By J. Patrick Coolican | Editor-in-chief
Good morning, Reformers.
I have a fun memory of the late Speaker Melissa Hortman: I’m interviewing her in the speaker’s suite of offices, and while we’re talking, she’s moving and tearing open boxes of snacks and putting the snacks in bowls, i.e., refilling the caucus snack supply while she talks to me about the $60 billion state budget or whatever. House members told me they’d never imagined a speaker so concerned with their feeding and hydration, and the little anecdote says a lot about her.
Vance Boelter pleaded guilty to his crimes Thursday, thus foregoing the need for a painful trial for Minnesota, and especially the family and many friends of Melissa and Mark Hortman, who he murdered a year ago Sunday.
The details of his admission — given in flat affirmatives to his lawyer’s questions — were chilling, as reported by Max Nesterak in the federal courtroom.
We’re in for a year of awful anniversaries in Minnesota. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that the first may be the hardest but it doesn’t necessarily get easier after that.
Bob Dylan’s masterpiece “Simple Twist of Fate” is about a lost, fleeting romance, so a less profound kind of grief than we’re feeling, but I kept coming back to the lyric yesterday:
“Felt an emptiness inside.”
There are no proper consoling words, so I won’t pretend to have them.
To the Reformer:
By Michelle Griffith
In the year since former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed, their son has spent countless hours researching political rhetoric. He used the moment with his late mother’s co-workers to emphasize that how legislators craft their arguments matters. He wasn’t there to lay blame on any individual lawmaker or political party.
“This can really feel abstract for the general public, but the people in that room, for myself, for my sister, for our whole family, political violence will never feel abstract again,” Hortman said in a Reformer interview.
His message to the lawmakers resembled what he and his sister, Sophie, shared days after their parents died: Love your neighbors, and treat each other with kindness and respect — words of the world religions and kindergarten teachers alike, and yet abandoned these days by many politicians.
A big thanks to Michelle for finishing this piece while in Glacier National Park, including her crucial interview with Colin Hortman. And thanks to her boyfriend, Andrew, for tolerating this state of affairs. We owe you one.
By J. Patrick Coolican
My last conversation with her was off-the-record, but her family gave me permission to report on nearly all of it. She was her usual self: Candid, cutting, insightful. She was already thinking about the path back to the majority, including dealing with the bad Democratic brand and improving upon candidate recruitment and vetting.
One comment that might rub some Democrats in the political class a little raw is that she was looking for candidates with a biography outside of politics. Though obviously a huge Barack Obama fan, she said the days of a community organizer getting elected president had “run its course.”
This is another instance when words fail, but I tried to reflect on my reporter-source relationship with her. For the most part, when it comes to politicians, I keep a certain appropriate distance, for reasons I explain in the piece.
Now, I wish I’d spent more time with her.
By Alyssa Chen
The Minnesota Department of Human Services says it is resuming payments to most of the thousands of care providers that it had cut off from Medicaid funding in May in a rush to meet a federal deadline.
The state agency notified Medicaid providers Wednesday that it would reinstate payments to providers that had appealed their terminations to ensure Medicaid recipients keep getting care. The update comes after legislators from both parties and advocates for people with disabilities expressed outrage about the agency’s move to cut off payments to 60% of providers of 13 Medicaid services. The 13 Medicaid services are designed to help Minnesota’s most vulnerable populations; they have also been deemed by the state as high-risk for fraud, waste and abuse.
The back-and-forth announcements underscored the chaos that’s beset Minnesota’s safety net programs in the past year, when the administration of Gov. Tim Walz began more seriously grappling with a years-old problem of fraud and waste in Minnesota social services.
By Max Nesterak
The union representing over 500 Target Field concessions workers called a one-day strike on June 22, when the Minnesota Twins are scheduled to play the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, and are asking fans to bring their own food and drinks.
A strike by cooks, bartenders, suite attendants, dishwashers and other workers would be a first at a major league stadium in Minnesota and threatens to cost their employer, Delaware North, and the Minnesota Twins significant revenue.
Negotiations between the workers’ union, United Here Local 17, and Delaware North have stalled over pay and health care; workers say they are earning minimum wages and have no employer health insurance because they are seasonal.
IN OTHER NEWS
Nearly half of adults struggled to afford healthcare last year, survey finds | Reformer via Stateline
Corporate logos abound on White House grounds in prep for fights by Trump-allied UFC | Reformer via States Newsroom
US Supreme Court leaves stay against Alabama’s nitrogen gas executions in place | Alabama Reflector
We need to fix Social Security before it’s too late | Jason Furman in the New York Times, gift link
OH BY THE WAY
A Thursday in the Reformer newsroom:
You’re not allowed to record in a federal courthouse, so Max was sending me messages describing what was happening in real time, which I used to update our story about Boelter’s guilty plea. Once it was over, Max wrote a complete version. Then he wrote up the Target field strike story. Madison McVan was at an immigration conference but helpfully wrote Thursday’s newsletter so I could manage the Boelter verdict. Alyssa Chen wrote a story about Medicaid providers and did a round of what we call “backreading,” which is when we copy edit each other’s work. Michelle Griffith, while on vacation, shepherded the final edits of her story about Colin Hortman’s pleas for civility. (We don’t work on vacation and she’ll get this time back.) Nicole Neri put our stories on social media and set up our Hortman pages with images she’d taken. Adam Causey, our national editor from States Newsroom, edited my column and did another round of edits of Michelle’s story.
Not a typical Thursday, but not extraordinary either. I’m blessed to work with such capable and generous people.
And you help us make it happen, so thanks for your continued support.
Correspond: [email protected]
Have a great weekend! JPC
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