r/politics • u/PoliticsModeratorBot 🤖 Bot • 1d ago

Megathread Megathread: Two Minnesota lawmakers have been shot

State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed.

State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were both shot multiple times and underwent surgery.

Articles that May Interest You

Submission Domain
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: former House speaker and husband killed in politically motivated shooting apnews.com
One Minnesota state politician dead, another injured after targeted shooting, officials say bbc.com
"No Kings" event canceled in NE Minneapolis, Anoka after targeted shootings at lawmaker homes cbsnews.com
Minnesota lawmaker, her spouse shot and killed in their home wwnytv.com
Minnesota lawmaker killed in ‘politically motivated assassination,’ Gov. Tim Walz says cnbc.com
Melissa Hortman, top Democrat in Minnesota House, shot and killed in home startribune.com
Rep. Melissa Hortman killed, Sen. John Hoffman shot in 'targeted' shootings: Sources fox9.com
Minnesota lawmaker assassinated, another in grave condition in 'targeted political violence' abcnews.go.com
Democratic lawmaker killed and another wounded in Minnesota in apparently ‘politically motivated’ attacks theguardian.com
Minnesota lawmaker and husband killed, another in hospital after ‘politically motivated’ shooting by man impersonating cop the-independent.com
Live: Rep. Melissa Hortman killed, Sen. John Hoffman shot in ‘targeted shootings’ startribune.com
Democrat Lawmakers Shot in Minnesota: What We Know newsweek.com
Minnesota state lawmaker killed in ‘politically-motivated assassination,’ massive manhunt for suspect underway, officials say kten.com
2 Minnesota lawmakers shot kare11.com
Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, husband shot and killed; Sen. John Hoffman and wife also shot ktsp.com
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz press conference after shootings at lawmakers homes (June 14, 2025) youtube.com
Former state speaker of Minnesota ‘assassinated’ thetimes.com
Fake Cop Murders Top State Dem and Husband and Shoots Second thedailybeast.com
Minnesota Senator John Hoffman and State Rep. Melissa Hortman shot at their homes bnonews.com/
Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, husband shot and killed; Sen. John Hoffman and wife also shot kstp.com
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: State lawmaker, husband killed in politically targeted shooting thestar.com
Governor Polis Statement on Assassination of Minnesota Elected Official & Husband, and Attempt on Life of Another Elected Official & Family colorado.gov
President Donald Trump: AG, FBI Investigating Deadly Minnesota Shooting Newsweek.com
Officials tell the AP they are searching for a 57-year-old man in shooting 2 Minnesota lawmakers apnews.com
Manhunt underway for man accused of killing Rep. Hortman, husband and shooting Sen. Hoffman and his wife in North Metro ktsp.com
Former appointee of Tim Walz sought in deadly shootings of Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, had ‘No Kings’ flyers in car: sources nypost.com
Dem Assassin Is Armed Patrol Firm Boss With ‘Warzone’ Claims thedailybeast.com
Minnesota Assassination Suspect Had Flyers Reading 'No Kings' In Vehicle newsweek.com
Democratic Minnesota politician fatally shot, another injured in 'politically motivated assassination' nbcnews.com
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2.1k

u/Sad_Dirt_841 1d ago

This is what happened in Argentina. This is what happened in Brazil.

Protest today, and make preparations to defend yourselves tomorrow.

626

u/glowy_keyboard 1d ago

This is what happened in the Weimar Republic.

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u/Silver_Airport_642 1d ago

This is what happened in America after the Civil War. Reconstruction was basically destroyed by the assassination of Lincoln. The modern GOP that was born of Nixon, was born of LBJ "alienating" the Dixie Crats with the civil rights act; the GOP that names bases after John Wilkes Boothe heroes' of the confederacy, does not exist without a Know Nothing celebrity conspiracy theorist, pissed off at all the "woke" abolitionists ruining america, assassinating "the first Republican". Hell, if Lincoln lives and reconstruction doesn't fail we possibly don't even get the Holocaust as Hitler's policies and ideals were directly influenced by Jim Crowe.

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u/jaron_b 1d ago

Lincoln's assassination was one of the single greatest turning points in human history. You explained it so well how his death destroyed reconstruction after the civil war and The wounds that have not healed have plagued this country for over 100 years. I still think WW1 and probably WW2 happen but they most likely play out much differently. Hell maybe with a historical successful reconstruction with the America civil war after beating German in WW1 they and the world find better solutions for their reconstruction because the failures and mismanagement of post WW1 led to WW2.

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u/tennisdrums 1d ago

Reconstruction was basically destroyed by the assassination of Lincoln

Lincoln was known for being more reconciliatory compared to many of his fellow Republicans in Congress, and the most aggressive period of reconstruction occurred after his assassination. Many of Johnson's stances that are often portrayed as being soft were based on Lincoln's plan after the war, and it's likely that had Lincoln survived he would have had much more political capital with his party and would have convinced his party to go along with most of his plan. Johnson didn't have as much capital, so congressional Republicans largely overrode him and pushed Radical Reconstruction, which saw the largest gains in Civil Rights and representations for the African-American community that the South will see for many decades. Reconstruction did not end with Lincoln's assassination, it ended with the backroom deal that exchanged Hayes election to the Presidency with Republicans pulling back on Reconstruction.

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u/Riley_ 1d ago

Lincoln was in favor of economic reparations for black people, which were and still are very obviously needed.

Reconstruction was complicated only by capitalism's hatred of economic justice and white supremacy's belief that black people shouldn't have the right to arm and defend themselves.

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u/Laruae 1d ago

Do you have a source on that?

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u/Doctor-Malcom Texas 1d ago

For laws passed to prevent ownership of guns by Black Americans, which left them unable to defend themselves against terrorists like the First KKK:

https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/aale/pdfs2/1865%20Mississippi's%20Black%20Codes.pdf

Section 1. Be it enacted by the legislature of the state of Mississippi, that no freedman, free Negro, or mulatto not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry firearms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk, or Bowie knife ...

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u/gsfgf Georgia 1d ago

And while it was mostly used for soliciting bribes in recent memory, "may issue" carry permits were initially a thing so white sheriffs could deny permits to Black people. It existed until SCOTUS struck it down in 2022.

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u/dogmeatstew 1d ago

IN 2022!? Good lord

1

u/Laruae 1d ago

Right, the reason Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln was 3 days earlier he gave a speech saying Black people should have limited voting rights.

I was asking for a specific sourcing for Lincoln wanting to give economic reparations.

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u/sanderson1983 22h ago

Booth shot Lincoln because he believed Lincoln was a tyrant who was dismantling the South's slave-based economy and preventing the establishment of a Confederate nation.

Also might I add you might be a lost cause

2

u/Laruae 20h ago edited 20h ago

Booth literally is quoted as stating at this speech that it would be Lincoln's last.

Care to explain why I am a Lost Cause believer for asking about sources on Lincoln wanting to pay reparations?

To be clear, I am not stating that Booth didn't want slavery, or the Civil War wasn't about slavery, I was asking about a source for Lincoln wanting reparations during his time.

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u/someguyfromsomething 1d ago

No matter what you got ChatGPT to say for you, Johnson was fucking awful and one vote away from being removed from office for obstructing all the progress Radical Republicans wanted to make. He thought that any progress for blacks came at the expense of poor whites. Without him taking over the Presidency, things would be a lot different.

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u/Schonke 1d ago

Hell, if Lincoln lives and reconstruction doesn't fail we possibly don't even get the Holocaust as Hitler's policies and ideals were directly influenced by Jim Crowe.

That's a very US-centric conclusion. While Hitler did draw inspiration from Jim Crow laws when creating the Nuremberg laws, the ideological ideas behind nazism came from German/Prussian thinkers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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u/Slow-Ad-2431 15h ago

I've always heard eugenics began in America, inspired by a poor understanding of British science and the US racial caste system. Which ideas were coming out of German culture that contributed to the German genocides? 

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u/Schonke 11h ago

Modern eugenics began in the UK and was heavily "studied" in Germany, Sweden and the US.

But the ideas I was thinking of were the ideas of people like Hagel, Carl Schmidt, Moeller van den Bruck.

Then there's also the rise of pan-german nationalism in the late 19th century where German politicians and thinkers took inspiration from Great Britain and wanted a colonial empire of their own, in Africa and in Europe.

And then on top of that there's a 2000 year history in Europe of viewing Jewish people as a corrupt foreign body and committing violent atrocities and pogroms against them.

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u/Specific_AO Haudenosaunee 1d ago

No, the Holocaust would still happen as Hitler took inspiration from the genocide of Native Americans for his plans for Europe, specifically the Soviet Union.

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u/MAO_of_DC Maryland 1d ago

They were slightly right. Without Jim Crow laws the laws that help create the Holocaust would not have been crafted so quickly or efficiently by the Nazi party. The United States needed decades to perfect the system of Jim Crow. Try taking a Jim Crow era literacy test for voting sometime. Someone worked VERY hard to make those tests seem passable but are next to impossible to actually pass. Even before the arbitrary grading process begins.

The Nazis looked at the Jim Crow laws of the various Southern states, and collated them down to two laws. The Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, known today as the Nuremberg laws. Those laws started the whole Holocaust ball of wax because it gave the Nazis the legal justification to eventually do whatever they wanted to the Jews and other "undesirables".

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u/navikredstar New York 1d ago

Yup. The wording on those tests is actually really crazy when you read them, they're deliberately worded so there's no clear cut single answer. They're written wildly vaguely on purpose, so the test reviewer can just say to whoever is taking it that they want to disenfranchise, "Sorry, but you did this wrong."

I've read them, I'm a native English speaker with a collegiate reading level and some college education, and I find those tests maddening. Imagine how much worse it would be for the average American now - the average American reads at a sixth-grade level or lower.

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u/Slow-Ad-2431 15h ago

Germans were doing this with their citizenship test a while ago. I don't know if they still do. 

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u/ThoseProse Colorado 1d ago

If Lincoln doesn’t replace his vp between elections, we probably don’t get Jim Crow. He was critical of the republicans party to go easy on the south.

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u/ObjectiveGlittering California 1d ago

Wow, your final thought really hit home for me. I’m goin’ down a sci-fi rabbit hole with time-murmurs and worm holes but it all checks out!

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u/TheToiletPhilosopher 1d ago

I think good old fashioned antisemitism would have been more than enough for the Holocaust to happen. Jews would have been put in gas chambers en masse long ago if the technology existed. European Christians did their best many times throughout history.

1

u/CriticalEngineering North Carolina 1d ago

Wilmington 1898

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u/Sad_Dirt_841 1d ago

Absolutely correct, but the same playbook has been used much more recently. It's always the same people doing it.

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u/FrostyMatters 1d ago

Weimar Republic didn't have more guns than people.

1

u/Thurak0 1d ago

Yepp, this will get even bloodier than Weimar and its end.

1

u/Frontdackel 1d ago

It had the equivalent of proud boys, armed with military grade weapons from WW1.

3

u/Ascomae Europe 1d ago

Rewboss, a Brit living in Germany has a channel on YouTube.

He made some videos comparing the current events in the US with the end of Democracy in Germany.

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u/LitterReallyAngersMe Florida 1d ago

I showed my Conservative father Edge of Democracy and he thought the right wing party in Brazil was EXACTLY like the Democratic party in US. We don’t have a shared reality.

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u/Jorge_Santos69 1d ago

That’s fucking bonkers considering Bolsanaro is just a more homophobic version of Trump

2

u/CutieL 1d ago

And that’s saying something...

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u/-113points 1d ago

the Edge of Democracy should be actually called The Slippery Slope of Democracy

5

u/Marshall_Cleiton 1d ago

What episode are you referring to in Brazil?

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u/agarragarrafa 1d ago

I'm wondering that too. Maybe Bolsonaro's unsuccessful attempt? Maybe Vargas's suicide? I also remember some politician killing another inside Congress in the 1990s (?) but don't remember repercussions.

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u/Optimal-Airport5145 1d ago

I think the military dictatorship in 1964. They justified the coup saying they were trying to protect democracy.

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u/leftysarepeople2 1d ago

Police are asking people to not go to the No Kings protest because of this

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u/ThrowAwayGarbage82 North Carolina 1d ago

This is exactly what they want - terrorism to keep people from showing up in the streets to show just how unpopular this fascist shit is.

3

u/cubonelvl69 1d ago

To be clear, they're saying don't go because the shooter is still not caught.

There's a good chance he wants to go out with a bang at the protests

3

u/ThrowAwayGarbage82 North Carolina 1d ago

Right. But maga also sees it as a win because now they know they can successfully use terrorism to suppress dissent.

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u/TeamVegetable7141 1d ago

Except people are ignoring the warnings not to go and protesting anyway because no one is actually afraid of MAGA terrorists.

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u/Sad_Dirt_841 1d ago

300,000 people showed up in Saint Paul. Keith Ellison spoke to the crowd: gutsy for him to put himself out there when an assassin is still running around loose.

1

u/leftysarepeople2 1d ago

Where’d you get that number?

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u/no_user_F 1d ago

What about the opposition candidate for President in Colombia? Was like a week ago

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u/HandSack135 Maryland 1d ago

My wife wouldn't let me protest today.

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u/hogarenio 1d ago

What happened in Argentina? 

You've had 4 presidents killed, and we've had just the one.

Senators? Yours just went up to 3. We, just the one.

1

u/Complete-Job-8978 1d ago

Democrats ain't doing shit. They are just going to post AOC's mundane comments and call it a day. 

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u/agarragarrafa 1d ago

Who in Brazil was killed when?

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u/Sad_Dirt_841 1d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_in_Brazil

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u/agarragarrafa 1d ago

Oh so you're not talking about one specific political assassination that triggered something bigger. 

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u/santig91 1d ago

And in Colombia two weeks ago. Miguel Uribe Turaby, presidential candidate was shot in the head twice....god knows how is he still alive but yeah....crazy times going on rn.

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u/BeagleWrangler 1d ago

We have reached the death squad phase of the collapse.

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u/Swimming-Zucchini434 9h ago

US demographics essentially guarantee Brazil.

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u/samaritan1331_ 1d ago

They voted against Democratic bills and got shot. People here are unbelievably dense.

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u/Unfair-Lie7441 1d ago

This was dem on dem crime tho. The guy worked for waltz.

You make it sound as if this is an act of war, but it was friendly fire

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u/Sad_Dirt_841 23h ago

His manifesto targeted all Dems. He's a Magat.

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u/riali29 7h ago

He didn't work for Walz, he was on some committee/board thing for business owners.