The Tribune

with CHARLIE HARPER

DONALD Trump thought he had a really good chance to steal Minnesota in the 2024 presidential race. After he addressed the state Republican convention in May in the state capital, he returned on July 27 to hold a rally in the city of St. Cloud, which is located about an hour north of Minneapolis along the upper Mississippi River.

This rally, as were most of Trump’s campaign gatherings during all three of his presidential runs, was designed to attract rural, exurban Magas and other unaffiliated voters who were disenchanted with Democratic ‘woke’ ideology and policies.

Six days before the St. Cloud rally, then-president Joe Biden had reluctantly withdrawn from the presidential race following his disastrous showing a couple of weeks earlier at the first 2024 campaign debate with Trump. The Democrats were in chaotic disarray. With gas prices still obdurately high and border and immigration failures dogging the Democratic campaign, Trump was very optimistic as he and JD Vance took the stage in St. Cloud.

Delivering what turned out to be empty promises to fix the economy and complete Trump’s southern border wall, Trump and Vance delighted an overflow crowd of over 8,000 fans.

But things are different now in St. Cloud after ICE and US Border Patrol agents shot and killed two civilian protesters in Minneapolis on January 7 and January 14. ICE activity in the city stirred tensions and led to several confrontations with protesters, and an anti-ICE rally last week. City leaders from across the political spectrum joined forces to make a statement.

"We reject violence and dehumanisation in all forms, and we commit to being voices for peace, understanding, and shared responsibility,” they said. “We strive to model what it means to live our democratic values with courage and compassion.

"Our shared work, as civic, education, and business leaders, is grounded in the belief that democracy depends not only on laws and institutions, but on how we treat one another. Peaceful dialogue, freedom of expression, and equal protection under the Constitution are essential to a society where everyone belongs and can contribute."

Trump didn’t carry Minnesota in 2024. Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz won the state by 137,000 votes, a margin of more than four percent, and a big win in a state that some felt might be susceptible to supporting Trump.

But there is little question that Minnesota voters today are deeply divided about immigration and its implications for the state. All the headline-making confrontations between Trump, Department of Homeland Security, and ICE on one hand, and the national Democrats, Governor Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey on the other add to the chaos. And the outraged reaction to the tragic shootings in Minneapolis continues unabated.

Around nine percent of Minnesota’s intentionally-diverse residents are of foreign origin, with ethnic groups ranked in descending order by population: from Mexico, Somalia, India, Ethiopia and Laos. The latter are the Hmong hill country tribespeople who worked with the US military during the Vietnam War and were repatriated to the US after the war. Minnesota ranks in the middle of US states in African-American population, with about eight percent.

The state’s eight members of the US House of Representatives are evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, one of the latter being Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose outspoken identification as Somali-American and strident criticism of Trump has put her consistently in the national news and made her a MAGA target. Her town hall was disrupted this week by a man harmlessly throwing liquid at her.

Ironically, the uproar following the two fatal shootings in Minneapolis that has captured national and international headlines for weeks came just a couple of days after another Minnesota-based story buffered long-standing conservative complaints about corruption and abuse in liberal-supported social service programs around the country.

Just two days before Renee Good was shot to death by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, CBS News reported the story. “As national attention focuses on the growing fraud scandal in Minnesota, which federal prosecutors estimate could top $9 billion, the state's Democratic Governor Tim Walz has announced he is dropping his re-election campaign.” A huge story.

Major programs victimised by corrupt officials included day care centres, autism programs, various housing support organisations and food support.

No one is talking about this now. Trump and Department of Homeland Security officials have managed to make people forget all about it with their ICE and Border Patrol activities.

The transformation of several DHS agencies into alleged thugs and vigilantes under the current US administration has seized the nation’s attention. Pundits are dissecting public officials’ statements to discern cracks in the wall of GOP congressional support for Trump. Polls also show support for the president flagging on the economy and his unsuccessful efforts so far to stem rising costs of living.

An interesting perspective on the shootings comes from as unlikely a source as professional athletes, which may indicate the depth of discontent and unease in America over the recent killings. The reactions come from star basketball players and coaches from two teams visiting Minneapolis in recent weeks. The hometown Timberwolves are enjoying a largely successful season so far, standing in a virtual tie with the Lakers, Suns, and Rockets in a hotly contested Western Conference NBA race.

The Cleveland Cavaliers visited Minneapolis’ downtown Target Center arena for a scheduled game on January 8, the day after Good was killed. The Cavs’ all-star leader and players association vice-president, Donovan Mitchell, spoke with the Cleveland Plain Dealer after the game.

“Cleveland was on a routine business trip to Minnesota, preparing to face the Timberwolves the next night,” the article stated. “The day unfolded like any other road stop until it didn’t. News broke of the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent just miles away. Suddenly, the normal protections of the NBA lifestyle disappeared. Players were restricted to their hotel rooms. Plans were scrapped. The invisible barrier between the league and real life cracked.”

The Cavs all-star Donovan Mitchell said “We are in this bubble as NBA players, right? Like, we’re removed. But in the same token, being there in Minnesota when that happened, it really made you open your eyes because you’re there, you feel it, right? It’s 10 minutes away. We’re on lockdown in the hotel. You can only feel for the people of Minnesota, feel for the families, because it’s just not right . . . It’s the human element. It’s the human part of it that gets to me.

“It’s not right that it keeps happening. It’s not right that it’s desensitised the way it is ... that can’t be who we are as a country, as a people.”

Mitchell is the grandson of an immigrant from Panama. “I have family who came to this country, and they fear for their lives,” he said. “And they’re legal citizens, and like, they fear.”

Last weekend, the Golden State Warriors were in Minneapolis for two scheduled games with the Wolves.

“It was really bizarre,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said Monday. “But we have a lot of empathy for the people here and we’re really hopeful that the protests here and nationwide will lead to a much better solution for immigration. Immigration is a problem that needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed by Congress, legislatively, not by military force in the streets, pulling people from their homes.”

“Obviously, we are the visitors here,” Kerr said. “We’re the observers. It’s not our city — but we hear what people are feeling, their families are feeling, and then to see literally up close the people in the streets and the tragedy, knowing it was right down the street from us, was almost surreal.”

Kerr is one of the most widely respected figures in NBA history. He has won a total of nine NBA championship rings, five as a player (three with Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and two with Tim Duncan’s San Antonio Spurs) and four as the head coach of Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors (2015, 2017, 2018, 2022). He is the first person in NBA history to win at least four championships as a player and as a coach. And he has nine!

His words resonate.