Minneapolis has “a very detached, bourgeois, liberal mentality,” according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara in a press conference in May of 2025.

His comments perfectly encompass the stigma surrounding Minnesota’s democratic political base. While the rest of the world views Minneapolis as the center of protests and racially-biased killings all laid out on the grounds of a Native American genocide, it’s really not that different from any other blue state. In reality, the distorted projection of Minnesotan political wokeness on the national stage is not based on fact, but rather a false claim pushed by Republicans to justify extremist action.

Yet, the concept of this intense focus on Minnesota leaves us with an interesting question: why us? If Trump were going after his enemy, surely it would be Democrats from a more relevant, larger state, namely New York or California, which have historically gone blue in state-level elections and have voted against Trump in every possible presidential election. Yet, they are rarely attacked as directly as Minnesota has been in the past month.

The most logical explanation as to why Trump is targeting his bullying at a relatively average state is obvious, and it’s because of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Walz ran against Trump in the 2024 presidential election, where he was Kamala Harris’ vice presidential candidate, and Trump has been very vocal in his distaste towards Walz in the past.

“He’s a loser,” Trump said in a Fox News interview.

Even more so, since their election drama, Walz hasn’t tried to appease the administration in the least. In fact, he slammed Project 2025, continues to support high school transgender athletes, and has spoken out against the extreme austerity measures taken by the Trump administration.

All of this is fueling a mutual hatred, but the difference between them is clear: Walz is acting professionally, while Trump is creating a campaign of fearmongering and targeting Minnesotan minorities.

And Trump, and his fellow Republicans, aren’t being discreet in their plan to drum up foundational hatred towards Minnesota. Headlines such as “Somali Daycare Fraud” and “Black Lives Matter Riots” were presented in a way that pushes a narrative of destructive or violent Minnesotan tendencies.

For instance, the headline “Somali Welfare Fraud in Minnesota Has Cost American Taxpayers Billions” published by Republican think tank the Heritage Foundation, acts as a perfect representative of the blatant vilification of Minnesota. Not only are Somali groups fundamental to the culture of the state, but the direct mention of Minnesota in the name insinuates that the state and its minorities are directly responsible for stealing money from the reader’s pocket.

This criminal portrayal of the state occurs constantly. In fact, almost anytime a scandal takes place, Republicans are ready to push the state back into its destructively radical box.

Even movements that fought for an undeniably good cause, such as the rights of oppressed minorities, have been used as a tool of the Republican hive mind to attempt to give the state a bad name. The 2021 headline “‘They Have Lost Control’: Why Minneapolis Burned” from the New York Times in regard to the Black Lives Matter protests, and even an article published last week by Fox News titled “Anti-ICE agitators arrested at a federal building in Minneapolis after lewd objects hurled at law enforcement” pin Minnesota against either the federal government or as its own destructive entity that must be stopped.

And that’s exactly the tool they are using to bully Minnesotans into Republican submission and exert extreme violence against them.

This cruel method of oppression isn’t new, but rather, a tool that has been used for centuries to suppress innocent protestors and peacemakers.

One of the most violent took place in the early 1900s and was aptly entitled “The Red Scare.”

The event took place in the wake of World War One, during which communism began to spread across Russia, inspiring fear in the eyes of constitutional democracies across the world. In the same vein, workers’ strikes, largely led by Black Americans, began to spread across the U.S., generating similar fear of social change.

Yet, instead of listening to and serving the community when it came to their valid concerns, the U.S. government decided they could ignore the voices of their citizens and grouped them in with the breed of socially-destructive anarchists many had grown to fear.

Headlines from that time villainized minorities and innocent parties, attaching the name “Reds” to anyone who dared challenge the policies of the decade and thereby creating an enemy from people who used to be seen as traditionally contributing members of America.

And politicians weren’t safe from the isolation. Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy piloted a program of political isolation and polarization at the federal level decades after the original Red Scare, the most atrocious of which took place in a 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia.

“I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department,” McCarthy said.

“He has lighted the spark, which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted, warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of honesty and decency in government,” he continued.

This statement created mistrust between citizens and their representatives, and when paired with a reinforced hatred of minorities, gave the politicians the chance to knock down their political opponents and disrupt the lives of people of color.

This happened first during the Palmer Raids in the 20s, which allowed the government to deport Russian immigrants, anarchists, and left-wing individuals, whether or not they were communist. Additionally, minority communities, including Black and Jewish people, were persecuted, shunned socially, removed from their communities, and lived under extreme scrutiny and destruction, and no one did anything; in fact, the majority supported it because they believed their own lives and government were truly in danger, which continued throughout the 50s and 60s.

It is this same sense of fear that Trump is using to monger fear and garner support for dangerous actions today in our home state.

By deceiving his followers into believing that protestors trying to protect their Hispanic and Black neighbors are inciting violence and stealing money from citizens, Trump and Republican extremists are inviting Americans to be afraid of the hypothetical destruction of their own country.

And as we have seen time and time again, fear is a powerful tool.

That’s why Republicans are turning a blind eye to the unconstitutional murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. That’s why we Minnesotans on the front lines are endlessly confused as to why our Republican family members in other states believe there is a problem here that needs to be solved. And that’s why Trump is pushing Minnesota as far down as it will go.

Now, it’s obvious that Minnesota is not the extremist outlier that the world has been led to believe, but instead is a victim of Trump’s campaign of fear in order to maintain oppression. So I urge everyone, in these times of darkness and uncertainty, to challenge their own fear, because we are stronger than deception.

This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on Feb. 19, 2026