Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Walz Family Values
If you've hit your limit on Tim Walz-related stories in the Flyover just say the word... but this whole thing with the guv's brother and the rest of his Nebraska family is simply too good not to address.
Last week, stories started circulating that Walz's brother, Jeff Walz, had made a series of Facebook posts about the brother he apparently hasn't spoken to in eight years, according to the New York Post.
You're telling me Walz has an estranged, Trumpy family member he no longer speaks to? Boy, I wonder if that might be relatable to any voters.
That New York Post story was full of funny little moments (“My family wasn’t given any notice that he was selected,” Jeff Walz wrote in one post—oh, boo fuckin' hoo), but at the time, Jeff told the paper he wasn't doing interviews. This week, he broke his silence in a NewsNation Now exclusive containing one of the best passages of political reporting I've ever read:
In the Facebook posts first seen by the Post, Jeff Walz said there were “stories (he) could tell” that implied his brother wasn’t “the type of character you want making decisions about your future.”
Now, he told NewsNation these “stories” follow a similar line to one wherein Tim Walz’s siblings didn’t want to sit with him due to car sickness when they were younger.
“Nobody wanted to sit with him, because he had car sickness and would always throw up on us, that sort of thing,” Jeff Walz said. “There’s really nothing else hidden behind there. People are assuming something else. There’s other stories like that, but I think that probably gives you the gist of it.”
A vice president who had car sickness when he was a little boy?? Keep that man AWAY from Air Force Two—who knows what turbulence will do to him. I mean, can you believe they went with Tampon Timmy when they could have had Barfin' Tim? We can't wait to hear about how Walz hoarded the LEGOs and refused to clean his room.
Elsewhere, you may have seen this viral photo of Walz's Nebraska-based family in grammatically incorrect pro-Trump shirts.
Uber/Lyft Rift
Uh-oh: Months after MN Gov. Tim Walz signed the bill bumping pay and regulating labor standards for Uber and Lyft drivers, local workers for those rideshare companies have filed a lawsuit accusing the leader of their own advocacy org of fraud.
Max Nesterak at the Minnesota Reformer has the scoop on the lawsuit, which alleges that Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association President Eid Ali created other orgs with similar names to funnel money to himself. Drivers also accuse Ali of fraud, saying that he took membership payments through the organization's website long after Ali changed the bylaws to say the group doesn’t have members.
"The law’s passage wasn’t MULDA’s final mission, which is why the group’s mostly Somali members are still concerned about its future," Nesterak writes. "At stake now are valuable contracts from Uber and Lyft to provide driver services—as well as MULDA’s organizing infrastructure that could prove to be a powerful political tool to advance the goals of the East African immigrant community."
“We want this organization back in the hands of drivers,” Farhan Badel, a dues-paying member who spent $100 to join MULDA and plaintiff in the lawsuit, told the Reformer. “Drivers have the right to have an organization that has proper governance.”
Cabooze Is Back in Town
The Minnesota Star Tribune's Jon Bream reports that the 50-year-old Cabooze will return to the West Bank, an occasion the bar plans to celebrate with a grand opening next week and several free shows. New owners Nabil Ghebre and David Grady bought the bar over the winter, undertaking a "modest remodeling" that includes the addition of a second green room, new LED lights, and upgrades to the restrooms, as well as a remodel of the kitchen at the adjacent Joint bar. Food and THC drinks will be available at the reopened Cabooze.
Bream reports that Ghebre and Grady also bought nearby Whiskey Junction, which has been closed since 2017, but for now at least that bar and venue remains closed.
An Apple A...ward?
You don't need us to tell you that Minnesota is the undefeated champ when it comes to breeding apple varieties that don't suck. So we'll let someone else tell you how good we are at it—specifically Brian Frange, a comedian and writer "who has been yelling about apples for years," according to his illustrious website, applerankings.com.
As we gently careen towards fall (and let's be honest, once the fair is over and school starts, it's fall), we're reminded of Apple Rankings' definitive list of apples—the top two of which were created right over at the University of Minnesota.
Coming in first is the SweeTango, with a near-perfect rating of 97. "If this was the apple that tempted Eve in the garden of Eden I wouldn’t blame her; for the taste of just one SweeTango is worth living through 1000 painful childbirths," Frange writes, and as someone who's had a SweeTango but not a child... can't dispute it! In second is the Honeycrisp, heralded as a "trailblazer" that "may have jumpstarted the Apple Renaissance."
