Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has sued the Trump Administration 47 times in the past year. To mark one year since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Campbell kicked off a Tuesday roundtable discussion by highlighting some of the lawsuits and the faces behind them.
“We have heard from countless residents, community leaders, nonprofit organizations, you name it, that they are feeling a deep sense of confusion and fear, and it’s understandable because of this administration’s constant attacks and mixed messaging,” she said.
Campbell has sued over funding cuts, changes to birthright citizenship and other policy shifts. Her nearly four dozen lawsuits include one over cuts to research funding from the National Institutes of Health and another one challenging delays and termination of NIH grants.
Beth McCormick, chair of the microbiology department at UMass Chan Medical School, said NIH funding represents several billion dollars a year for Massachusetts and supports tens of thousands of jobs. Last year, she said, grant review timelines slowed “dramatically” delaying funding decisions by months.
The instability leads to low morale, smaller cohorts of researchers and more challenges for early-career investigators looking to pursue science research, McCormick said.
“This is how the brain drain begins,” she said. “The broader consequences for Massachusetts are that these disruptions delay or eliminate discoveries that could lead to new therapies, clinical trials, and biotech startups,” McCormick said.
Chelsea city manager Fidel Maltes, another participant in the roundtable, said immigrant communities like his are “the target of this administration.” He said that dynamic erodes residents’ trust in their local services, giving the example that “it’s really hard to differentiate between ICE and Chelsea Police.”
“One thing that has been extremely, extremely hard is to continue building trust with our residents and encouraging [them] to call law enforcement when something bad is happening in their household,” Maltes said. “This building of trust that has taken decades to fortify is now being dismantled overnight.’”
Campbell on Tuesday also launched a new online dashboard tracking her lawsuits and the federal funding involved. Her office says President Donald Trump has put $3.3 billion in federal funding to Massachusetts “at risk” since taking office last year, though Campbell has managed to preserve almost all of that money — $3.14 billion.
“These billions are to educate our youth, promote public safety, protect health, fortify our infrastructure, support our most vulnerable communities, and so much more,” Campbell said.
