SAN JOSE, Calif. — The onslaught of executive actions emerging from President Donald Trump’s second administration — some of which have aimed to entirely reshape the federal government — has had attorneys for Santa Clara County and San Francisco working at breakneck pace.

The counties are at the forefront of the resistance against the second Trump administration’s policies that have put billions of federal dollars they typically rely on at risk. Proposed cuts to Medicaid, canceled public health grants and threats from Trump of withholding federal funds have created massive budgetary challenges.

Both Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti and his San Francisco counterpart, City Attorney David Chiu, agree: Trump’s second term in the White House is drastically different than the first.

They’re seeing the “muzzle velocity” — a term coined by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon — in which the administration seeks to overwhelm opponents with the sheer volume of changes. In his first 100 days, Trump issued 142 executive orders, compared to the 162 that President Joe Biden authored in his entire four-year term.

In separate interviews this month, LoPresti and Chiu expressed their concerns about the future of democracy in the United States, the partnership they’ve formed, and how their offices have been working around the clock to file lawsuits and defend their interests in federal court.

“We are putting up one or two defenses a day, while the Trump administration is ripping apart civil society and federal government on an hourly basis in ways that are blatantly unconstitutional and illegal,” Chiu said, referencing the more than 200 lawsuits filed nationally against the president and his allies. “I think the constitutional blitzkrieg with which this administration is engaging has been extremely challenging.”

Santa Clara County has filed five lawsuits against the second Trump administration — a number that is expected to surpass the seven filed during the president’s first term. San Francisco has been a partner in most of them. The lawsuits challenge various executive actions carried out by Trump, including orders to cut off funding to jurisdictions that have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for immigrants living in the country illegally and attempts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to lay off federal workers in mass.

The partnership between the Bay Area’s biggest county, Santa Clara, and one of California’s most recognizable cities, San Francisco, dates back decades.

Santa Clara County Executive James Williams, who served as county counsel during Trump’s first term, said both localities are among the few in the nation to have affirmative litigation programs that pursue lawsuits that are in the public interest. In 2000, the county and San Francisco, along with eight other California counties and cities, successfully sued paint manufacturers for promoting lead paint in homes despite the known risks.

“We had those pre-existing relationships in place when Trump took office the first time,” Williams said. “We immediately recognized that there was going to be a need to stand up for really essential rights, especially rights for local governments to make the decisions that we need to be able to make in terms of our own policies and our own resources and the needs of our own local communities.”

LoPresti, who started working at the county in 2018 and assumed the role of county counsel in 2023, said that working with San Francisco and other groups to file lawsuits against the Trump administration allows them to “leverage our limited resources to effectively respond.”

The legal landscape, he said, has also changed since the first Trump administration, making it critical for the county to collaborate with others and be listed as a party in a lawsuit.

“I think we’ve seen an increasing hesitance from federal judges and federal courts when it comes to issuing nationwide injunctions,” LoPresti said. “What that means is oftentimes you have to be a party to a particular lawsuit in order to ensure that the relief that you win in that lawsuit applies to your jurisdiction.”

Paul Nolette, director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University, said that local governments suing the federal government is a “relatively new phenomenon.” It’s largely been sparked by cities and counties not getting what they felt was their fair share of a 1998 settlement with tobacco companies – a lawsuit filed by state attorneys general.

“I think municipalities really want to carve out their way now, not fully trusting the state to advance their legal policy interest,” Nolette said.

The political science professor has been tracking lawsuits filed by state attorneys general against Trump. From the president’s inauguration in 2017 to May 31 of that year, Nolette said there were five multistate lawsuits filed by state attorneys general. But from the start of Trump’s second term to the present date, he said, more than two dozen have been filed. In the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, the state of California alone has been filing lawsuits against the feds at almost twice the pace of his first term, according to a recent analysis from CalMatters. The state has filed more than 20 lawsuits since Inauguration Day.

Since the merits of a legal suit can take years to sort out, Nolette said that some of the strategy is to delay once preliminary injunctions have been issued.

“If you delayed the policy, and a Democratic president is elected in 2028, we’ve done exactly what we want to do. It’s as good as a win,” he said. “That’s going to be a big part of the thinking over the next three and a half years, is to what extent can we continuously delay implementation of these policies until Trump’s out of office?”

For Chiu, his office and LoPresti’s office in Santa Clara County serve as the “first and last lines of defense against the Trump administration.” Their public hospitals, county jails and other services rely on the federal funds that he said are at risk.

“What we are seeing unfold every day is akin to what has happened in too many democratic societies that have slipped into authoritarianism in recent decades,” Chiu said. “I’m extremely concerned about the existential threat to American democracy, and this is why it’s so important for city attorneys and county counsels to step into the breach and defend our jurisdictions and the rule of law.”

Both attorneys say that partnerships and the strength in numbers are ultimately the best way to defend their jurisdictions’ values and funding against Trump’s attacks on democracy.

“In moments of crisis you want to hunker down and work with the folks that you trust the most, that you believe in the most and that you know you are going to be able to form a powerful coalition with you, a powerful partnership with you in pursuing what your legal roles are,” LoPresti said. “That’s been San Francisco for us.”

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