Scott Walker's fading campaign and Canadian wall
Good morning. Final day of August. Expect a slow-ish news week with the traditional Labor Day holiday coming up, marking the final weekend of summer. Many pols at the State Fair this week, however.
Lessard-Sams meets Tuesday and Wednesday to hear Legacy funding requests.
Nice piece by Adam Belz looking at entrepreneurial Somali women at Karmel Square and other venues. The mall is the scene of a rich paradox in Somali culture. The women who run the shops cover their heads, and many of them believe it is a man's responsibility to pay bills for the family. Yet they are aggressive businesspeople, cherish financial independence and preside over a microeconomy at the core of the Twin Cities' Somali community.
Scheck was up in Mille Lacs, where it's gotten bleak with walleye season over and fears of no ice fishing season either.
The conservative Weekly Standard on Gov. Scott Walker's fading campaign. On Monday, August 17, Walker said in a Fox News interview that his position on immigration is "very similar" to Donald Trump's. When asked by an MSNBC reporter later that day if he thinks birthright citizenship should be ended for the children of illegal immigrants, Walker replied, "yeah, absolutely, going forward." But by Friday, after a week of negative headlines and criticism from some donors, Walker declared of birthright citizenship on CNBC, "I'm not taking a position on it one way or the other." Two days later, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Walker if he supported the Fourteenth Amendment's provision that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States." Walker replied: "Well, I said the law is there, we need to enforce the laws, including those that are in the Constitution." The satirical newspaper the Onion published a story the next day with the headline: "Out-of-Control Scott Walker Injured After Wildly Careening Between Stances on Immigration."
And Dan Balz with an early Walker obit.
Now Walker's talking about a wall along the Canadian border. (John Candy's final movie, "Canadian Bacon," was about an American president helping his flagging approval ratings by starting a cold war with Canada.)
Denali will again be Denali. (Fyi….McKinley never actually went to Alaska.)
Trump may not have Fox in his corner, but he's winning another important primary: Talk radio.
Interesting history: Mexican immigrants were forced out of the country in the 1930s over fears they were taking jobs during the Depression. The result: Around 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were pushed out of the country during the 1930s repatriation, as the removal is sometimes called. During that time, immigrants were rounded up and sent to Mexico, sometimes in public places and often without formal proceedings. Others, scared under the threat of violence, left voluntarily.
So it's not like it hasn't been tried before.
With his term winding down, Obama gets very active on labor issues.
We're losing to the Russians in the race to control the Arctic. This is a BFD. And some great enterprising journalism.
Have a good week everyone.
