Good morning. A Lynx star has returned in winning fashion.

The gunman who assassinated Melissa and Mark Hortman and seriously wounded John and Yvette Hoffman gets sentenced today. The hearing in U.S. District Court will give the Hoffmans and the family of the Hortmans a chance to address the devastation Boelter caused. Yvette Hoffman, the wife of the DFL state senator, previewed her message in a Facebook post yesterday that denounced Boelter’s request to serve the almost-certain life sentence at a prison in Florida. “The defendant is worried about his comfort. His victims lost their futures, and countless families will carry the trauma he caused for the rest of their lives,” she wrote. Hoffman said she would deliver a victim impact statement in court Thursday “for those who no longer can and for those of us who will live with the consequences of his choices forever.” The sentencing hearing before Judge John Tunheim begins at 10 a.m. in Minneapolis. 

Some endorsed Republican candidates are facing tough challenges this year that threaten to break a 30-year trend of endorsed candidates moving on to the November ballot. Dana traveled to Brainerd to get the latest from the slate of endorsed candidates. Businessman Kendall Qualls and Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze beat competitors for the GOP endorsements for governor and U.S. senator, respectively. But opponents who are more widely known and have more money remained in the race for the party’s nomination. The endorsement, which typically slingshots a candidate to a primary win, hasn’t brought much momentum. “It's been a jump. It hasn't been a high-dive springboard, if you will,” Qualls said. “Obviously, we have Lisa Demuth that didn't honor her commitment to abide by the endorsement, so that's been an issue.” Recent polls suggest Demuth and Mike Lindell have had more appeal to voters in the race for governor. In the Senate contest, former TV sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya has led the pack among Republicans.

Mike Lindell is now officially registered to vote in the election where he is seeking to advance in the race to become Minnesota governor. The Star Tribune reported last week that Lindell had yet to register after moving back from Texas. But Lindell told the newspaper for an update that he believes a state recording error kept him off the voter rolls. State agency officials outlined the process to the Star Tribune’s Walker Orenstein . At an event in Sauk Centre yesterday, Lindell told our Tadeo Ruiz Sandoval that he believed he had been automatically registered when he got his driver’s license. Lindell also touted a lucrative fundraiser he held at a Trump golf course last weekend where the president popped in, Joe Piscopo appeared and “the people there said it was the most entertaining fundraiser that they’ve ever been to.” He said he pulled in upwards of a million dollars, which we won’t be able to fact check until a new round of fundraising reports come out later this month. “I'm the only one that can win because we can have the national money brought in,” Lindell said. 

Polling released by KSTP this week shows the MyPillow CEO is leading the GOP field for governor, sportscaster Michele Tafoya leading the GOP U.S. Senate primary and U.S. Rep. Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in a close DFL Senate primary. KSTP’s newest poll out front with 35 percent support, gaining support since Trump’s endorsement. Demuth trails him, getting 26 percent and Qualls is a distant third with just 11 percent. A significant 22 percent of people were still undecided. Tafoya easily leads the GOP Senate race, with 41 percent support. Royce White was closest with 10 percent and GOP-endorsed Adam Schwarze is half that. Plenty were undecided. On the DFL side, Craig and Flanagan both had 40 percent, with 16 percent undecided. 

Those numbers might be changing the calculus for some. Lisa Demuth’s campaign has been so far relatively focused on Democrat Amy Klobuchar, but yesterday turned her focus to Mike Lindell. She pointed to a proposal from Lindell that would grant a six month amnesty period for undocumented immigrants in Minnesota. She said such a proposal “will only make Minnesota more of a magnet — I would expect this from Amy Klobuchar and Tim Walz, but I’m surprised to see it coming from a fellow GOP candidate for governor,” Demuth said. Demuth has spent little time since the convention talking about Qualls, the endorsed party candidate. 

 

Nicole Mitchell is attempting a political comeback. The former state senator has filed to run for Woodbury City Council just a year after her conviction on felony burglary charges. Mitchell is a DFLer who resigned from the Legislature after a Becker County jury found her guilty of breaking into her stepmother's Detroit Lakes home in 2024. She received a six-month jail sentence last September, which she was allowed to serve closer to home. She filed this week for what is technically a nonpartisan office. Her website says she'll focus on clean water issues and transparency in city decisions. Multiple candidates are running for four at-large seats in the growing eastern suburb. Mitchell said  she has knocked about 1,000 doors in the district and voters have been receptive to her pitch. “Most people, if I get to the door, they say, "Oh, you know, we supported you before, we support you still,’ and they kind of understand that the level of charges in my case was based more on politics than reality for how family situations are usually handled. So I think there's a lot of empathy,” she said.

A new report from CNN’s Jake Tapper looks at the 19 days between the fatal shootings by ICE officers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti . He describes how pressure from the Trump administration after the shootings led to the departures of several longtime DOJ employees. Tapper reports that federal prosecutors were denied the ability to conduct a normal investigation of the Good shooting by top Justice Department officials. When they filed a search warrant to look at the blood spatter and bullet trajectories, it was signed off on by a judge. But then the FBI sat on it. DOJ officials then told local prosecutors to rewrite the warrant to instead investigate whether Good was a “domestic terrorist.” The story rehashes the implosion at the U.S. Attorney’s office for Minnesota where several key top prosecutors resigned instead of doing work they saw as overtly political. “It was a shock to me to have agents lying to me. They were telling me that they had been pushed or shoved and I would accept it, and I would assign the case. And then defense lawyers or somebody would show me a video that showed it was not true,” said former prosecutor Tom Calhoun-Lopez. Tapper reports on other departures from the DOJ’s criminal section of the civil rights division because of the shooting responses. 

Medicare for All is a rallying cry for some, but not all Democrats on the campaign trail. MinnPost’s Ana Radelat reports on a split looming on a key issue for voters among DFL candidates. While progressives are pushing for Medicare for All, centrist candidates are pushing for a public option instead. In the 1st Congressional District, which has been reliably Republican since 2019, Jake Johnson is running to unseat GOP U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad. Johnson told a crowd he supports “a strong public option to the health insurers we have now.” A public option would start up a government-run health insurance plan that would compete with the private market. Medicare for All would create a government-run health insurance program for all Americans. In the 2nd Congressional District, DFLer Matt Little is firmly in the Medicare for All camp, while the other DFL candidates — state Rep. Kaela Berg and state Sen. Matt Klein — are more open to a public option. In the U.S. Senate race, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig supports a public option, while Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan wants the broader Medicare for All.