Mourners Honor Minnesota Lawmaker and Husband at Funeral
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Midwest Cities Bake as Heat Wave Blankets the Central U.S.
St. Louis, Omaha and Des Moines were among the cities that saw heat indexes rise toward triple digits, with similar temperatures expected on the East Coast by Monday.Dick Kraklow rolled into Minneapolis earlier this week with three generations of his family and several vintage vehicles in tow, excited for an annual gathering of the Minnesota Street Rod Association that celebrates classic cars.But instead of setting up on Saturday morning to display their collection, Mr. Kraklow, 42, and his family were loading up to drive back to Wisconsin. Several members of the group are in their late 70s, and the heat radiating off the asphalt at the state fairgrounds in St. Paul on Friday caused the family to change plans.“We love the show,” Mr. Kraklow, a welder from Muskego, Wis., said as his uncle angled a yellow 1957 Ford Thunderbird onto a trailer. But ultimately, he said, “It’s too hot.” Millions of Americans on Saturday faced sweltering conditions as a dangerous heat wave brought rising temperatures to the Midwest and Central Plains. By early afternoon, the National Weather Service reported that the heat index — a measure of how hot it feels that accounts for both heat and humidity — had hit 93 degrees in Minneapolis, 98 in Des Moines, 99 in Sioux Falls, S.D., and 105 in St. Louis. In Omaha, forecasters said that it would feel like it was 100 to 110 degrees this weekend — in the shade.The most extreme heat was expected to move east and south over the next several days. New York City, Washington and Philadelphia could all break 100 degrees on the heat index by the end of the weekend. Several cities could see heat records broken. Over the entire country, more than 64 million people were under an extreme heat warning.Climate scientists have found that climate change has made heat waves more common, more intense and longer lasting worldwide, though attributing a specific heat wave to climate change is tricky.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Many Lawmakers Share Their Home Addresses. Political Violence Is Changing That.
The Minnesota assassination is causing some state legislators to rethink home security and how much personal information they make public.When an assassin visited the homes of two Minnesota lawmakers on Saturday, it exposed the longstanding tension between a public official’s accessibility and their security.Both State Representative Melissa Hortman, who along with her husband Mark was killed, and State Senator John A. Hoffman, who along with his wife Yvette was wounded, readily shared their home addresses with constituents. Ms. Hortman’s address was listed on her campaign website, and Mr. Hoffman’s address had been listed on his official legislative webpage, a common practice in many states.But in the hours after the shootings, while police officers were still searching for the assassin, lawmakers across the country began to rethink their approach to privacy and safety. The Michigan State Police held security briefings for legislators. The police in Fairfax County, Va., increased patrols around lawmakers’ homes. And in North Dakota, officials decided by midday Saturday to scrub home addresses from legislator biography pages.“In light of the tragedy in Minnesota, we quickly decided to remove all addresses until our leaders have time to assess the proper balance between transparency and safety of our elected officials,” John D. Bjornson, the director of the North Dakota Legislative Council, said in an email.In interviews with lawmakers across the country, some said sharing their home address helped reassure constituents that they were part of the community and could be easily reached. But unlike governors and presidents, most state lawmakers have no special security protection when they are away from work. The country’s coarsening public discourse has left them to weigh difficult trade-offs.“Part of the reason why my address is easily found is to make it clear that I actually live in my district,” said Stephanie Sawyer Clayton, a Democratic state representative in Kansas. “If you have a P.O. box, you don’t look authentic, right?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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What We Know About the Suspect in the Minnesota Lawmakers Shootings
The suspect, Vance Boelter, was appointed more than once to the Workforce Development Board, where he served with State Senator John A. Hoffman, who was shot on Saturday.The man suspected of shooting two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota early on Saturday had served on a state board with one of the victims, records show.The suspect identified by the authorities, Vance Boelter, 57, was appointed several times by Minnesota governors to the Workforce Development Board, where he served with State Senator John A. Hoffman, who was shot and survived.Mr. Boelter and Senator Hoffman attended a virtual meeting together in 2022 for a discussion about the job market in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, minutes from the meeting show.Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said investigators did not yet know how well the two knew each other, if at all.Mr. Boelter was appointed to the board in 2016 by Mark Dayton, a Democrat who was then the governor. More recently, he was appointed by Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat. The board has 41 members who are appointed by the governor, and its goal is to improve business development in the state.A state report in 2016 listed Mr. Boelter’s political affiliation as “none or other,” and another report in 2020 listed him as having “no party preference.” Voters do not declare political affiliation when they register in Minnesota.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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End of Federal Oversight Plan for Minneapolis Police Draws Criticism Over Timing
The Trump administration announced the withdrawal of the plan just days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s killing.The Trump administration’s announcement on Wednesday that it was withdrawing from federal oversight plans for the Minneapolis Police Department came as the city was preparing to mark the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of the police.Officials and residents expressed dismay about the administration’s decision, saying that oversight had been aimed at ending what federal authorities had described as a longstanding pattern of violent, racist and unconstitutional practices by the city’s Police Department.The timing of the announcement, during a week when Mr. Floyd’s death is being observed with panel discussions, concerts, vigils and other gatherings in Minneapolis, struck many in the city as insensitive.Mr. Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, when a police officer held his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.“The Trump administration is sending a signal that they don’t care about Black lives,” said Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and activist in Minneapolis.Officials in Minneapolis said they had long anticipated that the Trump administration would withdraw from an agreement that had been signed just days before President Biden left the White House.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Trump Administration Pulls Back From Local Police Oversight Across U.S.
The Justice Department said that it would abandon efforts to overhaul local policing in Minneapolis and other cities with histories of civil rights violations.The Trump administration moved on Wednesday to scrap proposed agreements for federal oversight of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., as part of a broader abandonment of efforts by previous administrations to overhaul local law enforcement across the United States.Justice Department officials said they planned to drop cases filed after incidents of police violence against Black people in Minneapolis and Louisville, and to close investigations into departments in Memphis; Phoenix; Oklahoma City; Trenton, N.J.; and Mount Vernon, N.Y., as well as a case against the Louisiana State Police.In those cities and states, Justice Department officials said, they were retracting Biden-era findings that police departments had violated the constitutional rights of residents and were declaring those findings to be misguided.The announcement came four days before the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died at the hands of the Minneapolis police. That act of violence, caught on video, inspired national outrage and worldwide protests against police violence targeting Black Americans.It also resulted in a withering federal report that found that the Minneapolis Police Department had routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people and had used deadly force without justification. After nearly two years of negotiations, the Justice Department and the city submitted an agreement to the court in January calling for federal oversight of the Police Department’s efforts to address the issues.That arrangement, known as a consent decree, was similar to court-approved agreements between the federal government and at least 13 other cities whose police forces have been accused of widespread civil rights abuses, including Los Angeles, Newark and Ferguson, Mo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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UnitedHealth’s Move to End Cyberattack Loan Lifeline Upsets Medical Providers
The company lent roughly $9 billion to practices affected by a vast cyberattack on its payment systems last year. Medical practices are now suing the health care colossus, saying it is pressuring them to repay funds.Two independent medical practices in Minnesota once hoped to expand operations but have spent the past year struggling to recover from the cyberattack on a vast UnitedHealth Group payment system.Odom Health & Wellness, a sports medicine and rehabilitation outfit, and the Dillman Clinic & Lab, a family medicine practice, are among the thousands of medical offices that experienced sudden financial turmoil last year. The cyberattack against Change Healthcare, a division of United, paralyzed much of the nation’s health-care payment system for months.Change lent billions of dollars to medical practices that were short on cash but has begun demanding repayments.Dillman and Odom are suing United in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, accusing the corporation of negligence related to the cyberattack and claiming they sustained excessive expenses because of the attack’s fallout.In addition, Odom and Dillman asserted in court filings that the company’s insurance arm, UnitedHealthcare, has in turn been denying claims to cover patient care for being submitted late.Lawmakers viewed the chaos caused by the cyberattack as a result of United’s seemingly insatiable desire to buy up companies like Change, alongside doctors’ practices and pharmacy businesses. The widespread disruption was a reminder of how deeply United’s sprawling subsidiaries had become embedded in the nation’s health care system.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Small Plane Crashes in a Minneapolis Suburb, Killing at Least One, Officials Say
No one in the house was injured after the plane crashed in Brooklyn Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, officials said.A small plane crashed in a residential area in Brooklyn Park, Minn., on Saturday, leaving a house in flames.ABC NewsAt least one person was killed after a small plane crashed into a house in a Minneapolis suburb on Saturday afternoon, engulfing the home in flames, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and local officials.No one in the house was injured after the plane crashed in Brooklyn Park, Minn., Risikat Adesaogun, the city’s communications manager, said. Shawn Conway, the city’s fire chief, said no one aboard the plane survived, though it was not immediately known how many people were aboard.The plane, which the F.A.A. identified as a SOCATA TBM7, seats a maximum of seven people, according to GlobalAir.com.The home that was hit was a “complete loss” and there was minor damage to nearby homes, Ms. Adesaogun said. The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board were traveling to Brooklyn Park to investigate the crash.The plane took off from Des Moines International Airport in Iowa and was headed to Anoka County-Blaine Airport in Minnesota, the F.A.A. said, when it crashed at 12:20 p.m. in Brooklyn Park, a city of about 82,000 people that is 11 miles north of Minneapolis.Footage from a Ring security camera appeared to show the plane nose-diving a short distance away. Videos from the scene also showed a large home engulfed in flames.Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said on social media that his team was “monitoring the situation closely.” More
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S.N.L. Is for Me and All the Other Outsiders
In December 2019, when my children were in third and fifth grade, I decided to show them a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that, decades before, my three siblings and I had loved: Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn as the Sweeney Sisters singing a Christmas medley at a party. I had trouble finding this particular sketch, but as my kids and I inhaled, via YouTube, a random assortment of other ones from over the years — among them such classics as “NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls” and “The Love Toilet” — I inadvertently yet happily created what would become our 2020 hobby, while quarantined in our Minneapolis home. I also welcomed my offspring into a time-honored tradition: watching “S.N.L.” when you’re a little too young for it.I myself began doing this in the mid-80s, in my friend Annie’s attic, when her older brothers introduced us to “Choppin’ Broccoli,” “A Couple of White Guys” and “The Church Lady.” As it happens, “S.N.L.” and I are the same age. I arrived in August 1975, and “S.N.L.” debuted in October. It’s therefore a little brain-scrambling to me that “S.N.L.” is now, with deserved fanfare, celebrating 50 years while I’m not quite 49 and a half, but apparently a TV show’s first season starts immediately, while a human’s first season starts when she turns 1.In any case, when I think of being too young for “S.N.L.” and enjoying it anyway, I don’t exactly mean because of the risqué content. Admittedly, as my family started watching entire episodes in reverse order of their airing — we especially enjoyed the golden age of Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant — my husband and I occasionally fast-forwarded through sketches not because they were crude (bring on “Undercover Office Potty”) but because they were innocence-destroying (the intentionally misogynistic “Guy Who Just Bought a Boat”).But I suspect that for a child watching “S.N.L.,” the joke itself doesn’t necessarily matter. If you’re 8 or 10, you might never even have heard of the politician or cultural trend being mocked. But you still know that you’re watching something funny; the magic of “S.N.L.” is that with its costumes and collaboration and the cast members regularly cracking up themselves and one another, it makes adulthood itself seem fun.My parents had friends and attended and threw parties, but even so, there was something about adulthood that struck me as serious when I was a kid — adults spent their days getting their oil changed, filling out paperwork, going to funerals — and the sheer silliness of “S.N.L.” seemed charmingly, enticingly at odds with that. If you were lucky, perhaps you could build a life around silliness. As it turned out, I did and I didn’t: I’m not a comedian, but as a novelist, I did build a life around making stuff up, reconstituting what the culture offers.Back in Minneapolis, the pandemic dragged on, and eventually my family was joined on our TV-watching couch by a rescue Chihuahua named Weenie. As we all watched episode after episode, it dawned on me that in addition to being a kid’s festive idea of adulthood, “S.N.L.” embodies several other elusive and aspirational ideas: an idea of New York for people who, like me, have never lived there; an idea of having hilarious friends or co-workers instead of annoying ones; an idea of being able to metabolize political instability into biting jokes instead of feeling helpless about it; an idea of glamorous after-parties that we want to want to attend when most of us don’t really want to stay up that late. (Though here I might just mean me. My kids are now teenagers and go to bed after I do. But my family has never watched “S.N.L.” live; we usually watch it on Sunday around 7 p.m.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
