Overview
- Voters on Nov. 3 flipped Republican-held attorney general offices in Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa and Kansas, handing Democrats control of at least 29 state AG offices plus the District of Columbia.
- Texas Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson said he will conduct a top-to-bottom review of Ken Paxton’s cases and staff, with the option to withdraw or decline to defend suits tied to Paxton’s partisan agenda.
- Incoming Democratic AGs in other states have pledged similar pivots toward consumer protection, antitrust enforcement and traditional state duties, and to reassess litigation on the abortion pill, gender-affirming care and immigration laws.
- Conservative legal groups are expected to concentrate remaining multistate efforts in surviving GOP offices such as Florida, but they lose Texas’s unusually large legal staff and the pipeline that fueled coordinated nationwide suits.
- The change in state AG leadership will reshape which states lead major suits, but the short- and medium-term fates of high-profile cases will still depend on decisions by the new attorneys general and rulings from the unchanged federal courts.