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L’ETOILE DU NORD

When my wife and I visited Minneapolis in 2024, we loved it.

Of course, having close friends there doesn’t hurt. Or the fact that, as in every other trip I’ve taken to the state of Minnesota, the temperature never fell below 70°. That includes two trips in late September and early October, when New York was in the 40s. I have no idea what it’s like when the high is minus 10°.

But even putting those things aside, we noticed things about Minnesota that surprised our Gotham-centric eyes.

First, it’s a really beautiful place. The Mississippi River begins in Minnesota and it frames Minneapolis. It’s not as wide as it gets when you’re further downriver – in St. Louis, for example. It seems like you see life on both sides.

Not to mention Minnetonka Falls, a wonderful park that includes the impressive cascade on the outskirts of the city.

Second, we ate really well there. The idea of peanut butter on a hamburger would gross me out. Not in Minneapolis. Same with a stuffed hamburger. Or a tater tots casserole, aka hot dish.

We even ventured to an Italian restaurant. I never do that outside New York since it’s hard to believe any other city – except maybe Boston – has decent cuisine of my ancestral home. But it was wonderful – a great array of antipasti, pasta and carne that would be at home in Carroll Gardens or Arthur Avenue.

The Twin Cities don’t lack in culture. We attended a wonderful production of “The Lehman Trilogy” at the relatively new version of the Guthrie Theater. In a previous trip, we visited the beautiful Walker Art Center. There are independent bookstores all over the place.

And, of course, Minnesota is the home state of Prince and Bob Dylan.

You’ve heard that people in Minnesota are over-the-top nice and try at all costs to avoid hurting your feelings.. Let me give you an example:

On our last day in the area, we had lunch with friends at a pub in the south part of the city. It was a Monday, and I was somewhat distracted by the fact that the Mets needed to beat Atlanta to make it to the postseason.

I tried to avoid the game – my friends aren’t big baseball fans. But as were leaving the restaurant, I watched on the TV screen as Francisco Lindor homered to put the Mets ahead in the ninth inning.

I do not hide my feelings when I’m watching the Mets. I let out an enormous “Go, go, go, yes!” as the ball cleared the fence.

At which point a server in the restaurant, quite naturally for a Minnesotan, blurted “Who cares about the Mets?”

I was undaunted. I went out to the parking lot to catch the end of the game and say goodbye to my friends. At which point, the server came running out and apologized profusely for her outburst.

I mean, the rowdy New Yorker is the one who disturbed everyone’s lunch. But she was the one who expressed remorse. My wife and I laughed, because there was no way this ever happens in New York without somebody’s middle finger going up.

Minnesotans are nice. They look out for one another. There’s less crime and a genuine effort to alleviate poverty. They are culturally diverse, welcoming people from throughout the world to a place where a lot of immigrants from tropical areas are probably shocked by the climate.

It might seem like heresy for a native New Yorker, especially if you know how chauvinistic I am about the City that Never Sleeps. But I could live in Minnesota.

So why did Trump pick on Minnesota?

Exactly because of all of the above. And because Minnesota hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972 – and has only voted for a Republican (Eisenhower twice) three times since 1932, the first time it ever went Democratic.

The red states where Trump is beloved are generally failures. Crime is higher. Living standards are lower. And, of course, bigotry keeps anyone not white and Christian from thriving.

That won’t do as far as Trump and his minions are concerned. Their hatred for Tim Walz and Illan Omar and Amy Klobuchar and everyone else from Minnesota is based on the perception that the competence of Democratic leadership is a taunt rather than an example.

So Trump and Stephen Miller and the rest of the pond scum were determined to make life miserable in a place where it isn’t. The results are there. Hundreds of non-criminal immigrants – undocumented or otherwise – whisked away by secret police. Disruption of businesses, schools, houses of worship. And murder – at least two that we know of.

What Trump and Republicans didn’t count on was the fact that Minnesotans are fierce about their niceness. They mistook civility and kindness for complaisance and apathy, and ended up with exactly the opposite.

I love Minnesota. I love the Minnesotans I’ve met in my life. They are real Americans, the real patriots. And they deserve better than what January 2026 has given them.

It’s the North Star State, l’etoile du nord, because it’s a guiding light for the United States and the world. Never more than now.

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POWER OF THE PURSE

Those mouse ears you bought the kids at Disney World funded a concentration camp.

The Tesla charger you used to refuel your plug-in vehicle paid the salary of a DOGE dope.

Your flipflop order on Prime Day Two bought a truffle cream canapé at an overwrought wedding in Venice last month.

The president is an addled megalomaniac, Congress bows to his will and the Supreme Court accedes to it all. News media, corporations and universities cave to his BS lawsuits like sandcastles in a tsunami.

Americans disgusted by this point in our history (hand raised!) feel powerless to stop what’s happening.

We’re not. At least not now.

We might not be able to 86 the sycophants who approved the ridiculous Trump spending plan until next November.

But we can show our disgust and make this nonsense hurt them a little bit with the power of our wallets.

We need to spend money. To buy food, services, goods, vacations.

How we spend it makes a difference. We don’t need to give it to people, organizations and places that spit in the face of our values.

A friend calls this “casting your dollar vote.” When he said it, he referred to an awful soap commercial we watched in his dorm room. The ad was so bad he swore never to buy that brand of soap.

It no longer exists.

I doubt it was just my friend’s disgust that sank the brand. But other people might have drawn the same conclusion – why should I buy a bar of soap made by people who think THAT ad is clever?

That isn’t always going to happen. But you can inflict economic pain on people who find contentment in inflicting real pain on real people.

Florida is a prime example.

Its malevolent dumpling of a governor brags about cooperating with the American Gestapo, ICE, in building “housing” in the Everglades. It’s a facility meant for the people being rounded up from the streets, without any form of due process or respect.

They call it Alligator Alcatraz. That’s a misnomer. In Alcatraz, prisoners were men convicted of crimes by a jury of their peers. There isn’t a jury verdict in the lot here, which makes this a concentration camp.

And they sell merchandise for it and chuckle at the idea that any potential escapees face death from predatory wildlife.

Why, why, why, why would a family of decent people like yours spend a penny of your money in a place like that? Especially in a place that generates a whole lotta income from vacationers like you.

In the summer, it’s a no-brainer. What with the hurricanes, tornadoes, miserable heat and almost hourly thunderstorms, why would anyone want to suffer through Florida?

But, when winter comes, there are places to go that aren’t run by Hothouse Hitler wannabes.

Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are part of the United States. So are California and Hawaii. You can leave the country, too, and feel better about it for not supporting evil.

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Every time you look online this week, somebody or something is mentioning that it’s Prime Week at Amazon.

But you’re also seeing that the sales this year aren’t particularly good. I’ve seen the word “stink” used.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve quit Prime.

Jeff Bezos saw Lex Luthor in a Superman comic and decided he found a role model. He gutted the Washington Post’s independence and donated money to the MAGA cause.

And he flaunted his wealth. Sending Katy Perry on a joyride to space. Ordering up a $500 million superyacht with a helipad aboard.

And, of course, his recent $50 million wedding in Venice.

Why should you pay for that?

To be fair, it’s hard to wean yourself from Amazon. You need something somewhat urgently at the cheapest price. You know you can get it tomorrow. That’s tough to walk away from.

It seems a lot tougher to live in an oligarchy.

While vacationing in Mystic, Connecticut, this week, I visited Bank Street Books and did my part to keep their business going.

Could I have gotten the book I bought for less on Amazon? I don’t know. I don’t care.

The same applies to Elon Musk. I’ve been off X since he took over Twitter. Not interested in what he does with Space X. And when I rent an electric car in September, I’ll make certain I charge it somewhere unaffiliated with Tesla.

And then there’s the companies that support Trump overtly or tacitly.

Take Target. Once the darling of people who believed chic could be affordable, the company turned its back on one of its largest customer groups – black people. It roiled Back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives because MAGA types squawked and Trump growled.

Black ministers understood the power they held in their wallets. They organized an open-ended boycott of Target that has severely pared company sales.

And here’s the thing: there’s no guarantee Target will ever get those customers back. Instead of admitting its mistake, it’s trying to muddle through. People can find other places to shop or make do if they think giving their money to people who don’t respect them is a bad idea.

Earlier this year, I wondered about my orthopedist. His mug is plastered or digitized on billboards throughout New Jersey.

Just for my information, I went into the Federal Election Commission’s data base of 2024 campaign contributors. And – surprise! – this doctor donated at least $30,000 to various incarnations of the Trump campaign.

He’s now my former orthopedist. I feel awful that any portion of that $30,000 came from me – even if it was through my Medicare account.

Don’t feel like this. Before you spend money on things that are important to you, think about who’s getting that money.

There are companies determined to keep DEI initiatives and not cooperating with ICE goons.

There are companies run by men and women not just unafraid of a changing society, but willing to embrace it.

You don’t have to shop at Home Depot or Wal-Mart. You don’t need a MyPillow.

And you don’t have to go to Texas or Florida, where diversity and equity are ridiculed and met with a 21st century concentration camp.

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OUTRAGE, INC.

We kinda knew, prior to January 20, what would happen.

Trump put together a collection of some of the worst people who’ve ever lived in this country. And that’s saying something – if their heirs donated to Trump’s campaign, Benedict Arnold, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Al Capone would have been pardoned and/or given jobs.

This collection of pond scum set out with a plan. Go after as many stable, peaceful, prosperous, honorable and – here’s the key word – diverse elements of American life that don’t support their warped view of America. Sow chaos, pick fights with entities that have been as removed from the title “enemy” as you can imagine.

Harvard. Canada. Childhood vaccinations. Bruce Springsteen. Solar energy. Women professionals. School kids of color.

And, of course, Los Angeles.

Now, to be clear, L.A. is not even close to being my favorite city in the United States. It’s not even in the top ten. Seven-lane freeways are an abomination. The Dodgers abandoned the good people of Brooklyn. I’m actually surprised there’s something they consider a downtown.

But there are people who love L.A. Not just Randy Newman. They like the quirkiness of having lots of different cultures mesh together into a spectacle for the senses – music, art, food, clothing, language. Millions of people who work hard, struggle to put food on their families’ tables and enjoy the occasional kimchi taco.

Which is why the city is one of the hubs of resistance to what Trump’s cuckoo coterie wants. Because it is, with Miami and New York, a center of immigrant culture in the United States, it is an easy target. And why so many Angelinos are out in the streets trying to stop ICE, the American Gestapo, from its heinous raids.

Destroying the immigrant idea that built this damn country is their touchstone. MAGAts act as though their families sprouted from the heartland soil and don’t have a long boat trip or plane ride in their DNA.

What they’ve been terrified of is the fact that the United States has gotten closer to becoming a majority minority country. That some coalition of Black, Latino, Asian and indigenous people will soon make up 50.01% of the population. 

And they think that coalition, should it so choose, would wreak on strictly Caucasian people some of the despicable acts that Caucasians inflicted on them since arriving here. Slavery, mass deportation and exclusion acts can go both ways.

For now, the question is how to combat these manufactured outrages, the ones Trump and the gang conjured as he stewed after Joe Biden beat him handily in 2020.

Well, one thing might be to keep reminding him that he lost in 2020. Trump has been plotting revenge against the whole country – not just the states that didn’t support him – since then. Some 81 million of us rejected him and the 74 million who did vote for him didn’t do enough to ensure his return. Even winning last year didn’t make up for that loss, that failure to adore him. 

But rehashing 2020 is hardly a solution to the problem we face now.

As far as Los Angeles goes, continuing the protests, even in the face of the world’s strongest military, is paramount. What’s also true is that the protests can’t be violent – Trump wants nothing more than to bully protesters and show off the force he believes he controls.

Making the people behind the ICE masks pariahs – actually, that would speed up what the rest of their life is going to be like – is one course of action. In Los Angeles and other cities, shun these people. Their money is no good in your store or they need to identify themselves fully in order to use their credit cards. 

I thought about whether or not any family members of ICE agents should be targets. Normally, I would find that heinous. But these are the people who have taken children from their parents and parents from their children. They’ve raided graduations. They’ve raided the legal proceedings that immigrants are required to attend. 

It would be interesting to see how they would feel about being on the other side of their bile.

But then we would be stooping to their level. We would become the same kind of unthinking, heartless being that is defiling the streets of our cities. So leave their families alone – just pick on the ICEes.

This Saturday, June 14, Trump is orchestrating a military parade through Washington. He’ll tell you it’s to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary. It’s actually to celebrate his 79th birthday. 

It’s easy to say that you shouldn’t go. But I suspect somebody is going to do something to disrupt it. In any case, there are protests around the nation to counter this massive ego trip. Join, if you don’t already have plans.

My preferred course has always been to come up with a strong positive alternative to Trumpism. A plan that would actually make people’s lives better – accelerating a lot of the ways the world has improved in my lifetime. Promoting clean energy and improved transportation. Health care for all. Support for families no matter how they’re constituted.

But Trump has the money and the manipulated Congressional support to let his mass despicabilities take over the agenda. People are hurting. 

We need to throw sand into the outrage machine.

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NO, I DON’T FEEL SORRY FOR THEM

Can you imagine what it’s like to be an ICE agent in June 2025?

Probably not, because I imagine the people who read this come equipped with compassion, intelligence, scruples, understanding of democracy and other attributes of positive humanity.

But we are people who see that all of us are real human beings, with imperfections and such. So I guess, intellectually, we know that the ICE agents we see committing these despicable acts against vulnerable immigrants are, uh, people.

So what do you think it takes to be part of the American Gestapo?

There are, according to the Department of Homeland Security, about 20,000 people who work in various capacities for ICE. That’s one in every 17,500 Americans.

Of course, that doesn’t include the local law enforcement types who want to show they can be among the big federal boys.

I can’t imagine anybody who works at ICE was particularly good at civics in school – assuming, of course, they went to school. Maybe that’s a big assumption. They missed the classes about the Constitution – or the classes they had focused only on the Second Amendment to the exclusion of the other 26 (or 27 if you count the Equal Rights Amendment).

When confronted with the concept of due process applying to all persons – you know, that Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment stuff – their brains find it difficult to grasp the concept. So they ignore it – it’s probably easier than actually reading less than 100 words – which might stretch the extent of their vocabulary.

Being fashion forward probably disqualifies you from ICE. You’ve got to wear those drab ersatz military-style outfits as befits wannabe warriors. After bemoaning mask-wearing during the pandemic as freedom-infringing, you have to wear a black one during a long day of scooping up kids and mothers.

Most people in legitimate law enforcement go after what we used to think of as real crimes such as stealing money. That was, of course, before Trump pardoned people convicted of fraud because they or their families like him.

But those legitimate law enforcers are usually pretty proud of who they are and what they do. They’re thought of as brave and even-handed.

So they put stickers in their car saying they’re cops. They show up at festivals and parades. They’re the helpers Mr. Rogers told kids to look for in times of trouble.

What if those kids in trouble listened to Mr. Rogers and ran up to an ICE agent? I imagine they’d be cursing the nicest man in history in their native language from the friendly confines of a South Sudan internment camp.

On Career Day at school, the kids of legitimate law enforcement officers show up with their Moms and Dads in uniform.

What do ICE agent parents do at Career Day? Show up in their khakis, shades and masks? Demonstrate what it feels like to experience a flash grenade? Tell the kids to make sure they have all their papers in order – and take a few with them if they look a little scared?

Assuming that people who work for ICE are family men and the occasional woman. 

I can’t imagine they go to normal bars and church socials to meet people. Who wants to go out with somebody who might send you to El Salvador if the relationship goes sour?

That’s why there’s a lot of thought that ICE agents are incels – involuntary celebates. That makes some sense.

Unless, of course, there’s some app ICE agents use for meeting suitable mates. You swipe left and someone who loves to be dominated shows up as the mate of your dreams. Those handcuffs and twist ties aren’t just for lawn mowers, hamburger cooks and housekeepers. Good times.

And here’s the part about working for ICE that is going to make it unique:

You see, one day, this madness will end. You and I are determined to make that happen. We’ll be about the business of repairing the damage that Trump, Musk, the saps in Congress, the Christian Nationalists and your neighbor with the “Daddy’s Home” flag (I’ve actually seen that!) have done.

These ICE agents will still be of employment age. Except who is going to hire them? An employer and co-workers will always know that so-and-so grabbed defenseless people, hurled them into vans, denied them their rights, and sent them away from the lives they peaceably created and the people they helped.

Not to mention all the days these people will miss from work for testifying in the lawsuits that will brought against them by the hundreds. It’s hard to be a security guard at Walmart when you’re in court four days a week.

Normally, I have a soft spot for people with troubled lives. There but for the grace of God, et cetera.

Except I know I would never betray other human beings and the ideals of American democracy. Not for any amount of money – including the $40,000 bonuses Republicans are trying to give them.

So do I feel bad for these people? Nah.

Do they deserve all the opprobrium they will face for the rest of their lives?

Absolutely.

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