ARIZONA’S ATTORNEY GENERAL GOES TO WAR WITH WASHINGTON
From “Reporter” Mayes to “Reported” on Mayes – Part 2
Forty-Eight Lawsuits Against Trump – and a Legal Network That Was Preparing Before Election Day
By Linda Brickman
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SCORECARD – The Sunshine investigation (as noted in the last report) showed how Kris Mayes exercised power close to home. But the larger Mayes story stretches far beyond Arizona — and it did not begin with Donald Trump.
To understand how a former political reporter became an Attorney General willing to take the federal government to court again and again, we have to go backward before we go forward.
SECTION 1. FROM REPORTER TO POLITICIAN
Long before she was suing Presidents, challenging federal agencies or running Arizona’s top law-enforcement office, Kris Mayes was reporting on politicians.
Mayes began her career as a reporter for the Phoenix Gazette and later covered the Arizona Legislature for the Arizona Republic. After graduate school at Columbia University, she returned to the Republic and covered the 2000 Presidential campaigns of John McCain, Dan Quayle, Steve Forbes and George W. Bush. The Arizona Corporation Commission’s own historical biography confirms that reporting career.
Then the reporter crossed to the other side of the political notebook.
Following a chance encounter during a flight between Phoenix and Washington, DC, Mayes joined Janet Napolitano’s 2002 campaign for Governor as press secretary and later served in a senior role in the Napolitano administration. Mayes’s own Attorney General biography acknowledges that she served in the Napolitano administration before being appointed to the Arizona Corporation Commission.
And that appointment matters.
In October 2003, Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano appointed Mayes to fill a vacancy on the Arizona Corporation Commission after Commissioner Jim Irvin resigned. The Commission’s official annual report records Mayes’s October 2003 appointment.
But there was a political wrinkle.
Napolitano was not simply appointing another Democrat to statewide office. She was appointing a Republican who had worked in her campaign and administration.
That distinction is important.
There is nothing inherently improper about a Governor appointing someone from another party. But Napolitano’s appointment gave Mayes something a political reporter had never possessed before:
Statewide Public Office.
Mayes went on to win election to the Corporation Commission, served there from 2003 through 2010 and chaired the Commission during her final two years. Her current AGO biography describes two statewide election victories during that period.
Then Mayes’s political identity changed.
She remained a registered Republican until 2019, when she switched to the Democratic Party. Contemporary reporting described her as a Republican-turned-Democrat and confirmed the 2019 change.
Three years later, Mayes ran for Attorney General as a Democrat.
And she barely made it.
After an automatic recount, Mayes defeated Republican Abraham Hamadeh by 280 votes in the 2022 Attorney General race. The final recount was certified by the court in December 2022 – despite alleged vote counting issues.
- From political reporter…
- to gubernatorial press secretary…
- to Republican Corporation Commissioner…
- to Democrat…
- to Attorney General.
Kris Mayes had crossed nearly every side of Arizona politics before she ever declared war on Washington.
And then Donald Trump returned to the White House.
SECTION 2. THE WAR ROOM BEFORE THE WAR
Donald Trump had not yet won the 2024 election. Joe Biden had not even dropped out of the race. But by the spring of 2024, Democratic Attorneys General were already preparing for what might happen if Trump returned to the White House.
According to a confidential document obtained by The Center Square, at least 22 Democratic attorneys general entered into what was formally titled a “Privileged & Confidential Common Interest Agreement.” The agreement concerned what it called federal-accountability issues and potential litigation involving those issues. Seven Attorneys General signed on April 28, 2024; others joined during May and June.
Arizona was among them.
The coordinated effort would become known as the “Project for Federal Accountability.” Records later obtained from Washington State also referenced a “Rule of Law Working Group” connected to the broader planning effort.
There is nothing inherently improper about Attorneys General preparing for litigation.
States routinely cooperate, share legal research and enter common-interest agreements when their interests overlap. Republican Attorneys General have joined together against Democratic administrations, just as Democratic Attorneys General have challenged Republican ones.
But the timing made this agreement different.
The first signatures appeared more than six months before Election Day — before there was a second Trump administration policy to challenge, an Executive Order to contest, or a federal action to take to court.
When The Center Square later asked Mayes’s office about the timing, spokesman Richie Taylor did not deny Arizona’s participation. Instead, he said there was “nothing particularly significant about that date,” adding that the Arizona Attorney General’s Office enters common-interest agreements with Republican as well as Democratic Attorneys General depending upon the litigation.
Fair enough. But the agreement establishes something important:
The legal infrastructure existed BEFORE Election Day.
The Attorneys General did not have to wait until January 2025 to find one another, determine who might cooperate, or begin building a mechanism for sharing legal work.
They had already done that.
And once Trump returned to office, the preparation quickly became litigation.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes became a frequent participant in the multistate lawsuits challenging the new administration. By August 2026, one detailed accounting placed her total at 48 lawsuits.
That does not mean all 48 lawsuits were conceived before the election.
It does not mean Mayes personally designed every legal strategy.
And it certainly does not mean that challenging a federal action in court is improper simply because the Attorneys General prepared in advance. But it does mean Arizona voters should understand one important fact before examining Mayes’s record:
When the legal war with Washington began, the Battlefield had already been surveyed.
And Kris Mayes was not entering it alone.
SECTION 3. FORTY-EIGHT LAWSUITS LATER…
Once Donald Trump returned to the White House, preparation became action…
And action became lawsuits.
By August 4, 2026, Phoenix New Times counted 48 lawsuits filed by Kris Mayes against the Trump Administration since January 2025. The cases touched almost every corner of federal policy: birthright citizenship, federal funding, immigration, elections, tariffs, health care, education, environmental programs, federal employees, government data and the authority of the Executive Branch itself.
Forty-eight is an eye-catching number. It is also a number that needs some unpacking. These were not 48 lawsuits in which Kris Mayes marched alone into federal court carrying Arizona’s flag.
Many were multistate lawsuits involving coalitions of Democratic Attorneys General. Some involved 15 states. Others involved 20 or more. In several cases, Arizona had substantial money or the personal information of Arizona residents directly at stake. In others, Arizona joined litigation involving broader national policy disputes.
That distinction matters.
Because saying “Mayes filed 48 lawsuits against Trump” is technically the headline. Understanding what Arizona’s role actually was in those 48 lawsuits is the story.
Her first came on January 21, 2025, when Arizona joined three other states challenging Trump’s Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship.
A week later came a 23-state lawsuit challenging the administration’s broad freeze on federal funding. That case ultimately kept nearly $1.4 billion in federal funding available to Arizona agencies while the litigation continued.
Then came more.
Mayes joined 19 states challenging access by Elon Musk and DOGE employees to sensitive federal payment information.
She joined 21 states challenging cuts to medical and public-health research — litigation that prevented approximately $35 million in NIH grants from being cut in Arizona.
She joined a 20-state lawsuit challenging the firing of probationary federal employees.
That one did not go nearly as well.
An appellate court concluded that the States lacked standing, and the lawsuit was dismissed. The cases kept coming.
Mayes challenged efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.
She joined litigation that restored approximately $239 million in Arizona public-health funding while that case proceeded.
She and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes challenged Trump’s Election executive order.
She joined litigation protecting federal funding for libraries and museums.
And she joined a tariff lawsuit in which the plaintiffs ultimately prevailed after the courts rejected the administration’s use of emergency authority for the challenged tariffs.
There were lawsuits involving electric-vehicle infrastructure, AmeriCorps, wind-energy approvals, HHS restructuring, FEMA programs, education grants, SNAP recipient data, domestic-violence funding and federal grant cancellations.
At some point, one begins to wonder whether the Attorney General’s Office kept a litigation calendar — or simply reserved the courthouse for the year.
But humor aside, some of these cases did benefit Arizona.
- Federal money remained available.
- Programs continued.
- Personal information was temporarily protected.
- Policies were reversed.
And in some cases Mayes and the other Attorneys General won final judgments. That deserves to be acknowledged.
But the record was not a clean sweep.
- Some cases were dismissed.
- Some requests for immediate relief were denied.
- Some rulings were mixed.
- Many remained under appeal or unresolved.
And a preliminary injunction stopping something today does not necessarily tell us who ultimately wins the case tomorrow. That makes the raw number 48 simultaneously impressive and incomplete!
It tells Arizona voters how often their Attorney General went to court against the federal government. It does not tell them:
- How many cases Arizona actually led.
- How many Mayes merely joined.
- How many produced final victories.
- How many remain unfinished
Or even exactly what Mayes means when she says her office has been successful approximately 80 percent of the time. And that last number may be even more interesting than the first…Because before awarding Arizona’s Attorney General a courtroom batting title, there is one question somebody ought to ask:
What counts as a hit?
SECTION 4 — WHAT COUNTS AS A WIN?
Mayes says her office’s success rate against the Trump Administration is about 80 percent.
That sounds impressive. But Mayes’s own calculation reportedly includes more than final courtroom victories. It also counts temporary restraining orders, injunctions, and cases in which the federal government abandoned the challenged action.
Those outcomes matter. A temporary order can protect funding, programs or personal information while a lawsuit continues. But a temporary order is not necessarily a final judgment. And an ongoing case is not necessarily a finished victory.
The 48-case record contains all of the above: final wins, preliminary relief, dismissals, mixed rulings and lawsuits still moving through the courts.
The question is whether “80 percent successful” tells Arizona voters the whole story.
Because before awarding the Attorney General a courtroom batting title, somebody ought to know what was counted as a hit.
But two larger questions remain:
- What did 48 lawsuits cost Arizona?
- And was Arizona leading the litigation — or joining a war already underway?
SECTION 5. WHOSE FIGHT WAS IT?
Forty-eight lawsuits do not automatically mean forty-eight bad decisions. Several produced meaningful results for Arizona.
Mayes did not lead all 48 cases. Her own office’s lawsuit tracker repeatedly describes Arizona as “joining” multistate coalitions, while separately identifying cases Mayes led or co-led. So, another question belongs on the scorecard: How many of those 48 fights was Arizona actually leading — and how many was it joining?
One Arizona example makes the contrast harder to ignore. When the state’s Save Women’s Sports Act was challenged in Federal Court, Mayes declined to defend the law. Senate President Warren Petersen then intervened on behalf of the Legislature to defend it – one of several instances of Legislature intervention.
So, while Mayes was joining lawsuits against Washington, Arizona lawmakers were sometimes stepping in to defend laws enacted here at home.
But that leaves Arizona voters with four questions:
- Where did cooperation end and leadership begin?
- How many of the 48 cases did Arizona initiate or lead?
- How much Arizona taxpayer money and staff time were devoted to them?
- What specific Arizona interest justified joining cases over national policy?
Those questions matter because an Attorney General represents a State – NOT a national political organization, NOT another Attorney General, and NOT a presidential opposition movement.
Kris Mayes can point to real victories. Her critics can point to an extraordinary volume of litigation. Both are true…The harder question is whether those 48 cases represent an Attorney General aggressively protecting Arizona — or one participating in a much larger legal war with Washington, for her own Political Scorecard!
Perhaps the answer is some of both.
But after forty-eight lawsuits, and a questionable, unresolved Sunshine investigation, Arizona voters deserve more than just a win-loss percentage.
They Deserve the Real Scorecard.
By Linda Brickman
©2026 Linda Brickman. All Rights Reserved.
COMING NEXT IN THE THREE MUSKETEERS…
Adrian Fontes moved from Maricopa County Recorder to Arizona Secretary of State. Next, we follow the records, the lawsuits, the voter rolls — and one disclosure involving hundreds of protected voters that remained out of public view for nearly two years.
Is there some sort od a qualification rule that requires Leftist Operatives to be B-F Ugly?