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It may not be quite the same as facing the Tribal Council as millions of viewers looked on—as Nick Brown did as a contestant on Season 2 of Survivor in 2001—but Washington’s new Attorney General sat before a full Oberto Commons earlier this month to talk about his busy first several months on the job.

And while being a contestant on a reality show and being the state’s top law enforcement officer may seem different, there are some similarities. For one, it prepared Brown for being a public figure.

“That was the first time I got used to people recognizing me, which as a 23-year-old was pretty cool,” said Brown, who finished seventh out of 16 contestants on the show.

Brown has certainly become recognizable in his short time as the Washington Attorney General, serving as a prominent face among state attorney generals in pushing back against some of the Trump Administration’s orders and policies, including birthright citizenship and federal funding tied to immigration enforcement. To some he’s seen as a hero and others, well, not so much.

He said he tries to be consistent in being sure that when he acts on behalf of the state, he’s doing so with a focus on the law, his ethics and what is in the best interest of the public, while recognizing he’ll never make everyone happy.

“More than anything else, my job is to enforce the rule of law,” Brown said. “Reasonable people can disagree on a host of things. You can disagree about how much funding a federal agency should get, how big a government is, about whether citizenship should be defined by where you’re born. That is not why I filed suit in those cases. We file suit because what the president has done is illegal and unconstitutional and that has driven the decision-making for me.”

As with Survivor, there is plenty of strategy that goes into an attorney general’s job. Everything from what lawsuits to be involved with to where those lawsuits should be filed. Brown and his staff meet with AG offices from other states several times a week and said traditionally democratic states began preparing for the possibility of a second Trump administration more than a year ago to anticipate what he says we are now seeing.

Brown said there are only about five or six states—Washington being one—that have the capacity to lead large federal lawsuits. The suits Washington has taken a lead on are things that Brown has particular interest in, such as birthright citizenship and transgender health care.

But does he worry that these cases against the federal government will put Washington at risk of retribution?

“I do not think that I should ever say I’m going to allow the law to be broken because it might benefit us in my state,” Brown said. “Not every case is the right one for us to join. I make a pretty straightforward analysis of whether it’s illegal, whether it harms Washingtonians and if we should be a part. The fact that we have a president who acts with retribution, vengeance, I do not think should dissuade us. I would not be the right person for this job if I buckled under that sort of pressure.”

Indeed, Brown says one of the lines being drawn in the face of an administration that employs threats against those who push back against it are those who back down and those who continue to stand on their principles and values.

One stark example of that is in higher education, where some schools have complied with the administration’s demands against things like diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, while others have not. Most prominent of those refusing to comply is Brown’s alma mater, Harvard. Brown said he’s been shocked that so many major institutions and companies have capitulated to this administration’s demands and he was glad to see Harvard, which does have perhaps more flexibility to push back than others, make a principled stand.

“It was really not only the right one morally and ethically and legally,” Brown said, “but it was also the right one pragmatically. The mistake Columbia made is that you think that when you just agree and capitulate to the president’s demands, that that’s it, that he’s not going to come back for more. That is the strategic error that Columbia and others have made. Harvard recognized that if we say yes to this there will be something else.”

After receiving his Juris Doctor from Harvard in 2002, Brown joined the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s office, was assistant United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington and spent four years as general counsel for former Governor Jay Inslee. Prior to being elected Attorney General he was the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington.

While on Survivor, Brown was noted for flying under the radar to avoid other contestant’s scrutiny, but that hasn’t been the case since he became AG. He said states have always challenged the legality of federal government acts, but that the scale and significance has grown, adding that what is happening now should scare everyone and he has an obligation to speak the truth in this moment.

“The thing I love most about my job is every decision I get to make matters,” Brown said. “The things that come to my desk are the hard decisions. I love the fact that everything feels significant. The thing that I don’t like about my job is that everything feels significant. About a month ago, I said to my staff can you just bring me an easy decision today. But I chose to be in this position and I’m having so much fun being Attorney General and it’s an honor to be in the position.”