By John Bolton
Dated: August 11, 2026
WESTPORT, Conn. — John Bolton, the Republican nominee for Connecticut Attorney General, today responded to Connecticut’s current Attorney General’s reaction to the federal lawsuit filed Monday challenging Connecticut’s provision of in-state tuition and financial aid to residents in the country illegally.
“Yesterday, the United States filed a federal complaint against our state, grounded in a statute Congress passed thirty years ago — a statute courts have already used to strike down similar laws in five states. And the chief legal officer of Connecticut responded with — and I quote — ‘Note to Trump: stay out of Connecticut.’”
“That is not a legal defense. That is a lawn sign.”
“The current Attorney General says how we educate our kids is ‘none of your business’ and that the federal government has ‘no authority’ over the ‘sovereign State of Connecticut.’ Let me say something every first-year law student knows: state sovereignty is a shield against federal commandeering — it is neither a license to defy Acts of Congress nor an invitation to revive the discredited doctrine of interposition. The Supremacy Clause is in Article VI. It doesn’t have an exit for Connecticut, and the Attorney General of this state knows it.
“And the hypocrisy is staggering. The current Attorney General has sued the federal government dozens of times — proudly, on camera — invoking federal law and federal courts every time it suits him. Federal law doesn’t run in one direction. You cannot spend eight years demanding Washington obey the law and then tell Washington the law is ‘none of your business’ the moment it’s inconvenient.
“And here is the unfairness at the heart of it: a family in Ohio, or a legal immigrant who followed every rule, pays the full out-of-state price to send their child to UConn — while Connecticut hands the discounted in-state rate to someone who is here illegally. The current Attorney General is fighting to keep it that way. That is not compassion. It is a state telling its own citizens to go pound sand.”
“This lawsuit is serious. Courts have sided with the federal government in five states already. And our current Attorney General is answering a federal complaint with playground rhetoric instead of addressing the merits of the suit — the same unhinged reflex we have seen from this office again and again.
Connecticut deserves an Attorney General who puts the law ahead of political theater and answers a complaint with a serious pleading — not a bumper sticker.
“Nobody is above the law. Not the President. Not the Governor. And not the Attorney General of Connecticut.”