Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Take Our Mayor—Please!
With Operation Metro Surge “over,” the predictable Jacob Frey victory tour is underway. Yesterday the Minneapolis mayor did the lefty news circuit in New York, speaking with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes and appearing on The Daily Show. And as a cheerleader for the city, he did… fine.
“You saw a federal government and an administration that thought that they were going to break the people of Minneapolis down. They thought that we were going to back down,” Frey told Hayes. “And here's the thing, we didn't. The people of Minneapolis stood up. They stood up for their neighbors.” Let’s just say that his “they” was more convincing than his “we.”
Frey also spoke to Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show, who asked much better questions than the somewhat fawning Hayes, such as “Are there things that you can do as a mayor? Can you stop evictions from happening? Can you freeze rent?”
Here is how Frey responded: “We just approved rental assistance that is targeted towards the people who hopefully need it most.”
And here is how Frey discussed the matter with City Council:
You ever stop to think how much more smoothly Minneapolis politics would function if Jacob Frey could be just like 15% less of a dick?
Yes, Frey did approve the appropriation of $1 million in emergency rental assistance that City Council had voted on. But he couldn’t pass up a chance to lecture his colleagues about budgetary thrift in the process. And in doing so, he smarmily quoted Council Member Aisha Chughtai’s words against her.
Today, the council set aside $500,000 for legal services for immigrants. Think Frey can sign off on that without excessive tut-tutting before taking credit for it on television?
Frey also did a photo op with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Maybe he went to the top of the Empire State Building too.
The cynical among us might say Frey is auditioning for his next gig. The optimistic among us might hope that someone out East can find a use for him.
Anyway, just something to bring up the next time your MS NOW-pilled family members wonder why many folks in Minneapolis find Frey so much less endearing than, say, Jen Psaki does.
Guns Are Cool Now, I Guess
There’s just something about a violent paramilitary unit running loose across your state that inspires people to wanna arm themselves. Kristoffer Tigue and Jeff Hargarten of the Strib report that gun sales and permits sought by new owners in Minnesota spiked in January compared to the same month in 2025.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office says it received 1,400 new permit applications last month, up 70% from the previous January. New buyers accounted for more than half of those applications. One gun shop in Robbinsdale reported a 40% leap in sales.
“At least anecdotally, the demographics are shifting a lot, where we see people who are more liberally aligned, or on the left, expressing interest in gun ownership,” says Rob Doar, president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Center.
Meanwhile, Sam Stroozas (better known as St. Paul’s iconic “bathrobe lady”) reports for MPR that one group of Minnesotans now getting their guns is sex workers. (Also, Liam James Doyle snapped some incredible photos for this story.)
The Sex Workers Outreach Project has been organizing training sessions for new gun owners. “A lot of sex workers are so fearful. They’re already losing their incomes, a lot of them can’t go to clubs or get new clients because they’re just very scared. We don’t know who ICE is, or who is an agitator,” says SWOP’s Athena Papagiannopoulos.
In Major About Face, ICE Decides Lying Is Bad
Two ICE agents have been disciplined for—get this!—lying in court.
The agents were placed on administrative leave and facing a criminal investigation after a federal judge ordered all federal charges dropped against two Venezuelan men, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna.
Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg in north Minneapolis on January 14. The ICE officers said he attacked them with a snow shovel and a broom handle. No one believed them, and we were right not to. One ICE hotshot fired into Sosa-Celis’s home through a closed door, then smoked both men out with tear gas; there were two children inside at the time.
"What we saw last night in Minneapolis was an attempted murder of federal law enforcement," said messy as fuck DHS Secretary Kristi Noem the day after the shooting. It was not. (Noem has not been placed on administrative leave and is not facing a criminal investigation.)
Those of us in Minnesota who have spent the last two months trying to reconcile DHS statements and other claims by the feds with our own perceived reality might be surprised to learn that ICE agents are not permitted to lie. Let ICE acting director Todd Lyons clear things up for you.
"Lying under oath is a serious federal offense," Lyons says.
Lying to journalists and city residents as a matter of course, however, is just how the Trump administration does things.
How to Help: Albi Kitchen
Albi Kitchen is wonderful. Racket's Em Cassel raved about the “super-cute” Loring Park restaurant last October, saying it was “full of happy surprises” and praising its “welcoming” decor. I’ve recommended it more than once to grateful friends staying in hotels nearby. All signs pointed toward Albi becoming a thriving addition to the neighborhood, serving up sambusas, desserts, and drinks for years to come.
A virulently racist president and his goons changed all that. “We are entering our second full month of businesses being shuttered because people are too afraid to go into work and about their regular lives due to the ICE activity and in the city,” reads the text for Albi’s fundraising page.
Even before the ICE invasion, Albi was under attack. The restaurant had the misfortune of being situated right next to one of the places that right-wing jerkoff Nick Shirley spotlighted in his video ambush of Somali daycares, making Albi a target of “right-wing thrill seekers,” according to the fundraising text.
The fundraiser hasn’t quite built up steam yet, having raised just $830 of its $59,000 goal. Honestly, if this place shuts down permanently it will break my heart, so let’s help owner Fardowsa Ali and her employees out.
