As Minnesota AG fights Trump in court, he says executive branch 'belligerence' is growing

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison says he’s “trying to stop a dictatorship.” Less than 100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, Ellison and fellow attorneys are litigating against him on more than a dozen fronts — and the list of lawsuits is growing.

Since taking office in January, Trump has issued a deluge of executive orders intended to dramatically reshape the federal government and policy. Ellison calls the administration lawless, and as Minnesota’s top prosecutor, he is using the legal system to fight back.

As the tension builds between the executive branch and the judiciary, Ellison admits the courts have limitations.

“He wants total and complete authority,” Ellison said, “with a thin, thin, thin, ineffectual veneer of democracy so that he can pretend legitimacy.”

Ellison is one of several Democratic attorneys general leading the court challenges against Trump’s agenda. They’ve sued over funding freezes, reductions in the federal workforce and Trump’s tariffs, the flagship of his policy agenda.

“I think we are very much one of the most important lines of defense against this unconstitutional behavior by Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said at a town hall with Ellison in St. Paul last month.

On average, Minnesota joins a new lawsuit or two each week against the administration, an exercise Ellison likened to “whack-a-mole.” Normally, his work as attorney general focuses on prosecuting scams and ensuring public safety at home.

“I would rather prosecute crooks,” Ellison said, “but he won’t let me because he’s breaking the law on the daily.”

For its part, the Trump administration has argued the federal government is bloated and needs aggressive change to better meet Americans’ needs.

Trump is seeking to strip birthright citizenship from future children of undocumented immigrants or those in the country temporarily, arguing the Constitution does not automatically grant citizenship to them. Courts have so far ruled against him, citing long Supreme Court precedent as well as the plain language of the text.

Trump also has issued sweeping policies attempting to ban trans children from youth sports and prohibit gender-affirming care.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

Minnesota House GOP Leader Harry Niska, an attorney from Ramsey, said both Republicans and Democrats have expanded the role of the White House in recent decades. He said he wished Ellison had been more concerned about executive overreach during Democratic administrations.

Niska added that he thinks Ellison has overreached his authority, using his office to sue oil companies over climate change.

The separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government is important, Niska said, and acknowledged Trump had issued a significant number of executive orders.

“I think the rhetoric around Donald Trump is a little more overheated than is justified,” Niska said.

Ilan Wurman, a constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota, said the level of litigation and court intervention against White House policy seemed unprecedented.

“It definitely seems like the states are not only more aggressively suing the administration in terms of volume,” Wurman said, “but also in terms asserting interest in lawsuits that ordinarily would not really be about the state.”

Minnesota has joined 16 lawsuits against the Trump administration in the 10 weeks since he took office.

In that short time, Ellison noted, Trump has taken aim at judges, law firms and the press. The first weeks of Trump’s second term, in Ellison’s view, have demonstrated democracy’s frailty.

“If you don’t oppose Trump, then I don’t know how history is going to judge you,” Ellison said. “If you capitulate to Trump in this moment, I think history will look at you as one who failed when the propitious moment arrived.”

The attorneys general have secured some major victories. Judges have ordered probationary workers reinstated to roles in the federal government and funds unfrozen. But a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in a separate case that the Trump administration did not need to rehire workers gives Ellison some worry, he said.

The federal government has appealed a court order blocking Trump’s executive order revoking birthright citizenship. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on the subject in May.

Even when the attorneys general succeed in court, Ellison said, Trump can still do “a lot of damage.”

Ellison said his efforts weren’t political. He said he’s concerned with the rule of law and Trump’s efforts on birthright citizenship.

“How can anybody think I’m going to sit around and allow that?” he said.

Wurman said he thought federal judges had granted injunctions that were too sweeping, citing the birthright citizenship case. He argued the courts should not halt the executive order universally or before the policy goes into effect.

Respect between the judicial branch and the executive, Wurman said, is a “two-way street.”

“Yes, the executive has to respect these court orders and it can’t ignore them just because the president thinks they’re wrong,” Wurman said, “but courts have to respect executive power too.”

Niska said Minnesota may have an interest in challenging some of the actions from the Trump administration.

“The pattern I’ve seen from Attorney General Ellison, though,” Niska said, “has been sort of a knee-jerk — join virtually every challenge or take on every single fight in a way that I think is more about Democrat partisan politics than it is about the interests of the state of Minnesota.”

Ellison said most of what Trump wants to do could be legal — if he follows the correct process. But he said Trump doesn’t want to listen to other points of view or wait for Congress to pass legislation.

With the Trump administration’s “belligerence” toward the courts, Ellison said he’s worried the world’s longest-established democracy could be thrust into a constitutional crisis by summer. The nation isn’t there yet, Ellison said, but U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert’s rebuke of Trump’s calls to impeach a judge who ruled against his deportation plans was stark.

Wurman said the standoff between Trump and the courts over deportations was “too close for comfort” to a conflict between the two branches. But he said the country was not approaching a constitutional crisis — at least not yet.

At town halls across the state, Ellison said he gets asked routinely — what if Trump defies court orders?

He said nobody likes the answer.

“The answer is: The American people are the people who guarantee American democracy, and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

“I recognize the limitations of American law,” Ellison said, “and I recognize that American judiciary exists as a force for protecting American democracy because people still have some semblance of recognizing it as legitimate authority. But when it runs out, the American people are going to have to rise up and say, ‘This is our country and we’re going to keep it this way.’”

Ellison said he’s convinced Trump will keep working to shift policy and slash the federal government.

“If he keeps it up, I’ll keep it up,” Ellison said. “If he stops, then I’ll stop. But if he thinks he’s going to keep raising hell with the American people and nobody’s going to fight him, I’ll fight him until his last day.”

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