Politics
Biden pays respects as former Minnesota House Speaker Hortman, killed in shooting, lies in state
ST. PAUL, Minnesota — Former President Joe Biden joined thousands of mourners Friday as former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman lay in state in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda while the man charged with killing her and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, made a brief court appearance in a suicide prevention suit.
Hortman, a Democrat, is the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans accorded the honor. She lay in state with her husband, Mark, and their golden retriever, Gilbert. Her husband was also killed in the June 14 attack, and Gilbert was seriously wounded and had to be euthanized. It was the first time a couple has lain in state at the Capitol, and the first time for a dog.
The Hortmans’ caskets and the dog’s urn were arranged in the center of the rotunda, under the Capitol dome, with law enforcement officers keeping watch on either side as thousands of people who lined up filed by. Many fought back tears as they left.
Among the first to pay their respects were Gov. Tim Walz, who has called Hortman his closest political ally, and his wife, Gwen. Biden, a Catholic, visited later in the afternoon, walking up to the velvet rope in front of the caskets, making the sign of the cross, and spending a few moments by himself in silence. He then took a knee briefly, got up, made the sign of the cross again, and walked off to greet people waiting in the wings of the rotunda.
The Capitol was open for the public from noon to 5 p.m. Friday, but officials said anyone waiting in line at 5 would be let in. House TV livestreamed the viewing. A private funeral is set for 10:30 a.m. Saturday and will be livestreamed on the Department of Public Safety’s YouTube channel.
Biden will attend the funeral, a spokesperson said. So will former Vice President Kamala Harris, though neither is expected to speak. Harris expressed her condolences earlier this week to Hortman’s adult children, and spoke with Walz, her running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket, who extended an invitation on behalf of the Hortman family, her office said.
Lisa Greene, who lives in Brooklyn Park like Hortman did, but in a different House district, said she came to the Capitol because she had so much respect for the former speaker.
“She was just amazing. Amazing woman. “And I was just so proud that she represented the city that I lived in,” Greene said in a voice choked with emotion. “She was such a leader. She could bring people together. She was so accessible. I mean, she was friendly, you could talk to her.” But, she went on to say admiringly, Hortman was also “a boss. She just knew what she was doing and she could just make things happen.”
A hearing takes a twist: The man accused of killing the Hortmans and wounding another Democratic lawmaker and his wife made a short court appearance Friday to face charges for what the chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota has called “a political assassination.” Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, surrendered near his home the night of June 15 after what authorities have called the largest search in Minnesota history.
An unshaven Boelter was brought in wearing just a green padded suicide prevention suit and orange slippers. Federal defender Manny Atwal asked Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko to continue the hearing until Thursday. She said Boelter has been sleep deprived while on suicide watch in the Sherburne County Jail, and that it has been difficult to communicate with him as a result.
“Your honor, I haven’t really slept in about 12 to 14 days,” Boelter told the judge. And he denied being suicidal. “I’ve never been suicidal and I am not suicidal now.”
Atwal told the court that Boelter had been in what’s known as a “Gumby suit,” without undergarments, ever since his transfer to the jail after his first court appearance on June 16. She said the lights are on in his area 24 hours a day, doors slam frequently, the inmate in the next cell spreads feces on the walls, and the smell drifts to Boelter’s cell.
The attorney said transferring him to segregation instead, and giving him a normal jail uniform, would let him get some sleep, restore some dignity, and let him communicate better. The judge agreed.
Prosecutors did not object to the delay and said they also had concerns about the jail conditions.
The acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joseph Thompson, told reporters afterward that he did not think Boelter had attempted to kill himself.
The case continues: Boelter did not enter a plea. Prosecutors need to secure a grand jury indictment first, before his arraignment, which is when a plea is normally entered.
According to the federal complaint, police video shows Boelter outside the Hortmans’ home and captures the sound of gunfire. And it says security video shows Boelter approaching the front doors of two other lawmakers’ homes dressed as a police officer.
His lawyers have declined to comment on the charges, which could carry the federal death penalty. Thompson said last week that no decision has been made. Minnesota abolished its death penalty in 1911. The Death Penalty Information Center says a federal death penalty case hasn’t been prosecuted in Minnesota in the modern era, as best as it can tell.
Boelter also faces separate murder and attempted murder charges in state court that could carry life without parole, assuming that county prosecutors get their own indictment for first-degree murder. But federal authorities intend to use their power to try Boelter first.
Other victims and alleged targets: Authorities say Boelter shot and wounded Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, at their home in Champlin before shooting and killing the Hortmans in their home in the northern Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, a few miles away.
Federal prosecutors allege Boelter also stopped at the homes of two other Democratic lawmakers. Prosecutors also say he listed dozens of other Democrats as potential targets, including officials in other states. Friends described Boelter as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views. But prosecutors have declined so far to speculate on a motive.
Ken Paxton is less than a month out from the conclusion of a D.C.-outsider campaign for a Texas U.S. Senate seat that he privately admitted is being run by Washington.
“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming — you know — from D.C.,” Paxton said during a small fundraising event last month, according to an audio recording obtained by Blue Light News from a person in the room who does not support Paxton, and verified by another attendee.
“I don’t control message or what we’re doing.”
The lunch, hosted Sept. 24 in Washington by Chris Brinson and Susan Hirschmann of the D.C.-based lobbying firm Williams & Jensen, was attended by about a dozen people including Scott Kopple, VP of government relations at defense contractor BWXT.
“Texas is a big state, and some of these issues obviously resonate with real — I’ll call real people — you know, like back home,” Kopple, who did not respond to a request for comment, said to some chuckles in the room. “I know you need money to get the message out and stuff, but how does this stuff translate?”
Paxton replied saying: “I miss the days when I could go to, get around with all the people. But we have 32 million people, so let’s just say for the next 40 days I’m in front of 1,000 people a day — which I’m not — and that’s 40,000 people. Ten to 10.4 million people are gonna vote.”
“But then it comes down to your messaging,” he continued, “which in a federal race comes from other people a lot of times, which you don’t control.”
One attendee granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting said that Paxton never explicitly said he was referring to Trump’s team controlling his campaign, but “everybody knew what he was talking about.” The person said Paxton’s comments came amid a broader discussion about the national political environment.
“I don’t have ability to change anything,” Paxton went on. “So I have to live with whatever I’ve got. So it is a challenge.”
Paxton campaign adviser Nick Maddux said, “Campaigns don’t coordinate with super PACS and that’s obviously what AG Paxton was referring to,” in a statement to Blue Light News. “AG Paxton is thankful for the support and knows how important Texas is to keeping the majority which is why he’s on the ground every day talking to Texas, raising money, and taking his message directly to the people including with his statewide television buy that started over this past weekend.”
Neither Hirschmann nor Brinson responded to a request for comment.
In an audio recording of the same meeting obtained by The New York Times, Paxton told attendees the midterm convention hosted by Trump in Texas last month “dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.” Maddux described the article as “manipulated nonsense.” Playbook hasn’t heard the contents of the rest of the hourlong meeting.
The most recent New York Times/Siena poll has Paxton running 6 points behind Democratic challenger James Talarico.
The private comments follow a bitter primary campaign waged against Republican incumbent John Cornyn, whom Paxton framed as a “Washington insider” and “RINO” while publicly aligning himself with Trump.
“His money is coming from the D.C. establishment,” Paxton said of Cornyn while campaigning in Texas before the primary, the AP reported. “That’s how they always try to convince us from Washington with their money that we should select their person. Well, I’m not their person and I’m never going to be their person.”
Paxton maintains a cash advantage heading into November and announced a $20 million ad buy last month. The Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super political action committee closely aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, pledged millions to back Paxton earlier in September.
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President Donald Trump made major gains among Latino voters in 2024. Now, those same voters might cost Republicans control of Congress.
Fifty-nine percent of Latino registered voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared with 35% who favor Republican control, according to a new NBC News/Telemundo poll released Sunday. That 24-point gap for Democrats is twice the party’s lead compared to the September 2024 version of the poll.
A separate CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday also found Democrats ahead among Hispanic likely voters, with 60% backing a Democratic House candidate and 39% supporting a Republican.
The findings threaten gains the GOP made in 2024, when Trump narrowed Democrats’ long-standing advantage among Latino voters. A POLITICO analysis of that year’s election results found that Trump improved his vote share by an average of more than 6 percentage points in majority-Hispanic counties, compared with 2020.
With the midterms approaching, Republicans have made those gains central to their push to maintain control of the House. When Texas Republicans revealed their redistricting proposal last year, four of the five potential GOP pickup opportunities were in majority-Hispanic districts.
Meanwhile, Trump’s overall approval rating among Latino registered voters stands at just 27% in the NBC/Telemundo poll, while 69% disapprove. On the economy specifically, 74% of Latino voters disapprove of Trump’s handling, while 78% disapprove of how he’s dealt with cost-of-living concerns.
Nearly two-thirds, 65%, say Trump’s policies have hurt economic conditions. Inflation and cost of living rank as the most important issues facing the country for 33% of respondents, followed by government corruption at 22%. Another 10% named jobs and the economy.
Economic frustration helped drive Latino voters toward Trump in 2024, with Democrats across the country suggesting in the aftermath of his victory that he was better able to connect with the voting bloc on financial issues.
But now, Latino voters seem to favor Democrats over Republicans on the economy, 48% to 27%, and the cost of living, 45% compared to 26%.
The war with Iran, now in its seventh month, is also weighing on voters’ perceptions of energy costs. In September, the average price of diesel hit a record $6.53, according to AAA.
In the CBS survey, 91% of Hispanic registered voters attributed rising U.S. oil and gas prices to the conflict.
Trump’s immigration crackdown is also putting vulnerable Republicans on the defensive. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) released an ad in English and Spanish criticizing the administration for going “too far” on immigration and saying Hispanics who backed Trump in 2024 feel “betrayed.”
In the days immediately following her ad, Trump told reporters that he still supported Salazar. “I’m very strong on the borders — and she isn’t,” Trump said. But the president later reposted a flurry of social media messages criticizing Salazar on Truth Social, including one calling for the Florida Republican’s replacement ahead of the midterms.
In the NBC/Telemundo poll, 67% of Latino voters say Trump’s immigration enforcement has gone too far, compared with 22% who say he has taken the right approach.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dissatisfaction with Trump and Republicans has not translated into broadly positive views of Democrats. According to the NBC poll, Latino voters remain nearly evenly divided on the Democratic Party, with 41% viewing it positively and 42% negatively. Negative views of the GOP, meanwhile, have climbed to 62%, up from 46% in September 2024.
The NBC/Telemundo survey of 800 Latino registered voters was conducted Sept. 21-28 and has a margin of error of ±3.46%. The CBS/YouGov survey of 2,166 adults was conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 2, with a margin of error of ±2.5 points.
CONCORD, New Hampshire— Pete Buttigieg is barnstorming the nation in the final weeks before the midterms, boosting candidates in battlegrounds and even areas traditionally hostile to Democrats. And it’s helping him look beyond November.
Down the homestretch, Buttigieg is set to campaign in at least six states: North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia and Nevada, along with his adopted home state of Michigan, according to an itinerary shared first with Playbook by a spokesperson for Win the Era, his political group.
Buttigieg has been refining his campaign trail message as he crisscrosses the country, connecting concrete cost-of-living concerns to the more abstract need for political reform.
It’s a kind of real-world testing that helps him further define his political brand at the same time that he leverages it to “be useful,” as he so often puts it, to his party.
“I have a lot of conviction that, actually, your economic message only has credibility if you have a reform message, too,” Buttigieg said in an interview after a Rochester Opera House rally where he received a standing ovation. “Because otherwise, what you’re doing is you’re saying things that people agree with, which is great, but they might not believe that you can actually deliver it.”
He’s also building the kinds of relationships with voters and party leaders that can be useful if he runs for president in 2028, a question he was repeatedly asked. (“We’ll see,” he told one woman at the Deerfield Fair.)
“For Pete, it’s less about getting credit nationally for what he’s done for Democrats and more about building relationships in places that will be beneficial down the line,” said David Axelrod, a Buttigieg confidant.
Buttigieg’s status as an in-demand surrogate was on full display during his 48-hour swing through the Granite State, where he finished “a very, very, very close second place” to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2020 primary, as Buttigieg put it in Saturday evening remarks at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner in Concord.
“I couldn’t ask for a better wingman,” Rep. Chris Pappas said, introducing Buttigieg at the packed rally Friday in Rochester. “People know that he’s a trusted voice,” Stefany Shaheen, who is running for Pappas’ seat, told Blue Light News after campaigning at a book store, cafe and candy shop with Buttigieg along Elm Street in Manchester.
How Buttigieg is learning from the midterms
Buttigieg has neither a battleground governorship nor a personal fortune to wire into midterm races. What he has put on offer is himself: He’s made more than 100 endorsements this cycle, campaigning in person for roughly half of them, and stops in 37 states since he left the Transportation Department.
Buttigieg was welcomed in places where candidates shunned some of his potential rivals. He campaigned with Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa as they run for governor and senator, respectively. He backed Brandon Dukes in his special election effort to flip a Pennsylvania state House seat that Trump won by 18 points. He was alone among his peers in endorsing Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin in his victory over longtime Rep. John Larson in Connecticut.
“If I can help give voice to what people are after in diverse geographies, including very conservative areas,” he said, “turns out that’s my best use of time.”
Buttigieg admitted he wasn’t certain what role he would play in the party’s midterms at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Now he’s processing all of the data and inputs he’s receiving along his travels.
“I’m learning a lot about our country and our party as I go, and what I’m seeing is that people have a real hunger for change,” he told Blue Light News. “First of all, in policy. Secondly, in the kind of politics that we have, and third, in the system itself.”
That’s developed into a core argument in his speeches connecting the cost of living to political reform: “If we want the kitchen table to be better off, we got to deal with the political system that is kicking the legs out from under the kitchen table,” Buttigieg said at the Rochester Opera House Friday evening.
It’s a message that can last long beyond the midterms, and Buttigieg is trying to point his party there.
“Part of what I’m really trying to push my party on is the need to have answers for ‘then what,’” he said. “There’s a big ‘then what’ for when Donald Trump leaves the political scene, but there’s an immediate ‘then what’ starting on Nov. 4.”
A Democratic Congress, he argued, needs “a compelling governing vision coming out of the gate” and should move quickly on tariffs, the minimum wage, tax fairness, health care, the Child Tax Credit and political reforms including gerrymandering.
The 2028 question
Even as he sidestepped several questions from reporters about his next moves, saying he was focused on 2026, remnants of his 2020 campaign and hints of a future one piled up. People wore “Pete for New Hampshire” buttons and T-shirts. His old playlist, including Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Around the Bend,” played at the Friday night rally.
At the Roosevelt dinner the next night, in front of a sold-out crowd of over 400, Buttigieg earned a standing ovation that ended in “Pete, Pete, Pete” chants.
“Pete had a great New Hampshire organization in 2020, nearly winning,” Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, told Blue Light News. “If anything, his popularity here has grown.”
Much has changed since then.
On Saturday evening, instead of walking out to Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes,” his ubiquitous anthem back then, or even Imagine Dragons’ “It’s Time,” which he road-tested last year, Buttigieg employed “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals.
There have been deeper changes, too: Buttigieg is now the father of 5-year-old twins, Gus and Penelope. He is weighing whether he can run for president and remain a good and present father.
His husband, Chasten, is a “great dad” and “knows why I’m on the road.”
Back on the road, Buttigieg is winning over those who didn’t back him in 2020.
At the back of the room in Rochester on Friday night, the town’s Mayor Chuck Grassie wore a “Pete for New Hampshire” button as he took in the scene. Grassie, who backed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020 and considers himself a “pragmatic progressive,” said Buttigieg could knit together the party’s moderate and progressive factions.
“He’s a guy I think would attract a lot of people,” Grassie said. “And a lot of people I talk to are saying, ‘You know, he’s looking better and better every day.’”
Added Grassie: “In New Hampshire, I think Pete may be the guy to beat.”
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