Trying hard to force state to submit

Trump's funding cuts are fended off with repeated lawsuits by Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

- KEVIN RECTOR

CALIFORNIA Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, center, holds a meeting in March on litigation challenging the Trump administration's maneuvers.

The federal Office for Victims of Crime announced in the summer that millions of dollars approved for domestic violence survivors and other crime victims would be withheld from states that don't comply with the Trump administration's immigration policies.

California, 19 other states and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that such preconditions are illegal and would undermine public safety.

The administration then took a different tack, announcing that community organizations that receive such funding from the states — and use it to help people escape violence, access shelter and file for restraining orders against their abusers — generally may not use it to provide services to undocumented immigrants.

California and other states sued again, arguing that the requirements — which the administration says the states must enforce — are similarly illegal and dangerous. Advocates agreed, saying screening immigrant women out of such programs would be cruel.

The repeated lawsuits reflect an increasingly familiar pattern in the growing mountain of litigation between the Trump administration, California and other blue states.

Since President Trump took office in January, his administration has tried to force the states into submission on a host of policy fronts by cutting off federal funding, part of a drive to bypass Congress and vastly expand executive power. Repeatedly when those cuts have been challenged in court, the administration has shifted its approach to go after the same or similar funding from a slightly different angle more litigation.