Colorado is part of 20 lawsuits (and counting) against Trump. Here’s what AG Phil Weiser says is behind the strategy.

Limitations on transgender robustness care Threats to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds The tumultuous whipsaw of on-again off-again tariffs Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January and unfurled a flurry of executive orders and directives Colorado has joined with blue-state allies to file lawsuits challenging those and other actions a rate of more than one suit per week It s a litigious streak outpaced only by Trump s blistering spree of executive orders and the Republican s unprecedented attempts to pull the nation s purse strings to his chest Colorado s top elected lawyer two-term Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser is no stranger to litigation against Trump Weiser s office sued the president and his administration at least times during both men s first terms Just four months into Trump s second term Weiser has already surpassed that total and he argues that the level of lawlessness is unprecedented We ve had to essentially stretch ourselves as a department to keep doing what I ll call our normal work as the people s lawyer he stated in an interview last week Then there s what he calls the abnormal task of the Trump era an unprecedented situation of being a constant evaluator of Is this action harming Colorado and is this action illegal So we ask those two questions again and again and again Weiser declared And times I ve had to say Yes it is So fast and furious have the executive orders come with lawsuits often following swiftly that when The Denver Post demanded Weiser s office about the total number of cases Weiser s spokesman Lawrence Pacheco hedged his accounting A st suit might come before the end of the week he warned Tuesday As of Friday afternoon it hadn t yet been filed The th and th cases had each been filed on Tuesday both of them challenging attempts to withhold federal funding unless states cooperated with immigration enforcement The menace to the state is real Hundreds of millions of dollars in various types of funding bound for Colorado for wagon charging stations citizens healthcare grants academic research and public-safety programs have been frozen or threatened in fresh months The wellness grants alone amount to million Weiser and other state personnel have mentioned Other challenged presidential orders have sought to implement Trump s agenda for elections and immigration attempted to dismantle of the U S Department of Mentoring and put limitations on gender-affirming care Colorado Republicans meanwhile have argued that the state s aggressive approach to federal action puts more federal funding at hazard They have mentioned that as the elected president Trump has the right to steer the nation toward his initiative objectives During the state legislative session that ended May House Republicans repeatedly accused their Democratic colleagues of poking the bear by passing policies opposed by Trump and by establishing a million fund to defend against federal action Minority Leader Rose Pugliese the House s top Republican stated Friday that she craved to be less litigious and to be careful continuing to put a target on Colorado s back Maybe we can have more conversations with the Trump administration as opposed to litigation Pugliese explained And that s my concern is that the lawsuits feel like more politically motivated State AGs also targeted Obama Biden The partisan multistate litigation filed in response to Trump s orders is part of a growing trend that has oscillated depending on which party is in power legal experts declared Republicans first launched the practice under President Barack Obama Then Trump s first administration was sued times almost entirely by Democratic attorneys general according to the independent tracker AttorneysGeneral org President Joe Biden was sued times by multistate coalitions overwhelmingly dominated by Republicans We ve seen this huge shift for Democrat AGs in the states to fight against the Republican president and vice versa commented Doug Spencer a constitutional law professor at the University of Colorado Law School Texas Gov -elect Greg Abbott center arrives for his inauguration with his wife Cecilia right and daughter Audrey left on Jan in Austin Texas AP Photo Eric Gay There s another political dimension he revealed Current Texas Gov Greg Abbott filed dozens and dozens of lawsuits against Obama when Abbott was attorney general helping spark the trend while raising his own profile Weiser is now running for governor in Colorado s ballot when the seat will be open As congressional Democrats have struggled to combat Trump this year attorneys general have represented a tangible and effective counter to the president for restless Democratic voters Still Spencer argued that the rush of lawsuits against Trump had been driven more by Trump s attempts to upend parts of the Constitution and the country Trump himself has been issuing so various executive orders if the goal is to keep pace and push back substantively or politically it s hard to necessarily say Democratic attorneys general are turning up the dials he explained I think they re being reactive Federal judges have blocked several Trump orders or administrative actions as a impact of litigation in which Colorado s involved A Massachusetts judge put a stop to the National Institutes of Wellness s plan to cap research grants A court in Maryland ordered the reinstatement of thousands of fired federal workers And on Thursday the U S Supreme Court heard arguments related to Trump s order attempting to end birthright citizenship which had been swiftly blocked in Massachusetts Other cases like the two filed Tuesday or another one challenging Trump s tariffs are still in their early stages Weiser s office is taking the lead role on three of the cases Those are related to electric car infrastructure funding the termination of populace fitness grants and the dismantling of AmeriCorps For the rest the state has played a more supportive role Leader states take on the bulk of a matter s work Weiser mentioned and the coalition s members have discussed which office has the ceiling and expertise for individual issues to determine who will take which role States rights are going to be so fundamental Preparation among the blue-state attorneys general began after the November polling Before Trump assumed office Weiser s office sought Colorado lawmakers for more money and employees Given the state s budget shortfall legislative staff initially recommended rejecting the request An analyst wrote that Weiser s office could just take a backseat to other states in the litigation rather than lead But Democratic legislators eventually agreed to direct the funds to his office Sen Jeff Bridges the chair of the Joint Budget Committee noted in March that while the request would development in rare development in a year of cuts it was an financing that will pay dividends in protecting a lot of the investments that we would lose from the federal cabinet Lawmakers also established the million defense fund which can be directed to Weiser s office via Gov Jared Polis to combat federal action As for the AG s stable of attorneys people are not getting paid more Weiser commented Wednesday When you re a lawyer in the Department of Law you get a salary whether you re working or hours a week or or hours a week We ve had incredible willingness to step up and do that extra work None of the Trump-challenging cases has been filed in a federal court based in Colorado Eight have been filed in Massachusetts and five more are in court in Rhode Island The blue-state AGs which also include those in Hawaii Washington state Illinois New Jersey and California discuss where to file the cases Weiser revealed That s a mirror of the strategy in Republican-led suits that were often filed in Texas where the district and appellate courts were favorable to conservative challenges One of the realities we have to look at is Do we have judges not just at the district court but at the court of appeals who are more hospitable or more hostile to the circumstance Weiser announced Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser poses for a portrait in the Ralph L Carr Judicial Center in Denver on Wednesday May Photo by Hyoung Chang The Denver Post Related Articles Secret shoppers at King Soopers other Kroger stores say overcharging is common Colorado other states sue Trump over immigration-enforcement conditions on federal funds Legal advocate for workers renters announces run for Colorado attorney general Legal experts say Trump is unlikely to win Colorado lawsuit against sanctuary policies But he may not care Colorado legislature ends with an AI fizzle as delay falters further stoking talk of a special session The shift to attorneys general forming coalitions and suing the leadership has practical along with partisan benefits Spencer declared Those offices typically have more guidance and higher-caliber attorneys on staff Courts often look at them with more deference and speed than private firms or groups that would otherwise file suit As a effect challenges of Trump s orders have been met with swift hearings and injunctions Spencer mentioned Just look at Thursday s U S Supreme Court hearing Normally it takes years before a lawsuit climbs the judicial ladder and reaches the high court But the birthright citizenship situation and an underlying question about the power of district judges to block orders across the entire country reached the justices in a matter of months The next question announced Spencer and Siddhartha Rathod a Denver civil rights lawyer is whether Trump and the federal governing body will accept any court decisions that go against them We will face this constitutional emergency and I think we may already have to particular degree Rathod reported And that s why state rights are going to be so vital That s why having strong attorneys general strong governors is a matter of such importance Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter The Spot