Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Pete Hegseth: Maybe not a good guy!
Last week under the fiery headline ‘Trump taps bloodthirsty, unqualified Fox News asshole from MN to head DoD’ Racket highlighted some of the most glaring negatives surrounding newly elected President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Defense Department, and failed U.S. Senate hopeful Pete Hegseth, who is unfortunately from here.
Turns out that list — which included naming war criminals, calling for bombings of hospitals, mosques and schools, and impregnating people who weren’t his then-wife — wasn’t nearly long enough to cover up the Forest resident’s villainous mob. Lake to include. That is why we draw your attention today this new triple-lined count of Hagseth factoids of popular information. (Worth mentioning: Yesterday he denied the 2017 sexual assault allegation, while acknowledging that he had made a payment to the accuser.)
Among the lowlights we didn’t include in last week’s list…
- That horrific sexual abuse allegation from 2017
- His 2002 argument in a student newspaper that sex with unconscious women should not be classified as rape
- Learn about his serial flirting and the blackmail it could cause
- His 2019 argument that fellow vets who receive government support violate ‘the ethos of service’ by being ‘dependent’ on the government
- His pro-waterboarding, anti-Geneva Conventions stance at the 2016 Conservative Forum
- His “who cares” approach to nuclear warfare (this seems to be of great importance given his current job prospects)
- His suggestion that we should ‘just get rid of the United Nations’
- Are raising eyebrows “Deus Vult” tattoo
- His membership in a ‘Christian supremacist church’
- His belief that higher Muslim birth rates represent “a slow motion 9/11.”
- And finally, his promotion of a bestiality-coded op-ed calling the “homosexual lifestyle abnormal and immoral.”
Open: Stone garden. Closing: Hello Flora! Coming soon: collaboration between Italian eatery and Travail?
It’s time for a mini speed round of our monthly Racket Restaurant Roundup!
First up: an Axios review of Stonegarden, the new 120-seat brunch spot at 54th & Chicago in south Minneapolis. Located on the ground floor of the newly opened Pearl Apartments, the restaurant offers broth bowls, several types of eggs benedict, tartines, soups and salads, plus a full bar. A reader told Axios’ Nick Halter to try the Norwegian Benedict ($22, made with gravlax), calling it “the best benny they’d ever had,” although the reporter is “not a salmon eater,” so no judgment there be handed over. Dumbbell, an apparent broth sipper, couldn’t recommend the $8 broth bowls.
Next up: goodbye to Hi Flora!, the booze-free THC food joint at 25th & Lyndale in south Minneapolis that opened just over a year ago. The owner, Heather Klein, says the business will close on December 5, and she cites a $7,500 fine from the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management as one of the reasons. Hi Flora! was criticized by the OCM “over a variety of alleged violations”, the Star Tribune’s Louis Krauss reports. Was the weekly Pizza & Blunt night part of the problem? Obtained according to gossip by one Racket reader/contributorYes!
And finally, could famed south Minneapolis restaurant Italian Eatery come back to life after closing earlier this year? Maybe, reports Axios’ Audrey Kennedyand the adventurous food crew behind Travail Kitchen & Amusements could be part of the equation. An LLC linked to Travail has applied for a liquor license at the old IP address under the name “Italian Eatery x Travail,” according to public records. A spokesperson for Travail declined to comment.
Report on campus parties: booze to the limit, weed to the limit
The young people: what are they doing these days? Last year, Racket published the findings of then-student Noah Mitchell, who informed our elderly readership about the pros and cons of BORG-based binge drinking. But the latest numbers from the University of Minnesota’s 2024 College Student Health Survey Report? They suggest that there are more blunts and bongs than BORGs these days. According to the Boynton Health survey, risky alcohol use on campus has fallen 10% since 2015, the Minnesota Daily reports, while cannabis use has increased about 9%.
“We see both trends happening in the United States,” says Julie Sanem, a researcher at the U of M Cannabis Research Center. (My dad could have been president of that center in the 1970s, maaaan.) Fourth-year student Jack Baribeau says: “I think the drinking culture is messy. I’ve heard of people being attacked in bars because they’re drunk. Others have less control over their actions when they’re drunk.” Wise words. Third-year student Katie Leach adds, “I can smoke as much weed as I want in one day and feel great the next day.” Hm, maybe less sensible. Safe partying, Gophers!
This American life Explores our MN turkeys
On the latest episode of This American lifeproducer Diane Wu traveled to Minnesota, the nation’s largest turkey producer, to learn more about the turkeys that will receive a presidential pardon later this month, and especially how they are trained not to embarrass the president. (We reported in 2022 the grim reality of life, or lack thereof, after those bogus PR pardons for poultry.) It’s a fun 10 minutes TAL segment, and we hear it was loosely inspired by friend of Racket Jessica Lussenhop of ProPublica. Gob, gob!