Pantsuits and Lawsuits with Attorneys General Kris Mayes and Dana Nessel

End of Summer Lawsuit Roundup: Dozens of Lawsuits and Billions Saved

• Attorneys General Kris Mayes & Dana Nessel

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AG Mayes and AG Nessel are back from a summer break to take us behind the scenes of their relentless legal battle against what they describe as the most unconstitutional administration in American history. They’ve filed over 25 lawsuits against the Trump administration in just six months, working around the clock to protect their states from illegal trespasses against their residents’ rights and devastating federal funding cuts.

The financial stakes couldn't be higher. Through successful litigation, Michigan has preserved $1.6 billion and Arizona $1.2 billion in federal funding for critical programs including healthcare, education, infrastructure, and public safety. These victories come at a crucial time as both states face potential budget shortfalls from the recently passed "big bill for billionaires" that slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthy while cutting essential services.

 The AGs walk us through their most significant wins: preventing the dismantling of AmeriCorps, protecting library funding serving millions of cardholders, saving cancer research and treatment programs, and stopping illegal conditions on roads funding. In many cases, the Trump administration simply abandoned its efforts after initial court defeats rather than pursuing appeals – a pattern the AGs attribute partly to staffing challenges at the Department of Justice, where many experienced attorneys have departed.

 Perhaps most alarming is the administration's aggressive data collection efforts. Both AGs express deep concern about federal agencies attempting to "hoover up" massive amounts of personal information from Treasury, IRS, Medicaid, and SNAP programs. This intrusive data gathering crosses partisan lines – as Mayes notes, traditionally Republicans have opposed such "Big Brother" surveillance. The question remains: what happens to all this sensitive personal data, and who controls it?

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Welcome back everybody to Pantsuits and Lawsuits. Kris Mayes, the Attorney General of Arizona.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And I'm Dana Nessel, Michigan Attorney General.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Well, it is good to be back with you. It's good to be back with our viewers and listeners and our regular programming here as the summer kind of starts to slide away. But I think we we wanted to do a whole episode taking stock of what has happened, what's going on with the litigation that we're involved in to try to save our country and save our democracy.

Alina Hauter, Fox 17:

We continue to follow the fallout after the Trump administration ordered a freeze on trillions of federal dollars on Monday. The order caused panic and confusion. In response, two lawsuits were filed over this freeze one by nonprofits, another by 22 state attorneys general.

Vladimir Duthiers, CBS News:

A judge in Maryland has ordered the Trump administration to restore millions in AmeriCorps funds slashed by Doge cuts. About $557 million dollars will flow back into critical services and jobs across at least 26 states.

Vanessa Croix, KENS5 :

This morning a federal judge in Massachusetts has issued an order that permanently blocks an effort by the Trump administration to cut funding to the National Institutes of Health.

News Center Maine:

A district court judge in Massachusetts has stopped the Trump administration from making funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health for the time being. The office of Maine's Attorney General announced today that an injunction from the judge now replaces a temporary restraining order initially imposed to halt the cuts.

Tim Williams, CBS News Baltimore:

Federal judge rules. The Trump administration violated the law when it canceled hundreds of research grants for the National Institutes of Health

Monica Garcia, News 4 Tucson:

Attorney General, Kris Mayes and 20 other attorneys general stopping an executive order from President Trump that aimed at closing down three federal agencies.

Monica Garcia, News 4 Tucson:

The Rhode Island US District Court preliminary injunction blocks the closure of agencies funding things like libraries, museums, minority businesses.

Seth Wells, WILX 10:

This morning, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Education in an effort to block proposed cuts to mental health funding. Nessel and more than a dozen other state attorneys general argue that billions of dollars in funding that was approved by Congress following the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.

Andrew Lorinser, MyUP:

A federal court has ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general, including Michigan's Dana Nessel. The court granted a motion filed by Michigan Attorney Dana Nessel, and a coalition of 23 other attorneys general to block the Trump administration's attempt to suspend nearly $3 trillion in federal funding.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Trump has been in office now just a little bit over six months, and I don't know about you AG Mayes, but this has definitely been the busiest six months of my career.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

It has made what is already a busy job with enormous responsibilities even busier. I don't know about your team, but we are working basically seven days a week. Sometimes it feels like 24 hours a day, but we've been having to work overtime on the litigation to try to spare our states from unmentionable, unbelievable harm coming out of Washington DC and more unconstitutional behavior than I think we've ever seen out of any executive in the history of the country.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Oh, perhaps combined All of the administrations that came before the Trump administration, including Trump 1.0. And I will say this, of course, because I was around for the last two years of Trump 1.0. And, of course, he didn't come into office until later. But, my God, what I wouldn't do for the first Trump administration, which was, by the way, covid times it wasn't exactly a walk in the park, but it was nothing compared to what we're seeing right now, and I think that is, of course, by design.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Can you speak more to that? So what is that? Just be the sheer volume and and ferocity of it, sort of compared, because you all, during that time, it's my understanding, filed more than 100 lawsuits against Trump, winning more than 80%. Is it just the volume here at the front, on the front end of of his term that's different? And or just the sheer unconstitutionality of all of it.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I mean, I think it's both, and I think the other part about it is that before, of course, you had more congressional pushback on so many different things, but you also had his own administration pushing back. So what you would see time and time again is, I think, he would want to do something that was clearly illegal, clearly unconstitutional, and he got talked out of it. Now there's not really a pushback internally and, as a result, you're just seeing more and more of this really dangerous conduct. So I think we're seeing all of that and, as a result, obviously you and I and our many Democratic colleagues have been incredibly busy, but I think this is an important thing to note incredibly successful. I know that we tend to dwell on the cases that were not successful and, to be clear, it's not as though any of these cases have been litigated all the way through on the merits. So success or failure to succeed is really based on these preliminary injunctions, which, again, that's not the true test of the success of a lawsuit.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

It's what the final outcome is, but that's sort of how we've been measuring it in those terms, and, boy, we've had a lot of wins.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I mean, we really have, if you look at the preliminary injunction or a TRO as a win or at least a preliminary win, which I think it is which is to stop the bad thing that Trump is doing, whether it's ripping funding away from education or trying to eliminate birthright citizenship, or taking funding away from health providers and healthcare. We have stopped that. We have had a few losses that are disappointing, but we're stopping a lot of the bad stuff, or at least slowing it down, and that's really important because it's unconstitutional, you know.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And it bears noting to say that many of the cases that we've brought the Trump administration has just completely given up

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Right

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I think that's important.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I think that's an important point, because what is- I don't know about you, but what I am noticing and this is really interesting is we'll get them stopped at the district court level and then they'll kind of slink away a little bit. Sometimes Not all the time. Sometimes in a couple of cases they have filed an appeal upwards, but I think they're kind of saying, maybe we don't want to pursue this, maybe they don't have the resources to pursue it on appeal. Or maybe if you're a 35 or 45-year-old lawyer working for the Department of Justice, you don't want to make bad faith claims and put yourself at risk of maybe losing your law license down the road. I mean, you know there is that.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, and the other thing I think that we're seeing is just so many really talented AUSAs who work for the Department of Justice, so many talented attorneys that have left. So these are lawyers who proudly worked for the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

They don't feel comfortable doing that anymore because, again, they don't want to violate their oath of office by lying to a court, by providing inaccurate information that they know is not honest and forthright and that violates their oath as an attorney that each of us have to take as an attorney

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Right

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Or even we have to take an oath not to file frivolous claims. So there's many things that we do as a lawyer, but what I've seen is many of those attorneys have left. They've not been able to replace them with equally competent certainly not equally experienced attorneys and, as a result, by us filing as many cases as we're filing and again, always legitimately so, with viable claims, they just can't keep up. So that's another thing. It's, yes, we have winning arguments, but you know, I don't think the DOJ even has the staff necessarily to keep up with the number of lawsuits, because it's not just us filing the lawsuits, of course. You have many different entities that are doing that and a lot of talented lawyers that are fighting back against this lawless administration.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I heard you guys calculated the amount of money that you have saved Michiganders and we have calculated the amount of money that we have saved Arizonans as a result of these lawsuits.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So a conservative estimate for the state of Michigan is so of these lawsuits is so far, these lawsuits have saved us north of 1.6 billion dollars. Billion with a ", that's money that was being wrongfully, illegally withheld from the state of Michigan by the federal government. We filed lawsuit, we got either a TRO or a preliminary injunction, and a court ordered the federal government to release the money to us, and that money now is in our state coffers or to other entities like independent school districts or local health departments. They have the money now that they were legally entitled to, instead of it being withheld wrongly by the federal government. That's a lot of money.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, so you're a little bit north of Arizona. We calculated conservatively, I think, $1.2 billion saved for Arizonans, for our universities, for health programs, for libraries, for our schools. I think that's a perfect lawsuit to highlight right now. My daughter's about to go back to school next week and our schools were about to be denied by the Trump administration, if it weren't for our lawsuit, $132 million for after-school programs and teacher support programs. Even in Arizona, Dana, they were going to defund school safety officers, police officers Again, another example of Donald Trump defunding the police, which is insane and they were going to defund our homeland security and cybersecurity programs here in Arizona, and we stopped that.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Why it's more important than ever is our calculus is because of the Big Beautiful Bill, which I can't believe we have to call it that because it's ridiculous, and so they're just calling it the budget as is normally done.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Let's call it the "ig bill for billionaires.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, that's what we really should call it, but the projections are that for the upcoming fiscal year, because of that bill, the state of Michigan is to lose $1.1 billion. And why? Well, it's a combination of things. It's some of the funding that we're going to have to make up for in things like SNAP benefits and Medicaid, but in addition to that, it's the loss in revenue, because now, of course, you know, billionaires are not going to be paying taxes at the same rate. Corporations will be paying less in taxes, not regular people, not you, me and all the other regular folks out there but for really rich people and for big corporations they will be paying less. And so how do we make up for that loss in $1.1 billion? I don't know, but the good thing is, state of Michigan, now at least there's this extra $1.6 billion that we didn't lose, that we otherwise would have.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, I think that's a really important point the compounding effect of what we would have lost if we hadn't filed these lawsuits your 30 lawsuits, my, or your 29 lawsuits, my 25 lawsuits the compounding effect of that loss plus the "ig bill for billionaires which slashes Medicaid and SNAP benefits and is going to blow a hole in our budgets. I mean that is going to happen. We did want to talk about some of our big wins. We have had some huge wins that add up to that 1.2 billion or 1.8 billion for you guys, and I don't know where you want to start, because there's been a lot of them.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, well, I think just running through them, and these are just the ones. Obviously there are more lawsuits than this, but if you just want to look at it, from a financial standpoint, I mean my gosh, the OMB lawsuit the. Office of Management and Budget. You know where, all of a sudden, you know there was an immediate pause, without explanation, for federal funding for all of our most important state programs.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

It was insane. I mean I know for you guys as well, but for Arizona we were talking about SNAP, Head Start, Section 8 housing LIHEAP for people to be able to keep their air conditioning on in the summertime. Rural health clinics. Our access portal went down, that's our Medicaid program, went down for a day and then they were going to I know I've told you this before they were going to defund my efforts, our efforts in Arizona to combat the Mexican drug cartels and the fentanyl crisis. That was Donald Trump defunding the police

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

And we got that to stop

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yep. 42% of our of our budget came from that federal funding. Can you imagine losing 42% of your budget literally overnight?

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

It's nuts.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

It's insane.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Fortunately we were able to get all those programs restarted and some of them were restarted almost immediately, others it took a little bit of time, but we got it done.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So that was a significant win for us, no question about it.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That was a big one. Another big one I think was the NIH. Here in Arizona we were looking at $170 million for the U of A, $65 million for ASU, $14 million for NAU, this would have crippled Alzheimer's funding research in Arizona. We do a lot of Alzheimer's research in Arizona for a lot of reasons.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, well, in Michigan it was $225 million, and remember that was a memo that came out on a Friday night, we filed the lawsuit on a Monday morning and we got a TRO later that day, so that none of the money actually ended up being lost, thankfully. But for us, I mean, that's a significant amount of people, not just, not just cancer research, cancer treatment these are people in experimental programs, that without those programs they would literally die, and the Trump administration thought nothing of the significant harm.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Fortunately, you and I both filed lawsuits right away and we didn't see that harm occur.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

But again, Dana, going back to the fact that some of these Republican all the Republican states are not participating in this, I remember Katie Britt, the senator from, I think, Alabama, complaining about how her University of Alabama was going to be hammered by this, and I remember thinking well, hello, Katie, you need to talk to your attorney general over there, who refused to join our lawsuit.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, I just couldn't imagine any Democratic president causing this kind of harm to our states without us standing up to him or her.

News Center Maine:

I agree

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

With the Republicans, though it's just fall in line. The end.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Another case that was really impactful, of course, was our case involving public health grants, and I know both of our states were significantly impacted, but we were able to get injunctive relief and finally the money got released. And for Michigan that was $379.3 million for programs affecting mental health for youth, substance abuse treatment, control of infectious diseases, direct care for patients list goes on and on.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

We were going to lose out on $239 million for many of the same kinds of programs, including our tribal partners. So huge impacts. On that one, Thank God we prevailed.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And we had, of course, our seven agencies lawsuit, which sounds a little confusing, but one of the worst impacts would have been to our libraries and all kinds of libraries, by the way right so libraries that are in our schools, your local library, state libraries, you name it. We were able to get injunctive relief and in Michigan we saved what was 75% of all funding for school libraries and public libraries and all the rest, which was about $5 million.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, you know. I mean a very similar situation in Arizona, and I think anybody who lives in rural Arizona knows how important our libraries are, and here we had $18 million in this kind of funding that we would have lost for a number of different programs, and we gathered this statistic. Arizona has 3 million library cardholders 3 million who, in 2023 alone, visited the library 14 million times. So libraries do still matter. They matter.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, they sure do. There was the ESSER funds lawsuit and I know this is title one money, meaning it's money that goes to our school districts, and this was money already spent by our school districts and in Michigan that was $25 million that we were able to recover of money that was again already spent to improve things like HVAC systems, air conditioning, heating, all types of you know filtration systems. That was again these schools. They applied for the money. They spent time, money, effort, resources to apply for this money. They spent the money. The money was due to be reimbursed to them and then the federal government was like "yoink, just kidding, you're not getting reimbursed after all. It's like a Scooby-Doo episode for some reason. But so that was $25 million for Michigan.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, a very similar situation here in Arizona and that would have hit our rural areas very, very hard, so that was a huge one.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Obviously, every state is different, but there was a Title VI education funds that, in Michigan, would have resulted I mean, there's nearly $1.3 billion in school funding that gets awarded through that program but we were able and it involves support for students in foster care and low-income households and teacher training and all the rest and we were set to lose that money. And then, uh, after we filed this lawsuit, the Trump administration just decided to drop the whole thing.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, that's a huge win. We were not part of that one and that was one of the few lawsuits I think that we weren't part of, but, for standing reasons I think. Another one that was a huge win for all of us was our ability to stop the dismantling of AmeriCorps, and that preliminary injunction was granted on June 5th and AmeriCorps had invested more than $23, well, almost $24 million in Arizona, had engaged more than 4,800 members and Arizona seniors in their work all throughout our state. They're at our universities doing incredible work for our state.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Absolutely

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

There was $15 million in AmeriCorps funding in Michigan and it was really nice because just on Saturday actually, I was at an event and I ran into a young man who had just graduated from college and was already set up with an AmeriCorps job and he thought he lost his job and then he said to me I just found out I got my job I'm going back to work thanks to your lawsuit so it was nice because you don't always get to hear those stories you

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I have a tip for you on those negative comments. Don't read the comments on social media.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

No, I know you keep saying that and I keep trying.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, I know it's hard. You know they wanted to. Trump wanted to dismantle HHS. We got a preliminary injunction to stop them on July 1st they were going to lay off the entire staff of LIHEAP. I mean it's crazy. This is a program that is used by so many low-income folks, working Americans who need help with their utility bills and so many other things that we were able to stop by stopping the dismantling of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

By the way I saw a special on a young man who demonstrated what it was like to live in Arizona without air conditioning, for I think it was like 90 days or something, and I think. I'm going to stay in Michigan, I think, as it turns out.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

But there's a lot of people that would freeze to death. Literally, families that need that assistance would freeze to death in the winter but for having that assistance and sadly the Trump administration doesn't care if people freeze to death. I mean let's just say how it is.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That's insane. It's just, it's absolutely crazy.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Obviously you know you talk a lot, and so do I, about the impact to things like the Department of Transportation or to FEMA right for emergency financial and the cases that we've had where the Trump administration will just all of a sudden add conditions that never existed before and they'll say hey, road worker, I know you're there to help with infrastructure. You're literally filling potholes so that people don't get into car accidents, but instead we're going to make you do immigration enforcement.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And if you don't? You're going to lose all the money. And for our Department of Transportation, on a case that we brought in June that was $520 million to the Michigan Department of Transportation. That would have gone to our state's roads, highways, railways, et cetera, and as a result of our lawsuit that didn't happen. And there are so many lawsuits that are data privacy related that we brought.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, I think we should talk a little bit about that too, because I have to tell you, living here in Arizona, which we tend to be kind of a libertarian oriented state, kind of live and let live, stay out of my business, stay out of my data, hands off my data and, as you know, we have been suing pretty much every time the Trump administration tries to hoover up people's private data out of various federal agencies and programs, and that seems to be happening an awful lot lately.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

You and I we fought DOGE on several fronts. They were trying to hoover up data inside Treasury and now ICE and DHS are trying to take data out of the Medicaid program and they are trying to take data from the SNAP program, basically food security, and what I would remind people and obviously the belief is that they're trying to do this so that they can go after immigrants. Right now it sure looks like they're not going after criminals so much as just gardeners and people who work in car washes and people who work on farms and people who are working on construction. But when they hoover up this data on SNAP, Medicaid, Treasury Department, IRS, they're hoovering up all of the data. That's everybody.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And I can tell you the American citizens who think that they're, they're very personal information which is extensive in order to participate in these programs. That's why it has such a low fraud rate, because there's so much information that you have to provide about yourself. You know the medical bills you have to provide. You know getting out the medical bills you have to provide. You have your landlord, you know leases and contracts.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I mean just the list goes on and on, and we know how hard our states work to protect this information. It goes to the federal government. Now I don't know if it's going into the hands of some 20-year-old who hasn't been properly vetted and what the completely unsecure server systems it will go to, because we have strict rules about that in Michigan. I know you do too in Arizona. With the federal government it's just a free-for-all. So you think that I'm participating in this program and my information is only going to go to the administrators in our states of those programs, but now they're saying no, no, no. You have to share this information, not just with ICE, but with everybody.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

No, I mean. And then I really think we have to think, to consider and I know people in Arizona are thinking about this what are they doing with it? You know this is the sheer volume of this data and the amount of the data that they are clearly going after. What is happening to it? How is it being vacuumed up? You know there's been speculation about whether companies like Palantir or others might be being used to compile the data. There's other programs I'm sure that could be used to compile this data.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

And now, with AI exploding, I just think there's real concerns that are legitimate about what kind of a big brother database they are putting together. And you know, Dana, as you know, I used to be a Republican and I can tell you that at one time the Republican Party didn't like Big Brother-like programs and didn't like the idea, this kind of intrusion into our private lives and our data. And I don't think Republicans do. I know they don't. I know independents don't like it. I know Republicans don't like it. I know Democrats don't like it. So, this is just something I think we need to keep an eagle eye on.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Oh, absolutely. And the more you see these programs where they're going to use your data to decide what the pricing is going to be for a product that would be sold to you based on knowing all of your information. What do I think you could afford to buy this product for? That's what I'm going to sell it to you for, and so if you go online to try to purchase it, you know the price will be different depending on what information we know about you. And, again, I certainly don't trust the federal government is going to be a good, you know, safeguard for this information, because we already know how the DOGE is operated and you know it's really scary. It's really scary to think of every single aspect of your life compiled together and used for what purposes, we don't know. Will it be used by insurance companies to decide whether or not they're going to insure you, whether they're going to insure your home or your vehicle, or that you can get medical insurance? I don't know, and the thing is nobody knows.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Nobody knows.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I think that that is going to be one of the big storylines as we go on through this. You know, nightmare situation that we find ourselves in right now is what are they doing with the data and what can we do to unwind it when this is all over with? But, Dana, I think we are running out of time, but this has been great to recap, after the summer, all the progress that we've been making and the other state AGs, Democratic AGs have been making on behalf of our states to prevent the harm and to uphold the rule of law and our constitution.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, absolutely, and we're going to continue to file these lawsuits as long as we're in these offices, because we do recognize that it's the very best way to ensure that our constituents are protected and that we are doing our job, which is to uphold the rule of law.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

So that's all we have time for on this installment of Pantsuits and Lawsuits. Thanks for tuning in. Again, we are so glad to be back part of the regularly scheduled timeframe for our programming. Looking forward to the fall I don't know about you, Dana, but it's going to be interesting, as ever.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yes, it certainly promises to be, and we're going to keep up the good fight.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

For sure. So don't forget to subscribe. Also, catch us on all your social media feeds, including YouTube, Instagram, all of them, I think and until next time, keep fighting the good fight. One pantsuit, one lawsuit at a time.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Good to see you, Kris.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

You too.