What the Hell Happened in St. Paul Yesterday?

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

And You Thought St. Paul Had the “Good” Cops 

Though the fog of war has lifted somewhat following Tuesday’s federal raid in St. Paul, still much of what’s being reported is vague and contradictory.

During the raid, ICE seized 26-year-old Jeffrey Suazo, according to Suazo’s family. Community organizer Mary Anne Ligeralde Quiroz read a statement from the family that said, “Children and a pregnant woman spent five hours under threats, humiliation by [Homeland Security] agents, mockery, and invasion of property,” MPR News reports. 

However, the only person that ICE has acknowledged taking into custody is Honduran-born Victor Molina Rodriguez. 

Mayor Melvin Carter initially expressed approval of Tuesday’s actions by the Saint Paul Police Department, but he slightly modified his stance on Wednesday after the internet was flooded with photos and videos of St. Paul cops leveling weapons at protesters, spraying protesters with chemical irritants, and firing “less-lethal” rounds.

"I am deeply concerned about some of the complaints that I've heard today, about some of the allegations that I've heard today, and about some of the videos that I've seen today," Carter said Wednesday. St. Paul Mayor-elect Kaohly Her, meanwhile, expressed “deep concerns over what we witnessed yesterday.”

Of course, it’s hard to report on a situation when the cops are shooting at you. The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists announced in a statement that three local photojournalists, all clearly ID’d as press, were injured by “less-lethal” munitions fired by St. Paul police officers—and that they believed themselves to be specifically targeted. 

Guys, don’t shoot journalists. Not only is it fascist behavior, but it ensures that you’ll get angry stories written by other journalists about your fascist behavior. And we’ll get to see photos like these.   

No, Fraud in MN Isn’t Funding Terrorism 

Conservative disinfo specialist Christopher Rufo is once again poisoning the well of public discourse. Earlier this week, Rufo, who previously brought you such hits as “Haitian refugees are eating your pets,” published a story in the conservative website City Journal (with co-author Ryan Thorpe) under the headline “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer.”

Big if true, as we used to say on the internet. Al-Shabaab is a Sunni militant group based in Somalia, allied with al-Qaeda, and classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. If, as Rufo alleges, Somali defendants in the Feeding Our Future scandal were indeed funneling money to Al-Shabaab, then the federal investigation that Trump lapdog Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) and Minnesota House Speaker/gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth (R-Cold Spring) are calling for might indeed be appropriate.

But as Ryan Faircloth reports for the Star Tribune, no one working on the Feeding Our Future case has run across anything to corroborate these allegations. As U.S. Attorney Andy Luger puts it, the defendants “were looking to get rich, not fund overseas terrorism.” 

And Rufo's only named source, Seattle police detective Glenn Kerns, has been saying shit like this for years without evidence. (Minnesota's Office of the Legislative Auditor investigated similar claims from Kerns eight years ago and found zip.) But hey, Rufo got his president to threaten to yank Temporary Protected Status away from Somalis, and he's forcing us to argue about whether an entire nation of people should be assumed to be criminals, so I'm sure he counts this as a win.

Say It Ain’t Snow! KSTP Meteorologist Shares AI Video.

Snow falls in the Twin Cities every year. And yet somehow KSTP has no B-roll of what the city looks like after we get a few inches. 

That’s the only possible explanation for these tweets from meteorologist Jonathan Yuhas.

Yep, those scenes are AI-generated. The social media response was swift and justifiably angry, but there has been no response from Yuhas or the station. When your job is to show people things that actually happened, presenting them with imaginary pictures sure does undermine your credibility.

Incidentally, when former KSTP meteorologist Wren Clair filed a discrimination suit against her bosses, saying that less qualified male meteorologists were given preferential treatment, she alleged that Yuhas was among the colleagues who “would leave her with inaccurate forecast information and would not coordinate with her.”

A First for Wild Hockey

Well, this Flyover sure was a bummer, huh? So here’s a relatively nice bit of news to send you into the holiday weekend. Friday is Native American Heritage Day, and to honor the occasion the Minnesota Wild will broadcasting the game against the Colorado Avalanche in the Ojibwe language, the NHL reports. The 2:30 p.m. game will be called by Gordon “Maajiigoneyaash” Jourdain, Chato “Ombishkebines” Gonzalez, and James “Ginoonde” Buckholtz. The Wild are currently in third place in their division with a record of 12-7.