Weiser has used taxpayer-funded lawsuits to go on a jihad against President Trump, and probably to promote his own candidacy for governor.
This article first appeared on November 11, 2025 in Complete Colorado.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser says he favors trashing Colorado’s legislative reapportionment system to get more Democrat members of Congress elected.
His statement offers some useful instruction in how, when conservatives make political deals with the left, it usually comes back to bite them.
The current reapportionment system resulted from such a deal. It was made only seven years ago and ratified overwhelmingly by the voters. Now Weiser wants to renege.
The Colorado background
In 2018, Coloradans voted for Amendments Y and Z. Amendment Y transferred the job of drawing congressional districts from the state legislature to an independent commission. Amendment Z did the same for state legislative districts.
I voted against both. One reason is that I generally oppose moving political decisions away from the people’s representatives and lodging them in administrative agencies. Doing so is undemocratic, and it doesn’t take the politics out of the decisions. It just hides the politics from public view.
Another reason is that lawmakers who gerrymander have to explain their conduct to the voters. An independent commission never has to do that.
A third reason is that experience with a similar commission in another state convinced me that they tend to be captured by the political left. This is true of government agencies generally, because conservatives spend time living real lives, but “progressives” live for politics: Politics are what theologian Paul Tillich would call their “ultimate concern.”
Many conservatives of impeccable credentials did not agree with me about Amendments Y and Z. They saw the left’s tightening grip on the state legislature, and thought an independent commission would be a better place to lodge reapportionment decisions. Their left-right coalition was reflected in the campaign finance figures: Proponents of Amendments Y and Z raised and spent $6 million. Opponents raised and spent nothing.
I also doubted that “progressives” would keep the bargain if it became inconvenient for them. Weiser’s announcement is confirmation of that.
Now let’s examine some context.
The national context
In Texas, reapportionment is still the prerogative of the legislature, and the legislature recently exercised that authority to create more Republican congressional districts. The legislature could defend this action as a response to the state’s huge population growth and its increasingly Republican hue.
The response of California Democratic officials was less defensible. The state’s population has stagnated recently, and its “independent” commission already had gerrymandered congressional districts to favor Democrats: Although Republicans garner nearly 40 percent of the vote in California, they hold only 17 percent of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (nine of 52).
But for California Democrats, that wasn’t good enough: They shifted the redistricting process back to the heavily-Democratic legislature with the goal of getting rid of the remaining congressional Republicans.
Now Weiser has just shown that he’s in the running for the Independence Institute’s “Californian of the Year Award.” He wants to pull the same stunt in Colorado.
Weiser’s record
As Attorney General, Weiser has the obligation to fight crime. Colorado’s soaring crime statistics show that he hasn’t done a very good job.
But he has done a very thorough job of demagoguing against President Trump. Apparently, the obsession with Trump is a principal part of his campaign for governor.
Maybe this obsession is pardonable in a Democrat primary. But conducting an anti-Trump jihad from the Attorney General’s office—at taxpayer expense—is not pardonable. Here’s a list of some of Weiser’s official state-funded press releases from just the past few months:
* May 13, 2025: “Colorado joins lawsuit against Trump administration over illegal immigration conditions placed on infrastructure funding.”
* May 28, 2025: “Attorney General Phil Weiser sues Trump administration over illegal cuts to National Science Foundation funding.”
* July 15, 2025: “Attorney General Phil Weiser sues Trump administration to save $4B program that fortifies communities against natural disasters.”
* July 29, 2025: “Attorney General Phil Weiser sues Trump administration for blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding.”
* August 18, 2025: “Attorney General Phil Weiser fights Trump administration for $1B in federal funds to support crime victims.”
* October 16, 2025: “Attorney General Phil Weiser sues Trump’s EPA to recover Solar for All funds.”
* October 28, 2025: “Attorney General Phil Weiser sues Trump’s USDA for illegally suspending SNAP benefits.”
* October 29, 2025: “Attorney General Phil Weiser sues Trump administration for unconstitutional and unlawful decision to move U.S. Space Command HQ from Colorado Springs.”
And that’s only a partial list! (You can see a longer list here.) In early October, the Axios news service reported that Weiser had brought about 40 lawsuits against the Trump administration. There have been more since then, all paid for with our tax money.
Admittedly, there are times when a state must sue the federal government—particularly to prevent federal intrusion into matters the Constitution reserves to the states.
But “progressives” generally don’t care a rodent’s derriere about the Constitution’s division of powers. (How many times did Weiser sue the overreaching Biden administration?) And most of Weiser’s suits are constitutionally perverse: they are designed either to (1) undermine legitimate federal functions, such as immigration control, or (2) force the federal government to do things the Constitution actually does not assign to it (such as subsidizing solar power).
Apparently, our attorney general and aspiring governor would rather fight the duly-elected President of the United States than protect Coloradans from crime.
A personal perspective
Weiser came to the AG office from the University of Colorado law faculty. I was a law professor myself for 25 years—although one of relatively few with lots of private sector/mainstream law practice. So I know the type: According to an internet biography, Weiser has little, if any, experience in the private sector. He never engaged in the mainstream practice of law. He seems never to have paid more in tax money than he pocketed.
Instead, he attended a very left-leaning college (Swarthmore) and a left-leaning law school (NYU). Upon graduation, he went to work for government. After five years in government, he was hired by another government institution, the overwhelmingly left-of-center University of Colorado. His job was to train students to do what he had never done: engage in real-life law practice.
“Progressive” politics (like law school faculties) is populated with people like that. People who have lived their entire adult lives in taxpayer-subsidized leftist cocoons. Only most of them are dumber, and some are more scrupulous.
But too many of them are willing to walk away from a political compromise whenever it suits them.
Conservatives and libertarians: You have been warned.
