Ron Schutz Calls Ellison’s Trump Lawsuits Theater, Accidentally Books the Season

ST. PAUL — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s campaign announced Monday that, in response to Republican challenger Ron Schutz calling his lawsuits against President Trump “theater,” every future legal filing will now open with a darkened auditorium, a single cello note and a program note explaining which portion of Minnesota is about to get financially harmed.

The first production, The State of Minnesota v. Whatever This Is Now, concerns federal actions that Ellison says have endangered state funding, consumer protections, health coverage and the basic constitutional principle that a president cannot keep pressing buttons until a governor calls customer service. Ellison has filed more than 73 lawsuits against the Trump administration, and his campaign says those cases have kept $7.3 billion flowing into Minnesota.

“Mr. Schutz says it’s theater,” said a fictional Ellison campaign spokesperson, standing before an enormous velvet curtain with the seal of Minnesota embroidered on it for reasons no public agency could explain. “Fine. Then this is a tragedy about a state that keeps discovering the antagonist has access to the federal budget.”

Schutz’s campaign, caught slightly off guard by having its insult treated as a grant application, hired a theater critic to review the lawsuits before voters see them. The critic, who declined to identify himself but wore a scarf indoors with unmistakable authority, gave Ellison’s challenge to Medicaid cuts two stars out of four.

“The stakes are undeniably real,” the critic wrote. “But the plaintiff spends too much time arguing that people should retain health coverage and not enough time undergoing a morally ambiguous transformation in Act Two. Also, the tariff litigation has become repetitive. We understand: prices go up. Perhaps give the soybean farmer a secret.”

The criticism immediately created a new problem for Schutz. His own attacks on Ellison’s fraud record were judged to have “strong source material but an overreliance on procedural vocabulary,” with one focus group reporting that it could not tell whether “stay of adjudication” was a legal outcome or the name of a Scandinavian prestige detective series.

Ellison, who has highlighted more than 350 Medicaid fraud convictions and related cases as evidence of his record, seized on the review. At a fictional campaign rehearsal, he entered from stage left carrying a stack of case files, paused beneath a spotlight and delivered the line, “A consequence is still a consequence,” with such restraint that several consultants briefly forgot they were supposed to be polling it.

Schutz responded by insisting that voters did not elect an attorney general to mount expensive productions every time Washington does something legally questionable. “Minnesotans deserve an office that knows the difference between enforcing the law and accepting a standing ovation,” a fictional Schutz adviser said, before pausing for what witnesses agreed was an extremely well-timed standing ovation.

By afternoon, both campaigns had accepted the unavoidable logic of the new format. Ellison’s consumer-protection cases were moved into a matinee slot for seniors and anyone who has ever tried to repair a John Deere tractor. The lawsuit over insulin pricing was reclassified as a one-person drama in which a prescription bottle delivers a monologue about market concentration. A challenge involving education funding received a content warning for scenes of federal paperwork being described as “temporary.”

Then the outside money arrived.

With millions in PAC spending already pouring into the race, donors demanded a more premium experience. A super PAC opposing Ellison commissioned a minimalist revival in which a lawyer stands silently beside an empty lectern for 90 minutes, representing “the taxpayer’s unanswered question.” An allied group answered with an experimental piece called Seven Point Three Billion Reasons You’re Suddenly Very Interested in Production Costs, performed entirely in the lobby so no one could accuse it of being theater.

The race’s final debate has now been retitled a “post-show discussion,” where moderators will ask whether a lawsuit can be both legally necessary and annoying enough to make someone run against it. Candidates will be permitted one closing statement, one rebuttal and, under Minnesota election rules that absolutely do not exist, one devastating review from a man who believes every constitutional crisis needs tighter lighting.

At press time, the critic had upgraded Ellison’s Trump litigation after learning it had already saved Minnesota billions, calling it “a crowd-pleaser with alarming relevance,” then immediately complained that the audience had started mistaking the plot for their lives.