By Max Nesterak | Deputy Editor
Thank you to veterans and their families for your service and sacrifice.
To start, a few national items of local significance.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Minnesotan) survived an impeachment effort led by outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The House voted largely along party lines to refer it to a committee, effectively killing the effort until Democrats take control of the chamber next year.
Hegseth, who as a Fox News personality championed presidential pardons for service members accused and convicted of murdering civilians in Afghanistan, held a fiery news conference defending his leadership of, as he calls it, the Department of War. His tenure includes leading the country into a war in Iran that resulted in the deaths of at least 23 service members, a U.S. airstrike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 150 people, most of them children, and deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats (some of which may have just been fishing vessels) in the Caribbean. You can read the allegations of high crimes and misdemeanors in the articles of impeachment, which are likely to live on in the next Congress.
Rep. Tom Emmer moves up to the No. 2 spot in the Republican caucus after fending off a challenge to his leadership position as party whip. U.S. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota was also reelected.
And, The New York Times reports federal prosecutors filed a felony charge against a man who briefly served as a bodyguard to Rep. Ilhan Omar in an apparent attempt to gather damaging information about the congresswoman as part of an investigation into possible immigration fraud. They dropped the charge in September.
(Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Madison McVan
The first detainees have arrived at the Appleton Detention Facility, Minnesota’s only immigrant detention center, according to local activists.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed the facility opened on Monday in a statement provided to the Star Tribune.
The Department of Homeland Security purchased the 1,600-bed former prison in August from the private prison company CoreCivic for $496 million — more than six times the property’s assessed value of $75 million, according to county records.
KARE11 obtained emails from May 2025 between CoreCivic and officials with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, in which CoreCivic offered to sell the prison to the state for $75 million. The state declined the offer.
By David Lightman
This story follows Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which holds that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no.”
“You can’t legislate your way out of high gasoline prices,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, which tracks prices.
Regardless of who has the majority, the government’s ability to bring consumer energy prices down over the short term is limited. Quick fixes like drawing from the strategic reserves have already been tried this year and have had minimal impact.
By Chuck Johnson
Former deputy commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Human Services examines one of the most visible and intractable failures of public policy. He writes that homeless encampments can’t be solved with aggressive enforcement action, nor can they be allowed to grow unchecked.
“The best path to making a dent in the encampment problem is to improve the social services needed by chronically homeless people, including those living in encampments. Perhaps most critically, we need better community care for people experiencing mental illness, including more supportive housing. We need more robust addiction treatment programs. And we need to reduce the frequency of unhoused people cycling through the criminal justice system,” he writes.
IN OTHER NEWS
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Former subprime auto lender tapped for FTC | The American Prospect
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