A Minnesota veteran who found work at the Veterans Benefits Administration after suffering two traumatic brain injuries on overseas deployments stood in front of hundreds of people and five Democratic state attorneys general on Thursday night and recalled the moment she learned she lost her job.
The story was one of many shared by former federal workers and others impacted by the Trump administration’s policies during a town hall in St Paul, Minnesota, on Thursday, part of a national tour that has offered an avenue for grievances against Donald Trump’s first two months, but also a way to gather evidence for ongoing lawsuits, totaling about 10 so far, that Democratic attorneys general have filed against the Trump administration.
The community impact hearings, as they’re calling them, kicked off in Arizona earlier this month and will continue in Oregon, Colorado, Vermont and New York, the attorneys general said. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Kris Mayes of Arizona, Letitia James of New York, Matthew Platkin of New Jersey and Kwame Raoul of Illinois attended the event in Minnesota on Thursday, where the crowd filled a high school auditorium and spilled into an overflow room.
Attendees were given the opportunity to take the mic and share their stories.
After several probationary employees shared their stories, Arizona’s Mayes cut in to ask whether the Trump administration or their agencies had reached out to rehire them. The Democratic attorneys general secured a win in a lawsuit over these firings, and a judge ruled they needed to be reinstated. If that wasn’t happening, Mayes said, they needed to know.
“We can bring a motion to enforce,” Ellison explained. “We can bring, perhaps, a motion for contempt. There’s a lot of things. But if we don’t know that, we certainly can’t do anything.”
Posted by John3262005
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>After two hours of testimony a Minnesota activist stood up and shared their vision of the way forward: “The first step of that call to action is just to get fucking angry, man.”
This man/women gets it.