This story by Chase Woodruff appeared on Colorado Newsline on April 17, 2025.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, left, was joined by fellow Democratic attorneys general from three other states for a town hall event at George Washington High School in Denver on Wednesday, April 16. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
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 welcomed 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.”