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    Doctors find bullet fragment in neck of 10-year-old Minnesota school shooting survivor

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    Doctors have found a bullet fragment lodged perilously close to the carotid artery in the neck of a 10-year-old boy who narrowly survived the mass shooting in Minneapolis last week after a friend shielded him from the gunfire.Fifth-grader Weston Halsne recounted running under a pew and covering his head while shots fired by the alleged shooter, Robin Westman, came through the stained-glass windows during the shooting at Annunciation Catholic school last Wednesday. He described how his friend Victor Greenawalt had jumped on top of him to shield him.After the shooting, the boy told reporters: “I think I got, like, gunpowder on my neck.”His father, Grant Halsne, has now told NBC News that it was in fact not gunpowder, but a piece of bullet, adding that a doctor described the boy’s survival as a “miracle”.“If it [the bullet fragment] went any further, he would’ve died,” Halsne told the outlet.His son is expected to have the fragment removed later this week and is expected to make a full recovery.An aunt, Allison Hawes, confirmed that her nephew “will need surgery to remove a bullet fragment that is lodged in his neck, dangerously close to his carotid artery”.Hawes wrote on a fundraising page: “You’ve been amazed by his quick wit, awed by his persistence, and charmed by his earnestness.“If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve seen his grief-stricken face and heard, despite his shock, Weston’s account of the horrific details during the mass at Annunciation Church. And in spite of everything, this 10-year-old boy was able to express appreciation for his friends and pray for their recovery.”Weston last week described how he first heard the gunfire. “I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows,” Weston said. “So, they were like, the shots were like right next to me.”The suspect, who was found dead at the rear of the church with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, fired around 120 shots from three different guns, according to Minneapolis police.Police on Sunday revised the number of people injured in the shooting from 18 to 21 on Sunday. Fletcher Merkel, eight, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed. Most of the injured were children.Greenawalt’s uncle, Mike Kelly, said his nephew’s “selfless acts” helped spare the lives of his friends. “But he and his sister were injured in the process,” Kelly wrote on a fundraising site.Others injured include Genevieve Bisek, 11, who was shot in the neck. She is listed as “satisfactory”. Her family, who have also launched a fundraising page, said her “medical journey is uncertain”.Sophia Forchas, 12, was listed as in critical condition; Lydia Kaiser in “very serious condition”; David Haeg, six, is being treated in a hospital pediatric intensive care unit; and Astoria Safe, 10, was grazed on the forehead. She told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she had helped pull two kids next to her down when the bullets started flying.“I had two buddies side by side, and I just pushed their heads down to make sure they were safe,” she said. “I thought it was fireworks, it was just crazy. And the smell was terrible.”Officials have said they are trying “to determine some type of motive” for this shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told ABC News the suspect “clearly had a deranged obsession with previous mass shooters”.“Ultimately this person committed this act with the intention of causing as much terror, as much trauma, as much carnage as possible for their own personal notoriety,” O’Hara said.The survivor accounts come as a political debate rages over the motives for shooting, with figures on the right pointing to the shooter’s transgender identity, and the left to identify gun control.On Sunday, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused White House official Sebastian Gorka on Sunday of wanting “to deflect from the reality” after Gorka said Westman had a clear “ideological” motive for targeting the Catholic school.“That’s what terrorism is,” Gorka said, prompting Omar to respond: “These people are all over the place because they want to deflect from the reality … which is that, there was, someone who came into that school, through the window, and assassinated two beautiful angels, as they prayed.”Omar called for call for a ban on assault weapons and increased mental health services. “This is not the moment to point fingers,” she said. More

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      Judge blocks White House from defunding 34 municipalities over ‘sanctuary’ policies

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      A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funding to 34 “sanctuary cities” and counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration law enforcement, significantly expanding a previous order.The order, issued on Friday by the San Francisco-based US district judge William Orrick, adds Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as Boston, Baltimore, Denver and Albuquerque, to cities that the administration is barred from denying funding.Orrick, an Obama appointee, previously ruled it was unconstitutional for the Trump administration to freeze funding to local governments with “sanctuary” policies, limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).The April ruling came after cities including San Francisco, Sacramento, Minneapolis and Seattle sued the administration over what they claimed were illegal executive orders signed by Donald Trump in January and February that threatened to cut off funding if Democrat-controlled cities do not cooperate.Cities and counties suing the administration contend that the executive orders amount to an abuse of power that violate the constitution. The administration argues that the federal government should not be forced to subsidize policies that thwart its control of immigration.The administration has since ordered the national guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC, both cities with sanctuary designations, under a law-and-order mandate. On Friday, Trump said Chicago is likely the next target for efforts to crack down on crime, homelessness and illegal immigration.“I think Chicago will be our next,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding: “And then we’ll help with New York.”The number of people in immigration detention has soared by more than 50% since Trump’s inauguration, according to an Axios review published Saturday, reaching a record 60,000 immigrants in long-term detention or around 21,000 more than at the end of the Biden administration.Separately, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, last week issued fresh threats to 30 Democrat-led cities and states, including to the governors of California, Illinois and Minnesota, and the mayors of New York, Denver and Boston, to drop sanctuary policies.Bondi said in the letter that their jurisdictions had been identified as those that engage “in sanctuary policies and practices that thwart federal immigration enforcement to the detriment of the interests of the United States”.“This ends now,” Bondi wrote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrat leaders uniformly rejected the Trump administration’s assertion. Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said in response that Bondi’s order was “some kind of misguided political agenda” that “is fundamentally inconsistent with our founding principles as a nation”.The accelerating confrontation between the administration and Democratic-led jurisdictions comes as the Pentagon began ordering 2,000 national guard troops in Washington to carry firearms.US officials told NBC News that the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had authorized national guard members who are supporting local law enforcement will probably carry weapons but troops assigned to city beautification roles would not.The official said troops supporting the mission “to lower the crime rate in our nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training”, according to the outlet. More

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      US lawmakers balance security and openness as threats of political violence rise

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      “Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.”The staff at representative Swalwell’s California district office had heard the man’s voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday.“So, I’m fine with anything at this point. I’m tired of it. I’ll just set up behind my .308 and I’ll do my job,” he said in one voice recording. The .308 is a reference to a rifle, according to the criminal complaint. “You want a war? Get your war started.”Swalwell’s staff reported the latest threat. This time, the FBI charged the caller with a crime.As threats of political violence escalate – and the impact of the political assassination in Minnesota reverberates across the country – lawmakers like Swalwell are re-evaluating how to manage the balance between openness and security.The instinct of security professionals may be to increase physical security and limit the availability of elected officials to the public. But that approach runs headlong into a conflict with the imperative for politicians to connect with their constituents.“I’m not going be intimidated. I know the aim of this threat is to have me shrink or hide under the bed and not speak out,” Swalwell told the Guardian. “This guy’s terrorizing the members of Congress, law enforcement and staff, and it just has no place in our civil discourse.”Swalwell has had to spend nearly $1m on security over the last two years, he said. That money comes out of his campaign accounts.“When they threaten you and you protect yourself, your family and your staff, you’re dipping into your campaign resources,” Swalwell said. “You have this decision calculus where you can protect your family or you can protect your re-election, but it’s been costly to do both.”The caller, Geoffrey Chad Giglio, was no stranger to the FBI or to the public. Reuters interviewed him in October while looking at violent political rhetoric after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, presenting him as a provocateur and an example of the new viciousness.“I push the envelope,” Giglio told Reuters, adding that he would never hurt anyone. “If I have to go to jail because somebody thinks I’m really a threat, oh well, so be it.”View image in fullscreenGiglio’s made his last call to Swalwell’s office on 13 June according to the complaint, apparently undaunted after being interviewed by the FBI about previous threats only a few days earlier.Researchers have been tracking an increase in threats made against lawmakers for years, with the January 6 attack on the Capitol a way station on a dark road.“We see an increase starting around 2017, 2018,” said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, who in 2024 published a review of a decade of federal data on intimidation charges against federal elected officials. From 2013 to 2016, Capitol police charged an average of 38 people a year for making threats to lawmakers. By 2017 to 2022, the average had grown to 62 charges a year.“It’s hard to know whether there’s an increase in threats to public officials or there’s an increase in the level of enforcement that’s producing more criminal investigations and ultimately more charges filed in prosecution,” Simi said.But surveys of public officials at both the state and federal level also indicate an increase in threats.In a survey of local lawmakers published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice, “substantial numbers” said they thought the severity of the threats was increasing, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.“Lawmakers are reporting that it’s kind of getting worse, the severity of what’s being said in these voicemails, these emails, whatever messages people are getting,” Ramachandran said.Best security practices have begun to emerge, but the implementation is inconsistent across states, she said. One recommendation is for a specific law enforcement agency to take charge of monitoring and tracking threats against lawmakers, Ramachandran said. The US Capitol police are tasked with responding to threats to federal lawmakers, who may then refer cases to the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution. The responding agency at the state level is often less obvious to elected officials. “A lot of lawmakers we spoke with didn’t even know who they’re supposed to report these things to,” she said.Many elected officials said they wanted to balance security with accessibility, Ramachandran said, citing interviews with dozens of local lawmakers in 2023 about security and threats.“The vast majority of the lawmakers we talked to were really concerned about their constituents not feeling welcome, in terms of coming to visit their offices or going to the state capitol to be heard,” she said. “There was a repeated concern, of course, for safety of their staff and their families and all of that, and the constituents themselves, but also with not wanting things to be on lockdown and wanting to be accessible to constituents.”But the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Minneapolis-area home last month, has provoked a reassessment of that balance.At the federal level, the committee on House administration doubled spending on personal security measures for House members last week, allowing congressional representatives to spend $20,000 to increase home security, up from $10,000, and up to $5,000 a month on personal security, up from $150 a month. The committee’s chair, Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking member Joseph Morelle, a Democrat from New York, also asked the Department of Justice to give the US Capitol police additional federal prosecutors to help investigate and prosecute threats against legislators.Federal campaign finance law, as revised in January, provides a mechanism for federal officeholders to spend campaign money for locks, alarm systems, motion detectors and security camera systems, as well as some structural security devices, such as wiring, lighting, gates, doors and fencing, “so long as such devices are intended solely to provide security and not to improve the property or increase its value”. It also provides for campaign funds to pay for cybersecurity measures and for professional security personnel.Both Democratic and Republican legislators in Oklahoma sent a letter earlier this month to the Oklahoma ethics commission, asking if state law could be similarly interpreted, citing the assassinations in Minnesota.Lawmakers in California are also looking for ways to loosen campaign finance restrictions for candidate spending on security.California has a $10,000 lifetime cap for candidates on personal security spending from election funds – a cap that legislation doubled last year. A proposal by assemblymember Mia Bonta would suspend the cap through 2028, with a $10,000 annual cap after that.Enhanced home security for Minnesota legislators will be covered by a state budget appropriation for any member asking for it, lawmakers decided last week. This is in addition to state rules enacted in 2021 allowing $3,000 in campaign spending toward personal security.Minnesota and several other states – including Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota – almost immediately removed home address data from state government websites after the Minnesota assassinations. New Mexico had already largely restricted this data after a series of drive-by shootings at lawmakers’ homes by a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2023.Restricting public information about lawmaker’s residency can be a political headache in some states. Generally, an elected official must live in the district he or she represents. Residency challenges are a common campaign issue, but a challenge cannot be raised if the address of a lawmaker is unknown to the public.“It is something that I think we as a society are going to have to grapple with,” said Ramachandran. “It may not be the best idea to enforce those rules about residency requirements by just having the whole general public know where people live and to be able to go up to their house and see if they really live there, right?”Some states like Nevada are exploring long-term solutions. Nevada’s secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, is forming a taskforce to look at ways to restrict access to lawmakers’ residential information without interfering in election challenges.“Political violence has no place in our country,” he said in a statement. “People, including elected officials, should be able to have differing opinions and go to work without fear of violence or threats.”The challenge for lawmakers and investigators is crafting a policy to deal with people who because of their behavior are unusual outliers. As angry as people can be about politics, only a tiny few will make a phone call to a legislator to make a threat, and even fewer will carry out that threat.“The vast, vast majority of Americans are reporting on these surveys that they don’t support political violence,” Simi said. “So those that do are an outlier. But there’s some question about whether that outlier is increasing over time. We don’t have great data over time, so that’s a hard question to answer.” More

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris attend funeral of slain Minnesota lawmaker

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      Democratic former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral on Saturday that was attended by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.The former president and vice-president were joined by more than 1,000 other mourners.Hortman was shot to death during a pair of attacks two weeks earlier by a man posing as a police officer. Minnesota’s chief federal prosecutor has called the killing an assassination. The shootings also left her husband, Mark, dead and a state senator and his wife seriously wounded.“Melissa Hortman will be remembered as the most consequential speaker in Minnesota history. I get to remember her as a close friend, a mentor and the most talented legislator I have ever known,” Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said in his eulogy.Walz, who was Harris’s running mate in the 2024 White House election won by Donald Trump, added: “For seven years, I have had the privilege of signing her agenda into law. I know millions of Minnesotans get to live their lives better because she and Mark chose public service and politics.”Neither Biden nor Harris spoke, but they sat in the front row with Walz. Biden was also one of more than 7,500 people who paid their respects on Friday as Hortman, her husband and their golden retriever, Gilbert, lay in state in the Minnesota capitol rotunda in St Paul. Gilbert was seriously wounded in the attack and had to be euthanized. Biden also visited the wounded senator in a hospital.Dozens of current and former state legislators from both parties and other elected officials who worked with Hortman also attended.As House speaker, Hortman helped pass an expansive agenda of liberal initiatives such as free lunches for public school students along with strengthened protections for abortion and trans rights during a momentous 2023 legislative session. With the House split 67-67 between Democrats and Republicans this year, she yielded the gavel to a Republican under a power-sharing deal, took the title speaker emerita and helped break a budget impasse that threatened to shut down state government.Walz said Hortman – who was first elected in 2004 – saw her mission as “to get as much good done for as many people as possible”. And he said her focus on people was what made her so effective.“She certainly knew how to get her way – no doubt about that,” Walz said. “But she never made anyone feel that they’d gotten rolled at a negotiating table. That wasn’t part of it for her, or a part of who she was. She didn’t need somebody else to lose to win for her.”The governor said the best way to honor the Hortmans would be by following their example.“Maybe it is this moment where each of us can examine the way we work together, the way we talk about each other, the way we fight for things we care about,” Walz said. “A moment when each of us can recommit to engaging in politics and life the way Mark and Melissa did – fiercely, enthusiastically, heartily, but without ever losing sight of our common humanity.”A private burial for the Hortmans will be held at a later date.The Hortmans were proud of their adult children, Sophie and Colin Hortman, and the lawmaker often spoke of them.In a voice choked with emotion, Colin said his parents embodied the “Golden Rule”, and he read the prayer of St Francis, which his mother always kept in her wallet. He said it captures her essence. It starts: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”After the service, Walz presented the children with US and Minnesota flags that flew over the state capitol on the day their parents were killed.The man accused of killing the Hortmans at their home in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park on 14 June, and wounding Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in nearby Champlin, surrendered near his home the night of 15 June.Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, remains jailed and has not entered a plea to charges that could carry the federal death penalty. More

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      Suspect in Minnesota killings accused of being ‘prepper’ preparing ‘for war’

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      The man charged in connection with the recent shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses was a doomsday “prepper” who instructed his family to “prepare for war” as he tried to evade capture, according to new court filings.Vance Boelter, 57, faces multiple federal and state murder charges after allegedly shooting dead the Democratic Minnesota state house speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in the early hours of 14 June. Boelter is also accused of shooting and seriously wounding the Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, about 90 minutes earlier.In a newly unsealed affidavit first reported by the local news station WCCO and seen by the Guardian, law enforcement pulled over Boelter’s wife and four children hours after the shootings near Lake Mille Lacs, about 75 miles (120km) north of the Twin Cities, apparently en route to Wisconsin.Boelter’s wife consented to a search of her vehicle, where law enforcement located a revolver in the glove box and a semi-automatic pistol in a cooler. Police also found a safe, Boelter’s and the children’s passports, and at least $10,000 in cash, according to the affidavit by FBI agent Terry Getsch.Boelter’s wife told investigators that her husband had recently sent a message to a group text thread with their children, which “stated something to the effect of they should prepare for war, they needed to get out of the house and people with guns may be showing up to the house”, wrote Getsch.According to the affidavit dated 14 June, Boelter and his wife were preppers – a term which refers to people who stockpile materials such as weapons, food and gasoline. Preppers’ purpose for doing that is to survive a future major disaster or catastrophe such as war or economic or political collapse.At some point earlier, Boelter had given his wife a “bailout plan” – instructions of what to do and where to go in case of “exigent circumstances”. The plan specified that the family go to her mother’s residence in Spring Brook, Wisconsin.She also told investigators that her husband “has a business partner from Worthington” who lives in the state of Washington. The two were “partners … in Red Lion, a security company and fishing outfit in Congo, Africa”, the affidavit states.The deadly shootings took place as millions of people prepared to take to the streets to protest against the Trump administration and its assault on free speech, peaceful assembly and due process rights embedded in the US constitution.Getsch wrote the affidavit during what became the largest ever manhunt in Minnesota state history, when he believed the gunman may have fled state lines. Boelter was eventually captured two days later while trying to evade arrest by fleeing into a wooded area close to his home.The affidavit does not imply that Boelter’s wife knew about her husband’s alleged plans to attack the lawmakers. She has not been charged with any crime.Boelter was disguised as a police officer and drove a black SUV with a license plate that said “police”. He allegedly ambushed the lawmakers at home in the middle of the night, banging on their front doors armed with a 9mm handgun, and wearing a black tactical vest and silicone mask.He exchanged fire with police at about 3.30am on Saturday outside the Hortmans’ home but managed to flee the scene, according to a federal criminal complaint.According to separate court documents obtained by WCCO on Friday, law enforcement found a storage locker rented by Boelter in Minneapolis on 10 June. He had last “used his access code” for the locker the day before the shootings.Investigators later found empty rifle cases, gun-cleaning supplies and a bike inside the locker.Law enforcement found a “hit list” of individuals inside what they believe was Boelter’s vehicle. It included Hortman, Hoffman and several other Democratic lawmakers, as well as reproductive rights advocates.In a statement released on Thursday, the Hoffman family recounted the terrifying attack. The statement said: “We are grappling with the reality that we live in a world where public service carries such risks as being targeted because someone disagrees with you or doesn’t like what you stand for.” More

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      The Minnesota shootings illuminate the character of the Trump era | Sidney Blumenthal

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      In the early morning of 14 June, according to authorities, Vance Luther Boelter, disguised as a police officer and wearing body armor and a face mask, drove his black Ford Explorer SUV, equipped with flashing lights, to the home of the Minnesota state senator John Hoffman. There, he shot Hoffman nine times, critically wounding him, and shot his wife eight times as, relatives say, she threw her body over her daughter to shield her. He next drove to the home of the former house speaker Melissa Hortman, forced his way in, and killed her and her husband, officials say.The police arrived and Boelter fled, abandoning his car. In it they allegedly discovered a “kill list” of dozens of federal and state Democratic officials, mostly from Minnesota but also prominent Democrats in other midwestern states, and the sites of women’s healthcare centers and Planned Parenthood donors. He left behind notebooks with detailed descriptions of his target locations. On the lam, Boelter sent a text message to his family: “Dad went to war last night.”As soon as the earliest reports of the murders were published, with the sketchy information that Boelter had been appointed by Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, to one of many state boards, on which there are currently more than 342 vacancies, the rightwing swarm began spreading the falsehood that he was Walz’s hitman. Mike Cernovich, a notorious conspiracy-monger with a large following on X, tweeted: “Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?”Elon Musk jumped in, writing on X: “The far left is murderously violent.” The far-right activist Laura Loomer, who occasionally surfaces as an intimate of Donald Trump, tweeted that Boelter and Walz were “friends” and that Walz should be “detained” by the FBI.Within hours, Mike Lee, a Republican senator for Utah, used the platform of his office to push the disinformation. Over eerie night-time photos of Boelter in his mask and police outfit standing at Hortman’s door seconds before he opened fire, Lee tweeted, first at 9.50am on 15 June: “This is what happens. When Marxists don’t get their way.” At 10.15am, he tweeted, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” misspelling Walz’s name.Lee expressed no sympathy or shock over the assassinations. He assumed the distance of the online tormentor gave him license. Like the mask-wearer, both were disinhibited by their contrived personas. Anything goes. Lee was doing more than blaming Walz for carrying out a bloody vendetta that conspiracy theorists had conjured. Lee created a cartoon. The killer was enlisted by the evil liberal governor to rub out someone who was in reality one of his closest allies. Like Boelter, Lee felt a compulsion to push himself in. The clamor of the far right pre-empted the emergence of the facts for Lee and served as his incitement.But, of course, Lee is a learned man who knew that what he was doing was malicious. The facts were always irrelevant. He trivialized a tragedy in order to implicate Walz as the villain commissioning the hit. Lee’s tone was one of mocking derision to belittle and distort. The killer, Walz and the victims were all tiny, dehumanized figures he arranged to illustrate his tweets. His manipulation was more than a maneuver. It was a revelation of Lee’s own mentality and political imagination he believed would be embraced to his advantage. His depraved humor was designed to cement fellow feeling between the jokester and his intended audience. He was playing to the gallery that he knew how to own the libs. He would gain approval and acceptance. In the hothouse in which he operates, he thought his mindless cruelty passed as wit.Soon enough it was reported that Boelter was not a Marxist or for that matter a hitman hired by Marxists. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Walz “did not know him” and Walz was on his “kill list”. Boelter was reportedly an abortion opponent, an evangelical Christian and a registered Republican who attended Trump rallies.Mike Lee is also a man in a mask. He altered his identity, discarding the veneer of a statesman for the Maga mask. Both Boelter and Lee profess to be men of faith, draping themselves in the authority of the law as one allegedly committed murder and the other hooted at it. They have both posed as heroic avengers and truth-tellers as they target victims. While speaking of God, the law and a higher calling, they worship at the shrine of Trump. The alleged assassin and the character assassin embody parallel lives that have intersected at the tragedy under the influence of Trump.One grew up in a traditional middle-class family; the other is a privileged son. Each of their fathers were prominent in their communities – one a high school coach, the other solicitor general of the United States. One graduated from St Cloud State University, the other from Brigham Young and its law school. One appeared susceptible to the latest conspiracy theories; the other knows these are lies but amplifies them anyway for personal aggrandizement to win the approval of the mob and its boss. One is a true believer; the other is a cynical opportunist. One is a “loser” in the Trump parlance. The other is a winner in the Trump galaxy. Both put their enemies in their crosshairs. One has been booked for homicide; the other is disgraced as a moral reprobate. One is indicted for his alleged crimes; the other has indicted himself. Both spiraled under Trump and both became lost souls, though Boelter would believe that he was found at last.Vance Luther Boelter grew up in the town of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, one of five siblings, living in a large house, the captain of the high school basketball team, voted “most courteous” and “most friendly”, according to the Washington Post, and his father acclaimed in the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. But when he was 17, the mainstream Lutheran young man became a born-again Christian, living in a tent in the local park and shouting sermons to passersby.After he received a degree from a state university, he wound up at the Christ for the Nations Institute, a Texas Bible school that emerged in 1970 from a faith healing group founded by Gordon Lindsay. On the lobby wall of the school is a Lindsay saying: “Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer each day.”Lindsay was also an organizer for the Anglo-Saxon World Federation, an antisemitic organization in the 1930s and 1940s that spread the doctrine of what was called British Israelism, that Anglo-Saxons, not the Jews, were the chosen people of God. The group distributed Henry Ford’s antisemitic tract, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, as well as Nazi propaganda, and preached that God would punish Franklin D Roosevelt. Lindsay was a close associate of Gerald Winrod, a pro-Nazi demagogue, who ran a group called Defenders of the Faith and was indicted for seditious conspiracy in 1944. After the war, British Israelism was rebranded as Christian Identity, a theocratic doctrine based in part on racist distinctions between superior and inferior races. Lindsay preached “spiritual war” against the satanic demons of secular culture.Boelter graduated in 1990 from the Christ for the Nations Institute with a degree in practical theology. He wandered as a missionary spreading his gospel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In one sermon, he said: “There’s people, especially in America, they don’t know what sex they are. They don’t know their sexual orientation. They’re confused. The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”Boelter claimed he was the CEO of the Red Lion security group. He continued his soul-saving. “In the Middle East, I went to the West Bank, the Gaza strip, southern Lebanon, and I would give pamphlets to everybody I could,” he said in one sermon. He created a website for a religious group he called Revoformation. He managed a 7-Eleven store, a gas station, and after taking courses in mortuary science worked transporting bodies to a funeral home. He listened to Alex Jones’s stream of conspiracy-mongering, Infowars.Boelter created a website for a security firm called Praetorian Guard for which his wife was listed as the CEO and he was the head of security. He bought two cars that he fitted out to look like police cars, stockpiled weapons and uniforms, but had no known business. On 14 June, with his “kill list” in hand, he sent a message to a longtime friend: “I made some choices, and you guys don’t know anything about this, but I’m going to be gone for a while. May be dead shortly …”Boelter’s apparent disguise as a law enforcement officer was an expedient that tricked his victims into opening their doors. Pretending to be a police officer, he traduced the law to impose his idea of order.Christ for the Nations Institute issued a statement renouncing Boelter: “Christ For The Nations does not believe in, defend or support violence against human beings in any form.” It added that the school “continues Gordon Lindsay’s slogan of encouraging our students to incorporate passion in their prayers as they contend for what God has for them and push back against evil spiritual forces in our world”.Mike Lee took the news of the assassinations as the signal for him to tweet. Lee was born to Mormon royalty in Utah. His father, Rex Lee, was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general, a principled conservative with an independent streak. He resisted pressure to argue cases on behalf of the administration against separation of church and state that would endorse government-sponsored prayer and religious symbols. He resigned in 1985, stating: “There has been a notion that my job is to press the Administration’s policies at every turn and announce true conservative principles through the pages of my briefs. It is not. I’m the solicitor general, not the pamphleteer general.” Rex Lee became the president of Brigham Young University and dean of its law school, both of which his son attended.Lee was elected to the Senate in great part on the strength of the family name. In 2016, Lee endorsed Ted Cruz for the Republican nomination for president. When Trump wrapped up the nomination, Lee refused to endorse him. “I mean we can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK,” Lee said. “We can go through the fact that he has made some statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant.” Lee demanded: “I would like some assurances that he is going to be a vigorous defender of the US constitution. That he is not going to be an autocrat. That he is not going to be an authoritarian.” Lee remained a holdout at the convention until the very end.By 2020, Lee touted Trump as a virtuous figure, comparing him to the self-sacrificing leader in the Book of Mormon. “To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni,” a hero in the Book of Mormon, Lee told a rally, with Trump standing beside him. “He seeks not power, but to pull it down. He seeks not the praise of the world or the fake news, but he seeks the wellbeing and the peace of the American people.”After Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Lee sent John Eastman, a law professor with a scheme to have the vice-president throw out the votes of the electoral college on January 6, to the Trump White House. While Trump focused on the insurrection, Lee strategized with the chief of staff, Mark Meadows – “trying to figure out a path that I can persuasively defend”, Lee texted Meadows. Lee diligently worked to realize the coup plan using fraudulent electors. “I’ve been calling state legislators for hours today, and am going to spend hours doing the same tomorrow,” Lee wrote Meadows.The journalist Tim Alberta, writing in the Atlantic, described a conversation Lee recounted with one of his staffers about Trump that went far to explain his motive for switching from a critic of Trump’s authoritarianism to a defender. “Donald Trump walks up to the bar,” said the staffer, “and he’s got a beer bottle in his hand, and he breaks the beer bottle in half over the counter and brandishes it.” Lee said he replied: “Immediately, a bunch of people in the room get behind him. Because he’s being assertive. And odds are lower, as they perceive it, that they’ll be hurt if they get behind him.”As Vance Boelter’s life unraveled, perhaps he imagined himself risen into a spirit warrior.Mike Lee knows better. To know better, but not to be better, is his peculiar disgrace. He lacks introspection into the source of his hateful behavior, except to offer the excuse that he won’t “be hurt” by Trump. Not to feel any ordinary emotion for the victims of a terrible and unprovoked crime and instead to engage in taunts betrays his father’s legacy and the shining figure of Captain Moroni, whom Lee has upheld. His fall from grace is one of the incidents that illuminates not only his but also the true character of the Trump era.

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast More

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      ‘True model of humility’: hundreds pay tribute to victims of Minnesota killings

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      Hundreds gathered at the Minnesota capitol on Wednesday night to honor the state Democratic representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were killed at their home on Saturday night in what authorities have described as a “political assassination”.Some mourners reportedly brought flowers to place in front of this memorial, while others held candles. Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, grew teary at the vigil, and consoled attenders, as a brass band from the Minnesota Orchestra performed, according to the Associated Press.Colin Hortman, Melissa and Mark’s son, hugged Walz and placed a photograph of his parents on their memorial. This is the first of several public vigils planned to memorialize the Hortmans before their funeral, MPR reported.The vigil also featured a string quartet, as well as a Native American drum circle. Attenders sang Amazing Grace together.Mourners, standing “shoulder to shoulder”, also brought “flags, handwritten notes and other mementos to Hortman”. A large blanket, laid out on the ground, allowed attendees to pen messages, per MPR.One message reported by MPR said: “Melissa was a true model of humility. She didn’t do this work to boost her own ego, further her political career or garner fame and glory. She did it to improve people’s lives.”The vigil’s organizers told attenders not to bring signs and decided not to have a speaking program. Walz said that Hortman should lie in state at Minnesota’s capitol, MPR said.The Hortmans’ suspected killer, Vance Boelter, also stands accused of attempted murder for shooting state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in nearby Champlin. Boelter, 57, faces state and federal charges for the fatal shootings.The Hoffmans are recovering from their injuries. Authorities said that Boelter, who allegedly had a list of targets including other Democratic lawmakers and abortion rights advocates, traveled to two other legislators’ homes that evening – with plans to assassinate them.Attenders, some of whom knew the Hortmans personally or through her work, came from diverse political backgrounds. As Zack Stephenson, who co-chairs a state house budget committee, prepared to honor Hortman several hours before the vigil, he described their friendship.View image in fullscreenStephenson said that he met Melissa Hortman when he was 18, volunteering on her campaign. He worked closely with Hortman in the state house and described her as a mentor.“She was a leader who was not afraid to invest in other leaders. It didn’t threaten her,” Stephenson told the Guardian.Hortman prioritized kindness in her work and told fellow Democrats in 2023 that they shouldn’t confuse kindness for weakness. They could be strong leaders and still be respectful and kind, Stephenson recalled her saying.“No one worked harder than her,” Stephenson said. “Those kind of timeless values of, be kind to people, work hard, care about the institution more than partisan politics, those things really matter. People saw that.”Lynne Billing, of St Paul, Minnesota, told MPR she knew Melissa Hortman “was special and I knew she really cared about people”.“It’s just a huge, huge loss and I’m just here to say I’m going to miss her,” Billing said.While remembrances for the Hortmans have come from people of all political stripes, Donald Trump said he will not call Walz, adding that calling would “waste time”, AP said. Trump, in ruling out a call to Walz, described Minnesota’s governor as “slick” and “whacked out”.“I could call him and say: ‘Hi, how you doing?’” Trump reportedly said. “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a, he’s a mess.”Walz’s office said that the governor hoped Trump “would be a president for all Americans”. US presidents routinely contact governors, as well as other state and local officials, after tragedies.“This tragedy isn’t about Trump or Walz,” Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for the governor, said. “It’s about the Hortman family, the Hoffman family, and the state of Minnesota, and the governor remains focused on helping all three heal.”Walz did speak with JD Vance as well as former president Joe Biden and former vice-president Kamala Harris, AP said.Rachel Leingang contributed reporting More

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      A US senator’s X posts after the Minnesota shootings were horrific – and predictable | Austin Sarat

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      National tragedy used to bring national unity. If only momentarily, partisanship was put aside, and people of all political persuasions came together.No more. The nation received a startling reminder of that sad fact on Sunday when the Republican senator Mike Lee went online to share his reaction to the weekend’s horrible shooting of two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses.“This is what happens,” Lee wrote in a since-removed post on X, “When Marxists don’t get their way.” Accompanying this ugly, unfounded comment was a photo of the suspect in the shooting, Vance Boelter, wearing what appears to be a latex face mask.As if that wasn’t enough, Lee posted another picture of Boelter under the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street”, an apparent reference to the Minnesota governor and former Democratic nominee for vice-president, Tim Walz. During the 2024 campaign, Republicans accused him of being soft on crime and mishandling the riots after the murder of George Floyd.So why not suggest that he is somehow to blame for the shootings?Shameful. Lee has dishonored the institution in which he serves, and he knows it.Republican Senate leaders should censure their colleague. If they do not, they will further shred whatever dignity is left in that body.Put in context, Lee’s posts show how far we have come from the vision and hopes of the founders of the American republic. Recall that James Madison, co-author of the Federalist Papers and fourth president of the US, warned that government by the people could become what he called a “spectacle … of turbulence and contention”, driven by passions to make decisions “adverse to the rights of others or the permanent and aggregate good of the community”.Madison preferred what he called a republic, a government in which representatives would display the wisdom necessary to “discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations”.Oddly enough, in October 2020, Lee channeled Madison when he insisted “that our form of government in the United States is not a democracy, but a republic … Insofar as ‘democracy’ means ‘a political system in which government derives its powers from the consent of the governed’, then of course that accurately describes our system”. He continued: “But the word … is often used to describe … the view that it is the prerogative of government to reflexively carry out the will of the majority of its citizens.“Our system of government,” Lee noted, “is best described as a constitutional republic. Power is not found in mere majorities, but in carefully balanced power.” In that system, the job of the Senate, Lee suggested – citing Thomas Jefferson – is to cool “hot passions … It’s where consensus is forged, as senators reach compromise across regional, cultural, and partisan lines.”Perhaps the senator has forgotten those lines.His posts about the Minnesota shootings seem designed to further fuel the “hot passions” of our political moment, rather than to “cool” them. They surely do not help build consensus across party lines.Now Lee’s agenda seems different. He wants to show his Maga scapegoating bona fides by conjuring leftist plots as an explanation for every problem.And he is not the only member of the Maga crowd to do so. He was joined by Elon Musk, who wrote on X: “The far left is murderously violent.” Musk reposted the following from a person who identifies herself with these words: “GOD | #MAGA | Freedom |#Trump2024 | Constitutionalist | America First | Shall Not Be Infringed | USMC Wife”.“The left kills the CEO of United Healthcare. Kills two Israeli ambassadors staffers. Attempts twice to assassinate the President. Doxes and attempts to murder federal ICE agents and Police – all week. And now kills a MN state rep and her husband and injures a Senator and his wife. The left has become a full blown domestic terrorist organization.”Madison must be turning over in his grave.And, as to the evidence that supports Lee’s or Musk’s claims about the Minnesota suspect? There is none.Don’t forget that the president himself has frequently demonized “radical left lunatics” and labelled people Marxists. Last September, he blamed a “violent, radical-left monster” for the second attempt on his life.Using tragedy to demonize others and stoke fears about adversaries has become a new normal. No more rallying around the flag and doing the job that Madison thought political leaders in a representative democracy should and would do.In 2016, the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, writing in the wake of what was then the deadliest mass shooting in American history, suggested that “not since 9/11 has a moment like this brought the nation together, and that evaporated quickly. Since then, calamity seems only to drive the left and the right further apart, while faith in the nation’s institutions deteriorates further.”We know that Lee knows better than to do what he did on Sunday. He demonstrated that in 2020.So why, five years later, would he go after Walz or Marxists after a national tragedy? We can only speculate.Politicians like Lee live for and on social media. Legislating is hard; accumulating “likes” with a quick post is easier.Getting attention by being outrageous or provocative is the name of the game in what is now referred to as the attention economy. Madison, who thought that any damage done by what he called “fractious leaders” would be limited to their local area, could never have imagined the gravitational pull of that economy or its global reach.Sadly, Lee’s posts are making him a winner in that economy. By Monday morning, the first of them had been viewed 5.3m times, and the second attracted 7.8m views.Not bad for someone with 799,000 followers on X.In a deeply divided nation riven by political sectarianism, Lee did what his partisan supporters expect him to do. Give no quarter. Be on the offensive. Push your point.These are the rules, even when a tragedy occurs. In fact, it increases the “opportunity for free publicity” that people like Lee crave.But let’s be clear. While we can understand the forces that might explain why Lee turned tragedy into disinformation, that doesn’t mean we should accept or forgive him for doing so.In the kind of constitutional republic that Madison imagined and Lee once praised, tragedies like the murders in Minnesota should bring out the best in our leaders. Their duty was, when Madison wrote, and remains today: “to remind us of our shared humanity, not deepen our political divides.”

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

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      Tough, whip-smart and selfless: Melissa Hortman, ‘singular force for democracy’, remembered

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      A group of white male lawmakers were playing cards in a back room while their female colleagues gave speeches on the Minnesota house floor. They weren’t paying attention, and Melissa Hortman had had enough.“I hate to break up the 100% white male card game in the retiring room,” Hortman said in 2017. “But I think this is an important debate.”The comment upset some Republicans, who said it was racist for her to call them white men and wanted her to apologize. Her response: “I’m really tired of watching women of color, in particular, being ignored. So I’m not sorry.”The moment went viral – people made shirts and rallied in support of her comments. The Republican men knew that they had lost, the Minnesota senator Tina Smith said about the incident. “Melissa won the day.”“I think you have to call bullshit when you see bullshit,” Hortman said at the time. “And we see plenty of it.”It was one of many moments Hortman’s friends and colleagues have shared since the 55-year-old longtime legislator and her husband were murdered in what appears to be a politically motivated shooting spree in suburban Minnesota on Saturday.Her friends and colleagues have remembered her legislative accomplishments – an ability to bring people together, stay organized, find common ground and, perhaps most of all, actually get things done. She injected humor and levity into her work. She was whip-smart. She raised two kids and had a beloved rescue dog, Gilbert.“She demonstrates how being a steely negotiator and showing toughness isn’t in tension with being human and warm and likable,” said Steve Simon, the Democratic secretary of state who knew Hortman for three decades, since the two were in law school together.Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, an ally and friend of Hortman’s, called her “the most consequential speaker in state history”. Democrats held a trifecta in 2023 – controlling both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s mansion – which allowed the left to achieve a host of its longstanding priorities, including protecting abortion access, universal school meals, childcare assistance and paid family leave, and felony voting rights restoration. The list was long, and Hortman held together her caucus through it all, gaining national attention for the “Minnesota miracle”. Those gains are Hortman’s legacy, the result of many years of laying the groundwork so that when Democrats had power, they could move quickly, Smith said.Walz, in an interview after her assassination with Minnesota Public Radio, said Hortman understood procedure, policy and people, and she had an incredible work ethic. He puts Hortman high on the list of consequential politicians in Minnesota history and counts her as one of the people who have affected him most. She didn’t seek credit, but if things got done, it was because of her, he said.“Melissa was a singular force of understanding how democracy worked in getting things done,” Walz said. “You didn’t have to agree with her politics to know that she was effective. She was decent when it came time, and if her point did not win out, she accepted it, shook hands and signed it.”The 2025 legislative session started acrimoniously. The House was tied at 67-67, but Republicans tried to press a temporary advantage into leadership power, leading Hortman and Democrats to boycott the session until Republicans would agree to a power-sharing agreement. Hortman gave up the speaker title, becoming speaker emerita, and got to work governing the tied chamber.The session proved difficult – Hortman described, with emotion, how hard it was to be the lone Democratic vote to repeal healthcare coverage for undocumented adults, but that she had agreed to it so the state could have a bipartisan budget and prevent a shutdown.Her Republican colleagues said they liked and respected her, despite their political differences. Lisa Demuth, the Republican house speaker, said she looked at Hortman as a mentor. They could disagree politically without being cruel, in public or in private, she said.When Demuth became minority leader, Democrats held complete control of the state government. Hortman didn’t need Demuth’s help to advance legislation, but she still wanted to meet with Demuth every week so they could get to know each other. When the chamber became tied, they had a two-year working relationship to build on, Demuth said. Hortman called the bipartisan group “Team House” this year.“I learned so much from her leadership and just who she was as a person that was willing to compromise and negotiate well and do really what she felt was best for Minnesota,” Demuth told the Guardian.They shared a love of Cheetos – snacks are essential for late-night governing – and talked about Hortman’s love of flowers. Hortman had a tree that bloomed every year, and that was her monitor for when the state budget should be done: before the tree bloomed. Demuth would ask, so how’s that tree? They missed the deadline this year.Even in rocky moments, Hortman was direct, true to her word and looking for creative solutions, Demuth said. The session started with Republicans forging ahead and Democrats boycotting, an undoubtedly rough time. “We both agreed that we had to find a way through,” Demuth said.Hortman grew up in Minnesota. She told MinnPost she decided when she was 10 years old she would be the first female president, while watching the 1980 presidential campaign. She left for college at Boston University, but returned home for law school at the University of Minnesota, then began work as a lawyer. Along the way, she interned for Al Gore and John Kerry.Keith Ellison, the Democratic attorney general, shared at a rally the day she was killed that she was a “beautiful human being”. He met her before she was a lawmaker, when she was a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, a non-profit that provides legal services for people who can’t afford it, when she fiercely defended tenants, he said. In a statement after her passing, legal aid noted that Hortman had secured what was then the largest jury verdict for housing discrimination in Minnesota history.“If you did things that she did, you’d be on the right track in your life,” Ellison told the crowd. “She fought for people, she stood with people. She was a powerful political leader, but she also was a compassionate and kind person. Melissa proved that you could be a politician and a good person, and I know some people wonder about that sometimes, but she really was both.”Her swing district was not an easy win. She ran twice, losing both times, before winning on the third attempt by a few hundred votes in 2004. She kept her seat through 11 elections, rising up the ranks in her caucus, ultimately becoming speaker in 2018. She considered a run for Congress, previously one of her childhood dreams, but decided she could make more happen as a state lawmaker, she told MinnPost.Zack Stephenson met Hortman when he was 18 and volunteered on her second campaign. Then, as a college student, he suggested Hortman make him her campaign manager and a few of his friends full-time campaign staff during Hortman’s third run for office. They would take time off from college and work for free. Hortman would joke that, after two losses, she was so desperate she’d try anything. She won.Now a state representative, Stephenson got to work closely with his longtime mentor and friend in what became the final months of her life – he as co-chair of a house committee that worked on the budget and she as speaker emeritus. He’s one of many who called Hortman a mentor. “She was a leader who was not afraid to invest in other leaders. It didn’t threaten her,” he said.She talked about running for higher office at times, and Stephenson advocated for her to run for governor someday. But she also had a full life outside the office. In one classic example, Stephenson recalled a staff member who said his parents’ gardening business was having trouble finding seasonal help. Hortman, an avid gardener, asked how much the gig paid. “She’s like, ‘oh, yeah, great. I could pin my earbuds in, listen to disco music and just garden.’ And then she was talking about it for weeks,” he said.There are several pots of money in the state budget for tree-planting that she snuck in, he said, a testament to her love of the outdoors. She used to joke that her only two forms of exercise were cross-country skiing and doorknocking.The 2017 moment when she called out white male lawmakers brought her legislative career more attention and solidified her as a voice for her caucus, but she was always tough, Smith said. When Smith was lieutenant governor and Hortman was minority leader, the men in leadership roles once met without Smith and Hortman to try to strike a deal. Hortman called Smith early in the morning and told her they were being shut out, and they raced over to the capitol. She was determined and made clear she wouldn’t be dismissed, Smith said.“She was just so strong, like, what is going on here? This deal isn’t done until we say it’s done,” Smith said. “And it was a classic moment of her not being afraid to lean in and using her power and after it was over, we were like, can you believe those guys? I can’t believe they tried that.”Hollies Winston, the mayor of Brooklyn Park, where Hortman lived and represented, said she had to balance delivering for the local community and delivering for the whole state, and she did so “from a place of wisdom and empathy”.“She really moved the ball in terms of education and childcare, workers rights, public safety, criminal justice,” he said. But it’s the quieter moments he saw from her that truly showed her character – her willingness to serve as a mentor to youth in the area, who came to her home to learn about politics, her support for emerging voices at the statehouse.She was more interested in the work than the publicity, Simon said. She wasn’t seeking to promote herself, but to deliver results that would help the most people in Minnesota. Even her opponents knew she was “fundamentally selfless”, and it went a long way to helping her negotiate during tough moments, Simon said.“She went into politics to do something, not to be something,” Simon said.Sophie and Colin Hortman, her two children, released a statement after her death, saying their parents’ love for them was “boundless”. Their statement was a testament to their parents, whose “legacy of dedication to their community will live on in us, their friends, their colleagues and co-workers, and every single person who knew and loved them”.They called on people to honor their parents with a list of Hortman-approved acts of kindness: “Plant a tree. Visit a local park and make use of their amenities, especially a bike trail. Pet a dog. A golden retriever is ideal, but any will do. Tell your loved ones a cheesy dad joke and laugh about it. Bake something – bread for Mark or a cake for Melissa, and share it with someone. Try a new hobby and enjoy learning something. Stand up for what you believe in, especially if that thing is justice and peace.” More