Even Frey Allies Have ‘Soured’ on Minneapolis Police Chief O’Hara

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

MPD Chief O'Hara Faces "Uphill Battle" to Keep Job

Will Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara be reconfirmed for another term? It looks like an "uphill battle," report the Strib's Deena Winter and Liz Sawyer. The city's top cop has lost support from both progressive and more moderate Dem members of the City Council—for going over budget by roughly $20 million in 2025, for racking up millions in overtime during Operation Metro Surge, and for his department's failure to do more (or anything?) as federal agents tore through the city during that surge. 

Council President Elliott Payne says he has a “great working relationship” with O'Hara, but Council Member Soren Stevenson, who represents Ward 8, said in a statement to the Star Tribune that he’s “deeply concerned” with the police department’s “overall lack of accountability, need for reform, and the way the department has been overspending and causing shortfalls to the city’s budget.”

Definitely of note: "Council Members LaTrisha Vetaw and Michael Rainville, among the most pro-police members of the body, informed Frey in March that O’Hara did not have their support for a second term, according to three sources with knowledge of the meeting," write Winter and Sawyer, noting that "swaths of City Hall have soured on Minneapolis’ top cop in recent months."

As for Mayor Jacob Frey? He said in a statement to the Strib that his support for the chief "has not changed," and his people have been leaning on on-the-fence council members to confirm O'Hara for another term. Frey, meanwhile, has vowed to protect Public Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette, who's one of the city's highest-compensated employees, after the council voted to oust him this week.

Hundreds of Minnesotans Are Still Detained in Texas

Throughout Operation Metro Surge, roughly 3,400 people detained by federal agents were transferred to Texas detention centers—and roughly 530 of them were still there as of early March. That's according to ICE data analyzed by Sahan Journal's Katelyn Vue and Cynthia Tu (outstanding rhyming byline), who write that the remaining 500+ detainees face a number of challenges.

Local attorneys tell Vue and Tu that the detainees are living in unsafe conditions and having trouble accessing legal help, since many Minnesota attorneys aren't authorized to work in Texas. For example, attorney Brendan McBride is representing a 28-year-old Crystal man who's lived in the U.S. since age 6; he was arrested January 17 while working at a restaurant and shipped to Texas within an hour, where he remains. He has no criminal history (and has a 3-year-old-daughter, a U.S. citizen), but a federal judge in Texas has denied his request for release.

“He’s in one of those tents with the dust storms and the filthy latrines,” McBride tells Sahan. “He could be in there for several years.” 

Rep. Morrison Gets Into Stock Trading Trouble

Money doesn't appear to have been an issue throughout the life of U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison (DFL-MN), who attended the prestigious Blake School in Hopkins before matriculating to the considerably more prestigious Yale University. But earlier this week money became an issue—in particular, the congresswoman's violations of the STOCK Act, which discourages lawmakers from insider trading.

Morrison made eight unreported trades worth between $1.41 million to $2.91 million, according to records reviewed by NOTUS. (We weren't familiar with either; it's apparently a newish nonprofit news site from Politico founder Robert Allbritton.)

While Morrison's office blames the tardy disclosures on an investment manager, NOTUS notes that "STOCK Act compliance is squarely on the member of Congress." She'll reportedly pay the whopping $200 fine. Her unreported trades "mostly" involved sales of equity stakes in Bayport-based window/door company Andersen Corp., plus trades involving firms dealing in horse software (huh) and AI hardware (yuck). At least one of Morrison's above-board wheelings/dealings has raised eyebrows; she disclosed an investment of between $15,001 to $50,000 in Saronic Technologies, a naval contractor, nine days after the U.S. and Israel started a war with Iran.

Just spitballing here: Perhaps sitting members of Congress should be banned from trading stocks! Last year U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN) and Betty McCollum (DFL-MN) joined 77 of their bipartisan colleagues in backing a bill that would do just that.

Maria Bamford: Simply the Best

Maria Bamford's PR team didn't grant Racket an interview ahead of the premiere of Paralyzed by Hope, a new Judd Apatow-directed doc on the Duluth-born comic that'll screen Thursday during opening night of MSPIFF. (Bamford will be in attendance; we're NOT bitter.) Steve Marsh over at MSP Mag? He had better luck landing an interview with the locally launched comedy great. Some highlights from their sprawling chat...

On the influence of clowning...

I've taken a couple clown classes, and that's inspired me. In clowning, the audience is the show. Stand-up feels, for me, more defensive; like I'm going to do this thing and you're going to have this response. But with clowning, not only is there nudity, crying, and a considerable lack of consent, but the clown people, they just accept whatever is happening.

On her time at the U of M...

I lived in a hippie cooperative called the Hieronymus Bosch House. It was in Northeast Minneapolis, named after the Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch. And I think it was just in the air then. Like, I had a car covered in bumper stickers. And I was performing at Leslie Ball’s cabaret, that she still does.

On her "Crazy Target Lady" ads...

I even posted a vague thing about workers' rights in garment factories once—just posting as a comedian, and [Target] said, “Take that down.” I knew from the beginning it was not ideal. The first shoot we did, the people who were restocking Target at night were all non-union, and here I'm a union member coming in being paid an enormous amount of money. Yeah, it was weird.

I wasn't doing well already. What happened after my 40s, something chemically changed inside of me. I'd always had really high highs and lows, and I'd always been told to go on mood stabilizers, but I just didn't want to go on them. And then success can be its own kind of pressure, making decisions based on money and prestige. And it really was a fun character to do. But after one year of doing it, I realized the people coming to my shows were fans of the character, saying, “Oh, my god, I'm a shopaholic, too, isn't that great?” And I'm, like, “Do you notice the woman's lonely and she has no friends or family?”

Yeah. It's just monstrous. And it's perfect in this sort of Portlandia way. Oh, aren't we smart liberal progressives, we love to shop but we're not shopping at Walmart, we're shopping at Target, which is a much better situation. Which is not at all a different situation, at least as far as I could tell from my amateur level of sleuthing. But that was a store that was beloved in my family.

You can—and should!—read Steve's full convo with Bamford here.