Peter Neronha had a story as soon as he learned that former U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, who is now president of the Rhode Island Foundation, would be addressing the Warwick Rotary Club.

Both were young prosecutors and both have a habit of speaking faster and faster when they home in on their final arguments. It was too much for the court stenographer, who stopped them – breaking their train of thought – and told them to slow down.

Nobody told Neronha, now the Rhode Island Attorney General, to slow down last Thursday as he addressed the service club. He was on a roll and lingered to chat well beyond the end of the meeting at the Crowne Plaza.

Only hours before, his office had issued a release that the state had joined a coalition of 20 states in suing the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education.

But he started with his management of the Office of the Attorney General following his election in 2018, went on outline the changes he has made, answered “maybe” when asked if he would run for governor in 2026 and dove into a civics lesson on the three branches of our government and why it is so important to challenge the president when he steps beyond his authority.

And by what criteria does he make the decision to sue the president, or for that matter fight for lower energy rates?

The first question, he said, is whether the action being taken is unlawful, second is whether it harms Rhode Islanders and third is  whether he has legal standing.

One of the first of Neronha’s challenges is to Trump’s effort to strip the U.S. citizenship of children born to immigrant parents in the United States. He said the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution “makes it clear if I’m born here, I’m a citizen.”

Neronha said he and other attorneys general across the country had been working in anticipation that Trump would seek to deny this birthright citizenship. Their work resulted in the granting of a preliminary injunction by a federal judge early last month.

“If [immigrants] have a child here, they have standing whether [the administration] likes it or not.”

Neronha went on to talk about “federal funding grabs” and efforts to nullify grants that have been approved and in some cases issued.

“We knew we had to act quickly,” he said of calling on other states, among them California and New York, to gain a temporary restraining order.

He called those grants “basically a contract and not new aid.”

Neronha also touched on the dismantling of agencies, saying they “can’t be cut by 50% and do the same level of work.”

In the case of the Department of Education, Neronha said in the release issued last Thursday morning that massive layoffs “will severely undermine the department’s ability to perform basic functions, functions upon which American families rely. Kids with special needs who require speech therapy and IEPs and transportation; kids in rural communities whose districts rely on federal help to keep up; kids from underserved communities; those who require vocational rehabilitation services; the list goes on.”

In a discussion following the meeting, Neronha didn’t hesitate to say that in addition to stripping away the authority of Congress, Trump is going after the courts.

“If the courts don’t stand up to him, he’ll do it,” he said.

But then if the Department of Justice has been compromised, what power do courts have to enforce the law?

 Neronha said he would hope that the people would see what’s happening and stand up.