07/14/2025
Letitia James, the New York Attorney General who took Trump to court for a civil fraud trial from October 2023 to January 2024, headlined the Women in NAACP Empowerment Brunch at the Charlotte Convention Center. Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who squared-off with Trump when he probed into her investigation surrounding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, joined James.
The two, who are some of Trump’s cardinal critics, delved into how U.S. legal systems — from White House executive orders to local acting police chiefs — affect Black women everywhere and how they believe the country is inching closer to fascism.
Trump has made a “bold, naked grab to literally rewrite the Constitution,” Lynch said.
It’s troubling, James added, but grassroots movements — like those of the civil rights movement — are a force that for centuries has fought to both change and protect laws in communities across the country.
Moderator Eboni K. Williams, a lawyer and television host, asked the two about the executive order Trump signed that threatens to upend how the Constitution’s protection of birthright citizenship is applied.
Immigration Customs Enforcement agents’ raids coupled with the order could jeopardize citizenship and the right to vote for all, Lynch said, but particularly that of people who “traditionally have less political power than others.“
“That is how fascism has always started,” she said. “Going after the least powerful members of society, people who do not have the ability to vote and making sure they never get it”
Lynch said the order is “an attempt to unravel what knits this country together by the stroke of a pen.”
James replied: “The president doesn’t use a pen, he uses a Sharpie,” and his executive order has not held up in three lower courts.
News from the top is “challenging and bad,” James said, but it is not everything.
Community is everything, she said to an audience of Black women and power.
Lynch encouraged the audience to familiarize with themselves with local leaders: police chiefs, city council members and mayors — and vote for the values they want to see the government uphold.
▪️Newsbreak article
