# Letter to Secretary Pete Hegseth, Department of Defense --- MTN Minneapolis, Minnesota [email protected] May 13, 2026 The Honorable Pete Hegseth Secretary of Defense U.S. Department of Defense 1400 Defense Pentagon Arlington, VA 20301 **Re: DoD Civilian Hiring and Personnel Screening Exposure to the Minnesota §43A.191 Architecture and the University of Minnesota MMPI Monopoly — Coordination Request Under the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud (E.O. of March 16, 2026)** Dear Secretary Hegseth: I write to identify two Department of Defense portfolio items — civilian hiring under federal affirmative-action frameworks that mirror Minnesota Statute §43A.191, and personnel screening conducted using the University of Minnesota-owned Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) — as operational consequences of one institutional architecture currently the subject of a Department of Justice federal complaint. The Task Force to Eliminate Fraud chaired by Vice President Vance has consolidating authority over the coordinated federal response. **The Portfolio Issue.** The Department of Defense maintains a $24 billion-plus annual contracting and operational footprint in Minnesota (Northrop Grumman, BAE, Honeywell, Polaris Industries among the primes). DoD civilian hiring operates under affirmative-action frameworks that, in their state-level form, are codified at Minnesota Statute §43A.191 — the statute currently under federal Title VII challenge in United States v. State of Minnesota, 0:25-cv-03798 (D. Minn., filed Jan. 14, 2026). DoD also relies on personnel screening using the MMPI, a psychological assessment owned by the University of Minnesota and licensed commercially through Pearson Assessments. The MMPI is used across DoD components and is the predominant law-enforcement personnel screen in all fifty states. https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1415681/dl | https://mmpi.umn.edu/ **The University of Minnesota Origin (Hiring Architecture).** Minnesota Statute §43A.191 codifies the consent decree from Rajender v. University of Minnesota (D. Minn. 1980), in which the University was found liable for sex-based hiring discrimination and entered into a permanent compliance regime. Judge Miles W. Lord, who entered the consent decree, was a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School (1948). The University's Office for Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action (EOAA), founded 1972, produced the institutional plan that was accepted by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1976 and **distributed to 111 institutions as the federal template** for contractor compliance. Every federal affirmative-action enforcement framework — including those administered by OFCCP under DoD prime contracts — operates on architecture whose template was UMN-developed. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/43A.191 | https://eoaa.umn.edu/ **The University of Minnesota Origin (Personnel Screening).** The MMPI was developed at the University of Minnesota Hospital in the late 1930s by Starke Hathaway and J.C. McKinley. The instrument is owned by the University of Minnesota and licensed commercially through Pearson Assessments. The scoring keys, item content, and norm-reference data are proprietary. Independent verification of the test's clinical validity is therefore structurally constrained: the entity that would need to be audited owns the audit-relevant data. The MMPI is the predominant psychological screen used in U.S. law-enforcement personnel selection and is in active use across multiple DoD components for civilian and military applicant screening. https://mmpi.umn.edu/sites/mmpi.umn.edu/files/2022-05/personnel_screening_references_with_the_mmpi_0.pdf | https://www.pearsonassessments.com/store/usassessments/en/Store/Professional-Assessments/Personality-%26-Biopsychosocial/Minnesota-Multiphasic-Personality-Inventory-3/p/100001977.html **The Institutional Admissions.** The University of Minnesota's own commissioned Truth Report (April 11, 2023) states that the founding board "committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples for financial gain." In October 2025, the University signed an Office for Civil Rights Resolution Agreement acknowledging that its PhD Project partnership violated Title VI by discriminating against white and Asian students. The institution that licenses your personnel-screening instrument and templated the affirmative-action enforcement framework you contract under has confessed in its own commissioned reports to both foundational fraud and contemporary discrimination. https://mn.gov/indian-affairs/assets/full-report_tcm1193-572488.pdf | https://www.startribune.com/the-u-signs-agreement-acknowledging-discrimination-against-white-and-asian-students-cuts-ties-with-recruiting-nonprofit/601564669 **The Consolidated Federal Posture.** The Department of Justice has filed the §43A.191 challenge under a Certificate of General Public Importance, opening the route to expedited three-judge-panel review and direct Supreme Court appeal. The Department of Education and HHS have referred Minnesota to DOJ for Title IX non-compliance (Jan. 26, 2026). The House Oversight Committee report (March 4, 2026) documents approximately $9 billion in Minnesota Medicaid fraud across fourteen-plus programs. The Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is the executive-branch coordinator for the consolidated response. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/establishing-the-task-force-to-eliminate-fraud/ **The Ask.** I respectfully request that the Department of Defense: 1. Review the application of §43A.191-derivative affirmative-action language in DoD civilian hiring under DoD prime contracts in Minnesota, in light of the pending DOJ Title VII challenge and the University of Minnesota's October 2025 Title VI Resolution Agreement; 2. Audit current DoD reliance on the MMPI for civilian and military personnel screening, with particular attention to the proprietary structure that prevents independent verification of the instrument's clinical validity, and assess whether alternative or supplemental screening tools are warranted; and 3. Coordinate findings with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud so that DoD's portfolio is incorporated into the cross-agency federal posture under the March 16, 2026 Executive Order. This letter is one of approximately twenty Cabinet-level briefings I am submitting under the Task Force framework, each identifying a single departmental portfolio item that traces operationally to the same University of Minnesota institutional architecture. Respectfully submitted, MTN [email protected] --- **Primary Sources Cited:** - E.O. Establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud (March 16, 2026): https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/establishing-the-task-force-to-eliminate-fraud/ - US v. State of Minnesota Complaint: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1415681/dl - Minn. Stat. §43A.191: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/43A.191 - UMN EOAA: https://eoaa.umn.edu/ - MMPI program site: https://mmpi.umn.edu/ - MMPI law-enforcement screening references: https://mmpi.umn.edu/sites/mmpi.umn.edu/files/2022-05/personnel_screening_references_with_the_mmpi_0.pdf - Pearson Assessments MMPI-3: https://www.pearsonassessments.com/store/usassessments/en/Store/Professional-Assessments/Personality-%26-Biopsychosocial/Minnesota-Multiphasic-Personality-Inventory-3/p/100001977.html - UMN TRUTH Report: https://mn.gov/indian-affairs/assets/full-report_tcm1193-572488.pdf - UMN OCR Resolution Agreement: https://www.startribune.com/the-u-signs-agreement-acknowledging-discrimination-against-white-and-asian-students-cuts-ties-with-recruiting-nonprofit/601564669 - House Oversight: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/The-Cost-of-Doing-Nothing_How-Tim-Walz-and-Keith-Ellison-Fueled-Minnesotas-Fraud-Explosion_3.4.26_FINAL.pdf #Addresses_Advisories_and_Archives