Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Walz and Trump: Mutual Threats to the Boundary Waters?
Last year former Gov. Arne Carlson wrote an open letter to current Gov. Tim Walz, blasting him on his inaction to protect northern Minnesota waters from foreign mining giants. (You can read that letter in Racket, in addition to Carlson's unrelated thoughts on Jingle All the Way.) And today the Wall St. Journal published a jarring headline as Democrats continue to go gaga for the guv/VP contender: "Trump and Walz Can Agree on One Thing: Mining in Minnesota."
Sounds bad! And, yes, once you dig into the triple-bylined story, you learn that Walz's position on proposed mining from Twin Metals is that of "pragmatic referee." President Biden, meanwhile, banned the BWCA-adjacent project for 20 years, while ex-President Trump wants dangerously untested copper-nickel extraction ASAP—he has vowed to overturn the ban “in about 10 minutes” if reelected. “[Walz] is on our side and he’s there for us,” Shawn Braford, a union mining proponent who "talks often" with Walz, says of the man who would influence policy within a Kamala Harris White House.
Writes the WSJ: "Instead of siding with Democrats, as his liberal record as governor would suggest, Walz has repeatedly echoed industry and labor unions’ arguments for building a copper-nickel mine in northern Minnesota, saying that if it can be done safely it could be a boon for the regional economy and clean-energy infrastructure." (It would also be a boon to Andrónico Luksic, the Trump-affiliated Chilean billionaire who owns the parent company to Twin Metals.)
That safety bit is a mighty, mighty big "if" because, as conservationists like to point out, copper-nickel mining has never been done in Minnesota; the process has inflicted heavy environmental tolls around the world, and expensive post-mine cleanup responsibilities will span hundreds of years into the future. Former Gov. Mark Dayton favored an extremely cautious approach, WSJ reports, one that angered union miners and, apparently, one that's not being mimicked by his successor. “That’s not a Walz strategy,” says Becky Rom of Save the Boundary Waters.
Why You’ll (Probably) Never See the (Probably) Brilliant 9-Hour Prince Documentary
The adulation Prince has received following his death in 2016 has been sadly one-dimensional—for all his genius and his impact, we’ve all known that he could be controlling and cold to those around him, including the women he mentored. A corrective that maintains the proper balance between respect and scrutiny would be welcome, and it’s hard to think of anyone better suited for the job than Ezra Edelman, the director responsible for O.J.: Made in America, one of the greatest documentaries of this century.Â
But in an exhaustive, essential piece for the New York Times Magazine this weekend, Sasha Weiss, who has seen the full nine-hour cut of the film that Edelman made for Netflix, discusses why you and I may never get to see it. In short, representatives from the estate, especially Prince’s onetime lawyer Londell McMillan, consider it a hit job. But Questlove, an unparalleled Prince fan, "feels the film performs a cultural service: a cracking, particularly for Black men, of a facade of invincibility,” Weiss writes. As Questlove puts it, “I saw this as a rare, rare, rare chance for us to look human to the world.”
St. Paul’s Riverview Streetcar Project Quietly Dies
Friday afternoons serve as graveyards for bad news, and last Friday was no exception: Ramsey County announced the killing of its decades-long, $2.5 billion plan to connect the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America to St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center via rail transit. Several outlets managed to pick up the news as readers' thoughts turned to weekend happy hours, but thankfully MinnPost's Bill Lindeke returned from the weekend with today's helpful explainer on how "meaningful transit investment for one of St. Paul’s most important corridors" went down the tubes. Lindeke, who long advocated for the Riverview Corridor project, explains the history of the project, the "political minefield" that formed around it, and, ultimately, the immense failure it now represents. "I wonder if anyone will ever calculate the price tag for transit planning for this nonexistent transit project over the years," he concludes. "It’s at least eight figures."
Local Teacher Gets Spotlight (In Good Way!) on Last Week Tonight
Over 150,000 TikTok users are familiar with @sabocat, a political/cultural commentary account run by a St. Paul teacher with a knack for going viral. (Click here to hear her delightful reading of Racket's Big Corn expose; she's also hip to our whippin' shitties reportage.) On Sunday night, viewers of the indispensable HBO show Last Week Tonight With John Oliver got to know the real-life Mandi Jung. In a deep-dive episode on school lunches—which should soon be available to view here—we see a clip of Jung testifying before the Minnesota House about the emotional pain of seeing schoolchildren go hungry.
"For fuck's sake! No teacher should have to do that," the host rants, accurately. "Especially that one, who clearly cares about her students. I know the fun teacher when I see one, and that is the fun teacher right there." Oliver then proceeds to shower Ms. Jung with riffy praise for a solid 15 seconds—what a treat! Elsewhere in the segment, we see local right-wing cranks like Sen. Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa) drone on about how feeding hungry kids is a Maoist plot... or something.
Earlier today we asked @sabocat for her thoughts about appearing on prestige cable...
I love attention, so this has been a total dream for me. I’ve been in the spotlight before due to some very unflattering personal profiles about me published on Fox News but this is way better because no one has threatened to kill me today. Please check out my DonorsChoose project so that I can get my students some glue sticks.
