Tariff war: Canada threatens to unplug Minnesota
TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he will cut off electricity exports to three border states, including Minnesota, if President Trum slaps a 25% tariff surcharges on Canadian goods. Ford was firm: “If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything, including cut off their energy, with a smile on my face.” Michigan, Minnesota and New York rely heavily on electricity generated in Ontario. “They want to come at us hard, we’re going to come back twice as hard,” Ford said. “They need to feel the pain.”
Verbatim
Ford: “We didn’t start this tariff war, but we’ll go dollar for dolar to win.” Ford acknowledged that Canadian trade pplicy is decided set by the national government but that t but provinces, like his Ontario, are of one mind.
Ford. Ontario premier. His favorite baseball proclaims: “Canada Is Not for Sale.”
Major transborder transmission lines. These are super-voltage transmission lines. Other line, less than 345kV, don’t appear on this moa. Image: North American Electric Reliability Corporation
Trump belligerence
Trump has blamed Canada for illegal traffic of the drug fentanyl into the United Sates and resulting thousands of overdose deaths, although he’s never produced supporting data about the quantity. Nor has he explained why U.S. border guards don’t intercept shipments. Trump has claimed that Canada treats the United States badly, claiming falsely, among other thnigs, that Canada forbids U.S .banks from doing business in Canada. He also has suggested the annexation of Canada as a 51st state, irritating Canadians to no small degree. Aside from negotiation bluster and bluff, it’s unclear why Trump has been picking at Canada. The countries have been trading partners and geopolitical allies historically.
Unknowns lurk in dim state budget update
ST. PAUL, Minn.—The new state government budget forecast sees continued slippage in the state’s budget surplus and eventually deficits. Erin Campbell, the state budget commissioner, said the surplus of $6 billion has shrunk to $465 million. Campbell noted gloomily that there are more troubling variables ahead than usual. She pointed to the Trump tariff wars that could goose inflation and put consumer spending into a tailspin. Farm export markets, essential in the Minnesota economy, could dry up. Legislators were listening carefully. In the next few weeks they will be making adjustments in tax policy and spenijng priorities for the next biennium. Long term, Cambell said, there could be a $6 billion shortall by 2029.
Campbell. Her 102-page report is a “must read” at Capitol.
Cops: Ecstasy pills, fentanyl traces in traffic stop
WINONA, Minn. – Police stopped a Winona man on an arrest warrant for skipping a 2023 court date on a drug charge — and found more drugs. Jarrard Marquis Bradford, 42, was carrying a black tube with two pills inside that, officers said, he admitted were hallucinogenic ecstasy. The container also contained white residue that police said tested positive as fentanyl The stop was about 10 a.m. near Center and Howard streets.
Bradford. Now a second item on judge’s agenda.
Drugs suspected in traffic stop
GOODVIEW, Minn. – A Winona man seemed unsure on his feet and his speech was slurred during a traffic stop, leading the officer to suspect drugs. Adam Michael Sylvester, 22, was arrested. Blood was drawn at the jail. There may be formal charges after lab tests of the blood come back from the state, police said. The arrest was about 5:10 p.m. near West Sixth and Martina Streets.
Blizzard claims Faribauit man ice fishing
FARIBAULT, Mnn. –- The body of a Faribault man missing while ice fishing was found in Cannon Lake. Allen Krenz, 58, had gone out the afternoon before and was caught in a blinding blizzard. In all there was new snow of 7 to 8 inches. Winds were 40 to 50 mph. The 1,600-acre lake is on the Cannon River just west of Faribault.
Cannon Lake. The county’s lake rescue team in an earlier training exercise. Image: Rice Coumty sheriff
How WSU lost $1.1 million community-building grant
WINONA, Minn. – Winona State University has begun an internal assessment of whether its civic engagement project can survive a Trump Administration decision to pull the plug on $1.1 million in funding. The project director, Elissa Alzate of the political science faculty, said she was in the middle of planning a speaker series for this spring when the funding was yanked. The focus was to encourage community dialogues on topics like: building welcoming and inclusive communities through transportation coordination, affordable housing, and cooperation on regional development. The project had been taking form since last fall after the U.S. Defense Department approved a two-year $1.1 million grant. The university president, Ken Janz, declined to take news media questions about what went wrong. Janz, however, assigned his marketing director, Joe Hammel, to address questions.
Caught in Trump crosshairs
From Joe Hammel and other sources, here is the timeline of what was called the Civic Center project
> Elissa Alzate, a political theorist, applied for federal funds to promote dialogue among government agencies, citizens and shareholders. Alzate’s doctoral research at the University of California-Davis had centered on the relationship between the individual and the community, the role of religion in politics, and civic education with a focus on the early modern period, particularly John Locke. She joined the Winona State faculty in 2012.
> The U.S. Defense Department approved Alzate’s proposal in August 2024 at $1.1 million. The award was part of the Biden Administration program to pump money into the economy to continue the recovery from the CoVid pandemic of the previous Trump Administration.
> Immediately Alzate began planning a conference called “Promoting Civility Through Dialogue.” She launched an internship program to provide hands-on work experience for students She partnered with SE MN Together, a group of local government administrators and employees, educators, and leaders of nonprofit organizations to strengthen local capacity to solve community issues.
> Trump was elected to succeed Biden in November.
> Trump was inaugurated January 20. He appointed a Minnesota native, Pete Hegseth, as secretary of defense. Hegseth’s appointment was approved the U.S. Senate by the narrowest of margins, 51-50. There serious reservations about his modest military qualifications (only an Army major) and a record of peccadilloes and alcoholism. Trump had known Hegseth casually through interviews on Fox News, where he was a weekend anchor.
> Hegseth began a quick review of Defense Department to programs to eliminate. Such were Trump’s instructions. Across all agencies, the President wanted action quickly, not allowing time for careful review and heedless to implications or merit. With the Trump mandate, hundreds of federal programs were chopped. An estimated 70,000 federal employees were emailed pink slips.
> On February 28, the Defense Department notified Winona State that the Civic Center grant was dead. Yes, it had been oromised — but not yet delivered. The letter referenced Code of Federal Regulations language that indicated a federal award may be terminated if the “award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” There was no apology, no words of regret, no elaboration.
> For reasons not yet clear, the university chose against announcing the loss publicly, despite having announced the grant’s initial award with great fanfare back in October — and despite that both the university and DOD are public agencies that operate with public tax dollars.
> Word leaked to news media on March 5. that DOD had axed the Winona project
> Pressed by news reporters, the university belatedly issued a statement: “This grant represented a significant investment in student learning and regional community support for civic engagement, and we are disappointed the award has been terminated.”
> Meanwhile, Trump actions to downsize government metaphorically overnight have triggered hundreds of lawsuits. Some of the estimated 78,000 federal employees who were fired have filed actions for wrongful dismissal. There are other lawsuits that Trump ‘s executive orders to dismantle agencies, programs and projects were unconstitutional. These suits allege that Tump ran roughshod over the role of Congress, the legislative branch, which had appropriated agency funding for government operations.
> Unknown is whether Winona State is considering legal options.
Earlier: Trump kills $1.1 million WSU project
Alzate. Editor of the textbook “From Concept to Dialogue: An Introduction to Political Theory.”
Second editon due. Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing at $122 retail.
Blood tests will decide if driver was high
WINONA, Minn. – A Winona man was arrested after driving erratically, police said. An officer suspected that Keenan Mychael Wells, 32, was high on a controlled substance. A blood sample was sent to the state crime lab to find out. The arrest was about 1:22 a.m. near the Gundersen Clinic on U.S. Highway 61 at Vila Street.
UW-L dorm sex party plea: Not guilty
LACROSSE, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse freshman pleaded not guilty to sexual assault of high school girls in a campus dorm. Caden Atkinson, 20, had invited four girls to his dorm and plied them with alcohol and marijuana, according to the complaint. This was in January.
Earlier: UW-L student accused of illicit partying with teens
News summary at week’s end: March 5, 2025
COLLEGES: Trump kills $1.1 million WSU project
GOVERNANCE: How many Duluth alien arrests? ICE won’t say
GOVERNANCE: Ellison defiant to feds on transgender sports
CRIME: Update: Torture of transgender man included kids
CRIME: Update: Intercepted drugs worth $$1 million-plus
CRIME: Driver in Winona drug bust claims innocence
CRIME: $13,000 out the door in recent Winona scams
CRIME: Clever swindlers trick rural woman for $12,200
CRIME: Woman jailed after melee with husband
CRIME: Holy books stolen from St. Stan’s Basilica
CRIME: Too young to sip legally but were at Sippi’s anyway
SCHOOLS: Teens protest Red Wing school race issues
POLICING: Opioid contact downs cop answering call
POLITICS: Motley messages in street corner demonstration
INFERNO: Man, dog rescued from rural Arcadia fire
JOURNALISM: Winona Journal: Mount McKinley? Not us
College scores
Lacrosse: UW-LaCrosse and Wesleyan of Illinois, postponed
Softball: Trine 4, Saint Mary’s 3
Softball: Saint Mary’s 3, Benedictine 1
Minnesota prep
Basketball (boys): Byron Bears 89, Winona Winhawks 48
Amish toddler survives trampling by horse
ST. CHARLES, Minn. — A 3-year farm boy was trampled by a horse at an Amish place south of St. Charles in far western Winona County. The boy was taken 52 miles to a LaCrosse hospital by private conveyance. In the emergency room his injuries were described as non-life threatening. The incident was not reported to authorities until the hospital notified the Winona police dispatcher in the late evening. The incident was in thec 11000 block of Keller Drive.
Trump kills $1.1 million WSU project
WINONA, Minn. – A $1.1 million federal grant for a Winona State University project to promote civic dialogue has been withdrawn. The U.S. Defense Department, which awarded the grant in October, notified the university Friday that the money would not be delivered. The terse explanation from the Defense Department raised more questions than it answered: “The award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” The university had made a major announcement when the grant was awarded in October. but went silent several days about losing it. To media queries Wednesday, the university’s official information channels were unresponsive. Calls to Andrea Northam, the university’s chief spokesperson, were answered with a recorded message that she was out of the office until March 12. In the information vacuum, the campus suddenly was alive with chatter and speculation:
> The university was a casualty of President Trump’s drastic budget cuts to divert federal funds to offset the cost of major tax breaks he has promised his wealthy supporters.
> The university found itself on Trump’s enemies list for its strong diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, of the sort that Trump has tried to outlaw with executive orders flowing from a white supremacist orientation.
> Trump targeted Winona State in retribution for Minnesota voting 51% to 47% for the Democratic Harris-Walz ticket in the November presidential election.
> Trump is averse to the kind of civic engagement tools that the Winona State project was promoting.
> Trump has a generally anti-education perspective, particularly for public education, as well as a distrust of academics and the academic enterprise.
Slippery I-90 wreck: St. Charles driver hurt
EYOTA Minn. – A St. Charlesdriver was injured, albeit not seriously, in a two-vehicle collision on Interstate 90 near the Eyota exit. Pierce Benjamin Haas, 27, was taken 25 miles to a Rochester hospital. The accident was about 12 p.m. on snowand ice. Olmsted County deputies said both vehicles were beaded west toward Rochester. Haas was driving a 2021 Toyota Rav 4. In the other car, a 2022 Volkswagen Atlas, were Douglas Edward Everett, 60, and Kerstin I Everett, 57, both of Garrison, California. Neither was hurt.
Drug wholesaler admits large client list
MADISON, Wis. – A LaCrosse meth dealer, Toudeng Thao, age 49, pleaded guilty in federal court to drug trafficking in several counties. Thao had bene arrested in January 2024 with a supply f meh in his vehicle. He admitted to trafficking meth from sources in Minnesota, California, Canada and Mexico. He told police he supplied six drug local distributors. The arrest had followed months of a muti-agency investigation. The agencies included police in Campbell, LaCrosse, Onalaska and Prairie du Chien as well as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, and the West Central Wisconsin Metropolitan Enforcement Group.
Her story: He berserk in spat over dog
WINONA, Minn. – A neighbor heard a woman screaming for help. Police rushed to an apartment and found a couple who had been in a heated argument over a dog and that it had turned violent. The woman said that Brandon Marques Pierce, 26, had become angry because a dog was sitting on a couch. His anger intensified, she said: He grabbed her and threw her on the couch. When she threatened to call police, she said, he took her phone and sat on her. When police asked Pierce for his side, he responded that had nothing to say because “this is a women’s state.” He was booked for interferring with a 911 emergency call and domestic abuse. This was about 9:50 a.m. in the 250 block of East Sarnia Street.
Pierce. Seemed to say that men can’t get a fair break anymore.
Dad asks cops to help retrieve kids, then arested
WINONA, Minn. – A Winona man was arrested for drunken driving in an odd case that began the night before in a quarrel. Reportedly Scott Wesley Whetstone, age 50, had been too drunk to be in charge of the kids. So police took the kids to a girlfriend’s place for the rest of the night. In the morning Whetstone called police to stand by at the girlfriend’s place to be witnesses while he tried to pick up the kids to take back to his place. His intentions backfired. Police arrived as Whetstone was waiting in his car to go get the kids. This was about 9:20 a.m.in the 500 block of Kerry Drive on the Far West End. He was arrested. Not only was his blood-alcohol still at 0.10%, one-fifth more than the legal impairment level, but also he was driving, police said. The kids stayed with the girlfriend.
Musk on freeing cop-killer Chauvin: “Think about it”
WASHINGTON — Close Trump adviser Elon Musk reposted a video calling for the President to pardon Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin from a 22-1/2 ear prison sentence. It was Chavin, a white cop, choked George Floyd to death on a Minneapolis street in 2020 and set off racial unrest nationwide. The Musk post originated with odd-ball conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. Hardly anybody paid much attention until Musk repeated the post with the comment: “Think about it.” That elevated the Shapiro proposal into public dialogue — especially in the black community that had taken comfort in the Chauvin conviction as vindication against historically abusive white policing. A pardon would fit Trump’s pardon of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021, some of whom had been convicted for brutal acts against Capitol police.
Shapiro profile
Benjamin Shapiro, age 41, is a columnist, who worked for right-wing Breitbart News from 2016 to 2020. He now is editor of the online site Daily Wire, a podcaster, and radio talk-show host. He is a lawyer, clever with words, who flamboyantly advances a range of extreme causes. Among them are that homosexuality is a mental disorder, that capital punishment should be restored, and that federal healthcare should be repealed. He is quick to demonize people with different views. His home is Florida, his media productions from Tennessee.
Shapiro. Two hours daily on 200-plus radio stations in nine of 10 largest U.S. markets.
These birds know where to go
A cardinal flock. Finding food and shelter from the storm at the base of a bluff in East Burns Valley shortly after sunrise. Image: Andy Frank
Albert Lea blizzard idles travel; Guard called up
ALBERT LEA, Minn. — Governor Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard for emergency storm operations in Freeborn County. The Guard had been requested by Sheriff Sheriff Ryan Shaw to rescue motorists stranded by blizzards and also others isolated without power. The Guard was expected to be on special duty at least through Sunday. A portion of Interstate 90 in Freeborn County was shut down overnight. Stranded drivers were taken to the National Guard armory in Albert Lea. State trooper responded to 70 crashes with damage overnight. Thus was largely in southwest Minnesota, although the storm had a broad rcach across soutern counties. There were also 111 vehicles went off the road, 25 spinouts, and seven jack-knifed semis. Xcel Energy crews reported multiple power outages.
Eleven inches. The National Weather Service measured 11 inches of wet and heavy snow. Winds to 50 mph kept moving it around. Also badly hit was south over he Iowa birder. In Winona the snow was less than an inch. Image: Minnesota Transportation Department
Traffic issues from overnight freezing, thawing
NODINE, Minn. — A semi-truck slid off Interstate 90 a couple miles west of the Nodine exit during the overnight snow storm. The State Patrol reported no injuries. The rig was left in place until the weather cleared enough to tow it out safely. On Highway 61, which follows the Mississippi Rover, rocks and trees were loosened and dropped onto the right-of way at isolated points on the 25-mile stretch from Minneiska to Lamoille.
Emergency, fire crews make 54 calls
WINONA, Minn. – The Fire Department reported 38 emergency medical calls plus 16 fire calls in recent days:
> Tuesday, March 4: 5 medical calls plus 2 fire calls.
> Monday, March 3: 3 medical calls plus 3 fire calls.
> Sunday, March 2: 7 medical calls plus no fire calls.
> Saturday, March 1: 5 medical calls plus 1 fire call.
> Friday, February 28: 7 medical calls plus 5 fire calls.
> Thursday, February 27: 5 medical calls plus 3 fire calls.
> Wednesday, February 26: 6 medical call plus 2 fire call.
Earlier: Emergency, fire crews make 70 calls
$13,000 out the door in recent Winona scams
WINONA, Minn. – After five fraud cases in 1-1/2 weeks, Winona County Sheriff Ron Ganrude issued a citizen alert to be leery about telephone and online calls for money. The recent frauds netted crooks about $13,000, he said. Some ploys heve complex schemes. Among them:
> “Real deals” on Facebook and other online market places. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
> An online notice, usually purporting to be from Microsoft, that malware has infected your computer and that your password is needed to fix it.
> Claims of a relative in trouble with the law and needing quick cash.
> Instructions to buy and send gift cards.
Update: Torture of transgender man included kids
CANANDAIGUA, N.Y– A grand jury indicted seven people for first-degree murder in the torture and killing of a Minnesota transgender man. The county prosecutor, Jim Ritts, presented the case for murder to the grand jury. The indictments paved the way for trials of the seven defendants, ages 19 to 38, if thry plead innocent. The body of the Minnesota man, Sam Nordquist, was found dumped in a field south of this western New York city on January 13. The grisliness of the crime, according to grand jury documents, was worse than originally reported by officials. The documents say two children, ages 12 and 7, were forced to engage in the torture. The indictment also says the seven adult defendants tortured Nordquist because they enjoyed it. Asked whether the indictments should have been elevated to hate crime status, assistant prosecutor Kelly Wolford called the case “bigger than a hate crime.” She noted that New York has not had a death penalty since 2007 and that a first-degree murder convictions can mean life in prison without parole.
Earlier: More arrests in depraved Nordquist slaying
College scores
Baseball: Wartburg 13, Saint Mary’s 2
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