ONE WEEK AFTER the 2024 presidential election results, Attorney General Andrea Campbell has a staggering legal to-do list.
“I think there are many out there doing the blame game or complaining. We don’t have time for that,” Campbell said on The Codcast. “I told my team to take whatever time they would need to grieve. I recognize that people are grieving. Some folks are angry, they’re depressed, they’re fearful, and rightfully so. But I’m focused on the work and, most importantly, acknowledging that, with any democracy, the transition of power must be peaceful,” said the first-term Democrat.
When it comes to policy, Massachusetts likely will be on the outs with the Donald Trump administration come January.
Campbell campaigned for Kamala Harris, a friend and mentor, and in her first press conference after the election said that Harris’s hopeful and joyful campaign echoed Campbell’s ethos. “Hope and joy have been essential to helping me navigate very difficult and painful moments in life,” Campbell said, before launching into a laundry list of office priorities.
At stake, she said, are the rule of law; reproductive rights; LGBTQIA+ rights; immigrants’ rights; racial justice; environmental justice; health care; education, including student loan programs; gun violence prevention; and federal benefits programs like Social Security and Medicaid.
Unlike in 2016, this time the state was braced for a possible Trump win, and Campbell said the office has been “preparing contingency planning.” The attorney general’s toolkit includes litigation and enforcement, grant making, distributing resources and money for particular initiatives, and filing legislation.
She launched a unit focused on reproductive justice in late 2023, which provides information on accessing contraceptives, abortions, and gender affirming care, and this year offered recommendations to address the maternal health crisis. A gun violence prevention unit followed, focused on coordinating the office’s work on gun law and defending the state’s suite of firearms regulations.
“People have been coming after our progressive gun laws in this state since Bruen,” Campbell said, referring to a transformative US Supreme Court ruling that changed the way states defend their gun laws. “Folks have been challenging our assault weapons ban, our recent gun legislation. Folks have been challenging these for years now. And we have been standing up, fighting in court to protect them. And we have been winning.”
The gun unit also distributes grants, like the October announcement of $1 million to fund public health organizations with a track record of addressing gun violence.
Campbell inherited an office led by then-Attorney General Maura Healey, who built a national brand with her combative stance against Trump’s policies. She and Healey haven’t gotten “specifically in the weeds on this,” Campbell said of the AG’s next possible moves, but “that institutional knowledge still exists in the office” by way of the lawyers and staff who stayed on since the first Trump administration.
Campbell emphasizes that the office can’t anticipate or know everything that’s going to come, but says, for example, she is prepared to defend the state’s abortion provider shield law – which protects abortion providers from being subject to civil or criminal action if their practice runs afoul of other states’ laws barring certain reproductive care – from legal challenge if there are federal moves to restrict abortion access. Similarly, the office has doubled down on student loan debt relief, which was the subject of one of the nearly 100 lawsuits brought by Healey during the Trump years.
Campbell and other attorneys general, for instance, pushed the US Department of Education to swiftly implement proposed regulations that would waive or reduce student loan repayment for certain groups of federal student loan borrowers. The AG’s office has also partnered with the City of Boston to host public service loan forgiveness clinics.
Democrats are engaged in finger-pointing over who is to blame for Harris’s loss. But, Campbell, sounding exasperated, said generally leaders should knock it off with the recriminations and get focused.
“If anything,” she said, “every resident that I am interacting with – including business leaders, nonprofit leaders, those in our philanthropic community, our health care community, you name it – every stakeholder in this great ecosystem in Massachusetts, they want to know how is this office addressing the pressing issues of the day.”
Campbell entered office as a Boston city councilor – ousting a long-time incumbent in the process – just as Donald Trump was about to begin stomping through a crowded field of 17 Republican candidates to take control of the national party in 2016.
“Not only am I personally ready because I have seen various iterations,” Campbell said of the Trump-Biden–Trump vacillation during her career, “but I want folks to understand that, for me, this work has always been about systems work. Not one individual, not even one man.”
As a city elected official, Campbell said, the goal was to use the tools of government in a way that is responsive to constituent needs.
“What I have recognized is, especially when I was on the city council, just how much money and time we waste not helping people,” she said. “So now I have a bigger platform with more tools, more resources, and in this season and in this moment, I’m gonna make sure that this office does not waste any time and does not waste any resources or tools that we have.”
For more with Attorney General Andrea Campbell – on defending gun laws, hoping for “collaboration” with the new administration, and partnering with residents and other states’ AGs – listen to The Codcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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