🥊 The law MAGA AGs use to go on offense

And we can, too.

ICYMI: For the past few months, we’ve said a lot on ways states can hold rogue ICE agents civilly and criminally accountable. The legal world is starting to listen. State lawmakers are listening too.

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This week, we’ve got ideas for how to use state consumer protection laws to reclaim some power…

• Kristi Noem’s “unfair and deceptive” no-bid contract 🤑

• Grok’s ❤️ affair with MAGA accounts

• Did Trump’s 60 Minutes settlement violate state consumer protection law?

But first, let’s talk about getting off our back foot.

With Minneapolis under siege, Medicaid and the ACA under constant threat, and Trump dismantling NATO to steal Greenland (or maybe Iceland?), it feels like we’re perpetually stuck playing defense. It’s a familiar feeling — for only one side. Because when Joe Biden was in the White House, MAGA’s agenda didn’t stall out. Companies dropped DEI commitments. Reproductive rights were decimated. “ESG” became a lightning rod.

Which begs the question: If political power swings back and forth, why does actual power seem permanently lodged on the far right?

Our take? The power pendulum doesn’t swing unless you move it. And MAGA Republicans — especially state AGs — have ripped the pendulum off its anchor and wielded it like a chain mace. The moves they made during the Biden years set the tone, direction, and strategy Trump has now deployed.

But everyone knows Republican AGs have been successful. What’s far less appreciated is how they’ve done it. Sure, resources help. So does a stacked judiciary and a casual contempt for the rule of law. But creativity matters, too. And MAGA Republicans have been ruthlessly creative in one underappreciated way: using state consumer protection laws to press their agendas.

Consider three recent examples:

• Silencing Critics in the Media: After Media Matters published research Elon Musk didn’t like, MAGA AGs rushed to Musk’s defense. Texas AG Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the nonprofit. Former Missouri AG Andrew Bailey (now Trump’s deputy director of the FBI) sued. Their theory? Media Matters violated state consumer protection laws by “fraudulently manipulat[ing] data” from X. The suits may be frivolous. But they still cost a significant amount of money to defend and have real world chilling effects. Just ask Media Matters.

• Restricting Abortion Access: In November, Florida AG James Uthmeier filed a specious lawsuit against Planned Parenthood. His claim? Planned Parenthood misrepresented the safety of the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol in violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Uthmeier is seeking millions in damages and asking a court to fully bar Planned Parenthood from operating in Florida.

• Attacking ESG and DEI Investing: Uthmeier didn’t stop there. He’s also sued two leading proxy advisory firms, claiming their consideration of ESG and DEI factors violated…you guessed it, Florida’s consumer protection laws.

And it’s not just state AGs. Trump himself has embraced the tactic. His infamous 60 Minutes lawsuit cited Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act and his suit against the BBC over a January 6th documentary relied on Florida’s consumer protection law.

The lesson is obvious. State consumer protection laws are broad, flexible, and powerful. MAGA understands that — we should too.

So what exactly do consumer protection laws do? Broadly speaking, they prohibit unfair or deceptive practices. (H/t to New York, which just last year broadened its consumer protection law to cover “unfair” practices, in addition to deceptive ones.) The word “unfair” is important in this context. While its definition varies to some extent state to state, it is generally understood to capture quite a lot. California, for example, describes its consumer protection law as having “sweeping” reach and defines “unfair” to include any activity that is “immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, or substantially injurious to consumers.” Also important: In most states, consumer protection laws are strict liability statutes, meaning intent is irrelevant.

Blue state AGs, nonprofit groups, and private litigants — indeed, all of us — can rip a page from the MAGA playbook and put these laws to use. We can play defense against Trump by challenging corruption and cronyism. We can fill the federal enforcement gap and rein in companies that defraud consumers. And we can go on offense to press our affirmative agenda on issues like abortion access, AI regulation, and affordability.

We’ve got ideas on how.

THE PUNCH LIST

• Are you Delaware AG Kathy Jennings? Open an investigation into the Delaware ad company that just got a $143 million no-bid DHS contract. That company — Safe America Media – was incorporated in Delaware only days before receiving millions of dollars that it then funneled to “Strategy Group,” a consulting firm run by the husband of Kristi Noem’s chief spokesperson. What was the 💰for? An ad campaign featuring Noem on horseback declaring, “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.” Well, state consumer protection statutes are laws too. Did Strategy Group get an “unfair” advantage over its competitors? AG Jennings should find out.

• Fired up about Social Security fraud? Investigate the latest perpetrator: DOGE. In a recent court filing, DOJ admitted that members of DOGE were secretly in touch with an outside advocacy group focused on overturning elections, about sharing sensitive Social Security data to match state voter rolls. That’s not just a violation of federal law, it’s arguably a violation of state consumer protection laws by DOGE, individual DOGE bros, and the nonprofit that solicited the data. Did Palantir or other companies get access to similar data, providing them an “unfair” advantage over their competitors? State AGs can — and should — investigate.

• Want to protect abortion access? Look into who owns the hospitals in your state. Since Roe was overturned, women around the country have died after hospitals turned them away from emergency rooms or denied care. Those hospitals are violating federal law (h/t EMTALA). But they’re also, quite literally, failing to protect consumers. And remember, hospital systems with locations in blue states often have locations in red states, too. So just because no one has been denied care (yet) in your state, doesn’t mean your hospital systems aren’t implicated.

• Hey Virginia! Beef up your consumer protection laws. Leveraging state consumer protection laws to counter Trump only works if state consumer protection laws are robust. In Virginia, they’re not. Governor Abigail Spanberger and her new Democratic-majority legislature should change that by strengthening Virginia’s Consumer Protection Act. The Commonwealth can specifically prohibit “unfair” business practices in addition to “deceptive” ones, raise statutory damage caps, and explicitly make violations of federal law violations of state law.

• Work at a nonprofit litigation group in DC? Sue X under DC’s consumer protection law for producing biased and inaccurate results. Late last year, then-Missouri AG Bailey sent letters to Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta, accusing them of potentially violating consumer protection laws. Bailey claimed their AI chatbots produced factually inaccurate results that disfavored conservatives. Bailey’s letter was frivolous, but there is evidence that Elon Musk has biased his platform towards conservative speech and misinformation. That’s a potential violation of DC’s consumer protection law, which grants nonprofits standing to bring suit without having to demonstrate a specific injury to one of their members.

ABOUT THAT 60 MINUTES PAYOUT…

When Paramount’s 60 Minutes paid millions of dollars to settle Trump’s frivolous defamation claims, it may have crossed into federal bribery territory. The timing is hard to ignore: the payout landed just as Trump’s FCC was scrutinizing Paramount’s pending merger with Skydance.

Sure, Trump’s DOJ won’t charge Paramount or CBS. But here’s a take for Bari Weiss: Bribery isn’t just unethical, it’s also anticompetitive.

A bribe is designed to get an advantage in the marketplace — a contract, a vote, an FCC merger approval. And by definition, a bribe is “unfair” and “deceptive.” That makes bribery illegal under most state consumer protection statutes.

So even if corporations aren’t worried about federal prosecution for bribing President Trump, they should be worried about something else: a state AG with ambition.

FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE

🥊 California AG Bonta isn’t sitting on the sideline. In the wake of the disturbing news that Grok is producing an avalanche of nonconsensual, sexually explicit material, California’s AG announced his office is putting its investigative powers to use. They’ll look into what laws xAI may have violated, including the company’s “legal obligation to children as consumers.”

🥊New York is picking up consumer cases Trump dropped. Trump’s CFPB has dropped more than 20 cases, which could cost consumers over $3 billion. Fortunately, states have consumer protection laws too. When CFPB moved to dismiss its suit against Capital One, New York AG Letitia Jamessued the company on behalf of New Yorkers. She did the same after CFPB dropped a suit against Zelle’s parent company.

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Counter Punch is a collaboration between Salt River Valley Project and Evergreen Legal — two organizations that believe punching back is the policy playbook this moment demands. It’s how we fight a rigged system, make courage contagious, and deliver for people against the leaders holding them down.