Tough, principled, and kind — the legacy of a slain Minnesota lawmaker

Summary

Apple News Today: June 27, 2025

Host: Shumita Basu
Episode Title: Tough, principled, and kind — the legacy of a slain Minnesota lawmaker

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Remembering Minnesota Lawmaker Melissa Hortman

In a heartfelt tribute, Shumita Basu opens the episode by commemorating the life and legacy of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, who was tragically assassinated earlier this month along with her husband, Mark. Their loyal golden retriever, Gilbert, was also severely injured during the attack and had to be euthanized. The tragic event not only claimed their lives but also left Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife wounded, though they survived.

Melissa Hortman was lauded as a principled legislator and a formidable negotiator. Beyond her political acumen, she dedicated her personal time to leading Girl Scout troops, teaching Sunday school, and volunteering with service dog training groups.

Key Tributes:

• Senator Amy Klobuchar praised Hortman from the Senate floor:

  "Melissa was one of the most consequential speakers in the history of our state. She knew no limits in terms of trying to get people together, trying to get things done. And while I cannot believe she is gone, Minnesotans will be feeling the impact of her leadership forever."
  [01:37]

• Representative Athena Hollis, a colleague, highlighted Hortman's mentorship:

  "I mean, I got the ability to see how the sausage was made and it gave me a whole new perspective on what legislating and leading was actually about. And she didn't have to have me in those rooms. And honestly, I didn't have a lot to contribute, especially when I first started. But she knew that it was important to bring up new leaders."
  [02:08]

• Patrick Cooligan, editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Reformer, detailed her legislative achievements:

  "They created the biggest child tax credit in the country, free lunch, universal free meals for K12 students. They restored the vote to felons who no longer incarcerated. They created driver's licenses for undocumented people. They increased education, human services spending, they raised taxes in the metro area for housing and transportation. They codified abortion rights, they legalized marijuana. It's an incredible record of legislative achievement."
  [02:43]

• Congressman Tom Emmer acknowledged her bipartisan respect:

  "While we may have disagreed on policy, Melissa was a great colleague who fearlessly fought for what she believed in and she devotedly served the people of Minnesota."
  [03:30]

  "Of the Minnesota House, she led with integrity and fostered bipartisan collaboration even during the most challenging times in our state."
  [03:42]

Patrick Cooligan also emphasized Hortman's commitment to the well-being of her colleagues:

"When she becomes speaker of the house, she decides that she's going to take the health and safety of everyone more seriously than it had been. And specifically, she's going to stop debates at midnight. Everyone knew that this was not just unhealthy but potentially hazardous because you have both members and staff out on the roads in the middle of the night after they've had this extraordinarily long day of work and someone was going to get hurt in a car wreck or some other way. And so she just said, we're not going to go past midnight anymore. And I think everybody appreciated that."
[03:58]

Melissa Hortman made history by becoming the first woman to lie in state at the Minnesota State Capitol, joining a prestigious group of fewer than 20 Minnesotans honored for extraordinary public service. Her children, Sophie and Colin Hortman, urged the community to continue her legacy by making positive changes:

"Honor your parents’ legacy by doing something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else."
[04:30]

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Immigration Policy: Targeting Iranian Christian Asylum Seekers

Shumita Basu transitions to the pressing issue of immigration, focusing on the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents' targeting of Iranian Christian asylum seekers. A particularly distressing case involves a couple who sought refuge in the U.S. to escape religious persecution in Iran. They entered the country in October using the Biden administration's CBP1 mobile app, designed to streamline asylum claims. However, the Trump administration discontinued this program, leading ICE to aggressively pursue those who entered via CBP1.

Disturbing Incident in Los Angeles:

A video clip reveals ICE agents with covered faces arresting the husband and distancing themselves from the distressed wife, who suffers a panic attack during the encounter. Their pastor, Ara Turrosian, captured the harrowing moment on film.

• Ara Turrosian expresses desperation:

  "Let him go. She's mad. Let her go. Let her go. You don't stay there, you're going to be arrested for. She's sick. She's sick. You're gonna be arrested for interview. She's sick. I'm here. She's sick. Okay. Stay there. She's mad. Call 9, 9, 9."
  [06:05]

The woman was subsequently taken to a hospital for treatment, but as she is now under federal custody, ICE agents must accompany her. Activists protesting the incident led to the involvement of the LAPD.

Reporter Alicia Victoria Lozano from NBC provides further context:

"So now you have this community who once was coming to Los Angeles to join their cousins and their friends and their relatives. Now they are living in fear as well, because the freedom that was granted to their relatives is no longer available to them."
[07:32]

Lozano reports that similar cases are emerging:

• In Arizona, an Iranian asylum seeker on a work permit is on a hunger strike after detention, with authorities commencing force-feeding.
• ICE has recently arrested 11 Iranian individuals, citing criminal records or alleged terrorist links. However, Lozano clarifies that none involved in Los Angeles cases have such histories and are primarily asylum seekers.

The broader community, especially in areas like "Tehran Jeles"—a neighborhood with a significant Iranian population—faces heightened fears. The discontinuation of the CBP1 pathway has escalated tensions and uncertainty among Iranian Christians who fled persecution.

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Other News Stories

1. Pew Research Study on 2024 U.S. Election

A new study by the Pew Research Center reveals that even with full voter turnout in the 2024 election, former President Donald Trump would have still secured victory. The analysis, based on surveys of 9,000 adult U.S. citizens and official voting records, counters claims that low voter turnout was the reason Democrats and Kamala Harris lost.

Key Findings:

• Trump built a diverse coalition, making significant gains among Hispanic (48% supported Trump), Asian (40%), Black (15%), and young voters—groups typically favoring Democrats.
• These demographic shifts provided Trump with the largest share of Black voters for a Republican candidate in decades.

"The study, based on a survey with 9,000 adult U.S. citizens and official voting records, dispels the idea that Democrats and Kamala Harris lost because of low turnout."

2. Anna Wintour Steps Down as Vogue Editor-in-Chief

Iconic fashion editor Anna Wintour announced her retirement after a remarkable 37-year tenure leading Vogue magazine. Under her leadership, Vogue became a cultural staple, influencing global fashion trends and shaping the industry.

• Her tenure is believed to have inspired the acclaimed novel "The Devil Wears Prada," though Wintour has never confirmed this.

Despite stepping down, Wintour will continue to serve as Vogue's Global Editorial Director and Global Chief Content Officer at Conde Nast, the parent company overseeing Vogue and numerous other lifestyle publications. The search for her successor is ongoing.

3. Apple Original Film F1 Premieres

Shumita Basu discusses the release of the new Apple original film F1, starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris, produced by seven-time F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton. The film, directed by Joseph Kosinski and produced alongside Jerry Bruckheimer, aims to authentically capture the speed and intensity of Formula One racing.

Insights from the Film's Creation:

• Joseph Kosinski elaborates on the physical demands faced by actors:

  "In Formula One, the Gs are side to side, left to right, and forward when you brake and when you're pulling five Gs in a left or right-hand turn, the strain on your body and your neck to hold your head upright is enormous... Brad and Damson just had to do hundreds and hundreds of laps to physically train themselves to actually be able to sustain driving these cars."
  [11:09]

• Jerry Bruckheimer discusses the integration of real F1 elements:

  "What Joe asked Apple to do, he said, I want to take your camera from your phone. I want you to enhance it for me, and I want you to be able to put it on our cars. But what happened is he was able to take two of those cameras, which they developed, and put them on two of the actual F1 cars during every race. So some of the footage that you're seeing is actually in a race."
  [12:30]

The film was released in theaters today, with Basu informing listeners that her conversation with Kosinski and Bruckheimer is available on the Apple News app.

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Closing Remarks:

Shumita Basu wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to enjoy their weekend and anticipates returning with more news the following Monday.

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This episode of Apple News Today offers a poignant reflection on Melissa Hortman's enduring legacy, a critical examination of current immigration policies affecting Iranian Christians, and insightful coverage of other significant national and cultural developments.

Transcript

[Shemitah Basu]

Good morning. It's Friday, June 27th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, remembering Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman. What happened when ICE agents targeted Iranian Christian asylum seekers and Anna Wintour ends her decades long run as the editor in chief of Vogue.

[Unknown]

Foreign.

[Shemitah Basu]

Let's start. In Minnesota, lawmaker Melissa Hortman, along with her husband Mark and their golden retriever Gilbert, will lie in state today at the Minnesota State Capitol. A private funeral will be held tomorrow that will also be live streamed. The Minnesota House Speaker Emerita and her husband were assassinated earlier this month in their home. Their dog was severely injured in the attack and later euthanized. The suspected gunman also attacked Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, who were both wounded but survived. Hortman was known as a principled legislator and a tough negotiator, an unusually generous and skilled public servant. In her personal time, she led Girl Scout troops and Sunday school classes and volunteered with a group that trained service dogs. In the days and weeks since the attack, Minnesota lawmakers have expressed their grief and shared stories about their friend and colleague. Here's US Senator Amy Klobuchar, who represents Minnesota and came up in local politics with Hortman speaking from the Senate floor.

[Amy Klobuchar]

Melissa was one of the most consequential speakers in the history of our state. She knew no limits in terms of trying to get people together, trying to get things done. And while I cannot believe she is gone, Minnesotans will be feeling the impact of her leadership forever.

[Shemitah Basu]

Representative Athena Hollis, Hortman's colleague in the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party, told a local CBS affiliate how Hortman mentored a whole generation of young people and inspired them to become public servants.

[Athena Hollis]

I mean, I got the ability to see how the sausage was made and it gave me a whole new perspective on what legislating and leading was actually about. And she didn't have to have me in those rooms. And honestly, I didn't have a lot to contribute, especially when I first started. But she knew that it was important to bring up new leaders.

[Shemitah Basu]

As House speaker at the start of the 2023 legislative session, she pushed through several major pieces of legislation. Patrick Cooligan, editor in chief of the Minnesota Reformer, told us just how gifted Hortman was as a politician.

[Patrick Coolican]

They created the biggest child tax credit in the country, free lunch, universal free meals for K12 students. They restored the vote to felons who no longer incarcerated. They created driver's licenses for undocumented people. They increased education, human services spending, they raised taxes in the metro area for housing and transportation. They codified abortion rights, they legalized marijuana. It's a an incredible record of legislative achievement.

[Shemitah Basu]

And despite policy disagreements, she earned the respect of her colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Here's Republican congressman Tom Emmer speaking, speaking on the U. S. House floor.

[Tom Emmer]

While we may have disagreed on policy, Melissa was a great colleague who fearlessly fought for what she believed in and she devotedly served the people of Minnesota.

[Shemitah Basu]

He went on to say, as speaker.

[Tom Emmer]

Of the Minnesota House, she led with integrity and fostered bipartisan collaboration even during the most challenging times in our state.

[Shemitah Basu]

Beyond her legislative accomplishments, Coolican said Hortman will also be remembered for how she treated people.

[Patrick Coolican]

When she becomes speaker of the house, she decides that she's going to take the health and safety of everyone more seriously than it had been. And specifically, she's going to stop debates at midnight. Everyone knew that this was not just unhealthy but potentially hazardous because you have both members and staff out on the roads in the middle of the night after they've had this extraordinarily long day of work and someone was going to get hurt in a car wreck or some other way. And so she just said, we're not going to go past midnight anymore. And I think everybody appreciated that.

[Shemitah Basu]

Today, Hortman becomes the first woman to lie in state at the capitol, joining a small and distinguished group of fewer than 20 Minnesotans who've been given that honor for their extraordinary public service. In a statement, her and Mark's children, Sophie and Colin Hortman called on people to honor their parents legacy by, quote, doing something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else. And now to immigration policy as some high profile cases involving Iranians in America have been emerging. Just a heads up, some of the tape that we're about to play might be distressing to hear. First to la, where a woman appeared to suffer a panic attack as ICE agents came to their home initially looking for her husband. The couple are Christian asylum seekers who say they came to the United States to flee religious persecution in Iran. They entered the country last October using the CBP1 mobile app launched by the Biden administration to streamline asylum claims. The Trump administration has since scrapped that program and ICE agents have been pursuing those already in the country and either using or hoping to use the CBP1 route. As the ICE agents, most with covered faces, arrested her husband and appeared to restrain her. Their pastor was there to film the incident.

[Ara Turrosian]

Why are you doing this.

[Tom Emmer]

It's no longer valid anymore. That's why.

[Ara Turrosian]

Can I have his stuff? No, no. Yeah, Phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tom Emmer]

No, he can't.

[Shemitah Basu]

That first voice you hear is Ara Turrosian, the couple's pastor and a US Iranian citizen. As the video continues, you can hear her convulsing as the panic attack sets in.

[Ara Turrosian]

Let him go. She's mad. Let her go. Let her go. You don't stay there, you're going to be arrested for. She's sick. She's sick. You're gonna be arrested for interview. She's sick. I'm here. She's sick. Okay. Stay there. She's mad. Call 9, 9, 9.

[Shemitah Basu]

The woman was eventually taken to a nearby hospital for treatment where anti detention prot. But because she was now under federal custody, she had to be accompanied by ICE agents.

[Alicia Victoria Lozano]

And that created a little bit of a kerfuffle on the outside with the protesters, with the activists. LAPD was called to the scene.

[Shemitah Basu]

That's Alicia Victoria Losano from NBC who's been covering this story from la. She says the couple remain in federal custody and their future is now uncertain, with the CBP1 path no longer an option. The incident happened in an area with a large Iranian population, so much so that it's been nicknamed Tehran Jeles. A lot of those people are Christians who came to the United States after the Iranian revolution.

[Alicia Victoria Lozano]

So now you have this community who once was coming to Los Angeles to join their cousins and their friends and their relatives. Now they are living in fear as well, because the freedom that was granted to their relatives is no longer available to them.

[Shemitah Basu]

Lozano has learned about eight other cases similar to this one. And in Arizona, an Iranian asylum seeker who was living in the US on a work permit is on a hunger strike after being detained. A federal judge just granted permission to allow officials to begin force feeding. And federal agents revealed they recently arrested 11 Iranian individuals with either criminal records or alleged terrorist links.

[Alicia Victoria Lozano]

So that is the other complicated side of this coin. And anybody would have said, okay, that's exactly who we are. Okay? Getting, you know, behind bars, going back to or whatever country they came from. So all of those 11 had demonstrated histories of violent history. However, the ones here in Los Angeles, none of them do. Those were all asylum seekers.

[Shemitah Basu]

It's unclear whether deportation arrests of Iranians have actually gone up since the recent conflict broke out, or if we're just seeing more of these cases in the news now. But certainly for these communities, the stakes of having to return to Iran will feel a lot higher. Before we let you go. A few other stories we're following A new study released from the Pew Research center found that even if everyone had come out to vote in 2024, President Trump still would have won the election. The study, based on a survey with 9,000 adult U.S. citizens and official voting records, dispels the idea that Democrats and Kamala Harris lost because of low turnout. Instead, the data shows that Trump was able to build a diverse coalition with major gains among Hispanic, Asian, black and young voters groups that are key for Democratic victories. In fact, nearly half of Hispanic voters supported Trump 48% in 2024. Asian support also grew, with 40% voting for Trump in 2024 compared to 30% in 2020. And 15% of Black voters supported Trump compared to 8% in 2020, giving Trump the largest share of black voters for a Republican candidate in decades. In other news, Anna Wintour is stepping down as the editor in chief of Vogue magazine. She's been in charge of the iconic fashion bible for 37 years, shaping the monthly newsstand staple into the cultural touchstone it is today. It's widely believed that Wintour and her sharp personality inspired the Devil Wears Prada, a book written by one of her former assistants that was later made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. Wintour has never confirmed the movie is about her, but when it came out in 2006, she showed up to the premiere wearing Prada. Wintour will stay on as the magazine's global editorial director and the global chief content officer of Conde Nast, the media company that owns Vogue and more than a dozen other lifestyle magazines. Her replacement has not yet been named. And last thing, let me tell you what's been going on on Apple News. In conversation, I sat down with the creators of the new Apple original film F1, the movie out today starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris. Seven time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton served as a producer.

[Tom Emmer]

3 Laps 3 Laps is a lifetime.

[Shemitah Basu]

I recently spoke with director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The two previously teamed up for Top Maverick and like that movie F1, the movie is all about bringing the speed and intensity of the real life experience to the big screen, kaczynski told me. The actors spent months training to handle the extreme G forces drivers feel on the track.

[Joseph Kosinski]

In Top Gun, we talked about GS, which are kind of vertical, pushing you down into your seat, you know, and pulling the blood out of your brain and making you unconscious. In Formula One, the GS are side to side, left to right, and forward when you brake and when you're pulling five GS in a left or right hand turn, the strain on your body and your neck to hold your head upright is enormous. And most people, after two laps in a Formula one car, they would be exhausted, not be able to hold their head upright anymore. And that's something that's very hard to train for. So Brad and Damson just had to do hundreds and hundreds of laps to physically train themselves to actually be able to sustain driving these cars.

[Shemitah Basu]

The filmmakers also embedded in a real F1 season. They built garages alongside the actual teams and filmed at live races. Bruckheimer described how some of those shots were captured.

[Unknown]

What Joe asked Apple to do, he said, I want to take your camera from your phone. I want you to enhance it for me, and I want you to be able to put it on our cars. But what happened is he was able to take two of those cameras, which they developed, and put them on two of the actual F1 cars during every race. So some of the footage that you're seeing is actually in a race.

[Shemitah Basu]

F1. The movie is out in theaters today. If you're listening in the news app right now, my conversation with Joseph Kaczynski and Jerry Bruckheimer queued up to play for you next. Enjoy the weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.