North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson says his office applies a strict, non-partisan checklist before taking a target to court — a standard that has so far placed President Donald Trump's administration in his crosshairs in a total of 25 lawsuits, 10 of which his office has confirmed as wins.

"We use an objective criteria here," the Democratic attorney general told Spectrum News 1. "It's, 'Did someone break the law?' 'Did they hurt the state?' And, 'Can I prove both of those things?' And if I can check all three of those boxes, we're going to take you to court."

The tally comes with Trump only halfway through his term. Of the 25 suits, the remainder are still pending except for one that Jackson agreed to dismiss. For Jackson, a former state senator and congressman, the docket reflects a broader feature of the era: state attorneys general have become a favored vehicle for checking federal executive power in court — a role Republican attorneys general also played in filing dozens of suits against the Biden administration's policies.

According to Spectrum News, Jackson's successful challenges include blocking the Federal Emergency Management Agency's cancellation of $200 million in disaster preparedness grants, stopping the halt of AmeriCorps program funding, and reversing the cut-off of more than $165 million in Education Department funding — all of which were halted as a result of lawsuits Jackson was involved in.

The FEMA fight carried particular weight at home: western North Carolina is still rebuilding from Hurricane Helene, the September 2024 storm whose catastrophic flooding made preparedness money a pressing state priority. The AmeriCorps and Education Department cases, meanwhile, fit a wider wave of Democratic-led litigation over the administration's moves to cancel federal grants and scale back agencies.

Jackson's litigation also helped restore food assistance during the nation's longest federal government shutdown last year, Spectrum News reported. At the time, the Trump administration froze the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — the nation's largest food aid program, which serves more than 40 million people each month — claiming the program had "run out of money" because of Democrats' refusal to fund Trump's controversial budget.

Dozens of Democratic-led states, Jackson among them, took the administration to court, arguing that contingency funds could cover the benefits. A series of favorable lower-court rulings soon prompted states to issue full or partial SNAP benefits before the government even reopened.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis, speaking to Spectrum News, countered that the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, filled with Republican-appointed justices, has delivered favorable decisions to Trump "over 20 times," and she characterized lower court rulings against the White House as "lawless."

The clash captures a defining dynamic of the administration's legal fights: district courts have repeatedly paused executive actions at the outset, while the administration has generally fared better as cases climb toward the Supreme Court. In June 2025, the high court ruled 6–3 that federal judges lack the authority to issue nationwide injunctions, a decision that has pushed state challengers toward class-wide relief and limited how far any single ruling against the White House can reach.

"The Administration's policies have been consistently upheld as lawful, despite some lower courts issuing an unprecedented number of lawless injunctions," said Bis, a former communications director of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an organization known for suing states to purge voters from election rolls. "Instead of bragging about filing frivolous lawsuits against the Trump Administration, these radical Democrat State AGs should focus on addressing problems in their own states — like the countless criminal illegal aliens Democrats allow to roam free and terrorize innocent Americans."

While Jackson continues to rack up wins against the administration, state Republicans complain that he spends too much time suing the president. North Carolina Senate Republicans went so far as to pass legislation that would have barred him from initiating lawsuits against the president over executive orders, but the bill stalled in the state House.

Jackson, for his part, is unapologetic about his record. With the remaining 14 suits still pending, the durability of those early wins will be tested as the cases — and the administration's appeals — move through the courts.

"I think it's hard to say that against someone who is so far undefeated. I think that our record speaks for itself," said Jackson.