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VOICEOVER: And now, please welcome Attorney General Keith Ellison.
KEITH ELLISON: Let’s give a hand for Quinn, everybody. Come on now. Thank you, Quinn. It’s such an honor to be here with you. Thank you for the invitation. Please know that the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office is here to help you. We want to be able to assist you. We want to be able to be your ally in your struggle for human inclusion and equality.
And that means we got to be talking, and we got to be working together. We, I want you to know right up front, don’t know everything. A whole lot of things, we have to learn, but we’re willing to learn those things. And we want to do it in partnership with you. I believe in an inclusive society, where everybody is recognized for what they can do, what they can share, and who they are.
And that means that we’ve got to be working together to advance that cause. The cause of the rights of people with disabilities. But the truth is, I’ve met a lot of people in my life. About half of all of us are going to have a disability at some point in our life. And so really, it’s something that we all share. We all love somebody or in family or ourselves are facing some form of a disability.
So it’s really not somebody else’s problem. It’s all of our problem. We’re not allies of the disability community. We are intrinsically connected to the community. And that’s how we should operate all the time. Look, I want to talk to you about some things that I’m working on right now that do impact people with disabilities, which is either our neighbors, our friends, or ourselves, or our family members.
And I want to talk to you about the importance of belonging. It is a central idea and vision in our country. Liberty and justice for–
AUDIENCE: –all.
KEITH ELLISON: That’s a statement about belonging. It’s in the words that we’ve all heard so many times. And this idea of liberty and justice for all has no exceptions. There’s no comma except for trans people or immigrants or people with disabilities. It’s just liberty and justice for all. Period. Stop. And I love the elegance of that.
And we know our country hasn’t always lived up to this. And let me just give us a little historical reference setting. When our country was founded, it was not nearly good enough to be a white male to vote. You had to have property, you had to be Protestant in many times, and you had to be 21.
And so since that time, our country has expanded inclusion and opportunity, year by year by year. It’s never been easy. But what we’ve done as a nation is that we’ve said, again, liberty, and justice for all, all means all. And so this is an idea that we cannot just state, and it is, we got to fight for it and establish it every single day because the idea is contested.
And so I want to talk to you about the effect of some of the executive orders that we’ve seen from Washington. This is not a partisan speech. I’m not here to bash or criticize anyone, including the President. I just do want to make it clear that some of these executive orders will impact the rights of Minnesotans. And I want you to know what’s going on. And I want you to know what we’re doing about it.
And I want to be very clear. I am more than happy to join with anybody of any political persuasion to protect the rights of Americans. This is not about party. This is about these specific actions that I think are not good for Minnesota. And so I have gone to court on several occasions to stop them.
They are, in fact, causing chaos and confusion across the country. I’ve been to many town halls. And I’ve heard Minnesotans express concerns on a wide range of things, including on how this is going to affect people with disabilities. But my office has received literally thousands of calls from concerned Minnesotans.
We’ve gotten more calls on this issue than at any time since George Floyd was killed. We got a bunch of calls then, like a spike, and now we got another spike. And so I want to talk a little bit about this matter. So the funding freeze. The funding freeze, which you all know about, I might refer to it as impoundment.
But what I mean is when Congress, no matter who’s in the majority, when they pass laws, that appropriation that they pass laws to spend money, that money is meant to go where it is intended and written to go. And it is not the prerogative of the president certainly not after signing the bill into law to simply reverse these things.
And so we found ourselves in court. So one of the first actions that was taken in this administration was to freeze payments on federal grants and other government programs. These are essential funds that states like ours rely on for health education, law enforcement, disaster, and other essentials.
This freeze hit people with disabilities, particularly hard. That first morning, Medicaid portals in all 50 states stopped working. Is anybody aware of this? Yeah. I see many nodding heads. And the fallout just kept coming. Disability organizations and programs face uncertainty about their federal funding and some had to lay off staff. They had to close entirely.
Minnesota schools with legal mandate to provide special education services were scrambling to figure out how to pay for these services without any federal money. And so here’s the thing. Minnesotans already paid for these programs, Congress already allocated these funds. These are our tax dollars. And the President is not authorized to simply void these decisions.
And it doesn’t matter what party the President is from. The President can’t do that. And we don’t live under a king or a monarch, we live in a three-pronged system of government with a legislature, which is co-equal in power to the president, and a judiciary, which is co-equal in power to the president and the legislature. And so we sued. And along with 21 other attorneys general, we took the administration to court to stop the illegal action.
In February, the federal court ordered the administration to release the funds. But even though some funds started flowing, others, there was a lot of foot dragging. And I was getting calls from various agencies saying they’re still not opening the portal. I need you to let me know if you encounter this, because I will go right back to court and sue him again, and let the court know that the administration is not abiding by the order.
But I can never know as much as you know– thank you so much, who are fighting on the front line on these issues. So can I ask you all to let me know if you see money getting frozen that’s supposed to be unfrozen?
AUDIENCE: Absolutely.
KEITH ELLISON: OK. Great. I like that. And so we went back on March 6, just the other day to, and the court issued a preliminary injunction. Now, some of you all may not know what a preliminary injunction is. Some of you all do know what it is. Should I explain it? So look, in a regular lawsuit, and I’ve been a lawyer for 35 years, in a regular lawsuit, one side, the plaintiff sues the defendant. And the court says, OK. You guys, here’s a scheduling order. You have to trade information. You got to do that by a certain amount of time.
Then we’re going to bring motions to dismiss, where they’re going to do that. And then we’re going to have a trial. Then there’s that. And that’s how trials generally go. Now, there are some situations where what the defendant did to hurt the plaintiff, you following me? Everybody following me?
AUDIENCE: I follow you.
KEITH ELLISON: Good. Well, what the defendant did to hurt the plaintiff is an emergency. And in that situation, the plaintiff can ask the court to immediately stop the actions of the defendant. And in that situation, the first thing that you ask for is something called a TRO. Everybody say, TRO.
AUDIENCE: TRO.
KEITH ELLISON: And TRO stands for temporary restraining order. Temporary restraining order. Now, that’s temporary–
AUDIENCE: Restraining order.
KEITH ELLISON: Temporary restraining order. And to be fair, that’s only in place for a few weeks. Then you got to come back, and the court has a bigger, fuller hearing to get more evidence in. And then the court can either rescind the TRO or can give a preliminary injunction. If the court feels that the plaintiff is right, that there is immediate, irreparable harm that could happen, they can issue that preliminary injunction. So when the court issued a preliminary injunction, that’s a big deal. That’s a big deal.
So I just wanted you all to know. We got that preliminary injunction in that funding freeze case. So the money should be flowing. If it ain’t, I need you guys to give me a call. And you said you would. So thank you very much. All right?
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Now, cuts to research. Cuts to research. Now, look, we believe in scientific inquiry, trying to learn new things, to figure out how to help more people. One of my loved ones has multiple sclerosis. And we are always trying to figure out what’s the latest to see what good can happen. Many of you may be doing the same thing. You follow along with different research things that can help therapy and can help cures. And so when the administration, their next big cut was to cancel direct reimbursement at every research institution in the country. That happened.
AUDIENCE: No more cuts, and no more cuts.
KEITH ELLISON: Right. So the ADMINISTRATION, these reimbursements are to help to pay for essential life-saving, life-changing research. Without these funds, our country is less able to fight chronic illness, less able to help Americans be healthy, less able to support the disability community.
These cuts, in some cases, stop clinical trials that were already in progress, leaving patients abandoned and confused. These cuts were abrupt, meaning they happened suddenly. They were arbitrary, they weren’t like, OK. We’re not going to do this one because we don’t think that’s good, but we’re going to do that one. They’re like, we ain’t doing none of these. They just cut.
And they were dangerous. And they were illegal. So we went to court, we sued under the– something called the Administrative Procedures Act. With a bunch of other AGs, we sued, we stopped it. And just over a week ago, a federal judge granted another preliminary injunction. And now we all know what a preliminary injunction is.
And so we got another one of those. And the fact that we got the preliminary injunction is evidence that by this judge deems this as very serious emergency and illegal and cannot be allowed to stand. Then there were the mass firings. Now, we’re on our third thing I’m talking around.
So the mass firings. So Trump attacks are not just about funding, he’s coming directly for people’s jobs. And I just want to say, the money is one thing, but the person who’s actually giving you assistance and care and doing the job is really important. The administration fired tens of thousands of federal workers.
These layoffs hit disability communities, especially hard. Many disabled workers make their way into the federal workforce through Schedule A, which gives agencies special leeway to directly hire people with disabilities. Who’s familiar with Schedule A? Schedule A is an important program, and you should look into it, if you haven’t heard of it. It helps people with disabilities get work.
Since Schedule A, employees start new roles with a two-year probation period instead of a one-year, many disabled workers were caught up in these mass firings in their probationary periods. And many of them had, in their discharge papers, that they didn’t do a good job. But that wasn’t true.
That wasn’t true. So we sued them. We went to court. I believe in Schedule A, I believe it levels the playing field to give people with disabilities a fair shot at a career. And look, just because you may not be able to walk very well doesn’t mean you can’t do a computer, it doesn’t mean you can’t do the phones, doesn’t mean you can’t manage and organize a department.
Just because you don’t see well doesn’t mean that there’s a lot of other things you can do. And so Schedule A is trying to emphasize people’s abilities, not their disabilities. One of the reasons why disability discrimination is a prejudice is it’s not really asking the question, what can you do, it’s making an assumption that because you can’t do one thing, that you can’t do anything. And that’s wrong. We got to stand against that.
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That’s why it is a prejudice. It is unfair. And so we went to court, and we used the law to move forward. And so we are taking them to court, and we are fighting on this. And we’re asking the court to reinstate every unlawfully fired employee. And I think as of tonight, the court– of last night, the court did grant our motion to reinstate a lot of federal workers. Now, on the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion, I see I got five minutes left to go. Friends, there is nothing illegal about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
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It is against the law under the 1964 Civil Rights Act to tell somebody that they cannot have a promotion, they cannot have a job, they cannot have opportunity because of their race, because of their disability, because of their sex, because of their national origin. That’s discrimination.
Jim Crow. That’s discrimination. Having a program that says, we’re going to create a welcoming, inclusive workplace in which no one will be discriminated, but everybody will be encouraged to reach their full potential is not discrimination. And it is wrong to say that it is. And I’m telling you that I am absolutely opposed to that wrong interpretation.
And so let me just walk through it for a second. What’s the opposite– I need audience participation. What’s the opposite of diversity? Homogeneity. Just one group of people gets to participate. If you don’t like diversity, then you’re saying, no. Not diversity, just one. Which one? And if you don’t like equity, then are you for inequity? If you don’t like inclusion, what are you for?
AUDIENCE: Exclusion.
KEITH ELLISON: Exclusion. So I’m for diversity, equity, inclusion. And I suppose those guys over there are for singularity, homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion. And the problem is some of our leaders in our society don’t have the guts to stand up and say that the administration is wrong about this. And they obey in advance. And I don’t want us to obey in advance. So that’s why he got sued on this one, too. And there is an injunction against him.
And so we’re fighting that, and we’re also putting out guidance on DEI. Please don’t quit. Don’t let anybody tell you the lie that somehow white males are not a part of DEI. They are. Anybody with a disability. Anybody who lives in a rural community. Anybody who’s a veteran. Anybody who has a story to tell and has a barrier to their full participation is a part of DEI. And so don’t let anybody bully you out of believing that.
AUDIENCE: Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t vote either.
KEITH ELLISON: That’s right. You can vote for sure. And you need to vote. So let me just tell you this. My office is prepared to stand up with you, to stand up for our country, to stand up for a multicultural, multiracial, multi ability democracy, where everybody gets to be a part of it.
We’re not in favor of a country where opportunity is limited based on what sex you are, what race you are, what ability level you may or may not have. We believe in an inclusive society. And friends, we got to fight for it.
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And so I just want to say that I’m very proud to be here with you. I’m so proud that you and I, we just had a little discussion about how we’re going to work together to make sure that people with disabilities have rights, are included, and can reach the full measure of their ability and happiness. And so with that, I’m going to thank you for listening to me and see you soon. Bye-bye.
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QUINN: All right. Always wonderful to hear from the attorney general. And I loved how he said, how it emphasizes abilities and not disabilities. I liked how he framed that. And I know when I was meeting with him a month or so ago, we were doing a press conference, and he invited us into his office ahead of time.
And he was saying, one of the reasons why he decided to not run again for Congress, but run for the attorney general of the state, is because he was meeting people from around the state who were having different issues, one of those being Nicole Smith-Holt with her son not having access to insulin, but other advocates who had approached him.
And he realized that he could be very– I’m trying to remember this, Keith, but you had said, like meeting Nicole Smith-Holt and meeting others, you felt very inspired to run to be the attorney general because he wanted to be the people’s attorney. And he wanted to be able to be boots on the ground in this state and make sure that laws not only are being enacted, but implemented. So we’re so grateful for him and for his leadership in this state.