The Keith Ellison Files: all Trump, all the time
Since President Trump began his second term back in January, the state’s Attorney General seems obsessed with stopping his agenda, and little else.
Since the start of Trump’s new term on January 20, Ellison’s office has put out, by my count, some 114 press releases. Most of them (64) announce some opposition to the Trump Administration by Ellison’s office. Of those, half (32) mention Trump by name in the headline.
For example, Ellison’s first press release in the Trump 2.0 era was on the topic of birthright citizenship, a subject addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in a decision issued today.
Back on May 17, the Daily Caller reported that Ellison had already filed some 23 lawsuits against Trump:
The attorney general’s 23 lawsuits challenging the Trump administration touch on transgenderism in schools, federal funding cuts, immigration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) among other matters. Ellison’s office has also filed six legal briefs in court opposing aspects of Trump’s agenda.
It’s not as if there aren’t problems here in Minnesota to occupy his attention: crime and rampant fraud against state government, to name but two.
Back in April, Ellison himself wrote in defense of his approach. At the time, he was only up to 11 lawsuits against Trump. Ellison wrote:
As Donald Trump continues his mission to wreck our democracy, our economy, and our freedoms, a cohort of 23 Democratic attorneys general has fought him at every turn. None of us sought these offices so we could sue Donald Trump every day. None of us are suing him now out of political malice or pure partisanship.
“Pure” is doing a lot of work in that last sentence. Given that he loses at every turn, how are these lawsuits not filed out of malice or partisanship?
Ellison barely won re-election in 2022 by only 20,000 votes (a less than 1 percent margin). His newfound interest in states’ rights is exactly that: newfound. In June 2024, his office put out a mere 10 press releases; in 2025, 21 were issued, six mentioning Trump by name.
As Ellison himself will tell anyone within earshot, his office does not have unlimited resources. So, where does Ellison get the money to fight Trump all day, every day?
Ellison is also in need of campaign cash to run for a third term as attorney general in 2026. It turns out that the answer to both needs may be a single man: New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Back in April, the New York Times reported on the former New York mayor’s 2026 intentions:
Bloomberg Pumps Cash Into the Long-Term Legal Fight Against Trump:
The billionaire’s gun control group plans to spend $10 million to help elect Democratic attorneys general, who are on the front lines of legal clashes with the president.
Specifically:
The group, Everytown for Gun Safety, will back Democratic candidates in 10 competitive states, including Virginia this fall and Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin, among others, next year, according to John Feinblatt, the organization’s president.
At American Experiment, along with our friends at the Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC), we’ve been tracking the Bloomberg cash as it flows into Ellison’s organization, in particular how Bloomberg has directly funded Ellison’s climate and energy litigation efforts.
In 2025, at least five of Ellison’s anti-Trump efforts involve energy and/or environmental policy.
Not surprisingly, the subject of transparency in the AG’s office came up frequently during this past session of the state legislature. HF 20, introduced by Republican leader Harry Niska, could not get through an evenly divided (67-67) House of Representatives.
Back in 2022, SF 2818 made it through a state senate committee. If passed, it would have explicitly banned the sort of Bloomberg-sponsored litigation undertaken by Ellison’s office.
The issue here is that no out-of-state, private party should be able to hire a sitting Attorney General as their own private attorney, with all of the powers of state government behind it.
Minnesota is not for sale.