Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Tom Emmer Very Excited to Yell at Tim Walz
You may have some rough days at work, but at least you never have to listen to U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) badger and insult you as he runs through a bunch of potential soundbites.
Such was the fate awaiting Gov. Tim Walz today as he testified before the House Oversight Committee. Emmer was there to gain headlines like “'That's What You Tweeted!': Tom Emmer Demands Tim Walz Apologize For Calling ICE 'Gestapo.'” Walz was there to offer as few quotable statements as possible. By these sad standards, both men “won.”
Emmer repeatedly returned to Walz’s recent commencement address at the U of M Law School, where the guv said (correctly) that "Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets.” Throughout the course of his performance, Emmer helpfully explained who the Gestapo were (“Gestapo, by the way, sir, was the official secret police of Hitler’s Nazi Germany”) and did the “pretending to be overwhelmed by emotion” schtick as he told us how brave and selfless ICE’s thugs are.
There was no reason to hope Walz would go on the offensive here; instead he made moderate-seeming noises without being too declarative about anything. His testimony consisted of multiple variations on “Which question would you like me to answer first?” and had an easy time dodging the questions that Emmer and other House Republicans kept repeating because they left him no space to answer.
SCOTUS Revives Disabled MN Teen’s Discrimination Suit
You don’t see too many unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decisions these days, but today the conservative-dominated court ruled 9-0 in favor of Maple Grove teen Ava Tharpe, reversing an 8th Circuit ruling and establishing a nationwide standard for claims disabled students bring against schools under the Americans With Disability Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
Tharpe, a student in the Osseo Area School District, has a form of epilepsy that primarily affects her early in the day. When the school district refused to adjust her schedule to accommodate her disability, she sued for discrimination. The lower courts ruled that she had not shown that the school acted with “bad faith and gross misjudgment”—a high hurdle—when failing to make accommodations.
In A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, the Supreme Court said that this heightened standard, which does apply to other disability discrimination claims, should not apply to claims against schools either. As Julia Métraux writes for Mother Jones:
While diversity and equity protections are under attack by both the conservative Supreme Court majority and the Trump administration, A.J.T. illustrates the ways disability rights law is sometimes less politically polarized. Even the Trump administration, in an amicus brief, said there is “no sound basis for that idiosyncratic heightened standard” around only schools.
Elon Musk Threatens to Ban Minneapolis From Buying Teslas
That’s what I read on a Facebook page called Vikings Power Play, so it can’t possibly be true. Your parents’ and grandparents’ favorite social media site is flooded these days with deranged AI-generated hallucinations posing as news stories, often involving sports figures engaging in unlikely humanitarian feats.
Each post on Vikings Power Play feels like an episode of some bizarre AI soap opera where the main characters are Justin Jefferson, Kevin O’Connell (whose family members seem to keep dying), J.J. McCarthy, and, for virality purposes, Musk. Posts like “Coach Kevin O'Connell Finds a Lost Child at the Airport! What Kevin O'Connell Does Next Will Leave Everyone STUNNED!” receive hundreds if not thousands of likes and messages of support from gullible commenters. Then there are hot-button posts like “Minnesota Vikings Spiritual Leader J.J. McCarthy Announces Boycott of NFL Pride Night: ‘On the Field, Everyone Should Be Focusing on the Ball, Not WOKE.’” Coincidentally, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and Yankees slugger Aaron Judge said the exact same thing!
Anyway, just another terrifying glimpse at the post-truth world that tech hucksters are eager to plunge us into. You wanna hear something extra fun? If you Google these stories to check their veracity, the search engine’s “AI Overview” will often recycle the very stories you’re investigating, thus “proving” them to be true. What could possibly go wrong here?
PAC Supports Frey, ICE, Militarized Federal Raids
All of Mpls is a political action committee that funnels money in from the suburbs (and elsewhere) for the benefit of Mayor Jacob Frey and Minneapolis City Council candidates who position themselves as moderate. But there’s nothing moderate about the PAC’s rhetoric.
In a recent fundraising email, All of Mpls claims that by showing up at the June 3 federal raid on Las Cuatro Milpas on Lake Street and asking questions, 9th Ward Council Member Jason Chavez and state Sen. Omar Fateh “attempted to stop a federal criminal investigation” and “did their best to inflame an already tense situation.”
The fundraiser also misrepresents social media posts from Chavez, accusing him of “claiming it was an immigration raid.” What Chavez stated, correctly, was that ICE agents were present, certainly a concern for many Minneapolis residents. So, who exactly is doing their best here to inflame an already tense situation?
