Star Tribune
Trump and his MAGA hat
The first time I noticed that Trump’s red Make America Great Again hat had come into vogue was at the Lake Region Threshers Show in Otter Tail County, locally known as the Dalton threshing bee. (If you’ve never been, you should go. It’s amazing.)
It was 2016, and as my small son and I walked around the grounds, admiring the huge century-old tractors and getting a free ride on the steam engine, red hats were everywhere. One man was wearing one that said, “Make Dalton Great Again,” which made me chuckle, imagining this small farming community as a long-ago mighty empire.
I always thought Trump looked like a goof wearing that hat. I mean, who wore a feed-style cap with a suit? But all around me, men were wearing them like they’d finally found a club they actually wanted to join.
Skeptics mocked The Hat. They laughed at the idea that a chauffer-driven New York billionaire with a gilded penthouse, who’d never shoveled manure or speared pike from a darkhouse or driven a semi-truck, could think that a red cap would endear him to men who had done all those things. They laughed that parts of his hats were evidently made outside the United States, or that they were made in the U.S. by people he has disparaged.
Many a lesser politician would have slunk away from The Hat and the mockery it engendered. It would have faded into the background as a tried-and-failed campaign prop shunted aside in favor of more traditional apparel like buttons or T-shirts.
Not Trump. He did as he always does in the face of criticism. He doubled down. The Hat took on the air of defiance, a symbol of a man who never backed down, a man who never apologized. A man who made his own atmosphere, critics be damned, using their own momentum against them. Hat sales went through the roof. There were knock-offs and parodies. Finally, the people had a politician who didn’t scurry off at the faintest hint of criticism, but who stood his ground, stood boldly and took it all, mockery and adoration alike. The hats linked the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the barely-making-it, the city slicker and the cowboy.
The mockery continued. He pronounced the books of the Bible “One Corinthians” and “Two Corinthians” instead of “First Corinthians” and “Second Corinthians.” Haw haw! Some Christian. (Never mind that “One Corinthians” and “Two Corinthians” was exactly the pronunciation I and many other kids learned in Sunday School.) He didn’t have a 2016 campaign office in New Jersey. He spelled coffee “cofveve” in a Tweet. Haw haw. A stable genius, all right!
But he continued to gain in the polls, with politicians falling over themselves to support him. And as he kept winning, his critics began to look like wolves unable to take down a majestic stag. They looked like loser wolves.
Kyle Steven Williams was convicted Tuesday in the 2021 murder of Kelly Jo Marie Kocurek, a 36-year-old mother of two, who was found bloodied and bruised in a Hastings hotel.
Following a five-day trial, a Dakota County jury convicted Williams, 35, of Red Wing, of first-degree murder while committing domestic abuse, premeditated first-degree murder, intentional second-degree murder and first-degree assault.
A conviction of premeditated first-degree murder comes with a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. The jury deliberated for less than a day before reaching a verdict, according to a news release from the Dakota County Attorney’s Office.
“Today justice was rightly served as Mr. Williams will now be held accountable for his continued acts of domestic abuse that culminated in the violent murder of Kelly,” Dakota County Attorney Kathryn Keena said in a statement. “While no outcome can ever fully heal the wounds of this heartbreaking incident, I hope today’s verdict brings some peace and comfort to Kelly’s family and loved ones.”
On May 18, 2021, Kocurek was found unresponsive by Hastings police officers in a room of a local hotel. She had marks around her neck and a number of cords were lying next to her. Her face was bruised. She was hospitalized but died from her injuries five days later.
Williams told police that Kocurek tried to strangle herself and he tried to cut the cords from around her neck, according to the attorney’s office. But the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Kocurek was strangled in a homicide and had also suffered traumatic injuries to her head.
A man on a scooter has grabbed or tried to grab at least five females on a St. Louis Park trail over a span of several weeks this fall, officials said Tuesday.
Reports to police say the incidents tied to a suspect in his late teens or early 20s have occurred on the North Cedar Lake Regional Trail in St. Louis Park and Minneapolis between Oct. 9 and Nov. 12.
“At least five females have reported incidents where the suspect has approached on an electric scooter and either attempted to or successfully grabbed them over their clothing,” a statement from police read.
Incidents have taken place between the trail’s Dakota Park and Cedar Lake areas, police said.
The physical description offered by police was too broad to help the public possibly identify the suspect.
Anyone who has also been similarly targeted or has information about a possible suspect is urged to call the police tip line at 952-924-2165, or email info@stlouisparkmn.gov and include your contact information.
A Stearns County judge this week sentenced a central Minnesota woman to nearly 22 years in prison for silencing the alarm on an oxygen-monitoring device and allowing her severely disabled child to die.
Elise C. Nelson, 39, was charged with two felony counts in Stearns County District Court following the June 2020 death of 13-year-old Kylie Larson at their home in Paynesville.
Court documents state Nelson was the sole caretaker of Kylie during a weekend in June 2020 and that Nelson was trained to feed and medicate Kylie, as well as suction her tracheotomy as needed.
In court documents, Nelson said she was struggling with depression and admitted to going to the liquor store to buy a 1.75-liter bottle of vodka. She “drank to the point that she blacked out and does not remember what happened for long time periods,” documents state.
The complaint against Nelson states that alarms on Kylie’s pulse oximeter — a device that clips to a finger and assesses breathing by measuring oxygen saturation — started going off on June 20. Court documents state Nelson silenced the alarms multiple times and eventually took the device off; Nelson then called 911 about seven hours after the machine last recorded a pulse.
Kylie had medical problems including chronic respiratory failure and severe developmental delay from a loss of oxygen at birth. But she “enjoyed being outside and moving around, whether it be spinning around in her chair, going for walks with friends and family, or traveling to new places,” her obituary reads.
Nelson pleaded guilty to one felony count of second-degree murder in October 2023 as part of a plea agreement that dismissed one felony count of second-degree manslaughter. She entered a Norgaard plea, allowing her to claim she cannot recall committing the crime but believes there is substantial evidence she would be found guilty at a trial.
In January, Nelson made a motion to withdraw her guilty plea, saying she felt coerced by her previous attorney into signing the document. The state argued her plea was voluntary and informed, and Stearns County Judge Heidi Schultz denied the motion.
