As of this writing, on the afternoon of February 13, 2025, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has just launched her fourth legal battle – in less than a month – against the Trump administration. I use the term “as of this writing” because at the rate she’s going, by the time this gets published, she may have filed four or five more lawsuits.
WAIT! STOP THE PRESSES! Because quite literally during this writing, Mayes became party to her fifth lawsuit against Trump. All filed with other state attorneys general since January 21.
Yes! For once, my procrastination pays off. My deadline is tonight, but if I’d started – and finished – the article in a timely manner, I would’ve missed out.
If you’re playing along at home, this fifth suit means she’s filing a lawsuit, on average, every 4.8 days – and only if she’s working weekends, which she and her staff would need to do, to sustain this rate.
Mayes’s lawsuit No. 5 challenges “the unlawful delegation of executive power to Elon Musk” and argues “Trump has violated the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution by creating a new federal Department [of Government Efficiency] (DOGE) without Congressional approval.”
Three days earlier, with lawsuit No. 4, Mayes sued the Trump administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and National Institutes of Health for “unlawfully cutting funds that support… medical and public health research at universities and research institutions.”
Lawsuit No. 3 involves trying to stop Musk’s DOGE from accessing citizens’ private info through the Treasury Department, while No. 2 aims to prevent the Office of Management and Budget from withholding trillions of federal dollars from the states by attempting to put an indefinite pause on that money. But after a federal judge put an indefinite pause on Trump’s indefinite pause, the administration retreated.
And, waaaay back on January 21, Mayes sued Trump for the first time – the day after he became president again – challenging his executive order that tried to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to non-legal resident parents.
Whew! I need to take a breath… before I take a moment to compare and contrast Mayes, Arizona’s third-highest elected official, to número uno, Governor Katie Hobbs.
It’s hard to find a bigger difference between Arizona Democrats when it comes to dealing with The Donald. Mayes can’t seem to stop moving. Hobbs is sitting back and not doing much to stand in the president’s way. As far back as mid-November, Hobbs said she was willing to work with Trump on border security issues. Yes, she also said that Arizona wouldn’t help with mass deportations – but just this week she welcomed the active-duty federal troops Trump sent to Arizona’s border.
I’ve always thought Hobbs can look a little too laid-back, but she may have simply figured out how to live a serene existence. And that could lead to Hobbs living a longer life than Mayes – physically, if not politically.
