Feds Can’t Leave Minnesota Alone

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

Here We Go Again

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged 15 Minnesotans with conspiring to impede or injure a federal agent during Operation Metro Surge, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen announced during a press conference Tuesday morning. Examples cited include an angry Instagram post, paperwork that was knocked out of an agent’s hand, tossed ice blocks, and one protestor following an agent in their car from the Whipple Building into Hudson, Wisconsin.

“Whether or not they actually at the end of the day caused bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious crime,” Rosen said. You can watch the full presser below; gotta love all the tough questions our local reporters had for the feds.

The 94-page indictment claims that all were members of a group named “Direct Action Minnesota” aka DAMN (nice), which would plan protest actions via Signal chats. The feds also believe they are part of “antifa”—even though they don’t seem to know what that is or how to define it.

"What we can tell you is that we have plenty of people that self-identify in that way and you might want to ask them that," Rosen told reporters.

So far, over one-third of the 36 people previously charged with Operation Metro Surge-related assaults have either had their cases dismissed or are pending dismissal, according to this list from Susan Du at the Star Tribune.

Protestors showed up to the courthouse this afternoon, where they were greeted with chemical irritants from the police. Meanwhile, the Immigrant Defense Network says it will be watching the case closely. "We call for transparency from federal authorities, accountability from all parties, and a commitment to protecting the civil and human rights of everyone involved," it spokespeople write in a statement.

Eyedea Back From Grave—in AI Form

We'll tread lightly here because nobody wants to come down hard on a grieving mother... but man... one has to wonder if a new Eyedea album that features AI-cloned vocals of the late St. Paul rapper is the best idea for his legacy.

15-Year-Old Shit Talking dropped earlier this year, and the lyrics were indeed culled from tattered notebooks the late Mikey Larsen left behind when he died of an accidental overdose 16 years ago. The voice bubbling with battle-rap bravado across those 14 tracks? Entirely the creation of Kits AI, a software program that Eyedea's mom Kathy Larsen Averill and collaborator DJ Willy Lose trained on human recordings of the local indie-rap star. (The beats are reportedly manmade, FWIW.)

“I’m only 15, but my mind is older ... When I prescribe a dose of doper oversaturated poems, that’s created to make your mind wind like a roller coaster," the AI bot raps on “MN State of Mind,” which, like the rest of the LP's tracks, come from Eyedea's teen-era handwritten lyrics. "The level of your abilities isn’t the idea of the beholder/I’m Minnesota state of mind, you’ll find it’s colder.”

Says Larsen Averill, heartbreakingly, to the Strib's Chris Riemenschneider: "I wanted everyone else to hear what he wrote in his own voice. I loved the sound of his voice.”

Riemenschneider calls the project a "likely controversial but well-intentioned record," and Larsen Averill has plans to produce more AI-generated Eyedea records that pull from a trove of handwritten lyrics. She and Lose are aware fans might not vibe with a robot imitating their favorite rapper.

“If you don’t want to hear it, or you hear it and don’t like it, you can still listen to all his other recordings," Willy argues. "This doesn’t change the quality of all that stuff.”

MPD's $21B Overspend

"Harley-Davidsons, trailers, and vague ledgers"—it's not the name of a new Kacey Musgraves single. These are the items KSTP singles out in its headline about the Minneapolis Police Department's $21 million 2025 budget overrun.

“I’ve never seen expenses like this. The amount of money being spent is huge,” Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw said in a Friday interview with KSTP's Renée Cooper. MPD says the money was spent on overtime, and it looks like $16.2 million was (not that such a thing is acceptable), but there's also $5.3 million that the department spent on "contractual services." What's that, you ask? Why, it's a vague collection of miscellaneous line-item expenses that Vetaw says sure looks like it was spent on “lots of toys,” including hundreds of take-home vehicles for officers (and civilians!) who haven't traditionally had them, as well as four new Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

OK, so that's an F on responsible spending. How's the ol' MPD doing when it comes to meeting goals in its state policing agreement? Also very bad! For MPR News, Jon Collins reports that Effective Law Enforcement for All (ELEFA) has noted substantial problems in Minneapolis's internal affairs unit.

“The failure to timely resolve complaints defeats the purpose of a progressive, corrective action disciplinary system,” according to ELEFA’s report. “The lack of progress is even more concerning because MPD leadership has long been aware of these deficiencies.”

Hell of a department we've got here.

Hear Wisdom From Bob Dylan, an "Old King From Some Vanquished Country"

Half of Racket—hint: the Y chromosomal half—loves Bob Dylan. The other half? Largely indifferent. So we call our shots on when to cover Bob, since the wily ol' devil from Hibbing finds himself in the news, well, pretty much all the time. The blessing and curse of monumental fame.

Today we're short-staffed, getting all primped for tonight's Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists "Page One Awards," and in need of a fourth Flyover blurb, so indulge us as we pass the baton to Dylan, who this Sunday popped up in a New York Times feature (gift link) where celebs—Liza Minnelli, Dionne Warwick, Art Garfunkel, Gloria Steinem, Robert De Niro—penned mini essays about the octogenarian's life.

Below you'll find the profound passage written by the same St. Louis County man who wrote "Wiggle Wiggle," and who'll be performing July 6 at the brand-spankin'-new Mystic Lake Amphitheater. Flexing my own literary panache, I'll offer this spoiler: It's really fucking good stuff ...

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions. People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t. You see life repeating itself everywhere.

The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t; it stands still. We’re the ones that move.