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- [00:01]
Jon Favreau
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- [01:32]
Lydia Polgreen
Choose to lean into it. Every Mazda is engineered to give you effortless control. I wake up. In some ways, I feel like protesting is sort of the wrong word. I think it's really organizing. And a lot of the people who are on the ground in Minneapolis, they aren't even protesters, right? I mean, they're just organizers. They're people who have organized to feed their neighbors, who can't go to the grocery store or who can't go to work and therefore can't afford groceries, you know, because they're afraid of getting picked up by ice. You know, they are collecting information. That kind of grassroots organizing, I think produces power that cannot be tainted by the broader structures that, you know, have pushed our society towards a kind of paralysis or waiting around for, for the midterms, waiting around for 2028. You know, the way that we make the midterms actually be effective is by people right now coming together in groups of solidarity to provide mutual aid for one another.
- [02:46]
Jon Favreau
I'm Jon Favreau, and you just heard from this week's guest, Lydia Palgreen. Lydia is a journalist and opinion columnist at the New York Times who's covered human rights and democracy and civil conflict in countries all over the Senegal, India, South Africa. She also grew up in Minnesota, which is unfortunately in the midst of its own civil conflict with the federal government right now. Lydia went back to Minnesota to report on everything that's been happening in and around Minneapolis and St. Paul since Trump flooded the state with ICE officers and border Patrol last month. And she wrote a fantastic piece for the Times about what she heard, what she saw, and how she noticed frightening parallels to some of the civil conflicts she's covered in other countries. I was really moved by the piece and haven't talked to Lydia in way too long, so I asked her to join for a conversation about Minnesota, America and where this is all headed. You'll hear that in a bit, but first I just wanted to share some thoughts about where I think this is all headed and more importantly, what's really needed. If you don't like what's been happening in America over the last year, but haven't spoken up for whatever reason, I would say that now is a good time to reconsider. I've heard people with a lot of reach and influence say that the best way to handle Trump's second term is to just wait him out. I've heard people who were more outspoken in his first term say that it didn't make a huge difference then, so why take the risk now? Politics in the last year has somehow become even more horrifying and exhausting and depressing. If you can live your life without paying too much attention to the insanity that hasn't really affected you yet, why bother? I understand this. I really do. Trump is a lame duck president who Most Americans around 60% of us don't support, and he keeps getting less popular. His party is currently on track for a poor midterm performance, which would make him even less powerful, less relevant, and unable to ever pass another law again. Which makes it tempting to just keep your head down, wait until November, and hope for the best. In the meantime, maybe you donate to some candidates or causes or relief funds. Maybe that feels more effective and certainly more comfortable than pissing off certain friends and family and colleagues and followers by getting all political. I get it. But here's the thing. We've only finished the first quarter of Trump's presidency. We have three more years of this at least the midterms are still nine months away and things are moving very fast. Faster than I think most people realize. In just one year, America has become a place where paramilitary squads rampage through the streets of cities that didn't vote for the President. A President who has given these federal agents, heavily armed and often masked, free reign to do whatever they want to whoever they want without any legal consequences. If you're not yet a citizen of this country, they can take you away from your family at gunpoint, grab you off the street and throw you in the back of a van, break down your door and raid your home without even getting a judge to sign a warrant first. Having the right papers will not necessarily protect you. Being in this country legally will not necessarily protect you. You may not get to make a phone call or meet with a lawyer. You may be held for days or weeks in a crowded detention center a thousand miles from home, where people are sick and dying from rampant disease and rotten food and a lack of medical care, where people are routinely beaten and abused. If you are an American citizen, these paramilitary squads can still arrest you based on your accent or, or your skin color or just a hunch that you might be someone they're looking for. They can arrest you if you're at a peaceful protest, or even if you just happen to be walking by one or driving through. They can tackle you to the ground, put you in a chokehold, beat you until you're bloody and bruised. They can hit you with tear gas or a pepper ball, or, as we saw with Renee Goode, real bullets. And they can brutalize you like this. Even if you're not resisting in any way, even if you offer to show proof that you're a citizen, it can take hours and even days for the federal agents to set you free, usually with no charges, no explanation, and no fear. They'll be held accountable for what they did to you. This is happening in Minnesota. This has happened to a Purple Heart combat veteran whose head they smashed on the ground and then denied a lawyer for hours. A city snowplow driver who is legally authorized to work here and has no criminal record, but is now rotting in a barbaric detention camp in El Paso where his wife is desperately trying to get him his medication. A detention camp where the guards just killed a man. This has happened to an off duty police officer whose car they boxed into a corner before pointing their guns at her, demanding to see her papers, and then knocking her phone out of her hand before she could show them her badge. This has happened to a Disabled woman who they dragged from her car while she was trying to see her doctor. To four Native Americans who they kidnapped off tribal lands, three of whom are still missing. To an elderly citizen who was marched out of his home in his underwear into the freezing cold. To a pregnant woman who they pulled across the street by her arm while she screamed. This is happening to children in Minnesota right now. Children, the paramilitary squads are showing up in high school parking lots. Teenagers are being taken without their parents. There's a five year old little boy who was in a Minneapolis classroom with his friends just last week. And now he and his father, who came here legally, are in a detention camp in Texas while his mother tries to explain to his middle school brother why their family is missing. And the response we get from the Vice President is, what were we supposed to do? Leave the kid out in the cold? Which was like the response we got from the Secretary of Homeland Security when she couldn't express a hint of remorse toward the family of eight who was driving home from a basketball game when agents exploded tear gas under their car that caused their six month old infant to stop breathing. Not a hint of regret. This is happening. Those are all stories, just from this last week, from one state. But those stories are everywhere. The videos are everywhere. And each week there are more, not less. They've been multiplying since last spring, really, when the government's deportation machine kicked into high gear. I remember the fear here in LA, but then D.C. was worse than LA, and Chicago was worse than D.C. and Minneapolis is worse than Chicago. And now they've arrived in Maine and they have yet to spend most of their gigantic new budget that's the size of the Israeli militaries, which is why we could really use more people speaking up right now. The government and its paramilitary squads are powerful, but they are not popular. They do not have the support of most Americans. That is not actually what most people voted for. And a big reason they are so unpopular. The reason that immigration went from one of Trump's strongest issues to one of his weakest is because people who've experienced this madness and witnessed these incidents have decided to speak out and hold up their phones and share these stories and take to the streets. And now the pushback isn't just coming from protesters and activists and politicians, but from federal judges and churches and schools and hospitals and local media and now even local law enforcement. A few weeks ago, a group of faith leaders in Minnesota called for an economic boycott to protest the government's militarized occupation of Minneapolis one day of no work, no school, no shopping. The idea then got support from labor unions and a bunch of community organizations and then hundreds of local businesses that all agreed to shut down for the day. They called it the Day of Truth and Freedom. And it's taking place as I'm recording this on Friday, January 23rd. I can't predict how it'll go or the impact it'll have, but I can imagine it's not an easy thing to do for everyone who's participating. It's not easy for most people to shut down their business for the day or miss work or figure out childcare. It's not easy to be part of any kind of protest when the government's already investigating the people who represent you and terrorizing your state with 3,000 federal agents. It's a risk, and it's a sacrifice. And the thousands of people participating are just hoping it will matter. And that's what we need right now. I get why a lot of people with big platforms and influential voices in all kinds of fields want to stay away from politics, especially now. And I don't think that in order to make a difference, everyone needs to declare their partisan loyalties or call Trump a dictator or go lead the next protest. But I do think that speaking out will matter. Taking action will matter because it will tell the people who know you and follow you and respect you who. That it's okay for them to speak out, too. And then maybe they'll share these stories or organize to help their neighbors or put pressure on their elected officials or join people in the streets. And if nothing else, saying something now, doing something now will begin to rebuild some of what we've lost in this country over the last decade. Our humanity, our ability to see someone else's pain and suffering and struggle and fear as our own, even if we're not like them, even if we haven't experienced what they have. Because rebuilding that sense of empathy and decency is the only thing that has the potential to tie us together again and get us through this crisis. And now here's my conversation with Lydia Palgreen. Lydia, welcome to Offline.
- [13:14]
Lydia Polgreen
It's great to be here, John.
- [13:16]
Jon Favreau
Great to see you again. I mentioned this to you earlier this week, but I was really moved by your piece on Minnesota for the Times this week. The headline was, in Minneapolis, I glimpsed a civil war. You were on the ground reporting. And I just wonder, how has it felt to see all this unfold, not only as a journalist, but as someone who grew up in Minnesota?
- [13:38]
Lydia Polgreen
I mean, it's Extraordinary. The thing about Minnesota and anybody who's spent any time there is that it is a, you know, I think certainly before the summer of 2020, an incredibly placid place. You know, it has this very strong ethos of community cooperation, go along to get along. One pastor I talked to told me, look, you know, you can't survive in this cold unless, you know, people look out for each other. And political culture there is, you know, very much contested, but, you know, there's a sense that sort of partisan rancor that has gripped the entire country just really hasn't been quite as vituperative or personal. And obviously that's been shattered by recent years. But what really struck me when I was on the ground, there was just the absolute horror and revulsion that I was seeing from people In Minneapolis, in St. Paul, in the, you know, the suburbs that surround those cities against, you know, what can really only be described as an occupation. You know, I've spent a lot of time covering conflict in places like Darfur, you know, the Congo, Sri Lanka, you know, all around the world. And the sort of feeling on the street, that sort of combination of anything can happen, violence can break out anywhere that, you know, the agents of the state and, you know, those trying to protect civilians are really kind of in sort of open combat, but unequal combat because one side is armed and the other isn't. It just felt so redolent of those experiences. Obviously it's a very different context, not least of which the sub zero temperatures. But it was really extraordinary to feel that level of tension and violence. And the other thing that I think that is hard to kind of capture if you're looking at it from afar and hard to understand is this is really unfolding like not in major commercial districts, not on big avenues and thoroughfares. This is like block by block, you know, neighborhoods with, with little bungalows and these tidy little houses. And it's just ordinary people coming out on the streets with whistles around their necks saying, we're gonna protect and stand in the way of anyone who wants to drag our neighbors away. So it was really just an extraordinary experience and an extraordinary scene.
- [15:56]
Jon Favreau
The headline I glimpsed civil War really stood out to me in part because my sister in law lives in Minneapolis now, moved from Orange county over the summer and she's a teacher there. And my wife reached out to her and just to ask what it was like and she said it feels like civil war. And it's hard because so these, these ICE operations, these, you know, and they, they name Each one a different operation name. When they go to another city, you know, they've been in a bunch of different cities. Louisiana was one of the first. I remember here, you know, there. There was a sense of fear. Louisiana is also, you know, it's a county of 10 million people, and you didn't see it everywhere. And I do think that one of the challenges I've had in trying to convey this to people of how serious the situation is, is there's a lot of people in the country who don't quite understand how ever present this is. And I do feel like in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, it is the sort of their worst operation yet. The most intense, the most aggressive. And I wonder if you can explain just from what you've heard from people on the ground, why Minneapolis feels so different and is so different. And, you know, I feel like each one's gotten worse. Chicago was pretty bad as well. But Minneapolis does seem like it's. It's reached a new level.
- [17:10]
Lydia Polgreen
Yeah, I mean, the federal government, the Trump administration is describing this as the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. It's called Operation Metro Surge. And in a lot of ways, Minnesota is a really weird state to do this in, Right? I mean, it's. It's less than 6 million people. Its rate of undocumented immigrants is less than half that of the national average, to say nothing of, you know, the Minneapolis, St. Paul metro area, certainly much lower than Chicago or Los Angeles, you know, New York City, places like that, or, you know, Dallas or, you know, any. Any. Any number of cities, Miami, any number of places that you might send an operation like this to get supposedly illegal immigrants. This is just a much, much smaller population that you're looking for. And, you know, the Twin Cities sprawls. It's. It's definitely, you know, goes over a large area and includes a number of counties, but it's. It's also really a small. I mean, you just think about those numbers compared to Los Angeles, which is, you know, as you said, like 10 million people in the metro area. This is really tiny. And so that feeling that this is happening street by street and neighborhood by neighborhood is really visceral on the ground. And I also think that the approach has been aggressive in a way that feels quite different. You know, one of the most chilling things for me, and this has been highlighted by the fact that we're seeing now images of very young children being used as bait or being detained. But, you know, one morning when I was out just kind of rolling around looking for ICE presence, you know, which is not very hard to find, unfortunately. You know, I rolled up on a corner in south Minneapolis and I had, you know, I saw a truck that was parked kind of weirdly askew. And some people who are clearly observers, you can tell because they have their, you know, ice out pins and their whistles and whatnot. And, you know, I got out and I spoke to a woman named Hilary Ottman. And, you know, she showed me on her phone what I had just missed, which was two girls. You know, one seemed to be a teenage, other around 12. And what seemed clear, we were just a couple of blocks away from a school. And what seemed clear and what this pattern that's just repeated over and over again is that you have ICE agents kind of staking out school drop off and pickup in order to try and entrap people and scoop them up in these circumstances. And, you know, you're watching as a preteen is being handcuffed and put in the back of a vehicle. You know, I mean, it's just wild. There was a little white dog in the car. I mean, Lord knows what happened to that poor dog. And so I think that the thing that we're seeing here, I mean, there are a few things that feel different. You know, there's obviously the size. I mean, they're talking about surging up to 3,000 federal agents, which is just a mind boggling number of agents. I think the Minneapolis Police department is like 600 officers. And so that's one part of it. But I think there's also just, you know, this kind of like unmitigated aggression. The fact that they're taking on these tactics, they're going, you know, there was one report where they went into, you know, some ICE agents went in and had l at a Mexican restaurant and then used that to sort of scope it out, and then came back later and arrested members of the staff. And so I think this just this sort of nefariousness is really wild. The other thing is the Twin Cities has a very high proportion of native population. It's a place where the native population is incredibly active and has very strong civil society organizations. And so we're seeing native people because they look brown being picked up in all of this. And so I spent some time with various indigenous activists and just ordinary people who are out on the streets patrolling and trying to help. And, you know, it's just mind boggling, if you think about it, that these are people who have, you know, roots in the United States far deeper, certainly than mine. Probably certainly than yours. Really, than anyone. And it's just extraordinary, you know, who's getting caught up in this dragnet? It's really wild. And I think there are still three native homeless men who are unaccounted for. I mean, we, we just don't know where they are.
- [21:25]
Jon Favreau
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And you know, I was horrified and I was like, I'm hoping someone will ask JD Vance this question because this is obviously, this is just a horrific story. And you know, someone asks him and then he's like, well what are we supposed to do? Leave the five year old alone in the cold? And he was with the father and everything was. And you know, on one hand you could tell that J.D. vance sort of, his tone had, it was a little calmer than it was when he was in the briefing room yelling that Renee Goode was a domestic terrorist. But the lies were sort of, they came easier and it just sounded so matter of fact. And one of the things I'm struggling with is sort of like how you organize or at least raise awareness of what's going on in an information environment where you can't believe now almost anything that the Government says, and if the government has their side of the story, then it instantly becomes a conflict over the details of the story. And I'm now, and after JD Vance now all over social media you got people. I mean, I even saw Dean Phillips, former Democrat Dean Phillips be like, you know what? Just because I don't like in misinformation, I just want to say, you know, that kid is with his father now and they're together. And so I don't want to be spreading misinformation. And I'm like, what? How did we, like, I just, I don't understand. But I wonder like on the, on the ground there, people who aren't either involved in the protesting or worried that they're going to be taken because of their immigration status. Like, how are like average people in Minneapolis receiving this, seeing this, talking about this?
- [26:22]
Lydia Polgreen
I mean, look, it's interesting, right, because I think that a lot of the propaganda that we're seeing from the Trump administration is clearly designed to consolidate people who already believe or delusional, you know, kind of moderate Democrats, Democrats who have their own reasons for wanting to seem, you know, reasonable on this issue. I don't understand how you can be reasonable about the detention of a five year old child by the federal government. There's just no universe. And I think the good news is that a majority, and I would say perhaps an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with that. I mean, what's been really striking to me is the extent to which, you know, and we're seeing this in polling, but you know, I'm seeing it just, just kind of everywhere that just ordina are like, this is fucked up. Like the murder of Renee Goode, the kidnapping of these children, the images of that woman, the disabled woman who was dragged out of her car. I mean she was basically hogtied. They smash in her windows, you know, she's on her way to a doctor's appointment. I just don't think that it's only, you know, blue haired activists who see those videos and become outraged. I think it's just normal people. And you know, one of the things that really struck me when I was in Minneapolis was just the diversity of those, those who've come out in order to be a part of this resistance. I think just today there were, you know, dozens of faith leaders who were, I believe, detained or arrested at the Minneapolis airport protesting this, you know, this, this incursion by ice. You know, so you have the faith community, you have. There was a real estate agent who works in Woodbury, which is, you Know, a kind of well to do suburb of St. Paul, you know, who was detained while, while filming ICE. He had never been involved in any sort of activism before, you know, and he just happened, was dropping his kid off his school to see this ICE thing and started filming it. You know, when we're talking about like suburban real estate agents getting involved in this kind of thing and then getting detained, I think that normal people can just look at that and be like, like, what the fuck, you know, this is just not something that we can be a part of and that we can support. You know, Vance, if his mouth is open, then he's lying, right? And he can modulate the tone and the presentation based on the situation. But, you know, the, the, the facts are just very clearly not on like, you know, he tried to claim that, you know, Minnesota had, you know, the biggest problem with criminal undocumented immigrants. And that's, that's just lies. You know, it's just, you know, there are what, you know, maybe 100,000, 130,000 undocumented immigrants in all of Minnesota. You know, that is just a tiny number of people. We obviously know that immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. I mean, there's just all, all kinds of ways in which this is just complete, utter bullshit, you know, and his job is to go out there and say these things. But, but the reality is like this is a country that for all of their attempts to create this reality distortion field, when you see images like the ones that we've been seeing, you can look at that and just say it's not right. I mean, on the front page of the Star Tribune today, the Minneapolis hometown paper, which has just been doing a fantastic job, they have that incredible photo of an ICE agent who's holding just a couple of inches away, the tear gas can from someone's face. We don't know is this person approached protester? Are they a journalist? Like, you know, I, I'm not sure. But you just look at that and you just say, there's just no way this can be justified. There's just no language, there's no circumstance in which you can do that kind of thing to an unarmed person. So I, I, I, you know, maybe I'm putting too much stock in the common sense of the average American. But you know, I think, I think back to my grandparents, you know, they are sadly no longer with us. But you know, they were Minnesota Republicans. They were Goldwater voters. They were, you know, Reagan voters. You son brought home a woman from Ethiopia and said, you know, I want you to meet my fiance. They were taken aback. You know, this was just a couple of years after Loving. But, you know, in talking with them as I grew up about their experiences of race in America and change and things like that, my grandmother talked about seeing images of, you know, schoolchildren in the south, in the Jim Crow south, being menaced by dogs or being sort of hit by fire hoses, and those being transformative and galvanizing images that really changed and transformed her own view. Not that she was racist before, but that, you know, this isn't something that concerns me, but there are lots of things that are happening in this crisis that I think anybody, including Republicans, can look at and just say, this is not right. This is not something that I can countenance.
- [31:05]
Jon Favreau
To what extent do you get the sense that the protests are organized? To me, I've been surprised how disciplined and peaceful they've been. Obviously, the. The government looks for any sign of violence or vandalism or anything like that, and they highlight it. But in comparison to even many of the protests we've seen pop up in different times in the Trump era, it does seem, from afar at least, like there is this real discipline to the protests in Minneapolis. But I wonder, you know, you've probably been talking to a lot of people who've participated in these protests. Is their participation spontaneous? Have neighbors reached out? Are there community groups? What's that like?
- [31:49]
Lydia Polgreen
Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinarily organized, but also incredibly decentralized. So there are all of these kind of secret messaging groups that people have formed. Some of them are citywide. Some of them are like, literally micro neighborhoods, groups of little blocks. Some of them are parent groups at a particular school that organize around pickup and drop off. And there is this very complex system of, you know, for example, logging license plates that are suspected ice. And if they're able to confirm that they're ICE cars, they go into a database. And so if you spot that car, you can actually send a message to this group and say, hey, you know, is this an ICE vehicle? And then it's worth, you know, sort of following it where it goes. But the other thing that's really remarkable about that is that, you know, the ICE vehicles are moving around the city in a very reckless way, running red lights, you know, being incredibly, you know, sort of indifferent to civilian and pedestrian safety. These folks have been told and trained to follow traffic laws, not to try and get in front of or to obstruct, to observe, but also, you know, try if they can to distract, to, you know, not detain, but really do anything you can to keep them from fulfilling their mission. That is within the bounds of the law and within the sort of protected First Amendment activity. And what's really remarkable is just seeing how disciplined people are. And there are a couple of things that I think go into that. One is that, you know, this is a city that went through the summer of 2020 with the murder of George Floy. So a lot of the networks, community networks that sprang up both to join the protests against the Minneapolis police and the city government in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing very quickly reactivated. And those groups have remained in contact and have been able to sort of spring into action. But also community groups that were focused on protecting kind of life and property of neighborhoods because as you'll recall, those protests, there was property damage. A police precinct was burned to the ground. Ground. This time around, I think we're seeing actually pretty extraordinary discipline. You know, when you get into these tense confrontations, you're definitely seeing insults, you know, people, you know, blowing whistles, saying, you know, fuck ice, go home, your grandmother hates you. All kinds of sometimes really, really creative and funny insults. And some people are engaging in forms of civil disobedience that really do just go right up to the line. So, for example, the night that there was another shooting that happened exactly a week after Renee Goode was kill, you know, luckily this man was just injured and not killed. But a huge number of people surged to that spot again using those communication networks there as observers, there to make noise, there to distract and make their presence known. And there was a guy, long haired guy wearing a kind of buffalo plaid jacket, who sat down in front of a giant like Chevy Suburban that was leading the convoy of ICE vehicles that were trying to leave. And then, you know, kind of got up and then just kind of walked slowly in front of them. And so he's again just sort of using, you know, but, you know, using his body as a way to kind of slow distract, keep them from doing what they're trying to do. And that night, you know, it was tense. People threw firecrackers, you know, things like that. But there was a guy who was saying, hey, I need a brick, you know, where are some rocks? And blah, blah, blah. And it was clear that the crowd was like, no, no, no, we're not doing that. That's not what this is. And so I think there's been just a tremendous amount of discipline on the ground. But it's been a trial by Fire. The other really important thing is obvious. The case of the George Floyd protests, that was very much, you know, an internal conflict, right. Where you had people, you know, angry at their own city government, at their own police force, and here this is an outside invader. And honestly, I really felt for the Minneapolis police. They've been through a lot, and, you know, their numbers are way down from what they were, and they're really caught in the middle. People are dialing 911 on ice. You know, it's just kind of crazy. So the emergency services are all kind of tied up in dealing with the. The craziness that's going on on the street. And so it's really kind of a wild situation. You know, some of the people who are on the front lines of the George Floyd protests are like, wait, is the Minneapolis PD like, are they on our side now? Are we, like, allies?
- [36:14]
Jon Favreau
Well, I mean, one of the most stunning developments was watching a press conference by police chiefs and local law enforcement leaders talking about their own police officers. There's people of color being profiled and assaulted, essentially by ICE when they're off duty. And it's just that. That, to me, was wild. And then, you know, I'm sure they are getting a lot of pressure from the people of Minneapolis to, like, hey, protect us from ice. And then, you know, J.D. vance was also going in on, well, you know, local law enforcement aren't allowed to help ICE when there's all this violence. Right. So then they have this pressure from the federal government as well. So I imagine. Imagine that's very tricky as well.
- [36:56]
Lydia Polgreen
Yeah. And I mean, I think if. If. If Governor Tim Walls ends up calling in the National Guard, it's only going to add to the complexity. You know, they. They posted on social media that, you know, if the Guard is, in fact, deployed, that they'll be wearing these, like, yellow reflective vests so people can tell the difference between them and the federal immigration agents that are out there. I mean, there were guys from the Bureau of Prisons that were just, you know, I mean, like, it's a real kind of Alphabet soup of agencies, federal agencies that are involved in this. And, you know, they all have very different levels from different cultures, but they all seem to be operating on orders of kind of maximum aggression. And so it's a very volatile and combustible situation. And I think, like, I mean, we talked about the, you know, sort of the Civil War metaphor. And I think one of the reasons that I stand just this side of calling it a Civil war is that, you know, the opposition at this point is just civilians, you know, but if we end up in a place where there are open confrontations between different armed groups, the Minnesota National Guard under the command of the governor of Minnesota, as they lawfully should be, and then federal armed agents who are under the command of Donald Trump, you know, that's when we get into like the really, truly terrifying territory. And then of course, this is a state that's, that's full of hunters, lots of guns, you know, plenty, plenty of guns, you know. You know, there have been images emerging of people in neighborhoods coming out with their, you know, their hunting rifles as they are lawfully allowed to do to protect their neighbors. And, you know, so it really is a very, very volatile situation.
- [38:36]
Jon Favreau
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- [41:31]
Lydia Polgreen
Yeah, I mean, this was a really, really big push. I think that there is a sense that there needs to be, like, much deeper solidarity. Businesses have been very, very adversely affected by these actions. The labor unions are very much involved and have been pushing for this action. One of the things that's really str to me about Minnesota in particular is that historically it's had this very strong kind of civic business culture. The companies and a lot of people don't really know this about Minnesota, but there are some really big iconic American companies that are headquartered there. 3M, where my grandfather worked as an engineer, Best Buy, Target. I went to middle school just less than a mile away from the first Target store. These are really big American brands and they traditionally have been a really important part of the fabric of civic life in Minneapolis. And there's a big ethos of giving back and, you know, supporting not just cultural institutions, but you Know, they. They were very involved in the response to the George Floyd protests. Obviously, the world has changed a lot since then, and, you know, nobody wants to be too woke. And I think that there has been a lot of concern in Minnesota about the silence of these big companies. I mean, Target, for example, you know, there was a Target employee who is an American citizen who was arrested after a confrontation with ice. And I think that this boycott, in some ways is a way to kind of force that business community to think more carefully about its role in the community and its historic role in the community. I mean, again, I just want to underscore this is a place that is incredibly nuanced in that it's. You know, there's a lot of rural areas. There certainly are Republicans. It's not a kind of uniformly blue place. But, you know, it has been 50 years since a Republican president won the electoral votes of Minnesota electorate. You know, hometown hero Walter Mondale was on the ballot the year that Ronald Reagan won 49 states, denying him a total sweep. Go Minnesota. And so this is a place that does have a very particular political culture. And it's both progressive, but I think there's also populist elements to it. You know, remember Jesse Ventura, the former.
- [43:42]
Jon Favreau
Governor, and Wellstone, too. Paul Wellstone.
- [43:45]
Lydia Polgreen
Yeah, Paul Wellstone. I mean, a great hero of mine and many other people on the left, you know, tragically died in a plane crash. And, you know, Al Franken, there's been a whole host of, I think, really kind of extraordinary leaders from Minnesota. But it's, you know, I think that the sort of the corporate culture of the place reflects that, you know, and I think appropriately so. It also has a very strong tradition of moderate Republicans. It's funny to think that, you know, Norm Coleman, who was the mayor of St. Paul, he went from being a kind of moderate Democrat to being a moderate Republican. And now that's sort of unthinkable in any number of ways that transition would happen. But it's just a reminder of how complex and really kind of unique the politics of Minnesota are. And one of my feelings is that. And I'm sorry I've gotten far away from your question about the boycott, but one of my feelings about the reason that Trump has targeted Minnesota is that he really thinks that this should be his turf. He really believes that he won it all three times he ran for president. And if you look at it on paper, it's a super majority white state. It's got quite a lot of rural res. It's in the upper Midwest. It's surrounded by red states. This should be kind of prime Trump territory. Why is it not more like Iowa, you know? And I think that that really kind of sticks in his craw. It's funny, I talked to Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota, and he said this, that he sort of dryly remarked that Trump thought of Minnesota like Hitler thought of Norway, that it's a place that was full of Scandinavians, sort of Aryans that should be on his side. And you. Norway resisted more strongly than any country that was successfully taken over by the Nazis and its king decided to flee rather than abdicate in favor of the kind of Hitler adjacent far right leader who the Nazis wanted to install. So I think there's a little bit of that spirit in Minnesota that this is not who we are thing is sort of bullshit. But in Minnesota, it's really true. This is not who we are.
- [45:52]
Jon Favreau
The boycott is interesting to me because, you know, unfortunately, as many of us have, I've been thinking since Trump was inaugurated again, you know, what are the different levers available to opposition in a country that is sort of slipping into, already there, facing an authoritarian threat? And I think that sort of collapses collectively as a country, as a whole. People are very much like, okay, well, we got elections. You wait for the election, you change someone, and that's what it is. Some people protest. Protest is great. Elections are great. But obviously in situations like this, you can't always rely on elections. You can't always just rely on protests in the street. And it does seem like economic boycotts, economic pressure, trying to pressure, and then hopefully galvanize the business community to be on the side of the opposition is one of the big strategies and one of the more effective strategies. I just wonder how you think about that beyond Minnesota and in other places you've reported on and other countries where this has happened.
- [47:01]
Lydia Polgreen
Yeah, I mean, I think, just in general, I would say that the performance of the business community in the United States in response to the broad threats that Trump poses to American democracy has obviously been, like, beyond pathetic, craven, you know, just like, I mean, we're just talking like, Vichy stuff, right? Like, you know, just total, you know, bending of the knee. And not just bending of the knee, but, you know, really kind of like making the most of the opportunity. And, you know, we see little flickers of resistance with things like, you know, the absurd investigation of Jerome Powell, the Fed reserve chair, and, you know, and things that might ultimately imperil their bonuses, the insane stock market run that we've been on and all of that kind of stuff. But the reality is that I'm pretty sanguine about how much we can rely on big business to sort of come to the side of those who are seeking to limit the power of Donald Trump. And the reason is that the most effective forms of resistance are gonna be the ones where Trump has the least leverage. And because of the nature of our economic system in this country, he actually does have just absolutely enormous leverage over giant corporations. I mean, we're seeing this all the time, right? Any company that does business or is regulated by the federal government is scared shitless to get on the wrong side of Donald Trump. And they will, in a mealy mouth way, justify that by their obligation to their workers, to their shareholders, whatever, ultimately their obligation is to their own pocketbooks. And so I would like to think that courageous business leaders could be sort of an important pillar. But sadly, in so many countries that I have either reported in or have seen, you know, from afar, the sort of titans of industry are often one of the first pillars to fall, right, because they control media, they control finance, they control all of these things that are incredibly important but are also are interwoven with the state or regulated by the state. So, you know, we saw in Turkey, seen it in India, we've seen it in all of these places. And you know, we see inklings of it obviously here in the United States. You know, what's happening right now with CBS News and the Ellison's trying to buy Warner Brothers, we're really seeing the leverage that the government can bring to bear on basically any company. And you know, in the case of cbs, obviously you have a perfect storm of someone who you almost don't even really need the leverage because they're basically on the same side. You know, the Ellisons want what Donald Trump wants. Maybe not everything that Donald Trump wants, but you know, many of the things that Donald Trump wants. So, you know, while, yes, it would be great, you know, to have kind of wise corporate leaders who are looking at the long term and saying that ultimately, you know, the destruction of the global international order, the imposition of tariffs, the total shattering of the public goods that have led to American prosperity over, you know, my lifetime and yours and our parents lifetime, that that's ultimately going to be bad for America Inc. But you know, we live in a society of quarterly earnings based shareholder capitalism. And you know, these guys I think are ultimately just loyal to that and not really thinking about these longer term obligations that we have to one another and to our country.
- [50:42]
Jon Favreau
Given what you have seen and uncovered in other countries. And what you have been witnessing happen here, what parallels do you see between here and other places that are, you know, went through authoritarian backsliding or authoritarian takeovers? What's different about the US and where do you see here? Probably where the most effective forms of opposition and resistance might come from?
- [51:06]
Lydia Polgreen
Yeah. So just a few months into this Trump administration, an old friend from India came to visit, and he was. He's a journalist named Siddhartha Darjan, and he's been, you know, kind of under investigation by the Modi government there and has been fighting the good fight to try and do independent journalism in India, you know, could be jailed. And I asked him, you know, for his thoughts on. And he'd been on a speaking tour going around to the United States, and I asked him for his thoughts on what he was hearing. You know, he'd been speaking on university campuses and things like that, and compared to India. And he said, you know, the thing that really astonished him was that this had all happened so much faster in the United States, that this sort of slide towards authoritarianism was happening so very, very quickly, both in terms of the media, but also in terms of the opposition and other ways that the Trump administration had been able to consolidate power through, speed, through all of the things that we've seen over the past year. And I think that that was shocking to me at the time, but it's actually become less shocking with each passing month. Right. I mean, I think we've all discovered that we live in a democracy that is governed by incredibly soft norms rather than kind of hard principles. And, you know, you and I, as kind of ordinary people, you know, who vote and, you know, participate in this democracy, assumed were kind of ironclad laws, actually just turned out to be, you know, very soft customs. And so, you know, I think we are actually quite a bit further along the road than I would have expected to be compared to other places that I'd covered. You know, the other observation comes from a friend who covers Turkey and has written a couple of books about Turkey. And we were just talking, and she mentioned to me that she'd been asking people, what is your biggest regret? What is the one thing that you wish you had done earlier in this process? And she ended up asking the same question to people from a number of countries that had been through this kind of process of becoming more authoritarian. And the overwhelming answer was, we wish that we had replaced the leadership of the opposition. And that was really striking to me. And I think that it is something that we all really need to be thinking about and something that is actually incredibly hard to do here in the United States. We don't have like an opposition leader in the same way that you would in say a parliamentary system. You know, instead we have Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and then the sort of self anointed who wanna run for president in 2028. You know, we have people like Bernie Sanders and AOC who, you know, step out and put themselves, you know, on the front line. We've got people like Zoran Mamdani, but there's not a singular person or body that has the stature to say like, okay, we are to change direction. And you know, today we just saw like a group of, of, you know, so called moderate Democrats who went along with the Republicans in order to approve this, you know, giant fat hog of new funding for dhs. Like these are not serious people. Jared Golden, I mean, the guy's not even running for reelection in Maine and you know, he's telling us that he thinks this is necessary for the safety of people in Maine. Like, you know, sit down. Like we need new leaders in, in both chambers of Congress who I think really deeply understand the gravity of the crisis that we're in and are ready to really kind of fight to the death and treat this like the emergency that it actually is. So I think those are sort of two instructive things. The other thing is that I just think that more ordinary people need to get involved. You know, I think that, you know, we talk about protesting and in some ways I feel like protesting is sort of the wrong word. I think it's really organizing, you know, and a lot of the people who are on the ground in Minneapolis, they aren't even protesters, right? I mean, I mean they're just organizers. They're people who have organized to feed their neighbors, who can't go to the grocery store or who can't go to work and therefore can't afford groceries, you know, because they're afraid of getting picked up by ice. You know, they are collecting information. That kind of grassroots organizing, I think produces power that cannot be tainted by the broader structures that, you know, have pushed our society towards a kind of paralysis or waiting around, around for the midterms, waiting around for 2028. You know, the way that we make the midterms actually be effective is by people right now coming together in groups of solidarity to provide mutual aid for one another. And that's how you build kind of grassroots change in democracy. It's not like a deus Ex machina. You know, these billionaires are going to save us, or this charismatic leader is going to save us. You know, And I think the Mamdani campaign is actually a really great example of that. That in that it obviously helped lift a very charismatic leader. But, you know, the substrate of it is actually a meaningful movement that has, you know, transformed the politics of New York City. And not every city is the same. The issues aren't going to be the same. But I think that kind of democratic transformation is absolutely what we need in order to have a fighting chance to get out of this trap that we're in.
- [56:11]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, this is exactly where I've landed as well, which. Which is just like, broaden participation. I think there's a lot of people, understandably, who maybe were spoke out more in the first Trump term and did more in the first Trump term and were like, now I'm done. Either I'm exhausted or I'm scared, or I'm just. Politics is hopeless. And so, you know, I feel like getting more people to speak out and to participate. And then on the leadership front, it's just like, you know, I've been banging my head against the wall on this. But it's like, I do think there are some Democratic leaders and Democratic politicians who I think, think are speaking out and doing what they can and taking the right votes and saying the right things. I guess my bar is higher only because the situation is so much more dire right now. And so everyone's like, well, you know, we had Barack Obama. Barack Obama's a generational talent, and blah, blah. And I was like, well, we need multiple generational talents right now. And, like, I'm just waiting for people to step up. And you're right. Like, I think. I think you need that combined with the grassroots organizing of ordinary people coming into the political process. But you do need both.
- [57:16]
Lydia Polgreen
You totally need both. And, you know, I think. I think that, you know, there are people of talent, there are people who are doing courageous things. We can talk about some of the extraordinary moments over this past year. I mean, I thought when, you know, Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador at a moment when, you know, other Democrats were sort of, you know, bedwetting about whether immigration was too favorable an issue for the Republicans. You know, that showed real courage, and it showed, you know, real principle. And is Chris Van Hollen the most charismatic leader in the entire world? I mean, he's not bad, but, you know, we just need to remember that, like, action, yes, is what builds movements and what builds, you know, and frankly, like builds up the appeal of any particular leader, you know. And so I'd like to see more things like that, you know, people really putting themselves on the line rather than this like, you know, kind of moving, mealy mouth, like, let's find a way to be bipartisan and make a deal on a small corner of something that we care about and call it a win. This is not the time for that. This is the time for resistance.
- [58:18]
Jon Favreau
Lydia, thank you so much for this conversation and thank you always for the reporting you do, but especially going to Minnesota, your home state, and giving us a clearer picture of what's going on there. So thank you.
- [58:29]
Lydia Polgreen
It was great to catch up with you. Take care.
- [58:32]
Jon Favreau
Two quick notes. Cricket Media's newest book, Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Conservative Mind, is releasing next week on January 27th. It's by one of our favorite political journalists, New York Times Magazine writer Jason Zengerly. Tommy just interviewed Jason on Tuesday's Pod Save America. They had a fantastic conversation about the book, so make sure to check it out. This is your last week to pre order the book to get a discount, so just head to crooked.combooks to get your copy and check out Jason's book signing tour dates. And just a reminder for our Friends of the Pod and anyone who wants even more pose, we just launched a new weekly newsletter, Pod Save America Open Tabs. It releases every Thursday morning. Open Tabs offers a behind the scenes look at how we put Pod Save America together, what's coming in the next episode, and the stories rattling around in our heads before we get into the studio. Sign up for Friends of the Pod to get access to this newsletter@qriket.com friends and if you're already a subscriber to our substack or Discord, you'll start getting open tabs every week. As always. If you have comments, questions or guest ideas, email us@offlinecrucket.com and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad free episodes of Offline and Pod Save America, exclusive content and more, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. If you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events, and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Ilic. Frank Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jerrick Centeno is our sound editor and engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos. Every week, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.
- [60:58]
Lydia Polgreen
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