Dem
47
GOP
53
When we split the initial item in this series into two parts, we obviously had no idea that it would take on a life of its own. It's going to go to at least 16 parts at this point, and the over/under is probably something like 20. We mention this because if we had known, we would have chosen a slightly different title.
Why? Well, consider this message from reader J.S. in Minneapolis, who wrote in to warn us that Liam Ramos was actually grabbed in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights, and not in the city proper. J.S. regretted being "nitpicky," but explained:
The reason I think it's relevant enough to at least send a message is this: A lot of the smaller, poorer suburbs, Columbia Heights included, are struggling in ways that are less visible in the media. ICE was all over Columbia Heights on Monday, wreaking havoc. Columbia Heights schools were closed because someone called in bomb threats to Liam's and area schools.
The smaller-sized school and smaller district also drives home the point about the disproportionate targeting even further—ICE is clearly targeting our Ecuadorian neighbors in Columbia Heights. This is also where ICE tried to break into the Ecuadorian consulate.
We are not well-versed in the nuances of Minnesota geography, of course. But we do know enough to know that while Minneapolis is the epicenter of all of this, St. Paul is getting hit, too, as are the suburbs of those cities, as are many other parts of the North Star State. So, if when we started this series, we knew what we know now, the headline would be "Minnesota Is Apparently the Hill that The White House Wants to Die On." We're kind of stuck now, but please do regard "Minneapolis" as a metonym for "Minnesota" going forward.
And that brings us to what we want to do with today's entry. We've got reader reports from Minnesota, many of them, and we wanted to share just a few for now. Away we go:
A.F. in Minneapolis, MN, writes: I live about a mile away from 38th and Chicago/George Floyd Square, and a mile and a half from where Renee Good was killed. In 2020, in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, I watched helicopters pull huge buckets of water from a nearby lake to be dumped on burning businesses on Lake Street because fire trucks couldn't get to them. The fires, the looting, the protests; this is the image that much of America has of Minneapolis.
Less well known is just how much middle and upper-class housing and how many high-end neighborhoods there are in the city. The wealthy are not confined to second- or third-ring suburbs.
Because Minneapolis is a smaller city, an affluent neighborhood can be three blocks from a commercial corridor or a half mile from a more embattled neighborhood. This means that everyone shops together, goes to school together, and plays on the same beaches and playgrounds together. Somali-American women wearing hijabs hike through northern Minnesota trails and walk around Minneapolis lakes. They do the same things other Minneapolitans do. It's just not that weird. What is weird—sociopathic, really—is the way they are being treated by our federal government.
By now, readers have likely seen video after video of the disgusting, horrible, and often illegal treatment of immigrants as well as U.S. citizens. But the videos don't show what else happens in a place enduring this type of trauma. Where there aren't whistles and honking and federally-approved violence, there is silence. Businesses are closing, some temporarily, some permanently, streets are emptier, and schools have moved online/hybrid so students can learn from home.
Here are my suggestions for ways to help Minneapolis, some already noted by others:
- Call, write, email your politicians. Ask your governor to support/stand with ours.
- Donate to legal aid, schools, and other supportive organizations. This is a pretty good list.
- Believe that as bad as it looks online, it's worse to live it.
- Protest in any way you can. Big protests, small protests. Protest!
Also, a couple of points of note. Jesse Ventura was mayor of Brooklyn Park, MN, prior to running for governor of Minnesota. His Lieutenant Governor was Mae Schunk, a former teacher. So even when Minnesota makes unconventional political choices, we still expect our (celebrity) politicians to know something about how to govern. Also, the 2016 Minnesota Republican presidential caucuses were won by Marco Rubio. We were the only state to place him first. This might be yet another reason Minnesota gets under Donald Trump's rather thin skin.
C.C. in Saint Paul, MN, writes: I've had friends and family text me to tell me they're thinking of me and asking if it is as bad here as it seems on the news. Yes.
My home is under attack by my own government. It's overrun with ICE, who are terrorizing children! St. Paul Public Schools is offering a virtual option to scared parents.
The federal government is also making moves to stop Medicaid funding, attacking Minnesota's most vulnerable people.
And for what? Because Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) called Trump weird?
Minnesotans are coming together to support our neighbors. Would you mind sharing this with your readers? It's a list of ways to donate and to help.
Thank you.
Anonymous in Minneapolis, MN, writes: I live within a few miles of where Renee Good was murdered.
Someone I know has three friends who've been taken with no idea if they'll be released anytime soon, or even where they are. He has stopped doing rideshares and deliveries on weekends even though his family needs the money. Meanwhile his wife stays in the house, doesn't answer the door, and his kids can't go outside. He puts his hood up and gets to his car as fast as he can, drives straight to work and back, nothing else.
Someone else I know, a guy with several degrees who works as a mental health professional and also has a young family, is now carrying a copy of his (American) passport with him, looking over his shoulder and fearing for his (American) children.
There is little traffic during the rush hour commute; it's like a COVID ghost town again on I-35W. School is being canceled. Restaurants and businesses are closing abruptly. I work in the building materials industry, and the buzz for 2026 is really grim. If this keeps up, there will be no crews to do the work. If we get a big hailstorm this summer, the Twin Cities are going to have a lot of leaking roofs left un-repaired. All the sales and production and warehousing and distribution jobs that go with that are going to dry up too. In other words, our economy is being damaged by the party of fiscal responsibility.
ICE agents are abducting people out of their cars and leaving the abandoned vehicles in the middle of the road. They took a teenager working his shift at Target and threw him in their vehicle, drove up the road and realized he was a citizen, then dumped him out in the Walmart parking lot and took off. Meanwhile, they violently arrested a guy wearing a giraffe suit because he was making fun of them. Yes, this really happened. It would be hilarious if it weren't so horrific. They are deliberately doing all of this trying to get a rise out of us so that they can escalate. Their mission here under the guise of "keeping America safe" is a lie.
The current regime is telling America that all of this is justified, legal, even that it should be celebrated. It's cruel, it's violent, it's abhorrent, it's arbitrary, and it's sad. Quite frankly, the fact that a sizable portion of America thinks their fellow Americans somehow deserve this makes me physically sick to my stomach. "News" outlets still reporting the administration's absurd and blatant lies should be shamed. Real people are suffering, and since the people in power and the media don't seem to care, we need other real people to hear our stories and put more pressure on them to stop this insanity.
I don't know how we heal the nation after this, but for now I'll say to all the masked cowards perpetrating this awful violence on our city: May you go home safely to your families soon. Or better yet, my favorite Minnesotan version as seen on a highway overpass this morning: GTFO DONCHA KNOW!!!
T.C. in Saint Paul, MN, writes: It is hard to describe what it is like to live in the Twin Cities right now. ICE was spotted one block away from my daughter's school and they kept the children inside all day to keep them safe. Children in her class share that they are terrified to walk down the street because they are brown. These are U.S. citizens. We were enjoying a simple breakfast Sunday morning only to learn that ICE officers were staying at a hotel on the same block. So on the way back to our car, I instructed my daughter to stay within 6 inches of me at all times. My friend and I are noticing weird lags in cellular communication. We don't know what is safe. Can we go for a walk to the playground near our house?
Is this what the "land of the free and home of the brave" is supposed to be like? Remember when W. established DHS after 9/11 and the left was worried that an agency of that size and scope could be used nefariously against its own citizens? We were correct to be worried.
And, to round it out, one letter about the mess in Maine:
E.H. in South Burlington, VT, writes: I just received this from a friend in Maine who got this from her friend:
Today in Maine, just like yesterday and just like the day before, ICE detained anyone too brown for their liking. They pulled people over, smashed their windows, dragged them out of their cars and left the cars empty and running on the side of the road. They staked out bus stops. They staked out businesses. They staked out apartment complexes.
Today, those abducted by ICE included an engineer, living and working here legally. A business owner and father, living and working here legally. A Cumberland County Sheriff's department recruit, living and working here legally. In the comment section of the news conference at which the Sheriff explained in painstaking detail the legal vetting a recruit undergoes, proving beyond measure that the recruit was here legally, people wondered, "How did an illegal get hired by the Sheriff's department?"
Today I heard from a hospital chaplain colleague that the hospital at which they work had close to 50% of its staff call out in some departments because people are too terrified to go to work. Neighbors are transporting children to school because parents are afraid to leave the house. People are running out of food because they can't safely go shop. These are people that we love. These are people that love each other. These are people who love, or at least loved, Maine.
Today, like yesterday and the day before, MaineX agitated its followers towards violence by spewing lies about our immigrant neighbors that are too absurd to be believed but are believed anyway because there have always been people in this country who enjoy seeing others hurting and will grab hold of whatever excuse allows them to continue to do so without shame.
There are no words to describe the rage I feel.
It would have burned me to ash by now if I hadn't also seen today, like yesterday and the day before, the kind of incandescent love and fierce solidarity that I would describe as holy, or feel the weaving of beloved community not fraying but rather pulling tighter under this onslaught.
The kind of repressive, race-based, state-sanctioned violence our community is experiencing right now is in the blood and bones of this country. But so is the irrepressible love that is flaring up in response, calling us towards one another and the promise of the world we can still choose to create for all of us.
May we always choose that love.
As a reminder, we had a long list of reader ideas for how to help the people of Minnesota. We are, of course, happy to share the recommendations above once again.
The overall theme of this series is that the situation in Minnesota (and Maine, and elsewhere) will be somewhere between "very bad" and "utterly disastrous" for the Trump administration and the Republican Party. After all, we are a site about politics, so of course that's our lens. However, in general, we have been thinking about dynamics on the national level. The purpose of these letters, and of today's entry, is to remind readers that this will also have a major impact on the local level, in those places that have been attacked.
Minnesota has some key races this year; one for governor, one for the U.S. Senate. It has one R+6 district held by a Republican (MN-01; Brad Finstad), and one R+7 district held by a Republican (MN-08; Pete Stauber). Maine has a governor's race and a U.S. Senate race as well. Under normal circumstances, the blue team would probably be slight favorites in the two governor's races and the Minnesota Senate race, a slight underdog in the Maine Senate race, and a longshot in those two House races. But then consider the fundamentals of this year's election (e.g., unpopular president, midterm election). And after that, think about the letters above.
There's no way to run the numbers at this point, because there's little polling. However, we'd guess that the invasions of Minnesota and Maine probably move each of these offices a notch or two leftward on the Solid-D-to-Solid-R scales that sites like the Cook Political Report use. To spell it out more fully, our guess is that both governorships are now Solid D, and so is the Minnesota Senate race. The Maine Senate race is probably Leans D now, and might even be Likely D, and the two House races are close to "Toss Up" status. There's also a chance that the effect spills over to neighboring states, helping the Democrats in the governor's races in Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire, the Senate races in Michigan and New Hampshire, and perhaps a few House races (like the R+3 MI-04 and MI-10).
Tip O'Neill famously observed that "All politics is local." That doesn't always hold these days, but the odds are good that the voters of Minnesota and several other states are about to show us that it does still apply sometimes. (Z)