Gov. Tim Walz‘s (D-MN) administration approved a $100,000 contract to a left-wing group that has advocated defunding the police, documents show.
The documents, unearthed by the Daily Caller, show that Walz’s Labor And Industry Department in 2023 awarded the contract to Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha, a Minneapolis-based group. Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha, a workers-rights group that aims to “build a movement to win racial, gender and economic justice,” was awarded the state funds to “increase worker knowledge and understanding” of a new law that Walz approved, a press release shows.
Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha, also known as CTUL, reportedly has an extensive history of anti-law enforcement activism. In 2020, after the death of George Floyd, the group was a “hub of protest,” according to Dissent magazine.
In June of that year, CTUL shared a Facebook post of its organizer, Valentina McKenzie, speaking at a defund the police rally. McKenzie, the image showed, was also wearing a T-shirt that said, “#defund police.”
“We’ve protested,” another CTUL organizer reportedly said in 2020. “We fought for the police not to get higher pay, but we were ignored, and they are still killing. Now, it is to the point where everybody is so angry — I don’t think half of these stores would have been burned or touched if we weren’t so fed up.”
That Walz administration-funded CTUL could open him up to further scrutiny as he campaigns as the running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. Walz has faced criticism over his response to the 2020 riots in Minnesota, where the estimated property damage reached $500 million.
Harris, meanwhile, has her own law-and-order baggage that has alarmed Republicans.
She supported donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a bail fund that freed violent criminals, the Washington Examiner reported. Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, have donated in recent years to Legal Aid D.C., an anti-police group that pushed to make Washington, D.C., a permanent “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants, the Washington Examiner also reported.
The state of Minnesota has so far paid CTUL $43,000 of the $100,000 contract, the Daily Caller reported.
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CTUL is reportedly behind a “campaign to defund the police and reinvest those funds into other programs that actually keep communities safe, such as worker protections, additional wage theft investigators, and other social programs.”
The Washington Examiner reached out for comment to CTUL and the Harris campaign.