states. We do it in all 50 states. And there's a reason why Congress has that authority and not the president. It's because we don't want to live under the rule and the whims of a king.

Mark Joseph Stern (27:03)

So to put a finer point on it, if nationwide injunctions were still available, you could sue with blue states and get a decision that restores funding to every state, all 50 states in D.C. but without nationwide injunctions, we're in this odd world where you and your coalition of blue states could get funding restored to programs that you want funded, but the decision won't cover red states and they will still be denied billions of dollars in funding. Is that right?

Matthew Platkin (27:32)

Yes. I mean, I think if you take CASA at its literal meaning, where states need to get complete relief, I do think there's scenarios where funding cases will play out that way. The NIH case is a great example. I don't think anyone went to the polls in November to cap the administrative fees on NIH grants. I admit I did not know what the administrat administrative fee cap was until I learned that this was something they were considering doing. But the upshot of that is it would have absolutely crippled the entire system of higher education in New Jersey, in just about every state across the country. And unlike most states, our system of higher education is not the largest employer in New Jersey. It is a very large employer and it's a huge driver of our economy. But you saw, even Senator Katie Britt of Alabama came out and said, wait a second, wait a second. University of Alabama, really important to our state. You can't just yank away the biggest source of federal funding for these institutions overnight. They literally issued that directive at 5pm on a Friday with a 9am Monday morning effective date. I mean, talk about irresponsible. And that's why our lawsuits, why we've been able to move so quickly, have been so important.

Mark Joseph Stern (28:39)

Are you surprised when red state attorneys general don't join these suits because their residents stand to lose billions of dollars? As you've said, it seems like the harms and that are inflicted by these policies clearly transcend state lines. And yet we've seen over and over again, in these cases, it's almost exclusively Democratic attorneys general. So is it surprising at all to you that these Republican AGs are just sitting it out and risking some severe and avoidable harms to their residents and presumably their voters?

Matthew Platkin (29:12)

It is surprising to me, and it's disappointing. And look, I sued the Biden administration. I publicly disagreed with the Biden administration. My job, like I said, is to protect the people of my state. If the shoe was on the other foot, and this was a Democratic administration doing these types of things, and I had to go to the 9.5 million people of New Jersey and say, I'm sorry, the president is unlawfully taking away your health care, or telling your kids with special needs that they're not gonna get the services they're entitled to, or telling your parents that are in a nursing home that they might be thrown out on the street in the middle of the winter, or telling your friends who are on low income heating assistance when it's freezing out that that might be cut off illegally? Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. It's bad, it hurts you, it's illegal. But I'm of the same party as the president, so I'm not gonna do anything. Like, I literally couldn't sleep at night. And so, you know, I think we do really need folks to step up. And I'm proud of the folks that have joined us, the Democratic attorneys general across the country that have been working literally around the clock in our offices. But these are not, in most instances, they really aren't controversial questions. And in fact, until very recently, there was broad bipartisan agreement that a president couldn't do these types of things unlawfully and in contradiction to laws passed by Congress and signed into law.

Mark Joseph Stern (30:26)

You know, the attorney general is a state's top law enforcement officer. And I think a lot of people might still have the image of you basically as a prosecutor with a fancier title. Why do you think that suing the Trump administration over federal policies is part of your law enforcement duties as a state official? This goes beyond political considerations for you. Clearly, you've acknowledged that there are things that Trump does that you don't like that you're not suing over because it's his prerogative. So where does this slot into your role as the guy who has chosen to specifically be the top cop and enforce the laws of the state?

Matthew Platkin (31:05)

My job, I'll say this to him in the face, is to protect the residents from harm of my state. And I don't really care who I have to go against. If we take on people trafficking, guns and drugs, we take on human trafficking. I've taken on some of the largest social media companies, Meta and TikTok, and Discord for harming our kids. I just settled the largest environmental suit ever by a single state against DuPont for well over $2 billion for PFAS contamination in South Jersey. So we take on anyone hurting our residents, and that, unfortunately, nowadays includes the President, United States and his administration when they're unlawfully doing things that hurt people here. I sort of don't view this as ancillary or some other part of my job. I view it as core to my job. And the question, as I said to you, is not, would I vote for something if I was a member of Congress, or if I was, you know, in an administration, would I support a particular policy? No, that's not the question. It wasn't the question when President Biden was in office, and it's certainly not the question when President Trump is in office. It really is those two questions I said before. Are you hurting people in New Jersey and are you breaking law? And do I have standing to do something about it? And when the answer to those questions are yes, I really don't think more because it's an obligation I have. And if I wasn't filing these suits or I wasn't standing up, like I said before, then I actually think I wouldn't be doing my job. Not that I'm somehow being distracted in the way that we're currently operating.

Mark Joseph Stern (32:26)

Yeah, it really shows how different your job is from that of a legislator or a lot of other political positions, in that your number one priority is not really political considerations at all. And that might be easy to forget when your office is working on a bunch of lawsuits that obviously have a political valence. But I think what you're saying is the politics is secondary at best. You sued the Biden administration. You'll sue a future Democratic administration if it comes to it. This is about making sure that you're doing your job and upholding your oath to protect people. And that's not a Democratic or a Republican issue. It should be an issue for New Jersey and ideally a kind of American principle, even if this president does not subscribe to it.

Matthew Platkin (33:10)

Mark, I think if you polled folks in power in New Jersey, you'd find that I've offended and upset people of both political parties for taking on tough fights that I think are in the best interest of the state. So I've certainly been equal opportunity in that regard. It's not something I wake up every morning trying to do. It's not like I get up every morning and say, hey, how can I sue the president today? Who can I piss off here? The job is to protect the people of New Jersey. And I feel genuinely, and I'm not trying to be like Pollyannish about this, but if I had any other consideration, I'm appointed and have a term to do the job that I have, if I was thinking about things other than what I think are in the best interests of the nine and a half million people, it's time for me to do something else. And people I think can fairly question whether I'm right about what is in the best interest of the people or whether I'm right on the legal analysis. But I would really sort of challenge them to say that I haven't been consistent in my own analysis of saying, like, I do think the law is broken and I do think it harms the residents. So I'm going to stand up for it.

Mark Joseph Stern (34:07)

And now for a short break.

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Mark Joseph Stern (37:27)

Back to our conversation with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin. So you're doing your job of fighting back, even when it means pissing people off. But a lot of people are not fighting back. A lot of people, people and institutions are capitulating to Trump. Over the last seven months, we've seen a great deal of capitulation from ostensibly independent institutions, especially law firms. Blue state ags like you have taken a starkly different stance than the law firms that have caved. I'm wondering what that contrast reveals to you.

Matthew Platkin (38:02)

I've been tremendously disappointed by colleagues and peers in our profession, including people who I've worked with and who have respect for as individuals. But to see, like you said, it essentially from large swaths of the profession, capitulation to what they know is not right. The idea that you could be punished professionally for doing your ethical obligation of zealously advocating for your client's interests is frankly, bone chilling. Because if people can't access the courts, if people can't have their rights vindicated, if people can't find protection through the legal system, then we don't live in a democracy. We just don't. There's a reason why one of the Three branches of government is the courts. Because without the arbiters of our legal system being independent and people being able to access that system, then your democratic rights and privileges essentially can be withered away, if not taken away very quickly. And so I can't speak for them. I have spoken to a lot of them. I have written letters, I've said very publicly I'm disappointed. And I think history is going to judge them quite harshly, you know, whether they made a short term business decision or whatever it may be. You know, I think a few months, few years from now, we're going to look back at this period and say, wow, there were members of our legal profession who were supposed to stand up for the rule of law, who didn't. There were members of the press who didn't fulfill their obligations. There were institutions of higher education that are supposed to be beacons of debate and freedom of thought and independence. That cave. And I get. It's scary, trust me, I get it. Like, I understand when you're up against a threat, it can be a scary thing. And sometimes these threats can seem existential, and maybe in fact they are. But this country's supposed to be built on core principles. And yes, we have a constitution, and the Constitution lays out a whole bunch of them. But at the end of the day, they're norms that we all say we're gonna follow. And when we stop following them, even we whittle away bit by bit. It is very hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube. And I think if you look seven months in of where we are as a nation, you know, like I said, he was remarkably transparent. And Project 2025 laid a lot of this out. What it didn't lay out, and what I think I'm most disappointed is by how few people have been willing to stand up and fight for what this nation is supposed to be built on.

Mark Joseph Stern (40:19)

Do you think the legal profession can recover from all of this caving? I mean, I certainly agree with you that it's shameful and a dark day for the profession. You just sort of suggested that you think that, you know, we'll move on from it. There will be a day when we look back and say, this was bad, we shouldn't have done this. How optimistic are you that that day will come? And like, what kind of reforms do we need within this profession to make that happen?

Matthew Platkin (40:43)

You know, it's a great question. I think the legal profession is going to be fundamentally changed. I think the structure of law firms, for instance, I think are going to Change. I think you're going to see litigators doing and operating differently who want to take on these fights. And I think you already are. And I have to say, it's not everybody. Remember, there are four firms that fought the orders. We've stood up and supported each of them with amicus. Jenner, Woolmer, Perkins, Coie and Sussman. And there are lawyers across the country that at great personal expense are still taking on tough fights. Remember what Charles Hamilton Houston said, a lawyer is either a social engineer or a parasite on society. Now, I don't know that's quite that binary, but we are seeing lawyers fulfill those incredible responsibilities, including lawyers, by the way, who I'm routinely against in a lot of cases. It's not necessarily been a neat breakdown along ideological or quote, unquote, partisan lines. So I do think the legal profession is going to have to have a reckoning. You know, we need boards of ethics and professional responsibility to take their responsibility seriously. You know, we are a profession that's supposed to be self policing in that, you know, cares about oaths being adhered to. But I can't speak to why any one person or any one firm made a decision that's a decision they'll have to live with. And maybe it's easy for them to justify. I know it's not why I became a lawyer. And the lawyers that I admire to this day, I think it's not why they became lawyers. And I think those of us who are standing up, I hope, would do this regardless of who's in office, standing up for core principles in our Constitution and core principles in our nation. I hope that they do get looked on over time as people who stayed true to what this profession is supposed to be.

Mark Joseph Stern (42:24)

So I just asked you a really big, difficult question, and you gave me a brilliant answer, which means I have to ask you another one. You ran through the list of capitulators a minute ago. You know, it's not just law firms, right? It's also these other institutions, it's universities. How do we stop this capitulation from continuing like we're seven months in to Trump's second term? In theory, he has another three and a half years left. I'm worried it's going to get worse. What do we need to see happen in the short term to staunch the bleeding, stop the capitulation and kind of turn this around?

Matthew Platkin (43:02)

Look, there's no question strength in numbers is a powerful force. I think it's important for people to make their voices heard. When I get asked Are we in a constitutional crisis? And. And the answer to me, I think, is yes. I think when you have a president, a vice president, an attorney general, openly questioning the legitimacy of judicial decisions, when you have the Solicitor General of the United States standing in court before the nine Supreme Court justices, refusing to even concede that he would follow a circuit decision that was binding on the office, I think if that's not a constitutional crisis, I'm not really sure what is by any academic definition. But the reality is, again, I go back to what I was just saying. These constitutional principles are just, at the end of the day, a series of norms that we as a nation said are so important we're going to put down on paper. And in order for them to mean something, the public is going to have to show that they care. And that will be beyond the 23 Democratic attorneys general. It will be beyond, you know, certainly my office, though I hope we play our part. It'll be up to the. The hundreds of millions of people who live in this country to say what we stand for. And regardless of where you are on the political pendulum, I think it has to be the case that we as a country, if we're gonna continue as a democratic republic, stand for things like you can go to court and get your rights vindicated, that those courts can operate independently and you don't get impeached as a judge because you issue a decision that the administration doesn't like, that the press can operate freely and fairly and be critical of those in power. I say this as someone, by the way, who gets sued a lot by these lawyers, whose rights I'm defending and gets criticized a lot by the press, that I'm asserting the right to exist for, and that our institutions of higher education can train the next generation of leaders and not be afraid that they'll be punished because they're, quote, unquote, indoctrinating people in ways that the administration doesn't see as favorable. And I could go on and on down the list, but these are core things to who we are as a nation. It's why we are the most powerful nations in the world. It's why we are the world's most enduring democracy. And I think those principles are being tested. But ultimately, it's going to be up to the people of this nation to show that they care enough about those rights and privileges and want them to survive.

Mark Joseph Stern (45:18)

I certainly agree that having an independent judiciary is key to our nation surviving as a democracy. I think that's something of a rallying cry here on Amicus. And on a recent show, we talked about good judges who are fighting for equal justice within a judiciary that doesn't always deliver it. You have had a lot of wins in the lower courts, but you've also had some setbacks at the Supreme Court. I'm curious how you shape your litigation strategy, knowing that you might start out with a receptive judge and then later face a Supreme Court that's far more skeptical.

Matthew Platkin (45:54)

Well, I start by making sure I'm surrounded by the best and brightest lawyers in the country, and I'm very fortunate in that regard. You know, I have to give him another shout out. I thought Jeremy Feigenbaum was masterful in the CASA argument at scotus. You know, the team. I get asked like, aren't you wasting all this taxpayer dollars? I'm like, if you saw how hard these folks are working, it's like a handful of people in my office that are working around the clock in some cases, literally, and preserving billions and billions of dollars of state funding. So I think the ROI on their efforts is quite good. But, of course, you have to think strategically. I think any good litigator thinks about how is a case going to proceed. I don't like filing cases that we're not going to win. I have enough to do. I don't need to sue for a press release again. I care about is the law being broken and do we have standing and the ability to do something about it where we can get redressed through the courts? I think that is why courts exist. And as litigators, you need to be thinking about that. And you're sort of living under a rock if you're not thinking about, well, these cases, very likely, some of them, if not most of them, will ultimately wind their way up through the appellate courts and maybe to the Supreme Court. So how is that going to factor into your litigation strategy? Do you seek a preliminary injunction? Do you not seek a preliminary injunction? You know, what type of relief are you requesting? Is it nationwide? Is it not nationwide? Again, all of these things that take into account what the Supreme Court has said. But I think our record of success has been pretty strong. It's actually historically anomalous that we've been this successful against the administration. Traditionally, states are successful about 20% of the time. They sued the federal administration. We've been successful almost all of the time, and that's because this administration violates the law at a rate that is, you know, frankly, unprecedented. But, yes, we think strategically, and we try not to bring cases that are unlikely to succeed.

Mark Joseph Stern (47:38)

This sort of builds off that. And I think it's something that we've been talking a lot about at amicus, at least since the election, probably before, which is how you remain optimistic and keep faith in the rule of law, not just in light of Trump and all of his abuses of office, but in light of a Supreme Court that often seems to be rejecting equal justice. When the decision came down in cost of versus Trump, I was pretty dispirited. I'm sure that your office was very dispirited. I mean, this was a Supreme Court that allowed how many nationwide injunctions to remain in effect against President Biden over four years and then six months into Donald Trump's second term, does away with, with nationwide injunctions or at least universal injunctions. It's been a little while since that decision. You've sat with it. You've gone back to the courts and tried to, you know, deal with it and continue the fight for birthright citizenship. How do you and your staff remain optimistic even in the face of a setback like that? And when going up to a Supreme Court that, as you've said, as everybody knows, is not especially favorable to challenges against the Trump administration.

Matthew Platkin (48:45)

I might have a slightly different take on CASA more broadly. I think it's certainly the contradiction that you highlighted is notable, and it's almost. It's sort of hard to ignore. But at the end of the day, the court for states said quite clearly that we can still seek and obtain nationwide relief. And we always said for states at least, that nationwide injunctions should be limited, but that there are certain extraordinary circumstances that merit them. And birthright citizenship being, I think, probably the clearest example we could come up with. Which is why, as you know, as we've been backed down in the lower courts, we've gotten very principled decisions that have said the exact same thing as they said previously, which is that states are entitled to nationwide relief on this particular question. But the broader point you raise, I think, is a really important one, Mark. And look, I think one big difference. I mentioned Dobbs and Bruin. I think back to those two days because you think, on the one hand, no deference to states and particularly law enforcement's decision about whether somebody has met the legal standard for carrying a firearm, the most dangerous thing somebody could carry, the leading cause of death for kids. And yet on the other hand, complete deference to states about whether they want to restrict access to life changing or life sustaining and saving abortion care for people in need. So it would be very easy just to say I don't understand how we keep fighting, given that clear, some might say political difference in those decisions. But look, these things we're fighting for, the rule of law, which can seem abstract, the principles that this nation's founded on, they're really important. And we have fought for them for two and a half centuries. And throughout periods in American history, it has seemed pretty bleak. You know, I'm not sure if you look back at the antebellum period or Reconstruction or the women's suffrage movement or Jim Crow and civil rights movement, that everything seemed so rosy and we'd come out on the other side as we did. And I think we're in one of those periods now where we're being tested. And I just was talking to Pam Karlan, who's one of my longtime mentors and friend of the show and heroes. I know she said something in a speech before I went to law school that has always stuck with me, that in life you don't really know when you're being tested. We are in a test right now. We're in a test as a nation, and I think we're in a test as a profession. And for those of us in positions of power, we're in a significant test. How we fare in this test, I couldn't tell value. But I think that's true in every critical moment in American history. And the only way we get through it is by believing that we can have an impact and that we can keep doing things that slowly but surely get us through that period. And so that's what keeps me motivated. I mean, I don't allow myself to sort of wallow in despair about a tough case. Like I said, we only bring cases we think we're right on, that we think are righteous and that we're going to win. And when you do that, but sometimes you lose. Anybody who's never lost a case has probably never fought a tough case. And so, you know, I try to maintain that perspective. I try to make sure our folks, you know, can continue to have the resources they need to do their job and that we're standing up for things that we should be standing up for. In the name of the people in New Jersey.

Mark Joseph Stern (51:56)

Attorney General Plotkin, thanks for joining Amicus.

Matthew Platkin (51:59)

Thanks so much for having me.

Mark Joseph Stern (52:04)

And that's a wrap for this episode of Amicus. Thanks so much for listening, and thank you so much for your letters and questions. You can keep in touch@amicuslate.com or you can find us at facebook.com amicuspodcast in our special bonus episode available exclusively to Slate + members. We welcome Madiba Denny to the Amicus Rumpus Room. We talk about Trump's takeover of D.C. and how the Supreme Court's unexplained orders may be coming back to bite them. To hear that, join Slate Plus. We hope to see you there. Sara Burningham is our senior producer. Our producer is Patrick Fort. We had additional help from Joel Meyer, Mia Lobel is the executive producer of Slate Podcasts, Hilary Fry is Slate's editor in chief, and Ben Richmond is our senior director of operations. We'll be back with another episode of Amicus next week. Until then, take good care. Hi, I'm Josh Levine. My podcast, the Queen tells the story of Linda Taylor. She was a con artist, a kidnapper, and maybe even a murderer. She was also given the title the Welfare Queen, and her story was used by Ronald Reagan to justify slashing aid to the poor. Now it's time to hear her real story. Over the course of four episodes, you'll find out what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name.

Matthew Platkin (53:53)

The great lesson of this for me.

Mark Joseph Stern (53:56)

Is that people will come to their.

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Own conclusions based on what their prejudices are.

Mark Joseph Stern (54:00)

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