Melissa Hortman
BY ED FELIEN
The tragic murder of Melissa Hortman has left us with another great emptiness in the progressive leadership of the Minnesota Legislature. She, as Speaker of the House, along with Kari Dziedzic, as Senate Majority Leader, led the Minnesota Legislature in 2023 to pass the most progressive legislation probably in Minnesota history: universal school meals; tuition-free college for low-income families; removing lead pipes; universal background checks for guns; ban on PFAS (forever) chemicals in consumer products; driver’s licenses for all legal residents; and much, much more.
Kari Dziedzic died from ovarian cancer December 27, 2024.
Melissa Hortman was murdered on June 14, 2025.
Vance Boelter told his wife and kids, “Dad has gone to war.” He had just killed Melissa Hortman and her husband and ran from a shootout with the Brooklyn Park police. He says he miraculously met someone at a bus stop who sold him a late model Buick and an electric bike. He was found in the woods near his home in Green Isle.
Kari Dziedzic
Why did he do it?
Boelter is a big Trump supporter. Police found a long hit list of other DFL legislators and abortion providers in his car.
Was he feeling the military spirit in keeping with Trump’s parade? Was he upset about the popularity of the No Kings demonstrations? Did he believe that killing one abortion enabler could save thousands of unborn children? Did he believe that homosexuality was an abomination in the eyes of god? Did he see himself as a martyr, the first casualty in the civil war that would transform America into a Christian nation—a white, male-dominant, very conservative Christian nation?
Did he believe that a single spark could start a prairie fire, that his actions would inspire a mass uprising against the Woke Culture that has been eating away at the Christian values that underpin our national identity?
A single spark can start a prairie fire—but only if the conditions are ripe. There has to be abundant tinder anxious to burst into flame, and there have to be suitable winds to fan the flames.
Boelter was a prepper, someone who believed a national catastrophe was inevitable and imminent, and you had to be prepared for it. How many preppers are there? Do they talk to each other? Do they have a coherent analysis?
He home-schooled his kids. Home-schooling and prepping are not socially gregarious activities. If you belonged to a home-schooling group, you’d start a school, wouldn’t you? And if you were saving up just enough food and water for your family, when Armageddon came you wouldn’t want everyone else in the world to know your address, would you? But we really don’t know enough about these groups and what they’re thinking, and whether or not they’re organized. We don’t know if there is enough tinder there to start a prairie fire. Generally, we think, if there were enough of them we’d know about it. We really don’t know, but we would like to learn more about the guy at the bus stop who sold him the Buick.
Were the winds of change favorable for Boelter?
He had sheets of paper in his car with “No Kings” hand written in big letters. What does that mean? Does he see Trump as a king, as the vicar of Christ on earth? Does he see Trump’s authoritarianism as a welcome return to proper authority. Does he agree with Mel Gibson, “It’s like daddy arrived and he’s taking his belt off.”
Evangelical Christianity has a strong inclination toward respect for traditional authority. That seems ironic in that its founder was executed by Roman authorities for leading a demonstration to throw money-changers out of the temple. His followers built catacombs to literally undermine Roman authority in Rome. They were so successful that Constantine and the Roman Empire abandoned Rome and established a new capitol in Turkey, and at the Council of Nicea in 325 Constantine established a Roman
No Kings protest in St. Paul (Photo/reddit)
Catholic (meaning universal) Church that taught respect for Rome and traditional authority.
There was a strong wind against Boelter on June 14. Five million people in more that 2000 cities in America said, “No Kings!” around noon on Saturday, June 14, but Boelter wouldn’t have known that tidal wave was coming at two a.m. that morning. He had no idea that this would be the largest demonstration in American history. He thought his act would turn the page. He must have believed his murders of prominent DFL politicians would be so horrific it would knock those demonstrations off the front page.
Trump must have felt the same way. He bombed Iran a week after the “No Kings” rallies ruined his birthday parade, so he could put something else on the five o’clock news.
But Minnesotans will not forget the work of Melissa Hortman.
Her love will outlast their hate.
