Tim Walz talks about the 'generational trauma' his state has faced - Karen Tumulty, WaPo
For Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who rose to national prominence as the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, the past year has been a cascade of nightmares.
“It was a privilege to do so. I know she would have been a fantastic president,” Walz said of his decision to accept former vice president Kamala Harris’s invitation to share the ticket. But he added: “I do think it comes with its own billion-dollar hits against you. So you know, you stick your head up, they’re going to come for you.” The presidential race didn’t end as he had hoped, and since then, Walz and his state have been at the center of one trauma after another. The worst of them came to a head in January, when two Minnesotans were gunned down by federal immigration officers.
Two days after the death on a Minneapolis sidewalk of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, Walz got a phone call. It didn’t start well, the governor recalled in an interview with The Washington Post. “Well, Tim,” President Donald Trump told him, “everything went fine in Louisville and New Orleans,” other places where his administration had conducted high-profile crackdowns.
“Mr. President, you didn’t shoot anybody in those cities,” Walz retorted, referring to Pretti and Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, who had been killed by a federal immigration officer 17 days earlier. Trump backed off and turned to finding a way out of the explosive situation. “He was calling because he had to get out of there, and in typical form, they had to save face,” the governor said. (The White House declined a request for comment on the conversation.)
Walz offered no concessions, but that same day, Trump dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, replacing heavy-handed Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. Soon after, what the administration had dubbed Operation Metro Surge was winding down.
Minnesota has suffered what the governor described as “generational trauma.” But its residents also offered the rest of the country an opportunity to observe the state at its best, he said.
More..
https://wapo.st/4bwkQls
free