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Let's Hear It For The E Line!
Have you heard? I moved back to Uptown. (This will almost certainly not be the last time I mention it.) But I was converted to the E Line rapid transit bus before my move because—have you heard?—my poor little 2009 Honda Civic finally had enough of my abuse.
As a car-less filmgoer, I appreciate how the E transports me from my home (in Uptown) near the Lagoon to Southdale (my preferred AMC, if I have such a thing) and out to the Main at St. Anthony Main.
Turns out I wasn’t alone, according to this Fox 9 report. After just six months, Metro Transit says the E Line is averaging 5,600 rides a day—that’s twice as many as predicted.
One small complaint: Because the E Line travels down Hennepin Avenue, it can get involved in traffic snarls downtown, where there’s no dedicated bus lane, as I learned during one Twins game.
One other (slightly niche) complaint? The Southdale transit station is on the other side of the mall from the AMC. That’s no problem during business hours, but the mall closes before the theater, and once the gate goes down you have to wander through the parking lot and down a big hill. It’s kind of exciting, but not exactly safe or convenient.
The Ones Left Behind
Minnesotans will be dealing with the fallout from Operation Metro Surge for months, if not years. But some of us will endure its consequences for a lifetime. Those who’ve had a family member deported, for instance, including the people Madison McVan spoke to for the Minnesota Reformer.
Blanca Lara and her two sons, 4 and 2, are missing her partner, Hugo Diaz. He was arrested in January and is now in Guatemala. They video chat with Diaz daily, but that encounter leaves the eldest silent afterward. “He would only answer me with his head. It’s like his lips were glued together—like his head was spinning,” Lara tells McVan. “For them, it’s like an abandonment.”
There are many more details here, both about this particular family and about the devastation writ large. But Lara’s story cuts through the statistics, reminding us that every one of those numbers represents a family torn apart for no reason.
How They Planned to Crush Us
If you wonder how shook Minnesota had the Trump administration, here’s a piece from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in the New York Times about how a few of our demented rulers planned to invoke the Insurrection Act and suspend habeas corpus after the shooting of Alex Pretti.
Those in favor of what became known as the “retribution” agenda (retribution for… having killed two people?), were JD Vance, our typographically challenged vice president, and Stephen Miller, the president’s director of white supremacy.
Would it have been good to know some of this stuff six months ago? Sure would! Instead Haberman and Swan saved it as a teaser for their new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Oh also, why does every Times piece about the president and his cronies tell us where they sat at the conference table?
How Did This Happen?
Well, the Park Board didn’t give us the “how” but we did get the “what”—over the weekend the vehicle veered off near East Lake Harriet Parkway and Penn Avenue and down the stairs toward Lake Harriet (not Bde Maka Ska, as the OP says).
“The driver was treated at the scene for minor injuries and transported to HCMC for further evaluation,” a spokesperson tells Racket, referring as well to “a complicated vehicle removal.” Posters on the Reddit thread say they heard from observers that a medical incident was the cause of the accident.
