MNByChoice

Live updates page, so posting text. I could not find the article "freestanding".

2:49 p.m. Feb. 8 | Kidney recipient detained by ICE still hasn't received life-saving medications

Four days after ICE arrested a Rochester man who is the recipient of a kidney transplant, federal authorities still have not given him the life-saving medications he needs to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, according to the man’s wife.

The Department of Homeland Security said late Friday that ICE is aware of the man’s recent kidney transplant, that the family gave authorities the medications and that ICE was working to ensure he gets them, but he apparently still has not received them.

Javier Abreu-Vasquez was arrested by immigration agents in Rochester on Friday while he was delivering groceries as part of a local mutual aid group through his church. He was taken without his medications to the Whipple Federal Building near the MSP airport, where he was held until being flown to a federal detention center in Texas Friday.

State Rep. Kim Hicks, DFL-Rochester, said a lawyer for Abreu-Vasquez was told Friday morning that he would need a doctor’s note to be able to access the anti-rejection medication vital to his transplant survival.

Hicks drove to the Twin Cities Thursday night to deliver the medication to Abreu-Vasquez at the Whipple building. After conferring with his attorney Friday morning, she got a letter from his doctor at Mayo Clinic, where the 38-year-old had kidney transplant surgery in July of 2023.

Hicks and Abreu-Vasquez’s family grew quite concerned though, because they hadn’t heard from federal officials as of Friday afternoon — after Abreu-Vasquez was scheduled to be transported by plane to a federal detention center in Texas.

By late Friday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement regarding Abreu-Vasquez’s situation.

“ICE is aware of his recent kidney transplant, and his family sent the medications and medical documentation. ICE is working with the family to ensure he gets all of his needed medications,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

“It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody,” McLaughlin’s statement continued. “This is the best healthcare many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

Abreu-Vasquez’s wife, Carolina Rosario De Abreu, told MPR News Sunday that she talked to him by phone, and he told her he still has not received his medications. She says he needs to take his pills daily to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, and that going without them could be life-threatening.

Hicks said community members alerted her Thursday that Abreu-Vasquez had been detained after federal agents rammed into his car and broke his car window on Civic Center Drive in Rochester. She said he had been delivering groceries for a mutual aid network through his church when he was detained.

In the statement, McLaughlin described Abreu-Vasquez as “an illegal alien” from the Dominican Republic.

Hicks, though, said the man has an alien registration number, which people often receive after applying for a green card, receiving a work permit or taking part in immigration court.

“I don't understand why the federal government is taking Minnesotans who are not criminals, who are part of our communities, and violently ripping them off the streets after running into their cars, and then denying them access to life saving medication,” an exasperated Hicks said Friday morning.

“For what purpose? What is the end goal here?” she said. “This is not the worst of the worst.”

— Molly Castle Work and David Schaper, MPR News

Minnesota's four Republican members of Congress are supporting new legislation designed to force the state's election officials to turn over private voter data to the Trump administration, withholding federal funding if it doesn't.

Rep. Pete Stauber introduced the Minnesota Voter Integrity Act of 2026 in the U.S. House on Monday, with Reps. Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, and Michelle Fischbach as co-sponsors.

Minnesota DHS has a website devoted to debunking DHS claims.

This page exists to correct the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) repeated false claims regarding the Minnesota Department of Corrections' (DOC) cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Please see the below media fact sheet, press releases, and videos for more information.

Page devoted to Alex Pretti:
https://mn.gov/doc/about/news/news-releases/?id=1089-720842

Found on bluesky post via mastodon. May be more discussion there:
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bbp2b224lro3bfnzcqwwnkfo/post/3mdczpr56ak2g

MINNEAPOLIS — Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the city is asking a federal judge to immediately grant a temporary restraining order to help halt the federal government’s current immigration operation on Monday. The request came after federal agents shot and killed a 37-year-old man Saturday in south Minneapolis.

– article continues

The Kare11 ICE in Minnesota Page has a collection of recent stories. https://www.kare11.com/section/ice-in-minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS — Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the city is asking a federal judge to immediately grant a temporary restraining order to help halt the federal government's current immigration operation on Monday. The request came after federal agents shot and killed a 37-year-old man Saturday in south Minneapolis.

-- article continues

The Kare11 ICE in Minnesota Page has a collection of recent stories. https://www.kare11.com/section/ice-in-minnesota

President Trump is best taken in his own words.

President Trump's letter in full (quotes are from the source, and likely not in the original):

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.

“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.

“I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/trump-letter-greenland-nobel-peace-b2903022.html

Edit: I take it that my sarcasm is not landing.

How are you preparing for Friday's general strike? (January 23, 2026)

I want to ensure I am not forcing someone else to work.

I am arranging PTO, shifting hours earlier in the week, and getting errands done by Thursday. Also, asking people how they are getting ready to remind people it is happening.

Edits: This is a distraction from the world crumbling near me.

I just want to talk equations as those are distracting.

Original: I have been thinking of Generational Wealth lately, and my thinking is ~~unrefined~~ muddy. I wish to get feedback and your thoughts.

Before I learned of FIRE, I had assumed Generation Wealth required a wildly high sum of money (hundreds of millions of USD). Anything less was just a nice retirement. (I had also assumed retiring was simply impossible.)

Like with many things about compounding, it matters critically to not spend all of one's money and to have time. Too little money or too little times and money goes to zero. Even a little more than the "balance" point, and the number go to infinity.

At 2 children per household, the number of households being supported grows at a larger rate than reasonable investment gains. The tripling time at 4% real gain is 28.01 years. (The tripling time for supported households is shorter than this. Tripling time chosen as the initial household will then become 3. Though in my scenario below the number of households in each 28 year period only doubles.)

If each new generation are comprised of twins, starts to receive on their 28th birthday, and sadly this is the day their grandparents die, then the balance seems to work out if the initial parents overshoot their FI number by about 66% either by over-saving or not withdrawing for years.

(Generational Wealth depends heavily upon how many children each generation produces. One under earner/over producer of children will sink the whole thing... )

It would seem the best I can hope to do is to give my children and grandchildren an education and a head start. They will have to live their own lives and make their own contributions to their retirements.

I finally started to listen to "Sold a Story", then in a panic reviewed how my school system is teaching children to read.

While listening to episode 2, "The Idea", I learned that many students were taught how to read with the skills that are certain to make them poor readers. (This made me reflect on the recent news that a great many Americans don't read at the 6th grade level.)

I hope that you all check what your school district is doing, and like me find that the school district is following a good plan. (Minnesota requires the reading plans for school districts to be made public. I read the plan, and then I ran it through Gemini to check against "sold a story" as this is not my area of expertise.)

As an aside many reading program have suspiciously terrible names, like "Read Naturally". While the google I use found the main site quickly, criticisms of that program are harder to locate. (There are many criticisms of other programs that use the phrase "read naturally".)