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Latest updates, now that it's spreading around official media outlets: a suspect is wanted, Vance Boelter. He has ties to Tim Walz and the greater Democratic Party. Still no released motive.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/14/democratic-lawmakers-minnesota-shot
A man masquerading as a police officer is shooting politicians in their homes. The why is debatable; the theories I see floating around have to do with these two Democrat's recent voting records, and breaking from Dem consensus to support the Republicans. I don't know if this is true, I didn't check their records -- I share only because it's what I heard.
The why is also, I think, insignificant. There are so many reasons to be violent in modern society, if you're not intrinsically against violence itself -- punishing defectors, rallying your side with a show of force, intimidating people and politicians on the margins. I don't care what specific social ill or rage drove this would-be assassin.
More interesting, to me, is that we're seeing assassinations and their attempts more and more. It seems that way to me, at least -- I'm going off vibes and a gut reckoning with the numbers, not a reasoned analysis. Maybe I'm entirely wrong! But the vibe I get is the willingness to use violence on one's enemies is becoming significantly more normalized by the day, and eventually, I suspect, we're going to hit a turning point where no one pretends they don't want the other side dead and we get to it.
I don't particularly want that end result, but I find it hard to argue against murderous force on principle. The arguments supporting it seem obviously correct; the protests against it seem sincere, well-meaning, and completely wrong.
It makes me think. We're materially better off than ever. We're spiritually dead. We have more freedom than ever. We're trapped in our heads like anxious prisons. We solved hunger, and crippled ourselves with food.
We don't build. We don't conquer. We prosper, sort of, the numbers on the charts go up and the useless shit is really cheap -- but the precious things are rarer than ever.
I dunno. Nobody died this time, I guess that's nice. And the future, rough beast that it is, continues to slouch toward Bethlehem.
edit: scratch that two died, I guess that's less nice. RIP.
People in this thread are claiming that the shooter is a Blue, given that he appears to have been appointed to office by Tim Waltz and possibly by other Democratic politicians, with one of the victims being a democrat who recently voted with the Republicans on an important issue, resulting in much criticism from her own party. Also, he apparently had a stack of No Kings flyers in his vehicle. This seems quite premature to me.
I'm going to bet that the motivations for this assassination end up red-coded. Per CNN, the shooter is apparently a devout Christian, with him being caught on video "pointedly questioned American morals on sexual orientation". I've seen reports that he had a target list of pro-choice politicians and abortion providers. And not to put too fine a point on it, but he just shot two democrats.
Apparently the police have a manifesto, so we'll probably know the truth soon enough.
This seems highly inconsistent with the facts on the ground. What are the odds that he happened to target two democrats that very recently voted on a massive issue with the Republicans?
That is, if he was targeting Democrats at random the odds are very small he’d pick these two. So the evidence we have at first glance (as opposed to your speculative evidence) suggests he is left wing coded.
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If the politicians were all Democrats, then yeah they'll all be pro-choice. As your comment indicates, Christians and pro-life not wanted in the Democratic Party.
Depravity, depravity, the Democrats like depravity,
For they are fiends in human shape, monsters of depravity.
You may meet them in a by-street, you may see them in the square —
But when a crime’s discovered, then a Democrat's not there!
(Because it was really a pro-life, homophobe, transphobe, racist, conservative theocrat, bigot, Republican in disguise only pretending to be a Democrat)
That's the norm across the West. In most of Europe abortion is non-controversial even in conservative and far-right parties.
Yep. The reaction is akin to how the GOP would react to "pro-Sharia-law Republicans."
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This is way too boo-outgroup.
Okay, maybe the T.S. Eliot parody was over the line.
But show me where I'm wrong that it is more likely than not that Democratic politicians are pro-choice. The bodies are barely cold by this stage so I don't want to go digging out "what did Representative A and Senator B get as scores from Planned Parenthood?" but assuming that "oh this guy must be pro-lifer because he had a list of pro-choice politicians" doesn't track when it comes to Democrats. If he had a list of Democrats, he had a list of pro-choicers, more likely than not. Correlation is not causation, isn't that the saying?
No one is disputing that Democratic politicians are more likely than not to be pro-choice. That wasn't the boo outgroup part.
Please (I mean this sincerely) don't start playing this game again just because you're back under a new alt.
I don't want to fight over this. But if someone can come along and presume that the shooting happened because of some Christian extremist, I'm going to answer that in the same spirit as it was posted. "Gosh, he must have been a radical anti-abortionist, he had a list and everything!"
Says who? When we get proper information, go right ahead. Right now we have bits and scraps and no clear pictures, and what little information we do have points towards the guy being a Democrat, but already some comments here are trying to spin it that "yeah well it was really all the fault of the Republicans".
Are you under the impression that FC is a Democrat supporter?
I don't know what their views are (I don't track closely "aha, X said Y so that must mean Z" on here). Whether they're Red, Blue, Green or Orange, professing to have insight into the mind of the shooter because the magic crystal ball is showing the shape of a black dog is proposing an explanation too soon.
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I feel like what's going on in this subthread can be described as "trading in culture war options". Clearly, people hope to get a greater win for their side by calling boo outgroup in advance, before it has actually been established that the bad guy was in their outgroup (the mechanism being something like "see, this proves that you get a more accurate world model by assuming that [my outgroup] is bad"), at the risk of egg on their face and a status drop for their ingroup if the call turns out to be wrong.
To make the trade count, whatever the shooter's politics turn out to be, we should parade those who confidently claimed the opposite through town with dunce hats and signs saying "[my tribe] sucks".
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Until very recently, the Democratic Party in Minnesota had Pro-life Democrats.
Minnesota’s Iron Range was both very pro-life and very pro-union. They elected pro-life Democrat Jim Oberstar to Congress many times, until Obamacare turned the pro-lifers against him.
There were pro-life Democrats in the party, until they got deliberately frozen out. There's still a sub-group of them inside the party, but they weren't the ones being invited to, for instance, Hotties for Harris bashes.
Right now, they can't make enough of Governor Walz being pro-reproductive rights and so forth.
Makes sense. It's their best issue.
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Hanania shared a video of the alleged shooter's alleged roommate saying he's a Trump supporter.
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1934036017746780454
EDIT: Excuse me. Hanania shared a video of the alleged shooter's alleged roommate allegedly saying he's a Trump supporter. I thought he was saying it during the cringe blubbering part but now that I listen on better speakers it's not that. The source for his roommate saying he is a Trump supporter is the reporter in this video https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1934061437691072727
Hanania dropping the sarcasm in the twitter thread:
He really is a jackass. People are pointing out that the dudes LinkedIn has him employed 50m from the location of this alleged roommate and that the alleged shooter was married with kids. It really calls into question whether this purported roommate is actually a roommate.
The only thing Haniana has in response to the evidence is sarcasm. He is just the worst; even when he agrees with me.
According to this Boelter was renting part-time, presumably so that he could stay near his workplace when necessary. (edit: did you mean 50 miles? I read that automatically as 50 meters.)
Also: "The roommate tells FOX 9 he has known Boelter for more than 40 years, since the fourth grade and didn't express a lot of strong political views. He did, however, have strong views on abortion. Authorities also found receipts for items used in Saturday morning's shootings in one of his vehicles at the Minneapolis home."
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no idea what denomination this guy is, but in the Catholic world, prolife, pro-immigration, pro-social justice like healthcare for the poor, anti-Trump is not particularly ideosyncratic. Rather it's extremely common, and a relatively consistent worldview. This probably describes the pope himself, and many priest and bishops in the US.
However, I don't this agree that this maps to 'Red-coded'. I think it's the default left-wing half of Catholicism in America, consistenly votes democrate, and is pretty solidly blue tribe, just not woke.
Seems like a Charismatic Protestant of some sort, which would, at least in American context, further point towards him probably not being a liberal/leftist.
There are (weird)left wing charismatic protestants. It really wouldn't shock me if one of them wound up in a political assassination because, well, you can expect any group of weirdos to be overrepresented in political violence.
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In the days when the Democrats really were the party of the working man, you could vote Democrat and be red-coded. That faded away as they chased after the college-educated vote, pivoted to "what do college kids like? oh yeah sex'n'drugs'n'rock&roll", went increasingly all-in on progressivism, or at least allowed the progressive wing to push the social liberalisation programme, and dumped the rare part of "safe, legal, and rare" in the dumpster.
So now you're either mostly a cultural Catholic who votes blue no matter who because that's how you were raised, you are more serious about your faith but think the Democrats are better on other issues, or this is the deal-breaker issue for you and you have to hold your nose and vote for the Republicans.
But I think FCfromSSC doesn't mean Catholics when they talk about Christians there, they mean Protestants and most especially the Evangelicals.
No-college kids like that too.
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Yes and no.
Biden / Pelosi style catholics are definitely solidly blue tribe and do vote democrat. There's even vestiges of old school machine politics for these kind of folks in states like Rhode Island and Massachusettes.
The problem is they aren't actually catholic. Just as "culturally Jewish" is a thing for totally non-observing "Jews" in the bicoastal cities, I believe "culturally catholic" exists as well for many democrat strongholds. To me, it's almost stolen valor. People like Biden etc get to say "faith is at the core of who I am" blah blah blah and infuse their speeches - and votes - with high minded moralism. But they aren't actually living or even trying to believe the doctrine of their faith. The Church is pretty damn clear on abortion and divorce, among other issues.
Theologically serious Catholics, nowadays, have to vote Republican because, of the two parties, it is the only one that isn't openly hostile to all of the bedrock elements of the faith. A lot of the politically motivated (and serious) American Catholics also get really into issues of religious liberties. One need look no further than the recent SCOTUS decision on tax-exemption status for faith based charities.
Don't think the Pope would agree.
Why?
The majority of what he posted on Twitter before he became Pope (which wasn't much) was criticism of Trumpist policies or ideas.
He was also a, literally, registered Republican.
Claiming that the pope agreed with democrats more on immigration is probably true(although a lot of the evidence used for that is out of context- his recent speech about ‘breaking down borders’ was explicitly calling for Palestinian rights and not about the U.S., for example). But the claim that he was or is particularly anti trump is not.
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There are a small number of theologically serious Catholics who vote democrat- over stuff like the border, 'Trump is pro-choice too', 'democrats hew closer to Catholic social teaching'(apart from unions this is not really true, because Catholic social teaching is not really defined enough to say that clearly- it's a set of principles, not a policy platform, and neither party is much into it), or just unironically believing democrat's propaganda. This group is old and shrinking(partly from dying of old age), but the claim that it doesn't exist is just false.
That being said 90+% of non-dissenting, precept-following Catholics do probably vote republican, with the other single-digit percent being a higher percentage of heavily propagandized non-English speakers, or residents of places like Chicago where maintaining a democrat registration to vote strategically for less-bad democrats is more important than protest voting for republicans, than of actual liberals.
This is all correct and an important improvement on what I originally commented.
Taking the issue up one or two levels of analysis, I believe there's a fundamental and close-to-irreconcilable tension between being Catholic and being American. I was listening to an SSPX sermon on the drive home from my Dad's last night and the priest points out that America is a protestant country founded on and steeped in protestant principles. Catholic integralism has approximately 0% shot of taking root in the American Federalist system. (That being said, however, Catholic political leaders, especially in the judiciary, have, for decades, punch above their electoral weight.)
The overwhelming majority of the time, voting in America, for theologically serious (TM) catholics, is a choice for the lesser of two evils. My guiding light, for some time, has been a candidate's perspective on religious liberty. Never their voiced position, mind you - religious liberty is one of those issues everyone always says they are for, but their voting behaviors often betray them later on.
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Only if you selectively define "bedrock elements" to include only what's politically convenient. Is JD Vance actually Catholic? He repeated rumors about Haitian immigrants he knew to be untrue for the specific purpose of demonizing them for political gain. He has, to my knowledge, never once apologized for this or walked back his statements, instead doubling down on them and insisting on calling them "illegals" not because they arrived here illegally, but because he disagreed with the political mechanism by which they were allowed to come. Again, he didn't do this because he was mistaken but because either he personally doesn't like them due to his own racism or because he cynically believes that other people are racist enough that he can exploit them for his own political ends. While the church's position on immigration doesn't contain any bright lines, you'd have to squint really hard to claim that productive, law-abiding people are causing such a burden to the United States that we are justified in deporting them to a country steeped in as much violence, poverty, and political instability as Haiti.
Or if you'd prefer bright lines, let's just point to capital punishment, an issue on which the church has taken an unequivocal stance for 50 years. This isn't merely something where Republicans want to maintain the status quo; they actually advocate expanding the death penalty. At least when Democrats want to expand abortion access it isn't based on the idea that more abortions is a good thing.
I say this as a Catholic who went to a small, Catholic, liberal arts college largely populated by serious Catholics. Some of my friends were liberals, some conservatives, and I don't believe for a second that abortion or anything else is the defining thing that's keeping them from voting Democrat. I'm still in contact with a lot of these people, and the ones that didn't switch to Democrat in the wake of Trump are all aboard the Trump Train, defending every policy of his without question. They spent college defending the Iraq War as totally justified, and I can't tell you how many times I heard the traditional conservative caricature about how poor people just didn't work hard enough and taxes should be lower to avoid penalizing the most talented people in society. I don't think that these people "aren't true Catholics", I just wish conservative Catholics would stop blowing smoke up my ass because of the abortion issue, or gay marriage, or whatever. The Democratic Party could reverse course on these issues tomorrow and I'd still have to hear the same bullshit about immigrants, poor people, urban blacks, and anyone else they think is ruining America.
The correlation between social and economic conservatism isn't all that surprising in light of facts like these:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GVSIRXhWYAAxzzp?format=png&name=small
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A very large supermajority of six-precepts following Catholics who don't dissent from the doctrine of the Church voting republican is not the same thing as most Catholic republicans being six-precept following believers in every jot of Church doctrine.
The actual name for the prior group when identified in social surveys is 'conservative Catholics', and pollsters literally identify them in part by their beliefs about things like papal infallibility and transubstantiation. @100ProofTollBooth may not be literally correct, but his statement is almost assuredly close enough for government work.
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There are requirements to come under the program which they entered via. I don’t think anyone seriously debates that on the merits they’d qualify for these programs. Instead, the whole point is to delay for almost a decade having the case tried on the merits so that by that point in time the pro immigrant can say “they’ve been here a decade — how cruel to cast them out.”
That is, it is all a procedural game whilst they are substantively illegal. Fuck then for playing that game and the NGOs who support it.
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Biden is in an irregular marriage.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/01/27/some-questions-about-the-bidens-1977-catholic-wedding/
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I’m not talking about Biden or Pelosi or other democrat leaders. There are many many serious Catholics who are anti Trump and also anti abortion. You can I can discuss whether they are mistaken to keep voting democrat but these people exist in large number.
I am saying that if this guy is hypothetically anti Trump pro immigrant healthcare and anti abortion:
This describes a ton of serious involved Catholics. You are right that they are much less common in trad circles
A reliably large proportion vote democrat. Sure once you start filtering for theological rigidity, they vote more and more a minority vote, but still exist.
Voting pattern aside these folks are much more Blue Tribe than Red Tribe.
This set of views probably describes the most left wing bishops in the US, including ones who are shakey on sex stuff and ones who are solid.
Again, ther is no evidence this guy is Catholic so I’m just playing pattern matching.
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I agree that the last 20 years saw a move of the last of these Catholics to the GOP. Pro choice Democratic politicians were censured by the church itself which is a big step. In liberal European countries like Germany there are Catholic groups who have semi-openly broken with the Vatican on abortion but in the US the clergy tend to be more socially conservative.
But an example of the above would be like ACB who is a liberal except for abortion.
If they didn't have to worry about re-election there'd be a lot more "ACBs" in the House and Senate.
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ACB as a 'liberal' is a bit of a stretch. She's probably better described as a moderate conservative on non-social issues.
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I too have seen reports his list involved those targets. But, tellingly, the sources saying this didn't share the entire list. They just said it included those targets. It's yet unknown if he was targeting only Democrats, targeting specific people, or targeting many -- ultimately, the cops caught him too early, so he didn't get the chance to go through his entire list. We'll have to wait for the manifesto to release, if it ever does.
I'll admit I'm curious as to his motives. He's so... out of the expected range of random killers.
If the report is the same one I saw, it seems so odd to me.
Why does he have roommates when he also has a family with five children and a wife he's still married to? Why did he text his roommates that he "did something stupid" instead of his wife? Unless they're estranged.
Everything about this is bizarre. He somehow gained weight after losing the body armor and getting a cowboy hat. His wife worked for Tim Walz (Jenny Boelter). They also owned properties together.
Why was this well-off man with a family renting with a Papa John's pizza guy? Why would he text him?
My current thinking is the roommate is making it all up. As for the rest of it, dunno. Every emerging detail makes the story weirder.
Sublease for a temporary business assignment? I know a few people with a house several hours from where they work who get an apartment - sleep in town on work nights, go home on weekends.
Maybe. Still seems weird he'd text the guy.
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Maybe it's my inner partisam speaking, but if the attack is strongly red coded I'd expect the dems would be rubbing it in everyone's faces every chance they get.
I mean I think the silence is rather telling here. If he were a GOP/MAGA type, they likely wouldn’t be silent on motive. There’s a lot of people on the left who want MAGA to go stochastic terrorist on them. They fantasized about “MAGA instigators” infiltrating the No Kings protests, much as they fantasize about Trump declaring martial law and using the military against them. Is the political equivalent of a bored housewife with a Rape Fetish. She’s so bored an feels so unwanted that rape is an improvement.
Who is "they" supposed to be? The police who have possession of the manifesto? What makes it likely that a police precinct is carrying water for the dems by hiding the political affiliations of an assassin? Is the idea that Tim Walz, governor, is behind the scenes threatening to cut their budget if they dont play ball?
Homogenizing the motives of every possible leftist actor from journos to bored spinsters to protestors to the local PD does give the impression that somebody is fantasizing though, ill give you that.
Lots of hardcore dems could plausibly get their hands on the manifesto, and potentially leak it. The prosecution, detectives, city, police. They're all places that democrat operatives have influence and know people.
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That one trans shooter of the Christian school never got their manifesto released for unclear reasons that seem plausibly political (trans person hated Christianity) and police played along
Audrey Hale’s “manifesto” has been released. It was never more than a rambling diary. The reason its release was delayed — which was hinted at by law enforcement at the time and has since been made explicit — is that it repeatedly refers to Hale’s personal relationship (and unrequited obsession) with a local public figure.
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Why not? They've done it before. They explicitly went out of their way to hide the Nashville Shooter's manifesto, who was a self-claimed FtM tranny that shot up a Christian school, if you've forgotten.
Do you mean it wasn't released immediately, or ever?
(May 2025) https://newschannel9.com/news/local/fbi-releases-over-100-pages-of-writings-by-covenant-school-shooter-audrey-hale-journal-diary-release-mass-shooting-school-shooting-nashville-suicidal-mass-shooting-schools-gun-control-firearms-mental-health-tbi-document-pdf-google-trends
It means they went to extraordinary lengths to prevent the release, including coming up with a novel invocation of copyright law and (when part of the manifesto was leaked anyway) threatening the newspaper editor with contempt charges.
Who is “they”? Best I can tell it was mostly the parents and school trying legal tricks (presumably to protect their reputation or something)? And the stated purpose feels at least facially plausible even if made in bad faith (that releasing shooter thoughts only makes them more famous and validates their approach as their writings are guaranteed notoriety) even if you disagree (as I do) and think there’s more to lose by a perception of secrecy. I mean, despite thinking this, it’s also true that media attention spawns copycats. I’ve never seen the copyright angle used but it also seems legally plausible.
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It could also be that his motives are non-ideological, or only tangentially mapped onto anything resembling a “Red vs. Blue” split. He could have been motivated by a (real or perceived) personal or professional slight which he blamed on the individuals targeted.
Like with Charles Guiteau shooting James Garfield?
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Rarely do these things turn out to neatly fit anyone's narrative. I think this or something like it is very likely indeed.
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Or he's one of those political oddballs who cannot be neatly categorized as "red-blue." A pro-life Democrat who hates Trump but who also has idiosyncratic reasons for hating particular Democrats? Not impossible.
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That's certainly possible, but it's not the way I'd bet, given the current information.
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