The Texas attorney general’s office is a sprawling operation with 4,000 employees, including roughly 750 attorneys, who are spread out across 117 offices in the Lone Star State.
For the past 27 years, the office has served as a staging ground for litigation challenging endangered species protections and wind energy projects, while backing major oil and gas companies facing climate lawsuits that could cost the industry billions of dollars.
But that is about to change. Last week, Texas voters elected Nathan Johnson as attorney general over oil and gas heir Mayes Middleton. Once a leader of Republican coalitions challenging environmental regulations, the Texas AG’s office will now be run by a man who has decried President Donald Trump’s border wall as an ecosystem destroyer and has promoted clean energy systems in the state.
That means the Texas AG’s office, with its roughly $734 million annual budget, will likely be giving a little extra help on the other side of the courtroom aisle.
“The load of litigating these cases, particularly the climate cases, is really heavy,” Patrick Parenteau, professor emeritus at Vermont Law School and former regional counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency, told Landmark. “Having the resources of another major state AG’s office like Texas would be significant.”
5 states switch sides
Texas is among five states to see attorneys general change hands from Republican to Democratic control in the 2026 midterms. Rounding out the list are Georgia, Iowa, Kansas and Ohio.
Texas sued the Biden administration over 100 times under Attorney General Ken Paxton, including many major environmental cases challenging everything from Clean Air Act regulations to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, Endangered Species Act classifications and rules defining what waterways are subject to Clean Water Act permitting requirements.
(Paxton lost his bid for Senate last week after falling several points behind James Talarico in the race. Talarico appears more likely to be an ally to environmental causes, taking stances against data center water waste, but has said he will work to protect oil and gas jobs in the state.)
Much of that served to protect the fossil fuel industry in Texas, which is home to some of the biggest oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
But Ohio, Georgia, Iowa and Kansas were all frequently part of coalitions targeting similar subjects as well. And the states have all been part of coalitions challenging blue state environmental laws when possible, notably joining a challenge to New York’s climate Superfund law that would have required the oil and gas industry to pay tens of billions of dollars to help that state adapt to climate change through things like sea walls.
Those efforts will still have some of the leading Republican voices in the mix — for instance, litigation leader West Virginia still has a GOP AG. But legal experts said removing resources of big states like Texas and Ohio in those cases (and the broader effort to quash climate litigation that is currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court) could send a strong message.
“Texas and, to a lesser extent Ohio, have been among the leaders in bringing lawsuits challenging efforts by EPA and others to reduce pollution and transition away from fossil fuels, and also fighting ESG,” Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School, told Landmark.
“Several of their lawsuits are still pending,” he continued. “I’m looking forward to their new attorneys general dropping some of these suits, and where there are other plaintiffs, switching sides.”
Parenteau added that the states could specifically withdraw support from active litigation challenging the New York and Vermont climate Superfund laws, and could do the same with the climate case before the Supreme Court.
“When attorneys general turn over, they could withdraw their brief and switch sides if they wanted to,” he said.
Max Sarinsky, the legal director of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, told Landmark that the impact of those decisions will play out on the margins in the bigger cases, and is mostly a “question of resources.”
Big cases involving dozens of Republican states will still get filed, he said.
But he added that the shift in power among attorneys general could be especially significant where they resist defending the constitutionality of anti-environmental laws within their own states. As an example, he noted that it could have been significant if the attorney general of Texas had decided not to defend laws prohibiting state pension fund investments in firms that boycott fossil fuels, or refused to defend laws limiting renewable energy development.
‘New Attorneys General … let’s get to work’
Just days after last week’s midterms, there were signs that Democratic attorneys general were seeing a major shift in the legal landscape they had been fighting on.
Those offices have been fighting Trump’s deregulatory work just as often as Republican states fought former President Joe Biden policies, and are known to work closely — often meeting and sharing notes, while spreading the workload when possible.
Bill Sherman, the chief of the Environmental Protection Division in Washington state’s AG office, posted a short note encouraging the newcomers to join the fray.
“New Attorneys General in Texas, Ohio, Georgia, maybe others: We in the Environmental Protection Division of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office very much look forward to working with you to protect the people and natural resources of your states,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Get sworn in, staff your offices, and let’s get to work.”
Sherman later told Landmark that there are three broad areas where he thinks attorney general offices can help each other on the environmental front.
For one, they can help each other with “significant, broad pollution lawsuits” like the cases against manufacturers of PFAS, also known as forever chemicals.
The second is to compare notes and techniques for enforcing environmental regulations in state courts, an area that sources suggested could see a revamp in places like Texas if the incoming attorney general decides to be tougher on the oil and gas industry and crack down on potential permit violations.
And the third area is working together to challenge major federal deregulatory actions.
Sherman declined to speak to the specifics of what he thinks any other attorney general’s office should do. But it was clear that the new blue AGs were welcome to give him a call, and learn from the lessons that Democratic coalitions have gleaned over the past 10 years of increasingly politicized environmental legal fights.
“I think bottom line is , you know, environmental protection is a really important thing that attorneys general can do,” he said. “We find that we do it better working in collaboration with other states that also want to make that a priority.”