Washington’s Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson responded to a letter he received from President Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has identified the State of Washington as a so-called “sanctuary jurisdiction.”
At a press conference (video below), Ferguson noted that in the letter, Bondi “refers to unidentified policies and practices within Washington State that she asserts violate federal law…without any explanation whatsoever.”
We are not bending the knee.
My response to AG Bondi and President Trump. pic.twitter.com/DT9XvTO26F
— Governor Bob Ferguson (@GovBobFerguson) August 25, 2025
Ferguson said that Bondi threatened state officials, quoting the Attorney General’s assertion: “Operating under the color of the law, using their official position to obstruct federal immigration enforcement efforts and facilitating or inducing illegal immigration may be subject to criminal charges.”
Ferguson said: “That is breathtaking. And a letter like this cannot be normalized.”
The Governor added: “Let me be very clear. Washington State will not be bullied or intimidated by threats and legally baseless accusations.”
Ferguson said that “Bondi’s letter threatens me, police officers, state troopers, sheriffs, judges, and other officials with prison time. Why? Because our state legislature passed a bipartisan law that appropriately and lawfully limits the diversion of state and local resources to federal immigration enforcement.”
Ferguson, who served from 2013 to 2025 as the Attorney General of Washington, added: “If Pam Bondi really believed that Washington was in conflict with controlling federal law, she would make some effort to explain that. She did not, because she cannot.”
Ferguson told NPR: “It is all posturing. She won’t challenge us in court, because she would lose.”
Spoke to NPR for today’s Morning Edition about AG Bondi’s disgraceful letter.
It is all posturing. She won’t challenge us in court, because she would lose.https://t.co/ovVRLlOuP4
— Governor Bob Ferguson (@GovBobFerguson) August 21, 2025
Washington GOP chairman Jim Walsh portrayed Ferguson’s resistance as treasonous, likening the Governor’s response to Bondi’s threats to the response of Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders during the Civil War.
Walsh said that when Ferguson claims “Washington state has no intention of changing our values in the face of threats (from the federal government),” that the statement “echoes similar rhetoric used by Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens and other Confederate politicians during the Civil War, to defend their assault on the federal government.”
Pitting Ferguson’s resistance to the Trump administration’s demands, Walsh presents an extreme vision in which his state’s leaders suffer a fate similar to that of those who seceded from the Union, concluding that “these justifications didn’t end well for Davis and Stephens then; they aren’t likely to end well for Ferguson now.”
The Trump administration continues to claim that emergency situations necessitate its most controversial maneuvers, including the global application of tariffs, the rampant ICE detentions and deportations, and the deployment of troops in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
Numerous legal experts say these emergency declarations which make it legal for the president to usurp power normally centered elsewhere (with Congress or states) are fabricated and unjustified.
Expressing that view succinctly is Ilya Somin, a libertarian professor at Antonin Scalia Law School, who told the New York Times in June that Trump is “declaring utterly bogus emergencies for the sake of trying to expand his power, undermine the Constitution and destroy civil liberties.”