How many active federal cases specifically name Donald Trump as an individual defendant as of January 2026?
Executive summary
A definitive, single-number answer is not possible from the documents provided: public trackers and news coverage in the dossier document hundreds of suits that challenge or involve the Trump administration, but those projects treat “administration actions” as the sued party and do not reliably enumerate federal dockets that name Donald J. Trump as an individual defendant; the sources here therefore allow only a conservative lower-bound, not a comprehensive tally [1] [2] [3]. At minimum, the reporting shows several federal matters in which Trump is named individually — including appellate litigation over union challenges and the federal criminal indictments referenced in Lawfare’s archive — but the precise count of active federal cases naming him as an individual as of January 2026 cannot be verified from these materials alone [4] [5].
1. Why the headline trackers don’t answer the literal question
Large litigation trackers cited here—Lawfare’s “Trump Administration Litigation Tracker” and Just Security’s tracker—measure challenges to Trump administration policies and often treat a district-court filing plus related appeals as a single “case,” but they generally catalog suits against the government or governmental actions rather than listing every docket that names Donald J. Trump personally, so their headline totals (hundreds of active matters) cannot be read as a count of federal dockets naming Trump as an individual defendant [1] [2].
2. Specific federal matters these sources do identify that name Trump personally
The files do include federal matters that explicitly name Donald J. Trump: the Ninth Circuit opinion and docket entries in American Federation of Government Employees v. Trump list Donald J. Trump as a defendant-appellant in an executive-orders/mandamus dispute, demonstrating at least one active federal appellate matter naming him individually [4]. Lawfare’s chronology of Trump’s criminal trials also documents two separate federal criminal prosecutions that were filed and subsequently dismissed after his 2024 victory, showing that federal indictments once named him individually even if those particular matters were later dismissed [5].
3. Why news coverage and advocacy trackers can create an impression gap
Advocacy outlets and news analyses, including Democracy Docket and broad media summaries, emphasize the volume and intensity of litigation surrounding Trump-era policies and Trump’s presidency, and thus report “hundreds” of suits tied to his agenda; however, those same outlets tend to conflate suits against federal agencies, policy decisions, or “the administration” with suits that formally list Donald J. Trump himself as a defendant, producing an impression of far more direct individual-defendant litigation than the underlying dockets necessarily show [3] [1].
4. The limits of the public record provided here and what’s needed for a firm count
None of the supplied sources supplies a court-by-court, PACER-style inventory enumerating every federal docket that names Donald J. Trump individually as of January 2026; the Lawfare and Just Security trackers are indispensable but oriented to policy litigation rather than to tabulating individual-party designations, and the news stories highlight major suits or appellate actions without promising exhaustiveness [1] [2] [5]. To produce a definitive number would require systematic PACER searches across district and circuit databases for “Donald J. Trump” as a named defendant as of a specific cutoff date, cross-checked for active status and consolidated dockets — a task beyond what the cited reporting provides [1] [4].
5. Bottom line
From the documents at hand, the only verifiable statement is this: multiple federal matters in 2024–2026 publicly named Donald J. Trump as an individual defendant or appellant — including criminal indictments referenced in Lawfare’s archive and at least one named appellate defendant in AFGE v. Trump — but the exact count of active federal cases that specifically name him as an individual defendant as of January 2026 cannot be determined from these sources alone [5] [4] [1]. Public trackers and media coverage show the litigation landscape and identify specific high‑profile dockets, yet they do not substitute for a granular PACER search needed to supply the precise number.