MIDDLEBURY — Some of Vermont’s top elected officials converged on Middlebury this past Saturday to spread a united message during these tumultuous early days of the Trump Administration: The Green Mountain State will pull out all the stops to safeguard its citizens from the growing threats of reduced federal funding, as well as any assaults on free speech, voting procedures and immigrants’ rights.

That was a major takeaway from an April 19 panel discussion at Town Hall Theater that almost filled the main hall with folks hungry to hear about how the state is preparing for — or reacting to — the myriad executive orders and budget signals coming from a White House and GOP-led Congress bent on delivering on their 2024 campaign promises.

Those promises — which don’t seem to be shared by most Vermont residents — include cutting billions in government spending; deporting or frightening as many foreign nationals as possible; obliterating efforts to make American society more equitable; restricting voting following false claims of a rigged 2020 presidential election; eliminating gender affirming rights; and dismantling federal agencies that oversee public education, human services and natural disaster aid.

Addressing those and other issues on Saturday were Attorney General Charity Clark, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Treasurer Mike Pieciak, Middlebury State Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair of the House Appropriations Committee), and state Sen. Ruth Hardy, who organized the forum.

MORE THAN 130 people attended an April 19 forum at Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater at which key state officials described Trump Administration efforts to cut federal funding and curb voting, free speech, immigration and other programs.
Independent photo/Steve James

Hardy, a Democrat in her seventh year representing Addison County, Huntington, Rochester and Buel’s Gore, said the Legislature is doing what it can to protect Vermont and prepare for potential federal restrictions on funding and civil liberties.

She specifically pointed to legislative efforts to protect reproductive rights, gender affirming healthcare, shield laws, and immigrants’ rights.

Each of the speakers framed federal impacts on Vermont’s budget and state services and described ways they’re trying to negate or forestall those impacts.

PIECIAK: RIGHT VS. WRONG

In addition to being the state’s banker and chief investment officer, Pieciak co-chairs Vermont’s 2025 Task Force on Federal Transition. That panel’s charge includes advising the treasurer’s office on “federal policy, legal changes, and the opportunities or challenges they create for the Vermont economy, future state fiscal or financial policy, or for Vermonters’ households and businesses.”

Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak

Pieciak took an informal poll of the crowd on current federal policy, including asking how many attendees had been affected — or had seen friends or family affected — by Trump policies so far in 2025.

More than half of those present raised their hand.

“The emotion I’m feeling now is anger,” Pieciak said. “This moment, it’s more than being Republican or Democrat. It’s so much bigger than ideology and party differences. This moment is all about what’s right and what’s wrong.”

The treasurer condemned Trump’s funding, immigration, DEI and other major initiatives as being “wrong — not because they are policy failures; they are wrong because they are moral failures.”

Pieciak said the Vermont Task Force on Federal Transition has produced some basic, disturbing numbers that “tell the story about what we’re dealing with”:

• One in five Vermonters works for a nonprofit. Pieciak said the state’s nonprofits collectively receive more than $600 million annually from the federal government. He noted 40 nonprofits in Addison County receive a combined $30 million each year.

Without the federal buy-in, Pieciak estimated 68% of Vermont’s nonprofits likely wouldn’t be able to meet their basic expenses.

“That’s a significant risk for our economy,” he said.

• Vermont businesses are bracing for $1 billion in increased costs stemming from the new tariffs Trump has imposed on countries throughout the world — including Canada, Vermont’s main trade partner.

“This is the highest tariffs have been since 1934, when we were in the depths of the Great Depression,” Pieciak said.

He noted Vermont businesses affected by an additional $1 billion in Trump tariffs will have to pass along at least some of those higher costs to consumers.

“It’s going to land on low-income, middle-class people the hardest, because it’s essentially a regressive sales tax,” he said.

Pieciak said he spoke last week with representatives of one Vermont business that reported a $9 million tariff on a single inventory shipment.

State Sen. Ruth Hardy and Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas

“They don’t get that money back until they increase their prices and sell their goods,” he said. “They have no idea if their customers are going to buy goods at the higher prices. It’s total insanity.”

• Vermont ranks fourth per capita in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reimbursement. Part of the reason is the state has been contending with a lot of flood-damage.

In an April 4 press release, FEMA ended the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program and canceled all BRIC applications from 2020-2023.

While finances are his domain, Pieciak said his biggest concern doesn’t involve dollars and cents.

“It’s the erosion of civil liberties that we’re seeing,” he said, citing as an example a Palestinian student (Mohsen Mahdawi) who on April 14 was arrested in Colchester by U.S. Justice Department officials who have yet to say why he’s being detained. Mahdawi, a Columbia University student, has been a vocal critic of the war in Gaza.

Mahdawi is one of several foreign students with legal status who’ve been detained and temporarily jailed by ICE — ostensibly for sharing political views not shared by the Trump Administration.

“It’s emblematic of a number of individuals who’ve had their due process and civil liberties stripped from them by this administration,” Pieciak said. “It’s so ‘anti-American values’… It’s not what we are as a country. I’m also mad about the amount of glee and joy the president and his administration seem to get from doing these horrible things to people living in the U.S.”

Pieciak encouraged Vermonters to join a growing chorus of voices opposing the deportations of those living legally in the U.S.

He said if one person’s rights are flouted, “we all have that threat of having our own rights eliminated in some way.”

ATTORNEYS GENERAL FIGHT BACK

As Vermont attorney general, Clark represents the state in all legal matters, providing legal counsel to state agencies and the Legislature, while enforcing state laws.

VERMONT ATTORNEY GENERAL CHARITY CLARK

The public is used to seeing its AG go after large corporations over fraud, pollution or other transgressions.

But the latest and most frequent target of her legal action during the past four months has been the Trump Administration. Clark said her office has, since Jan. 20, sued the Trump Administration nine times.

“I will continue to sue as long as the Constitution is being violated, or federal laws are violated,” she said.

Clark — her remarks interrupted several times by applause — voiced pride that her office, in concert with other Democratic attorneys general, had filed successful court challenges that have either blocked or forestalled the administration’s proposals on several issues, including:

• A birthright citizenship ban.

• A federal funding freeze.

• The “plundering of Americans’ data” by billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE.

• The “illegal firing of federal employees at 18 different agencies.”

• The “illegal dismantling” of the U.S. Department of Education.

• “Illegal and sweeping voting restrictions,” and

• The “dismantling of small federal agencies that support museums, minority-owned businesses and libraries.”

“We are focusing on every single executive order, and every action the Trump Administration is taking, to ensure it’s legal and Constitutional,” Clark said.

You’ll find a complete list of the Vermont AG Office’s actions against the Trump Administration by logging on to ago.vermont.gov/ago-actions.

Clark said that her actions have fortunately received little pushback so far from the administration.

“The good news is that we’ve found that so far, in our suits, the Trump administration has complied. Sometimes it takes them a couple of days — like a toddler who doesn’t want to go to bed — but eventually, they do,” she said.

VERMONT ATTORNEY GENERAL Charity Clark, left, talks here with Addison Central School Board Chair Barb Wilson and Middlebury selectboard member Andy Hooper at Saturday’s forum at Town Hall Theater.
Independent photo/John S. McCright

She’s also been heartened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings thus far on Trump’s executive orders.

“It appears that Chief Justice (John) Roberts is having none of it,” Clark said. “Federal judges are not used to being disobeyed, and they do not like it.”

Clark and her staff have been heartened by a growing number of thank-you cards and letters her office has received during the past four months. The messages span two large bulletin boards in her office.

“It’s so touching; it really means a lot,” she said.

She concluded by tipping her cap to Jeffrey Amestoy, a former AG and former chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. One of Amestoy’s favorite quotes is attributed to Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961).

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”

With that in mind, Clark said, “it is liberty in our hearts that should continue and fight for our democracy. Exercise your right to speak up.”

ELECTIONS UNDER FIRE

Copeland Hanzas said she remains “laser-focused on (preserving) free, fair and accessible elections.” She pointed to a March 26 executive order issued by Trump that tracks with the SAVE Act, which recently passed the U.S. House. The SAVE Act would, among other things, require all Americans to prove their citizenship by presenting documentation — in person — when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. Copeland Hanzas said voters would have to produce a passport or birth certificate as proof of citizenship.

In addition to placing a travel burden on the frail and elderly, more than 140 million American citizens don’t possess a passport, and around 69 million women who’ve taken their spouse’s name don’t have a birth certificate matching their legal name, according to the Center for American Progress.

“It’s a really blatant attack on our democracy and the function of our elections,” Copeland Hanzas said.

She noted Vermont is fighting the executive order in court.

“In my view, (the SAVE Act) is a blatant disregard of the Constitution, which says states shall determine the time, place and manner of elections — and only Congress can make laws and put certain parameters around that.”

Addison County State Sen. Ruth Hardy, left, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas and Attorney General Charity Clark on stage at Town Hall Theater on Saturday. Hardy organized the event and spoke, as well.
Independent photo/Steve James

The proposed law, Copeland Hanzas added, includes criminal penalties for those who register someone to vote in the absence of required documentation.

“As a town clerk, even though you’ve lived next to Mrs. Jones for your entire life and know she was born here, you’d have to tell her, ‘No, I can’t register you to vote until you have a birth certificate; how or if your name changed when you were married, and a current photo ID,’” she said.

“Of course we don’t want non-citizens voting,” Copeland Hanzas added. But she pointed to a non-citizen voting study performed by the Brennan Center for Justice which, among other things, revealed that the rate of potential non-citizen voting is 0.0001%.

SCHEU: CRUELTY REIGNS

As leader of Vermont House’s top money committee, Scheu has a tough task under ordinary circumstances. But this year has been far from ordinary. State officials have said federal funding directives from Trump and his cabinet leaders tend to come suddenly and can change seemingly on a whim.

Scheu said the state is counting on more than 36% — or roughly $3.1 billion — of Vermont’s $9 billion fiscal year 2026 state budget to come through federal dollars.

She noted around $1.5 million of the fed’s anticipated contribution relates to Medicaid, which subsidizes healthcare for low-income citizens.

“All Vermonters have the potential to be affected in some way,” Scheu said of potential federal cuts.

Vermont maintains what Scheu called “rainy day funds” that total around $300 million. But those would only go so far in a crisis.

“We don’t have the ability to backfill cuts the federal government can make,” she said.

“I’m also mad about the amount of glee and joy the president and his administration seem to get from doing these horrible things to people living in the U.S.”
— Treasurer Mike Pieciak

House Appropriations has asked department heads in state government to testify on “the nature and status of the federal funds they’re responsible for,” according to Scheu. “We’re asking, ‘Could that program continue in a reduced capacity if your (federal) funding was cut or eliminated, or would the program have to go away?’”

Those department heads are also being asked who’d be harmed if the program in question were eliminated or reduced.

“There’s no way to predict what’s going to happen,” Scheu said. “But… we want to understand as much as we can, so that if and when something happens — and we know it will — we’ll be better able to respond.”

She acknowledged federal funding bombshells could fall after the Legislature adjourns later this spring. If that happens, the state’s Joint Fiscal Committee and Emergency Board can make some financial decisions independent of the House and Senate. Scheu is a member of both of those panels.

At this same time, she conceded the General Assembly could be called back into an emergency session if the Trump Administration announces draconian federal funding cuts.

Scheu lamented the federal government’s current fiscal priorities.

The U.S. House-passed budget contemplates $880 billion in Medicaid cuts, while at the same time advancing $5.3 trillion in tax cuts during the next decade.

“Cruelty seems to be the point,” she said. “It’s stressful. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others.”

John Flowers is at [email protected].