Posted on July 22, 2026 by Scott Johnson in 2026 Election, Minnesota

The Trump effect [With Comment by John]

I decried President Trump’s endorsement of clown gubernatorial candidate Mike Lindell last week in “Put a MyPillow over it.” Lindell is running in a multicandidate primary field. According to a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, Lindell now predictably appears to have extended his lead over competitors including endorsed candidate Kendall Qualls and House Speaker Lisa Demuth. That is a shame.

Lindell is a joke. I would have said that before it was reported Lindell is not even registered to vote in Minnesota. He is registed in Texas. However, that is the least of it. Lindell should have no problem when he gets around to voting for himself in the primary. Minnesota’s same-day registration is easy as it gets.

I will be out of state for our August 11 primary. I defied Trump’s endorsement of Lindell last week when I voted early.

Democrat Amy Klobuchar won’t need a MyPillow to pummel Lindell in November, but Lindell will complicate the challenge faced by likely or certain GOP candidates Michele Tafoya for Senate, Ron Schutz for Attorney General, Tad Jude for Secretary of State, and Scott Jensen for State Auditor. Lindell threatens to drag them all down.

Not to mention Lindell’s impact on legislative races. If Klobuchar takes office with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate for a Democrat trifecta, we will get punished good and hard. Trump himself will escape any consequences of his destructive endorsement.

JOHN adds: I know hundreds of Minnesota Republicans, and I don’t know anyone who will vote for Mike Lindell in the primary. So I am skeptical of these poll numbers. The problem, of course, is that there are two normal candidates in the race, Lisa Demuth and Kendall Qualls, and they split the normal vote. Qualls won the party’s endorsement at the state convention, in a close vote that was marred by technical errors. Demuth has raised by far the most money and seems to have the support of most party insiders. She is running an effective campaign, while Lindell, as far as I have seen, is not running any campaign at all.

If Lindell were to get the nomination, it would be one of the worst disasters in our state’s political history. He would lose to Amy Klobuchar something like 80%-20% or 85%-15%, and he would drag down the rest of the ticket. I don’t think I would vote for Lindell; he doesn’t have the capacity to serve as governor. It would be like voting for Joe Biden. So I would probably leave that line blank.

It all comes down to turnout, of course. Very few people vote in primaries, so strange things can happen. Trump voters tend to have a poor turnout record when he is not on the ballot, so we can hope that most of those who say they support Lindell won’t show up. Still, it reveals the sorry state of our party when an absurd figure like Lindell can command significant support.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Communism

Co-presidents for life [With Comment by John]

I vaguely recall reading Ron Radosh’s 2021 Quileette essay “Sandinista! The US Left and Nicaragua.” However, while my attention was turned elsewhere, Nicaragua’s National Assembly amended the constitution to allow the president to run for an unlimited number of five-year terms. Given the fact that Sandinista Commie Daniel Ortega was president, that was a bad sign.

As I understand the relevant developments, it got worse in 2025 when the Constitution of Nicaragua was amended to provide for the powers of the presidency to be exercised by male and female co-presidents. The assembly extended the presidential term to six years and declared Ortega’s vice president — wife Rosario Murillo — co-president. Codependent no more!

For those of us who had turned whatever attention we paid to Nicaragua elsewhere when Ortega was defeated for reelection in 1990, as I think I did but for the Radosh essay, Diego Ruiz updated the story in 2025:

Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007 and never again repeated the “bourgeois nonsense” of 1990. He immediately set about consolidating his grip on every institution of government. He took control of the legislature, appointed a docile Supreme Court to brush aside all constitutional impediments to his continued rule, and installed an equally malleable Supreme Electoral Council to rubber stamp his several rigged reelections. He co-opted, imprisoned, or banned any political opposition figure that might have threatened his hold on power—including Doña Violeta’s daughter Cristiana, who has been held under house arrest since she tried to run for president in 2021. And he engineered a brutal crackdown on internal dissent that has sent an estimated 10% of the Nicaraguan population into exile.

Now comes the news that Ortega is dispensing with the facade of elections:

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Sunday said his country is moving toward not holding a presidential election next year, appearing to maintain his shared control over the country with his co-president and wife, Rosario Murillo.

Ortega said at a government rally marking the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution’s takeover of the country that there “won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” according to a translation of the rally from Reuters.

I have to say it seems a tad redundant. It calls to mind O’Brien’s instruction to Winston Smith in the course of Smith’s interrogation at the Ministry of Love in 1984: “[A]lways — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.”

JOHN adds: This is an illustration of one of life’s truest adages: You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out. Unfortunately, I suppose the Nicaraguan population, as in other socialist countries, has been disarmed. Has it ever occurred to anyone that we should arm and encourage rebels against Nicaragua’s leftist government?

Posted on July 21, 2026 by John Hinderaker in Economy

What’s Affordable, What Isn’t

This graphic has been all over X for the last few days, and I have been meaning to get to it. It is similar to many other charts I have seen over the years. We all know that the cost of living has been rising, especially during the Biden administration. But many are not aware of how targeted those increasing costs actually are. Many goods and some services have gotten notably cheaper, compared to incomes, over the last 25 years. Conversely, some services–hardly any goods–have gotten much more expensive.

One way to look at it is that the most labor-intensive services are the ones that have gotten unaffordable. The other factor is that everything the government has tried to make more affordable, has gotten much less affordable. There is no mystery here: if you subsidize something by adding many billions of dollars on the demand side, and don’t do anything to eliminate obstacles on the supply side, you obviously are going to increase prices. And then, if you are a Democrat, demand even more subsidies:

The world would be a different place if the majority of people had even a primitive grasp of economics.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Democrats, Education

The Democrats’ Most Loyal Voters

When I was trying civil jury cases, the conventional wisdom was that plaintiffs wanted jurors who were mad at the world because they thought their merits had not been sufficiently rewarded. The classic plaintiff’s juror, I was told, was a guy with a PhD in comparative literature who was driving a taxi. Conversely, the ideal defense juror (I am talking about civil cases, not criminal cases) is a happy person, someone who has succeeded in life and thinks the world is a terrific place. A classic defense juror is a guy who graduated from high school and started a used car lot. Twenty-five years later he owns three automobile dealerships. Coming into court, he wears a plaid sport coat, a tie that doesn’t match, and a smile.

You get the picture: you can plug “liberal” and “conservative” into those stereotypes. They are as true today as they were when I was picking juries.

Thus:


In general, going to college evidently has a negative effect on one’s understanding of political issues. That reinforces the conclusion that our society would be better off if fewer people went to college.

The other element, always, is economic self-interest. I wonder whether it is true that people who graduate from college are more likely than high school graduates to be public employees, or to be in jobs where government spending (nurses) or government regulation (lawyers) provides an economic benefit. Someone should try to figure that out.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in California, Crime, Fraud, Medicaid, Minnesota

Feds Suspend $1 Billion in Medicaid Funds to California, Minnesota

In a long-overdue action, the federal government is moving to protect taxpayers against systematic fraud in California and Minnesota:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday he’s stopping more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over suspected fraud.

“We are not sending Medicaid dollars out the door until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately,” Kennedy said at an announcement on Tuesday.

That certainly isn’t happening now.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is deferring over $200 million and over $867 million in federal Medicaid payments for Minnesota and California, respectively. The hold will be in place while federal officers review “high-risk Medicaid claims” and document deficiencies.

In Minnesota, the funding involves 14 high-risk areas that were identified as suspect because of vulnerabilities or evidence of fraudulent activity.

Tim Walz will claim that the feds are depriving poor people of health care, but that isn’t true. The 14 “high risk” programs do not pay doctors or hospitals for providing health care. They cover things like giving advice to homeless people on how they might find housing, at $70 an hour (seriously). These are the 14 Minnesota programs:

In December of last year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson told a press conference that of the $18 billion spent on those 14 programs over the past several years, at least half–$9 billion or more–was fraud. In one of the programs, Housing Stabilization Services, investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office found that it wasn’t clear a single dollar was ever spent properly. The entire program, which has now been shut down, may have been fraudulent.

So don’t pay any attention to the Democrats who will shed faux tears over poor people going without health care. It isn’t going to happen. There is plenty of fraud in Medicaid, much of it committed by doctors, clinics and hospitals, but that isn’t the issue here. What is going on here is a belated effort to close the barn door after billions of dollars have been blatantly stolen by criminals.

What about California?

CMS officials suspect the questionable spending in California is rooted in in-home services. Over the past two federal fiscal years, California’s spending in these programs went up 24%, while the rest of the country’s average was 12%, according to CMS administrator Mehmet Oz.

“So California increased spending at twice the rate of the average of the rest of the entire nation,” Oz said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

The public is fed up with state governments enabling the theft of many billions of dollars in federal taxpayer money, likely as a way of buying the loyalty of political constituencies. Everyone should applaud this relatively small-scale effort by the Trump administration to protect taxpayers.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Immigration, Law, Media, Minnesota, Thanks for clearing that up

Fox News covers “depraved rag”

Twenty years ago I covered Keith Ellison’s first campaign for Congress extremely closely. I talked to sources all around the United States in the course of the campaign. I have an Ellison file six inches thick deriving from my work on that campaign.

Star Tribune reporter Rochelle Olson covered that campaign for the Star Tribune. Her coverage essentially performed public relations on its behalf. Her motto was not there’s no cheering in the press box. That much I can tell you. To take just one example of her malicious and misleading work, see my October 2006 post “Errors and omissions.”

A day or two after Ellison defeated his Republican opponent in that campaign I appeared on a panel with Olson to discuss the election results. She went ballistic when I undiplomatically described the nature of her reporting on the campaign. She thought she had done a good job.

That is my personal contribution to some ancient Olson history. More recently, Olson sported her Team DNC badge with her Star Tribune collegues when they traveled to Chicago to cover the coronation of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Good times.

The Star Tribune has now rewarded Olson with a position on the editorial board and with a column focused on politics and governance. In a recent column Olson congratulated Walz’s defense of his vote to pardon Tou Vue Vang. Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Natalie Hudson voted with Walz to pardon Vang in their capacity as the Minnesota Pardons Board. Vang had pleaded guilty to raping a 10-year-old child over a two-year-period and lost his legal status following his conviction. With the pardon Walz, Ellison, and Hudson unsuccessfully sought to help Vang escape deportation by the Trump administration.

Don’t pardon the Minnesota Pardons Board. They should live in infamy.

It’s almost funny that Olson congratulated Walz with standing by his idiocy. Has Walz ever publicly admitted he made a mistake? Kamala Harris came closer to admitting a mistake with her selection of Walz than Walz has ever come in admitting any mistake of his own. Another personal note: I facetiously urged Harris to select Walz in the Free Beacon column “Take My Govenor — Please.”

Bill Glahn has covered the pardon story for us on several occasions. Jenna Gloeb covered it for Alpha News. (Jenna points out that Vang never served a day in prison.) I wrote about House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s concise condemnation of the Star Tribune as “this depraved rag” yesterday. Emmer represents Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District.

As I have repeatedly observed, the Star Tribune is an incessant and increasinbly bizarre supporter of illegal immigration. Olson is a case in point.

Olson has now drawn the attention of Fox News with the reaction to her comments cheering Walz for defending Vang’s pardon. Peter D’Abrosca covers the story in “Firestorm erupts online after Minnesota paper praises Tim Walz’s clemency for child sex offender” (“The opinion column compared the rape case to January 6 pardons, drawing widespread condemnation”). The New York Post also published D’Abrsoca’s story here.

The Star Tribune gave Fox News a statment for the story: “The Minnesota Star Tribune regularly publishes a wide range of opinions across the political spectrum. In this case, our opinion columnist agreed with a unanimous pardon by the Minnesota state board of pardons, including Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.”

I’m filing this under Thanks For Clearing That Up.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Donald Trump, Media, Taxes

Sentence affirmed & unreported

Surely you don’t remember Charles Littlejohn. He is the guy who was nabbed for leaking the tax returns of President Trump to the New York Times. He also leaked tax information of thousands of the most successful and wealthy Americans including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett to ProPublica. He pleaded guilty to only one crime, but he committed many.

Ira Stoll reports this underreported sequel for the Washington Free Beacon in “Appeals Court Affirms 5-Year Prison Term for Source who Leaked Tax Info to NY Times and ProPublica” (“IRS leak was ‘attack on our constitutional democracy,’ with aim ‘to influence an election through illegal activity”). This is the good news of the day — let it be known. Stoll writes:

* * * * *

A federal appeals court is affirming a five-year prison sentence for Charles Littlejohn, a consultant to the IRS who leaked President Trump’s tax return information to the New York Times and tax information about thousands of the richest Americans including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett to ProPublica.

The 16-page opinion by a three-judge panel—Justin Walker, Neomi Rao, and Judith Rogers—found that the sentence was reasonable. It offers a scathing narrative of Littlejohn’s behavior. At this writing, the decision hasn’t been reported in either the New York Times or ProPublica, which describes itself as “a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that exposes corruption.”

“In 2017, Charles Littlejohn obtained a job as a consultant to the Internal Revenue Service so that he could steal and leak the tax returns of President Donald Trump,” the opinion says. “Two years into his elaborate scheme, in 2019, Littlejohn gave President Trump’s tax return and return information to a reporter for the New York Times. He then helped the reporter analyze the data and leaked more tax returns and return information to supplement his original leak. Finally, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Times began publishing articles based on what Littlejohn had stolen,” the opinion says.

It continues, “he used his ‘skills to systematically violate the privacy of thousands of innocent people’ by stealing the tax returns and return information of about 600 entities and about 7,600 of the wealthiest Americans. He then leaked what he stole to ProPublica, which used data regarding at least 152 of his victims in about 50 articles,” the opinion says. A company I owned was among those affected.

“As a result of Littlejohn’s crime, his victims lost business. They were disparaged countless times. And their families were physically threatened,” the opinion says. “To this day, ProPublica is sitting on the private, as-yet unpublished data of other taxpayers stolen by Littlejohn. But those taxpayers continue to fear that ProPublica will publish their data in the future.”

Read the whole thing here.