Senate Standing Committee on Judiciary

Welcome, everyone, to the Judiciary Committee's information briefing. Informational briefing this Thursday, August 14th, here in room 016. Just for those who have. Don't pay attention to info briefings. Typically, info briefings do not allow public testimony. So this is a. A normal informational briefing. We're soliciting information from a specific office in this case, and that's why we don't.

We won't have public testimony. As probably most everyone's aware, the Covid virus has been on the upswing recently. So there are free masks back there in the back if anybody wants one. And I don't know, is that. Is that Representative Amato there? If you'd like to come up and sit with me up here.

I'm kind of lonely as is anyway, so I want to share for. And if I'm missing any other Members of the Legislature, please. I can't see everybody. Precisely. Okay, so the purpose of this information briefing. And we'll probably have a couple of more.

Well, we're planning to have more on the rule of law, and that's the General subject, but it will be looking at what the Trump Administration is doing at the federal level, how that. What their decisions in some cases, or in quite a few cases, actually would appear to be of doubtful legality. How's that affecting Hawaii?

What can we do about it? And what are, you know, what are the effects on Hawaii residents? So today, the Attorney General has graciously made herself and two of her top deputies available to talk about the lawsuits that the State of Hawaii has been involved with. Right now, I understand there's 27 that are ongoing, Is that correct?

Correct. Okay. And they will be talking about the status of those lawsuits, what the stakes are for Hawaii and how they affect Hawaii residents. And with that, I will turn over to Attorney General Lopez. Good morning.

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to come and provide this. It has been several months since we've had the opportunity to talk about what's happening with those cases. And so I think it's a good time to give you an update on what's happening.

I want to sort of just recap for people what my goal in this litigation is. My purpose and my goal is to. To make sure that we are enforcing the rule of law, and that's it. My efforts are not to make partisan points or to somehow get engaged in the political process that's going on.

We are purely here to enforce a rule of law. And so the decisions that we make about when we join a case and when we don't. That's typically the foremost part of the decision making. And so since, I guess, January 20th.

I'm sorry to interrupt. Can everybody in the back hear. Can you just pull the mic closer to you? And is that better? Just right up in your. Right up in my face.

Okay. Okay, Good. So since January 20th, the Democratic attorneys General have been meeting regularly to review the actions of this Administration, talk about whether or not the states have any standing or any kind of injury resulting from those either Executive orders or policies that are going back and forth.

I have today brought David Day, my special assistant, and Kaliko Fernandez, our Solicitor General for the State of Hawaii. While I've been working hard with the DIM AGs, I want everybody to know that these two have been on, on the phone five days a week since January 20th with the staff of the other Democratic AGs.

And they have devoted a considerable part of their lives over the last eight months to these matters. They know the ins and outs of everything. And so I'm going to pass this presentation over to them and let them take us through it all.

Very good. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair. So this, we're going to be giving a presentation on the affirmative litigation against the federal Administration. As noted, there are 27 cases. We have grouped these cases just for conceptual purposes, into four categories. One of them, and they aren't perfect in terms of sort of like there's some overlap between different categories.

For instance, there are several that relate to immigration that are in different categories. But we did our best to sort of conceptualize the issues that are present with immigration. What we classify as immigration. We have five cases, funding freezes and grant terminations, 10 cases, what we call federal agency dismantling and reductions in force. There are seven cases.

And protecting elections, health and safety, five cases. We'll be going through each of these cases briefly and then highlighting ones that we think are of particular import.

Okay, the first category we have is immigration. And as you see on the slide, the first case we filed was on birthright citizenship. And this relates to the birthright citizenship eo. I'm going to put a brief pin in that one because I'll talk about that one at some length. But first I'll describe the Medicaid data sharing case.

So in order to determine Medicaid eligibility and to pay for healthcare services through Medicaid, the states collect sensitive information about Medicaid applicants and participants that can include Social Security numbers, home addresses, birth dates, financial records, prescription drug records, mental health records, for example, and that the states are required to provide monthly reports to the Federal Government about some of this information that's collected now.

This case challenges the Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Kennedy's directive to share millions of individuals Medicaid data, including addresses and health claims Data, with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Even over the objections of career staff concerned about the legality of that data sharing, only 54 minutes were provided to comply with the directive.

The data shared was not anonymized or otherwise otherwise protected. Press reporting indicates that data of the PII of residents of California, Illinois, Washington and the District of Columbia were shared with dhs. There is ample evidence that the data will be used for immigration enforcement.

Indeed, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at CMS entered into a data sharing agreement with Ayes that gives it direct access to that Medicaid data. It's worth noting this was a radical departure that established federal privacy and confidentiality policies include an explicit prohibition on the use of Medicaid data files for immigration enforcement.

Part of the concern here is that the unauthorized disclosure of confidential data to DHS may create a significant chilling effect discouraging immigrants and their families from seeking necessary health care or from enrolling in Medicaid, which can have serious consequences for public health and increase the risk of adverse health impacts.

So we sued in a coalition of 20 states in early July and we recently obtained a preliminary injunction in this case that bars DHS from using the Medicaid data it has obtained for immigration enforcement and bars HHS from sharing any data from the plaintiff states with DHS for Immigration Enforcement purposes pending completion of a reasoned decision making process.

So that's the Medicaid data sharing case. The next is the SNAP data demand which has a sort of similar flavor.

This lawsuit challenges the U.S. Department of Agriculture's demand that states turnover sensitive PII of millions of applicants for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as snap, which provides is an essential safety net program that provides benefits that can be used to buy food.

States have responsibility for administering the SNAP program on a day to day basis and as part of that Administration collect again addresses, Social Security numbers, citizenship and immigration status, household income, among other things.

Earlier this year the USDA issued an unprecedented demand for PII including names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security numbers and total benefits received for all SNAP applicants and recipients for the past five years.

USDA announced that it had already contacted the state's third party vendors which administer SNAP payment systems and it planned to try to circumvent the states themselves and collect state SNAP data directly from those vendors. USDA also indicated that a failure to comply could trigger non compliance procedures.

USDA cited program integrity concerns, but recent events strongly indicate that the government's explanations are pretextual. Sort of hand in hand with the case I last described.

And again here there's a concern with the chilling effect that disclosure of applicant and recipient data, including for potential immigration enforcement purposes, deters individuals from participating in this critical safety net program to combat hunger, a threat to public safety and welfare.

That's on top of the severe administrative burden of having to collect and turn over the large swaths of data that are being requested. So we sued in a coalition of 22 states in late July. This is a newer case. The litigation is ongoing.

So I'm going to be talking about immigration enforcement funding conditions, and we have two cases relating to this. I'll begin by noting that the issue of conditions and certifications on grants has been one that has been growing exponentially over time. They don't just relate to immigration, but other matters as well.

For instance, diversity, equity and inclusion issues as well. But in these two cases, what we have are immigration enforcement conditions imposed by federal departments and agencies upon grants and grant recipients.

Putting it another way, these grants require as a condition for receiving funds for programs that have no reasonable connection to immigration matters, that state law enforcement and perhaps even regular employees of state departments cooperate and with respect to the FEMA conditions we'll be discussing in a second, be involved in joint operations with the Federal Government immigration authorities.

Hawaii's interest in both of these cases is to fight for the autonomy of our state and to not be illegally coerced into becoming De facto agents of federal immigration authorities, which is not something that is sanctioned by our laws.

In the first Administration, the first presidential Administration of the current President, there were limited instances of these immigration enforcement conditions popping up, for instance, in the context of Department of Justice burn JAG grants. But now it has become more widespread. In the case of California vs United States Department of Transportation, the scope of the impact is considerable.

We'll be discussing that case in more detail in just a moment. In the case of Illinois vs FEMA, Department of Homeland Security and FEMA sought to impose very stringent conditions on the recipient of fiscal year 2025 grants.

And these are things for like disaster preparedness and homeland security grants, including honoring requests for cooperation such as participation in joint operations, sharing of information, or requests for short term detention of an alien pursuant to a detainer. At this time, cross motions for summary judgment are pending.

So as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to do a little bit more of a deep dive on the birthright citizenship case. So within hours of taking office, the President issued an Executive order entitled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.

It declares that birthright citizenship does not extend to anyone born to a mother who is unlawfully present or who is lawfully present on a temporary basis and a father who is neither a citizen nor lawful permanent resident.

It states that no agency shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship or accept documents purporting to recognize United States citizenship for those children born after February 192025.

We sued the very next day in a coalition of 20 states and jurisdictions arguing, among other things, that this Executive order blatantly violates the 14th Amendment citizenship clause, which states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

We also argued that the order directly violates binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent dating as far back as 1898. The Executive order would not afford provide affected children any lawful status and may render them stateless and would leave them ineligible for a range of federal services and programs that aren't available to unauthorized individuals.

The United States has argued that the birthright order is consistent with their view of the original meaning of the 14th Amendment. They argue that it means that the subject to the jurisdiction language in the Citizenship Clause means only people who owe primary allegiance to the United States and not those who owe primary allegiance to a foreign sovereign.

So the district court in our case, as did every district court to consider a challenge to the Executive Order, granted preliminary relief, finding that we were nearly certain to prevail because the order violates settled and binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent, again from as far back as 1898.

Another judge in the State of Washington, in granting preliminary relief, called the order blatantly unconstitutional.

As you folks may have seen in the press, the case went up to the US Supreme Court on the Federal Government's emergency application for a partial stay of the injunction, and the court issued a decision in late June addressing universal injunctions, also known as nationwide injunctions, and not the underlying merits questions about whether The Birthright Citizenship EO violates the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause or any other law.

The Supreme Court concluded that universal injunctions, which bar a policy, for example nationwide, likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts and therefore partially state the injunctions entered by the lower courts.

But importantly, the opinion does not foreclose the state's argument that a universal injunction is necessary to provide them complete relief that absent this kind of injunction there will be chaos and serious administrative burden for the states resulting from some kind of patchwork citizenship system.

And on remand back to the district court after that US Supreme Court decision, the district judge agreed, affirming a nationwide injunction in our favor and finding that no narrower remedy would be workable and afford the plaintiff states complete relief.

The Federal Government's appeal in this case, which includes the underlying merits questions, was argued recently before the First Circuit. So we are awaiting a ruling there.

Next, we'd like to do a deeper dive into one of our immigration funding condition cases, and that's the UN regarding the US Department of Transportation and what's known as the Duffy Directive. And this is. And basically we'll also be discussing the scope of the potential impact on Hawaii.

The case arises from a a document from the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, and that on the right of this slide, this is how the United States District court described what this larger document does.

Secretary Duffy issued the Duffy directive in April 2025, requiring transportation grant recipients to, quote, cooperate with federal officials in the enforcement of federal law, including cooperating with and not impeding U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ayes and other federal offices and components of the Department of Homeland Security in and the enforcement of federal immigration law.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has added the immigration enforcement condition to General terms and conditions governing all federal funding. All federal funding administered by several sub agencies within United States Department of Transportation as well as to the terms and conditions for specified federal grants.

It has demanded that the state officials execute grant agreements with the immigration enforcement condition language. So we filed suit in the District of Rhode Island and we filed suit to enjoin the Department of Transportation and its sub agencies from imposing the immigration enforcement conditions upon these grants, we argued that the condition was imposed without legal authority.

There's nothing in the law that provides that these could be done, violated the spending clause of the Constitution and violated the Administrative Procedures Act. What we see in the slide is the potential impact to the federal grants that the Department of Transportation receives. It's in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

And this is another way that our office, with our friends in our other departments and directors of other departments assist in the litigation.

This comes from a declaration of Director of Transportation Ed Sniffin, who quoted in his declaration, in my years with hdot, I am not aware the Department of Transportation staff ever being required to enforce or participate in the enforcement of federal civil immigration law.

Further, because the Department of Transportation is responsible for duties related to highway, airport and harbor infrastructure, Department of Transportation staff has neither the expertise nor capacity to enforce immigration law.

If Department of Transportation is unable to comply with the Federal Government's new funding conditions, the state would be unable to receive fiscal year 2025 funds totaling $97,078,608 and funds not yet obligated from prior fiscal years of $365,140,098, depriving the State of at least $462,218,706 and frustrating its ability to maintain the critical programs described above.

The preliminary injunction was granted. It was granted on three grounds. The first was that they lacked any statutory authority the Department of Transportation to impose these conditions. The second was that the immigration enforcement conditions were arbitrary and capricious.

That's one of the standards for invalidating administrative acts under the Administrative Procedures act, because basically there was no thinking about it and no rationale given for why this should be done.

And it violated the spending clause for numerous reasons, among them that it was coercive and that it was not rationally related to the programs that were sought to be done. And based on this, an injunction was. zero, pardon me.

An injunction was entered prohibiting from implementing or enforcing the immigration enforcement conditions as set forth in the Duffy Directive. And based on that, the Department of Transportation has been allowed to proceed with its grants as in the normal course. So the next category we're going to be discussing is funding freeze and grant terminations.

The There are many of these. This has been a major subject that has come up, and obviously it's well known by those in the Legislature that many things have been. Many funding streams have been impacted. The first case is kind of the. The big one. It's called. It's called the OMB categorical freeze case.

New York versus And it began early in the new Trump Administration. We'll get into greater detail with this later as we'll do a deep dive into this one. The second case is Colorado versus Department of Health and Human Services. In that case, over $11 billion in public health funds issued during the COVID 19 pandemic were terminated because.

And this is the reason the COVID 19 pandemic is over. But the grants were not specifically for COVID 19. Hawaii Department of Health, for example, had seven grants terminated with over $89 million unspent.

These grants were intended to improve future outcomes and not specifically those related to Covid, including immunization and vaccines for children, generally, money for Hawaii's epidemiological and laboratory capacity for infectious diseases and and addressing COVID 19 health disparities in high risk and underserved populations.

A preliminary injunction was granted in that case and the terminations were declared null and void, and an appeal is pending in that case. In the First Circuit, the second case, or the next case is Massachusetts v. National Institutes of Health, what we call NIH1.

The issue concerned the National Institutes of Health reducing the indirect cost rates for grants from 15% to 215% from what was a much higher negotiated rate with the University of Hawaii, somewhere around 50 to 60%.

Now indirect costs are costs from grants that do not go directly to the research itself, things like overhead, personnel costs, necessary equipment upgrade and supplies, and the like. For Hawaii, this meant approximately $16.5 million in funding lost.

There was no statutory authority authorizing this specifically with respect to negotiated rates, and the court issued a permanent injunction and a final judgment in that case. That case is currently on appeal.

The next case is called National Institutes of Health 2 or Massachusetts versus Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy. This case concerns research grant terminations pursuant to DHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's directive on dei, related funding and other directives that sought to terminate projects related to dei, transgender issues and vaccine hesitancy. This case went to trial in two phases.

The first phase on terminated grants is complete and the second phase has not yet happened and concerns delays in approving new grants. The first phase went decisively in our favor for some color.

Two of the projects impacted by these directives as set forth in the preliminary injunction document with respect to the University of Hawaii, include longitudinal longitudinal study of early non alcoholic fatty liver disease progression and the gut microbiomes in Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Whites and a second project identifying unique biological factors as potential targets to mitigate colorectal cancer health disparities in Native Hawaiians.

This is the DEI doctrine taken to unfathomable degrees that could lead to adverse health outcomes and we were glad to obtain the judgment in this case on phase one of the trial. Phase two is currently progressing in New York versus Department of Education.

That case concerns a certification requirement sent to state and local education agencies, including the Department of Health, that required vague, undefined certifications concerning DEI quote, certain DEI practices unquote and illegal DEI practices unquote.

This came in lieu of previous certifications, standard certifications that state and local education agencies would comply with Title 6 of the Civil Rights act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race and national origin. Basically, the or the crux of the case is that the certification is too vague to be enforced.

An injunction against these certifications is in effect in another case, and the litigation remains ongoing in ours. The last case on this slide is New York vs National Science Foundation. This case concerns grant terminations and indirect cost caps imposed by the National Science Foundation.

National Science Foundation is statutorily obligated to provide programs intended to increase participation in STEM by women, minorities and people with disabilities. The University of Hawaii had specific programs that were intended to benefit Native Hawaiians in obtaining careers in engineering. In this case, or I should say in another court, enjoined the indirect cost directive.

This is similar to the one that we talked about earlier with NIH 1 where a 15% cap was imposed. So another court enjoined that and the preliminary injunction with respect to the grants was denied at this time with respect to the grant terminations, largely on potential jurisdictional grounds and litigation remains ongoing at this time.

Continuing on with the funding freezes and grant terminations category we have the education funding freeze case. The Department of Education and OMB froze 6 billion in mandatory formula funding for education programs on the eve of the new school year.

The funding was appropriated by Congress for critical programs supporting English language learners, training children of migratory workers, promoting and enhancing effective classroom instruction, improving school conditions and the use of technology in the classroom, and establishing and expanding community learning centers including through the provision of summer and after school care programs.

Educational agencies received a three sentence email on June 30th stating that the funds expected to be available on July 1st were being withheld pending review and citing quote the President's priorities.

About 33 million in funding to the Hawaii Department of Education was affected and in prior years this funding had been used by the Hawaii Department of Education to cover the salaries and benefits of 65 salaried personnel FTE at the Department and 2,673 part time employees.

It also covered professional development for educators, direct services to students and staff, staff training via contracts, and providing guidance and support to complex areas and schools on developing and sustaining effective family, school and community partnerships.

We sued in a coalition of 25 plaintiffs and after the suit was filed the ED funds that should have been available on July 1st were made available. The next case has to do with nevi, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Funding. It was created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act.

This program distributes 5 billion in critical funding to states to build electric vehicle charging infrastructure that improves the reliability and accessibility of electric vehicles. This is congressionally mandated formula funding to the states and the only prerequisite is that states provide a state electric vehicle infrastructure deployment plan by a certain deadline.

Shortly after taking office, the President signed the Unleashing American Energy Executive Order which declared it the policy of the United States to eliminate the electric vehicle Mandate and ordered the immediately halt the immediate halting of the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act, the iija, including the nominated funds for electric vehicle charging stations.

Then in early February, the Federal Highway Administration suspended the NEVI program. It revoked its prior approvals of all state electric vehicle infrastructure deployment plans and decided that no NEVI funds could be obligated until updated final NEVI guidance is issued and new state plans are submitted and approved.

The Hawaii Department of Transportation was appropriated approximately $18 million over five fiscal years under the NEVI program. Access to approximately 2 million was immediately cut off and HDOT had relied on the availability of the NEVI funds.

It had proceeded with purchasing chargers for eight of its NEVI sites and finalizing design for seven additional sites with the assumption that the funds would be available. So 17 states, including Hawaii, sued.

We succeeded in obtaining an order applicable to Hawaii that preliminary bars the defendants from suspending, revoking, or maintaining current suspensions or revocations of the state plan approvals and withholding or withdrawing NEVI Formula program funds unless in accordance with the ija. So litigation there is continuing on dispositive motions.

All right, so next we have the agency's priority clause case.

As we've highlighted here already, a number of grants and funding streams have been affected, and many of these terminations have been based on what we refer to as the Agency Priority Clause, which states that a federal award may be terminated by the federal agency pursuant to the terms and conditions of the federal award, including, to the extent authorized by law, if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.

So again, the Administration has used this clause to terminate thousands of grants totaling billions of dollars previously awarded to states and their agencies, stating that they no longer effectuate agency priorities. This has affected numerous grants throughout the State of Hawaii. Just as one example, UH alone has experienced a number of terminations under this clause.

A $2.5 million DOD grant regarding water security and a 2.47 million National Science Foundation grant which had supported culturally grounded STEM education and research opportunities for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students. So a complaint was filed against a variety of federal officials and agencies.

We argue, among other things, that the clause cannot be used to terminate existing grants based on new priorities not identified at the time of the award, and that it cannot be used to withhold congressionally appropriated funds based on priorities that are inconsistent with Congress's directives. So litigation there is ongoing on a motion for summary judgment. All right.

The next case is the Education Stabilization Funds. This case challenges the U.S. Department of Education's sudden rescission of extensions of time to liquidate education funds that had been appropriated through the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations act and the American Rescue Plan act of 2021.

These funds focused on addressing the impact of lost instructional time through interventions such as summer learning and after school care programs to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on K through 12 students.

So even though states had been permitted extension of time to draw down funds through March 2026, the Department of Education suddenly rescinded those extensions and at the same time notified states that their liquidation periods were deemed to have already expired. So I believe the email came in at 5:03, and we were told that the deadline was 5:00.

So three minutes ago it had passed.

The basis for the rescission was that extending deadlines for Covid related grants years after the Covid pandemic had already ended is not consistent with the Department of Education's priorities and thus not a worthwhile exercise of its discretion, even though the continued availability of those funds was not tied to the existence of the pandemic by Congress.

Doe, our Hawaii Department of Education was affected. We sued in a coalition of 17 plaintiffs and the district court granted a preliminary injunction barring the defendants from enforcing or implementing the rescission. That case continues to proceed.

So we're going to go back to the OMB case and this concerns the categorical funding freeze. This was a big one. It's been among the most. It was initially and I think still is among the most chaotic things that has happened in the Trump Administration.

And additionally the indicates sort of the some of the gamesmanship that we had seen in the litigation. This case originated in just a week after the initiation or President Trump's inauguration, January 27, 2024.

This was a memorandum for the heads of all Executive departments and agencies signed by the then acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget. This was this memorandum was in response to various Executive orders that were issued on January 20 and thereafter relating to immigration, DEI, the environment.

And what this memorandum did was implement those orders in a way.

And so I'd like to just read the text of the key paragraph here, which is to implement these orders, each agency, and that means each agency in the Federal Government must complete a comprehensive analysis of all of their federal financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects and activities that may be implicated by any of the President's Executive orders.

In the interim, to the extent permissible under applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation and disbursement of all federal financial assistance and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by Executive orders, including but not limited to financial assistance for foreign aid, non governmental organizations, DEI woke gender, ideology and the Green New Deal.

And so on the 28th in Hawaii and across the United States, this caused chaos in Hawaii. Reports from around the state, from its departments and agencies showed indicated that portals were down, funds being inaccessible, systems were on the fritz.

This was not for grants many people would have never heard of, but major programs that everyone relies upon such as snap, FEMA funds and others. Practically the entire state was having these issues with funding. The very next day, pardon me, on the 29th, this was put together very quickly.

The coalition filed suit a temporary restraining order against this categorical funding freeze was issued almost immediately. The preliminary injunction order was superseded. Or, pardon me, this preliminary injunction order was superseded, superseded, the temporary restraining order. And again, I just like to read this because I think that it sums up the issues in all of the funding cases.

And it was well put by Judge McConnell from the district of Rhode Island. The Executive's categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of government. The interaction of the three CO/ of government is an intricate, delicate and sophisticated balance, but it is crucial to our form of constitutional governance.

Here, the Executive put itself above Congress. It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress's authority to control spending. Federal agencies and departments can spend, award or suspend money based only on the power Congress has been given to them. They have no other spending power.

The Executive has not pointed to any constitutional or statutory authority that would allow them to impose this type of categorical freeze. The Court is not limiting the Executive's discretion or micromanaging the Administration of Federal funds.

Rather, consistent with the Constitution statutes and case law, the Court is simply holding that the Executive's discretion to impose its own policy preferences on appropriated funds and can be exercised only if it is authorized by the congressionally approved appropriation statutes.

Accordingly, based on these principles and the reasons stated below, the court grants the state's motion for preliminary injunction. And the preliminary injunction was granted. There were two motions to enforce that followed this. There were over 100 grants that were subject to that were continued to be off for a long period of time.

The first motion of enforcement that was filed by the states basically said they're not doing what the injunction said. And the court basically says, you have to do what the injunction said. The second one concerned FEMA grants. And for Hawaii, that was hundreds of millions of dollars that was at stake.

The issue in with respect to FEMA grants was that FEMA was taking the position that with respect to all funding streams, it was not freezing the funds. It was implementing what it called a manual review process, which we understood, I guess, logically to mean that they were doing it by hand with respect to every single grant.

The functional impact of that was a freeze in that none of the funds were flowing. This had a specific impact on one of the programs that FEMA was funding here in Hawaii, and that was the Disaster Case Management Program operated by the Department of Human Services.

And this is one area where the State of Hawaii played a leading role in ensuring that FEMA funds began to flow through the efforts of Deputy Director Trista Spear, who was an unyielding force in fighting for this program.

We submitted our comments about, or pardon me, a declaration and then also was made a key the key aspect of the second motion to enforce with respect to to the FEMA funds flowing to this program because basically, if you look at the second paragraph when we're talking about the impact here, I'm sorry if it's a little bit small.

For Hawaii, this means the imminent cessation of the case management services for victims of the 2023 Maui wildfires, including the wildfire initiated urban conflagration that caused extreme damage to the historic town of Lahaina, killed over 100 people and displaced thousands of Hawaii residents from their homes.

Before FEMA initiated its categorical indefinite pause of funding, Hawaii usually received reimbursements within approximately one week of submitting a request, a time period that allowed FEMA's review and the mechanics of the fund transfer. As of today, Hawaii has waited nearly 30 days for reimbursement.

This abrupt change in practice is near fatal because a key requirement of FEMA regarding these grants fund is that Hawaii is precluded from maintaining more than three business days worth of cash on hand.

If Hawaii does not receive reimbursement by March 31, it will be forced to discontinue its work with survivors to create unique disaster recovery plans that are individualized to each household and help survivors navigate their recovery and work with the myriad of resources available to meet their needs.

Hawaii currently provides these services to more than 4,000 individual wildfire survivors, but that work will cease as of April 4th if funds are not released. Hawaii has raised these serious concerns with its counterpart grant administrators at FEMA.

Despite seeking reassurance or guidance from FEMA, there is no known timeline for when FEMA or the Federal Department of Homeland Security will determine if or when it will approve Hawaii's pending funding requests.

And it was only through the issuance of an injunction and the motion to enforce invalidating FEMA's practice of manual review process and noting that it was in fact a freeze that these funds began to flow again to not only the disaster case management program, but to all of the FEMA funding sources throughout the state.

And we were Nothing made me happier than last week when DHS announced a new disaster case management housing initiative for Maui wildfire survivors based upon this program, which now continues to exist.

The next category of cases we're going to be discussing are federal agency dismantling cases and RIFs. So these are efforts to gut federal agencies, including through RIFS or reductions in force. And the case I will put a pin in to have a more extended discussion is the first one on the Department of Education.

But for now I'll take you briefly through the case on the Department of Health and Human services. So in March 2025, HHS announced that it would terminate 10,000 employees, which in addition to earlier reductions in force and departures would result in the Department losing a total of 20,000 full time employees.

It also announced that it would close over would close half of its regional offices and collapse 28 divisions into 15. The cuts burdened disfavored HHS agencies, sub agencies such as those that address HIV and aids, worker safety and programs for those living in poverty.

As an example, HHS plan to eliminate 90% of the workforce of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and Most of the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health staff DOH, our Hawaii Department of Health, would be affected by this dismantling. I'll give you a few examples.

Hawaii's Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program has relied on HHS for data relating to the health and well being of pregnant people and babies, including the PRAMS, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, tobacco data from FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, and the CDC Social Vulnerability Index to meet federal requirements and to identify at risk communities.

As of May 2025, new data collection for all three of those sources had been halted, limiting Hawaii's ability to target services and to meet reporting mandates.

Another example, the CDC's STD laboratory reference and Research Branch was closed, hampered the ability to test STI samples, and the CDC had not at that time provided guidance on where those STI samples should be refer, leaving public health laboratories to scramble to independently coordinate with one another to determine available testing capacities and resources.

In a last example, DOH relied on the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health for technical assistance around environmental health issues following the August 8th wildfire on Maui. Those efforts were also impaired, so a complaint was filed in May 2025 and a preliminary injunction was granted.

The Federal Government has appealed that preliminary injunction halting this dismantling, so that case is ongoing. Next is AmeriCorps. The Corporation for National and Community Service, which is also known as AmeriCorps, supports Members and volunteers that work in disaster relief, economic opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, and veteran services, among other areas.

The Federal Government terminated the AmeriCorps programs, grants and staff Members, impairing the AmeriCorps program's ability to carry out its statutory mission. Employees were riffed and nearly $400 million worth of AmeriCorps programs were immediately cut off. So in Hawaii, the AmeriCorps VISTA program with DLNR's Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission was affected.

They had 10 VISTA positions for climate change, natural resource protection, among other Topics, and approximately $200,000 in funds were affected. Hawaii Department of Education was also affected. They had VISTA Fellows at schools to increase college and career readiness efforts, and $53,000 in funds were also affected.

The District Court issued a preliminary injunction and litigation is ongoing in the District court over the fiscal year 25 funds because OMB is refusing to release tens of millions of dollars that Congress has already appropriated and that AmeriCorps chose to award to service programs for FY25.

Pause there for just one moment. Is this, is this screen down? Okay? It. Can you take a look at the screen on the Makai side of the room and see if you can get that one going again?

Yes, Chair, we're taking a look at it now.

Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, please continue. Thanks.

Okay. Probationary Employees this case challenges the mass termination of probationary federal employees. So under the civil service laws, new employees and certain employees who have changed offices or recently received promotions are subject to probationary or trial periods. At OPM's direction, many federal agencies began terminating probationary employees en masse.

So the Department of Agriculture, for example, terminated approximately 3,400 people. Treasury fired approximately 6,000 people. There were federal employees in Hawaii that were affected, including some from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, protecting wildlife and endangered species species.

And although unsatisfactory performance can be a basis to terminate a probationary employee, the mass firings were not based on any individualized findings regarding the probationary probationary employees performance themselves, and the terminations did not follow proper RIF procedures. The advance notice to which states and local governments are entitled was not provided.

This lack of notice meant that the states could not identify workers subject to the mass layoffs were entitled to rapid response services and assistance with their benefits claims without devoting significant time, resources and expense to that effort.

We sued in a coalition and obtained a preliminary injunction ordering the defendants to take all steps to undo the terminations of the affected probationary employees. A stay of that order was granted by an appellate court, the 4th Circuit and proceedings remain ongoing.

So these two cases on these slides both concern the so called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

The first of these cases is called New York vs Trump, was filed Very early in the Administration, after news reports had come out stating that DOGE affiliates had gained access to the Treasury Bureau of Fiscal Services, which processes 87.58% of federal transaction federal transactions per year, totaling $5.46 trillion annually.

This included access to the Payment Automation Manager system, which contains the personal identifying information of virtually every American, including Social Security numbers, bank accounts and tax return information. The coalition filed suit in the Southern District of the New York and the court there found that the DOGE employees in question who had been placed at the Treasury.

The way that DOGE works is they have like teams that are placed in given departments and agencies had not been properly trained in the regulations and policies governing sensitive information, particularly those at the treasury, and enjoin them from receiving access until they received such training.

And an appeal is pending in that case filed by the government in New Mexico versus Musk.

This is a case, it's an appointments clause challenged to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency exercising the power of a principal officer of the United States without having received the advice and consent of the Senate as is required by the U.S. constitution.

The U.S. constitution's appointment clause requires that principal officers receive such advice and consent and is part of the constitutional structure of our U.S. constitution. The procedural history of this case is quite complicated.

A motion for temporary restraining order was denied because the judge said that more facts needed to be developed, but noted in when it denied a motion to dismiss that there were indeed weighty claims to be considered.

The case is currently in its discovery phase and the last case is Rhode Island versus Trump, which concerns four agencies, which we'll be going into a little bit more detail in just a moment.

So returning to the education dismantling case, this is a case that Hawaii, along with a few other states, is taking a leading role. So do a bit of a detail a deeper dive on this matter. So as you'll probably recall, the President made it clear very early on that he wanted to close the US Department of Education.

He called it a big con job and declared that he would like to close it immediately, something he cannot do lawfully without Congress. On March 11, 2025 the Department of Education announced that as part of its, quote, final mission, it had initiated a reduction in force impacting nearly 50% of its workforce.

With the nearly 600 employees that had taken buyout offers, the RIF would reduce the department's total headcount from 4,133 to 2,183 or so workers. Secretary McMahon indicated that the RIF was the first step on the road to a total shutdown of the Department.

On March 20, an Executive order was issued by the President memorializing the directive to close the Department of Education. As mentioned, the State of Hawaii, along with a few other states, took the lead in filing a lawsuit on March 132 days after the RIF was announced.

We argued that the Administration's actions, including the termination of nearly half its staff, would interfere with the Department's ability to perform the functions it is mandated to do by statute that the Department had eliminated personnel critical to its ability to meet its statutory obligations across numerous programs that includes student aid for college students, administering funding through K for K through 12, education services for students with disabilities, civil rights enforcement, and vocational training, among other areas.

We put together an extensive unrebutted record to support this argument of the impairment of the Department of Education statutory functions. As an example, the Department eliminated more than half of the Office for Civil Rights's regional offices.

OCR is the is the body responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws, including Title 6 and Title IX, and even before the RIF, OCR needed hundreds more staff to effectively do its job.

So, In a detailed 88 page ruling, the District Court granted our motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that we were likely to see succeed on the merits of our claims, that we were likely to suffer reputable harm, and that the balance of the equities and the public interests weighed in our favor.

The Federal Government appealed and moved to stay the effect of the injunction pending appeal.

The District Court said no and the First Circuit Court of Appeals said no in a 26 page order noting that what is at stake in this case, the District Court found, was whether a nearly half century old Cabinet Department would be permitted to carry out its statutory functions or prevented from doing so by mass termination of employees aimed at implementing the effective closure of that Department.

Given the extensive findings made by the District Court and the absence of any contrary evidence having been submitted by the appellants, we conclude that the appellant stay motion does not warrant our interfering with the ordinary course of appellate adjudication in the face of what the record indicates would be the apparent consequences of our doing so.

And then the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court on the Federal Government's emergency application for a stay. In a four sentence unsigned ruling pictured here, the court granted the government stay application. No reasoning for the decision was provided.

Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented, explaining that only Congress has the power to abolish the Department and that when the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law and then executes on that promise. It is the judiciary's duty to check that lawless, not to expedite it. The dissent continues.

Lifting the district court's injunction will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sex assault, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.

The majority apparently Deems it more important to free the government from paying employees that it had no right to fire than to avert these very real harms. While the litigation continues, this truly unfortunate stay ruling enabled the government to carry out the massive rift that we had earlier successfully enjoined, though the case remains ongoing.

Okay, I'd like to briefly speak about the four, what we call the four agency case. This is a case involving several seven, or pardon me, four small agencies, four of seven that were part of an Executive order entitled Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.

This is one that really implicates the rule of law in that these are congressionally funded agencies that have statutorily mandated roles. And the Executive order called for them to essentially be gutted to the minimum possible level. For instance, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness went from, you know, I think it was 15 employees to zero FMCs.

The Federal Mediation Conciliation Service went from approximately 212 employees to, I believe, about a dozen. So these were kind of complete gutting of these agencies.

And so the agencies that were part of this again were FMCs, Federal Mediation Conciliation Service, US Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the Museum and Institute for Museum and Library Services. I'll speak briefly about MBDA, which is Minority Business Development Agency, provides almost $1 million in grants to UH Manoa and UH Maui College.

In addition to other services. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service played a crucial role in mediating the end to the Kapiolani Medical center nurses strike. And the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness acts as a conduit for states to work on homeless solutions collaboratively.

But I'd like to focus on the Institute for Museum and Library Services in addition to providing services and funds to the Judiciary History center, which is the museum at the bottom of Alii Olani Halei that is funded through IMLS's Native Hawaiian Museum Services Program, funds to United the University of Hawaii and funds to the state archives, in addition to many small private Native Hawaiian libraries throughout the state.

I'd like to speak about the state library system and why this Litigation can be so impactful even concerning a relatively small agency like the Institute for Museum and Library Services. And this is the suit that we filed in the District of Rhode Island.

Stacy Aldrich is the Hawaii State Librarian and she spoke of the importance of IMLS not just to the library system here, but to the well being and education of the entire state and has been a passionate advocate for IMLS and was a crucial part of our case.

Again, I'm not going to read everything in here, but basically what we see is that through IMLS's term that the there have been National Leadership Grants, Native American and Hawaiian Library Services grants, among others.

Since 1998, Hawaii library and museum organizations have received about $18 million to support projects that collect, digitize and make available important Native Hawaiian collections for today and future generations. For example, the Ulukau Online Digital Repository Project has become a cornerstone of Hawaiian knowledge preservation because it makes historical texts, genealogical records and languages language resources available worldwide.

This would not have been possible without the support of the Native Hawaiian Hawaiian Grant support from imls. The funding has also supported literacy and digital literacy skill building in the community. In fiscal year 2024, Hawaii library and museum organizations received nine grants totaling $1.6 million.

The Hawaii State Public Library System's budget for this year has relied on receiving 1.5 or $1,541,630 and we made plans and allocated funding for continuing to ensure that our communities across six islands have access to resources that cannot be afforded by purchasing separately for each of our 51 library branches based on the anticipated receipt of federal funding promised.

For example, bookflix is an interactive online ebook program that supports building early literacy skills. Children and family can read the books or follow along as books are read. There are also comprehensive games or pardon me, comprehensive games to reinforce learning. In fiscal year 24, the collection titles were read over 23,000 times.

The tool is vital for families who want to make sure their youngest learners are ready for school and can keep learn improving their reading skills. And I thought that this last paragraph really just summed up, you know, the importance of what IMLS does and why this case was important. This again is from Stacy Aldrich Wise, State Librarian.

Hawaii is located in one of the most remote places one can live on Planet Earth. Our libraries are the only open spaces that are open to everyone and in some communities offer only broadband connectivity. Access to professionally curated information and learning opportunities are vital to the success of students, individuals and our communities.

Without IMLS and the programs and funding described in the museum and Library Services Act, Hawaii will lose access to the online resources that extend connection across our islands and support the education, employment, lifelong learning, and literacy of our communities.

And I'm happy to say that we won a preliminary injunction in that case and we are now moving to summary judgment.

All right, It'll come as a great relief to all of you that we've reached our last category, protecting elections, health, and safety. So the first case I'm going to discuss is the FRT case that's Forced Reset Triggers.

So under the National Firearms Act, or the nfa, a machine gun subject to prohibition is defined as the any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot or can be readily restored to shoot automatically, more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger and the statute encompasses parts designed to convert a weapon into a machine gun.

In 2021, ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, recognized that Force Reset Triggers, or frts, are machine gun conversion devices that fall within the scope of the statute. FRTs replace the standard trigger on a firearm such that the shooter need only pull the trigger once and maintain rearward pressure to achieve continuous fire.

A firearm with an FRT can fire faster than an M16 military rifle in automatic mode, allowing even a novice shooter to fire multiple rounds in under a second. So as a result, shootings involving firearms equipped with frts tend to increase the number of victims and injuries, even though many states like Hawaii prohibit them.

FRTs have proliferated across the nation. ATF estimated that one manufacturer, Rare Breed Triggers, sold 100,000 FRTs across the United States in two years. FRTs have been recovered in connection with various crimes.

In one case, a firearm recovered with an attached FRT was involved in seven separate shootings, and ATF recovered 11,884 FRTs in the field and had been actively engaged in enforcement efforts. But in May of this year, following the change Administration, the Department of Justice announced a settlement in a pending lawsuit regarding rare bead triggers and FRT manufacturer.

The settlement purports to obligate the United States not to enforce any statute or agency interpretation under which an FRT is contended to be a machine gun, and it requires the Federal Government to return FRTs to the extent practicable upon request.

The agreement included no carve outs for situations in which the ATF's returns would be to individuals who reside in states that bar the possession of frts or FRT equipped firearms.

We sued in a coalition of states given the clear public safety concerns after the filing of the action, the Federal Government committed not to return FRTs into plaintiff states, including Hawaii.

The owners in those states will be given three options for disposition of their FRTs and will be warned that they may not bring any returned FRTs into a jurisdiction prohibiting FRTs and that doing so could subject them to state prosecution.

Next, we have a case that relates to the Big Beautiful Bill, which included a provision that bars federal Medicaid funds from being used to make payments to a prohibited entity that was defined by statute, a prohibited entity for items and services furnished for a one year period. As I said, there's a statutory definition of prohibited entity.

I won't go through here.

Suffice it to say for today's purposes that this defunding provision was meant to target Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its Member health entities for their advocacy on reproductive choice and essentially eliminates the use of federal funds for any health care obtained at Planned Parenthood health centers, which might include cancer screening, STI testing and treatment and family planning services.

So as a result of the defund provision, the states will either have to use state funds and forego matching federal funds or exclude the Pan Parenthood Health Centers from any state Medicaid program and lose critical healthcare infrastructure.

There are also considerable burdens on public health through this potential interference with access to critical health care, including cervical and breast cancer screenings. So this is a more recent case. We sued at the end of July and litigation is ongoing. And the last I have here on this slide has to do with gender affirming care.

This recent lawsuit challenges a particular portion of an Executive order, the quote, protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation Executive order and actions by the Department of Justice that aim to eliminate the provision of medically necessary health care to transgender individuals under age 19 that includes a category of not only minors but 18 year olds who have reached the age of majority.

By threatening providers into ceasing care through potential civil and criminal prosecution under laws that are unconnected to the lawful provision of this care.

This has caused a lot of chaos, confusion and fear for providers, transgender youth and their families, and we argue it interferes with the state's authority to regulate the practice of medicine within their borders and ensure public health and safety.

Long recognized to be part of the state's police power and it attempts to interfere in healthcare decisions between a patient and their physician. We recently sued asserting various constitutional and Administrative Procedure act claims. Litigation is ongoing. That case is in its early stages.

All right, the last two this the case of New York vs United States Department of Justice you'll have to bear with me just for a second. It is a little bit of a complicated one. It concerns the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation act, or PRORATE for short. Basically what PORORA did.

This is a, an act from the Clinton Administration era that prohibited aliens from receiving certain services, social services, that would be in the form of either grants or various sort of entitlements. But there were a large number of exceptions that were provided in the law for these federal programs, including a listening relating to public safety and health.

The law called for PRORA to be interpreted by agencies to basically define which sort of programs would be included or would be excluded from Porora's sort of prohibition on aliens receiving certain services.

But for over 20 years, departments, and these are departments, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education and the Department of Labor had allowed immigrants to access health and safety services such as Head Start counseling, crisis counseling, short term shelter and housing for domestic violence, food banks and the like.

But in July, the Department of Justice and the other agencies that I mentioned changed course and vaguely stated that many of these programs no longer fall under the exemption in agency rules. This not only creates a public health and safety problem, but an administrative one.

The administrative problem is basically for, for, you know, over two decades that the states have been operating that these programs can be functioned in a certain way. And now there's a mandate that there have to be checks that need to be performed prior to people reserving services.

A motion, the complaint was filed in the District of Rhode Island. It was very, very recently, so we're in early stages. A motion for preliminary injunction has been filed and is pending. The last case is an elections case, California versus Trump.

This case is about the State of Hawaii's constitutional rights as a state in the sphere of elections. The case concerns presidential Executive order entitled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, which mandates that the state conform their elections with the eo.

And there's various things about that relating to, you know, providing certain documentation so on showing lawful status prior to being able to receive an application to register to vote, for instance, and threats of enforcement for those that do not comply, you know, along with threats of loss of funding to the states.

Now, the problem with this is that the President has no authority to affect state elections. The states, pardon me, elections are primarily the Kuleana of the states and only Congress may pass laws concerning it.

Nothing in the Executive order that we challenged or the challenge provisions in the Executive order subject to this election or part subject to this complaint were authorized by Congress.

As a result, the District of Massachusetts agreed and enjoined the provisions of the EO that mandated that the states conform state elections with the Executive Order and against enforcement actions under the Executive Order. With respect to the State of Hawaii, that case is on appeal.

As a final note, if I may, the litigation in these 27 cases takes tremendous effort. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge others who have played a key role in litigating these cases. First Deputy Attorney General Nat Devanch, Michael Krone, who's seated here.

First Deputy Solicitor General Lauren Chun, Deputy Solicitors General Tom Hughes, Ewan Rayner, Caitlin Carpenter, Siana Gualano, and Deputy Attorneys General Miranda Steed and Danica Swenson. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you very much for making a very complicated situation as understandable as probably as humanly possible. It went a little longer than I was expecting, so let's take a quick break and we will have some questions for you. So let's come back at 11:20. By that clock, we're in recess for seven minutes.

All right, thanks for coming back into order. I'm going to start the questions on with a couple of 30,000 foot ones, and then we'll open it up to everybody. So I guess, you know, cutting through all the, I mean, there's a lot of weeds here, which is what lawyers do, of course, but cutting through all the weeds.

It looks to me like the recurring theme is the Trump Administration is saying we want to do X. And the counter argument is, well, you can't because there's no. The statute either says you cannot do it or there is no statute there. There's statutory authority that they're trying to ignore. Is that a fair represent and.

But probably with the exception of the birthright citizenship case, which is a constitutional issue just immediately. But is it, is that a fair representation of the sort of outlines of most of these cases?

Yeah, I'd say that's accurate. I think what we are seeing is an effort by the Administration to enact their priorities, which they are entitled to do, as any other Administration is, but they must do so within the confines of the Constitution and the existing statutory and regulatory framework. And so in other. Oh, go ahead, Senator.

So if they, if they wanted to, I mean, the normal course of events would be you pass a statute to override the statute that you don't like, and they're not going through that step in, in, in these cases.

Yes. I think what we're seeing in this case is often is a disregard of applicable statutory and regulatory authority.

So the remedy would typically be a political one, which is just, you got to outvote, you got to have the votes to do it.

Yes, in some cases. Yeah.

Okay.

If I could add, it's not just the votes. I think that he is, the Administration is, is sort of plowing over the idea that we have three coequal branches of government.

And we're seeing that both, with their express willingness to not follow the orders of the court to make statements that the court doesn't actually have the authority to tell the Executive branch what to do. And unfortunately, with a Congress that is unwilling to fight to maintain its part of that balance in the co.

Equal branch, suggesting they're. They're intentionally giving away their constitutional prerogatives.

Yes.

All right, I'll open up to others. Go ahead, Senator, you can continue. Okay. Mine is. Yeah, less lesser. Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair, for this opportunity. Excellent. Thank you, Attorney General Lopez, for your outstanding work and to your team of rock stars. You guys are doing an incredible job. Thank you. My question is, you know, pertaining to Constitutional rights and protecting our democratic republic. Is there any word on anticipated violations of the Voting Rights Act?

For example, is the Executive branch telegraphing any actions on issues affecting voting by mail, funding for ballots, et cetera? The concern is if restrictions should happen right before an election, there's little time for an appeal before a normal election certification time.

So I can take this, and this is one of the issues that's implicated in our election case in the election Executive order is that some of the provisions in the Executive order specifically place additional hurdles in the way of mail in voting, voting from overseas, restrictions on when ballots must be received by.

And these things include, you know, providing mandatory documentation of a certain character. I mean, I think that whether or not, you know, those provisions in and of themselves are the precursor or not, clearly there was an Executive order that said that implicated just that.

And we have a preliminary injunction in place saying that the actions called for in that Executive order are illegal and should be enjoined.

Thank you. One quick other thank you. Chair, has there been any progress with Rule 11 and invalidating lawyer access because of lies or etc.

So I can say that in our cases it has, at least with respect to the government and our, our relationship with the government, it hasn't come up specifically.

Rule, Rule 11, just for everybody is a rule in the rules of Civil Procedure that state that a person who signs a document as a lawyer must have a good faith basis for saying X, Y and Z, and that there are penalties and sanctions available if the person does not adhere to.

I think that in the OMB litigation we had instances of what we would call non compliance, but that wasn't necessarily something that was directly attributable to the attorneys. It was something that was attributable more to the agencies. There were games that were being played in the OMB litigation.

So for instance, Solar for All is a program that has been in the news recently. It was recently terminated. The.

Sorry, Solar for All?

Solar for All is a program and it's in Hawaii. It's, it's run through the Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority.

The Solar for All program basically provides funding for solar panels for low income and underprivileged communities to diversify the electrical grid. The issue with Solar for All, there was some kind of interesting things that happened there where the grant, after the injunction was initially issued, it came back on, then it came and went off.

And then so we moved for enforcement on that point. And then the day before the hearing it went on and then after the hearing it went off and so it was kind of like, what's going on here? The. So, I mean, so we saw some of that kind of stuff.

I can't say that I have anything to say specifically about the U.S. Department of Justice attorneys that we've dealt with. Other than that, you know, I don't always. I have sympathy for them as lawyers, I suppose, and that they have a very difficult job sometimes.

Okay, go ahead.

Mine's not even going to be.

I have a lot more, but. No, no, go away. Okay.

Mine is like home related as well. I'm sorry. Related, Not Washington.

Okay, well, some of mine are, too, so we'll see if. I guess. I mean, it looks to me like some of these, some of these cases have financial impacts on the State of Hawaii and on the residents of Hawaii. They're pretty substantial.

I think that one DOT case that you met, one of the DOT cases that you mentioned, Department of Transportation cases, was in the hundreds of millions. Is that correct? Correct. And that's money that would normally come in the normal course of things, would come to fix our roads and airports. In many cases, they're already obligated.

Oh, they've already been obligated. Yeah. So they're actually pulling back money that's already been. Maybe that was in your slide and I missed it. No. So. So what's the, what's the dollar amount there?

Zero, so. Well, actually. So with. So let me clarify. So with respect to the Department of Transportation funds that I referenced in the California versus DOT case, those were related to unobligated funds from previous years, along with fiscal 2025 years. The issue of obligated funds has largely been one of freezing.

It came up more in the freezing context. For instance, in FEMA, in the OMB litigation, there were a problem. There were hundreds of millions.

So they, they promised us the money and then said, no, we're not going to give you the money.

That's correct. Or at least they said, we're not going to give it to you now. And they didn't say when, when, when.

Do you have dollar amounts on that category of, of. Of items where the, the Federal Government has, has promised to give us a certain amount of money? And then they said, well, we're going to stop and look at it. Or is that just so split up between the different cases is. It's hard to.

It's kind of split up between the different cases. You know, I think that when it comes to the freezing cases or so, for instance, OMB, the day after, there were issues with obtaining funds virtually across the Entire state. So that was, I mean, easily over $1.0 billion.

Like that was at least being tied up where you couldn't access for that, at least at that first day.

For context, our entire budget, all sources of financing, is less than 20 billion, is that correct? About 19, something like that. So $1.0 billion in a 19 $1.0 billion budget is a significant amount.

That's right. And then so with respect to FEMA funds, my understanding, and it's been a while since I looked at the documents when the FEMA funds were going through the manual review process, we did look at the total amounts that were, that had been appropriated to FEMA.

And I believe it was close to $500 million that was being. Just from, just from FEMA and that.

Was mostly going to Lahaina.

I believe it was for a bunch of different projects, including some related to the lava flow from various lava incidents. But there was a substantial amount that went to Lahaina and those were being tied up in the manual review of all FEMA grants.

In addition, I think that UH has sustained a lot of losses as well. So with the grants in particular for research, NIH, NSF, they have lost. I don't know what the amounts are, but I think we can get a general idea of what the amounts are across the board.

But, uh, has been affected pretty substantially across the board.

It would. If you, if it's not just impossible to do, which, you know, considering there are 27 cases going on, it would be interesting to see what the macro number is. What, you know, what, what's, what's in, what's in play right now for us here in Hawaii. Sure.

So I mean, I think like one of the bigger cases where like there were actual termination of grants is certainly the Covid grant case for the Department of Health. That was, I think there were initially grants that were $212 million, I believe, of which 89, approximately $89 million had not been spent.

And that would have been money gone. Right, Just completely gone. But it was, it's only through the preliminary injunction that they continue to exist.

And that included employee positions. I believe they paid for about 88 employees in the Department of Health as well.

Okay, but you call that Covid money. But it was, it was money that came about as a result of code, but it's not specifically.

Yeah, that was just shorthand because that was kind of like it emerged out of the Covid.

It's more like public health money, really.

Correct. Okay. All right. You're acting like you'd like to. Yeah, yeah. On that.

No, I understand you're trying to make sure Hawaii gets the money that it's entitled to where it was supposed to get. So you're doing a job. But. And I'm not here to argue that me and you and we're gonna have difference of political opinion 180 degrees.

But in certain cases, if the money, you know, like the Health Department, if they're not using it or misusing it, should we keep taking that money? I mean, at the end of the day, it's our taxpayer dollars. What? All states, taxpayer dollars.

But, you know, there are cases here where we, we as a state misspend a lot of money. And in those cases, would we justify the misspending of money by saying, we need this money, don't take it away?

You and I will disagree on many things. I would disagree that money is being misspent a lot of times, particularly with issues like Medicaid and SNAP benefits. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is extremely diligent in the way that those funds are used.

And every organization that uses any of those monies has to follow very stringent requirements. So I would disagree with that part of what you're saying. Sometimes the money hasn't been used because we've been unable to find the people or the services that we need to use it.

With the Department of Health, I think a key area has been the area of epidemiology and the laboratories. And it's not that they haven't wanted to use the money, but building that process is not an easy process to build.

I believe that a lot of those funds actually had been encumbered with respect to purchasing equipment that would upgrade all of DoH's epidemiology programs. So I would say if we're not using money properly, then we shouldn't just keep getting it to use improperly.

But unless and until there's some evidence that that's the case, if, if Congress has said we are appropriating X amount of dollars to you, then we do not believe that the President has the authority to, to tell Congress no. They have some. He has some leeway, but not the ability to just say no.

Now, yeah, your, your, your role in the silo of the rule of law is what Right. I just kind of look at it more from common sense, human perspective. If I could turn it back home real quick and I'll be.

Paul, you can go ask all your questions, but you guys show with, you know, it must have been a busy year for you guys. By the way, this is yes, Senator. Did you guys have to hire more staff to do this? This is not where I was trying to go with it, but I was curious.

No, we have not.

So the workload is well increased?

It is. And I'll say that these two have shouldered a lot of that along with other deputies in our Department.

One of the I think great things about the coalition of Democratic attorneys General and I will say we have invited Republican attorneys General to join us in some cases that we thought they would be interested in joining us on.

But one of the things is, is every, every Demag office, whether it's something a group as large as the New York Attorney General or something as small as our Department or maybe Delaware, everybody is working collaboratively and that work is shared.

We have different groups that focus on different subject matters and they take the lead on those subject matters and then bring it to the larger group. So while the each office is doing a lot of work, the fact that we can spread it over 23 offices makes a big difference.

Understood.

We're almost going after I side check the conversation and I know it's a little bit different because you're, it's the legal precedent that you guys are fighting with that and but again we're looking at common sense problems but with your skill set and what you guys are the work ethic and your drive and passion and all of that.

Even though we disagree politically on views, I would love to see you guys be going after and suing the Department of Education for $120.0 million air conditioning disaster. Did you guys see that in the in civil beat to read that article? $125,000 to cool one classroom.

Somebody needs to get sued for that and get, get that money back to the taxpayers. $9 school lunches, the lack of buses. You know, I love that you guys are able to work the law and get wins even though you're on the other side.

You know, I don't agree with the wins but I'm not here to, to fight that.

I would love for you guys if I leave anything from this whole thing to look at how we can attack and I know it's our your own if we're you know, talking across political lines but how we can hold accountability like you guys are doing in Washington, but on the state side with our.

Own officials, I'm going to try to limit us to 25 minutes. So if that's the only thing I got. Okay, so if go ahead and answer.

That, I can just quickly say we're actually trying to do Some things not in a litigation manner. For instance, with procurement, we have been working with SPO and my deputies and a couple of the departments on doing some pilot programs for repair and maintenance and that kind of stuff.

I'm hopeful that in the next legislative session, we're going to be able to bring that information to the Legislature in the hopes of making some amendments to our procurement code that will help us do things like not have, you know, spend that much money on an air conditioning thing that doesn't work.

I would rather not sue over those things. I would rather work collaboratively with the Department and the Legislature to change the law to make it something we can do more efficiently and effectively.

However it gets it done, but get it done. Plenty of media attention. The public's really riled up. People are triggered. People want action. Right. So you got that going for you.

You do. But the Department does have a whole division on. I mean, you investigate waste and abuse at the state level all the time, correct?

Yes. In fact, the Legislature funded a couple years ago the special Investigations and Prosecution division.

With all due respect, we got to do a lot better job on that. So, you know, if there's a lot of effort going to Washington, I know you guys have the ability.

Let me just say that SIPI is not doing anything with Washington. Their entire focus is on public.

No, I meant. I meant these lawsuits. These lawsuits and where they're aimed at. They're aimed at the Administration on. In Washington versus Right.

And what I'm saying is I have a whole division whose entire focus is public integrity. So if money is not being spent properly, they're investigating.

Problem is, is that investigations occur over quite a while and people see what the problem is, but don't realize it could take up to a year more for the investigation to complete before we can actually charge somebody.

We got six minutes left. So I'm trying 25 plus 20. Yeah. So let me. I go to more questions and I'm going to try to end it on the 20. On the 25. 25 minutes. Has Hawaii taking the lead on any of these cases, or have you?

I know some of them you've been more active than others, but I didn't see your name as the lead plaintiff in any of them.

The answer is yes, and I'll let them.

So the. So the. The lead state designation is not necessarily the first named pl. Although that. That the person whose first name is normally one of the lead states. Right. Okay. The cases in which we have been specific leads are the Department of Education dismantling case. Okay. The four agency case and the National Science Foundation case.

We have also taken what I would say, you know, kind of these complementary leading roles in cases such as like OMB.

That's good. I'm going to try to limit myself to the five minutes. I got some other. So it's, it's the lawyer in me looks at these things that are referred to as DEI. Have the Federal Government, has the Federal Government in any of these cases actually defined what that means?

Not. No.

And in fact, in one case they said they really couldn't define it. They would have to do some research.

Because, I mean, just on his face. If it's what I think that they're trying to impart as the meaning, that's like everybody in Hawaii. So how do you, how do you deal with that from a, from a litigation point of view? It's like, okay, well, you're talking about our entire state.

Sure, I think. And Kaliko, if you can weigh in too. I mean, it's just it, one of the things is that's actually sometimes it's work to our advantage. The fact that they don't define it.

You know, there are cases where basically when they add these terms into, for instance, terms and conditions, the fact that they don't define it becomes an Administrative Procedures act violation. And so that they've actually, it's become a somewhat of a stumbling block for them, although they, it looms over us like a threat. Yeah.

Okay, let's see. Let's talk about the birthright citizenship for a couple of minutes. You know, I was, has the, has the Administration suggested, of course, Hawaii, where I believe it's 18% of the population was born outside of the US. And. Then of course we have immigration, of course, is a huge deal here in Hawaii.

And a lot of people, something like 25% of everybody speaks something other than English at home. Has the Federal Government suggested how you would prove that you were an American citizen if they, if their rule of birthright citizenship doesn't apply or is it just that narrow?

Are they only fighting on that narrow little ground of if your mother was not a citizen at the time? I forget exactly the definition that they. Had there, but it was.

Yeah, it's basically babies born to undocumented parents and those with temporary legal status.

That's really all they're challenging at this point.

That would be the Executive Order targets.

And I think what might be a little bit relevant to your question is when we were litigating over the universal or nationwide injunction the Federal Government complained about the this, the scope of the injunction, and that there are narrower ways to put this policy on hold, but then decline to really illuminate us all on what those narrower ways of doing this would be.

And as our agencies have attested, in that case, the sort of patchwork system that they're suggesting would be complete chaos.

Because I think that's where I was headed is. I mean, I. The only way I can prove that I'm an American citizen is that I have a birth certificate that says I was born in St. Joseph, Michigan. I can't. I don't know how I would prove that my parents.

I mean, the only way I can prove my parents were American citizens is that I still have their birth certificates even though they passed away. One was born in North Dakota and one was born in Michigan. Well, is that. I mean, I realize that we're.

The US Isn't a minority in terms of birthright citizenship, but when you switch systems from one to another, I mean, how would you prove that you were an American?

Yeah. So. And perhaps I can sort of outline what we argued. Right. Is that consistent with federal law, we have a number of systems to verify eligibility for services that sometimes depend on your citizenship status.

And that right now those systems are premised and built on the assumption that birth in the United States means that you're a citizen. And if that's no longer true, then our agencies will have to overhaul these systems and try to find new ways to. Your point of how to determine citizenship.

Okay. I mean, it's clearly not an impossible thing because many other countries don't have it, but we're not used to that, except for the. Except for the limited number of Americans who are born overseas to American parents.

Right. So for at least 150 years, this has been the status quo.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. I think I got time for one more. Let's see. So the Medicaid. There are two cases, the Medicaid data sharing and the SNAP data demand. It was my.

It was my impression, and I haven't been at the state level for a long time now, but to be eligible for SNAP or for Medicaid, you have to be an American or at least a legal status. Right. You can't just, you know, A non. An undocumented alien can't apply for.

Yes. I think the underlying assumption here from the Federal Government might be this waste, fraud and abuse type of rationale that they need to ensure program integrity by having all this information and this sensitive data.

Do you believe that's pretextual, that they're actually, after something else.

That is what we argue, that this is pretextual and that the goal is to be able to use it for immigration enforcement.

Okay. Is there any other? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Something.

I was just going to say that with respect to SNAP, you know, if a child is born here, they have a right to these services. If their parents aren't documented, they may not have the right to some of these services, but the children may.

And that's where I think a lot of the concerns come up with Medicaid and SNAP data.

Okay. Does the Federal Government have any other way to. I mean, I guess. I guess this. This seems like a particularly unuseful way to determine whether someone's an alien or not, because the. The barrier immediately is that it's illegal for them to do it.

So don't they have a better way of determining whether someone's a citizen or not?

I'm. I'm not all that terribly familiar with sort of how program integrity is handled at, you know, Medicaid or SNAP, but at least as a general understanding, we think there are other means of determining these types of concerns. There are other methods that states are required to comply with already to demonstrate that funds are being used appropriately.

And that, again, adds to our concern that this is merely pretextual. Okay.

All right. Thank you again for putting together the presentation and for working on these. In these issues in general. I'm sure it's a ton of work. And just putting the putting together the PowerPoint probably took you several hours, so I appreciate that very much.

Thanks for updating the Committee and appreciate your time today, and hopefully you'll be able to enjoy a little bit of the longer weekend that we're is approaching here.

We're adjourned.

Thank you, Senator.