Law enforcement officers on Sunday night arrested Vance Boelter, who is accused of assassinating Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband at their home in Brooklyn Park as part of a larger plot to kill Democratic elected officials and other advocates of abortion rights.

Boelter is also accused of shooting Democratic-Farmer-Labor state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in Champlin. Both Hoffmans survived the shooting, but received surgeries for their injuries and remain hospitalized.

The arrest comes after a 43-hour manhunt — the largest in state history, according to Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley. Law enforcement officers had been searching all day after locating Boelter’s abandoned vehicle near Green Isle, where Boelter has a home.

At the time of his arrest, Boelter was armed, but ultimately surrendered. Officers did not use any force, said Lt. Col. Jeremy Geiger of the Minnesota State Patrol.

In the state’s new Emergency Operations Center in Blaine — which was paid for by legislation passed by Hortman’s DFL-controlled House in 2020 — Gov. Tim Walz thanked law enforcement and decried political violence and hateful rhetoric.

“This cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences,” Walz said. “Now is the time for us to recommit to the core values of this country, and each and every one of us can do it. Talk to a neighbor rather than argue, debate an issue, shake hands, find common ground.”

Boelter is a Christian who voted for President Donald Trump and opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights, according to interviews with his childhood friend and videos of his sermons posted online. A list of potential targets — including Hoffman and Hortman — included abortion providers and other Democratic elected officials from Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The attack, which has shocked Minnesotans and the nation, comes amid rising political violence since the emergence of President Donald Trump, who has made repeated threats of violence against his political enemies and praised his supporters who, for instance, attacked officers while storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He later pardoned all of them. He survived two assassination attempts in 2024.

Authorities say Boelter attacked the Hoffmans at their home in Champlin at approximately 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. An unsealed criminal complaint indicates that the Hoffmans’ daughter called the police to report the shooting of her parents, the Associated Press reports.

At around 3:30 a.m., Brooklyn Park police headed to the Hortmans’ home to proactively check on them following the attack on the Hoffmans, said Drew Evans, superintendent at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at a press conference Saturday morning.

When they arrived, the officers saw the attacker in a fake law enforcement uniform shoot Mark Hortman through the open front door, according to the complaint. Out front, emergency vehicle lights flashed from a Ford Explorer outfitted to look like a cop car. When the officers confronted the shooter, a gunfight ensued, and the killer escaped, abandoning the vehicle.

Inside, Hortman and her husband, Mark, were dead from gunshot wounds.

In the SUV, police found a document with a list of lawmakers and other officials on it. Hortman and Hoffman were on the list.

Evans said Sunday that the document is not a “traditional manifesto that’s a treatise on all kinds of ideology and writings.” Instead, it contains a list of names and “other thoughts” throughout.

On Saturday afternoon, police raided a home in north Minneapolis where Boelter lived part time. In an interview with the Star Tribune and other media outlets, Boelter’s roommate and childhood friend David Carlson shared a text message Boelter sent him at 6:03 a.m. saying that he would be “gone for a while” and “may be dead shortly.”

Federal and state warrants were out for Boelter’s arrest, and the FBI was offering a $50,000 award for information that led to Boelter’s capture.

On Sunday morning, law enforcement officers detained and questioned Boelter’s wife as she was driving through Mille Lacs County with other family members. Evans said Sunday none of Boelter’s family members are in custody.

Sunday afternoon, law enforcement officers located a car linked to Boelter in Sibley County within a few miles of his home address in Green Isle. From there, teams from dozens of law enforcement agencies fanned out in search of Boelter.

Boelter was spotted in the area, and officers converged around him, Evans said. He declined to provide some details of the tactics used by law enforcement to capture Boelter.

Law enforcement officials continue to investigate Boelter’s motives, Evans said, and urged the public not to jump to conclusions.

“We often want easy answers for complex problems, and this is a complex situation…those answers will come as we complete the full picture of our investigation,” he said.

Fragments of Boelter’s life available online, and interviews with those who know him, shed light on his religious and political beliefs.

Boelter’s LinkedIn page indicates that he spent many years working in food production before becoming the general manager of a 7-Eleven. More recently, he worked at funeral homes, the New York Times reported.

Boelter was facing financial stress after quitting his job to embark on business ventures in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Carlson, the Star Tribune reported.

The website for a private security firm lists Boelter as the “director of security patrols,” and his wife as the CEO. He purchased some cars and uniforms but “it was never a real company,” Carlson told the Strib.

Carlson said Boelter is a Christian who strongly opposes abortion, the New York Times reported.

In recordings of sermons Boelter delivered in Matadi, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he railed against abortion and LGBTQ people.

The reporting on Boelter’s religious life suggests that his beliefs were rooted in fundamentalism, though he doesn’t appear to have been ordained in any particular denomination, said Rev. Angela Denker, a Minnesota-based Lutheran minister, journalist and author of books on Christianity, right-wing politics and masculinity.

“What this kind of theology says is that if you commit violence in the name of whatever movement you’re a part of, then you’re going to be rewarded,” Denker said.

The gunman shot John Hoffman nine times, and Yvette Hoffman eight times, according to a statement from Yvette.

The Hoffmans’ nephew, Mat Ollig, wrote on Facebook that Yvette used her body to shield her daughter. John Hoffman is “enduring many surgeries right now and is closer every hour to being out of the woods,” Yvette Hoffman said in a statement.

On Sunday night as leaders spoke to the press, Boelter was being questioned by law enforcement, but officials declined to say where he was detained and which agency was questioning him.

On the steps of the State Capitol Sunday, mourners created an extemporaneous memorial for Hortman, who will be known as one of the most consequential progressive leaders in recent state history.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

When President Donald Trump’s performance in the polls in 2024 signaled a possible re-election, Keith Ellison and fellow Democratic attorneys general read Project 2025 and started getting ready, especially when Trump hired the key author of the planning document after his election.

They divided the documents into sections and marshaled their staff lawyers to be ready with lawsuits.

So when Russell Vought and the Office of Management and Budget froze the distribution of certain federal funds — as outlined in Project 2025 — Ellison and other the Democratic AGs were ready.

They sued over the funding freeze the next day.

“They were not hiding the ball,” Ellison said in a wide-ranging interview with States Newsroom in Minneapolis Wednesday.

Ellison and his colleagues have engaged in more than two dozen lawsuits against Trump administration actions in the first five months of the president’s second term. The AGs have sued over cuts to federal agencies, tariffs, DOGE’s access to government data, attempts to end birthright citizenship, and more.

They’ve also toured blue states to tout their accomplishments and listen to voters’ concerns.

The stakes are high, Ellison said: the fate of multi-racial democracy.

Ellison, who served for a dozen years in Congress representing Minnesota’s Minneapolis-based 5th District, said the states are a sovereign bulwark against federal power grabs.

The Democratic attorneys general are not only fighting a Republican-controlled executive branch, but also a conservative majority on the U.S Supreme Court. In Ellison’s view, recent decisions by the Roberts court — particularly in 303 Creative v. Elenis, in which the court ruled that a business owner could not be obligated to serve a gay couple — signify that the country is moving towards legal segregation.

“We are a whisper away from Jim Crow,” Ellison said.

Still, Ellison was upbeat, celebrating the AGs string of victories and predicting that even conservative Supreme Court justices will resist the Trump administration’s attack on the rule of law and the institution of the court itself.

The Democratic AGs may benefit from a weakened Department of Justice under Trump, Ellison said. The agency that defends the federal government in court is hemorrhaging longtime staff attorneys, through both firings and resignations.

Ellison emphasized that many of the policies enacted by Trump in his first months in office would be legal if they were passed by Congress. Instead, the president is running the country through “edict” and “proclamation,” Ellison said.

“Our democracy is not perfect,” Ellison said, “but you will absolutely miss it when it’s gone, and Trump has given you a glimpse of that.”

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar gave a succint response to a question posed to her by a reporter from the right-wing Daily Caller a few weeks ago: “F--- off.”

Not long ago, a politician uttering the phrase may have shocked the Minnesota electorate’s civil sensibilities. But Omar was evidently satisfied with the interaction — she later tweeted it out — and in a matter of days, if not hours, even conservative posters had moved on.

It took awhile to reach the Upper Midwest, but Democrats here have joined a national trend, employing the kind of crass language that Donald Trump ushered into the political discourse almost a decade ago.

Back in October, less than a month before he and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris would lose the general election, Gov. Tim Walz revved up a friendly audience in Madison.

“Elon’s on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dips--- on these things,” Walz said, pausing for the audience’s laughter. He added: “You know it!”

The moment went viral, and Walz has since repeated the bit, sparking comparisons to Trump’s affinity for name-calling (though “Trump’s remarks were typically directed toward elected officials of color, not white billionaires,” The New York Times noted, helpfully).

Minnesota Democratic politicians are usually relatively mild in their cussing, but one thing seems clear: They’re cursing more freely, and often with gusto.

Since the start of Walz’s vice presidential run, he could frequently be heard bemoaning this or that “damn” thing — “Mind your own damn business” — like a dad suffering over his lawnmower engine, or a frustrated high school football coach.

In a recent town hall in Texas, he said: “How about we just be proud of our policies, take it everywhere, and we will win the damn election on that.”

But he’ll occasionally rip off a more weighty curse word. In a recently published interview with The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich, Walz said he regretted that neither he nor Harris went on the Joe Rogan podcast during the campaign.

“I’m like, ‘f--- it,’” Walz said. “Just go.”

Nearly 10 years ago, Trump transformed the way politicians talk, and especially the way they curse: openly and without apology. He won the 2016 election immediately after the publication of a tape in which he infamously described grabbing women’s genitals and has freely used curse words and vulgar language ever since.

Prior to Trump, cursing was scandalous for politicians. Former President Barack Obama once referred to his opponent Mitt Romney as a “bull-------,” grabbing headlines and sparking Republican outrage.

So why are Minnesota Democrats suddenly cursing so much?

Politicians swear in part to seem — irony alert — more authentic, said Melissa Mohr, swearing expert and author of “Holy S---: A Brief History of Swearing.”

“A lot of what politicians do in their speeches is quite scripted, and swearing is a way to use language to make it feel like you’re saying things from your heart,” Mohr said.

For Democrats facing the deluge of Trump’s executive actions in the first months of his second term — funding cuts to agencies, mass layoffs, the transfer of immigrants to an El Salvador prison, his defiance of the courts and more — cursing is also a way to emphasize the seriousness of the moment.

“Usually when we swear, that’s because we’ve got some deep emotion about something, whether it’s pain or frustration or joy,” Mohr said.

But cursing can also backfire when it’s not convincing, Mohr said.

If voters pick up on a slight hesitation before a bad word, a strange emphasis, or the unusual construction of a phrase, it could signal that the cursing is more of a strategic choice by speechwriters than a genuine burst of emotion from the speaker.

“When it’s not authentic, it comes off as extra not-authentic, and I think that that definitely turns people away,” said Republican lobbyist and local stand-up comedian Brian McDaniel.

As the parties have become more polarized and less inclined to appeal to centrist voters, Republicans — with the notable exception of the commander in chief — have kept their speeches clean so as not to offend the religious base of the party, McDaniel said, whereas Democrats’ cursing can be taken as a way to “stick it to the man.”

Democrats here may have taken a bit longer to jump on the cussing trend because they’re entrenched in the culture of “Minnesota nice.”

Minnesotans and their politicians seem to have a more reserved approach to swearing than people from other regions, though it’s difficult to accurately measure how frequently a population curses. A 2015 map of swear-word frequency compiled by a linguist and based on tweets, seems to indicate that Minnesotans generally swear less, at least in the online public sphere, than people from other areas.

Although lately with the Dems, it’s hard to tell.

On X, DFL Sen. Tina Smith captioned a post by Elon Musk, who was instructing federal employees to send a summary of their accomplishments for the week: “This is the ultimate d--- boss move from Musk — except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a d---,” Smith wrote.

And when Smith announced she wouldn’t be seeking re-election, state Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy’s official statement began with a two-word sentence: “Well s---.” (Murphy later showed more restraint: “My mouth is full of cuss words right now,” she said regarding recent negotiations with Republicans on the final day of the legislative session.)

It’s not just a Minnesota thing: U.S. Sen. Elise Slotkin got fiery and profane recently while urging Democrats to “f------ retake the flag” and to adopt “the goddamn Alpha energy.”

In the case of both Slotkin and Walz, the cussing shows emotion and seeks to shape Democratic identity, melding it to the working class party of old.

In this populist moment, Mohr said, swearing codes populist.

“When you break that mold and you swear,” Mohr said, “it kind of brings you to that ‘ordinary’ person’s level.”

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

Minnesota Rep. Drew Roach, R-Farmington, and Sen. Bill Lieske, R-Lonsdale, called the Jan. 6 insurrection a “hoax” and repeated a false conspiracy theory that the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were “actors,” during a video podcast posted Monday on YouTube and the popular right wing platform Rumble.

Lieske and Roach host a show called “Minnesota Liberty Network.” On Monday, the two discussed the state Senate floor vote on a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s blanket pardon of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6. insurrection. Lieske was absent for the vote, and all 22 of the Republicans present voted against the resolution.

“If I would have been there, probably would have ended up voting no. I think that was such a stupid resolution,” Lieske said on the podcast.

Roach then launched into an explanation of why he believes the Jan. 6. was a “hoax.”

“You had people that were actors that were wearing the uniform of the Trump supporter that made it look like they were there to support Donald Trump,” Roach said.

MAGA supporters at the time were upset with mask mandates, Roach said, arguing that because some insurrectionists were wearing masks, “those were not real, true MAGA Donald Trump conservative supporters.”

As evidence for the “hoax” hypothesis, Roach cited the timing of the Capitol breach — while Congress was debating whether to certify the election results in Arizona, which Joe Biden won — and floor speeches made by members of Congress immediately after the riot, all using the word “insurrection.”

“It was all prepared,” Lieske said.

“I had never heard the term insurrection in my life until that day,” Roach said.

He continued: “So you’re telling me you were scared for your life, you were in the basement calling your family, but you were rewriting a new speech? I call bullshit.”

Around 140 law enforcement officers were injured in the insurrection, and more than 1,500 people were charged with crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to carrying a weapon on Capitol grounds and assaulting a law enforcement officer. More than 1,000 pleaded guilty, with 281 cases going to trial.

Among those convicted were 14 members of the far-right organizations Proud Boys and Oath Keepers; members of a Telegram group chat called “PATRIOTS 45 MAGA Gang” who brought tactical gear to the Capitol to “violently remove traitors”; and numerous people who posted on their personal social media accounts or livestreamed while breaching the Capitol.

The U.S. Capitol Police chief testified Tuesday that Trump’s pardons had negative repercussions on morale within the department and for police across the country.

“I think there was an impact, not only to the Capitol Police, but an impact nationwide when you see folks that are pardoned — and I’m really referring to the ones that were convicted of assaulting police officers,” J. Thomas Manger said during a hearing on the department’s budget request.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.