We Are All Minnesota

President Donald Trump stepped into a major political landmine by picking Minnesota as the Democratic state he opted to savage with his Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this time around. No one, anywhere, has ever regarded Minnesota as any kind of threat to any nation. Writer and former “Prairie Home Companion” radio personality Garrison Keiler often talked about the rock-steady courtesy and careful reticence of the hard-working and (once) stoic Minnesotans. “We Minnesotans believe in low key,” he quipped about himself and the other residents of his home state. Hardly the rampaging “paid political agitators” Donald Trump conjures up.

Minnesota consistently tallies among the lowest per capita crime stats in the nation. Yet there Trump’s jack-booted thugs are in repeated scenes on TV across the nation, hurling Minnesotans to the ground, kneeling on their backs, wrapping their beefy arms around their necks and squeezing, shooting them. This, despite the fact that Democratic California, along with the Republican states of Texas and Florida, have the highest number—millions—of undocumented immigrants in the nation. Yet Trump is focusing on the Midwestern state.

Nearby residents across the Minnesota’s border identify with their out-of-state neighbors. I grew up in Wisconsin, and considered Minnesota part of us, as I did Michigan, Iowa, and much of Illinois. If Trump thinks he carefully sidestepped red Iowa and Michigan, and purple Wisconsin (which went for Trump in 2024) in his targeted violence, he’s hugely mistaken. What happens in Minnesota is felt by all Midwesterners. Like me, other Wisconsinites have relatives over the border, they shop in Minnesota, and some have farms and businesses there. Minnesotans talk like us. We have the same accents, and some of us call drinking fountains “bubblers.” That kind of identification is something Trump, born and raised in Queens, will never get.

Even more problematic for Trump is that the great swath of middle Americans view Midwesterners as one of them. The country often dismisses the complaints and actions of the New York metropolitan area and the West (i.e. “left”) Coast. But they don’t take that attitude when it comes to Minnesotans, widely considered the salt of the earth by their fellow Americans.

It’s not so easy (or a genius political move) to remain popular as a vengeful president scapegoats a steady state from heartland America with combat-outfitted thugs.

Nevertheless, Minnesotans are being brutalized on the streets of Minneapolis: their “papers” demanded by ICE agents (which citizens are not required to carry), their car windows smashed and their bodies dragged over shattered glass, slugged when they dare lift their cell phones to record the violence. Yet the Minnesotans, a huge percentage of whom are hunters and own guns, remain nonviolent protesters against the brutality, steadfast and indomitable in their opposition, relying on whistles to alert one another to ICE violence, relentlessly recording the federal agents’ assault on the law despite threats from angry, threatening officers. Minnesotans have staged protest sit-ins in churches, at Hilton Hotels, where agents sleep, and at Target stores where masked men have kidnapped teenage US citizens working there. Protesters last month staged an all-night raucous anti-ICE “concert” to keep the agents awake as they tried to sleep in their Hilton Hotel beds.

It’s a lose-lose situation for Trump. Early poll results already hint that the president’s support in the wake of the violence in the Midwest—and nationally—is tanking. It’s not so easy (or a genius political move) to remain popular as a vengeful president scapegoats a steady state from heartland America with combat-outfitted thugs.

Even before news spread that ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Minneapolis mom and US citizen Renee Nicole Good in the face on January 7, a number of polls found increasing anger over Trump’s Minneapolis thugfest.

A national YouGov poll taken the same day of the shooting before word of the killing had been widely shared found that 52% of those surveyed already either somewhat or strongly disapproved of how ICE was doing its job (39% somewhat approved or strongly approved). Just 27% thought the agency's tactics were "about right," compared to 51% who labeled them"too forceful.”

Six out of ten of those surveyed said they believed a “war” or “conflict” is erupting in the streets of America.

A Reuters/Ipsos survey January 15 found Americans’ approval of Trump’s immigration approach was at its lowest point in his second administration. An AP-NORC poll found that just 38% of Americans approved of Trump’s immigration enforcement, down from a 49% high this spring. In addition, a majority of voters (51%) in a recent CNN/SSRS poll said ICE’s actions are making US cities less safe.

Trump’s net job approval rating slid to -14, YouGov pollsters reported Jan. 20 after the president’s immigration crackdown, the lowest of his second administration. The American Research Group reported Wednesday that Trump’s approval rating had cratered to -28.

“What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief,” Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said in a televised address last week. “News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities,” he added, characterizing the ICE attacks as a “campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”

Trump thought Minnesotans would be pushovers and great “performance fodder” as televised victims of his version of macho violence. They may be quietly hard-working, and sometimes excruciatingly reserved, but they have spines of steel and they know what’s right.

We are all Minnesota.