Democratic-led states have been preparing for a second Trump presidency — and the policies it would bring — since far before Inauguration Day. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is no exception. WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “CT’s William Tong, other blue-state AGs brace for Trump 2.0,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. You can read his story here. WSHU: One of the first executive orders Trump has just signed revokes birthright citizenship. William Tong, Connecticut’s first Asian American attorney general, his parents were undocumented when he was born. So this is an issue that’s personal for him. MP: He has given that impression, but I did pin down with him that his parents were here legally when he was born. He identifies emotionally with the people who are at risk from the President’s executive order on birthright citizenship, but the scenario that surrounds his birth really is a little bit different. WSHU: Okay, but he does consider that his parents were, for a time, illegal in the country, correct? MP: There was a time when his father, at least, according to family lore, was facing deportation. He was here on an expiring visa, and he had opened a business. He had opened a Chinese restaurant on Park Street in Hartford, and the suspicion in the family is that a competing restaurant owner had dropped a dime and said you should check this guy out. Indeed, he was visited by the INS and told that he was going to have to leave the country because his visa was rapidly approaching expiration. His father wrote a six-page letter to President Richard Nixon. It’s a little fuzzy what happened next, other than the fact he was later visited by INS and told he could stay. Under precisely what status, I have not been able to determine. But the bottom line is that he and the attorney general’s mother each obtained green cards, gave them legal status, and eventually US citizenship. But the bottom line is that Attorney General William Tong feels very strongly about the vulnerability that immigrants, whether they have status or don’t have status, or they have a mixed family; according to Mr. Tong, about 70% of immigrant families are what he calls mixed status; you know, you might have somebody who’s here with legal status, somebody who is here on an extended visa, expired visa. You know, Tong’s view is that this is something that rattles families and also sets the stage for economic dislocation if there are mass deportations. Which, by the way, would not be the end of birthright citizenship, it is a constantly constitutionally suspect position on the part of the President. The order, which I read today, he said, you know, the interpretation has never been resolved. Well, that’s just not true. WSHU: I mean, it is the 14th Amendment. It’s written into the 14th Amendment. MP: Correct, correct. The United States Supreme Court interpreted the law at the end of the 1890s to mean what it appears to say: if you’re born here, you have the right to citizenship. WSHU: Now, Tong has an association with all the other Democratic attorneys general in the country, about 23 or 24 of them, right? They have been meeting. What does Tong say they will be doing now? MP: They have been preparing, in essence, battle plans in anticipation of a much more organized Trump 2.0 administration than we saw with Trump 1.0. An example is that in the first Trump administration, it took him about a week to issue an executive order that was widely interpreted as directed at Muslim immigrants, barring the entrance to the United States of people from Muslim countries. Again, that took a week. Yesterday, I don’t know what the final count is because I’m still going through all the orders, but he obviously was ready, and he had two, at least two, public signings of these orders. WSHU: How does Tong feel about taking a prominent role in challenging the Trump administration? He’s a politician. How does he take this? MP: Well, it’s an interesting question because he, like many attorney generals, is in a high visibility position. He has been very partisan at times, but recently, he has been chosen as the president-elect of the National Association of Attorneys General. And that was very deliberate on his part. He said he was in a leadership position for the Democratic AGS, but he really wanted the leadership of the nonpartisan group. It’s this really odd bifurcation. He will work with Republicans AGS on many issues, but be at odds with the more political ones. And that’s going to really involve everything having to do with the Trump administration, and that was true for earlier administrations. It wasn’t always suing a Democratic administration or Republican administration. When President Obama was in office, democratic attorney generals basically went to legal war with Republican attorney generals over the Affordable Care Act. His predecessor, Mr. Jepsen, was involved in defending the ACA against Republican AGS, who sued. The rise of the attorneys general has come since the Reagan years, when there was a retreat from many federal enforcement and regulatory efforts. The AGs stepped into this void. Over the subsequent years, it’s become increasingly political, and I think that’s reaching a climax now with Donald Trump back in the White House. WSHU: Now, talking about politics, I noticed that Governor Ned Lamont was one of four Democratic governors who showed up for the inauguration in Washington. Does Tong have ambitions to run for governor? I know you asked him that. What did he say? MP: He is somewhat coy. I mean, his basic answer is that he is a supporter of Ned Lamont and will remain so until such a point that Governor Lamont announces he is not going to seek a third term. Governor Lamont has said that is a decision he will make in late spring or early summer, and then we’ll share that with his party and the rest of us. So he is certainly positioning himself to compete. Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz is certainly running. She has nothing to lose. She will lose her position if Lamont does not run again, whereas Tong has a hard decision to make; it is a very enjoyable job for Tong, as it has been for his predecessors. Two of his four elected immediate predecessors went on to the United States Senate. So it has been a very, very effective springboard for the higher office. So the question for William Tong is, if it’s an open race for governor in 2026, does he go for that? Or does he wait to see if United States Senator Richard Blumenthal decides not to run again in 2028? WSHU: In the meantime, he’s got to take on the Trump administration. 2.0. MP: Yes, he is promising a lawsuit very soon, beginning with the birthright citizenship issue, but he and his fellow democratic AGS are going through the pile of orders that were signed yesterday, late yesterday afternoon and well into the evening, trying to determine what states are most affected, who has legal standing to sue, and what are the legal defenses and arguments that can be made. And that, in a nutshell, is the three-pronged tests that William Tong outlined yesterday for when he would make it his business and Connecticut’s business to challenge President Trump.