Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
It’s Only ‘Excited Delirium’ If It’s from the Excited Region of France…
Otherwise, apparently, it’s "severe agitation with delirium." That, reports Andy Mannix in the Star Tribune, is what the Minneapolis Police Department has renamed the supposed “syndrome,” which basically only cops and police-affiliated doctors believe in, which somehow almost exclusively affects Black men being arrested, and which transforms arrestees into violent superhumans who must be subdued with excessive force. According to the MPD and Mayor Jacob Frey’s office, Minneapolis police are no longer trained to look for such a condition, but we all know where sentences that begin with “according to the MPD and Mayor Jacob Frey’s office” often end up. In a video of current police training, obtained by the Strib through a public records request, Dr. Paul Nystrom, an ER doctor at Hennepin Healthcare who also happens to be a cop, is shown training officers to look for the renamed syndrome. As the Strib story points out, the American Medical Association has called the diagnosis simply a "manifestation of systemic racism." After the story’s publication, the mayor’s office pledged to look into “a failure to follow a directive” and ordered the MPD to stop working with Nystrom.
Don Samuels Ponders Disastrous Ilhan Challenge
Sahan Journal had the Friday afternoon scoop: Former Minneapolis council member, mayoral candidate, and free hot dog opponent Don Samuels is exploring a run against Ilhan Omar for her 5th District congressional seat. Samuels was among the most vocal opponents of the public safety amendment last year, successfully suing the city of Minneapolis for not employing enough police officers. He also supported Omar’s challenger (five bonus points if you can name him) in 2020. National media anointed Samuels as a spokesman for “reasonable Minneapolis Democrats” last year, so we can be certain that a Samuels campaign will get plenty of coverage in the New York Post. Maybe Samuels pal Tom Friedman will weigh in about our “dystopian ghost city” in the Times again. Samuels has not clarified whether he will challenge Omar in a DFL primary or explore an independent run. Maybe both! As he told Sahan, “I’m considering several options.” Ain’t we all, Don. Ain’t we all.
MN Senate GOP Calls for State-Funded Copaganda
For some reason, the police have a bad reputation in certain circles these days. Could be the murder and the casual violence and the lying and the racism and the goldbricking and the general contempt for all non-cops. But that’s nothing a $1 million ad campaign can’t fix, right? So believes Sen. Karin Housley (R-Stillwater), who, MinnPost reports, would like to toss that seven-figure sum in a hole to “publicly promote the importance of police officers for the safety of Minnesotans.” Obviously, this is a transparent opportunity to force DFL Senators to vote against the proposal so the GOP can run “Democrats hate cops” ads in an election year. And obviously the GOP would have found a way to run those ads anyway.
Goodbye Sports Journalism, Hello CRT Grift
Michele Tafoya has pivoted to politics. Last night’s Super Bowl was the Edina resident’s final broadcast for NBC Sports. This morning, her new role was announced: co-chair of Republican Kendall Qualls’s campaign for governor. Qualls, who failed to unseat Dean Phillips from his 3rd District congressional seat in 2020, is the founder of TakeCharge, an organization dedicated to the principle that systemic racism can’t exist within the United States because Qualls is Black and rich. Qualls has also been touring the state with the Center of the American Experiment railing against “critical race theory,” a term GOP political strategists have deliberately misapplied to any school curriculum that mentions how the U.S. was founded on systematic genocide and enslaving Africans. Tafoya allied herself with the anti-CRT scam as a guest on The View last November.
