From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By James V. F. Dickey and Ivan London

The Trump administration is suing Michigan and Hawaii over their stated plans to sue energy companies for alleged climate change harms. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison should watch out because he’s probably next.

Minnesota’s lawsuit against energy producers is a naked attempt to reshape national energy policy that will have global repercussions for costs. In other words, bad decisions by Minnesota courts will skyrocket prices for consumers everywhere, which is explicitly against the Trump administration’s energy policies.

Ellison’s lawsuit claims that energy production that results in burning gasoline and natural gas has caused global climate change. Yet Ellison’s beef with the companies isn’t about harm from climate change but what energy producers supposedly have said or not said to the public about the energy they produce for our nation. He also faults these companies for having funded research by organizations that disagreed with the State’s view of the climate science.

It’s part of a larger coordinated effort to use litigation to lay the groundwork for an economy-wide green energy transition and to secure additional income for state budgets. Democratic prosecutors in nine states, more than a dozen cities and counties, and Washington, D.C. have brought similar cases using the same playbook to try to keep the deliberations in state courts. In Puerto Rico, “similar” turned out to be identical, as Judge Aida Delgado-Colon discovered when large blocks of text in a complaint filed on behalf of San Juan matched word-for-word a different lawsuit by 16 Puerto Rican municipalities the year before.

Climate activists found Ellison a willing partner for persecuting energy companies when they sold him on the idea of getting millions of dollars a year for Minnesota by securing a settlement like the tobacco master settlement agreement but with energy companies as the target.

Attorney General Ellison has admitted that Minnesota’s special assistant attorneys general were paid for by the New York University School of Law’s climate-alarmist group, the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center. The purpose of that funding is to advance “progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal positions,” said then-executive director David J. Hayes. If this troubles you, you’re on to something: just imagine the reaction if an immigration-hawk group paid staffers’ salaries at the Minnesota attorney general’s office to coordinate deportations with ICE.

Minnesota’s demand in the lawsuit is mind-boggling: a gag order on energy producers’ speech, a forced “public education campaign” about supposed climate change myths, and an order for the energy companies “to disgorge all profits” because of their speech. The last bit is the kicker: Minnesota’s case is really just a virtue-signaling cash grab dressed in legalese.

If the case continues, Minnesotans will reap the whirlwind sown by their attorney general in the form of unreliable sources of energy, a crippled economy and astronomically high prices for travel and home-heating. Every state in the union would reel from this economic disaster’s ripple effect, which is why 19 states asked the Supreme Court this year to halt these lawsuits by Minnesota and four other states.

Minnesota should not try to set the entire country’s climate policy. Only Congress—where Minnesota and other states have elected representatives representing their interests—can do that. Minnesota’s appellate courts should end this charade—though they have so far balked.

Lawsuits like this one have already been rejected by courts in Maryland, New York, and New Jersey and partially dismissed in Delaware. For the sake of every American, Minnesota judges must follow suit and let federal courts litigate the issues that affect the entire nation. If they don’t, they should expect the Trump administration to come knocking.

James V. F. Dickey is managing attorney for the Upper Midwest Law Center and Ivan London is a senior attorney at the Mountain States Legal Foundation.

MxM News

Quick Hit:

Anna Paulina Luna on Wednesday introduced legislation to repeal the PATRIOT Act, accusing the intelligence community of exploiting national security powers to build a sprawling, unaccountable surveillance apparatus.

Key Details:

• Luna’s bill aims to completely repeal the PATRIOT Act, which was passed after 9/11 and dramatically expanded federal surveillance powers.

• Civil liberties advocates like Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice say the law enabled warrantless data collection on Americans without suspicion of wrongdoing, a practice that has proven ineffective and even counterproductive in fighting terrorism.

• House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan said Congress “needs to make sure we win this time” after privacy-focused lawmakers nearly passed a 2024 amendment requiring warrants for surveillance of Americans under Section 702 of FISA.

BREAKING: Today, I introduced the “American Privacy Restoration Act” to FULLY REPEAL the Patriot Act and strip rogue intelligence officers of their extraordinary mass surveillance powers.

Since the passage of the USA Patriot Act in the aftermath of 9/11, intelligence agency… pic.twitter.com/BeRDoQ442R

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) May 7, 2025

Diving Deeper:

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna introduced legislation Wednesday to fully repeal the PATRIOT Act, a post-9/11 surveillance law she says has enabled unelected bureaucrats to violate Americans’ constitutional rights under the guise of national security. In a statement, Luna said the law helped to “create the most sophisticated, unaccountable surveillance apparatus in the Western world.”

Luna’s proposal comes as Congress prepares to revisit key intelligence authorities, including Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless collection of Americans’ communications if they’re in contact with foreign targets. During the 2024 reauthorization debate, privacy-minded members of Congress narrowly failed to pass a warrant requirement amendment.

Speaking to Breitbart News, Elizabeth Goitein, senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice, explained how the PATRIOT Act’s lowered legal thresholds enabled mass surveillance: “It became lawful for the government to collect an American’s sensitive information based merely on a claim that the information was ‘relevant’ to a legitimate purpose,” she wrote. She also noted that mass surveillance has shown no real national security benefit. “There is zero evidence that suspicion less surveillance has made us safer,” she said, citing failed intelligence reviews that blamed overcollection for missing signs of domestic terrorism.

Luna argues the intelligence community must be stripped of its warrantless surveillance tools altogether. “My legislation will strip the deep state of these tools and protect every American’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures,” she said. “Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is using ‘security’ as an excuse to erode your freedom.”