Washington, DC – Thanks to their prep work and swift action, Democratic Attorneys General are fighting back against Donald Trump and Elon Musk – and winning. In the era of Trump 2.0, Democratic AGs have led the efforts to curtail the unconstitutional actions from Trump and Musk as the administration continues to enact harmful policies.

POLITICO’s Melanie Mason and Rachel Bluth spoke with several current and former Democratic AGs on their current legal efforts and the planning that led up to Trump’s inauguration. They write, “In confronting Trump, elected officials have largely yielded to labor unions and advocacy organizations. Then there are the attorneys general, who see themselves as the last backstop between the people and the president.”

Key highlights: 

• “The resistance meets daily on Microsoft Teams. The country’s 23 Democratic state attorneys general log on at 4pm ET for a thirty-minute confidential video chat to coordinate their plans for pushing back against the Trump administration. They share updates on the seven cases they have moving through federal courts and argue about whether to treat Elon Musk as a lawful arm of the government or an uncredentialed interloper to it. They plot where to respond next, leveraging timezone differences to expand the workday.”
• “Their multi-state lawsuits have temporarily stopped the president from revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal funding and cutting off money for medical research.”
• “‘Right now in the United States, the Democratic AGs are the only group of people who are united and working to prevent some of these unconstitutional actions from continuing,’ Hawaii attorney general Anne Lopez boasted in an interview.”

• “This year, the attorneys general are executing on a plan they worked to develop for a year before Trump’s return to the White House… Coming together to respond to Trump’s policy blitzkrieg after it began, they say, would have represented coming together too late.”
• “‘We talk each and every day these days, and you’d think we start to get tired of it, but we’ve just grown closer over time,’ said Kathy Jennings, Delaware’s attorney general. ‘And in the next four years, we’re going to grow very close.’”
• “‘There was going to be a need for coordinated action, making sure that we were not caught flat-footed,’ said Maine’s Aaron Frey. ‘It allowed us to be thinking about what it is that was going to be important for our states.’”
• “The state attorneys general — including from the District of Columbia — began speaking weekly throughout the summer and fall to update one another of their progress, using the time to order their priorities and determine the limitations of their powers.”
• “‘I think there was a collective recognition that we wanted to approach things differently,” said Rhode Island’s Peter Neronha…’We knew we would have to come up with a process by which everyone could and would participate.’”
• “Where Project 2025 was specific, they prepped tailor-made cases that all the states could sign onto. Where it was vague, they read up on the arguments that had been successful in impeding Trump’s first-term agenda.”
• “[California AG Rob Bonta] and his colleagues, he said, had strategized down to the detail of which courts to file in, the virtues of facing state versus federal judges, and how to ensure their cases would have standing to take on Trump. ‘If he violates the law — as he has said he would, as Project 2025 says he will,’ Bonta said, ‘then we are ready.’”
• “Among the attorneys general, there was a sense of shock at the speed with which he moved and how reckless some of the orders seemed. But they also knew they had spent the past year ‘trying to map out a list of areas where we might see massive policy changes and things that are illegal,’ said [Washington AG] Nick Brown…”
• “…states are in a unique position unavailable to labor unions and outside groups. Their suits are essentially class-actions on behalf of all their constituents, informed by the full range of concrete harms only a state government is positioned to document.”

• “‘It’s important that individuals understand that there are co-equal branches of law that need to be respected, and that states, again, have a unique responsibility to ensure that the Constitution is followed,’ New York attorney general Letitia James said…”
• “‘The cavalry is on the way,’ said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. ‘I anticipate that Maryland will be taking a leadership role on more cases as soon as we have the bandwidth.’”
• “But it’s only the beginning. For now the attorneys general will keep trying to hire more lawyers, and go about the business of their states while they try to match each executive action they can with a suit of their own. They’re tending to the drafts in their brief banks but trying to play it close to the chest.”

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