DENVER | Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told a crowd gathered in a Denver high school auditorium Wednesday night that opponents of President Donald Trump’s administration are fighting “to keep America, America.”
Weiser joined three of his counterparts from other states — Attorneys General Nick Brown of Washington, Anne Lopez of Hawaii and Aaron Ford of Nevada — for the latest in a series of “community impact hearings” on Trump’s agenda at George Washington High School.
The four are among the 23 elected Democratic attorneys general nationwide who have led the fight against the second Trump administration’s agenda in the courts. Weiser has sued Trump at least a dozen times so far, including challenges to the administration’s attempt to end the 14th Amendment’s protections for birthright citizenship; its sweeping freeze of many federal grant and aid programs; its mass layoffs of federal employees; and its defunding of medical research through the National Institutes of Health.
Weiser said the legal challenges have borne some fruit in the form of preliminary injunctions and other procedural victories, but acknowledged growing alarm over whether “this democratic republic (will) hold.”
“These court victories are important, but more important is everyone’s voice,” Weiser said, encouraging the crowd to join protests like the one that drew 8,000 people to the Colorado Capitol on April 5. “We need to use our voice.”
Wednesday’s event came amid an outcry this week over the fates of more than 200 immigrants deported by the Trump administration to a brutal maximum-security prison in El Salvador, and promises by Trump to send American citizens there next. At least one of the deportees, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was removed as a result of an “administrative error,” while advocates, attorneys and family members of many others say that they were falsely identified as members of a transnational gang because of tattoos honoring family members or their favorite soccer team.
The administration has also moved to target hundreds of lawful permanent residents and student visa holders for deportation, including Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who led pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations at Columbia University, and Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student who was detained after writing an op-ed in her student newspaper. Lawyers for Jeanette Vizguerra, a Colorado woman without legal status who was detained by federal authorities last month, have also alleged in court that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement retaliated against Vizguerra for her immigration advocacy work.
“We won’t tolerate people being picked up without any process and shipped to some other country with no recourse,” Weiser told the crowd to applause. “The First Amendment matters, because when you speak, and you speak your truth, you cannot be — in this country — retaliated against for speaking your truth.”
Weiser, serving his second term as attorney general after winning reelection in 2022, is running for Colorado governor in 2026. He faces a tough primary contest against U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who entered the race last week.
Weiser and his fellow attorneys general heard stories from Coloradans personally impacted by the Trump administration’s actions, including federal workers, homelessness service providers and refugee support organizations.
Marya Washburn, a U.S. Forest Service employee, was part of a firefighting team that responded to the Alexander Mountain Fire in Colorado last summer. In February, she was among the 3,400 probationary employees at the agency to receive termination notices from the Trump administration, and although she was reinstated thanks to a court order, that order is set to end on Saturday.
“I’m shaking,” Washburn said as she read from her notes, citing concerns about cuts to firefighting personnel ahead of the 2025 fire season. “I’m angry.”
Trump’s mass layoffs, funding freezes and attempted shutdowns of congressionally-established agencies amount to an unprecedented expansion of executive power that runs contrary to longstanding separation-of-powers principles in the U.S. Constitution. Fears that his administration will defy adverse court rulings have also reached new heights in recent days, especially following its apparent inaction in the face of a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling last week stating the administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.
Brown, elected as Washington attorney general last year, said that the outcomes of some legal challenges to the administration — like the restoration of grant funding that Trump had attempted to freeze — had “for the most part” given him “confidence in our system.” But that confidence is now being tested.
“This is the first time — this week, in the days past — where I think we’re really getting to the precipice of a constitutional crisis,” he said. “And I don’t say that lightly.”
“I don’t have all the answers. I do not know what it means for a president to blatantly disregard what a court says. I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” Brown continued. “But we might be there tomorrow, or next week.”
Phil Weiser’s aggressive and highly vocal approach to the Federal government and to the Donald will not help our State at all, in fact, we will get very little future help from the good old USA. We stand alone for the next four years. You will see.
On a brighter note, Jason Crow will hurt us worse because he’s more outspoken and much closer in distance to the Donald. Woo are we Colorado citizens.
I’m with Phil Weiser all the way. Believe what you want. But snatching people off the street without DUE PROCESS is what banana republics do….are we reduced to that ? Of course, it’s not clear what AG Weiser can do. ICE grabs somebody and deports them and guess what? Our Omnipotent, omnificence presidential ‘being’, all of a sudden has no power to stop it or do anything about it. Something ain’t right folks and it’s coming home to roost.
I don’t know if we are “woo”, but I refuse to bow to a criminal president who not only has no idea of how the government is supposed to work, but doesn’t care to know. The governing law in this country is the Constitution. Trump has no clue what it says, only that it gets in his way.
Donald Trump is, as we know, a felon and habitual liar. I would much rather live in Colorado, where we are not so meek as to bend a knee to a sadist. Think back to everything you’ve heard him rave on about, and try to find a human moment, a time when he actually appealed to the best in us.
I can save you the time, actually. There isn’t one.
This really isn’t about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Democrats don’t really care any more about him than they do about their victimized constituents. This is all about Democrat Party power. Despite losing control over all three branches of government, they still have enough liberal activist district judges they have planted in courts throughout the country. These judges were chosen, first and foremost, because of their consistent commitment to left-wing ideology. They are fighting for these activist judges to have absolute authority to nullify the power of the duly elected President by enacting nationwide injunctions against every executive order they disagree with. If this fails, they are likely to double down on death threats, destruction of property and assassinations to get their way.
Come on, Kirk. You bring on highly advanced, truthful statements that Dave Perry and his cohorts will never understand, nor accept. It’s like calculus students talking to general math students in trying to describe the basics of physics.