The federal government and the Trump administration continues to place a bullseye direction on the State of Minnesota.
Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed another lawsuit against the state, this time against what Attorney General Pam Bondi calls Minnesota's "Affirmative Action Regime."
Bondi says making hiring decisions based on immutable characteristics like race and sex is simple discrimination.
“From suing over sanctuary city policies to a wide-ranging fraud investigation, today's lawsuit is the Department of Justice's latest effort to bring Minnesota into compliance with federal law,” said Bondi. “The Trump Administration has no tolerance for such DEI policies.”
She calls the suit the DOJ's latest effort to bring Minnesota into compliance with federal law.
Also named in the press release from the Justice Department is Minnesota's new U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, Daniel Rosen.
“Minnesotans already had to see their state officials let criminals brazenly walk off with over a billion taxpayer dollars,” said Rosen . “Now they see those same officials abusing their power by systematically and unlawfully branding jobseekers as the wrong race or sex. The United States Attorney General and the Justice Department are on the side of Minnesotans and have stepped in to hold the State accountable.”
The suit comes just a week after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis. The Department of Justice has decided there's no cause for a Civil Rights probe into that shooting on a Minneapolis street, and has also cut the state investigative agencies from participating in any investigation, something Minnesota state leadership has decried.
The decision to keep the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division out of the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good marks a sharp departure from past administrations, which have moved quickly to probe shootings of civilians by law enforcement officials for potential civil rights offenses.
Also this week, roughly half a dozen federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned and several supervisors in the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division in Washington gave notice of their departures amid turmoil over the federal probe, according to people familiar with the matter.
Among the departures in Minnesota is First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, who had been leading the sprawling investigation and prosecution of fraud schemes in the state, two other people said. At least four other prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office joined Thompson in resigning amid a period of tension in the office, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
Thompson had been the interim U.S. Attorney for Minnesota prior to the Trump administration's appointment of Rosen.