‘We are a whisper away from Jim Crow’: Minnesota's top prosecutor sounds alarm

When President Donald Trump’s performance in the polls in 2024 signaled a possible re-election, Keith Ellison and fellow Democratic attorneys general read Project 2025 and started getting ready, especially when Trump hired the key author of the planning document after his election.

They divided the documents into sections and marshaled their staff lawyers to be ready with lawsuits.

So when Russell Vought and the Office of Management and Budget froze the distribution of certain federal funds — as outlined in Project 2025 — Ellison and other the Democratic AGs were ready.

They sued over the funding freeze the next day.

“They were not hiding the ball,” Ellison said in a wide-ranging interview with States Newsroom in Minneapolis Wednesday.

Ellison and his colleagues have engaged in more than two dozen lawsuits against Trump administration actions in the first five months of the president’s second term. The AGs have sued over cuts to federal agencies, tariffs, DOGE’s access to government data, attempts to end birthright citizenship, and more.

They’ve also toured blue states to tout their accomplishments and listen to voters’ concerns.

The stakes are high, Ellison said: the fate of multi-racial democracy.

Ellison, who served for a dozen years in Congress representing Minnesota’s Minneapolis-based 5th District, said the states are a sovereign bulwark against federal power grabs.

The Democratic attorneys general are not only fighting a Republican-controlled executive branch, but also a conservative majority on the U.S Supreme Court. In Ellison’s view, recent decisions by the Roberts court — particularly in 303 Creative v. Elenis, in which the court ruled that a business owner could not be obligated to serve a gay couple — signify that the country is moving towards legal segregation.

“We are a whisper away from Jim Crow,” Ellison said.

Still, Ellison was upbeat, celebrating the AGs string of victories and predicting that even conservative Supreme Court justices will resist the Trump administration’s attack on the rule of law and the institution of the court itself.

The Democratic AGs may benefit from a weakened Department of Justice under Trump, Ellison said. The agency that defends the federal government in court is hemorrhaging longtime staff attorneys, through both firings and resignations.

Ellison emphasized that many of the policies enacted by Trump in his first months in office would be legal if they were passed by Congress. Instead, the president is running the country through “edict” and “proclamation,” Ellison said.

“Our democracy is not perfect,” Ellison said, “but you will absolutely miss it when it’s gone, and Trump has given you a glimpse of that.”