Over a thousand community members gathered in Rochester’s Peace Plaza for the Hands Off! protest on April 5th.

The Resistance

On April 5, 2025, over 5 million Americans participated in the "Hands Off!" mass mobilization event staged in over 1,400 rallies across all 50 states. This movement united a diverse coalition of progressive, labor union, civil rights, LGBTQ+, women's rights, and other activist groups (https://handsoff2025.com/about-1). This was the largest protest in American History. Participants showed up to demonstrate opposition to policies of the Trump administration they viewed as detrimental to democratic values and social justice. Crowds also voiced concerns over Social Security and Medicaid cuts, federal workforce reductions, and attacks on consumer protections and human rights.

In St. Paul, at least 25,000 gathered at the state capitol to rally in solidarity. Rochester also had an amazing turnout thanks to the efforts of local 50501 and Indivisible organizers (https://indivisible507.org). More than 1,000 neighbors came together in Peace Plaza to share their messages of resistance. The demonstrations in both cities and nationwide were marked by peaceful - but firm- expressions of opposition to the harmful actions of the Trump administration. The signs speak for themselves. Millions of Americans standing up to say that we will not stand for the dismantling of our democracy, economy, or freedoms. This is our government, and we are coming together in increasingly large numbers to say NO!

You can stay informed about opportunities to add your voice to and support your community’s organizing efforts through our weekly ‘Activism Roundup’ newsletter (this week’s roundup can be found at https://olmsted2024dfl.com/activismroundup-457234-2. Mark your calendars for the next nationwide mass mobilization on Saturday, April 19th; details to follow as they take form. Our nation needs our fight right now, so please find an issue that moves you to action and get involved.

Tim Walz Holds a Town Hall Because Brad Finstad Won’t

At the largest gathering of DFLers in Rochester in years, Governor Tim Walz held a town hall on March 22 at John Marshall High School. Congressman Brad Finstad hasn’t been willing to do an in-person town hall in Rochester since he was elected in 2022, so Walz, who had Finstad’s job from 2007-2019 before becoming Governor, decided he would come back to the First Congressional District and listen to voters. The event was sponsored by the DFL, but there were no political restrictions on who could attend.

The town hall came together quickly. Four days before the event, Walz’s staff let DFLers in Rochester know he could do a town hall that Saturday morning. Planning for the event, shared between local DFLers, Walz campaign staff and Minnesota DFL staff, started immediately and moved at a rapid pace. The original plan was to hold it at Century High School, but within a day after registration opened on March 19, far more people than could fit in the Century Auditorium had registered for the town hall, so it was moved to the John Marshall auditorium, which is twice as big. A call for volunteers to help staff the event also quickly yielded more people than were needed. Organizers finally had to close registration on Friday afternoon when more people had registered than could be accommodated in the auditorium and overflow space at John Marshall.

Walz arrived at the school around 9:30 Saturday morning and met with reporters. After spending some time greeting the event volunteers, he and First Lady Gwen Walz came on stage to a standing ovation at 10:30, joining Caitlin Nicholson, chair of the 1st Congressional District DFL, the town hall’s moderator. The main floor of the auditorium was full and people were standing in the back. An overflow room with a monitor so people who came too late for a seat in the auditorium could see and hear the event was also full.

Walz spoke briefly about town halls he had done recently in other states and reminisced about how he had been on the same stage in 2009 doing a town hall when the Affordable Care act was being considered in Congress. He said the crowd then had been less friendly than the one today. He then answered questions submitted by audience members for the rest of the hour. At the end of the hour, he and Gwen reminded people that the antidote to despair was action and called on those present to go out and do something to help bring the country back to the right path.

Once he left the stage, he spoke to local legislators who had attended and to the event volunteers before going to John Hardy’s for lunch and heading out of town for another town hall later that day.

If you missed the rally, a full taping of it is available online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32WRXEWQV30).

Simon Glaser Running for MN Senate in District 24

Simon Glaser has announced he is running for the DFL endorsement for Senator in Senate District 24. Glaser, who teaches English at John Marshall High School, is running for public office for the first time, but he has been an elected officer in the Rochester Education Association, where he now serves as Vice President. He has also served on several boards for community organizations.

Glaser said he intended to focus on strengthening public education, safeguarding civil liberties, and protecting our environment as the key points of his campaign.

Glaser moved to Rochester in 2010. He is married and has two children. Senate District 24 DFL voted to give him a provisional endorsement through 2025, though that will terminate if another candidate enters the race.

Senate District 24 is probably the best chance for the DFL to flip a Minnesota Senate seat in Greater Minnesota. The Senate DFL Caucus is aware of Glaser’s candidacy and plans to assist him in his run.

The Minnesota DFL Has a New Chair: Richard Carlbom

Ken Martin served seven terms as the chair of the Minnesota DFL, far longer than any previous chair in the 81 year history of the DFL, but he left office on March 29. Martin didn’t run for re-election, because he was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee on February 1. The members of the DFL’s State Central Committee (SCC) met on the 29th in Edina High School to elect Martin’s successor and other statewide officers for a 2025-27 term. The party chair is a full-time paid position while the first and second vice-chairs are part-time paid positions. Other officers are volunteers. Campaigning for these positions had mostly been by phone, social media, and email, though there had been some in-person candidate forums organized around the state by local DFL units, including one in Rochester.

An unusually high percentage of SCC members turned out to hear candidates for office speak and answer questions, then vote. They elected Richard Carlbom chair by a large margin. Carlbom has been involved with the DFL for 20 years, starting as field organizer. He’s known to many in our area because he was finance director for Tim Walz when Walz first ran for re-election to Congress in 2008 and was Walz’s campaign manager in his close re-election race in 2010. He was also the director of the successful campaign in 2012 against the constitutional amendment that tried to bar same-sex marriage in Minnesota. Since then, he has worked as a political consultant and, for the last few years, as Walz’s Deputy Chief of Staff. He plans to draw on his organizing skills to improve DFL organizing efforts around the state, but especially in Greater Minnesota, and to develop a rapid-response team to rebut Republican attacks.

Also elected at the meeting were:

Marge Hoffa, re-elected as First Vice-Chair

Savanthi Sathanadan, re-elected as Second Vice Chair

Ceri Everett, re-elected as Secretary

Lindy Sowmick, elected as Treasurer

Quentin Wathum-Ocama, elected as Outreach and Inclusion Officer

Minnesota Legislature is Making Some Progress

Republicans mostly wasted 5 weeks of a one-vote advantage in the Minnesota House of Representatives pushing far right-wing bills through committee, only to see them fail on the floor because the bills did not get even the one DFL vote needed to pass (though there were some non-controversial passing with bipartisan support). On March 11, DFLer David Gotfried won a special election for the open seat in District 40B and brought the House back to a 67-67 tie. That meant the power-sharing agreement negotiated in February went fully into effect. DFLers became co-chairs of House committees. Rep. Tina Liebling became co-chair of the Judiciary and Civil Law Committee. As a result, more bills sponsored by DFL legislators have been heard in committee in the last two weeks. However, the crunch time is coming. Legislators have two weeks to move the bills that will be eventually considered by the full House out of committee, including putting together a budget bill from each committee that handles the finances of a part of state government. The bills will need to have bi-partisan support to pass out of committee. House leadership has just told each committee it can spend or has to cut from baseline spending with a lot more cuts being demanded than in the 2021 or 2023 budget process.

The Senate, which again has a one-vote DFL majority since Doron Clark, an Olmsted County native, won a special election in January to replace a member who had died, has been proceeding a bit faster. However, its activities were disrupted when a married Republican Senator with four children was arrested in a police sting for trying to solicit sex from a 17-year-old. He resigned a few days later, just before he would have faced a bipartisan expulsion effort from his Senate colleagues. A special election to replace him will be at the end of April.

The Legislature will take a week’s break in mid- April for Passover and Easter. When legislators return, they will have four weeks to pass budget bills and any other legislation they want to get through this year as well as reconciling differences between House and Senate bills before they must adjourn on May 19. If some budget bills aren’t passed by then, Governor Walz will have to call a special session, so they can be passed before June 30 or parts of state government will shut down.

What does it mean to “dismantle” the U.S. Department of Education?

By Simon Glaser | Teacher, John Marshall High School | Candidate for State Senate District 24

There has been a great deal of worry and confusion recently about the U.S. Department of Education, and for good reason. On March 20th, President Trump signed an executive order to, in his words, dismantle the department. But what exactly does that mean, for teachers like me, for my students, and for the community at large?

First the good news -- Trump absolutely cannot close the Department of Education on his own. That would require an act of congress, which is not likely to happen. Also, here in Minnesota are well positioned to take care of a lot of the problems created by this attack on public education. It is likely that the state would step in with additional funding for education which would make up for a lot of the losses. Of course, that consume state funding that could not then be spent on something else important to Minnesotans. Which brings us to the bad news.

Even though the president cannot end the department, DOGE, with the full cooperation of the new secretary of Education, can cripple it. Thousands of employees have already been fired, and they can certainly slow-walk any policies or responsibilities they wish. Increased state funding will not make up for all the damage, and these losses will be felt even more acutely by students in states that already deprioritize education.

About 15% of our state’s education budget is federal money. While that may not seem like that much, it still represents a lot of money, and those losses will certainly be felt. They will be felt mostly by our must vulnerable students. These are students with Individualized Education Plans due to learning difficulties, mental health issues, hearing loss, or other physical disabilities. Funding will dry up that would normally go to providing full access and services for these students, which would then create a ripple effect affecting all of us. Schools are required to provide these services, whether they are fully funded by the federal government or not. So then class sizes will go up, which we know always leads to poor outcomes. Other funding priorities will need to be abandoned – perhaps feeding kids, perhaps technical training programs, perhaps mental health supports, perhaps improved literacy programs. For us working in public schools, our list of responsibilities is about to get longer again.

Once thing is certain, these cuts have nothing to do with how we are teaching our students. Despite GOP claims both nationally and locally, this has nothing to do with giving local communities more control. States and local districts already manage all curriculum choices. So, when they say they want to return education to the states, they don’t mean returning control or values, they only mean returning the full cost of educating students to the states.

Political Contribution Refund (PCR) Program

In Minnesota, everyone eligible to vote may get $75/year ($150/year for a married couple) back from the state each year for contributions made to eligible candidates or political party units. If you haven’t made a contribution yet this year, please consider contributing to

Olmsted 20/24 DFL online at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/olmsted-20-24-dfl-1

or by check at P.O. Box 9044 Rochester, MN 55903

OR to one of these campaigns

Michael Hutchinson (House District 20B) online at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/vote4hutch or by check at: Vote For Michael Hutchinson, 884 Golfview Ave, Zumbrota, MN 55992 

Simon Glaser (Senate District 24) online at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/simonglaser or by check at: Simon Glaser for Senate, P.O. Box 8155, Rochester MN 55903

Heather Holmes (House District 24A) online at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/holmes-for-house or by check at: Friends of Heather Holmes, P.O. Box 360, Byron, MN 55920

Tina Liebling (House District 24B) online at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/liebling-for-state-house or by check at: Liebling for State House, P.O. Box 6332 Rochester, MN 55903

Our unit or the campaigns will send you a receipt for your contribution and may send you a form to claim the refund as well. (If the campaign doesn’t send you a form, it can be downloaded from the Department of Revenue website) Once you’ve made enough contributions to claim the full refund, fill out the form and send it and the receipt(s) to the Minnesota Department of Revenue and you’ll get your refund in a few weeks. You have until April 15, 2026 to apply for your 2025 refund. If you made qualifying contributions in 2024 and have not yet claimed the refund, you only have until April 15 to do that.

March/April 2025 Newsletter