Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown compared each morning of the last three weeks since President Trump’s inauguration to waking up to a natural disaster.

“This sense of urgency, this need to act — but the most troubling aspect of it is that natural disasters are rarely, if ever, avoidable,” Brown said Monday at a news conference.

Brown is one of a cohort of Democratic attorneys general firing off motions and briefs to federal judges to thwart what they say are unconstitutional and illegal government actions.

Brown has joined lawsuits that so far seek to protect Americans’ birthright citizenship, federal funding for state programs and the private financial information of millions of Americans.

So far, Brown’s coalition has found success. The temporary restraining orders granted by federal judges have served as sandbags from the flood of executive orders signed by the president, kept federal funds flowing for critical state programs and blocked Elon Musk from peeking at the nation’s bank account.

And it doesn’t seem like Brown, or Trump, have plans to yield.

“They will keep looking for ways to cut funding ... so we won’t let them,” Brown told reporters.

His latest filing: a joint suit against the Trump administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health for cutting medical and public health research.

Brown has come under fire for suing the federal government on the state’s dime, mostly from those supportive of Trump’s actions. He said his office will take action when the rights and privileges of Marylanders are threatened.

“This notion that the state is involved in this exorbitant litigation, I think, is misplaced and doesn’t accurately reflect what we’re doing,” he said. “But I think even more importantly, it’s the cost of inaction.”

Just days ago, a judge blocked Musk and members of his Department of Government Efficiency, which isn’t a government department, from accessing the Treasury Department’s central payments system responsible for disbursing social security payments, military benefits, state funds and federal employees’ paychecks.

Brown joined the suit on behalf of Marylanders and called Musk’s actions “a direct attack on the financial system that Marylanders and Americans rely on.”

Maryland receives billions of dollars from the federal government each year for state programs such as health care and food benefits, and Marylanders directly receive money from federal programs such as military benefits and housing supplements. More than 1 million Marylanders received monthly social security benefits as of December 2023, according to the federal government.

Though not a formal party in the case, Brown and 20 other state attorneys general weighed in on behalf of hundreds of thousands of their citizens receiving federal paychecks who were offered incentives to resign, calling the offer “opaque and coercive” and a “veiled threat” because employees were told if they didn’t accept the offer their jobs may be cut anyway.

“When the President threatens federal workers, that’s a direct attack not only the men and women who are public servants and faithfully serve our country, providing services to the American people, but it is a an assault on the economy of Maryland,” Brown said.

The Trump administration made the offer in an attempt to shrink the federal workforce and cut government overhead.

Like many mid-Atlantic states, Maryland’s economy is deeply intertwined with the federal government as an employer and a source of program and research funding. More than 160,000 Marylanders hold federal civilian jobs and more still work for federal contractors.

A federal judge paused the timeline Thursday to allow a cohort of federal employee labor unions to take the Trump administration to court. The hearing is scheduled for Monday.

Brown has also backed a lawsuit filed by families of transgender children against Trump’s executive orders denying federal funds for transition-related health care.

“These are our children,” he said. “Children deserve love, care and the right to live as their true selves.”

Maryland is not currently a party to the lawsuit, but Brown said he’s considering filing or joining the lawsuit.

Just days after Trump’s election win, Brown announced his plans for a federal litigation team, using the power given to the attorney general’s office by the General Assembly to sue when the federal government threatens the health and welfare of Marylanders.

Del. Jason Buckel, the minority leader in the Maryland House of Delegates, said in January he believes the attorney general’s office has adequate resources to handle “the occasional matter where Maryland’s interests are uniquely implicated.”

Buckel also cautioned against filing lawsuits for political purposes, rather than to protect Marylanders’ interests.

He pointed to Frosh’s emoluments lawsuit over whether Trump illegally profited off the presidency, which ended because Trump left office.

“I don’t think it makes sense to say we’re going to have a litigation team joining in 37 lawsuits all over the country every week, mainly for politics,” Buckel said.

Former Attorney General Brian Frosh filed or joined dozens of successful lawsuits against the first Trump administration under that same authority.

Brown asked Gov. Wes Moore for $1 million to fill out the team and the governor proposed setting aside those funds in the coming year’s budget.