On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) stated that he believes the Trump administration is trying to restore Jim Crow and the fact that “they’re combing through statutes to find anything that they can complain about” is an indication of this.

Ellison stated, “I believe that some of this stuff is about the restoration of Jim Crow. Now, I don’t want to sound alarmist. But when they’re attacking — when they’re taking the picture of Jackie Robinson off the walls, when we have to fight to get it back up there, when they’re attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion at every turn, when they’re combing through statutes to find anything that they can complain about, when they’re rescinding consent decrees regarding police accountability issues, it seems to me that there’s a bigger, deeper, wider agenda. And I think it’s the restoration of a pre-1954 America. That’s what I think they’re aiming for. We can’t look at this thing strictly in terms of 2025. We’ve got to look at it in terms of where are they going with this, where are they headed with this?”

He continued, “And you look at a case like 303 Creative, which you know well, I would argue that there’s already Jim Crow for gay people in America. They already can overtly say, we don’t serve your kind. And I think they’d like to do it to a much wider group. And I think that’s where they’re headed. And we’re not going to let them — we’re not going to let it go there. We’re not going back.”

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