Weekend Reformer: Lindell’s plan to end mass deportation

Good morning, Reformers, and happy Saturday. 

I was in the courtroom Thursday when family and friends of the Hortman family told a federal judge how the June 14, 2025, attacks on Minnesota lawmakers irrevocably changed their lives.

For me, the hardest part was listening to the two children of Melissa and Mark Hortman talk about how they learned their parents were dead. On the morning of June 14, Colin Hortman said the family was scrambling to try to figure out what had happened to his parents and what hospital they were being treated in. 

He said he called Melissa and Mark Hortman’s neighbor and asked them if his parents were carried out of the house on stretchers or body bags. When the neighbor said body bags, Colin said he told his family the news.

Another thing that struck me was that the Hortman family believed Melissa Hortman was destined for higher office one day. Her father-in-law said she would have been the governor, which we was a possibility because Gov. Tim Walz thought of Hortman as a potential successor. Colin Hortman thought his mother could be the country’s first woman president.

Though difficult, I felt privileged to bear witness to the pain the Hortman family has been quietly going through for over a year. Read more about the sentencing hearing of Vance Boelter here.

For four months, Max Nesterak has been covering the detention and journey back to Minnesota of Andrea Pedro-Francisco, a woman arrested during Operation Metro Surge who was denied necessary surgery for a painful, large ovarian cyst. She was detained at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, which has been beset by widespread reports of inhumane conditions, and then at the El Paso Processing Center. Read her story.

Minnesotans gathered to remember Bloody Friday, honoring two union members who were shot and killed in 1934, which was the crescendo of a months-long battle between Teamsters Local 574 and corporate owners trying to suppress workers’ pursuit of fair wages, Peyton Haug reported.

A Trump-appointed federal judge tossed out a Department of Justice lawsuit that aimed to invalidate state and local “sanctuary” policies, which limit information-sharing and cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and immigration enforcement, Madison McVan reported.

A thousand people packed into First Avenue for a rally supporting Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s U.S. Senate campaign, which was headlined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Max wrote. 

During a Reformer interview, GOP-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Kendall Qualls laid out his plans for tax and spending cuts, a close relationship with law enforcement and rolling back trans rights. He talked about Trump’s endorsement of Lindell, and why he posted on his personal Facebook page a photoshopped picture of his wife in a Slingshot next to a floating pair of arms, I reported.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Minnesota governor, released an 18-page, five-pronged plan to reform the federal immigration system by creating a path to temporary legal residency for working immigrants. The plan would have no path to citizenship, and immigrants would be ineligible for the social safety net programs their tax dollars fund, including Social Security and Medicare.

It would codify undocumented people as permanent outsiders, but end the Trump administration’s brutal deportation campaign. It doesn’t mention Minnesota, which is the state he’s seeking to govern.

Kimberly Soenen, a single-payer healthcare advocate, writes about the business model of commercial health insurance. Prior authorization is just one of the tools insurance companies use to deny care and pad their profits, Soenen writes.

The CEO of the National Conference of State Legislatures and the president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts argued that we can either learn to live and govern together or there’s more trouble ahead.

Patrick Hamilton, a fellow with the Science Museum of Minnesota, writes that the Trump administration’s attempt to kill renewable energy projects is putting Americans in a bad spot, especially since Trump and Israel started a war with Iran that resulted in the cutting off of roughly 20% of global oil and gas supplies.

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Have a great weekend and stay cool!