Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Frey Gets a Double Dose of Strib Love
A startling headline in today’s Minnesota Star Tribune: “The Minneapolis City Council gave a homeless shelter $1.5 million to stay open. It’s closing anyway.” Looks like our far-left, DSA-aligned city council—or should I say, city CLOWNcil—is at it again!
But if you read Deena Winter’s story a little more closely before you share it with an outraged comment on Nextdoor, you’ll notice a statement from Erik Hansen, director of Community Planning & Economic Development, that Minneapolis won’t “complete the funding” approved by the council last year for Agate Housing and Services. Hmm. So how much of that $1.5 million did Agate receive?
“Our action last year made the funding contingent on Agate securing the necessary funds to complete the renovation project,” Council President Elliott Payne tells Racket. “Since that requirement was not met, no funds have been disbursed.”
So, that would be zero dollars, then.
OK, let’s take a step back. In September, the council OK’d the $1.5 million to bail out Agate over the objections of Mayor Jacob Frey, who huffily stated at first that he’d have to reappropriate money set aside for North Commons Park. (He used pandemic funds instead.)
Now, though no disbursement was made and the unspent money returns to the general fund, the Strib story affords Frey considerable room to gloat.
Incidentally, the Strib also ran an exclusive Winter interview with Frey today, in which he announced that he would be running for mayor again in November. You could say that Frey and the Star Tribune are on very good terms.
Is ICE Ramping Up Arrests in MN?
While the rescission of the OMB memo that essentially shut down the federal government yesterday has some of us sighing with (premature?) relief, many immigrants are not so fortunate. The Trump administration’s commitment to rounding up as many foreign-born U.S. residents as possible, as directed by executive order, continues apace. So how is that playing out in Minnesota?
Hennepin County Chief Public Defender Mike Berger told Sahan Journal that ICE has made arrests in two county courtrooms, likely learning of the presence of their targets through public court calendars. A good way to discourage immigrants from showing up in court, so that you can use their missed dates against them at a later date, huh?
But these were not raids, and the consensus of experts is that while targeted ICE arrests have increased, general ICE raids have not yet come to Minnesota. Although ICE field offices, including the one in St. Paul, have been instructed to conduct 75 arrests a day, Sahan says advocates and businesses alike are urging people not to report unverified news of raids. Such rumors not only add to the general panic but can hurt businesses frequented by immigrants by scaring away customers.
Still, such anxieties are hard to quell. ICE also now feels free to barge into places of worship and schools, which had been previously off limits as “sensitive locations.” Minnesota pastors are concerned that this will discourage worshippers, according to Public News Service, while Melissa Whitler reports at the Minnesota Reformer that schools are also planning for the worst.
Noeker in for Jalali in St. Paul
St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalali announced on Facebook late last Friday afternoon that she’s stepping down from her post in February. Today we learned that Ward 2 Councilmember Rebecca Noecker will step up to Jalali’s old role on February 12.
In her Facebook post, Jalali said she realized that “my profession was negatively impacting my health and wellbeing” as far back as 2023, and that she eventually decided she had to step aside “to focus on my physical and mental health and wellbeing.” She added, “It is important for me to live out the truth that powerful women of color do have limits, are not superhuman, and will not break themselves in the name of the work continuing.”
Jalali was first elected to city council in 2018, becoming the first Iranian-American elected official in Minnesota, and became council president in 2024. An interim council member will be appointed for her ward, and then a special election will be held for a permanent replacement.
Little House Gritty Reboot?
From 1974 to 1983, NBC aired a family-friendly program set in Minnesota that Herb Tarlek’s wife Lucille once described on WKRP in Cincinnati as “a wonderful show about blind children in the old west, and each week one of them gets an incurable disease or something." That show, of course, was Little House on the Prairie, and it made your mom cry.
Well, we’ve got good news for the tearful mothers of the 21st century and fans of settler colonialism in general: Netflix is rebooting Little House on the Prairie, Variety reports. The showrunner, Rebecca Sonnenshine, has a background in the supernatural (she’s worked on Vampire Diaries and Archive 81), and we can only hope that she makes Nellie Oleson a werewolf.
“Rebecca’s vision threads the needle with an emotional depth that will delight both new and existing fans of this beloved classic,” says Jinny Howe, vice president of drama series for Netflix, who, based on her speech patterns, may be AI.
Little House author (and, yes, Minnesotan) Laura Ingalls Wilder, for decades a beloved children’s writer, has seen her reputation dip some in recent years. In 2018, the Association for Library Service to Children removed Wilder’s name from an award because of "anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments" in her writing.
