North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson made his name in the U.S. House as the “TikTok Congressman.” Now, he’s again staking out real estate at the technological forefront by heading up a nationwide task force on AI.
Stepping into the attorney general’s office in a year where Trump has sought to halt funding for everything from SNAP benefits to hurricane resilience grants to public school funding — all blocked after court battles that Jackson’s N.C. Department of Justice helped win — the former Congressman has come to view his office as a last line of defense for North Carolinians, both from the executive branch and from the threats of tomorrow.
To lead that defense, he has stressed a united front across party lines. “We are stronger when we speak with one voice,” he told dozens of attorneys general at the AI Task Force’s inaugural meeting last week.
But in his own state, Republicans are vying to strip him of one of his most potent tools: the ability to challenge Trump’s executive orders. The state Senate passed a bill last March that would require the General Assembly to authorize any such lawsuits, and the state House could do the same as it returns for the short session this month.
A term defined by Trump
More than anything else, Jackson’s first year in office has been defined by its lawsuits in defiance of the Trump administration.
Most notably, they won an October court battle that required the Trump administration to disburse $230 million in SNAP benefits to 1.4 million North Carolinians during last fall’s government shutdown. Other successful lawsuits challenged the revocation of more than $165 million in public education funding and $200 million in FEMA resilience dollars.
N.C. AG Jeff Jackson blasted a freeze on FEMA funding on a July 25, 2025 visit to a Hillsborough pumping facility flooded with wastewater. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)In Jackson’s view, his office has undertaken a principled approach on executive orders. Whereas some Democratic attorney generals have joined more than 60 lawsuits challenging the Trump administration, his office was only part of 18 in 2025.
“I use an objective formula for when I file a lawsuit against the administration or anyone else,” Jackson told NC Newsline. “Did someone break the law? Did it hurt the state? And can I prove both of those things?”
He has repeatedly stressed that North Carolina’s participation in these lawsuits is often key to recovering blocked funds through court injunctions that only apply to the parties to the lawsuit. Jackson announced in January that his office had recovered a total of $1.5 billion in stalled funds in 2025.
Jackson’s office declined to join some lawsuits against the Trump administration on more divisive issues, particularly around social issues. He did not join, for example, a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month challenging an executive order mandating health and education institutions to abide by its definition of biological sex rather than gender identity.
In the view of Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper, “it doesn’t appear that he’s just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.”
“I think he’s choosing cases where he thinks they have a chance to win, and that are going to present as, yes, partisan, but not hyperpartisan and not leaning into the negative,” Cooper said. “What he’s chosen to shoot, he’s been hitting.”
‘AG TikTok’
As the gears began moving on Senate Bill 58, the proposal that would strip Jackson of autonomy on challenges to executive orders, North Carolina Republicans issued a stark warning: Comply or else.
Asked by Sen. Julie Mayfield (D-Buncombe) in February what lawmakers would do if the Attorney General defies a new mandate on executive orders, Sen. Tim Moffitt (R-Henderson) suggested his role could be obliterated by repealing every power granted to it by state law.
“That way, the Attorney General is a feckless, empty shell of a position that has no authority to do anything,” Moffitt said.
Jackson has seemed to draw more ire from Republicans in a single year from Republican state lawmakers than his predecessor, Gov. Josh Stein, did in eight. But he’s also maintained a higher profile than any attorney general before him.
The TikToks that made him famous in Congress have continued — churning out 11 since he entered the attorney general’s office and sharing them across X, Bluesky, Reddit, and Instragram among other platforms.
While they have shifted from the political news dominating Congress to the lawsuits his office is taking on, they have at times retained an adversarial tone — directed at those his office is probing.
“Hi. This message is for WeChat,” he said in a video in May. “You are the second-largest texting platform in the world. You’re also heavily implicated in the money laundering that is tied to trafficking fentanyl.”
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