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Trump Resister CT Attorney General William Tong [1]
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Date: 2025-01-03
Democratic Connecticut Attorney General William Tong–Another Bright Light in the Trump Resistance Campaign January 3, 2025
While the GOP/GQ(QAnon) P briefly fought over whether Mike Johnson (R-LA) would be its next Speaker, but quickly re-elected him, (cnn.com, 1/03/26) let’s pay more attention to the leaders that the Democrats will have to resist Demagogue Donald’s horrible policies. Since the awful November, 2024 election, the national GOP has a trifecta or majority in the legislative and executive branches. On January 20, 2025, Republican Demagogue Donald will become the next President. The Senate has a 53-47 “Team Red” Majority, and the House is also in the GOP camp with a 219-215 majority. Mr. Popular Vote 1.5% “Winner” Donald has the smallest vote margin since the 19th Century (nytimes.com). And in the House of Representatives, the “People’s House,” the “Red” win was razor thin, the narrowest in nearly a century (cnn.com). Speaker Johnson’s task to pass legislation will, therefore, be an extremely hard one. Since the election, controversial GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) left the House. Congress Members Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Mike Waltz (R-FL) will be departing after being nominated to be Donald’s U.N. Ambassador and National Security Adviser respectively (NBC). As I previously noted, although the Democrats have been shut out from any majorities at the federal level, at the state level, they have a strong bench of attorney generals who can sue to block in the courts some of Demagogue Donald’s policies deemed unconstitutional by many people, including conservative Republicans as well as legal scholars. One of those policies that Demagogue Donald ran on and wants to take head on is to end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is a provision in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States (nbcnews.com, Hurley, L., 12/29/24).” Conservative James Ho, a Trump-appointed judge on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and considered a possible U.S. Supreme Ct. nominee if Trump gets a future High Court vacancy to fill, has written, “Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. That birthright is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers (nbcnews.com, Hurley).” I previously did a blog post discussing Washington State’s Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson. He will have no problems suing Trump for attacking the U.S. Constitution. Another Democratic State Attorney General, Connecticut’s William Tong, who has served in that office since 2019, promised that if Trump tries to repeal birthright citizenship, “I would be the first to sue.” Meet Atty. General William Tong.
William Morten Tong (51) is CT’s 25th and current Attorney General, AG (wiki). To AG Tong, birthright citizenship is not a theoretical matter. It is personal.Tong is a “birthright baby.” Hartford, CT, native Tong grew up in West Hartford. His father left China for Hong Kong during the Nationalist-Communist Chinese Civil War. His mother immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 1960’s (Preovolos, C., 2/10/10, Bowles, A., 11/26/06, nytimes.com). William Tong graduated from the elite prep school, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, also George W. Bush’s alma mater. Tong received a 1995 undergraduate degree with honors from Brown University and a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 2000 (See Kei-Rahn, J., 11/25/18, browndailyherald.com, law.uchicago.edu, 12/15/14). After graduating law school and before becoming CT’s AG, Tong practiced law for 18 years with the Wall Street law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and then in the Stamford, CT firm of Finn Dixon & Herring LLP (portal.ct.gov).
Tong was elected to the CT House of Representatives and served there from 2007-2019. In the CT House, Tong had a very productive career. He was a key leader in CT’s efforts to pass gun control legislation. As a freshman lawmaker, Tong wrote and passed the Lost and Stolen Firearms law that aimed to fight gun trafficking (trafficbill.com, CT HB6131). After the Sandy Hook, CT elementary school gun massacre, Tong played a major role in overhauling CT’s gun laws. He wrote and passed “Lori Jackson’s Law.” That law was a domestic violence gun law that required the subject of a temporary restraining order to surrender all firearms and ammunition for at least 14 days. In 2018, Tong wrote and passed the law banning bump stocks. In addition to his work on gun control, Tong wrote and helped pass several laws to reform the criminal justice system, including CT’s Second Chance Society law which eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug possession crimes that had resulted in the mass incarceration of young people in CT’s cities. Tong additionally helped write and pass legislation to protect homeowners in foreclosure after the 2008 financial crisis. Tong further helped write and pass legislation to hold teachers and school officials accountable for failing to report instances of abuse and sexual misconduct by teachers and administrators involving students (wiki).
In late 2017, Tong formed an exploratory committee to seek the nomination for CT Attorney General in the 2018 election, after the incumbent AG announced he would not run again. Tong went on to win the Democratic primary for AG on August 14, 2018 and defeated his GOP rival in the 11/2018 general election by 78, 394 votes or 6% of the total. He became the first elected Asian-American statewide official to win office in the Constitution State (ctpost.com, 11/07/18, portal.ct.gov, Tong- biography-page).
As CT Attorney General,Tong led a coalition of 49 states in suing the major generic drug manufacturers for price fixing. On a May 12, 2019 segment of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” AG Tong called these drug defendants the “largest private sector cartel” in history (CT.gov, cbsnews.com, 5/12/19). Tong was also a part of a small group of state attorneys general who led the investigation against Equifax. The Equifax matter related to a massive data breach in which millions of Americans’ personal and confidential information was compromised, that included 1.5 million CT residents. Eventually, Equifax agreed to a $700 million settlement, including $425 million in direct consumer relief and nearly $5 million to the State of CT (CT.gov).
During the 2018 midterm campaign, AG Tong pledged to be a “firewall” against Demagogue Donald and his policies. He joined other state attorneys general in challenging Donald’s attempts to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He also joined this group in fighting against adding a citizenship question to the U.S. census (CT.gov). Tong has additionally been a defender of the environment. He has taken numerous legal actions to protect clean air and water and to confront climate change (CT.gov).
With this record, CT AG Tong has shown that he has a strong ability to help the people of his state. He will certainly challenge unconstitutional actions that Trump feels emboldened to do throughout his second term against the American people. “Team Blue” needs good fighters like AG Tong as well as WA State’s Ferguson who will not “fall in line” as GOPers do to Trump, Musk, and their allies. Our democracy depends upon supporting Democratic leaders like Tong to resist Demagogue Donald’s attempts to shred the U.S. Constitution.
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