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madisonmcvan.bsky.social
madi mcvan
@madisonmcvan.bsky.social
1.3K followers 280 following 82 posts
reporter @ minnesota reformer. covering the trump admin's impact on minnesotans. texan in st. paul. DMs open. eng/esp
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madisonmcvan.bsky.social
fozzy when he was a little baby :)
February 6, 2026 at 6:33 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
we discovered the only treat that works to get him up these days is a peanut butter pretzel
February 6, 2026 at 6:28 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
February 6, 2026 at 6:25 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
he turned 9 months old and has developed the dog version of oppositional defiant disorder … every time we ask him to A) come inside of B) go into his playpen he flops on the ground and refuses to move (seeing as he is nearing 100 lbs we simply cannot force him anywhere)
February 6, 2026 at 6:24 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
Reformer editor J. Patrick Coolican in the newsletter this morning:
In other news: As I write at 10:20, Democrats have still not released caucus straw poll results. Why? Perhaps because so many caucusgoers ignored the party anointment of Sen. Amy Klobuchar and voted uncommitted? Michelle Griffith reported from Minneapolis’ lefty Ward 10. Out of 693 votes cast in the straw poll, 338 voted "uncommitted" — nearly 50%. Klobuchar received 200 votes, which is about 30%. About 17% cast their straw poll vote for miscellaneous candidates who are not running for governor. Same vibes in St. Paul, Bluesky says.
February 4, 2026 at 5:50 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
February 4, 2026 at 4:01 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
pushed this narrative in the reformer newsletter yesterday
February 4, 2026 at 3:50 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
Border Czar Tom Homan: ‘I’m staying ‘til the problem is gone’
minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/29/h...
January 29, 2026 at 4:34 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
This piece is overall very good but I do have one bone to pick. It wasn't the NYT """breaking""" the Minnesota fraud story that sparked Trump's racist rants against Somali people — it was Chris Rufo's Nov. 19 blog post claiming fraudsters were funding al-Shabaab.
January 27, 2026 at 3:19 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
We published a Q&A with SOS Steve Simon in September focused on the DOJ’s attempts to obtain Minnesota’s voter rolls: minnesotareformer.com/briefs/a-q-a...
January 25, 2026 at 7:25 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
State conservation officers and state troopers seem to be creating a buffer between protesters and ICE
January 24, 2026 at 5:56 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
The perimeter is several square blocks. Protesters are barricading streets and alleys. (Some folks were trying to put out the dumpster fire, saying it’s bad for the neighborhood)
January 24, 2026 at 5:52 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
Copper Hen serving as a medic station and offering coffee and water. It’s -9.
January 24, 2026 at 5:43 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
Some images from the site where a man was shot by federal agents in Minneapolis today:
January 24, 2026 at 5:42 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
Max and I interviewed Frank, whose has a work permit and a pending application for a U visa — a visa available for victims of crimes in the U.S., so they can cooperate with law enforcement without fearing deportation.
Frank has a hard time explaining to his 8-year-old daughter why they rarely leave their home in the Twin Cities. Why she can’t go to school, and why he can’t work. “The only thing we tell her is that soon everything will be over. Everything will be over soon, and she’ll go back to school like before,” Frank said in Spanish. The truth is, no one knows when the federal siege will end. It may not be soon. Frank knows a dozen people who’ve been deported — several in just the past couple weeks, including a co-worker on a construction job site. His kids, three of whom are U.S. citizens, switched to online school. He stopped going to work, and he and his wife never leave the house together, lest they both be detained and separated from their children. Frank, who has no criminal record save a couple traffic tickets, is the main breadwinner for his family. They’ve been able to live off savings, although he recently had to ask his mother in Mexico for help. “We still don’t have enough, but we have a little bit to survive on,” he said.
January 23, 2026 at 4:50 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan wearing a whistle at a campaign event in Prior Lake tonight.
January 23, 2026 at 2:58 AM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
unmarked vans
January 21, 2026 at 7:22 PM
madisonmcvan.bsky.social
the best way to follow our work at the @minnesotareformer.com is to subscribe to our daily newsletter. the whole team (5 full-timers!!) takes turns writing it.

minnesotareformer.com/subscribe/

from my newsletter this week:
I’m no historian, but having studied the rise and fall of Latin American dictators, I know that the conditions surrounding the ascent of fascism are often very specific to that time, place and culture — and conditions now are different than they were in Europe in the 1930s. But David French of the New York Times wrote today about a phenomenon first described by the German Jewish lawyer Ernst Fraenkel, who finished his book “The Dual State” after fleeing to the U.S during WWII. I’ve been struggling to articulate to my family and friends what it’s been like to alternate between the world of immigrants and ICE observers, who face daily violations of their constitutional rights, and my daily life: grabbing a drink with friends, reading at a café, watching football. French, writing about Fraenkel, put the experience into words: “The two components of the dual state are the normative state — the seemingly normal world that you and I inhabit, where…the ‘ordinary legal system of rules, procedures and precedents’ applies — and the prerogative state, which is marked (in Fraenkel’s words) by ‘unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees.’ …While we’re thankfully not yet close to the Nazi reality, you can see the emerging dual state in action in Minneapolis right now. In much of the city, life is routine. People create new businesses, enter into contracts, file litigation and make deals as if life were completely normal and the rule of law exists, untainted by our deep political divide. But if you interact with ICE, suddenly you risk coming up against the full force of the prerogative state.”
January 21, 2026 at 4:15 PM