Bonta seeks more funding for Trump litigation, antitrust

California Attorney General Rob Bonta wants more money to fight President Donald Trump in court. Potentially much more money.

Bonta would also like more money to do something he believes the Trump administration is neglecting: antitrust enforcement. Experts say there are arguments for funding both, but fighting a hostile administration is far easier, cheaper, and more likely to pay off.

Lawmakers gave Bonta $25 million last year. Now, 68 lawsuits later, it appears that money is gone. Announcing his latest case against Trump on Tuesday -- related to loan caps on certain graduate and professional degrees -- Bonta said he is in talks with Gov. Gavin Newsom about replenishing these funds.

"We might need to ask for a little more," Bonta said. "We're having those conversations now."

The comments came as lawmakers and Newsom are hitting crunch time on the 2026-27 state budget. But Democratic legislative leaders have viewed fighting Trump as a spend-money-to-make-money proposition. In February, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, claimed the state made a $188 billion "return on investment" by protecting the disbursement of federal funds to California that the administration attempted to block.

The enormous numbers are not "outside of the realm of possibility," said Marquette University political science professor Paul Nolette.

"I would definitely say that it's on the high end of plausibility, because I'm sure that they have all the incentives to inflate that number," said Nolette, who is also the director of the Les Aspin Center for Government. "But I think it's not unreasonable to think that it is well into the tens of billions of dollars."

Fighting the federal government over spending appropriations is also an area where it is straightforward for states to cooperate and "divvy" up tasks, he said. State departments of justice already have attorneys in-house versed in this work, making it inexpensive compared to the possible payoffs.

Nolette also noted that during the Biden administration, legislatures in Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas all approved additional funds for their attorneys general to fight the federal government. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for example, sued the Biden administration more than 100 times, while Missouri and Louisiana led a high-profile social media case.

During comments Monday, Bonta also said his office will need more funds to carry out antitrust cases, possibly implying that $14 million in Newsom's May budget revision might not be sufficient. He also said his office would like to hire eight more antitrust attorneys, adding that one case can cost $20 million and require 20 attorneys.

Antitrust is a "high-risk, high reward" game, said George Washington University Law School professor William E. Kovacic. If you win, he said, it can have huge benefits for consumers, adding that California has the largest consumer market in the country. But it is not easy.

"You can't do it on the cheap," said Kovacic, a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission. "You've got to have a Los Angeles Dodgers-type budget to make it work because you're playing against the very best and they're not going to give you any breaks."

Big wins are still possible, he added, pointing to recent litigation against Ticketmaster Entertainment LLC. But antitrust attorneys tend to be highly paid specialists hired by companies with deep pockets and a lot to lose.

By contrast, Kovacic said, beating the U.S. Department of Justice appears to be getting easier.

"You're going against a DOJ that is very thin in terms of senior experienced personnel with lots of past experience handling cases," Kovacic said. "You're going against people who've been thrown head over heels into matters about which they know very little and are being expected to do a lot right away."

Nolette said antitrust litigation is also inherently expensive because it involves extensive discovery, long timelines, and hiring economists and other expert witnesses. Even the success stories are arduous, he added, such as the five-year case that led to a $700 million settlement with the Google Play Store, finalized last month.

But former Maine Attorney General James E. Tierney said states have a clear role in antitrust enforcement, and they should use it.

"That's an easy call," said Tierney, now a lecturer at Harvard Law School. "Taxpayers come out way ahead."

He added that "states have very broad jurisdiction that's unique from the federal government." Meanwhile, Tierney said, the administration has abandoned the space to a degree that has drawn criticism even from some very conservative antitrust specialists. He pointed to the Tegna Inc.-Nexstar Media Group Inc. merger case as especially important. *In re: Nexstar-TEGNA Merger Litigation*, 2:26-cv-00976-TLN-CKD (E.D. Cal., filed March 18, 2026).

"I can't talk to the budget, but I will tell you that California has been the savior for serious competition," Tierney said.