#Minnesota Star Tribune

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“The Mighty Red,” the title of Louise Erdrich’s rambunctious new novel, definitely refers to North Dakota’s Red River, around which much of it is set, and probably refers to a large, red-headed character named Hugo.

A central event in “Mighty Red” is the marriage of a young woman named Kismet, but will she end up with brash Gary or gentle Hugo? Most of the characters have something to say about that, including Kismet’s mom Crystal, a truck driver who hauls sugar beets and whom Erdrich— a Pulitzer Prize winner for “The Night Watchman,” National Book Award winner for “The Round House” and owner of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis — says is something of a stand-in for her.

Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa who lives in Minneapolis, has written 20 books.

Q: What came first when you were dreaming up “The Mighty Red”?

A: The first character I really thought about was Hugo. He goes back about 10 years and just kept plodding back into my notebooks with his obsessions about geology and energy and with his hapless ardor. I guess a lot of this book is about hapless ardor. Here we are, wired to mate, yet relationships are so ridiculous and awkward and, if you are lucky, magical.

The goal in my books is never to get two people together and leave them marooned, but to explore the tension and idiocy in a relationship. I mean, love. When love gets to a critical madness, people get married to reduce the madness to manageable increments of madness — like who keeps track of the vacuum cleaner attachments? Who deals with the mice? Who mislabeled the electrical box? Forget nosegays and frothed milk. Dawn dish soap becomes the thing you can’t live without. Like Kismet, you may end up making three-egg breakfasts for your husband’s family and eating your own breakfast out in the garage.

Q: Like “ The Sentence,” “The Mighty Red” is set in the recent past. Lots of “Sentence” readers were struck by your ability to evoke pandemic-era behaviors (like sanitizing the mail) that we engaged in, quit and then promptly forgot. Is it tricky to capture a past that most readers lived through?

A: You’re right. We forget the details of what we live through. This book is set in 2008-2009. The first hint I had of the mortgage crisis was running into someone I knew who was shaking and distraught over losing the house into which she’d sunk all she owned. It was devastating and it was happening everywhere.

Something like this happens to my somewhat alter-ego Crystal. There are other books about why and how this huge con game exploded, but I wanted to write about the way 2008-09 affected a few families. I thought about this a lot, how close we came to a serious economic depression, and how bad it was anyway. Part of my research was listening to the archived late night call-in shows with Art Bell, “Coast to Coast.”

Q: Which Crystal listens to, as well. Any more research?

A: Then I really lost my mind diving into how Roundup Ready seeds were developed, also at that time. I couldn’t think about anything but herbicides and pesticides. I became a known conversation killer. A lot of farming is degenerative as opposed to regenerative, and obviously that’s got to stop. Most of the farmers I know are doing their best to use few chemicals and do right by their land. They are some of the smartest people I know.

But they are running businesses. Sugar is a dirty business. However, sugar is delicious. At the end result of all those herbicides and petrochemicals and semi trucks and processing is pure, white, sparkly, granulated sugar. It is integral to our food chain now, it hits the pleasure centers in your brain like rocket fuel, and even having written this book I still love cake and ice cream.

Q: Many novels address climate crisis but I can’t recall one that makes it as easy to relate to as, for instance, the passage about the effort that goes into re-establishing prairie. Is it important to you to personalize for readers what we’ve done to our planet?

A: I wanted people to read this book, so to keep things cheerful I only sprinkled the dire stuff into the trauma of a wedding. You know — Absurd Proposal, Strange Vows, Violent Wedding Dinner, Questionable Marriage, Aftermarriage. Maybe the real bond is with the land and sky. The book is also a love letter to the Red River Valley, where I grew up. The valley along the river has changed drastically during my life and I wanted to know why. I wasn’t looking for simple answers or heroes and villains (except Hugo, hero). Nothing lines up that way.

Q: The title character of the book, or at least one of them, is a river, which you describe as “everything.” Can you talk about how living in a river valley shapes these people?

A: Are you asking whether there is a character trait that people who live along and depend on a river share? Or a lake? I don’t know — maybe love of walleye? Certain members of my family and I have been conducting a longitudinal study of who — aside from my brother Ralph — makes the best fried walleye in the Upper Midwest. We have a long way to go, but so far the Creekside Supper Club (Red Lake walleye) comes closest to the sine qua non of walleye (without which life is meaningless) on a good night at the Sky Dancer Casino (Lake Winnipeg walleye) in the Turtle Mountains. If people want to write to the Minnesota Star [Tribune] with the results of their own studies, that would be great. Just don’t contact me about this. I can’t let any extraneous information spoil the parameters of my own investigation.

Q: I can’t wait to see that striking cover in stores. I know it’s designed by your daughter, Aza Abe, who has done many of your covers. How important are covers to you, as both a writer and bookseller?

A: Covers tell the bookseller and the reader how much a publisher cares about the book. (An author usually doesn’t get much say.) I love how covers can be art that wasn’t created for the book and yet be all about the book. When I am bowled over by a new novel in manuscript, and then the final cover isn’t good enough for the book, I’m so upset.

I’m beyond lucky to have my daughter Aza Abe, a remarkable woman and tremendous artist, as the cover artist. I’m so grateful that she and I were able to start working together. Every one of her covers is stellar and says something about the book that can only be said visually. A reader should turn back and forth from the text to the cover and always find something to think about. That always happens with her images.

Take this particular cover. Aza’s image is about the origin of the Red River, where three rivers come together and flow north. The river is white because it’s sugar. The earth is deep black with gold flecks because good soil is the earth’s wealth. The letters are strong and bold because that’s the river, too.

Q: You never seem to judge your characters. Has that always been crucial to your work? Do you have other “rules” for writing?

A: A lot of being a writer is getting out of your own way. I try to simply report on what the characters are doing and thinking. If I make a judgment, it is in the voice of a character reflecting on what they’ve done. It’s not that I’m so high-minded, it’s more that it’s intrusive for a writer to make a judgment. And the reader is bound to wonder why, if you, the writer, have such a poor opinion about your character, why not just redeem them? I am opposed to redemption in a book. Maybe that’s a rule, but I break that rule if it needs breaking.

Q: What surprised you most in writing this novel?

A: The arrogant wealthy jock, Gary, surprised me. What a jackass. But then as I wrote him, I began to discover how vulnerable he was, how ridiculous, how haunted. He became my favorite character to write.

Q: Gary — and much of “The Mighty Red” itself — is really funny. Readers are going to get a bang out of these people (one line I’m thinking of is, “She loved Hugo with that superb kind of love a mother has for a male child, a love that is deeper and more pure for knowing that he’ll more than likely turn out a fool.”). Obviously, writing a novel is hard work, but was it fun to hang with these characters?

A: Yes, most days I’m lying on the floor, just wiped out, but it’s worth it on the days I’m laughing my head off.

Q:“The Mighty Red” is tough but hopeful. Do you find your way toward hope in the act of storytelling or is it in you already and that’s what pulls the story toward hope?

A: I don’t see the point of writing a book that doesn’t hold out hope. Things are getting so dire that, no matter how annoying and crazy-making we all are, we have to pull together. We need to work on a livable world. Nihilism just strikes me as lazy, and pretentious. Anyway, it’s the serious people who are leading with hope in these times.

Q: I don’t want to spoil it for readers but that last paragraph is such a knockout. What was the hardest part of “The Mighty Red” to get right? Or the easiest?

A: Chris, I’m so glad you liked the end! It was the one and only page in this whole book that was easy to write. I just wrote it down and didn’t change a word. And then I cried.

©2024 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

[from-around-the-globe]

Minneapolis Skyline from Loring Park (1954)

Photo from the Star Tribune

[subsidystadium]

Minnesota United FC had grand plans outside their new stadium in 2016. Now? Not so much

It is 2016. Local leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota were debating whether to give millions of taxpayer dollars to Minnesota United FC to help with the construction of a new soccer stadium, named Allianz Field. This included a mixed-use development around the new stadium. In 2016, the owner of Minnesota United FC showed the city council a 33-page master plan that outlined a “series of public spaces,…

[atavist]

In March 2023, Levi Axtell bludgeoned his neighbor Larry Scully to death with a shovel and a moose antler. The shocking crime has divided their small Minnesota town.

Atavist issue no. 151, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, is now live:

It didn’t take long for a substantial cohort of people in Grand Marais to elevate Levi to the status of folk hero. In their view, what he did was in service of the greater good. Brandy Aldrighetti, a sexual-abuse survivor who lived near Larry, told the Star Tribune, “To me, Levi is like St. George who slayed the dragon—he killed a monster.” Kelsey Valento, a Grand Marais resident and mother, posted an article about the murder on her Facebook page with a comment addressing Levi directly: “I stand by you for removing a horrible nasty pedophile from this community.” ... There’s another side to public opinion, and its defining feature is dismay. The Cook County News Herald published a letter from Jim Boyd, a Grand Marais resident and retired newspaper editor, that argued against vigilante justice. “Scully had not been arrested, charged, jailed, tried, or convicted of any recent crime,” Boyd wrote, referring to the fact that no one had come forward to accuse Larry of abuse since 1979. “You can’t go around killing people just because they are horrible. (The dead would be stacked up like cord wood.)” Similarly, on Facebook threads about the case that mostly lionize Levi and disparage pedophiles, an occasional voice of dissent pops up. For example: “You can’t just murder people because you ‘think’ they might do something” (Penelope Orl). And: “Child molestation is horrible and wrong. Murdering someone by butchery is also wrong” (Don Croker).

[typhlonectes]

Wolves Keep Brain Worm–Spreading Deer Away From Moose Populations in Minnesota

Wildlife managers now face the challenge of creating conservation plans for all three species while maintaining balance between predator and prey animals

In Minnesota, moose used to roam the boreal forests by the thousands. The population had 8,800 individuals in 2006, and since then, numbers in the northeastern part of the state alone have fallen by 64 percent, reports Liz Scheltens for Vox.  Warmer, shorter winters, tick infestations, liver issues, wolves, and parasites all contribute to declines in remnant Minnesota moose populations, reports Dennis Anderson for the Star Tribune. However, the biggest threat may be migrating white-tailed deer. As deer entered moose habitats, they brought brainworm, a fatal parasite to moose. While harmless to white-tailed deer, the parasite (Parelaphostrongylus tenuis) causes disorientation, extreme weakness, and the inability to stand in moose. It may be a critical factor as to why Minnesota's northern moose populations have declined significantly...

Read more:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/plummeting-minnesota-moose-populations-may-recover-with-help-from-wolves-180979484

[bobcatmoran]

So with Tim Walz, governor of my home state, as the VP nominee (and news stories about him/Minnesota coming out of the woodwork) here's some stuff that will probably be helpful to know over the next 3 months:

The Minnesota Democratic party is, due to a 1944 party merger with the local Farmer-Labor party, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, or DFL for short. Local media refers to them as such.

Speaking of local media, we have two major local newspapers: the Star Tribune out of Minneapolis (Strib for short) and the somewhat smaller Pioneer Press out of St. Paul.

Minneapolis and St. Paul are the Twin Cities. They're next to each other, but woe betide you if you mistake one for the other. Minneapolis is the larger of the two, with the more vibrant nightlife and history as a flour milling hub, while St. Paul is the state capital, home to lots of liberal arts colleges and a significant Asian-American population, mostly the Karen ethnic group from Myanmar and Hmong.

Other reputable local news sources include MinnPost (online indie news site), the Minnesota Reformer (unashamedly leftist and pro-union), and Sahan Journal (focused on stories affecting the local immigrant and minority communities). We also have Minnesota Public Radio, or MPR for short, one of the largest NPR affiliates in the nation with a pretty solid local news arm. Bring Me the News is rarely a source of breaking news, but what they do report on is solid.

Alpha News is not a reputable local news source. They're far right wing and have a *cough* casual relation with reporting on actual events.

About 1% of Minnesota's population are Somali/Somali-Americans, concentrated in Minneapolis, especially the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. They're a major target of local racism and Islamophobia, by conservative assholes. The nonsense rumor over Minnesota's new flag being based on the Somali flag (because…uh…blue? and star?) stems from that particular local brand of xenophobia.

It's "Hot Dish." "Casserole" is the name of the type of cooking utensil you make Hot Dish in.

[simply-ivanka]

A Minnesotan Sizes Up Tim Walz

During his tenure, student achievement has slipped, crime has surged, and state residents have fled.

By Scott W. Johnson - Wall Street Journal

St. Paul, Minn.

Tim Walz has such a bad record as Minnesota’s governor that I was astonished when he landed on Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist. As Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment has documented, under Mr. Walz Minnesota has become a high-crime state. Student achievement has tumbled as spending on schools has skyrocketed. Per capita gross domestic product has fallen below the national average. Minnesotans have joined residents of New York, California and Illinois in fleeing their home state.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—also on Ms. Harris’s shortlist—made sense to me. Pennsylvania is a key state. Mr. Shapiro seems to be a man of substance and would give liberal Jews a reason to vote for Ms. Harris without a guilty conscience. As a Jewish supporter of Israel, I worried that Mr. Shapiro would give the animus throbbing in the heart of the Democratic Party cover. Indeed, that animus drove a nasty intraparty campaign against him.

But Tim Walz? I’m a conservative Republican. I don’t completely understand Democrats’ ways. As an observer of Minnesota politics, however, I understand how Mr. Walz became governor. Having served six terms in Congress from a rural district, he challenged the endorsed DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) candidate—a liberal metro-area state senator, Erin Murphy—in the 2018 DFL primary. Ms. Murphy was also challenged by another metro-area liberal, Lori Swanson, then state attorney general. With Ms. Murphy and Ms. Swanson dividing the liberal urban vote, Mr. Walz and his far-left running mate, former state Rep. Peggy Flanagan, won the primary with 41%.

On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.

Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)

During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.

Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.

Among the 70 defendants charged to date, 18 have pleaded guilty. In April the first of the cases to go to trial had seven defendants; five were convicted. The remaining cases have yet to be tried. In all, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the payout of $250 million to reimburse fictitious meals. The nature and scale of the fraud are staggering. Mr. Walz tried to blame state district court judge John Guthmann, who in April 2021 handled a case regarding the department’s processing of applications for reimbursements. According to Mr. Walz, Judge Guthmann ordered the state to continue payouts to the alleged perpetrators of the fraud even after the state Education Department discovered it.

In September 2022, Judge Guthmann authorized a news release titled “Correcting media reports and statements by Gov. Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.” The release concluded: “As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

In November 2022 Mr. Walz was elected to a second term, and the DFL won majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. In the preceding two years the state had accumulated an $18 billion budget surplus. With the DFL in full control, Mr. Walz and the Legislature have spent the $18 billion surplus on infrastructure, education and other programs that will burden the state for years. They have also raised taxes.

Mr. Walz and his DFL colleagues have backed measures establishing Minnesota as a mecca for abortion and a “trans refuge.” The legislation prohibits enforcing out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants and extradition requests for people from other states who seek treatment that is legal in Minnesota. It also bars complying with court orders issued in other states to remove children from their parents’ custody for authorizing hormone treatment or surgery to alter sex characteristics.

Like so many Democrats who have kept up with the demands of the progressive agenda, Mr. Walz has “grown” in office. In his second term, he has been the most left-wing Minnesota governor since the socialist Floyd B. Olson (1931-36). I doubt that Mr. Walz could be elected to Congress in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. The idea that he can appeal to voters who don’t already support Ms. Harris seems far-fetched.

Mr. Johnson is a retired Minneapolis attorney and contributor to the site Power Line.

[trumpamerica]

Walz was only enrolled at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota until 2004 but said until 2011 that he was close to getting his doctorate

Walz Congressional Website Bio: Walz completed his master's degree in educational leadership in 2001 and is nearly finished with his doctorate at St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota. His approach to teaching has gained him recognition as the 2002 Minnesota Ethics in Education award winner, 2003 Mankato Teacher of the Year, and the 2003 Minnesota Teacher of Excellence as well as being named the Outstanding Young Nebraskan by the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce for his service in the education, military, and small business communities.

When Walz ran for Congress in 2006, roughly two years after his last recorded year in the St. Mary’s doctoral program, he portrayed himself on the campaign trail and in Congress as an active student "nearly finished" with his Ph.D. A 2006 voter guide published by the Minnesota Star Tribune indicated that Walz’s Ph.D. was "in progress."

[disease]

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 10, 1900.

[lets-steal-an-archive]

Tim Walz was an enlisted soldier in the Minnesota National Guard in 1999 and defensive coordinator of the Mankato West High School football team. A student at the school, where Walz taught geography, wanted to start a gay-straight alliance.

This was three years after the president, a Democrat, signed a law forbidding same-sex marriage. Soldiers suspected of being gay in Walz's own unit could be discharged from the military. But Walz, now Minnesota's Democratic candidate for governor, had seen the bullying some students endured and agreed to be the group's faculty adviser.

"It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married," Walz said. In other words, he would be a symbol that disparate worlds could coexist peacefully.

"Tim Walz's campaign for Minnesota governor aims to bridge the great divide" (Star Tribune, 10/13/24)

[thisisjoy]

Minnesota 2024 📷 Minnesota Star Tribune

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Henry J. Gomez, Adam Edelman, and Jonathan Allen at NBC News:

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is homing in on what advisers see as a potential liability for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: his departure two decades ago from the Army National Guard. Walz, introduced Tuesday as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, ended his 24-year military career to run for public office in 2005 — just before the unit he led deployed to Iraq.  “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, do you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him — a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with,” Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate and a Marine veteran who served in Iraq, said Wednesday at a news conference in Michigan. 

“I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re going to follow through, and then to drop out right before you actually have to go,” Vance added. The strategy, which Trump amplified Wednesday by calling Walz a “DISGRACE” in a Truth Social post, is a throwback to 2004, when Republicans attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s record as a Navy officer in Vietnam. Chris LaCivita — who served as a consultant to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that helped sink Kerry’s bid — is a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign and has signaled an eagerness to reopen the playbook on Walz. “And when his men needed him the most … as they headed into the Crucible that is combat … he deserted them … left them,” LaCivita posted Tuesday on X, shortly after Harris selected Walz to join her on the Democratic ticket. “Why? So he could run for Congress.”

In introducing Walz, 60, to a wider audience beyond Minnesota, the Harris campaign has emphasized his military record, as well as his experience as a football coach. Campaign officials frame his decision to leave the National Guard and pursue a career in politics as a path that offered him new and meaningful opportunities to help service members and veterans. “After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired Veterans Affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform — and as Vice President he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families,” Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement for this article.

[...] During Walz’s nearly quarter-century of service, he was part of flood fights, responded to tornadoes and spent months on active duty in Italy, according to the Harris campaign. Walz “was deployed to Italy in 2003 to protect against potential threats in Europe while active military forces were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in 2022, attributing the information to Walz in an article about the scrutiny of his military service. Walz and Vance are the first veterans on a national ticket for either major party since McCain was the GOP presidential nominee in 2008. Vance, 40, briefly chronicled his experiences in Iraq in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” recalling his work as a public affairs marine.

Right-wing operatives are seeking to recreate the dirty swift boat tactics against Tim Walz, who served in the National Guard for 24 years before retiring in 2005 to run for Congress.

See Also:

MMFA: Right-wing media push old debunked smear of Walz’s military record despite his 24 years of service

[the-physicality]

the whole situation is so off to me, especially since Minnesota fired their coach right before the season and Ken Klee was actually one of the options for GM

yeah

We don’t know that min fired their coach right before the season, just that he left for family reasons (which based on the option for darwitz to say she left this time could have been a cover up) (unless I missed something non speculative) Apparently that guy was darwitz' first choice.

I think it is sus that Klee was an option to gm, became coach, and will now be taking on that role in the draft

some players [coyne schofield mentioned] taking klees “side”. though at least 2 players were uninformed about any moves

Minnesota had 2 notable gm moves related to team composition- very homegrown team and the jaques tapani trade which I think [my opinion] helped jaques and helped Boston. Obviously min beat Boston (I wasn’t watching).. curious if there are thoughts that it wasn't the most competitive team for those reasons. we also know that boston was pretty beat up [several players requiring surgery!] and that their reverse sweep of toronto happened after spooner was taken out with injury.

Me purely speculating here: min went on 2 substantial slides- one without heise [this was more of a first falter bc they were undefeated for a while] and ones post worlds... people chalked that up to not having enough depth after/during potential injury but the only reason you say that is if your depth isn't producing... if your depth isn't producing is that a team composition issue [gm] or is that a line composition issue [coaching]?

to me a lot of this sounds like some interpersonal issues because if it was a fireable offense, /hopefully/ she wouldn't be offered an intraleague move. It also seemed like the league got scooped on this.. freedom of the press etc.. and that they wanted to announce the ny coach first and then a lateral move for Darwitz in a positive light .. it is interesting that it seemed to already be decided that she wouldn't be at the draft [which is happening monday] so like was she just going to not be there or ??? because it would be more sus for them to put out a press release over the weekend or hours before the draft.

minnesota star tribune

the athletic

inforum

12ft.io [to break the paywall] / increase readability

[beardedmrbean]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal authorities in Minnesota have confiscated cellphones and taken all seven defendants into custody as investigators try to determine who attempted to bribe a juror with a bag of cash containing $120,000 to get her to acquit them on charges of stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic.

The case went to the jury late Monday afternoon, after the juror, who promptly reported the attempted bribe to police, was dismissed and replaced with an alternate. The incident had further ripple effects before deliberations resumed Tuesday — when another juror was replaced after a family member asked about the the attempted bribe.

According to an FBI agent's affidavit, a woman rang the doorbell at the home of “Juror #52” in the Minneapolis suburb of Spring Lake Park late Sunday, the night before the case went to the jury. The juror wasn't home, but a relative answered the door. The woman handed the relative a gift bag with a curly ribbon and images of flowers and butterflies and said it was a “present” for the juror.

“The woman told the relative to tell Juror #52 to say not guilty tomorrow and there would be more of that present tomorrow,” the agent wrote. “After the woman left, the relative looked in the gift bag and saw it contained a substantial amount of cash.” The juror called police right after she got home and gave them the bag of cash. It held $100, $50 and $20 bills totaling around $120,000. The FBI took the bag from Spring Lake Park police on Monday morning and interviewed the juror.

The woman who left the bag knew the juror's first name, the agent said. Names of the jurors have not been made public, but the list of people who had access to it included prosecutors and defense lawyers —- and the seven defendants themselves.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel and attorneys for both sides learned about the attempted bribe Monday morning. The judge ordered all seven defendants to surrender their cellphones at the request of the government so that investigators could look for evidence. She also ordered all seven taken into custody.

“It is highly likely that someone with access to the juror's personal information was conspiring with, at a minimum, the woman who delivered the $120,000 bribe,” the FBI agent wrote, noting that the alleged fraud conspiracy at the heart of the trial involved electronic communications, including text messages and emails.

Before the case went to the jury late Monday afternoon, Brasel ordered them sequestered for deliberations. When one of them called home to say she'd been sequestered, according to KARE-TV and KSTP-TV, a family member asked, “Is it because of the bribe?” The judge replaced that juror with an alternate, too.

Anyone involved in the attempted bribe could face federal charges of bribery of a juror and influencing a juror, with a maximum potential penalty of 15 years in prison.

Minneapolis FBI spokesperson Diana Freedman said Tuesday that she could not provide information about the ongoing investigation.

According to the Star Tribune, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson told the court Monday: “This is completely beyond the pale. This is outrageous behavior. This is stuff that happens in mob movies.” Defense attorney Andrew Birrell called it “a troubling and upsetting accusation,” according to the newspaper.

The seven were the first of 70 defendants to go on trial in what federal prosecutors have called one of the largest COVID-19-related fraud cases in the country. They’ve described it as a massive scheme to exploit lax rules during the pandemic and steal from a program that was meant to provide meals to children in Minnesota.

Prosecutors have said the seven collectively stole over $40 million in a conspiracy that cost taxpayers $250 million. At the center of the alleged plot was a group called Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors say just a fraction of the money went to feed low-income kids, and that the rest was spent on luxury cars, jewelry, travel and property. Federal authorities say they have recovered about $50 million.

Eighteen other defendants have already pleaded guilty, while the rest are awaiting trial. Among them is Aimee Bock, the founder of Feeding our Future. She has maintained her innocence, saying she never stole and saw no evidence of fraud among her subcontractors.

The defendants are: Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff and Hayat Mohamed Nur. The charges against them include wire fraud and money laundering. Shariff was the only defendant to testify and the only one to call witnesses on his behalf.

The food aid came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was administered by the state. Nonprofits and other partners under the program were supposed to serve meals to kids. Defendants allegedly produced invoices for meals that were never served, ran shell companies, laundered money, indulged in passport fraud, and accepted kickbacks.

An Associated Press analysis published last June documented how thieves across the country plundered billions in federal COVID-19 relief dollars. Fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion, while another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represented 10% of the $4.3 trillion the government disbursed in COVID relief by last fall. Nearly 3,200 defendants have been charged, according to the U.S. Justice Department. About $1.4 billion in stolen pandemic aid has been seized.

[mnfrostofficial]

5 wild moments ingrained in your brain

without a doubt kirill kaprizov otgwg on debut. i don't think anything will ever measure up to that.

this is probably due to the specific circumstances under which i experienced it, but, the 10 goal game this year. @girlfriendline and i went together in person (we weren't even planning to go until like idk 5 days before??), and i don't think i will ever have another experience like it. very much a perfect storm of factors on top of a bonkers game

guaranteed stupidest answer on here: that time i ran into charlie coyle at the minnesota state fair and failed to be normal about it (froze and ran away)

Russo, Michael. "Wild's Jonas Brodin and Matt Dumba: Opposites who attract." Star Tribune, 9, Oct. 2015. https://www.startribune.com/wild-s-jonas-brodin-and-matt-dumba-opposites-who-attract/331689431/.

the entirety of the beyond our ice series methinks

[coochiequeens]

Don't let the TQ+ use this tradegy to raise the alarm about violence against trans people. Not only are both victim and suspect bio men the suspect was also part of the TQ+ community.

A trans-identified suspect from Iowa was criminally charged on Tuesday after being found with the dead body of murdered Minneapolis transgender activist, Liara Tsai, 35. Both the victim and suspect are trans-identifying male.

Myles "Margot" G. Lewis, 32, of New Liberty, Iowa, was arrested on Saturday around 7 am after Lewis crashed into a guardrail on I-90 near Eyota, Minnesota. Authorities discovered Tsai's dead body in Lewis's car while responding to the crash site. Tsai was located deceased on the back seat wrapped in a bed sheet, blanket, futon-style mattress, and a tarp, police said, per the Star Tribune.

Suspect Myles "Margot" Lewis - Jail booking photos

A deputy noted that Tsai was found with a large wound to the neck near the carotid artery, and a Minneapolis police officer's report filed that evening classified Tsai's death as murder by a deadly weapon, such as a knife or "cutting instrument," according to police documents.

"It was apparent [to the deputy] that the death was not a result of the traffic crash," the complaint read.

Victim Liara Tsai - Instagram

Victim Liara Tsai - Instagram

Lewis was arrested at the scene of the crash and taken into custody. Lewis was charged with felony interference with a dead body on Tuesday in Olmsted County District Court and is being held on a $1 million bail.

Court documents do not state whether Lewis or another suspect killed Tsai, who worked as a techno-electronic DJ and was involved in Minneapolis transgender activism.

After authorities discovered Tsai's dead body, Minneapolis police conducted a welfare check requested by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at Tsai's home. Officers found a "scene indicating violence" at the victim's home, according to a police statement.

Victim Liara Tsai - Instagram

Lewis reportedly refused to speak to investigators and jail staff after being booked. Lewis, who reportedly took a vow of silence, requested a sign language interpreter and only communicated via written message or hand signal communication.

Steven Seuling, who works at the Pourhouse in downtown Minneapolis, told police he had hired Tsai to play at his bar on Sunday but Tsai was a no-show. The victim reportedly told Seuling on Friday that a friend was coming to town to visit.

Lewis will appear back in court on July 5.