Minnesota judges show how to fight Trumpism effectively

Rochelle Olson, Tribune News Service

DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison says it directly at the end of a campaign commercial: “My opponent? He’ll take orders for the biggest fraudster in American history, Donald Trump.” I was thrilled at last to hear a Minnesota DFLer call out the president’s egregious $2 billion self-enrichment so clearly. Minnesota Republicans are trying to reap anger over the state’s social services fraud while remaining mum on the fraudster in the White House. Ellison’s ad cut to a clip of his GOP opponent, corporate lawyer Ron Schutz, saying that he’d approach the White House for support. On Monday, President Donald Trump took a brief break from relentlessly demeaning the Minnesota Somali community to urge support for Republican US Senate candidate Michele Tafoya.

Of course, yes, fraud is bad, and it should have been caught much sooner. DFL gubernatorial nominee Sen. Amy Klobuchar has said as much, as has Gov. Tim Walz. But the profiteering and existential threats to this country coming from Trump far outstrip the fraud in Minnesota. How can Republicans denounce Minnesota fraud and still march for Trump? I could enumerate Trump’s egregious violations of democratic norms, from undermining elections to his unconscionable support for Russia over Ukraine. But someone with far more gravitas than I have is fighting Trump from the inside: US District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz. Earlier this month, he spoke at the University of St. Thomas Law Journal’s symposium: “ICE Versus the States: State-Law Remedies for Federal Lawlessness.” Schiltz was interviewed by Michael Stokes Paulsen.

Schiltz and Paulsen are both nationally known legal conservatives. The judge clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia and was appointed by former President George W. Bush. Days before the St. Thomas event, Trump’s Department of Justice filed a complaint against Schiltz and other judges, claiming they’d violated their ethical duties by speaking to the New York Times about federal immigration enforcement tactics. Schiltz has not been cowed. He explained at St. Thomas that when the Trump administration flooded this state with 3,000 federal agents last winter, they did nothing to protect the due process rights of those affected. The federal bench stepped up. Judges, clerks and support staff worked days, nights and weekends to protect the rights of those who were targeted. Schiltz said there was a collective agreement for the massive judicial effort of, “this is what we must do.”

Generally, US District Court judges have little interaction with immigration law, but they do act on habeas corpus petitions, which are filed to claim unlawful detentions. The bench was flooded with habeas corpus petitions from detainees, some 1,200 in the first two months of the year. To compare, there were 120 petitions in all of 2025. “What made this even harder ... was the consequence,” Schiltz said.

These petitions came in at all hours. Under normal circumstances, Schiltz said such petitions are filed by people who have already been convicted and are in prison. This wasn’t the case with the immigration detainees. “As a judge, it’s none of my business whether people get deported or not,” he said. “It is my business to make sure that before somebody is put on a plane to Texas ... that their rights are quickly addressed and that they are heard and that’s what we were doing.” In addition, the federal government was violating judicial orders by the dozens, which is extremely rare, he said.

“Even if the order is wrong, it doesn’t mean you have the right to violate. You follow it, you appeal it,” he said.

The Trump administration also went after state officials, subpoenaing Walz, Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, among others.

The judge described the subpoenas as “extremely broad” and “asking for anything they had that had to do with enforcement of immigration laws: every email, every letter, every text message.” He quashed the subpoenas in an extraordinary ruling that said the federal government was seeking “retribution against Minnesota authorities for not helping the federal government enforce immigration.” At this point, Paulsen noted the “integrity and courage” it took for Schiltz to stand up to Trump’s “efforts at intimidation.”

Paulsen is as troubled as Schiltz at this administration’s tactics. The normally reserved professor derisively called the US attorney general “Todd ‘Slush Fund’ Blanche” in reference to Blanche seeking to aid Trump in compensating Jan. 6 protesters. Throughout his comments, Schiltz was startlingly direct about the depth of the existential threat the Trump administration poses. Democracies collapse “not because somebody suddenly says, ‘I’m not following the law.’ It’s death by 1,000 paper cuts,” Schiltz said. “It starts with people not violating the letter of the law but violating long-held understandings about the way we act as a society, the way we treat each other, what’s right and what’s wrong, even if it’s not written down.”

As a judge, Schiltz said he has not merely a right but a duty to speak out against threats to the rule of law. “And I’m doing so right now,” he said. This is what courage looks like. Remember his words. Remember as well the candidates who, when faced with the truth from Schiltz, still seek Trump’s endorsement and remain unwilling to criticise him. Minnesota doesn’t need Trump foot soldiers in the US Senate or any statewide offices. We need more leaders like Schiltz with the courage to choose truth-telling over comfort and politics.