Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has filed or joined 30 lawsuits against the federal government since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
All but one of the other 22 states with a Democratic state attorney general have filed even more.
Arizona has challenged the recent interruption in federal nutrition aid during the government shutdown; immigration enforcement policies; funding cuts for science research, public health and education; Trump’s effort to end automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. with no American parent; and regulatory rollbacks intended to accelerate fossil fuel production.
“This is not what I get up every day wanting to do,” Mayes told Cronkite News recently, standing outside the U.S. Supreme Court after arguments on a multistate challenge to Trump’s expansive use of tariffs without congressional approval. “But if Donald Trump decides to violate the Constitution, violate statute, or harm the people of Arizona, I'm going to file that lawsuit.”
Mayes boasts that her efforts have already saved Arizona $1.5 billion, though she has won just two and lost two others. In 15 cases, her side persuaded courts to provide temporary relief.
The tally includes temporary wins involving $132 million in education funding and more than $1 billion related to orders Trump issued during his first week freezing just about any federal spending that didn’t align with his policy priorities.
Mayes and other Democratic AGs cast themselves as champions of taxpayers and citizens.
In the tariff case, Arizona, California and Oregon argued that Trump’s moves were illegal and raised costs for U.S. consumers and businesses.
“We have small businesses in Arizona that are going out of business every day,” Mayes said. “I've talked to a furniture manufacturer, a restaurateur, a hotel owner, cattle ranchers … all of whom are struggling because of these tariffs.”
Through mid-October, the litigation cost the state about $2 million, the Arizona Republic found.
Mayes asserted that Republican AGs “are losing billions of dollars” by refraining from court fights with the administration.
“They're too afraid of Donald Trump ... because he's a dictator and he will punish them and he will end their political careers,” she said outside the Supreme Court.
According to the Progressive State Leaders Committee, an advocacy group that tracks litigation between states and the federal government, Mayes has won temporary pauses in 15 cases.
These include challenges to the administration’s attempt to dismantle AmeriCorps; cuts to National Institutes of Health funding for medical and public health research; the cancellation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure funds; new immigration rules requiring status verification before access to services; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s demand for data on recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, an anti-hunger program that serves 42 million Americans.
Other successful pauses involved a policy that gave the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to taxpayer data; the executive order seeking to deny birthright citizenship to children of parents in the country illegally or with temporary status; cuts to a federal disaster mitigation program; and an attempt to give immigration authorities access to health data.
Eight cases involving Arizona have no decision yet, including Trump’s efforts to terminate wind energy projects and “Solar for All” grants to expand access to solar energy for low-income families, and to impose restrictions on education grants.
In three cases, courts have allowed Trump policies to take effect as litigation continues.
That includes changes to NIH grant procedures; the delegation of executive power to billionaire Elon Musk when he led the DOGE cost-cutting effort; and rules governing the Affordable Care Act.
In June, the Department of Health and Human Services issued regulations that, among other things, would add verification requirements, impose monthly charges on consumers who qualify for $0 premiums and shorten the open enrollment period. Democratic attorneys general said that would violate the law “and would cause significant harm to states and their residents.”
Courts have rejected challenges from Arizona to block mass layoffs of probationary federal employees and at the Department of Education, though Arizona and other states successfully blocked that department from rescinding hundreds of millions in grants stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
-
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs says she won’t give in to the Trump administration’s threat to withhold SNAP funding unless states hand over data about the program’s recipients. -
Kyle Wilkerson, program coordinator for air traffic control at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, joined The Show to talk more about how the shutdown affected Arizona controllers. -
The Trump administration is threatening to withhold SNAP funding from more than 20 states, including Arizona, that have refused to share data about residents who benefit from the food assistance program, citing privacy and concerns with how the federal government will use that information. -
In July, Congress removed homelessness as an exemption to work requirements under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The law took effect Nov. 1, with a three-month grace period. -
A Phoenix-area food bank says it has continued to see increased demand for help, even after the end of the government shutdown restored funding for federal food assistance.
