Attorney General Anthony Brown takes questions from the press on Feb. 10, 2025. (Photo by Danielle J. Brown/Maryland Matters)
President Donald Trump is unleashing almost daily executive orders to reshape the federal government — and opponents, including the state of Maryland, are just as quickly filing legal challenges to block policies that put “Marylanders and Americans at risk.”
That’s how Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) described his decision to join in several of the lawsuits that other states’ attorneys general have filed to counter the blizzard of initiatives since Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20.
“Every day in the last three weeks … It’s waking up to a natural disaster or some other crisis – this sense of urgency, the need to act,” Brown said Monday at the Office of the Attorney General in Baltimore. “Here we have a federal government that seems to be at war with the people of America, and it seems to be at war with communities across America.”
One of the most recent actions came Friday, when the National Institutes of Health announced that it was immediately capping administrative overhead costs on research grants — used to pay for facilities, equipment and administrative salaries — to 15% of the underlying research grant.
NIH said the cap would save nearly $4 billion a year that could go toward research, but critics say it could hobble universities that based their budgets on the funding that was promised in those long-term grants.
Brown said the cap would affect institutions such as the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and Johns Hopkins University, which would need to fill in the budget gap themselves, potentially putting jobs at risk and halting research. Maryland joined 21 other states Monday that sued to block the change, and a federal judge agreed late Monday to put the proposal on hold indefinitely.
“President Trump’s draconian decision to slash NIH grant funding for research institutions is a direct threat to the future of American higher education and global leadership in research,” Brown said. “Maryland is home to some of the most prolific public and private institutions that will suffer from this drastic action.
“The NIH has capped certain funding for grants that include vital resources for overhead and administrative costs. This move will cripple essential research operations at universities, including those in Maryland,” he said.
It was the latest in a string of legal challenges by the attorney general’s office in response to Trump administration actions. Maryland is one of 22 states that sued to to bring a halt to a sudden freeze on federal grants in January.
Brown also joined with 18 other state attorneys general to sue the Trump administration to block Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system, which gave the Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive information such as bank account details and Social Security numbers.
Judges ordered a temporary halt in both cases.
Brown also said his office is looking at options to challenge Trump over his executive order restricting access to transgender health care, particularly for youths. A handful of transgender Marylanders, represented by the American Civil Liberties Unions of Maryland, are already suing the administration.
“A group of courageous transgender children and their families are fighting back with a lawsuit. We’re not a part of that case, but we support them — and I am considering options for Maryland filing or joining a lawsuit,” Brown said.
Despite the several lawsuits at hand, Brown believes that American democracy is “strong and it is being tested.”
“Recognizing that Congress has the power to appropriate, and that as president, he has a responsibility to spend those dollars in a manner that Congress deems necessary and appropriate,” Brown said.
“I’m confident that the courts, after evaluating the facts and the law, are going to find that this is an administration that is acting above and beyond the rule of law,” he said.