Politics
How Democrats will try to block Trump’s promise of mass deportations
Democratic attorneys general are preparing a raft of legal actions to prevent Donald Trump from carrying out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, setting the stage for a series of showdowns over one of his central campaign pledges.
In interviews with Blue Light News, six leading blue-state prosecutors said they are girding to take Trump to court over misusing military troops on domestic soil, attempting to commandeer local or state law enforcement to do the job of the federal government and denying people’s constitutional right to due process.
The attorneys general also said they would move to challenge Trump if he tries to federalize the National Guard — or attempts to direct active-duty military units or National Guard troops from red states into blue states. They are bracing to push back against his administration sending immigration agents into schools and hospitals to target vulnerable populations.
And they are preparing to fight Trump over withholding federal funding from local law enforcement agencies in an attempt to induce them into carrying out deportations, as he did unsuccessfully in his first term.
The attorneys’ preparations underscore the depth of concern among blue-state leaders about Trump’s deportation plans and foreshadow the major role state prosecutors will continue to play in shaping the country’s immigration policy. Following a rash of red-state challenges to President Joe Biden’s immigration agenda over the last four years, it’s now blue-state attorneys who are positioned to set off another round of legal clashes — this time intended to stymie Trump on his signature issue.
“There are ways to [handle immigration] that are in line with American values and conform to American law. But they don’t seem to be interested in pursuing that,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a former federal prosecutor who has experience in immigration enforcement, said of Trump and his allies. “And that’s where someone like me has an important role to play.”
MOVES AND COUNTERMOVES
While some have dismissed Trump’s pledge to carry out the largest deportation in American history as infeasible, Democratic attorneys general are taking the incoming president at his word. They are preparing briefs and analyses and even identifying courts in which to file their lawsuits as they brace for him to begin rounding up undocumented immigrants, who number some 11 million, en masse.
It is setting up a legal chess match between a president-elect looking for new ways to press the limits of executive power and a cadre of state prosecutors already familiar with his playbook and adapting to changes in his approach. And it is unfolding amid broader shifts in the politics of border security.
The incoming president’s policy team is already thinking about how to craft executive actions aimed to withstand the legal challenges from groups and state prosecutors — all in hopes of avoiding an early defeat like the one that shuttered his 2017 travel ban targeting majority-Muslim nations.
But each step Trump takes during his transition — stacking his Cabinet with immigration hardliners who have pledged to carry out his calls for large-scale deportations, and confirming he intends to both declare a national emergency and use the military in some form to aid his plans — gives Democrats more clues about how to attempt to block his efforts once he takes office.
Trump pledged on the campaign trail to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expedite the removal of immigrant gang members. He is expected to end parole for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and deactivate a mobile phone application called CBP One that migrants could use to set up appointments to seek asylum.
His border-czar-in-waiting, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan, has vowed to ramp up workplace raids. His incoming deputy chief of policy, Stephen Miller, has spoken of deputizing the National Guard as immigration enforcement officers and even sending troops across state lines to circumvent any resistance efforts. While federal law largely prohibits using military forces for domestic law enforcement, Miller last year identified a workaround — the clause in the so-called Insurrection Act that gives the president power to deploy the military on domestic soil in times of turmoil.
And on Monday, Trump confirmed in a social media post that he intends to declare a national emergency and marshal military assets to help execute deportations.
State prosecutors argued in interviews that those plans are on shaky legal ground. And talk of using the military has already spurred policy divides between the incoming president and Republican lawmakers, with libertarian-leaning GOP Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) saying this week that Trump’s plan to carry out mass deportations with the military’s help would be a “huge mistake” — an early sign that Democrats might have some allies on this front.
“I don’t think the theories that they have comport with federal laws, so there would be a direct challenge to the legal basis the president would use to deploy the United States military,” Torrez said.
“Separate and apart from the legal arguments that we would be advancing in court, I think there’s a broader context that most Americans are simply not comfortable and do not support utilizing military assets in that way,” Torrez added.
WHERE TO PUSH BACK — OR NOT
Attorneys general aren’t planning to stand in the way of lawful immigration enforcement. In many cases they will work with federal authorities to address public safety threats and to help catch and deport criminals — as they have in the past. And even as they prepare for what they cast as potential overreach from a second Trump administration, they note that their next steps largely depend on how the president-elect implements his plans, which is difficult to predict.
Trump’s advisers have suggested the Republican administration will take a more “targeted” approach to deportations, starting with those who are known or suspected national security threats and who have criminal records. But attorneys general are skeptical he will stick to that. And they are fearful he could begin targeting both undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for a decade or more and have established roots, or those who entered the country through legal pathways — scenarios they warn could lead to family separation and cause chaos in some communities.
“If he’s going to want to achieve that type of scale, the largest deportation in U.S. history, as he says, by definition he’s going to have to target people who are lawfully here and … go after American citizens,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said. “And we’re not going to stand for that.”
Trump pledged on the campaign trail to begin his deportation push in Aurora, Colorado, the Denver suburb he routinely depicted — despite pushback from locals — as a “war zone” that had been “invaded and conquered” by members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Phil Weiser, the state’s attorney general, said he will be “laser-focused” on determining whether Trump’s immigration officials are denying people due process — a move he called “unAmerican.”
Attorneys general from Colorado to California are also preparing for repeat battles over federal funding. Trump threatened throughout his first term to withhold funding from states and cities with so-called sanctuary policies that limit local law enforcement’s interactions with federal immigration authorities. His administration also attempted to attach immigration-enforcement conditions to grants for local law enforcement — and lost in court.
“We won’t take that lying down, just as we didn’t last time,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.
In response to a request for comment for this story, Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said in a statement that the president-elect has “nominated the most highly qualified and experienced attorneys to lead the Department of Justice” and “focus on enforcing the rule of law.”
Democratic prosecutors’ resistance will extend beyond the courtroom. Advocacy groups such as the ACLU are already pushing attorneys general to use other tools at their disposal — such as issuing guidance to state and local agencies about how to handle immigration requests from the federal government — to attempt to slow implementation of Trump’s immigration actions.
And attorneys general are already embarking on a messaging campaign both against Trump’s broad characterizations of migrants as “blood thirsty” criminals and in support of immigrants who are contributing to local communities. They are also joining other Democratic leaders in starting to cast Trump’s deportation plans as potentially harmful for the economy he has pledged to improve, drawing a direct line between the immigrant workforce that helps drive the nation’s agriculture industry and higher prices at the grocery store.
Trump has created the narrative “that every immigrant who is here in, say, Massachusetts, or this country, illegally is committing crimes,” said the state’s attorney general, Andrea Campbell. “It’s just not true.”
Shia Kapos and Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
LAS VEGAS — Vice President JD Vance has faced skepticism from some in the Jewish Republican community. He waded directly into the fray Monday — and was met with raucous applause.
In a closed-door appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition leadership summit, Vance addressed what he called the “elephant in the room”: Israel’s plummeting favorability among young Americans, according to one people in the room for Vance’s speech, granted anonymity to describe an off-record conversation, and audio of the event obtained by Blue Light News. Vance also discussed rising antisemitism.
“There is a growing suspicion among, I would call it, under-40s of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Vance said in a moderated conversation with former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), chair of the RJC board. “I think my view is, what we have to do is articulate why this is in the best interest of the United States of America, and actually get out there and talk about the ways in which it is in the best interest of the United States of America.”
Vance noted that Republicans must “talk about the concrete alignment of interest and to hook a relationship on that, rather than something that may have made a lot of sense rhetorically 30 or 40 years ago, but just doesn’t have … the same purchase as it did 30 or 40 years ago because the country is different and because young people are looking at this in a different way.”
Vance’s appearance at the annual RJC confab — hosted at the Venetian Resort, developed by the late GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson — came as a surprise to many in the pro-Israel community, with which Vance has shared a sometimes tumultuous relationship. Vance, the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, will likely need to shore up support from the community to succeed Trump.
The hesitancy toward Vance among some in pro-Israel circles boiled up in recent months over Vance’s dovishness on the Iran war and his criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government. But other concerns go back further, centered on his longtime relationship with Israel-skeptical pundit Tucker Carlson and the way he’s addressed antisemitic incidents or statements.
Some pro-Israel megadonors, like billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, have already signaled they’d support Secretary of State Marco Rubio in 2028 over Vance. (Neither Vance nor Rubio have announced whether they’ll seek the presidential nomination, though Rubio has stated he will not run if Vance does.)
But Vance’s speech was met with applause inside the cavernous convention hall where it was delivered, and praise outside of it.
“He hit a home run with the crowd,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) told reporters after the speech, noting Vance received “several standing ovations.”
The Jewish community has “a great ‘bullshit detector,’ to understand when they’re being pandered to,” said Matt Brooks, CEO of the RJC. “And I don’t believe that anybody will come away from this meeting thinking that they were pandered to. I think they will come away from this conversation with a sense that the vice president really gets it and gets us.”
Last year, the RJC’s leadership summit was centered on combatting antisemitism within the Republican Party, and leaders took aim at Carlson and others. Vance has been an ally of Carlson’s, and when Coleman asked Vance about podcasters like Carlson, Vance gave a winding answer.
“I recognize a lot of people in this room may disagree with things that Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or Joe Rogan have said,” Vance said, before focusing on Rogan and Fuentes, saying they are “two very, very different categories of people.”
“I think it’s a mistake to sort of say we’re going to write Joe Rogan off because he said something that we don’t like,” he said. “I think the best approach is to actually go in there and talk to him and make the argument as best as you can.”
Vance directly condemned some antisemitic theories like blood libel, saying it is the exact opposite of the Christian gospel. He said that Jew-hatred is “corrosive to the soul.”
And echoing other speakers at the two-day RJC summit, Vance declared that former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) is the most important Senate candidate this cycle, and urged those in attendance to support him in his race against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
Earlier Monday, Vance rallied alongside Rogers at a Michigan event hosted by MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, before flying to Nevada. His cross-country itinerary signaled his seriousness in courting the Jewish donor community, suggested Robert Schostak, an RJC board member.
“I think it’s great that he’s here. This is not easy,” said Schostak, the former Michigan GOP chair. “He cares about the fight of antisemitism, and the support for Israel. If this was secondary to him, he wouldn’t be here.”
Ari Fleischer, an RJC board member and a former White House press secretary, agreed. “Today is not primary day,” he said. “But I think today was progress day for JD Vance with the Jewish community.”
Allies of Texas GOP Senate hopeful Ken Paxton are planning a $15 million ad campaign starting Tuesday, the first major ad buy on behalf of Paxton in his battleground matchup with Democrat James Talarico.
Two new ads from Lone Star Liberty PAC, the pro-Paxton super PAC, will air across 18 markets across Texas over the ensuing two weeks. They mark Paxton’s first significant foray on to the airwaves, jolting a campaign that has been clouded by concerns over Talarico’s massive cash advantage and Paxton’s electability.
One of the new ads will lean into Paxton’s record as attorney general, highlighting Texas’ recent agreement with Kellogg’s to remove certain food dyes from cereals and the state’s billion-dollar settlements with Meta and Google over privacy and safety concerns.
“When they come after Texans, he comes after them,” a voiceover says in the ad.
The other new advertisement accuses Talarico of aiding China’s growth at the expense of Texas residents, pointing to the Democrat’s vote against restrictions on Chinese investments, and argues that a Chinese billionaire’s ownership of land near Laughlin Air Force Base presents national security concerns.
“China’s got Talarico. Texas needs Ken Paxton,” the ad says.
“[James Talarico] voted to sell Texas land to China, pushed a Texas Green New Deal that would gut our oil and gas jobs, and stood with criminals over cops as the most pro-criminal member of the Texas House,” Lone Star Liberty spokesperson Sam Cooper said. “That record is too extreme for Texas. Between now and Election Day, voters are going to hear it.”
Talarico’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The multimillion-dollar campaign comes as Republicans look for ways to negate Talarico’s war chest. The latest Federal Election Commission filings from July show Talarico with $21.5 million in the bank, dwarfing Paxton’s $1.8 million in reserves.
That advantage, along with Paxton’s drawn-out primary runoff that forced him to focus on beating Sen. John Cornyn, has allowed Talarico to dominate the general election messaging battle on television. He’s spent $39 million on TV since the March primary, according to data tracking firm AdImpact.
On Saturday, Talarico launched his first negative ad against Paxton, spotlighting his impeachment and labeling him “the most corrupt politician in Texas.”
Although Republicans have traditionally been favored in Texas statewide elections, Democrats are optimistic Talarico can defeat Paxton. A Texas Public Opinion Research poll released Thursday found Talarico leading Paxton — 48 percent to 42 percent.
Concerns about a potential Paxton defeat have prompted some Republicans to implore President Donald Trump to invest some of the gargantuan MAGA Inc. war chest in the Texas race. MAGA Inc. has over $400 million in cash on hand, and Trump publicly pledged to support Paxton financially.
Republicans and Democrats are fighting over working class voters. Americans don’t believe the rhetoric.
Fifty-five percent of Americans think politicians are just trying to win votes when they say they will help the working class, according to new results from The Blue Light News Poll. It’s a view held by majorities of people who voted for President Donald Trump, who voted for Kamala Harris and who self-identify as working class.
Only one in four Americans who self-identify as working-class say politicians genuinely want to help them.
That wariness comes as both parties increasingly see working class voters as key to their winning coalitions. But The POLITICO Poll results show both parties face serious challenges to doing so.
Neither party does particularly well with Americans who identify as working class: 38 percent of them say Democrats best represent them, while 32 percent say Republicans. Americans, broadly, are almost identically split, with a 37 percent plurality saying Democrats best represent the interests of the working class, while 30 percent say Republicans.
Democrats wrestling with how to win back voters who have drifted toward the GOP — as their coalition has grown increasingly dominated by college-educated Americans — are locked in an intraparty battle over which wing of the party, progressives or moderates, best speaks to these voters.
“We’ve struggled with the working class for quite a while and it’s been a combination of being out of touch with working class values on a lot of culture issues and being seen as either not helpful or not helpful enough on economic issues,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), widely considered the leader of the progressive movement, told Playbook’s Will Steakin that progressive Democrats “are speaking to the needs of working families.”
“It is not just traditional Democrats or independents,” he said. “There are a lot of working-class Republicans who understand that there’s something wrong when we are the only major nation on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to hold onto the gains Trump made in 2024 with working class voters — including Black and Latino voters frustrated with the Biden-era economy — at a time when cost of living remains voters’ top concern.
“With the [Iran] war, with gas prices, with cost of food, the working class is not happy with the president, and many who are independents and even some Republicans have said that he’s forgotten about them,” said former Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Renacci.
Who is working class?
Complicating both parties’ efforts to win over these voters is that Americans do not agree on what makes someone working class. Neither do lawmakers and party officials.
When asked whether the term “working class” describes them, a 59 percent majority of Americans broadly say it does, while just 31 percent say it does not, according to the survey conducted by London-based polling firm Public First. But when forced to choose from a list of labels — including wealthy, middle class, lower middle class, working class and poor — just 16 percent of adults say they identify as “working class.”
Americans are also divided over what characteristics define the working class.
Some politicians, including progressive New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Andy Schor, the centrist Democratic mayor of Lansing, Michigan, have argued the definition of working class is expansive — encompassing anyone who needs to work to pay their bills.
“If you’re not making enough money that you don’t have to work, then you’re working class,” said Schor in an interview. “The American Dream is to be able to work hard and get ahead, and people are not getting ahead like they used to, and they’ll look at the folks that they vote for and think, ‘Who can help me to get ahead?’”
The Blue Light News Poll illustrates the difficult path for the GOP to solidify its gains with working class Americans as economic concerns continue to be top of mind: More than a third of this group say they are not currently employed. A 35 percent plurality also say Trump, not former President Joe Biden, is fully responsible for the economy and many oppose the war in Iran, which most say has made things more expensive for them.
Half of self-identified working class Americans say Trump has spent too much time focusing on international affairs instead of on domestic issues.
“I think [Republican candidates] just got to tell the truth,” Renacci, the Ohio Republican, said. “You just have to start realizing that those middle class voters are struggling and they’re just looking for somebody who’s going to understand their issues and problems.”
The race for 2026
November will offer a major test of whether each party’s working class pitch is working, carrying implications that extend into 2028.
Candidates in both parties are racing to flex their working class bonafides this cycle, leaning on their biographies to signal ties to these voters. Trump pushed that playbook to extremes in 2024, when he briefly worked the fryer and drive-through window at McDonald’s as part of a campaign swing through Pennsylvania.
Republicans have continued that approach, with candidates and administration officials emphasizing their blue-collar roots on the campaign trail. Vice President JD Vance recently returned to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where he spoke at the steel plant where his grandfather worked.
In battleground Georgia, Rep. Mike Collins — the state’s GOP Senate nominee — often touts his background as a trucker. And GOP Sen. Susan Collins has broken with Trump on tariff policy, saying his trade fight with Canada hurts working families and small businesses in Maine, where she’s locked in a competitive battle for reelection.
These efforts come against the backdrop of increasing concerns about the economy, fueled by the ongoing Iran war.
Democrats, meanwhile, are divided over which flank of the party can best appeal to working class voters, a fissure that burst into public view during primary season, when a slate of progressives prevailed in high-profile contests.
“The working class are giving Democrats another look and we better not blow it,” said Kessler of Third Way. “Donald Trump got reelected based on the notion he was going to fight for you, working class men and women, and his first year and a half has been anything but that.”
Some Democrats have made their working class background central to their pitch: Sam Forstag, a union leader and former smokejumper, is running in an open district in western Montana that Trump won by double digits in 2024. Bob Brooks, a firefighter union chief, is challenging GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania.
But some progressives are still running into limits: In Michigan, one of Democrats’ must-hold seats in November, the state’s divisive Senate primary illustrated that debate in real-time. Progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination, performed best in the state’s wealthiest and most highly educated areas, while moderate Rep. Haley Stevens did better in places with lower average incomes and where fewer votes have college degrees.
Jessie Blaeser contributed to this report.
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