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I guess that’s why they call it blues

National Columnists

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared last week that he has no other choice but to raise taxes on the rich and corporations because there aren’t enough savings from efficiencies in agency budgets. New York City spends more money per capita than any other major city in the country, but there’s no way to save money. Uh-huh! At least Mamdani was honest and campaigned as a socialist. The Manhattanites are getting exactly what they voted for. But the two new rising stars of the party, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, the newly elected governors of New Jersey and ...

GOP’s survival depends on Trump-pioneered coalition

National Columnists

Just how badly did Republicans do in two Texas special elections last weekend? Badly enough that Republicans nationwide have to learn some searing lessons. Although the GOP lost both races, one was for a U.S. House seat that’s been in Democrats’ hands for decades: Christian Menefee’s victory narrows the GOP’s congressional majority, but only because that safely blue seat had been vacant since Rep. Sylvester Turner died last March. The other contest, which yielded an upset, was for a Texas state senate seat that will be up for election again before the legislature ...

ICE, Israel face much of same dilemma

National Columnists

When you think about recent events in the Middle East, it’s easier to understand what’s happening in Minnesota. There are significant parallels between the tactics of Hamas and pro-illegal immigrant agitators. Start with this. Both have no realistic way to achieve their objective through conventional means. Despite the brutality of the Oct. 7 massacre, Hamas couldn’t defeat Israel militarily. That’s the reason it had to rely on a surprise attack. In response, Israel decimated Hamas’s leadership. President Donald Trump ran on deporting illegal immigrants, and voters gave ...

There’s ways to make Minn. safer place

National Columnists

In the months before the April 12, 1861, firing on Fort Sumter, there were lots of sharp divisions in the North about the proper reaction to the first seven Confederate states that had already left the Union. Not all Unionists believed that war was inevitable. Similarly, others agreed that the emerging Confederacy was not worth the trouble and costs of war, and the secessionists could just form their own nation and stew in their own backward, servile juice. But after Fort Sumter, Lincoln – who was hated as much by the Confederates as Trump is by the woke and socialist left – ...

This past month has been quite a year

National Columnists

From Minneapolis to Venezuela to Greenland, a year’s worth of current events have unfolded in a matter of weeks. Here are a few things that feel as long as the first few weeks of January have felt: Every episode of “Stranger Things” in Season 4 and Season 5. “In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust, the modernist French novel published in 1913 exploring themes of the human condition over the span of 486 chapters, more than 4,000 pages and 1.2 million words. “The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World,” a 1968 British underground film that runs 48 hours and is ...

‘Protest’ is word not to be abused, misused

National Columnists

Alex Pretti wasn’t killed while “protesting.” This is a common description of what he was doing on a Minneapolis street the fateful morning when a confrontation with federal immigration agents ended in his tragic shooting. But if Pretti had been a mere protester, he’d very likely be alive today. Now that we’ve seen videos of an earlier struggle with federal agents and learned more about the organized nature of the anti-ICE resistance, it’s become clear that the better word for Pretti was agitator, or perhaps even operative. A protester, as typically understood, is ...