Minnesota 'political assasinations' continue a pattern of deadly violence from some in the ‘pro-life’ movement
Editors’ note: Vance Boelter has been charged with killing two people and trying to kill two others early Saturday. Boelter was heavily armed and disguised as a police officer when he attacked the state legislators at their homes, court records indicate. He had prepared a list of dozens of potential targets, including Gov. Tim Walz, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and state Attorney General Keith Ellison. All are Democrats and pro-choice. Court documents and an abundance of news reports make a compelling case that Boelter the suspect is also Boelter the perpetrator.
Calling anti-abortion activists pro-life has never sounded more absurd.
The murder of an accomplished Minnesota House of Representatives member, former speaker Melissa Hortman (seen above in a public domain image posted on wikimedia commons) and her husband, and the attempted murder of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, shocked the world early Saturday.
Vance Boelter killed two people and tried to kill two others early Saturday. Boelter was heavily armed and disguised as a police officer when he attacked the state legislators at their homes. He had prepared a list of dozens of potential targets, including Gov. Tim Walz, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and state Attorney General Keith Ellison. All are Democrats and pro-choice.
This explosion of violence was horrific, and overshadowed the peaceful “No Kings” demonstrations across the country as well as the poorly attended parade President Trump wasted millions on Saturday night. Did those events spur Boelter to act? He was carrying “No Kings” flyers in his fake police vehicle.
Sadly, this tragic event did not come as a complete surprise. We live in a violent era, where tens of thousands of Americans are killed by gunfire annually. Efforts to reduce the glut of guns in the United States have largely failed despite overwhelming public support.
There are more than 400 million guns in this country. That’s more than the population, and the national armory keeps growing.
The gun industry — the pro-death movement — has bribed enough politicians with millions in campaign donations and lobbying activities to prevent sane, sensible laws from being passed. The fear of angering heavily armed Americans, many of them eager to pull a trigger for any reason, is another reason our lawmakers refuse to press for reasonable limits on guns.
Abortion has added to the heated climate. Since it became a major issue with the Supreme Court ruling to legalize it nationally in 1973, conservatives have increasingly embraced an anti-abortion position.
The Republican Party now makes its opposition to abortion a central tenet of the party. There is no room for disagreement.
Walz dubbed the murders a “politically motivated assassination” in a Saturday morning press conference and he was completely accurate. This was politics via the bullet, not the ballot.
Will the GOP condemn such an excess and try to calm the waters in this angry nation? Don’t expect that to last long.
“Absolutely terrible,” said President Trump, who narrowly survived an assassination attempt last summer and had another man try to shoot him a few weeks later.
“Absolutely terrible, and they’re looking for that particular man,” Trump said before his birthday parade on Saturday. “Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!”
But he declined to call Walz, and took the opportunity to attack the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential candidate.
“Well, it’s a terrible thing. I think he’s a terrible governor. I think he’s a grossly incompetent person,” Trump told ABC News reporter Rachel Scott. “But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too.”
Vice President Vance and former President Biden called on Saturday. That’s pretty standard behavior for politicians at such a time.
But Trump does what he will and is not bound by any boundaries. He uses insults and attacks as political weapons, inspiring his followers to grow angrier and angrier.
During his first term, Trump appointed three conservatives to the Supreme Court, leading to the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, which had legalized the procedure across the country.
“I did a great service in doing it,” Trump said last year. “It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it, and I give tremendous credit to those six justices.”
In 1999, while weighing a run for the White House on the Reform Party ticket — there’s an irony for you — Trump said he was “very pro-choice.”
As we have seen, consistency is not one of his attributes. As a politician for the last decade, Trump has displayed an ability to twist himself into any position to please enough voters to win an election. He’s a salesman, and not bound by ethics, decency or any sort of moral code.
This is the view of so-called pro-lifers. They disagree about abortion rights, and if you don’t change, well, they might have to kill you.
We have seen numerous examples over the decades. A 2024 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center lists the violence it has embraced.
“Since 1977, when the National Abortion Federation (NAF) first began gathering statistics on anti-abortion violence, anti-abortion activists have committed 11 murders, 42 bombings, 200 acts of arson and 531 assaults, all of which were directed at patients and those working in abortion care,” it states.
I shudder awaiting the next tragedy. Will Vance Boelter inspire others to kill prominent politicians who hold different views?
Over the weekend, as reporters sketched in details about Boelter, it was revealed he served on the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board. He was named to the commission in 2016 by then-Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat.
Walz reappointed him to the 41-member board. Oddly, state Sen. Hoffman also served on it, but there is no record they clashed or even talked during their joint service.
But that was enough for the far right. They labeled Boelter a Democrat — he is a registered Republican — and a liberal extremist. His close friend David Carlson, who rented a room to him, said he was a Trump supporter who would be insulted to be called a Democrat.
The loons also described him as a friend of Walz and claimed his wife had been an intern in the governor’s office. All are complete lies, but that doesn’t stop them from spreading their hate and nonsense.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, never known for his decency, jumped in with glee.
“This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote on Sunday while posting a security camera photo of a disguised Boelter at the Hoffmans’ door even as the manhunt continued.
Lee then posted a pair of images of Boelter, adding the words, “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” That was offensive, highly inappropriate — and misspelled.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was close friends with Hortman. She was outraged by Lee’s casual cruelty.
“I have condemned what Mike Lee did here at home, and I will speak to him about this when I return,” Klobuchar said on MSNBC. “And what I’m going to tell him is, this isn’t funny.
“This was an incredible woman, her husband, her two kids, yesterday on Father’s Day, there was no Father’s Day for them,” she said. “They lost both their parents.”
Lee was joined by conservatives across the spectrum, from Elon Musk to hate-filled little men in their darkened living rooms in sharing the disinformation. It’s the kind of thing that can fuel another attack, another murder, another outrage.
There are calls for an end to this madness. Walz and others are pleading for some sense of decency and respect to return to the American political discussion and the core values of our nation.
“This cannot be the norm,” he said.
We can disagree, even stridently, but when it ends in bloodshed, we have crossed a line forever.
Can we ever go back?
Fourth-generation South Dakotan Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states for four decades. He has contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The London Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets. Do not republish without permission.
Photo: slain legislator Melissa Hortman, public domain, wikimedia commons
The South Dakota Standard is offered freely and is supported by our readers. We have no political or commercial sponsorship. If you'd like to help us continue our mission to advance independent political and social commentary, you can do so by clicking on the "Donate" button that's on the sidebar to your right.
