Hans Buetow: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a show
for and about the Internet. I am your senior producer and today's
host of the show Hans Buto. I am also a resident of Minnesota,
born and raised in the Twin Cities. I am sixth generation
Saint Paul, and I'm coming to you now in your ears with a
sudden unexpected off publish day episode because my state,
Minnesota, is at the epicenter of a few things that are
happening right now in politics. I'm realizing that I don't
really fully understand all of it and I need some help.
If I'm a local who's having trouble I can only imagine how
confusing it is if you have questions about Minnesota and
what on earth is happening but you don't live here. So today, I
am hoping to get some perspective with the help of one
of my favorite local reporters in the Twin Cities to help me
understand because local reporting, if you don't know,
helps us understand ourselves. We're gonna understand a little
bit about how this what this has to do with the Internet, which
is spoiler alert quite a bit because of just, you know, how
the world is, what the administration is. But I have
with me to help me understand M Castle. Hello.
Hello, M. I'm so happy I'm to see so happy to see you. You are
the co owner and founder of the excellent local independent
journalism powerhouse Racket, which covers arts, culture,
restaurants, politics, kind of everything else relevant to
living here in the Twin Cities. I redo every day, and I'm so
happy to be talking to you.
Em Cassel: It is such an honor to be here, Hans. Thank you so
much. We have a lot of fun doing what we do.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. I can tell and I love having fun alongside
you and with you, and you helped me have more fun in the cities
by far.
Em Cassel: I hope that's true. Yeah.
Hans Buetow: So, Em, you have been out in the streets, in the
courtrooms, in the press conferences for Racket, and just
generally reporting on all things that are happening in
Minnesota. Right now, that's a lot of fraud and a lot of ICE
And in I bring both of these together side by side because
with the congressional hearings on fraud, all of the comments
that are happening about fraud all over the place, and now with
the surge that's happening in Minnesota with the killing of
Renee Goode earlier this week by ICE, I think there's reasons
that everyone is looking at our state.
Em Cassel: Yeah, Minnesota and the twin cities specifically
like once again finds itself at kind of the epicenter of the
national attention, which is unusual. It's another, just a
weird thing from the last couple of years.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Once again, and I want to get to that
because I have a lot of questions about why once again,
but I want to walk up to it because I think that these
stories of fraud, which some people may or may not have heard
of, and the ICE surge and killing that most people
probably have heard of, I think they're deeply related and
connected to each other, and I think the through line to them
is the internet. And I'm really curious to step through them all
to better just have a sense of what they are so that I just
know what they are, and then to map them against the Internet.
And I want to do that by looking at three moments in recent
history, if that works for you.
Em Cassel: I love it.
Hans Buetow: Great. So let's take a quick pause, and unless
you're a member, you're gonna hear a quick break. And then
let's start with fraud in Minnesota. Okay. Let's start
ourselves off in Minnesota in June 2024.
So two big things happen with fraud in June 2024. And the
first of those is a 200 or so page report comes out from the
Minnesota Department of Legislative Auditor, which is
looking into the Minnesota Department of Education and
their oversight of the Minnesota nonprofit. That's a lot of
layers. So Department of Legislative Auditor reports on
the Department of Education who's been giving money to a
nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. So Em, can you walk us
through what is this report?
Why is this being done about Feeding Our Future?
Em Cassel: Certainly, yes. So the broadest strokes answer is
that Feeding Our Future and the people associated with Feeding
Our Future have been perpetrating massive fraud. They
have referred to it you know, since looking back as sort of
the the biggest pandemic program fraud in the country. Wow. In
the end, you're gonna have more than 50 people so far Yeah.
Convicted of stealing so far, dollars 250,000,000 through this
fraud, which is, I don't need to tell you, Hans, a tremendous
amount of money. The start of the story is actually really
back in 2020 when the pandemic hits, schools are closed,
schools are not feeding lunches to children. And as a reaction
to that, the federal government kind of lowers the requirements
for states to access, what's called federal child nutrition
programs money. So this is what feeds underprivileged children,
and these funds are distributed by the Minnesota Department of
Education. So that's kind of like the, like, just laying the
very basic groundwork for, like, what will become this massive
fraud.
Feeding Our Future, in response, starts working with a ton of
other vendors. Like, they're kind of this this broader
nonprofit that works with, vendors. They also call them
food sites, I think, on the ground. And they start upping
the number of vendors they're working with. I think it ends up
being around 70 at one point.
And the vendors who they're working with are saying that
they're feeding a tremendous number of meals to local
children. Like, there's one restaurant, it's a small
restaurant that says it's feeding lunch to 6,000 kids a
day. There's another site in Wilmar, Minnesota that says it's
feeding 2,000 kids a week, which would be like half of the school
district's population.
Hans Buetow: Oh my goodness.
Em Cassel: The math does not math to use the nuance of our
times. So and so, you know, fairly quickly, actually, people
are raising alarm bells about these figures. As early as, I
think, October 2020, people are are reaching out to the
Department of Education and saying, like, this doesn't seem
quite right.
Hans Buetow: How can you actually feed? How are there
that many kids in the first place? But how do you feed all
of them? Can you feed 12,000 kids? Practically,
Em Cassel: You cannot feed this many children this many meals.
Like, it just it doesn't add up. The end result is that by May
2021, the FBI is now involved. They are investigating the
claims that Feeding Our Future and Feeding Our Future's vendors
have been filing false claims. It all eventually snowballs.
By 2022, the FBI is raiding the the businesses and individuals
who are, sort of associated with this fraud. And then finally, by
September 2022, charges are brought against 48 total people,
I think, as the first time for around $250,000,000 in this
money, which has been spent on things like personal trips. Amy
Bach, who's kind of widely referred to as the ringleader in
air Yeah. Quotes
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Of this,
Em Cassel: yes, of this fraud. She is accused of spending tens
of thousands of dollars on things like trips to Vegas. I
think her boyfriend took, like, a huge trip to Vegas. And, like,
spent a bunch of, like Cartier or whatever. Like, don't know.
Yeah. It's, like, really, like, like, extravagant fraud. Like,
not even this is not, like, super sneaky. It's, like, it's,
like, pretty bold. Yeah.
Brazen, I think, is a word that comes up a lot in media
reportage around this fraud is, like, it was really brazen.
Hans Buetow: And I think that's kind of like, I it's weird to
laugh at fraud and be like, these people stealing millions
of dollars from us. Doesn't that suck? But I think when
something's that brazen, that's You do kinda have to laugh.
Yeah. There's like element of like, what?
Em Cassel: Yeah. Like, this is like cartoonish levels of fraud.
Like, you like, I guess how did they think they would get away
with it? And then, like, second, how did they get away with it
for as long as they did?
Hans Buetow: As long as they did. And we're under
investigation and still doing it and spending the money. And I
remember one of the things that sticks in my mind about the
whole process was there was one point where they were going on
trials after the charges got brought, they were going on
trial and they tried they gave one of the jurors a $150,000 or
something.
Em Cassel: Yeah. There was a really weird situation where
they, like, dropped off a little, like, gift bag full of
cash on one of the jurors' doorsteps.
Hans Buetow: I
Em Cassel: mean, really, like, there are weird layers to this,
the way this fraud was perpetrated. And then and truly,
like, the way that they still thought, like, maybe we can get
away with this. Like, maybe we'll bribe a juror. Yeah. Let's
do it.
Hans Buetow: So so in 2024, this report comes out about the
Department of Education and how they handled it. So what did
this report in 2024 tell us about how all of this stuff over
those couple years was handled?
Em Cassel: Yeah. The report, I would say, is kind of damning.
It it's long. It's like a 100 page report. But the upshot is
that, like, the Minnesota Department of Education failed
on several fronts.
So for one, they failed to act on the warning signs, like,
before the COVID nineteen pandemic had even set in that,
like, there are not the right guardrails in place. Like, we
don't have the right systems in place to begin identifying this
kind of fraud. Then after that, that the department did not
effectively exercise its authority, I think is the phrase
that they used to basically, like, hold Feeding Our Future
accountable. Like, they have ways that they could have
stopped this fraud from happening, and they did not have
it. You know, they had people contacting them and saying, hey,
this fraud is happening and continued to pay out money to
Feeding Our Future and and therefore to its, you know,
vendor sites.
And then thirdly, that the department was ill prepared to
respond then. So, like, they were alerted to the fraud. They
kind of knew that it was happening, and yet they're they
did not respond in any kind of way. I mean, truly, until kind
of the FBI gets involved, like Yeah. You are a government
agency.
Get it together.
Hans Buetow: So and they're not the only government agency. So
this is what the other thing that happens in June 2024, this
report comes out, and at the same moment is the FBI starts
investigating for Medicaid fraud in autism centers, because
suddenly autism centers around the state have increased
spending 700% in five years, and a whole bunch of other metrics
are just suddenly there's all of this money going into these
autism centers without any related rise in the need for
them. Since then, seven people have been charged, some of those
people with connections to Feeding Our Future. And then in
2025, the next year, the Minnesota Department of Human
Services suspended the housing stabilization benefit, which
they did because they said there were credible allegations of
fraud from 77 providers, and 13 people have been charged since
then. All told, with all of these different avenues of fraud
in Minnesota in these government situations, 98 people have been
charged with various fraud schemes in various sectors since
2022, totaling, prosecutors say, a possible $9,000,000,000 of
stolen money.
Em Cassel: It's a huge amount of money. Billion with a b.
Hans Buetow: When we see these congressional meetings and we
hear people talking about fraud, there is a legitimate thing to
say. There was fraud committed. Yeah, and it was rampant. So I
think it's important then for the rest of this story to say,
who are those people of those 98 who was accused of perpetrating
this fraud?
Em Cassel: Yeah. So the kind of wild thing is, you know,
obviously there is Amy Bach, the sort of the CEO of Feeding Our
Future, the ringleader. She is a white woman, but all but eight,
I think, is the total of the people who are accused in this
fraud are Somali Americans, and the vast majority of them are
American citizens.
Hans Buetow: This is a big thing in the Twin Cities, especially
because we are one of the largest populations of Somali
folks, most of them American citizens. There's big parts,
especially of Minneapolis, that are very Somali oriented to And
that so that's already a thing that there are certain members
of the community and then especially of the wider
community, especially of the administration who are already
against African and East African people in the first place, much
less people who have come here despite them being citizens or
not. So when this starts to come out, who really gets the blame
for all of this fraud?
Em Cassel: I would say the blame kind of falls in two places. One
is on Minnesota governor Tim Walls and his administration,
like, basically, the the failure to do anything to stop the fraud
and to just kind of let it proliferate, under under his
watch and his administration's watch. But then, yeah, to your
point, Hans, the other place that it falls is on the broader
Somali community, you know, people who I think maybe already
have preexisting prejudices definitely use this as a way to
say, look at this community, like, look at this community of
immigrants and and and how they are acting basically, which is
just not I mean, it's it's still a very small fraction of the, as
you mentioned, very large Somali American population here in the
Twin Cities.
Hans Buetow: Absolute. But it's such an easy thing, I think, to
target now when you say, look all of this massive, we can call
it massive fraud, and look at how disproportionate it was
coming from this one particular community. You can imagine the
therefore that start to emerge. And I think this moves us into
our second moment that I want to talk about, which is jumping us
ahead to Thanksgiving of this past year, which involves the
escalation of rhetoric that leads to the deployment of ice
in the Twin Cities. So I want to move us to 11/19/2025, just a
month and a half ago.
There was an article that was published, I'm not sure if
you've read this article, it's a wild article. Woah. It's by this
group called City Journal, which is not in Minnesota, it's not
really affiliated, Independent Journalism, which I say that in
quote Marks, even though both of us are independent journalism.
Em Cassel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're not like those guys. We're
not like we're not
Hans Buetow: because they go on, they claim in this article that
the Minnesota childcare program funds, so this is childcare now
that we're moving into, the childcare program funds are
being sent back to Somalia to Al Shabaab, which is the terrorist
organization in Somalia, a lot of them responsible for the
Somali civil war in the early nineties that led to the
diaspora. So that they're taking government money, taxpayer
money, and shoveling it back to terrorist organizations in
Somalia. The problem is the source for this, who they quote
in it, comes out afterwards and it's like, woah, woah, woah,
they took me out of context. I didn't say that. So that is not
true.
Yep. That's not what's happening.
Em Cassel: But it's kind of like too late.
Hans Buetow: It's too late. The posts are made. The cat is out
of the bag and I think that this is a theme we're going to see a
lot coming from this point because Trump elevates this
claim almost immediately on Truth Social, he says, quote,
Minnesota under governor Walls is a hub of fraudulent money
laundering activity, end quote, which again, there is fraud.
Like, let's not lose sight of there is fraud. But this is
saying that it's laundering when there's no evidence for that,
but he takes a real world step and he cancels temporary
protected status for Somali folks in Minnesota.
Em Cassel: Yeah. Do you have a
Hans Buetow: sense, Em, of what that meant around here?
Em Cassel: There were only a couple 100 immigrants, I think,
who were immediately affected by that. I think it's like that
that's just like the first, like, the opening volley in his
escalation.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. That's interesting because most of the
Somali folks in Minnesota are citizens. They're not.
Em Cassel: They are. Exactly. So, yeah, it was just kind of
like a here's what I'm gonna do first, and then I'm gonna
Hans Buetow: Yeah. So then very shortly after that, on
Thanksgiving, the day after an Afghan asylee shoots two
National Guard soldiers near the White House, killing one of
them. Trump's in an interview, and he responds to reporters by
saying that there is nothing linking, that's in quotes,
nothing linking the shooting that happened with Somalia, and
then immediately goes on truth social and posts, quote,
hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are
completely taking over the once great state of Minnesota.
Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for prey as our
wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses
hoping against hope that they will be left alone. Did you feel
that way, M?
You hoping against hope clutching a picture of him. Oh,
please come help us.
Em Cassel: Oh god. This is the most bizarre thing. Like, it
truly is just like I mean, the way this administration will
just say stuff. Right? Like, way that they will just say say
anything in the way that Trump specifically will just, like,
make something up, like, just to, like, state the obvious,
there are not Somali gangs roving No.
The streets looking for, quote, prey. Yeah. That has, like,
never happened in my experience. I mean, it's like, again, it's
not really funny, but, like, all you can do is laugh. Like, it is
such an out outlandish claim.
Like, truly just, like, beyond the pale in terms of just, like,
making up a a really, really, really crazy, like, set of
facts, alternative facts.
Hans Buetow: And this is really the indication that we get that
he's seizing on Somalia and Somali Minnesotans as a way to
attack because then he immediately pivots, uses a super
gross epithet about governor Waltz saying that he and the
democrats are doing nothing. And then it's later that weekend
that the administration announces operation metro surge.
So what is Operation Metro Surge?
Em Cassel: Operation Metro Surge is mirrors the previous actions
in Portland or what we saw in Chicago, where the Trump
administration deploys just a bunch of Department of Homeland
Security agents to the Twin Cities, kind of using the Somali
community, right, as a scapegoat of, like, we're gonna I mean,
they basically say, like, this is gonna stop fraud somehow.
Like, they this is gonna stop fraud, and also, we're gonna go
after these these criminals who are running wild in the streets,
again, in this, like, totally alternate universe that no one
is living in where there's, like, just just rampant crime.
So I think initially, the idea was like, we're going to send
all these agents and we're going to round up the bad guys. Think
the worst of the worst or whatever is the language that
the administration uses. Like, we're going to come get the
baddies from the Twin Cities.
Hans Buetow: Which they're using the fraud stuff in that case to
be like, look at how many of these bad people. Look what
they're doing. Look at the scale of things that they're doing,
and look at how many of them there are. The the white folks
in Minnesota aren't doing this fraud. It's all like, we gotta
go in there because the Democrats aren't doing anything.
Now you did some reporting on the surge in what's happening.
So talk us through a little bit because did you go to Carmel
Mall?
Em Cassel: I didn't report from Carmel Mall. The Minnesota
reformer had a great story where basically they were like, it's
empty here. Carmel Mall, for those who don't know, is kind of
like a Somali hub here in the Twin Cities. It's on Lake
Street. It's a big market and there are shops and there are
restaurants.
And within a few days really of the surge starting of this
Operation Metro surge, like, the streets were kind of empty. And
you could see that playing out on other businesses on Lake
Street, which is a huge immigrant corridor here. There's
a lot of Mexican owned businesses, a lot of businesses
owned by people of color in general, and they were pretty
quickly struggling. Yeah. Struggling to get their workers
here safely to have the people who would generally patronize
those businesses feeling safe.
Lake Street in general really kind of cleared out and so did
other immigrant hubs in the Twin Cities area.
Hans Buetow: Mhmm. There were efforts to to get people to shop
at immigrant shops because their regular clientele couldn't go
in, like spend the hubs, spend your money going to support some
of these places with who haven't seen customers in days
sometimes. Everybody's running scared.
Em Cassel: Yeah. Yeah. People are locking their doors. I mean,
there are restaurants that you'll go to on Lake Street now
and the door will be locked. You'll have to knock to get in.
They're still technically open, but they're they're trying to
protect themselves and their their coworkers and their loved
ones. For most of December,
Hans Buetow: it felt like it wasn't it sucked and it was
scary, but it wasn't any more remarkable than in other big
blue cities where this was happening. Am I right on that?
Yeah. I think
Em Cassel: that's fair to say. I think if anything, you know, you
could kind of look around and be like, well, it's actually not as
bad, again, through December as it has been in Chicago and other
cities. Not seeing Just these numbers wise. Simply in a
numbers game, you know, it's bad and it's scary. But it was, you
know, relatively small in scale to what we've seen here at the
start of 2026, which is, I don't have to tell you, really bad.
Really bad. Really bad. Yeah.
Hans Buetow: So what was the local reaction that you felt
happened when Operation Metro Search started?
Em Cassel: It's been like actually very impressive to see
the local reaction and see how the community has banded
together to try to protect the the vulnerable members of the
community. People signing up to deliver groceries to people who
don't feel safe leaving their homes.
Hans Buetow: Their homes. That's right.
Em Cassel: That's right. Or or escorting children from their
bus stop to their house or from the bus into their schools.
Hans Buetow: Going like putting on a bib and going to stand in
front of a mosque. Yep. Like, know, just to be a presence.
Em Cassel: Yeah. There has really been a tremendous
outpouring of support, would say. And I I think going back
even further, like, this almost ties into 2020 and in earlier
where the Twin Cities kind of rallied together in the wake of
George Floyd's murder. And, like, there are sort of these
networks that already exist in the Twin Cities where people
have have done this before, unfortunately. And and so a lot
of those people have really stepped up to try to protect
their neighbors.
So of course, there's only so much you can do.
Hans Buetow: Right. Because, you know, we have we have armed
forces patrolling
Em Cassel: Yeah. The
Hans Buetow: And this reaction of at least a lot of folks
around here was markedly different from the federal
reaction and the reaction of the administration. So how did they
talk about it?
Em Cassel: I guess you could say they posted through it. Like
like, truly truly, like, posting through it. Like, early
December, you have that really bizarre video where Trump is
hurling horrific insults at Somali just like blatant racism
at Somali people calling them garbage. He's at a cabinet
meeting and, like, JD Vance is, like, banging on the table. You
hear that weird audio recording where he's banging his fists on
the table.
He, of course, targets Ilhan Omar.
Hans Buetow: Who is Somali?
Em Cassel: Who is Somali. Yes. Our representative. And I am not
personally on Truth Social, but you would see, you know, people
sharing screenshots of these posts where it's just like,
again, it feels like an alternate reality from the one
that we all live in where our Somali neighbors are wonderful.
It feels insane to even have to say it, but like, it's just such
a strange thing to watch an entire community be smeared like
this by the president of The United States.
Like
Hans Buetow: And then when he does it, like, it wasn't just it
was Vance, it was Cash Patel, it was the podcaster leader of the
FBI, it was Kristi Noem, like everybody would would echo in
posts a similar thing as they ramped up and escalated.
Em Cassel: Yeah. You'd sort of see the groundwork being laid
for, like, increased hatred, like, on Twitter, like, in
tweets. Like Yeah. Like, I don't know how often Kirsty Noem was
posting about Somali people before this December, but all of
a sudden All of a sudden. She has a lot to say about them.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. And so this pattern emerges of something
being posted, officials immediately reacting in posts to
each other, and then this severe disproportionate policy or real
world action or something emerges or gets generated from
that flurry of posts. So let's take a quick break, and when we
come back I want to talk about how this pattern escalates into
the death of Renee Goode earlier this week. So our final moment
that we're gonna examine here is the Internet of it all. And this
happens in late December.
So we're almost a month at this point into Operation Metro
Surge, and the day after Christmas, a video drops from a
23 year old, very MAGA friendly influencer sort named Nick
Shirley. Nick Shirley releases this forty three minute video
where he comes to Minnesota. They go to what he says is 11
different Somali childcare centers, and he just starts
demanding whoever opens the door show him the kids. Hello. We'd
like to ask where the money's going.
What do you guys think about the fraud that's taking place here
in Minnesota?
Em Cassel: Sorry. I don't think anybody is enabling that to
happen.
Hans Buetow: Hold governor Walls accountable for this. What was
this money spent on? 1,260,000.00. What was that
money
Em Cassel: spent on? If there aren't any kids.
Hans Buetow: Answer the question. Are there children?
There's no children inside this building. I'm not sure why they
didn't show him the kids when no random young person just starts
aggressively demanding that, you bring the kids out to me or let
me go in and see the kids. But he isn't shown any children in
these 11, and so then he turns around in the video and claims
this as evidence of a 110,000,000 more dollars in
widespread fraud by the Somali community.
Did you watch this video by Nick Shirley?
Em Cassel: I saw clips and I was kind of, like, again, talking
about, like, brazenness. Like, this guy really, really just
goes for it.
Hans Buetow: Which like a forty three minute YouTube video of a
guy doing kind of stunt journalism without research.
Like, okay. Yeah. This sort of stuff happens. Like, it's not
weird that you wouldn't have seen it, but there are some
people who definitely saw it and had this wildly outsized huge
reaction to it.
So almost immediately, the vice president of The United States
Of America, JD Vance, emphatically reposted on X
saying this is some great better journalism than any of the
people who want a Pulitzer this year. Elon Musk engages with it.
Kash Patel, again, from the FBI. Kristi Noem, head of DHS, they
all post. Kristi Noem says, oh, we're we're because of this,
we're gonna start investigating this immediately.
In a statement from the White House, Abigail Jackson, who's a
spokeswoman for it, said that, and this is a quote, quote, the
country should be deeply appreciative to Shirley for
shining a light on this issue. The legacy media should take
notes, end quote.
Em Cassel: Yeah. I think what we need is actually for Star
Tribune reporters to just start banging on day care centers.
Hans Buetow: Just demanding. Like it's everybody in the
cabinet seems to just immediately glom onto this, make
their own series of posts about it. Within the week, the video
has a 131,000,000 views on X, which who knows what that means.
2,500,000 views on YouTube. But it's also got Trump's attention
because Trump then does this thing after this flurry of posts
from everybody in the cabinet.
He orders the health department to freeze $185,000,000 in child
care payments to the state of Minnesota day care centers
directly in response to this video, which is the pattern that
we've been outlining.
Em Cassel: You manufacture a scenario and you post about it a
lot, which makes it true.
Hans Buetow: Yep. And then the posting begets posting.
Em Cassel: Yep. There's a whole like weird web ecosystem of
posts and they all relate to each other. Yep. And then you
use that web of posts to say like, this is fact now, and now
we are going to, for example, withhold these funds as a
reaction to the posts that we ourselves made.
Hans Buetow: It's early January when the Minnesota Department of
Children, Youth, and Families did compliance checks in all of
those places on nine of the 11 from the Shirley video and they
concluded definitively that no, they're operating exactly as
expected. There's no issue here. But that's like, it's what, two
weeks after? Well, right.
Em Cassel: It's too late. It's almost like the the outrage has
been created. We have our followers now, the people who
are MAGA, Jason, like they all believe what we have said. And
so actually, it kind of doesn't matter.
Hans Buetow: There's It something really
Em Cassel: doesn't. They're not gonna post again. Like, you're
not gonna get a sign off from JD Vance that's like, oh, good. The
Department of Children, Youth and Families said actually these
daycare centers are great.
Hans Buetow: You know, guys, I'm gonna delete those old posts.
I'm gonna issue a correction.
Em Cassel: Like, no, that's not gonna fucking happen. So
Hans Buetow: And instead, in the meantime, they used that as a
catapult, as a jumping off point, as a springboard to
launch, I don't even know if it's got a name, but the latest
assault, sending the largest force of DHS personnel into
Minnesota that I think has ever been assembled. I think those
are the latest. 2,000 DHS agents showed up in Minnesota in that
gap before they came in. Were like, no, no, this video isn't
accurate. This is not what's happening.
They came there like there's widespread fraud. Again, this
fraud. Let's go. We gotta go do something because the Democrats
aren't doing anything. So then 2,000 DHS agents show up, And,
of course, end this week.
Em Cassel: Yeah. I mean, it's been hell out there. December
pales in comparison. It feels like they're the city is
crawling with federal agents, ICE agents, DHS agents, border
patrol agents. Yep.
They are kidnapping people, leaving school. They are
flooding into local businesses. They are tackling workers at
Target. I mean, it's just like a really you definitely get the
sense that, like, maybe what they wanted the first time
around was a shock and awe that they didn't get. And now there
are these 2,000 additional agents and they are they are
doing the shock and awe.
They are getting the visuals that they want of grown men
tackling people to the ground and arresting bystanders and
arresting legal observers, detaining people.
Hans Buetow: And as of Wednesday, killing somebody who
was at one of the sites where they were without warrants,
without a reason to be there, without anything, as JD Venn
says, just going door to door, which is fundamentally
unconstitutional. You need a warrant to go door. You don't
just go door to door looking for crimes. It's awful. It's been an
awful few days since Renee Goode has been killed by an ICE agent
in her car on Wednesday.
We're not going to get too deep into that because I think that
part has been pretty well covered and folks should look it
up because it's heartbreaking and devastating. But I want to
focus in on another thing that happened earlier this week when
some really interesting writing came out from some really
interesting internet thinkers. So earlier this week Charlie
Warzel in the Atlantic, Don Moynihan and Cooper Lund, who
each have their own blogs, and Ryan Broderick in garbage day,
all of them thinkers about the internet independently of each
other came to and simultaneously came to roughly the same theory
and conclusion. That is that the people in the highest leadership
positions in government think about their primary job as
creating content. So power, as it exists now in that group, has
changed to be centered around and wielded by people who get
attention online.
So for a portion of the political ruling class right
now, it's the only thing they literally know how to do or
respect. I mean, we've got these podcasters. The head of the DOD
is a news presenter. That's his qualification. It's how they got
their jobs.
It's how their successors are gonna get their jobs. Creating
content is the currency of power that's happening right now. And
all four of these writers identified this in reaction to
Venezuela and the invasion that we did of them watching the
Twitter reaction in the quote unquote situation room at Mar A
Lago. But I think this applies to everything that's been
happening in Minnesota right now. Don Moynihan, one of these
thinkers on his blog, and we'll link to all of these in the show
notes, used the term click tatorship to define this.
He said that this behavior, that this thing leads to really big
changes in behavior. He outlines that it incentivizes conflict
between professional and online identities, which also leads to
degrading professional norms and work practices. Recruiting
others high on the meme supply to working government, you can
see a way where Shirley, who posted this video, is job
interviewing by posting this. Critically, think Don Moynihan
says that it alters decision making to be responsive to
social media. Charlie Warzel, one of the other writers, talks
about it in this way that I think is helpful, which is as a
culture of reaction videos.
So the memes and the reactions that happen to any piece of news
event happen now simultaneously with the news event. There is no
before and after anymore. So when respond to something,
you're not just responding to facts, you're not just
responding to news, you're responding to memes, in memes,
with memes, about memes. It's already too far down that line.
And this content mix of content fueling content, it creates
opportunities for itself, which is in itself a way to kind of
distance the audience from taking any sort of direct action
because it abstracts things.
So Charla Warzel says, quote, this process is nihilistic, and
it has a dehumanizing effect. Stories about people or
countries in conflict become abstract, buried under a pile of
memes and recursive references that exist for little more than
scroll by entertainment. So I read all of this and I was like,
wait a second, and then started mapping it against everything
that we've just talked about. All the fraud and all the
accusations of fraud and all the realities of fraud, and then
what the fraud then means and how the fraud led to this
invasion from ICE. And I'm just wondering, like, when you hear
all of this now, how does a clicktatorship map onto that for
you?
Em Cassel: Well, it does feel like the nothing happens anymore
without the sort of right wing blogger poster ecosystem, like,
descending on that either physically or or online only.
But we're seeing it this week in Minnesota, like, are right wing
content creators who have sort of flown into town for this
surge, for this, you know, increased number of troops that
are here. Ryan Broderick, who's very excellent, Newsletter
Garbage Day, you mentioned, like, is also in town right now.
And he has a video from the Whipple Building this morning,
which is the Federal building where sort of the ICE operations
are, like, centered
Hans Buetow: and where they're the corridors.
Em Cassel: Yeah. Where they're taking people who are detained
and everything else.
Hans Buetow: And they're doing daily protests, morning
protests.
Em Cassel: Yes. Yes. So people people have been protesting
outside the Whipple Building most mornings and and all day
long. Ryan has a a video of an ICE agent sort of fist bumping
with a right wing pro Trump content creator. And then, like,
that content creator is allowed to cross the line that the ICE
agents have formed while everyone else protesting or even
covering the event.
Like, other journalists are pushed back. So you can really
see the way that these right wing creator like, you can
visually see with your eyes the way that these right wing
creators have been given this sort of privileged place in the
administration while everyone else is kind of left on the
outside. It's like really worrying. It's really worrying.
Hans Buetow: I know. I think that it is really worrying, and
it it's I think it's a little clarifying to have this theory
kind of coalesce in the minds of a few different people who are
really watching closely. And as soon as I read it, I was like,
of course, that's what's happening. That makes it's one
of those things that you're like, why didn't we see this
before? I think we did see this before.
We saw how much they're addicted to Twitter and addiction is a
big part of this. We saw how much they are addicted to the
audience that they perceive, and this is a thing we come back to
in the show a lot, especially in our editorial meetings, is the
imaginary internet points that you think that you get from any
action that you take online. They have created an ecosystem
where those imaginary internet points actually have a orange
face and actually like a bad haircut. This is an ecosystem
that feels scary because it's so untethered from the realities
that it creates, because that's what we're seeing. This is the
pattern we're seeing over and over again, is it creates these
real actions where people die, their lives are ruined, where
people are deported, where people are harassed, where who
knows what's happening.
People are losing funding, people are not able to feed
themselves. That's real, but that's not considered or
important in this. And it feels like sometimes posts are the
only thing that matters. Like this group's only way to engage
with the world is a post and using everything as an
opportunity to generate more content. The ice surge as a
content generating mechanism is such a depressing thing to say.
Em Cassel: I know.
Hans Buetow: And yet And yet here we are mourning Renee Goode
and trying to protest and trying to like have a voice in it. And
it feels like that's a shocking thing to have to reconcile.
Em Cassel: And to your point about Renee Goode, I mean, the
folks in the presidential administration were were posting
about her death before we had basically any information. You
know, like, I think, like, the the sort of post first ask
questions later of it all is really, really damaging.
Hans Buetow: Like Yeah.
Em Cassel: Calling her, you know, whatever they call her a
professional agitator or the language they use, domestic
terrorist, When, I like, we had basically no information about
who this woman was, why she was there. We have a lot greater
clarity now, but she had only been dead for a few hours when
Yeah. When people in the administration were posting
about her as a person and her character and what she was doing
there and everything else. Just creating the narrative that, you
know, that we would have to then go on to debunk. It, like, puts
you as someone who wants to tell the truth on your back foot
because now you're in a position of having to react to the lies
that have already started to proliferate throughout these
online spaces.
Hans Buetow: That's right.
Em Cassel: It's it's really damaging.
Hans Buetow: I've been thinking a lot about the raid that
happened at Roosevelt High School on Wednesday. So just
literally hours after the killing of Renee Goode, ICE
agents stormed the grounds of Roosevelt High School, which is
fairly nearby to that, and started tackling people. They
punched out windows, they were shooting chemical weapons at
people, they arrested two faculty members. And there's
these videos that these students, these high schoolers
are taking of this where they're just screaming and like it's
just whistles everywhere. It's just this chaotic horrible thing
and you're watching them body slam students into the ground on
school property, which has been outlawed by the city of
Minneapolis and the city of Saint Paul.
They are not allowed to legally do that sort of thing. And it's
shocking in the way that you would expect a post like that.
Like it feels like it's made for the gram in a way, like it's
made to be posted about. And the casualness of it being mere
hours after they shot and killed Renee Goode is really sticking
with me as being an indication of like, okay, yep, we got that
one. Immediately, what's our next viral clip gonna be?
Let's tackle some kids.
Em Cassel: Yeah. It does make you wonder like, is there a
bottom? Is there a depth that we can yet reach? Like, I have
thought about those those videos and those photos from Roosevelt
so much over the last few days because it really is like, you
know, if I if my agency had killed a person in the street,
I'd pack it up and call it a day. And I guess that's just,
you know, they just keep right on going.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. You pause for a moment just to be like, hey,
let's slow down. Yeah. No, that was an escalation, right? And so
speaking of escalations like Philando Castile, Ja'Marr Clark,
George Floyd, now Renee Goode.
Are we really about to do all this again? Like it's still
tense here in the cities. There's protests happening in
other cities around the country. The governor's getting mad. The
National Guard has been activated.
Like this, it feels like 2020 all of a sudden. Like, we doing
this again?
Em Cassel: Yeah. It really feels strikingly similar. I on a
personal level, I live basically equidistant between George Floyd
Square and the intersection where Renee Goode was killed.
And just the reaction from community members feels very
much the same. The constantly circling helicopters overhead,
that feels the same.
Yeah. This feeling from the community of being
simultaneously activated and wanting to help, but also
feeling like, what do I do with this energy? How do I be
productive? And also this kind of feeling of helplessness, like
Philando, Jamar, George, Renee, they are dead. They have been
taken from us by, you know, agents of the state.
Yeah. This sort of feeling of like, does it ever stop? What
would stop it? I don't know.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Why do you think Minnesota, so many of
these things have happened? Why what is it about Minnesota that
makes it a hotspot for these sorts of videos and then the
reactions they generate?
Em Cassel: I've thought about this a lot and I have seen other
people sort of working through this a lot online over the last
few days. I think it's kind of twofold. I think one is that
Minnesotans and people in the Twin Cities specifically really
do show up for their communities in a way that I I'm not trying
to be like a Minnesota exceptionalism about this. Other
people don't. Yeah.
Not really. Yeah. I but I really do think that, like, people here
show up for their neighbors and and get involved. And when there
is a chance to protest, they protest. And when there is a
vigil, they go.
And when, you know, so so it kind of creates these scenes
that are very striking. At the same time, I think we talked a
little bit about the media ecosystem component of this. And
actually, unlike some other major American cities, the Twin
Cities does still have a pretty robust media ecosystem. We have
phenomenal journalists and photojournalists over at NPR,
Minnesota Public Radio. We have a phenomenal daily newspaper in
the Star Tribune.
We have lots of other, you know, the Minnesota Reformer, Hunt
Journal. So we have like, are a tremendous number of local
journalists There's
Hans Buetow: one called Racket?
Em Cassel: Have you heard of it? Have you heard? Yeah.
Hans Buetow: But it's true. Like, you're a part of this
ecosystem. Absolutely.
Em Cassel: Yeah. So I think the kind of like getting the story
out to the broader news media starts with that really robust
media ecosystem that we have in the Twin Cities, where when
something happens, when a woman is killed by ICE you know, a man
was killed by ICE in Chicago, not not too long ago.
Hans Buetow: Like week or something ago?
Em Cassel: Yes. And it just didn't feel like that kind of
like got out beyond its immediate bubble unless you were
really paying attention to this stuff. And with Renee Goode, I
think several things that are different about it are there
were multiple other observers, everyday citizens, who were
there filming the incident at the time, and that sort of falls
into the first point of, like, people show up here. Yeah. And
then the second part of it being the local media ecosystem sprang
into action immediately following that.
And I think that helps then get the story out and then it
spreads online and it, you know, it becomes then a national and
an international story in a way that it might not in other
cities.
Hans Buetow: Well, Em, I don't really know what's gonna happen
Me either.
Em Cassel: Over the weekend.
Hans Buetow: A lot of people have been asking me. I go into
meetings and stuff and a lot of people are asking me like, how's
it feel there? How's it feel there? And I'd say it feels
scary right now. And I think it's going to be a tough
weekend.
There's a big protest planned for Saturday afternoon. We're
going see what happens there over in Powderhorn Park. And
they're not stopping. They're not pulling back. In fact,
they've just sent more agents in to add to the 2,000 plus that
are already here.
Are you going back out in the field?
Em Cassel: Yeah. I'll be out again today. I've been returning
to thirty fourth in Portland a few times over the last couple
of days. I will be at the protest this weekend and, yeah,
plan to
Hans Buetow: keep showing up. Thanks for showing up, both in a
wider sense and then in a direct sense of like, thanks for
showing up on my screen and like hanging out with me and helping
me understand all this stuff. It's been really helpful to talk
through the full ecology of these things or a little bit
more of the full ecology of these things.
Em Cassel: So thanks for taking the time today. Yeah. I hope
that it was helpful. I know it's it's difficult even here in the
Twin Cities to kind of keep track of everything that's
happening. So if you're trying to keep track of it from beyond,
I can't even imagine.
Hans Buetow: So, Em, where can people follow you if they want
to follow more of this coverage and the stuff that you're doing?
How can people find you?
Em Cassel: Absolutely. You can find Racket at racketmn.com. And
if you're interested in following along with me, my
social handle is bike trouble on most platforms.
Hans Buetow: Yeah, it is. M Castle from Racket. Thank you so
much.
Em Cassel: Thanks, Hans.
Hans Buetow: So that is the show we have for you this week. We
will be back here next Wednesday once more in your feed, and we
have an update for you on what's happening with the show, some
big big moves, and some fun moves. So make sure to tune in.
Please go follow m Castle and Racket. And if you wanna follow
more independent news in Minnesota, the Sahan Journal, S
A H a n, or the Minnesota reformer are always worth
checking out.
Citycast Twin Cities is another one that both m and I are
contributors for. And, of course, if you have independent
media in your town who covers your local space, please find
them, read, and listen. And if you can, give them a little bit
of cash. Never post producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia
Hampton, and the mysterious doctor. First name, last name.
Our senior producer is Hans Buto. That's me. Our executive
producer is Jason Oberholzer. The show's host most weeks is
Mike Rignan. Neverpost is a production of Charts and Leisure
and distributed by Radiotopia.