By Pulane Choane
When the opening chords faded on Radio KFAI 90.3 FM in Minneapolis, host Al McFarlane leaned into the microphone and said, “I’m Al McFarlane. Welcome to The Conversation with Al McFarlane. Today we’re talking all things Jamaica.” His tone carried both heaviness and urgency. A historic storm had
By Pulane Choane Contributing Writer
On a recent broadcast of Radio
KFAI 90.3 FM’s The Conversation with Al McFarlane, the Tennessee-Twin Cities airwaves became a lifeline linking Minnesota’s Jamaican diaspora with the island in crisis. The trigger: Hurricane Melissa, a storm of record-breaking intensity that made landfall in Jamaica on 28 October 2025. According to the Associated Press, Melissa struck as a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds reported at 185 mph, making it the strongest storm ever recorded to hit Jamaica. Veteran community
just battered the island of Jamaica, and the Twin Cities’ Jamaican-diaspora community was mobilising to respond. According to multiple international reports, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on 28 October 2025 as a powerful Category 5 storm with sustained winds of about 185 mph (circa 295 km/h). According to reports by several media outlets, the storm is now described as the strongest to ever strike Jamaica since systematic
records began in 1851. These outlets also reveal that the devastation has been widespread with hospitals damaged, entire communities cut off, major agricultural zones flattened, and power knocked out to hundreds of thousands. Reuters reports that the island’s southern and western parishes, St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, St. James, Hanover, Trelawny were among the hardest hit. The scale of damage is still emerging, but one fact is clear: this is not busi-
ness-as-usual. Jamaica is facing a disaster of extraordinary magnitude.
McFarlane introduced his cousin, Philip McFarlane, recording producer who owns Irejute Records and leads the roots band, EarthCry.He joined from Kingston via video livestream. “Me personally, I’m good,” Philip began. “But collectively, as a country, we’re going through it. Those of us who are in a better position to help, that’s what we’re doing.” He
described the storm’s trajectory: “It came from the east, passed south, then went west and northwest. That took the eye through St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, St James, Hanover, Trelawny, Manchester, Clarendon. Even in St Mary, where I’m from: every farm tree down, houses without roofs. My mother’s roof is gone completely.” He went on: “Some towns are marooned off. No electricity. No phones. No nothing. I read a story yester-
day where somebody said they counted nineteen bodies on the ground, and they can’t access them.” His voice held the weight of that reality. When asked where people are sleeping at night, he responded: “Outside. Thousands. It’s impossible for government or any institution to rebuild houses that quick. Some say bussing them to Kingston,
organizer Earle Parris, a leader with the Jamaica Minnesota Organization (JMO), spoke with calm determination during the live broadcast. “When I’m lying in bed and I say my prayers,” he told McFarlane, “I say we’re going to get through this. Jamaica has set such a standard in the world, and I see the whole world coming to help us.” Parris recalled that JMO was born out of earlier disaster efforts. “Thirty-seven years ago, it was Hurricane Gilbert,” he said. “Thirty-seven years before that was Hurricane Charlie. Out of Gilbert, this organization was started, and we’re still here.” He positioned the current response as part of that legacy.
Now, JMO is once again rallying to coordinate relief with the Caribbean Disaster Relief Fund (Minnesota) and other community partners. “Tomorrow night we’re sorting and shipping barrels,” Parris explained. “We’ve reached out to friends and JMO members and the general population. People are calling in, sending emails, saying, ‘yep, I’m coming, and I’ll bring a friend.’” His invitation was intentional: the crisis demands vehicles of support, not passers-by. He made a pointed observation: “Some people say they don’t have money, but they have hands. Their humanity is
By April Ryan BlackPressUSA
The United Nations reports that
those communities are still without power and Wi-Fi. The category five storm killed at least 32 people in Jamaica and another 43 in nearby Haiti, where 13 people remain missing. Here in the United States, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, New York Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, is working feverishly with the State Department to ensure help is coming from the United States to the affected Caribbean nations, particularly Jamaica. Both of the New York Congresswoman’s parents immigrated to the United States from Jamaica. Clarke has been
a strong advocate for Caribbean issues and serves as co-chair of the Congressional Caribbean Caucus. According to a State Department website, “Within hours, Secretary [Marco] Rubio deployed a regional Disaster Assistance Response Team, including urban search-and-rescue teams, to assess needs and provide search and recovery assistance. The State Department also indicates it “is collaborating with UN agencies, NGOs, and host governments to deliver food, water, medical supplies,
St. Paul State Representative Kaohly Her Tuesday defeated incumbent Mayor Melvin Carter and now will share power and leadership with an all female St. Paul City Council.
Carter said he congratulated Her saying, “She’s going to be the next mayor of this city, and I told her that me and my team will be there to set her up for success.”
Her said, “My family came here as refugees. Never in their wildest dreams would I be standing here today accepting the position of mayor, mayor of the city that gave them the opportunity to live the American dream.”
The mayor-elect said, “We need a St. Paul that is focused on expanding our revenue stream so that our budget isn't balanced on the backs of our residents’ property taxes and rents.” Her promoted revitalizing downtown and Midway neighborhoods to make St. Paul business-friendly.
St. Paul State Sen. Foung Hawj, said Her’s victory means a lot to St. Paul's Hmong community.
“She’s the first woman, and she just happened to be Hmong,”
he said. “We will have a lot of work to do moving forward. I’m sure her administration, whenever she sets that up, will be representative of the diversity that we have here in St Paul.” thing, it’s a third term, it’s time for a change,” he said. Her, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a MBA from Northeastern University, has worked in business and financial services and as a community organizer. She directed the Hmong women’s organization Hnub Thisab and worked as an administrator for the St. Paul School Board. Her’s term runs through 2028. A special election will be held for the seat she leaves in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Dick Cheney’s expansive vision of presidential power lives on in Trump’s agenda
Former Vice President Dick Cheney will be remembered for many things. He was arguably the most powerful vice president in American history. He was a paragon of conservatism. He was the architect of many of the more extreme measures in President George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”
But Cheney’s legacy, after his death on Nov. 4, 2025, will also include a crucial development that dates back a half-century, when he served as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff. Based on his experience in the Ford administration,
Cheney felt that Congress had overreacted in its efforts to rein in the presidency after the abuses of President Richard Nixon. He thought that the assertive Congress of the 1970s had gone too far and had emasculated the
presidency, making it nearly impossible for the president to get things done.
As Cheney told an interviewer in 2005: “I do have the view that over the years there had been an erosion of
presidential power and authority, that it’s reflected in a number of developments – the War Powers Act. … I am one of those who believe that was an infringement upon the authority of the President. … A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both, in the ’70s served to erode the authority, I think, the President needs to be effective especially in a national security area.”
Cheney’s experience in the Ford years set in place a decades-long effort to enhance presidential power, to reinvigorate an office that he believed Congress had wrongly diminished. When Bush surprisingly picked Cheney to be his vice president in July 2000, Cheney
Veterans can’t eat their pride
According to U.S. government data and recent policy studies, nearly 25% of America’s veterans live either below the federal poverty level or paycheck to paycheck, with little margin for unexpected expenses.
To get by, many adopt emergency-level budgets. But even the harshest austerity measures may not be enough. Life at the bottom still costs money. Mortgages and rent must be paid. Vehicles are needed to reach work or medical appointments. So, what can be cut? Too often, it’s food—eating less or sacrificing nutrition. Tragically, many veterans and their families face this choice every day.
The latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that 7.5% of veterans—about 1.5 million—are hungry or food insecure. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reports that those ages 65–74 are now most at risk, a shift from only a few years ago when 55- to 64-year-olds faced the highest rates.
The picture grows bleaker within subgroups. Nearly 1 in 5 women veterans, many raising children, report food insecurity. More than a third of disabled working-age veterans struggle to feed themselves. These aren’t abstractions—they’re neighbors, family and friends.
VA disability benefits are often treated as unearned income for the purposes of means testing in some federal programs. But these benefits were never meant to be treated as a paycheck. They were designed to offset the extra costs of living with a disability. In programs where they are counted toward income limits, this classification can unfairly block many veterans from receiving assistance through programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. SNAP can provide essential short-term relief, adding protein, vegetables, and fruit to meals. Yet because disability benefits often push veterans over the income threshold too many are excluded. According to RAND, only 4.9% of food-insecure veterans in the U.S. received SNAP assistance in 2023. It is a failure of our system when individuals who served this country bravely and honorably—so that others could pursue the American dream—now face malnutrition and hunger. On Veterans
By Alan McPherson Professor of History, Temple University
A massive military buildup in the Caribbean has sparked speculation that the U.S. is now engaged in its latest chapter of direct intervention in Latin America. For now, at least, President Donald Trump has walked back suggestions that Washington is eyeing strikes inside Venezuela, seemingly content with attacking numerous naval vessels under the guise of a counter-narcotics operation. But nonetheless, U.S. presence in the region will enlarge further in the coming weeks with the arrival of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald
R. Ford. As a scholar of U.S.-Latin American relations, I know the actions of the current U.S. administration smack of a long history of interventions in the region. Should escalation develop from attacks on ships into direct military confrontation with Venezuela, such aggression would appear to be par for the course in inter-American relations. And certainly, governments across Latin America – in and out of Venezuela – will place it in this historical context.
But while it does hearken back to some quasi-piratical practices of the U.S. Navy, the military buildup now is in key respects both unprec-
By: Latonya Linton
The Government is taking steps to standardize the Hurricane Melissa relief distribution process.
Prime Minister, Dr. Andrew Holness, says the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) has currently established 22 staging areas across the island, operating under a hub-and-spoke model, to support national relief and recovery efforts.
“So they will move from big warehouses to these small hubs, and then from these small hubs to smaller areas of distribution. That might not be enough. Eventually, we will have to move from this operation of us moving items. The physical distribution of the relief is an expensive operation, and it poses some risks to us as well,” he said.
“I’ve seen videos circulating, where I’ve seen a Jamaica Defence Force truck and people are there waving and, you know, it wasn’t too bad. But even in a disaster, we must maintain our dignity. Even in a disaster, we must never give the view that there is lawlessness. Even if we are hungry and there is suffering, we must maintain our dignity. The way in which the relief operation is done, must be… in a way that protects the dignity of the people,” Dr. Holness said.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security, Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) and JDF have been tasked with implementing a standardized relief distribution process that safeguards the dignity of recipients, Dr. Holness said
“But as I was saying, we can’t carry this on forever or for too long. At some point, we will transition to a voucher or a coupon system where, instead of carrying the bag of relief items, you will get something that is equivalent to cash and you can go to your nearest shop in your area where we will stock and supply them and you get your items,” he stated. “But to do that, we
have to… provision [the shops], give them electricity, give them internet connection. So we’re working on that plan and, in the coming weeks, you will start to see that plan come to fruition so that, for the foreseeable future of the next few months, there is an effective and robust system to deliver relief as we pivot to the recovery stage,” Prime Minister Holness added.
By: Judana Murphy
The Government of Jamaica says more than 600 educational institutions sustained damage during the passage of category-five Hurricane Melissa.
“In the affected parishes, we have a little bit over 450 schools that have been affected, and that’s across the board – infant schools, primary schools, secondary schools and also eight tertiary schools. So far, we’ve seen estimates of 616 institutions having some kind of damage,” said Minister of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Senator Dr. Dana Morris Dixon.
Dr. Morris Dixon shared that the damages range from leaks to complete destruction.
“We may have to use tents; we may have to get makeshift structures that our stu-
Minister
dents can continue to learn in. We’ve started that process and I’ve already spoken to Keith (Co-Chair of the Private Sector Committee, Senator the Hon. Keith Duncan) – he’s looking at clear areas where we can put temporary shelters and I’ve said to him, while you’re doing that,
tents, warm food, beds, but you’re talking about thousands of families in rural hills with no
look for spaces that could house a temporary school structure,” she informed. She said that the Ministry is conducting assessments, noting that in some cases, a tarpaulin can be used to cover roofs to allow for reopening.
Dr. Morris Dixon
power, no roads. They are sleeping outside, catching on something.”
Joining from Minneapolis, Merina Neal, better known as Trinny Cee, a board member of the Caribbean Disaster Relief Fund of Minnesota, spoke with both heartbreak and determination. “It’s heart-wrenching,” she said.
“I’ve travelled to Jamaica for twenty years, into communities like Flankers and Tivoli, not resorts. What I’m seeing now looks like a bomb went off. No green, just brown and broken. And yet, even in that, the people, while screaming for help, are not broken.”
indicated that independent schools were also hit by the hurricane and the Government has committed to supporting them.
“We’re going to be flexible and everybody is going to be at school, but it will not look like regular school,” she said.
Her organisation sprang into action within days. She explained: “We sent the email. We got together. We asked people to donate funds, to funnel money through official Jamaican government sites and through trusted local organisations. We put barrels at Galaxy Foods, at local Caribbean-community locations. We condensed the island’s long list of needs down to essentials: soap, toothpaste, batteries, tarps, blankets. New items only, please, not used clothing, so the message being sent to Jamaica is one of dignity.”
Trinny Cee has
Rabby Motilall, President of Galaxy Foods International, 7128 Chicago Ave., Richfield, shown above with Jamaican team member Andre Johnson, and son Arun Motilall (r), has been a mainstay for Carribbean disaster relief support as a trusted conduit for diaspora responses to Jamaica and other West Indian natural disasters for decades.
Galaxy Foods International ships barrels of disaster relief supplies collected by organizations like Jamaica Minnesota Organization (JMO), the Organization for Strategic Development of Jamaica (OSDJ) and Caribbean Disaster Relief Fund and others to communities devastated by events like Hurricane Melissa, which annihilated Jamaica and wreaked havoc in Cuba last month.
Motilall said his company is shipping relief supplies to government approved distribution systems at no charge to the local Minnesota organizations and their donors. In addition, he said, individuals and churches or organizations that want to ship relief supplies to specific individuals or communities, such as their own relatives and friends or community institutions they have a personal relationship with, can do so at discounted shipping
co-ordinated volunteers, social-media campaigns and local drop-off spots. “Galaxy Foods donated storage space, barrels and manpower. Tomorrow, we inventory, rebuild the barrels, and ship. Jamaica will need help for a long time to come, not a one-time thing.”
Philip, pausing only briefly, shared what struck him most in his visit to affected areas.
“You can spend forty years chasing one thing: a house, car, and lose it in a day,” he said.
“These people find happiness in living simple. They’re smiling, because their value isn’t in material things. You’ll see some-
rates.
“What is helpful,” Motilall said, “is that the Jamaican government has opened up the ports and everything can be brought in duty free through the end of the year.”
Supporting West Indian communities and the joy Minnesotans experience when they visit and interact with Caribbean culture is at the foundation of Galaxy’s business mission.
“Food is culture. We curate an amazing set of Caribbean foods following one philosophy, providing only what we would eat. With five decades of expertise and many, many family recipes, this is what we do.,” Motilall says.
“We started in 1987 in our south Minneapolis home, then moving to the Lake Hiawatha neighborhood. Over ten years and with the support of Minnesotans who love Caribbean and African food and culture, we outgrew that location...leading us to our current location. Here we offer the most authentic line of products and services for the West Indian/ Caribbean community and all who want to share it with us,” he said. Connect with Galaxy Foods International at 612-861-7410.
one say: ‘My house is gone, but give me some board, some nail. We’ll string it back up, cook the food, laugh, play music.’ You can’t defeat them mentally.” Al McFarlane closed the segment with the phrase his cousin had shared: “We’re not dead, but we’re going to suffer.” He paused. “That honesty matters.”
From Minnesota to Jamaica, communities are forging a bridge of care. Faith and action meet: one roof, one barrel, one family at a time. The storm may have left devastation in its wake, but the response is already moving forward.
the most valuable thing in the world. Give me an hour. Give me a half-an-hour. That’s what matters.” He reinforced the practical: show up, labor, pack, ship. Joining the conversation was Wayland Richards of the Organization for Strategic Development in Jamaica (OSDJ). “Strategic is the key word in our name,” he said. “We respond now, but we’re also thinking ten years ahead. What will the needs be when the headlines fade?”
He described an organization with long-term vision: youth and community development, health-care infrastructure, social resilience. Now, with Melissa having destroyed or damaged hospitals, roads and utility structures, that strategic horizon matters. Richards cited, for example, the damage reported at Black River Hospital and the hundreds of thousands left without electricity.
He announced OSDJ’s upcoming gala on November 15 under the theme “Strengthening the Bond Between Minnesota and Jamaica.” Launching a campaign titled “A Million Friends of Jamaica,” they seek one million individu-
hygiene kits, temporary shelter, and search and rescue support.”
Iconic and award-winning actress, activist, and Jamaican native Sherly Lee Ralph said on The Tea with April, “It is exact-
ly one week later, and there are some people who have not had anybody come to help them, nobody!” Ralph emoted,” It’s rough. We need help there now.” She is calling on all the people who have “enjoyed the beaches in Jamaica” to help by finding trusted places you know and making a donation, as the
als over the next five years willing to donate a minimum of US $10 annually to fund rebuilding efforts. Two immediate flagship projects: the Davidson Outreach Centre and a new ward at the Bustamante Hospital for Children.
The voices offered something beyond hope: they offered structure, accountability, and a narrative of resurgence. Parris closed with a solemn determination: “It’s going to be a haul, short term and long term, but we’ll come through stronger.” Richards reiterated the need for long-term commitment. “Some homes cannot be rebuilt in a day,” he said, “and Jamaica will recover, but we must stay.” McFarlane closed the hour with a message that invited action: “Pray for Jamaica. Pray for all those doing the work. And then act.” The distinction is critical: prayer without action is insufficient in the face of this scale of destruction. Jamaica asked for response. Minnesota answered. Between Kingston’s damaged homes and Minneapolis’s volunteering arms, a bridge of compassion now crosses the Caribbean. The storm may have driven the gap. but this diaspora, anchored in culture, faith and purpose, is forging a path of repair, together.
storm’s destruction has halted the normalcy of life on the island.” Ralph provided an update on some areas that hold personal significance for her. “The school that my parents helped build lost their roof. They’re trying to figure out where we’re gonna put these kids, how we’re gonna get them back into school, all of these things, and it’s like I can see where we’re
Pearll Warren won the Ward 5 power seat on the Minneapolis City Council.
She succeeds Jerimiah Ellison, son of the Northside political dynasty created by his father, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and his mother, Minneapolis School Board director, Kim Ellison.
Warren finished with 2,437 votes and 48.4 percent of the vote, ahead of Ethrophic Burnettt with 1,723 votes.
Burnett had been endorsed by Ellison and Rep. Ilhan Omar. Warren was backed by All of Minneapolis, the local political organization that supports Mayor Frey and Elizabeth Shaffer – the Ward 7 candidate who defeated incumbent Katie Cashman.
Shaffer unseated Katie Cashman winning 6,709 votes to Cashman’s 5,909.
Cashman said serving as 7th Ward Council Member for the past two years has been an honor. “I am so proud of the work I’ve done in service to our beautiful ward, bringing resources for downtown and uptown revitalization, championing climate and sustainability practices, advocating for renters and often forgotten low-income residents, and successfully reinvigorating arts programming to the City.” It’s important to flex our democratic muscle when given the chance, and Minneapolis did with a record breaking 147,702 people casting their ballots, said Cashman in a newsletter to her constituents following last week elections. Minneapolis had its highest voter turn-out in City history, and that is something to be proud of, she said, thanking all the Election and Voter Services staff for their hard work.
Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne said, “I feel honored by your strong vote of confidence last Tuesday by electing me to continue representing Ward 1 for the next 4 years. Being re-elected in the highest turnout municipal election ever, and receiving over 60% of the vote in every single precinct in the Ward is truly humbling. This is the now the 3rd time I've been elected in the last 4 years, and I'm looking forward to having a full 4 year term for the first time. I'm excited to continue engaging with you all out in the community and will keep working hard to make sure Ward 1 continues be-
ing a great place to live. In Ward 4, incumbent LaTrisha Vetaw thanked voters for returning her to City Hall. “What a season it’s been! From record voter turnout in our municipal election to the ongoing work of keeping our neighborhoods safe, healthy,
and connected, I’m filled with gratitude for the energy and care this community continues to show. You showed up, you voted, and you reminded everyone across Minneapolis that the Northside’s voice matters,” Vetaw said in a newsletter to her ward.
“I’m deeply appreciative and proud to continue serving our Ward 4 community a place full of resilience, creativity, and heart. Every day, I’m inspired by the neighbors, business owners, and families who make this part of the city shine brighter,” she said. Robin Wonsley was top vote-getter in Ward 2, retaining one of the seats that give the progressive caucus its majority status on Minnapolis City Council, She said, “I am thrilled to continue representing Ward 2 for the next four years.
I look forward to working in close partnership with residents, community organizations, unions, and all my colleagues at
City Hall to improve the lives of diverse working class families across our beautiful city.”
The council's progressive bloc retained a seven-vote majority, but will no longer have the votes to override a Frey veto by themselves.
Winning reelection in Ward 3, Michael Rainville said, “A very big thank you to all who participated in the City election. This year saw the highest number of voters (147,000) to ever participate in a Minneapolis election and the 55% voter turnout was also a record.”
He said, “At the City Council Meeting this week we took more action to help our unsheltered neighbors by allocating more funding. $75,000 was authorized for a joint powers agreement with Hennepin County's office to end homelessness. The second budget allocation was to Avivo Village and Hennepin County for $1.6 million to support Avivo's operations. Avivo Village has proven to be the most effective way to immediately bring in unsheltered neighbors, stabilize their lives and provide services.”
Cashman said she looks forward to helping the new Council Member-Elect Shaffer get up to speed on constituent issues, and help her carry the baton on important priorities for the ward, like establishing a Cultural District on Nicollet Ave, increase MPD Investigator capacity, and everyday wins like keeping street lights on and buses running.
“In my remaining time in office, I will be working to support launching the new E Line bus service, bring public bathrooms Downtown, establish an initiative to demise large ground floor storefronts, fund climate action and the zero waste strategies needed to close the downtown HERC incinerator, and continue Uptown revitalization work,” she said.
“I have a few ordinances left that I need to get over the finish line as well. Our signage code amendment had its public hearing on Monday, so we are looking forward to the completion of that work to help skyway level businesses and small businesses citywide expand their wayfinding and artistic expression through commercial signage and murals. The remainder of my term will be spent working to pass the best budget possible for 2026.”
Reporting on ongoing city intitiatives, Rainville highlighted Winterapolis, a joint effort between the the Downtown
round of counting, while second- and third-choice rankings are allocated to the surviving candidates.
Frey, a mainstream Democrat, and Fateh, a Democratic state senator, led a 15-candidate field. The only other candidates drawing significant votes were the Rev. DeWayne Davis and businessman Jazz Hampton, who were further back.
Frey now has to work with a City Council where progressives with whom he has frequently clashed — including some who identify as democratic socialists — maintained a narrow majority.
“The message that has been sent loud and clear is that we have to love our city more than our ideology,” Frey said at a news conference. “We need to be doing everything possible to push back on authoritarianism and what Donald Trump is doing. And at the same time, the opposite of Donald Trump extremism is not the opposite extreme.”
Fateh congratulated Frey but said his campaign built “people power” that won't go away.
“They may have won this race, but we have changed the narrative about what kind of city Minneapolis can be," Fateh said in a statement. “Because now, truly affordable housing, workers’ rights, and public safety rooted in care are no longer side conversations; they are at the center of the narrative.”
Fateh, Davis and Hampton formed an alliance, urging their voters to rank one another, but not Frey, to make it harder for the incumbent to
win. However, the tactic came up short. Frey led Minneapolis through the turmoil following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white officer used his knee to pin his neck to the pavement for 9 1/2 minutes. But his administration later negotiated agreements with the state and federal governments to remake a police department that lost hundreds of officers after Floyd’s death. Fateh was hoping to become the first Muslim and first Somali American mayor of the city, which has the larg-
est Somali population in the U.S. He drew comparisons with Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won New York City’s mayoral race on Tuesday, because of their backgrounds and ideological similarities. Both come from immigrant families, although Fateh was born in the U.S. Election officials said Minneapolis set a record for the most votes cast in a municipal election, with more than 147,000 residents voting. They said 55% of registered voters turned out, up slightly from the previous record of 54% in 2021.
The City Council is scheduled to certify the final results and make them official on Monday. In neighboring St. Paul, Democratic state Rep. Kaohly Her defeated incumbent Democratic Mayor Melvin Carter early Wednesday after trailing slightly in the first round of counting there. Her will become the first woman and first Hmong American mayor of the state’s capital city, which has the largest Hmong population in the U.S. She will be working with an all-female City Council.
finally had a chance to right that perceived wrong.
Bush was happy to expand his own power, and the Bush administration made bold assertions of presidential power in a variety of areas. In many instances, Bush and others sought to justify his actions by invoking the unitary executive theory, a conservative thesis that calls for total presidential control over the entire executive branch.
Now, nearly two decades later, President Donald Trump is using this theory to push his agenda. He set the tone for his second term by issuing 26 executive orders, four proclamations and 12 memorandums on his first day back in office. The barrage of unilateral presidential actions has not yet let up.
These have included Trump’s efforts to remove thousands of government workers and fire several prominent officials, such as members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the chair of the Commission on Civil Rights. He has also attempted to shut down entire agencies, such as the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
For some scholars, these actions appear rooted in the psychology of an unrestrained politician with an overdeveloped ego.
But it’s more than that.
As a political science scholar who studies presidential
power, I believe Trump’s recent actions mark the culmination of the unitary executive theory, which is perhaps the most contentious and consequential constitutional theory of the past several decades.
A prescription for a potent presidency
In 2017, Trump complained that the scope of his power as president was limited: “You know, the saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved with the FBI, I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”
The unitary executive theory suggests that such limits wrongly curtail the powers of the chief executive.
Formed by conservative legal theorists in the 1980s to help President Ronald Reagan roll back liberal policies, the unitary executive theory promises to radically expand presidential power.
There is no widely agreed upon definition of the theory. And even its proponents disagree about what it says and what it might justify. But in its most basic version, the unitary executive theory claims that whatever the federal government does that is executive in nature – from implementing and enforcing laws to managing most of what the federal government does – the president alone should personally control it.
This means the president should have total control over the executive branch, with its dozens of major governmental institutions and millions of
sit down to abundant meals of turkey, vegetables, and homemade desserts, raising a toast to those who secured our freedoms. But veterans can’t eat our thanks.
those who wore the uniform with fierce pride. But veterans can’t eat their pride.
On Thanksgiving, we
edented and shocking. It could also damage U.S. relations with the rest of the hemisphere for a generation to come.
A history of intervention In the most obvious way, deploying a flotilla of warships to the southern Caribbean evokes dark echoes of “gunboat diplomacy” – the unilateral dispatch of marines or soldiers to strong-arm foreign governments that was especially prevalent in Latin America. One reliable account tallies 41 of these in the region from 1898 to 1994. Of these, 17 were direct U.S. cases of aggression against sovereign nations and 24 were U.S. forces supporting Latin American dictators or military regimes. Many ended in the overthrow of democratic governments and the deaths of thousands. From 1915 to 1934, for example, the U.S. invaded and then occupied Haiti and may have killed as many as 11,500 people.
During World War II and the Cold War, Washington continued to dictate Latin America’s politics, showing an eagerness to respond to any perceived threat to U.S. investments or markets and backing pro-Washington dictatorships such as Augusto Pinochet’s rule over Chile from 1973 to 1990. Latin Americans have, by and large, chafed at such naked displays of Wash-
Rather than simply thanking veterans for their service, we can show our gratitude through meaningful action.
ington’s power. This opposition from Latin American governments was the main reason that President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave up interventions with his “Good Neighbor” policy in the 1930s. Intervention continued, though, throughout the Cold War, with moves against leftist governments in Nicaragua and Grenada in the 1980s.
The end of the Cold War did not quite end military interventions. Some U.S. armed forces still operated in the hemisphere, but, since 1994, they had done so as part of multilateral forces, as in Haiti, or responding to invitations or collaborated with host nations, for instance in anti-narcotics operations in the Andes and Central America.
Showing respect for national sovereignty and non-intervention – both sacred principles in the hemisphere – especially in the context of rising drug violence, has largely quieted the resistance to the presence of U.S. troops in the largest nations in the hemisphere, such as Mexico and Brazil.
No mere Monroe Doctrine reboot
So is Trump merely reviving a long-abandoned stance on the U.S. role in the region?
Not even close. In two key ways, aggression against Venezuela or any other Latin American country now –rationalized by Washington as a response to insufficient law enforcement against drug-running – would be dangerously unprecedented.
employees. Put simply, the theory says the president should be able to issue orders to subordinates and to fire them at will.
The president could boss around the FBI or order the U.S. attorney general to investigate his political opponents, as Trump has done. The president could issue signing statements –a written pronouncement – that reinterpret or ignore parts of the laws, like George W. Bush did in 2006 to circumvent a ban on torture. The president could control independent agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The president might be able to force the Federal Reserve to change interest rates, as Trump has suggested. And the president might possess inherent power to wage war as he sees fit without a formal authorization from Congress, as officials argued during Bush’s presidency.
A constitutionally questionable doctrine
A theory is one thing. But if it gains the official endorsement of the Supreme Court, it can become governing orthodoxy. It appears to many observers and scholars that Trump’s actions have intentionally invited court cases by which he hopes the judiciary will embrace the theory and thus permit him to do even more. And the current Supreme Court appears ready to grant that wish.
Until recently, the judiciary tended to indirectly address the claims that now appear more formally as the unitary executive theory.
During the country’s first two centuries, courts touched on aspects of the theory in cases such as Kendall v. U.S.
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in 1838, which limited presidential control of the postmaster general, and Myers v. U.S. in 1926, which held that the president could remove a postmaster in Oregon.
In 1935, in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the high court unanimously held that Congress could limit the president’s ability to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. And in Morrison v. Olson the court in 1988 upheld the ability of Congress to limit the president’s ability to fire an independent counsel. Some of those decisions aligned with some unitary executive claims, but others directly repudiated them.
Warming up to a unitary executive In a series of cases over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has moved in an unambiguously unitarian, pro-presidential direction. In these cases, the court has struck down statutory limits on the president’s ability to remove federal officials, enabling much greater presidential control. These decisions clearly suggest that long-standing, anti-unitarian landmark decisions such as Humphrey’s are on increasingly thin ice. In fact, in Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2019 concurring opinion in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, where the court ruled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s leadership structure was unconstitutional, he articulated his desire to “repudiate” the “erroneous precedent” of Humphrey’s.
Several cases from the court’s emergency docket, or shadow docket, in recent months indicate that other justices share that desire. Such cases do not require full arguments
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First, it would blow out of the water the age-old justification for U.S. armed intervention called the Monroe Doctrine.
Since 1823, when President James Monroe announced it, the U.S. has aimed to keep outside powers out of the republics of the hemisphere.
Once a Latin American people won its independence, Washington believed, it had the right to keep it, and the U.S. Navy helped in any way it could.
By the early 20th century, that purported help took on the look of a policeman patrolling the Caribbean Sea on a beat, wielding what then-U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt called a “big stick” and keeping Europeans from landing and, say, collecting debts. Sometimes this was done by having the Marines land first and move a country’s gold to Wall Street.
An expansion of the Panama precedent Even during the Cold War, the Monroe Doctrine could be logically invoked to keep the Soviets out of the hemisphere –whether in Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, the Dominican
Republic in 1965 or Grenada in 1983.
Often, as in Guatemala, the Soviet link was weak, even nonexistent. But there was still a thin thread of keeping out a “foreign ideology” that seemed to keep Monroe relevant.
The doctrine died a surer death with the 1989 invasion of Panama to remove its rogue leader, Manuel Noriega, convicted of drug-running and guilty of trouncing his country’s democracy. No one fingered an extra-hemispheric accomplice.
Noriega’s removal by about 26,000 U.S. troops might be the closest parallel to Trump’s targeting of alleged drugs boats in the Caribbean. Trump has already – and repeatedly – alleged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is, like Noriega, not the head of state of his own country and therefore indictable. More fantastically, he has alleged that the Venezuelan leader is the head of the Tren de Aragua gang that has been designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by U.S. authorities. It is not too big a leap from there to calling for – and participating in – the overthrow of Maduro on the
but can indicate where the court is headed.
In Trump v. Wilcox, Trump v. Boyle and Trump v. Slaughter, all from 2025, the court upheld Trump’s firing of officials from the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.
Previously, these officials had appeared to be protected from political interference.
Total control
Remarks by conservative justices in those cases indicated that the court will soon reassess anti-unitary precedents.
In Trump v. Boyle, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, “whether this Court will narrow or overrule a precedent … there is at least a fair prospect (not certainty, but at least a reasonable prospect) that we will do so.” And in her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, Justice Elena Kagan said the conservative majority was “raring” to overturn Humphrey’s and finally officially embrace the unitary executive.
In short, the writing is on the wall, and Humphrey’s may soon go the way of Roe v. Wade and other landmark decisions that had guided American life for decades.
As for what judicial endorsement of the unitary executive theory could mean in practice, Trump seems to hope it will mean total control and hence the ability to eradicate the so-called “deep state.” Other conservatives hope it will diminish the government’s regulatory role.
Kagan recently warned it could mean the end of
support, we can work toward a future where all veterans live safe, healthy lives—free from hunger. Now that’s something to give thanks for.
DAV (Disabled American Veteran) National Commander & Marine Veteran Coleman Nee
grounds of removing an international “narco-terrorist.”
But even there, the parallel with Panama diverges in a crucial way: A U.S. attack on Venezuela would be far different in scale and geography. Maduro’s country is 12 times larger, with about six times the population. Its active troops number at least 100,000.
Another Iraq?
In all of the U.S. invasions and occupations of Latin America, none has occurred in South America or in a large country.
To be sure, troops from “the colossus of the north” invaded Mexico several times, beginning in 1846, but never did they hold the entire country. In the Mexican War, U.S. troops soon retreated after 1848. In 1914, they occupied a single city, Veracruz, and in 1916, they chased around a bandit in the Punitive Expedition.
In all these episodes, it found taking parts of Mexico expensive and unproductive. And a U.S.-provoked regime change in a sovereign country today, such as in Venezuela, would likely trigger a massive resistance not only from its military but throughout the country.
Maduro’s threat of a “republic in arms” should the U.S. invade might be bluster. But it might not. Many experts predict that such an invasion would meet with disaster. Maduro has already asked for military assistance from Russia, China and even Iran. Even without such help, the mobilization of U.S. assets in the Caribbean
administrative governance – the ways that the federal government provides services, oversees businesses and enforces the law – as we know it:
“
Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control. Congress created them … out of one basic vision. It thought that in certain spheres of government, a group of knowledgeable people from both parties – none of whom a President could remove without cause – would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good.”
If the Supreme Court officially makes the chief executive a unitary executive, the advancement of the public good may depend on little more than the whims of the president, a state of affairs normally more characteristic of dictatorship than democracy.
Judicial approval of the unitary executive theory might well have pleased Cheney by enshrining a significant means of enhancing presidential power. But ironically, the former vice president would be displeased for such power to be accessible to the current president, whom Cheney criticized, calling Trump a “threat to our republic.”
Disclosure statement Graham G. Dodds does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Coleman Nee is a service-connected disabled Marine veteran currently serving as National Commander of DAV (Disabled American Veterans). He previously held positions as Massachusetts Secretary of Veterans’ Services and on DAV’s National Executive Committee.
is no guarantee of success. And while many governments in the rest of the hemisphere would no doubt love to see Maduro gone, they would dislike more the method of his going. The presidents of Colombia and Mexico have criticized the attacks, and others have warned of the resentment in the hemisphere were an intervention to follow.
In part, this is informed by the U.S. interventionist past in Latin America, but it also comes from a place of self-preservation, particularly among the left-leaning governments who have already drawn Trump’s ire. As President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said, “If this becomes a trend, if each one thinks they can invade another’s territory to do whatever they want, where is the respect for the sovereignty of nations?” Venezuela is, contrary to the White House’s statements, not much of a producer or trans-shipment point of narcotics. What if Trump turned his sights on other government even more compromised by drug corruption, such as Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and Peru?
The concern there will be over becoming the next domino in line.
Disclosure statement Alan McPherson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
of Minnesota would provide $4 million in emergency funds to support food shelves.
Nutrition Assistance Program benefits were not issued beginning in November due to the federal shutdown. More than 60,000 Minneapolis community members, 14% of the city’s residents, might be affected by the lack of SNAP benefits. On Oct. 27, Governor Tim Walz announced the State
Attorney General Keith Ellison is co-leading a coalition of 22 other attorneys general and three governors in filing suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for issuing SNAP benefits, and Secretary Brooke Rolling for unlawfully suspending SNAP. The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order, arguing that the USDA has repeatedly stated its authority to continue SNAP benefits during a shutdown. Minnesota has more than 300 food shelves and meal programs to help support families when they need help right away. Residents can find
In response to a growing food emergency, Greater Twin Cities United Way (United Way) last week launched its Emergency Food Relief Campaign, a multi-channel effort to provide immediate support to families facing hunger due to already-strained food shelves, rising food costs, the federal government shutdown, and the anticipated disruption and loss of SNAP benefits.
With over 440,000 Minnesotans – including children, seniors and working families – potentially losing access to critical food support, food shelves are overwhelmed and demand for assistance is surging. United Way’s 211 resource helpline, which connects people to community resources that help them meet their basic needs, has seen an 82% increase in food-related requests in recent weeks.
“This is a crisis,” said John Wilgers, President and
CEO of Greater Twin Cities United Way. “Families are making impossible choices between groceries, rent and medicine. We’re calling on our community to come together and help ensure everyone has the food they need to thrive.”
Most families affected are ALICE (Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed) – working Minnesotans who don’t earn enough to meet basic needs. “SNAP provides a vital lifeline to our communities’ teachers, healthcare workers, daycare providers, and cashiers,” said Shannon Smith Jones, Senior Vice President of Community Impact. “They help keep our economy going but still face hunger. The anticipated loss of SNAP will push many from hardship into crisis.”
To date, United Way has distributed $105,000 in emergency grants to nonprofit partners to help get food to families. These grants support Route
1, The People's Market and The Food Group, helping them meet growing demand and overcome logistical barriers. United Way is also working with coalition partners to advocate for the protection and potential restoration of SNAP benefits.
“United is the way we respond,” said Kristina Salkowski, Senior Vice President of Advancement. “For over 100 years, Greater Twin Cities United Way has been here for our neighbors, meeting urgent
community needs while making lasting change. Today we’re mobilizing volunteers, donors and corporate partners to provide immediate food relief for our friends, family and neighbors. Please join us.” HOW TO HELP
Donate: Donate today to ensure every child, family and neighbor has the food they need during this critical time. Give online at community.gtcuw.org/food.
Volunteer at Home:
Help provide food to neighbors who urgently need it most. Sign up to purchase and drop off essential food items at specified locations around the Twin Cities. Sign up at gtcuw.org/food. Host a Food Drive or Volunteer Project: Host a food drive or onsite company volunteer event to assemble essential food packs. Email VolunteerUnited@gtcuw.org to learn how United Way can partner with you. WHERE TO FIND
By James R. Elliott Professor of Sociology, Rice University
Banerjee
Dangerous flooding has damaged neighborhoods in almost every state in 2025, leaving homes a muddy mess. In several hard-hit areas, it wasn’t the first time homeowners found themselves tearing out wet wallboard and piling waterlogged carpet by the curb.
Wanting to rebuild after flooding is a common response. But for some people, the best way to stay in their community, adapt to the changing climate and recover from disasters is to do what humans have done for millennia: move.
Researchers expect millions of Americans to relocate from properties facing increasing risks of flood, fire and other kinds of disasters in the years ahead.
What people do with those high-risk properties can make their community more resilient or leave it vulnerable to more damage in future storms.
We study flood resilience and have been mapping the results of government buyout programs across the U.S. that purchase damaged homes after disasters to turn them into open space.
Our new national maps of who relocates and where they go after a flood shows that most Americans who move from buyout areas
stay local. However, we also found that the majority of them give up their home to someone else, either selling it or leaving a rental home, rather than taking a government buyout offer. That transfers the risk to a new resident, leaving the community still facing future costly risks.
FEMA’s buyout program at risk Government buyout programs can help communities recover after disasters by purchasing high-risk homes and demolishing them. The parcel is then converted to a natural flood plain, park or site for new infrastructure to mitigate future flood damage for nearby areas.
FEMA has been funding such efforts for decades through its property buyout program. It has invested nearly US$4 billion to purchase and raze approximately 45,000 flood-prone homes nationwide, most of them since 2001.
Those investments pay off: Research shows the program avoids an estimated $4 to $6 in future disaster recovery spending for every $1 invested. In return, homeowners receive a predisaster price for their home, minus any money they might receive from a related flood in-
surance payout on the property.
But this assistance is now in jeopardy as the Trump administration cuts FEMA staff and funding and the president talks about dismantling the agency. From March to September, governors submitted 42 applications for funding from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which includes buyouts – all were denied or left pending as of mid-September. Our recommendation after studying this program is to mend it, not end it. If done right, buyouts can help maintain local ties and help communities build more sustainable futures together.
Buyouts vs. selling homes in damaged areas
Our team at Rice University’s Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience developed an interactive mapping tool to show where buyout participants and neighbors living within a half-mile of them moved after FEMA initiates a buyout program in their area. The maps were created using individual data, down to the address level, from 2007 to 2017, across more than 550 counties where FEMA’s buyout program operated nationally.
Zoomed out, they show just how many places the program has helped across the U.S., from coastal cities to inland towns. And, when zoomed in, they reveal the buyout locations and destinations of more than 70,000 residents who moved following FEMA-funded buyouts in their area. The maps also show which people relocated by ac-
who relocated through conventional real estate transactions.
This distinction matters, because it implies that most Americans are retreating from climate-stressed areas by transferring their home’s risk to someone else, not by accepting buyouts that would take the property out of circulation.
Selling may be good for homeowners who can find buyers, but it doesn’t make the community more resilient.
Lessons for future buyout programs
Our interactive map offers some good news and insights for buyout programs going forward.
Regardless of how they occur, we find that moves from buyout areas average just 5 to 10 miles from old to new home. This means most people are maintaining local ties, even
Credit: James R. Elliott
FEMA’s buyout programs have helped homeowners and communities across the U.S., in almost every state.
cepting a federal buyout and which ones relocated on their own. Nationwide, we see the vast majority of movers, about 14 out of every 15, are not participants in the federal buyout program. They are neighbors
tors from the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit source of flood risk ratings that are now integrated into some online real estate websites.
But many homes in risky areas are still being resold or rented to new residents, leaving communities facing a game of climate roulette. How long that can continue will vary by neighborhood. Rising insurance costs, intensifying storms and growing awareness of flood risks are already dampening home sales
as they relocate to adapt to rising climate risks.
Nearly all of the moves also end in safer homes with minimal to minor risk of future flooding. We checked using address-level flood fac-
According to Lisa Gilbert and Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen, “We filed this suit on Tuesday, November 4, which was Donald Trump’s 289th day back in office. This is our 22nd lawsuit against his administration in that time. That’s one lawsuit every 13 days. And we’re not done yet.”
“This latest lawsuit is intended to prevent the administration from denying student loan forgiveness — for potentially thousands and thousands of borrowers — just because Trump and his henchmen don’t like the politics of some of the places these loan recipients work or the fact that the work they do helps everyday Americans,” they said in a press release Wednesday.
Here’s more about the case: • In 2007, Congress passed bipartisan legislation — which was then signed into law by President George W. Bush to create the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. The PSLF program was established to help people choose to go into, and stay in, public service work. It is meant to help many, many kinds of workers, including: public school teachers, first responders, social workers, military personnel, librarians, government workers, people who work at homeless shelters and food banks, nurses and other employees at nonprofit hospitals, people who provide services to survivors of domestic violence. The list goes on and on.
• This is no handout. To qualify, borrowers must work a full ten years in a full-time public service job (defined as most federal, state, and local government jobs and jobs with specific kinds of nonprofit organizations) and they have to make regular loan payments that entire time. Only then can they apply to have any remaining debt forgiven (and many borrowers have been improperly denied even after fulfilling the requirements). There have been problems with how the program has been run. But it is still an important way to encourage people to go into public service work, where pay can be less than what the private sector might offer.
• Rather than try to make the PSLF program run more smoothly and help more Americans, the Trump administration wants to essentially punish borrowers who work for government agencies or nonprofits the regime doesn’t like.
As Public Citizen’s Cormac Early, lead attorney on the case, noted to the national media: “Congress created PSLF to support those who work in public service jobs, not to let the president play favorites. The Trump administration should not be allowed to use a program designed to reward public service as a weapon against its political enemies.”
Gilbert and Weissman said “Public Citizen is doing everything we can — within our
modest means — to fight what the Trump regime is doing to our country. It’s David and Goliath for sure, but we will never back down. Even where we haven’t (yet) notched definitive victories in court, we are slowing down the regime and making it work a lot harder in pursuit of its desire for absolute power.”
“This is the 22nd lawsuit we have filed (so far) against the administration since Trump returned to power. Are these lawsuits alone enough to fully defeat Trump and MAGA? Of course not. But they are a meaningful part of the pushback needed to collectively save our country,” they said in a statement to the press.
By Haley Taylor Schlitz, Esq.
Election night told a familiar truth. Across the country, Black voters again formed the backbone of Democratic victories. From Virginia to New Jersey to New York City, and on a California ballot question with national stakes, the coalition held and delivered. The winning campaigns met voters where they live, with plans about rent, wages, housing, and the cost of getting to work. Detroit offered the clearest mirror of representation paired with delivery. Voters elected Mary Sheffield as the city’s first woman mayor by a commanding margin. Her promise was simple and serious. Invest in neighborhoods. Stabilize housing. Make transit something people can count on. That is what moved people. Where we have data, Black Gen Z aligned overwhelmingly with Democrats. That matters. It says the next generation in our communities is not just voting, but voting with a clear issue lens. Affordability is not an abstract word. It is a lease, a paycheck, a bus route, and a grocery bill. Minnesota told a more complicated story. St. Paul chose change. Minneapolis chose continuity. These are not contradictions. They are a reminder that our votes are precise tools. In St. Paul, Rep. Kaohly Vang Her became the city’s first woman and first Hmong American mayor. It is a milestone for the city and for Hmong communities whose civic leadership has grown in strength and visibility. It also means a Black mayor, Melvin Carter, is no longer in the room. That loss carries quiet costs. It shifts who drafts budgets at the first pass, who is trusted in crisis, which neighborhood plans move from paper to pavement, and which Black-owned firms get a fair shot at contracts. It interrupts mentoring pipelines that lift new voices. It narrows cultural fluency at the table when the stakes are highest. In a moment when representation is being challenged nationally, our local turnout and coalition discipline decide whether power grows or recedes. The lesson is not to vote on identity alone.
It is to pair representation with results and to sustain the turnout that protects both. Across the river, Minneapolis re-elected Jacob Frey. Senator Omar Fateh fell short. Both are Democrats. The point is not blame. The point is ownership. If Black voters in other states surged to make their voices unmistakable, what kept us from matching that energy at home. Who is carrying our voice in both city halls now, and how will we help them carry it further? Democracy is not just about voting. It is showing up when ordinances are drafted, testifying at council, serving on boards and commissions, and staying until the roll call is done. If we want seats at the table, we have to fill the gallery, the advisory committees, and
the application portals. The next chapter in Minneapolis and St. Paul will be written by those who keep coming back after election night. There is a second Minnesota thread that deserves our attention, and we might as well name it plainly. Last week, House Speaker Lisa Demuth launched her run for governor and said she would welcome President Trump’s endorsement. That was before voters around the country handed Trumpism a receipt. Now watch the Minnesota political two-step begin. One day it will be “Trump is the leader of our party.” The next it will be “this is about Minnesota values,” followed by a quick pivot back to courting his base when the cameras move on. Call it the have it both ways caucus.
And if Republicans decide they need a pure Trump vessel, the rumored governor bid of Mike Lindell may yet ride to the rescue, giving them a candidate who can embrace Trump without the awkward hedging and lose for it in broad daylight. What to watch next, nationally and here at home. Keep faith with the backbone. Black voters again carried the coalition. That is not a permanent guarantee. It requires respect and results.
Treat young Black voters as partners. Invite them into governing, not just into photos. Let them help shape policy on cost of living, wages, transit, and safety that protects dignity.
Insist on representation with receipts. Detroit shows
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how it inspires when it arrives with a neighborhood plan and a record of work people recognize. Minnesota reminds us that communities will change course when they feel unheard or underserved. The goal is both identity and delivery. What Black voters delivered nationally was not just a party win. It was a set of instructions. Lower the cost of living in real ways. Protect our vote. Make the basics work. When leaders do that, our communities respond. When they do not, we use our power to reset. The work ahead is to turn margins into materials. Budgets and bus routes. Permits and payrolls. Apprenticeships and storefront leases. If leaders deliver, the backbone holds. If they drift, the backbone moves.
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By W.D. Foster-Graham Book Review Editor
new release, Life Switch: How to Experience the Power of Living ON, Steele helps readers see what’s possible when they learn to envision with clarity the life they want to create.
“Sometimes the lesson isn’t in the moment,” Steele said. “It’s in choosing to overcome hard knocks on the walk back home.”
Steele, a financial expert, entrepreneur and co-owner of a successful financial firm has more than 20 years of experience helping individuals build wealth and well-being
Steele’s journey — from massive setbacks to personal reinvention and profes
sional success — fuels his mission to inspire others.
He is part of the ownership group of the Grand Rapids Gold, the G-League affiliate of the 2023 NBA Champion Denver Nuggets.
In Life Switch, Steele retraces his candid story of resilience and reinvention, from facing jail time, bankruptcy and a near-death experience, to ultimately finding professional success and even an NBA championship ring.
Blending unflinching personal narrative with practical advice, he reveals strategies for unlocking potential, rediscovering passion and transforming adversity into purposeful opportunity.
Life Switch serves as
a roadmap for readers seeking change, offering guidance on how to “flip the switch” and fully engage with life’s possibilities. Steele’s journey illustrates that fulfillment is not a matter of luck but of mindset and action.
“When people flip their switch, they don’t just change their own lives,” Steele said. “They impact their families, their communities, and ultimately, the world. This pledge is my way of sparking more positive light in this world.”
For more information: www.BookJoelSteele. com or find him on Instagram (lifeswitchofficial) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/ in/joel-steele-9685888/.
There’s always something new to see at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and this month is no exception. From newly opened exhibitions to shows on the horizon, here’s a quick roundup of what’s happening at Mia right now, what’s coming soon, and an artful alternative to Black Friday shopping.
Recently opened Royal Bronzes: Cambodian Art of the Divine — Experience 200 rare Khmer bronze masterpieces revealing the devotion, power, and craftsmanship of the ancient Cambodian empire. This is the only stop in the U.S. that includes all the pieces together.
José María Velasco: A View of Mexico — A landmark exhibition celebrating one of Mexico’s most iconic painters, with works
rarely seen in the U.S. cutline: osé María Velasco: A View of Mexico”
• Gatsby at 100 — Step into the Jazz Age with more than 40 works of art celebrating a century of The Great Gatsby and its ties to Minnesota’s own F. Scott Fitzgerald. Be sure to see two pieces on loan from Princeton University Library: the first edition book and a letter from Fitzgerald to his editor about the cover artwork.
• Timber! Art and Woodwork at the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — A rich mix of paintings, furniture, ceramics, and textiles—anchored by Egon Schiele’s arresting works.
Sopheap Pich: In the Presence Of — A focused exhibition of contemporary Cambodian sculpture ex-
ploring material, memory, and transformation.
Opening soon
• Amy Usdin: After All (Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program) — Opening November 22, Usdin offers visitors a moment of reflection and respite through sculptural works that balance tenderness and tension.
Coming in 2026
Built to Last: The Shogren–Meyer Collection of American Art — A powerful exploration of promise and perils in America in the early 20th century.
• Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945 — Masterworks from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie reveal how modernism both shaped and reflected a na-
tion in turmoil.
• Crowning the North: Silver Treasures from Bergen, Norway — Shimmering craftsmanship spanning three centuries, from Baroque grandeur to Viking Revival elegance.
Black Friday at Mia November 28, 8-10 am: Connect with Mia’s collection as the museum opens early for exclusive events. Enjoy early access to select galleries, including FREE access to the special exhibition “Royal Bronzes: Cambodian Art of the Divine.” Bring the kids for story time with our museum educators. Prizes and giveaways will take place throughout the morning. Visitors can shop The Store at Mia for special Black Friday deals and unique gifts! Plus a complimentary mimosa bar for adults and a juice bar for the kids.
Ryan
P. Retail Banking Team Manager 11 years with BofA
