The details in this story are shocking, and I hope people will spend some time with it, despite the *gestures* EVERYTHING ELSE HAPPENING. Some of these details have been previously reported. Other big ones have not. Gift link:

“This is the eighth military intervention of Trump’s second term in office”

Gift link: Two recent reports estimate renters owe tens of millions of dollars in additional rent debt after the federal deportation operation drove many families into hiding.

I like to distract myself from the terrifying political news by reading the ridiculous political news.

Iran is supposed to play New Zealand at SoFi stadium in Los Angeles on June 15—roughly 3 months from now.

In answer to some queries: this is not a joke, Melania Trump actually is presiding over a UN Security Council meeting Monday, and apparently they scheduled that knowing they were going to launch an illegal war on Saturday morning

“About half of the people ICE took credit for detaining in Minnesota, who are featured on a Trump administration website titled ‘worst of the worst,’ were already in federal, state or county custody or had recently been released.”

Claims of 40 dead after an Israeli airstrike on a elementary girl’s school in Iran www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblo...

The state of the union address was like 72 hours before the US and Israel chose to attack Iran’s capital and call for regime change, and Trump did not even mention his policy toward Iran before Congress, much less ask for a declaration of war.

Just as Iranians began their workweek on Saturday morning, U.S. and Israeli strikes sent panicked residents of Tehran into the streets and parents racing back to schools where they had just dropped off their children. nyti.ms/4rN74Ri

"Who told you that?" the president said in response to a question from PBS News about the 17-page draft executive order that would give Trump extraordinary power over the 2026 midterm elections. www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Friday that 30 more people have been indicted for allegedly taking part in an anti-immigration enforcement protest at a Minnesota church.

Sandwich too structurally sound? Avocado to the rescue

Pretty sure I have the only plumber in the world who needs to be reminded like five times to send a bill after doing a job

It's not cute, koalas only do this when they're distressed

NEW: We obtained 911 audio from the Texas detention center housing hundreds of immigrant kids and their parents. Since mid-September, EMS crews have been dispatched to Dilley at least 11 times to treat children in medical distress. Burning fevers. Low oxygen. Seizures. A broken leg. My report:

A Minneapolis man found what he said was an unwelcome surprise in his recent Amazon order: a loaded handgun. Police are investigating where it came from and how it ended up on his doorstep.

Since Trump began his second term, at least 31 of the 64 lawyers at the MN U.S. Attorney’s Office quit or retired, with attorneys citing concerns about ethics, political pressure and the administration’s decision to make immigration a top priority, according to a 2-month Star Tribune investigation.

Posting The Jacket story again because The Jacket discourse allows me up to 70 seconds away from thinking about The Horrors.

Here's some nice counterprogramming for the images the world has been seeing out of Minneapolis for the last few months

Judge Schiltz said he’s identified another 113 orders that ICE has violated in 77 additional cases since his Jan. 28 order.

“This Court will continue to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law, including, if necessary, moving to the use of criminal contempt,” Judge Patrick Schiltz wrote. “One way or another, ICE will comply with this Court’s orders.”

This is quite a statement

Target paid almost $110 million to officially break its lease at downtown Minneapolis’ City Center, five years after moving out of nearly a million square feet of office space.

I'm going to promote the heck out of this: The Minneapolis Foundation has $4 million in grants available to small businesses for everything from rent and payroll costs to legal help and temporary relocation. More details and the application here: www.minneapolisfoundation.org/stories/comm...

We obtained the Dilley detention center’s 911 call logs. Among them are pleas for help for toddlers having trouble breathing, a pregnant woman who passed out and an elementary-school-aged girl having seizures.

A Milwaukee police officer was criminally charged after using license plate recognition technology to surveil a person he was dating and the person’s ex for two months last year, the authorities said.

A reminder that Minnesota as a whole sends more revenue to the federal government than it gets back, and on a per capita basis Minnesotans contribute more revenue to the federal government than residents of almost every other state in the nation. www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-u-...

As the midterms approach a fun counterfactual to think about is how things might have played out in Minnesota if the ICE surge never happened and the Trump administration more or less just let MN Republicans continue to hammer Walz, who remained in the gov race, on fraud for basically a whole year

South Minneapolis resident Aliya Rahman, one of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s guests at the State of the Union, was arrested by U.S. Capitol Police on Tuesday evening after she stood up in the gallery in protest during President Trump’s speech.

BREAKING: Vice President JD Vance says the Trump administration is pausing some Medicaid funding to Minnesota because of fraud concerns.

Three Minnesotans accused of assaulting federal law enforcement officers during Operation Metro Surge had their charges dismissed this month. The new dismissals are in addition to at least three other instances of protesters who had charges dismissed in January and February.

Border Patrol released Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56 yo man, nearly blind with serious medical conditions, at "an old address & his family had since moved" in Buffalo, NY in the winter. "His family was not initially notified." He was found dead. @news4buffalo.bsky.social www.wivb.com/news/local-n...

FBI raids LAUSD Supt. Alberto Carvalho's home, office

In a 5-minute phone call to dispatchers, a federal immigration officer requests police backup last October to help with a kid tailing him on a motorized bicycle. "I need someone here now, or else I'm going to have to shoot this kid," the officer said on a recording of the call obtained by OPB.

Boston Beer Co. co-founder and CEO Jim Koch on the firm's 2/24/26 earnings call responding to a question about why beer sales seem to be doing a smidge better than last year around this time:

"Johnny MAGA appears to actually be a White House staffer named Garrett Wade who works for the Trump administration as a rapid response manager, helping to run the very same White House account his anonymous MAGA account amplifies."

Ah yes, a casualty of the Crystal Pepsi fad

There was a whole movie about this

Aliya Rahman, woman who was dragged out of car by ICE in Minneapolis: "I've spent the last month learning the names of the tendons in my shoulder, because both of my shoulders are torn -- cartilage and tendons. But what I haven't learned is the names of the people who did this to me."

Good times at the Bari Weiss hiring desk, passing up the seven figure salary for the cush life of running an indy media site www.status.news/p/bari-weiss...

“The evidence response team instead had to drive through the night amid a snowstorm to reach the university in Providence, Rhode Island, by 9 o’clock the next morning, according to the whistleblower’s account.” — www.ms.now/news/senator...

Reminder that MN Republicans have not won a statewide election in going on 20 years

The Guthrie is developing a “documentary theater piece” about the ICE surge in Minnesota with Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen (The Exonerated, Coal Country): wfly.co/r7HQe

4 Minnesota guys

NEW: One aspect of the Epstein Files I find fascinating is that they're a rare window into the inner-workings of a federal investigation, including how tech companies respond to government requests for information. We looked at some Google-related ones: www.wired.com/story/heres-...

"I have learned how the Director’s decisions related to DOJ or FBI-controlled aircraft have negatively impacted high-profile criminal investigations. For example, in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk..." www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

Sen. Dick Durbin’s office says that a whistleblower disclosed that FBI Director Kash Patel said during a meeting with field offices last year that “If you have golf, hockey, fishing, or hunting and beautiful sights, you’re going to see a lot of me.”