Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Pete Hegseth: Perhaps Not a Good Guy!
Last week, under the fiery headline "Trump Taps Bloodthirsty, Unqualified Fox News Scumbag From MN to Lead DoD," Racket rattled off some of the most glaring negatives surrounding President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Defense, failed U.S. Senate hopeful Pete Hegseth, who, unfortunately, is from here.
Turns out that list—which included vouching for war criminals, calling for hospital/mosque/school bombings, and impregnating people who weren't his then-wife—wasn't nearly long enough to encapsulate the Forest Lake native's scummy multitudes. So, today, we direct your attention to this new, triple-bylined tally of Hagseth factoids from Popular Information. (Worth noting: He spent yesterday denying the 2017 sexual assault allegation, while acknowledging that he did issue a payment to the accuser.)
Among the lowlights we failed to include in last week's list...
- That horrific 2017 sexual assault allegation
- His 2002 argument in a student newspaper that having sex with unconscious women shouldn’t be classified as rape
- His serial philandering and the blackmail it could inspire
- His 2019 argument that fellow vets receiving government assistance violate "the ethos of service" by being “dependent” on the government
- His pro-waterboarding, anti-Geneva Conventions position at the 2016 Conservative Forum
- His “who cares” approach to nuclear warfare (this one seems to be of grave concern considering his current job prospects)
- His suggestion that we should “just get rid of” the United Nations
- His eyebrow-raising "Deus Vult” tattoo
- His membership in a “Christian supremacist church”
- His belief that higher Muslim birthrates represent "a slow motion 9/11"
- And, finally, his promotion of a bestiality-coded opinion piece that called the “homosexual lifestyle abnormal and immoral”
Open: Stonegarden. Closing: Hi Flora! Coming Soon: Italian Eatery-Travail Collab?
It's time for a mini speed round of our monthly Racket Restaurant Roundup!
First up: an Axios review of Stonegarden, the new 120-seat brunch spot at 54th & Chicago in south Minneapolis. Situated at the ground floor of the recently opened Pearl Apartments, the restaurant offers broth bowls, several riffs on eggs Benedict, tartines, soups, and salads, plus a full bar. A reader told Axios' Nick Halter to try the Norwegian Benedict ($22, made with gravlax), calling it "the best benny they'd ever had," though the reporter is "not a salmon eater" so no verdict there. Halter, an apparent broth sipper, couldn't recommend the $8 broth bowls.
Next up: Bye-bye to Hi Flora!, the booze-free THC food joint at 25th & Lyndale in south Minneapolis that opened just over a year ago. Its owner, Heather Klein, says the place will close December 5, and she cites a $7,500 fine from the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management as one of the reasons. Hi Flora! got dinged by the OCM "over a variety of alleged violations," the Star Tribune's Louis Krauss reports. Was the weekly "Pizza & Blunt" night part of the problem? According to gossip obtained by one Racket reader/contributor, yes!
And, finally: Could celebrated south Minneapolis restaurant Italian Eatery come back to life after closing earlier this year? Perhaps, reports Audrey Kennedy of Axios, and the adventurous food crew behind Travail Kitchen & Amusements could be part of the equation. An LLC linked to Travail applied for a liquor license at the ol' IE address under the name "Italian Eatery x Travail," according to public records. A Travail spokesperson declined to comment.
Campus Partying Report: Booze Way Down, Weed Way Up
The young folks: What are they up to these days? Last year, Racket published the findings of then-college student Noah Mitchell, who enlightened our aged readership about the pros and cons of BORG-based binge drinking. But the latest numbers from the University of Minnesota's 2024 College Student Health Survey Report? They suggest blunts and bongs are outnumbering BORGs these days. High-risk drinking is down 10% on campus since 2015, the Minnesota Daily reports, while cannabis used has spiked around 9%, per that Boynton Health survey.
“We see both trends occurring across the United States,” says Julie Sanem, a researcher at the U of M's Cannabis Research Center. (My old man could've been president of that center in the wavy-gravy '70s, maaaan.) Says fourth-year student Jack Baribeau: "Drinking culture is messy to me. I’ve heard of people getting assaulted at bars because others aren’t able to control their actions as much when they’re drunk." Wise words. Adds third-year student Katie Leach: "I can smoke as much weed as I want in a day and the next day I’ll feel fine." Hm, perhaps less wise. Safe partying, Gophers!
This American Life Explores Our MN Turkeys
On the latest ep of This American Life, producer Diane Wu journeyed to Minnesota, the nation's top turkey producer, to learn more about the turkeys that'll receive presidential pardons later this month—specifically, how they're trained to not embarrass the president. (In 2022, we reported the grim realities of life, or lack thereof, after those phony PR poultry pardons.) It's a fun 10-minute TAL segment, and we hear it was loosely inspired by friend of Racket Jessica Lussenhop of ProPublica. Gobble, gobble!
