AG Says Federal Partners Are Evaporating Under Trump

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/14/2025) Attorney General Dana Nessel has "great concerns" surrounding her office's federal partnerships as President Donald Trump moves to minimize federal spending and programming.

Nessel spoke to the Senate General Government Appropriations Subcommittee on Thursday. Earlier this month, Nessel joined 22 attorneys general (AGs) to file a second motion for enforcement in their lawsuit against Trump's impacts on federal funding.

During the meeting, Nessel said, "just the other day," while discussing an anti-robocalling case, an assistant AG revealed that their contact person with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) "just stopped responding."

She explained her office was working with the FTC on the case and the likely significant settlement it would have led to.

"And we don't know what happened to that person. We don't know if they still work there or not . . . there's no outgoing bounce-back email saying 'I don't work here anymore. Contact so-and-so,'" Nessel said. "We're not sure how to proceed on that case, and that's one of many cases where we're seeing that."

She explained how some of the Michigan AG's biggest partnerships are with the FTC, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"But I think that our biggest concern really is with the FBI and their work with us in so many different ways, whether it's human trafficking, domestic terrorism . . . I feel really comfortable in saying some of the work that we've done on domestic terrorism, I think we've saved an untold number of lives with the work that we've done together to identify threats," Nessel said.

Nessel said the FBI and the Western and Eastern U.S. District Courts in Michigan were working with her office to find missing and murdered Indigenous people. She said she doesn't think they'll be involved anymore.

She also pointed to the unclear future of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where the acting director informed employees earlier this year to stop most work activities.

"I'm trying to think how many hundreds of thousands of people they have assisted in Michigan. I mean, they were a really important federal agency, and for all intents and purposes they've pretty much been shut down at this point," Nessel said. "It's going to shift to us, and now it's going to be only us."