By J. Patrick Coolican | Editor-in-chief
Good morning, Reformers.
The Washington Hilton has now been the site of two unsuccessful assassination attempts on American presidents in the past half century. The first was President Ronald Reagan in 1981 by John Hinckley, who was found not guilty due to his severe mental illness. Saturday night, a gunman tried to get into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner; thankfully no one was killed. He has a screed that apparently tries to reconcile his actions with Christian principles. He charged a security checkpoint, which indicates that for however serious his intent, he didn’t have a well-considered plan.
Americans’ easy access to guns make this kind of incident far more likely.
He apparently attended a “No Kings” event, CBS News reports, citing family.
As “No Kings” states on its website, “a core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action.” No Kings marchers have hewed to that commitment, most recently in St. Paul, when tens of thousands peacefully gathered.
Even setting aside the moral flaw in responding to wrongful acts with a wrongful act, violence is politically counterproductive.
Moving on: Just a few more weeks of the legislative session. Not much to show for their work thus far, as predicted, but it was never going to happen until the very end anyway.
To the Reformer:
Protest signs stand in a front yard near the land earmarked for a large data center campus in Hermantown, Minnesota, just outside of Duluth, is shown Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Brian Martucci
The Nobles County Board rejected a zoning change this month sought by a Bloomington-based developer hoping to build a big computing facility near Worthington in southwest Minnesota. It’s the latest sign that communities’ increasingly vocal opposition to data centers — in big cities and small towns — is more than just noise.
At the national level, the data center debate pits proponents who say the U.S. must do all it can to win an AI arms race with China against skeptics concerned about rising utility bills, environmental damage and widespread white-collar automation.
Locally, the debate looks a lot like clashes over other big real estate developments, with pro-business groups touting generational economic development opportunities on one side and residents concerned about noise, traffic, water use, air pollution and secretive dealmaking on the other. Opponents say the larger scale of those potential impacts warrants special scrutiny, however.
By Tim Henderson
Currently asylum-seekers must wait six months after filing an asylum request before they can work legally, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend that to one year. The new rule is no longer open for comment. No effective date has been announced.
The proposal would also pause any new requests for work permission during times of high asylum case processing backlogs. Since the backlog is now 1.4 million asylum cases, that would effectively stop new and renewal work request applications for anywhere from 14 to 173 years, the administration estimates.
By Chelsea Moeller, Lydia Pietruszewski and Nate Byrne
Child care providers Up North call for a statewide universal option.
They write:
“In our northern Minnesota communities, we’re committed to building the infrastructure that we need — schools, health care, roads, businesses and more — so that we can grow and thrive. We may live in smaller communities, but our needs and hopes for the future are the same. But we can’t do any of it without affordable, available child care.”
IN OTHER NEWS
By week’s end, Trump’s war will be plainly illegal | New York Times gift link
OH BY THE WAY
I’m forever reminded of Philip Roth’s essay on the struggles of an American novelist, published 65 years ago:
“The American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, and then describe, and then make credible much of the American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one’s own meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.”
He refers to the phenomenon of the “American berserk," a phrase reused in “American Pastoral,” which I need to re-read in light of everything that’s been happening.
Thankfully I had my phone off Saturday night and was mostly unaware of anything going on at the Washington Hilton while I was at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Apropos song of the day, studio version.
Have a great day all. JPC
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