Virtual File - Item

Text: December 5, 2025

Dear Republican Colleagues,

We write to you today not as partisans, but as fellow Minnesotans and as elected officials who share a solemn responsibility to safeguard the dignity, safety, and wellbeing of every person in our state.

This week, the standard bearer of your party, President Donald Trump, called Somali people living in Minnesota--and our colleague in Congress, Representative Ilhan Omar--"garbage." These are not mere political attacks. They are dehumanizing slurs targeting an entire community of Minnesotans: our neighbors, coworkers, constituents, and friends.

Minnesota has already known--firsthand--the tragic consequences that can follow when people in positions of power use rhetoric that paints human beings as lesser, dangerous, or disposable. Our state continues to grieve the horrific loss of Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attempted murders of Senator John Hoffman, his wife Yvette, and their daughter Hope--attacks perpetrated by an individual who had been incited and radicalized by the very kind of hatred and dehumanization we are witnessing again today.

We cannot look away from the evidence.

Dehumanization is not abstract. It is a precursor to violence.

Research consistently demonstrates that:
• It erodes moral inhibitions, lowering the barriers that normally keep people from harming one another.
• It increases aggression, fueling harassment, bullying, sexual violence, and justification for violent action.
• It legitimizes atrocities, playing a core role in genocides and mass violence--from Rwanda to the Holocaust--where groups were cast as pests, threats, or sub-human.
• It harms mental health, causing profound psychological distress, anger, sadness, disconnection, and exclusion.
• It reinforces social hierarchies, deepening inequities and making reconciliation and social cohesion more difficult.
• It fuels cycles of marginalization, damaging communities and corroding the shared bonds that hold a society together.

When leaders use language that strips people of humanity, it signals to others that violence is acceptable--or even righteous. We have already seen what happens when that signal is received. We cannot allow it to happen again.

This moment demands moral clarity. As Mahatma Gandhi reminded us, "Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly." And as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned, "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people."

Every elected official has a duty to reject rhetoric that endangers our constituents. We ask--respectfully but urgently--that each of you publicly repudiate President Trump's hateful and racist statements.

Not for us. Not for our respective parties or political standing. But for the Somali Minnesotans who deserve to feel safe. For our democracy. For the integrity of public service. For the future of our state.

Minnesota needs leaders who will stand up not only to violence itself, but to the conditions that make violence possible. Silence in the face of dehumanization is not neutrality--it is complicity.

We hope you will join us in sending a different message: one of courage, decency, and our shared commitment to ensuring that every Minnesotan--every single one--is treated with the dignity and humanity they deserve.

As Robert F. Kennedy said, "Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope."

Let us send that ripple together.

Sincerely,
Minnesota DFL State Senators

Majority Leader Erin Murphy, Senate District 64
Senator Zaynab Mohamed, Senate District 63
Senator Omar Fateh, Senate District 62
Senator Scott Dibble, Senate District 61
Senator Liz Boldon, District 25
Senator Jim Carlson, Senate District 52
Senator Steve Cwodzinski, Senate District 49
Senator Bobby Joe Champion, Senate District 59
Senator Doron Clark, Senate District 60
Senator Nick Frentz, Senate District 18
Senator Heather Gustafson, Senate District 36
Senator Grant Hauschild, Senate District 3
Senator Foung Hawj, Senate District 67
Senator Ron Latz, Senate District 46
Senator Amanda Hemmingsen-Jaeger, Senate District 47
Senator Matt Klein, Senate District 53
Senator Ann Johnson-Stewart, Senate District 45
Senator Mary Kunesh, Senate District 39
Senator Rob Kupec, Senate District 4
Senator Alice Mann, Senate District 50
Senator John Marty, Senate District 40
Senator Erin Maye Quade, Senate District 56
Senator Jen McEwen, Senate District 8
Senator Clare Oumou Verbeten, Senate District 66
Senator Sandra Pappas, Senate District 65
Senator Susan Pha, Senate District 38
Senator Lindsey Port, Senate District 55
Senator Aric Putnam, Senate District 14
Senator Ann Rest, Senate District 43
Senator Judy Seeberger, Senate District 41
Senator Bonnie Westlin, Senate District 42
Senator Melissa Wiklund, Senate District 51
Senator Tou Xiong, Senate District 44