With Minnesota Democrats in control of the political branches of state government, they lost no time advancing the agenda of their base. In the first months of the 2023-2024 “let’s go crazy” legislative session, they made the national news with a bizarre “trans refuge” bill. The bill was preceded by Governor Tim Walz’s executive order making Minnesota a “sanctuary” where minors could suffer permanent genital mutilation in a manner that would be illegal where they live.
In the same “let’s go crazy” legislative session Democrats also banned therapy “that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions…” If you don’t doubt the wisdom of the law, you’re out of your mind.
The “let’s go crazy” session helped bring Tim Walz to the attention of national Democrats. President Obama thought that Walz had a good thing going. Following his selection as Kamala Harris’s running mate, Obama was ecstatic. “He knows who he is and what’s important,” Obama said. “You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet…” And he wasn’t talking about Walz’s effeminate theatrics on the campaign trail. They were yet to come.
If Minnesota is a state trans refuge, Minneapolis must be the capital. In the wake of the mass shooting yesterday at Annunciation Church by trans madperson Robin Westman, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey instructed us: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity.” He means to shut down those of us who have do not concur in the wisdom of the party’s program.
Frey also disparaged “thoughts and prayers” for the two children and others injured in Westman’s murder spree. He apparently wants to tout gun control. “Gun violence” is the question and “gun control” is the answer. Amen.
Westman’s reported video/manifestos include anti-Semitic and anti-Christian phrases and symbols as well as calls to kill President Donald Trump and destroy the state of Israel. He wrote of murdering “filthy Zionist Jews,” that “six million wasn’t enough,” and “free Palestine,” the New York Post reported yesterday. “If I will carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” Westman reportedly wrote in a journal that the paper said was “full of antisemitic slurs.”
It sounds like a slightly expanded edition of the whole party package. Miranda Devine gets inside Minnesota’s political culture in her New York Post column “Deadly Minnesota school shooting reflects tragic cost of a disordered society — including Dem leaders who lost the plot.”
The lineup of public officials at the press briefing after the shooting yesterday is a joke: Walz, Frey, O’Hara, Minneapolis public safety commissioner Toddrick Barnette, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. They make for an unintentionally satirical portrait of political clowns. It is the visual counterpart to Devine’s column.
We have followed the exodus of sworn officers from the Minneapolis Police Department, the demoralization of the department under Chief Brian O’Hara, the lawlessly lax law enforcement of Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the promotion of Minneapolis and Minnesota as “sanctuary” jurisdictions for illegal immigration, and so on. Minneapolis is down some 350 officers of the more than 900 that populated the ranks at the time of the death of Saint George Floyd. Five years later, Minneapolis’s police department more than 150 officers short of the legal minimum.
It should be noted that Walz has manifested his hostility to religious schools such as the Annunciation Catholic School affiliate of the church. The two students killed and others injured in the shooting attended the school. The National Catholic Register reports “Minnesota Catholic School Shooting Came After Bishops’ Pleas for Security Funds Went Unanswered.” Subhead: “Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and the state Legislature both declined to act on repeated appeals from Catholic leaders seeking the same level of protection public schools receive.” It is a timely, detailed, and devastating story by senior editor Jonathan Liedl.
The bishops speak for everyone I know involved with our local religious schools. That’s an angle that the Star Tribune has not yet covered in connection with the Annunciation shooting. That much I can tell you.
