Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Landlords & Republicans ❤️ MPLS?
For months now, citizen journalist Taylor Dahlin has been relentlessly investigating the finances of We Love Minneapolis, a PAC focused on electing a more “moderate” City Council this fall. Today she gathered what she’s uncovered into a single blog post, “Who is Behind We Love Minneapolis? Who Funds We Love Minneapolis?” and the answer seems to be: landlords and Republicans.
Among the largest donors to the PAC, Dahlin reveals, are the Hornig family, landlords in the Twin Cities, and Citizens for Safer Cities, a Brooklyn Center-based org chaired by Chris Kohler, who owns a property management firm. Many other property managers and developers have also donated to We Love Minneapolis; the group has received at least $132,890 so far this year.
In fact, Dahlin quotes the left-leaning PAC Mpls for the Many as stating that 68% of We Love Minneapolis’s funds "come from landlords responsible for hundreds of Minneapolis property violations in the last three years alone.”
These donors tend not to live in Minneapolis, Dahlin writes, and they also often donate to Republican candidates. She notes that the PAC’s chair, Andrea Corbin, who owns Flower Bar in Lowry Hill East, does not live in the city and donated $260 to the MN GOP last year.
But while the PAC is cozy with GOP donors, it is shriekingly obsessed with defeating Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidates. Dahlin shares their alarmist, red-baiting training materials, which calls council members Elliott Payne, Jeremiah Ellison, Katie Cashman, and Emily Koski “DSA aligned,” and seems to fear that a DSA-dominated council will withdraw the U.S. from NATO.
The picture that emerges is one of a PAC that considers the DSA, whose elected reps and voters share common concerns with the DFL, more radical and dangerous than the Republican party, which... well, you probably know about them.
A Bad Ship-tuation
Hey, so if there aren't enough goods coming into the country to keep truckers busy, is that... good?
For the Minnesota Reformer, Max Nesterak caught up with truck drivers like Freddy Lazo of New Brighton shipping company Big Blue Box. Scary reports of slowdowns at coastal ports have been rolling in for weeks now, with one Seattle port telling Newsweek: "We currently have no container ships." The slowdown on imports follow's Trump's April 2 “Liberation Day," on which our genius president announced tariffs on the whole world.
“It’s really super slow," Lazo tells the Reformer, and as an independent contractor, he's not getting paid when he's not working. And things don't seem poised to improve any time soon. Here's Nesterak:
Big Blue Box Vice President Ted Longbella said they aim to move about 120 containers a day—big blue shipping containers, as the name suggests. Toys, windows and games come in. Scrap metal, grain and dairy powder go out.
He’s been keeping a close eye on the number of blank sailings, when an ocean shipping company cancels a planned trip, because it tells him what demand will be like in the near future.
He’s like a taxi driver staring up at the airport sign listing arrivals and watching one flight after another canceled. There are passengers that still need rides home now, but pretty soon the airport will be empty.
Voting Reform: More Trouble for Trans People and Newlywed Women in MN
Voter fraud is extremely rare, but distrust and disinformation in the election process is part of the Project 2025 plan, so here we are. Should it become law, Congress's Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require voters to provide extra documentation (think birth certificates, passports, naturalization paperwork, etc.) when registering or re-registering to vote. So far SAVE has passed in the U.S. House, but not the Senate.
Not only would this be a logistical nightmare—imagine the backup it could put on states like Minnesota where people can register at the polls—this also would create a clusterfuck for anyone who has changed their name recently. The Center for American Progress estimates that approximately 69 million women could be impacted. Trans, intersex, and nonbinary people who recently changed their name would also face difficulties, and new passports issued are already misgendering people.
So, how would this play out in Minnesota? Janet Moore looked at the numbers in this depressing (but helpful!) rundown in the Star Tribune on what would happen if the bill is signed into law (and it probably will be). Although the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office notes it doesn’t know for sure, Moore used data from a Census Bureau survey and numbers from the Pew Research Center to find that there are “948,000 Minnesota women who may find it difficult to vote in federal elections under the Republican-led overhaul.” Moore also notes that 26,000 people identify as transgender in Minnesota.
Let's Hear From the Gopher Furry Community
Big week for furries.
In the indie-rock world, noted furry rockstar Will Toledo dropped Car Seat Headrest's 13th album, The Scholars, a mostly incomprehensible rock opera that does include include a handful of bangers—"CCF (I'm Gonna Stay With You)," "The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)," "Gethsemane," "True/False Lover."
And, closer to home, the Minnesota Daily's Sara Hussein shined a light on the University of Minnesota Anthro Club, which was created two years ago "to provide a safe place for students who identify as furries." Future club president Zachery Wesley says the club meets every other week inside Coffman Union to celebrate all things related to the furry subculture, one that involves participants dressing up in anthropomorphized suits to express their individual "fursona." (Sexual fetishism can come into play, but it's not the emphasis.) At Anthro Club meetings, "Members often bring board games to play together or just come to hang out," Hussein writes.
“It’s a pretty small community that is becoming more known throughout the world,” club member Brady Collins tells the Daily. “Just getting to have the same interest and getting to know that there’s more people like me and people who have their own characters and people who have an interest in the fandom itself."
The club's first "fursuit walkout" around campus drew some dirty looks from fellow students, Wesley reports, though there's a strong sense of solidarity among its 30 members. “I feel like most people know what a furry is, but they don’t really know anything past that,” club member Vincent Norton says.
In other U of M club news: Lettuce Club, which Racket profiled some years ago, is reportedly back in all its leaf-chomping glory.
