By J. Patrick Coolican | Editor-in-chief
Dear Reformers,
You should have received our second fundraising email earlier this morning, highlighting the work of Max Nesterak, our deputy editor. Forgive the repeated entreaties this week, but we’re almost at $100,000 for the year. If you can, be the one to push us over the top.
I’m on family vacation next week, so Max is in charge. Be kind to him, please.
Someone should check on Rep. Tom Emmer, who is melting down in a fetid puddle of hateful xenophobia.
“Sometimes Minnesotans are so afraid that you're going to call us a racist, you're going to call us an Islamophobe, you're going to call us some name that we just don't want to get into that fight. You know what, I would argue that I never did care, but I'm done being careful, even the least bit careful. If they don't assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from."
He made these comments at the Faith and Freedom Coalition town hall, as one does.
Rep. Ilhan Omar had a pithy reply: "I assimilated all the way to Congress and this idiot still tells me to go back where I came from.”
Georgetown historian Adam Rothman pulled a good bit from the St. Paul Daily Globe in 1882, which declared that Scandinavians have a nearly incurable attachment to their home country:
“So strong is this passion that it is hard for him to assimilate to the customs of his new home, and to conform to the ideas of American citizenship, but he remains in his land a foreigner….”
I personally find it a fool’s errand to try to rid the world of racism by policing people’s language, but a modicum of decency and respect is an important ingredient of democratic self-governance. But of course, that’s not what Emmer wants. He’s already bent the knee to the dear leader, and he wants the rest of us to do the same. Hard pass.
As I wrote on X, watch this clip with the sound off and imagine Minnesotans silently wishing the raving neighbor would leave the family-friendly potluck.
ICYMI from Thursday: Chad Maschke asks: Why won’t Emmer acknowledge the good work his son Jack is doing on the Epstein case?
To the Reformer:
A voter deposits a mail-in ballot at the drop box outside the Chester County Government Center on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Peter Hall/Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
By Madison McVan
Wow, yes, early voting begins today.
Madi runs down a bunch of good info on how to vote and what to expect.
By J. Patrick Coolican
My column is about the ruling earlier this week from Minnesota district’s chief judge Patrick Schiltz, a Duluth native who clerked for Antonin Scalia and was appointed by George W. Bush.
His ruling is scathing in its reproach of the Department of Justice, which had subpoenaed a bunch of Minnesota Democrats during the height of Operation Metro Surge, in what looks like a clear case of political harassment or an effort to commandeer the state to do the feds’ bidding. Both are unconstitutional.
Jason Marisam, a constitutional law professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, told me that he was struck by Schiltz’s decision to unseal the ruling.
“He wanted the public to see what he believed was a clear and egregious unconstitutional abuse of power from the executive,” Marisam said.
IN OTHER NEWS
GOP dreams of another big budget bill dashed by Trump demands for SAVE America Act | Reformer via States Newsroom
States show their stuff: The Great American State Fair opens in D.C. | Reformer via States Newsroom
OH BY THE WAY
I love this passage from “Lonesome Dove,” touching and yet so bleak you kinda have to laugh.
From Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove.”
He so loves his girls; it’s just too bad they couldn’t have a boy so he could have a farmhand!
Have a good weekend and Happy 250th. Here’s Bobby doing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” JPC
Thanks for reading Daily Reformer. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.