Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Restricted Research "Skyrocketing" at U of M
Good one from Minnesota Daily investigative reporter Anshu Patel: Since 2020, the University of Minnesota has rubber-stamped "secret research projects" at an accelerating rate. Between 2010 and 2019, only four restricted research projects were conducted on campus. Over the past five years there have been 33.
This loosening policy runs counter to the U's purported emphasis on open research, and Patel's reporting argues that it's "part of the larger effort to attract and accommodate more defense funding." Sometimes sponsors demand more secrecy from researchers, Patel writes, and sometimes the pressure comes from federal agencies. “Some of the change can be attributed to federal funding agency requirements, especially for the protection of research in the interest of national security," a U of M spokesperson tells the Daily.
In 1990, Richard McGehee walked away from his role as department chair of mathematics to protest the U's collaboration with the U.S. Army. He didn't want his research advancing chemical and biological warfare then, and he's not wild about the U courting defense dollars via increased secrecy today. “That is one of the foundations of universities: We do research that’s open to the entire public, and we teach students,” McGehee tells the Daily. “So secret research doesn’t belong on the University campus.”
MN GOP: Erect Statues of Charlie Kirk! DFL: Bring Back Cursive Handwriting!
De Tocqueville famously said that, in democracies, people get the government they deserve. But man... what'd we do to deserve this?! A distillation of our dumb moment, in two acts.
Act 1: Five Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would pillage $25,000 from the state's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund to erect a statue of slain right-wing YouTuber Charlie Kirk on the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus, Bring Me the News reports. There has to be a cheaper way to own the libs. In other deflating Kirk memorialization news: His jumbo likeness is now splayed across the exterior of U.S. Department of Education HQ in Washington, D.C.
Act 2: If state Sen. Ann Rest (DFL-New Hope) was talking about Tim Kasher & Co., I'd be more receptive and also dutybound to inform her the band Cursive haven't broken up. But no, Rest's crusade is about bringing back cursive handwriting, and the 83-year-old lawmaker recently delivered a 20-minute monologue before the Senate Education Policy Committee touting benefits like its being "a mark of an educated person.” (She low-key slammed her teen granddaughter who couldn't read a birthday card, Michelle Griffith reports for the Minnesota Reformer.) Rice's proposed bill would mandate "legible cursive handwriting skills by the end of grade 5.”
Another Day, More ICE Links
The federal thugs ain't all gone. As such, the link roundups will continue.
- Trump Declared Victory in Minneapolis. But What Did He Accomplish? (New York Times gift link)
- Greg Bovino, other federal agents investigated for Operation Metro Surge actions (Star Tribune gift link)
- Hennepin County investigating after deputy slams anti-ICE protester's head to ground (Bring Me the News)
- Measuring the economic damage of Minnesota’s ICE surge is hard (Minnesota Reformer)
- Tenant advocates say eviction filings remain steady amid ICE surge due to mutual aid (MPR News)
- Minnesota investigators continue probe into north Minneapolis ICE shooting (Sahan Journal)
- How the ICE Raids Turned Minnesota Politics Upside Down (New York Times gift link)
- And, finally, the perfect response to U.S. Rep. Angie Craig's tepid, tardy backtrack on her vote for the Laken Riley Act...
Sindex Ranking: MN Not Very Sinful
Most of the hollowed-out, godforsaken journalism industry revolves around aggregating bullshit studies from thirsty content mills like WalletHub, and here at Racket we do our best to shield you from that sort of—and I'm choosing the next word here with peak disdain—content. Sensing a "but" coming? But! We gotta tell you about WalletHub's new Most Sinful States in America tally.
WalletHub, uh, analysts I guess, cataloged state-by-state rankings for the seven deadliest sins—"Anger & Hatred," "Jealously," "Excesses & Vices," "Greed," "Lust," "Vanity," and "Laziness"—and calculated overall sinfulness scores based on that, um, data I guess. Minnesota came in at just 45th, meaning god smiles upon our state. None of our sin categories charted higher than 30, with the exception of vanity, which came in at 19th. This may or may not explain why Carly Simon doesn't visit us on tour very often.
Nevada, with its own city devoted to sin, claimed the No. 1 spot; Wyoming, with its god-fearing bison herds, came in at No. 50.
