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Excruciatingly Weak Alpha News Hit Piece Goes National
Last week Racket's staff laughed out loud at this try-hard October surprise from Alpha News, which informed us that Minnesota's DFL-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate, Peggy Flanagan, had a troubled grandfather, John Hartmann, who died when she was 3 years old.
The big "gotcha"?
"Hartmann died decades before Flanagan entered politics, when she was still a young child. His alleged crimes are not hers," Jenna Gloeb of Alpha News writes, presumably with great strain to her brain as it putters like an old outboard motor, "but for a politician who has made her family history a prominent part of her public story, the records reveal a chapter that, until now, has remained largely untold."
The saga of Hartmann, who was suspected of four killings but never charged in any of them, could have been tossed back into the dustbin of history. Except this week the bottom-feeding MAGA news ecosystem—Fox News, New York Post, possibly others—ran with the story of the lieutenant governor's very dead grandpa. (Page us when you uncover a wacky hick brother who sells novelty beer.)
"It is unclear whether voters will hold the alleged sins of her long-dead grandfather against her," the Post asks, stupidly. But that observation pales in stupidity compared this one from Gloeb...
Notably, Flanagan did not adopt the surname of her biological father, Marvin Manypenny, the White Earth Ojibwe activist whose Native American heritage she has frequently highlighted in her political career. Nor did she adopt the surnames of either of her husbands, Tim Hellendrung or Tom Weber, continuing to use Flanagan throughout her political career.
Notable to whom? TO WHOM?! We never find out.
Flanagan's campaign didn't respond when Alpha News asked for comment. One has to think they had more important matters to attend to, like literally anything else.
Obama Defends Rep. Omar
As President Donald Trump continues his racist, grievance-fueled march to deport U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), former President Barack Obama is leaping to the progressive congresswoman's defense. In response to a Michelle Goldberg opinion piece in the Times headlined "Trump’s Attempt to Deport Ilhan Omar Is Another Leap Toward the Abyss" (gift link), on Sunday morning Obama laid out a lengthy condemnation of Trump's actions.
You can quibble with Obama's tunnel-vision commitment to institutional centrism as president. You can accuse the man of keeping a low post-presidency profile as the country burns. But it's hard to argue with Obama here, so we'll lay out his full remarks on the Omar-Trump ordeal...
It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.
Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.
Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.
Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.
In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.
Obama is no stranger to bunk citizenship accusations; Trump's failed “birtherism” crusade against the president was essentially the entry point into modern politics for the serial bankrupt.
The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.
Wanna Buy a Giant Chunk of Downtown Eau Claire?
Forgive us for betraying our typical Minnesota provinciality here, but holy smokes, there's a real-estate fire sale happening in downtown Eau Claire, Wisconsin, at the moment. Last week Mohammad Al-Hashlamoun's Elite Realty Group listed four properties located "within a half-mile stretch in the heart of downtown," McKenna Scherer of local publication Volume One reports.
There's 406 Galloway St. (currently Leona's Pizzeria) for $849,900, 423 Wisconsin St. (formerly the Eau Claire Area Hmong Mutual Assistance Association) for $350,000, 8 S. Farwell St. (formerly Hope Gospel Mission) for $800,000, and the marquee address, 316 Eau Claire St. (the historic, vacant State Theatre) for $550,000. (Read more about the life and death of the State Theatre via this sprawling, deeply reported Volume One feature.)
Downtown Eau Claire is reportedly at "a [downward] tipping point," though a city official tells Scherer that this portfolio liquidation is unrelated to “current downtown conditions," whatever that means. (We don't live there.)
While we're not in the business of pressuring Grammy winners to become hometown venue proprietors here: Your move, Mr. Vernon.
RIP Modern Times Cafe
Pour one out for Modern Times, the lovely Minneapolis cafe that made international headlines (and, before that, also Racket ones) when it briefly shifted to a pay-as-you-can model earlier this year during Operation Metro Surge. On Saturday, having "exhausted every option without compromising the core fundamentals that make Modern Times what it is," owner Dylan Alverson announced that his 15-year-old restaurant will close at year's end.
"This coming week I’ll start to explain how we got to this point and what the next couple months will look like," Alverson writes. "The only way for places like Modern Times to exist in the future is to actively challenge the reasons why it can no longer exist."
After serving 30,000 free meals over six months, Modern Times shifted its pricing approach this summer as neighbors complained about the influx of unhoused and impoverished people seeking gratis brunches in Powderhorn. Read a recent heart-on-sleeve essay from Alverson on the "impossible" struggle to keep Modern Times afloat here.
We'll miss the merch. We'll miss the heart. We'll miss Modern Times.
