PROVIDENCE — When some of the Democratic attorneys general, including Rhode Island’s Peter Neronha, began to contemplate the possibility of a second Trump presidency, with the resulting threats to everything from health to research to the environment, they came up with a plan.

“What we agreed to do in that moment was, we’re going to build the biggest and best law firm in the country” to fight a second Trump administration, Neronha said Sunday at a forum at Hope High School titled “Can Democracy and the Planet Be Saved?”

Neronha said the discussion included AGs from Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, among others, and started while President Biden was still the candidate.

“We were hoping he would win” the 2024 election, Neronha said. But fearing what they knew Trump was capable of, should he be elected again, the AGs merged a portion of their staffs to pinpoint areas of possible conflict. The staff members began speaking daily, Neronha said, and identified 51 issues or areas that could be challenged.

“From listening to Trump and Project 2025, and what he had done the first time,” Neronha said, “they came up with 51 issues that we felt were going to be immediate challenges, and we could end them by doing the research on those issues and having that research effectively in so that we could pull it off the shelf and use it.”

The result of the “very, very hard work” by Neronha’s staff and that of the other AGs has been, so far, 19 lawsuits fighting various Trump actions, including one creating a “national energy emergency” that allows federal agencies to bypass or shorten critical reviews under the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and the Historic National Preservation Act for energy projects and is designed to pave the way for the growth of the fossil fuel industry. Neronha said Rhode Island is involved in all but two of the lawsuits, and his office created a page on the state AG website to track them.

“We have effectively stopped the worst of the administration’s attempts, when it comes to the states and things that are affected through the states,” he said. “We have built an integrated law firm. We are arguing these cases in Rhode Island. There will be lawyers from California here, depending on the case, from Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey. I’m really proud.”

The forum was sponsored by Climate Action Rhode Island and Indivisible Rhode Island, and was co-hosted by Aseem Rastogi, chair of Indivisible Rhode Island, and Caitlin Sanford, co-president of Climate Action Rhode Island.

Although the topic was serious, there were some light moments, including a Neronha riff on Trump’s tendency to “go off” on social media. “He was really going a little bit off the rails” in his posts Friday and over the weekend, Neronha said.

He also compared Trump to the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street: “He’s like the Cookie Monster, of course, but he wants more than cookies. He will keep eating until we’re gone. You can’t negotiate with a guy like that. You have to fight him.”

When it came to climate change, though, Neronha was critical of his home state, saying, “I just know that we’re not doing enough in Rhode Island to hit those Act on Climate goals. Even if Kamala Harris were the president today, I don’t think Rhode Island will be doing enough.”

“We’re small, but we don’t say, ‘Because we’re small, we’re going to do better than everybody else,’” he added. “We’re going to do just enough so that the U.S. News & World Report will give us some kind of symbolic pat on the head.”

When asked about Trump’s disdain for offshore wind, Neronha said the AGs in states with offshore wind projects in the works are “talking about reversing the Trump administration’s characterization of wind as a problem and as fossil fuels as a solution … and holding the administration accountable. If Congress has allocated [money for offshore wind projects] you as the president can’t take it away.”

After praising the hard work of his staff in preparing for the legal battles with Trump, Neronha said, “if the country has that same energy and approach and fight, we will outlive, collectively, as a country and as a people, Donald Trump.”