Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
So, Who is Zack Stephenson?
Gotta love the lede on this MinnPost story about newly selected Minnesota DFL House leader Zack Stephenson:
As they plumbed the depths of negotiating a state budget with an evenly split Minnesota House, Speaker Lisa Demuth and Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman hatched a “no shenanigans team,” selecting two lawmakers they each trusted to get a budget bill unstuck.
“There are times that you pull in the resources that we have,” Demuth told reporters amid budget talks in late May. “And we sent in the no shenanigans team.”
One team member was Paul Torkelson, R-Hanska, a septuagenarian lawmaker with a long held reputation for mastering policy details. The other was Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, just 41-years-old and hailing from a district where he had just won reelection by less than 1,000 votes.
That is, to use a technical term, the good shit.
MinnPost's Matthew Blake does a nice job profiling Stephenson, who will replace slain lawmaker Melissa Hortman as the DFL looks to push through an assault weapons ban. Stephenson certainly has his eyes on the prize: “The only reason that you are talking to me is that Melissa Hortman was killed in an act of gun violence,” he tells MinnPost.
What else should you know about him? Well, he comes from a historically Republican district, has an "unorthodox" policy record that includes a lot of work on cannabis, and... you know what, why don't you let him speak for himself. (Not addressed in that piece? He's proudly and openly bisexual!)
Willie and Neil Ain't Scabs
You may have heard that the University of Minnesota has a little labor problem. Members of Teamsters Local 320 rejected a final contract offer from the U earlier this month, meaning hundreds of custodians, maintenance workers, and food staffers are on strike.
You may also recall that a big, big show is heading for campus next weekend: Farm Aid 40 is supposed to take place September 20 at Huntington Bank Stadium. And as the Star Tribune's Brooks Johnson reports, that could be a problem, because crews are scheduled to start building the stage Friday.
“Our artists, production team and partners have made clear that they will not cross a picket line,” Farm Aid reps said in a statement Thursday. “These decisions reflect our own values: The farm and labor movements are inseparable, and we believe strongly that the University must return to the bargaining table in good faith.”
A Decent Kirk Reflection
Charlie Kirk's death is not "local" news, unless you count the fact that the the hate-stoking right-wing commentator was scheduled to appear at the University of Minnesota later this month. Or that Minnesota has also experienced shocking political violence and multiple mass shootings this year. Or that every social media feed, no matter where you live, has been clogged with some of the worst posts imaginable since his suspected assassination Wednesday.
I have many complex, contradictory, and not exactly charitable feelings about Kirk's killing, which is why I've been processing it privately, with friends, and avoiding the internet—especially Twitter, my god—as much as possible. (Process however you want, of course, just remember that the internet is forever and the FBI can show up at your house over posts.)
If I may recommend one piece of writing that made me feel less crazy over the last 24 hours, it's this, from Garbage Day's Ryan Broderick. It won't make you feel "good," to be clear, but it captures some of the complicated feelings you might also be feeling regarding gun violence and violent rhetoric in this fucked up country—about where we are and how we got here, about Kirk's role in that, and what might happen next. Speaking of eloquently weaving competing ideas: Ben Burgis and Meagan Day did just that Thursday at Jacobin with "Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster."
Leave it to Beavers
Could beavers help to fight the effects of climate change? According to MPR's Kirsti Marohn... maybe!
These "toothy engineers" (Marohn's words), generally thought of as a nuisance because their dams can cause flooding or raise lake levels, also create dams that slow water flow, reduce flooding, and "create critical wetlands that boost biodiversity—and can even slow wildfires." That's why, at an outdoor stream channel planned for St. Anthony Falls Laboratory on Hennepin Island in Minneapolis, scientists will study how beaver dams impact their surroundings.
“We know everything about people-built dams, and we know so little about the true hydraulics of a beaver dam,” says Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in beaver research. “And that matters a lot in somewhere like Minnesota.”
