The state attorney-general offices that have led the charge against Biden administration overreach over the last two years are changing direction and hemorrhaging staff, leaving some conservative legal insiders concerned that they will no longer serve as a key check on the president.

With Republicans shut out of power until this month, conservatives have relied heavily on large, well-resourced red states to push back on the excesses of Democrat-controlled Washington, Big Tech malfeasance, and ideologically captured financial firms. Former Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton captured the headlines throughout the first half of the administration, jointly leading challenges in the Supreme Court to the health-care-worker vaccine mandate, cancellation of the Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy, and President Joe Biden's student-loan bailout.

Under former attorney general Mark Brnovich, Arizona led the challenge to the Biden administration's rollback of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allows the federal government to immediately expel illegal immigrants. The law will be heard by the Supreme Court in March.

For unrelated reasons, all three offices are now in a weakened position to carry on these fights, according to sources familiar with recent developments in each office. In Missouri, the senior staffers who organized now–U.S. senator Eric Schmitt's high-profile fights are on their way out after the appointment of his successor, Andrew Bailey, who is widely perceived to be less proactive than his predecessor; in Texas, Attorney General Kan Paxton’s office is hemorrhaging the rank-and-file staff responsible for the daily blocking and tackling required to keep high-profile suits on track; and Arizona elected Democrat Kris Mayes to succeed Brnovich, prompting concern that the office will withdraw from or otherwise sabotage the Title 42 case.

"States have had immense success fighting federal overreach, in particular states like Arizona, Missouri, and Texas. They have been the ones at the Supreme Court on the biggest administrative law cases since Biden became president," said John Shu, an administrative law expert who served in the Bush administration and teaches at Pepperdine Law School. "Departures and changes of course in these states will have major implications. One would hope that other states will step up.”

Missouri

Before his election to the U.S. Senate in November, Eric Schmitt established a reputation as perhaps the most aggressive conservative attorney general in the country, picking fights with several of the movement's chief antagonists: Big Tech firms, CRT-happy school administrators, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Biden administration.

But the senior leaders who helped Schmitt establish that reputation aren't sticking around under his successor, Andrew Bailey — and many are headed to other state AG offices to resume those high-profile fights, leading conservative legal observers to conclude that Bailey's priorities are not in line with those of his predecessor.

Former solicitor general John Sauer has tendered his resignation, effective Friday, sources familiar with recent developments in the office told National Review. Deputy solicitor general Michael Talent is also departing at the end of the month, the sources said. Several other Schmitt deputies have also followed suit.

"When the core group of stalwarts on important cases announce they're resigning upon the swearing in of a new attorney general, it causes a lot of people to have concerns about what that attorney general intends to be doing," said one source, a senior figure in the conservative legal movement. "Because these are people who are well known for their conservatism and stomach for the fight, and if they are all choosing to depart in quick succession that causes us to have doubts about where that office intends to go."

Sauer declined to comment, and Talent did not respond to a request for comment.

With Schmitt making the jump to the Senate, Missouri governor Mike Parson appointed Bailey, his general counsel, to take over the AG's office. At his first press conference after being sworn in, Bailey was asked what his position would be on the office's existing cases. His answer — that he would have to review each case — did not inspire confidence among conservative legal pros who hoped he would issue a blanket endorsement of Schmitt's hardball approach.

During his tenure as AG, Schmitt proved willing to take on power centers in the private and public sector. He launched an investigation into Morningstar Inc. in August over alleged violations of state consumer-protection laws related to the company's selling ESG investment products to Missourians, accusing the firm of neglecting its duty to investors in favor of pushing a social agenda. He also won plaudits from tech-wary conservatives for suing the Biden administration over alleged collusion with major social-media platforms to censor conservatives.

According to sources close to the Missouri attorney general's office, there is a widespread perception within the office that the governor wasn't entirely on board with those high-profile national initiatives, and instead prefers a more business-friendly, local approach — hence the appointment of his former general counsel, Bailey, to the role.

"Bailey is not going to be the conservative fighter that Eric Schmitt was, and that's largely by design. Governor Parson, who Andrew Bailey worked for, didn't like being overshadowed and he also had a different philosophical view of the AG's office, so it's going to be a much less active, less aggressive office under Andrew Bailey," said a former staffer in the Parson administration.

Multiple sources in the conservative legal movement concerned about Parson's cozy relationship with business pointed to his recent appointment of Ray Wagner as his chief counsel and senior adviser. Wagner is coming to the administration directly from his role as the top in-house lobbyist for the rental car conglomerate Enterprise Holdings — a background that some believe makes him ill-suited to crack down on woke ideologically captured big business.

Conservative legal observers are also concerned that Bailey won't have an appetite for pushing back against critical race theory in schools in the way that Schmitt did, since Parson believes curriculum issues should be decided at the local level without intervention from Jefferson City.

Bailey initially planned to drop the many suits Schmitt filed against school districts in the state for promoting critical race theory — but decided to hold off because he's already drawn a primary challenge from his right, the former Parson staffer said.

Bailey's office did not respond when asked to respond to the concerns about the direction of his office that were shared with National Review.

Texas

If the problem in Missouri is insufficient will to carry on conservative battles at the leadership level, the problem in Texas is more mundane: The rank-and-file staffers who draft the endless briefs required to sustain campaigns against well-resourced adversaries are departing, often for other state attorney-general offices — and they're not being replaced.

Todd Disher, the head of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton's special litigation team — the group responsible for much of the day-to-day work required to keep lawsuits against the Biden administration on the rails — recently left the office for private practice, according to a source familiar with recent developments in the office. Disher's former deputy, Patrick Sweeten, left for the governor's office. Assistant solicitor general Eric Hamilton also recently left Paxton's office to work for the Nebraska attorney general.

Disher, Hamilton, and Sweeten did not respond to requests for comment.

The staff problems can be traced to late 2020, when four of Paxton's top deputies came forward to accuse him of bribery and abuse of office. The whistleblowers claimed they were punished and ultimately fired after objecting to Paxton's request that they intervene in a legal dispute on behalf of one of his top donors, Austin real-estate developer Nate Paul. Paxton denies any wrongdoing, and his office issued a report exonerating him of the charges, though the whistleblowers claim the report ignored many of their allegations.

"Since the departure of that leadership, it's been a slow degradation of talent leaving and less talent coming," the source said, adding that Paxton's team has struggled to lead in high-profile lawsuits as they used to.

The attorneys general of Utah and Indiana filed a lawsuit against Vanguard in December for pressuring publicly traded companies to avoid investing in fossil fuels. Vanguard announced days after the suit was filed that it would withdraw from a climate-agenda commitment drawn up by the ESG advocacy group Net Zero Asset Managers. Paxton's office joined the challenge nearly a month later, on January 3.

Paxton's office has continued to file suits against the Biden administration, most recently challenging a program that would accept 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. It's the process that occurs after a suit is filed that's now being neglected, sources say.

"When you file a complaint against the Biden administration, you get big media attention, but then the other side files a motion to dismiss and there are 28 other filings that need to happen in the next six months and the people who are doing the work on those documents, that is where you're seeing an erosion," the source said.

That erosion in Austin has implications for Republicans nationally. Historically, Texas has been the powerhouse in the conservative legal movement given its size and resources.

The Texas attorney general's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Arizona

The situation in Arizona is part of the normal political churn in a way that sets it apart from the recent unwinding of the Missouri and Texas AG offices. Democrat Kris Mayes, who was elected AG, will inevitably handle existing cases differently than her Republican predecessor, Mark Brnovich.

But that's no consolation to immigration restrictionists who have relied on the Arizona AG's office to lead the fight to maintain Title 42, one of the last stop-gap measures preventing the wholesale overrunning of the border.

Brnovich, the former Arizona attorney general, notched a win on his way out the door in December, when the Supreme Court granted a five-week emergency stay forcing the Biden administration to keep Title 42 in place to prevent the border from being further overrun until the Court can hear the case on the merits in March.

A former staffer in the Arizona AG's office told National Review that there is concern that Mayes will withdraw from the suit or, barring that, begin undermining the position of her co-plaintiffs by filing separate briefs that dispute the notion that unchecked immigration is a burden to her state. The concern is bolstered by the fact that Mayes elected not to sign on to a recent filing to the Supreme Court along with its co-plaintiffs.

"We had four to five experienced attorneys who had the time and resources to devote to these cases. We had a budget to hire expert witnesses, which is necessary because sometimes you need an expert to prove standing, basically to explain how the policy would harm the state. So all those resources are basically gone," the former Arizona AG staffer said.

Mayes's efforts to undermine high-profile initiatives pursued by her predecessor are already under way. Joined by 18 other states, Brnovich sent a letter to the asset-management giant BlackRock in August, accusing the firm of violating its fiduciary duty to investors by prioritizing its ESG commitments over returns. Earlier this month, the state AGs gathered on a conference call to discuss strategy. According to a source who was on the call, Mayes disrupted the session by lashing out at some of the other states, making a case for why they shouldn't be part of the project. Outnumbered by the other red-state plaintiffs, Arizona was ultimately booted.

Mayes also clearly doesn't support challenging Biden administration overreach on the issue of student-loan transference. She dropped a lawsuit challenging the unconstitutional executive order on January 20, according to court filings.

The Arizona attorney general's office didn't respond to a request for comment.