As Democrats struggle to find their bearings after President Trump’s return to the White House, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes isn’t looking for common ground like some Democrats in Washington. Her strategy is simple: take him to court.

Mayes is one of 23 Democratic attorneys general who are strategizing on a nearly daily basis about how to use the courts to thwart Trump. Various combinations of them have persuaded federal judges to pause White House initiatives to end birthright citizenship, freeze all federal grants and fire probationary government employees.

So far, they have brought 11 lawsuits against Trump and his administration and have won temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions in eight cases, with two requests still pending, according to the Democratic Attorneys General Association. In one, a bid to block some actions of Elon Musk’s and the Department of Government Efficiency, they failed to get immediate relief and are awaiting a full hearing.

Although none of the injunctions represent final rulings, they constitute a rare batch of victories for a Democratic Party reeling from electoral defeats in November, which left its brand tarnished, base deflated and leaders in Washington tangled in infighting. A CNN poll conducted in early March showed the party’s favorability among Americans at a record low, with just 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents reporting a favorable view of the party.

Democratic voters around the country have expressed frustration that they aren’t seeing enough fight from their elected leaders. During some recent town halls, they begged politicians to do more. But Democrats are in the minority in both chambers of Congress and have little power to stop Trump’s priorities from moving through Washington.

In an interview, Arizona’s Mayes said the Democratic attorneys generals are “punching back” and “doing a lot of winning.”

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said Trump’s actions were lawful, that the lawsuits were motivated by partisan politics and that the administration “is prepared to fight these battles in court and will prevail.”

For Democratic attorneys general in swing states, the strategy carries political risk. Mayes faces re-election in Arizona next year. Her 2022 victory by just 280 votes was a squeaker in a state former President Joe Biden narrowly carried in 2020, and that Trump won by 187,000 in November.

Another member of the group, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, said: “We can win in court, but we’ve also got to win in the court of public opinion.”

The Democratic Attorneys General Association, like its Republican counterpart, has existed for years, mostly for fundraising and getting candidates elected. Last year, during the run-up to the election, Democratic attorneys general started to raise concerns about the ability of then candidate Joe Biden, and later Kamala Harris , to win.

Early start

They decided they needed to start prepping for a second Trump presidency by, among other things, tracking his campaign promises and reviewing Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for remaking the government. They identified roughly 50 areas of potential legal action , said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha , who was part of the discussions.

“There was a lot of stuff that we thought would not be consistent with American law and the Constitution,” said Minnesota’s Ellison. “We got into teams, and people self-selected into the areas they wanted to work on.”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the litigation push also needs to ‘win in the court of public opinion.’ Photo: Ellen Schmidt for WSJ

When Trump took office, they began holding regular video calls, as often as every day at first, to discuss the administration’s actions—which ones they believed were unconstitutional, which states were best positioned to take the lead on a challenge and which other states would take part.

One consideration is resources. California’s legislature, for example, has allocated $25 million to challenge the Trump administration. The attorneys general also strategize about legal expertise in each state office and court venues most suitable to consider various issues. Before a lawsuit is filed, there is a flurry of activity, with drafts being passed between states, a process complicated by the fact that the attorneys general span many time zones, from Maine to Hawaii.

There was tension within the group early on, one attorney general recalled, including over the filing of two separate lawsuits over the birthright citizenship issue and over the importance of not appearing scattershot.

Ellison was one of the attorneys general to file a lawsuit recently in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from holding up billions of dollars for green-energy projects, appropriated by Congress in 2022 under the Inflation Reduction Act. Ellison’s counterparts in California, Illinois and Maine joined the legal challenge to an executive order Trump issued in January freezing the funds.

Ellison said it was decided more than a year ago that Minnesota would be one of the states taking the lead on environmental law matters. “It’s very collaborative,” he said. “We don’t have any lone rangers.”

Minnesota’s Ellison appeared with four other state attorneys general on March 20 at a town hall in North St. Paul, Minn. Photo: Ellen Schmidt for WSJ

Mayes said Arizona didn’t join that lawsuit because the state didn’t have legal standing. Arizona has led or joined seven of the 11 lawsuits filed by the attorneys general.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta recalled being on his way home one evening in January when he started getting bombarded with messages about a federal funding freeze on potentially trillions of dollars. One of the attorneys general had flagged the order, which Trump hadn’t telegraphed during the campaign, and various state teams were working to make sense of it.

Bonta said the attorneys general collectively decided they needed to file a legal challenge the next day. It was around 9 p.m. on the West Coast—midnight back East—when the group started working. Some staffers were up all night.

Minutes before the White House order was set to take effect, a judge temporarily blocked federal agencies from taking steps to implement it.

After some of Trump’s initiatives were slowed by judges, the president and his allies expressed fury at the judiciary . They have cast adverse rulings as not only incorrect but illegitimate. Calls to impeach judges earned Trump and his supporters a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts .

“I believe strongly that we are in the midst of a coup, and I don’t use that term lightly,” said Mayes. “But when you have a president who is actively violating federal court orders, that is a coup.”

In Mayes’s state, Arizona, Trump got more support in 2024 from many demographic groups than he did four years earlier, according to election survey AP VoteCast. Heading into Election Day, eight of 10 voters in the state said they believed the country needed “substantial change or complete and total upheaval.” More than half of those surveyed, 54%, said Trump had the right policy ideas.

Daniel Scarpinato, an Arizona-based Republican strategist, said Mayes’s lesson from 2022 should be to ask herself every day “what have I done today to win over Republican voters?” Instead, he said: “It feels like everything she’s engaged in is actually alienating the coalition of voters that put her in there in the first place.”

Mayes is one of five Democratic attorneys general from states that Trump carried last year, two of whom are up for re-election in 2026. She said her office has received angry calls and negative comments on social media about the legal actions, but that overall the response has been positive. She said some voters wearing pro-Trump hats attended a recent town hall, but remained quiet.

Mayes, one of several Arizona Democrats who won tight races in 2022 with the help of independents and Republican voters, said she thinks she will be re-elected because voters will support taking on an administration that she said has overstepped.

“Arizonans don’t like chaos,” she said. “They want the rule of law followed.”

Cross-state collaboration

Multistate lawsuits against tobacco companies, opioid makers and social-media platforms have been around for years, some of them bipartisan efforts. During the Trump era, some attorneys general on both sides of the aisle have been more openly partisan.

Rhode Island’s Neronha said preparation within the Democratic attorneys general group has been markedly different than it was during Trump’s first term, when legal challenges popped up haphazardly without much communication at the attorney general level.

“It wasn’t very well coordinated, and you would hear about them at the last minute, and you weren’t sure of the merits of those cases,” said Neronha, who served during part of Trump’s first term.

This time, some attorneys general have organized a roadshow to take their cases directly to voters. On March 20, five attorneys general—Mayes, Ellison, Kwame Raoul of Illinois, Letitia James of New York and New Jersey’s Matthew Platkin—spoke to more than 1,000 people, almost all of them Democrats, gathered at a high school in suburban St. Paul, Minn.

The attorneys general spoke for about 30 minutes, followed by testimony from laid off federal workers and advocates for immigrants, the disabled and medical research. Members of the audience stood and spoke about how they believed the Trump administration was damaging their lives and the nation.

“I am grateful they are doing it,” Democrat Amy Solinger, a social worker in a local school, said before the event. “Someone has to try to stop him.” She said she is worried federal education funding—and perhaps her job—will disappear.

The roadshow, which began in Arizona on March 5, is scheduled to stop in Oregon on April 10 and Colorado April 16.

‘Someone has to try to stop him,’ said social worker Amy Solinger, who heard the attorneys general speak in Minnesota. Photo: Ellen Schmidt for WSJ

All the state legal activity costs money. Illinois’s Raoul said his office is seeking roughly $15 million more than it had previously asked for in the state’s upcoming budget because of its actions against the Trump administration and in anticipation of doing more regulatory and civil rights enforcement at the state level.

New cases are under consideration. Mayes said the Democratic attorneys general aren’t actively considering challenges related to the potential conflicts of interest involving Musk or Trump family businesses. “It’s not on our list right now,” she said, “but I wouldn’t say it’s off the table.”

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com and John McCormick at mccormick.john@wsj.com