Afternoon everyone. Many of you have asked what more can we do to help the people of Minnesota? Whose bravery, and courage, inspires us every day?
Well, today we are launching a new campaign to raise $50,000 for the Minnesota Democratic Party (DFL) by February 15th. To kick it off I am sharing an interview I just completed with Richard Carlbom, the Chair of the DFL. A recording is above, and a transcript is below.
Here’s how Chair Carlbom began our conversation:
Yeah, it’s been a challenging time in Minnesota. How I’m doing… I’m making it. I’m doing everything I can each and every day to find a way to be more helpful to the community that I love and to the people of Minnesota who I love. And to try and figure out how, as a party in this moment, how we respond to the moment, not eking out every political advantage, but really asking ourselves, how do we support and protect the community around us? So, pulling our team together daily to ask that question, to find new ways of making an impact that’s positive right now.
It’s very scary. It’s scarier than probably folks realize. It’s not like what you see on TV. It’s everywhere. It’s not just in the Twin Cities metro area, but it’s happening in small towns. In a small town yesterday, ICE agents ate lunch at a restaurant and then came back three hours later and arrested and took away three people who served them lunch. And there’s heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story happening everywhere in Minnesota right now. So it’s scary. It’s meant to inflict fear and terror on a population. And our job is to do what we can to safeguard democracy.
“Our job is to do what we can to safeguard democracy.”
I just donated $500 to kick off this new campaign Will you join me?
We are launching this campaign for a few, critical reasons:
The Party’s response to the terror campaign launched by ICE is draining resources and capacities from their more traditional electoral work. We need to help them replenish what has been lost
We need to provide the DFL the resources to build a truly robust response to the terror campaign. You can learn more about what they are doing already - Constitutional Observer trainings, working with local and national content creators to document what is happening and share it all with the world, more direct partnerships and support of groups defending targeted communities - in the interview. It is essential at this critical moment that we help the DFL innovate and create a model for how a state Democratic Party responds to an assault like this. For assaults like this are coming to other states, both in the short term and perhaps in the run up to the November elections
We need to provide them the resources and capacity to take their experience in fighting ICE and help train other state parties across the country
We need to help ensure that their Feb 3rd precinct caucuses, in 4,000 different locations, can come off without incident and disruption by ICE. Many of you have wondered what it would be like if ICE is deployed in cities before the November election. What happens on February 3rd could be an early test, and we need to ensure that the DFL has the resources they need to execute 4,000 caucuses across the state in unprecedented circumstances
As I’ve been writing to you all week we are in a new day, and for us to prevail, we need to shed old understandings, and innovate, build new capacities, and keep getting stronger. We are launching this fund to help the DFL of Minnesota meet the moment, and start to re-imagine what a state Democratic Party can be in this new age of Trump. For yes we must win elections but it is my firm belief that the Party must also must take on one more big assignment, the assignment the Chair describes as:
“Our job is to do what we can to safeguard democracy.”
I hope you will watch our conversation, learn more about what the DFL is already doing, and support this vital effort to build something new, and important, for the pro-democracy movement.
And let’s close by once again thanking the courageous people of Minnesota. Your bravery has become an inspiration to us all. You’ve been there for us these last few weeks.
Now we need to be there for you - Simon
Chair Richard Carlbom Bio
Carlbom got his start in politics as a College Democrat in 2002. He was elected as Mayor of Saint Joseph in 2004 just months after graduating from St. John’s University. Soon after, he became a field organizer with the Minnesota DFL during the 2006 election cycle. He went on to work as campaign manager for then-Congressman Tim Walz in 2010, when Walz overcame a national Republican wave and won reelection.
In 2012, Carlbom was the campaign manager for Minnesotans United for All Families — the Vote No ballot campaign that made Minnesota the first state in the nation to defeat a harmful constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage.
Carlbom later served as Walz’s Deputy Chief of Staff. As someone who counted on free lunch at school when he was a kid, one of Carlbom’s proudest moments was standing alongside Governor Walz when the universal school meals legislation was signed into law.
Transcript - Simon Rosenberg and DFL Chair Richard Carlbom (January 16, 2026)
Simon Rosenberg:
Welcome, everyone. Simon Rosenberg back with an important event today. I'm joined here by Chair Richard Carlbom from the Minnesota Democratic Party, known as the DFL in Minnesota. Welcome, Mr. Chair.
Chair Richard Carlbom:
Thank you, Simon. Thanks for having me.
Simon Rosenberg:
Listen, I wanted you to come on today because we're announcing a campaign today to help raise you money. The state has been under incredible adversity. The party has had to put out resources and money in order to respond to the emergency and the threat coming from the Trump regime. And I want to talk about that in a minute, but first I just want to ask how you're doing. How's it going? I mean, this is a very tough period for all of you.
Richard Carlbom:
Yeah, it's been a challenging time in Minnesota. How I'm doing… I'm making it. I'm doing everything I can each and every day to find a way to be more helpful to the community that I love and to the people of Minnesota who I love. And to try and figure out how, as a party in this moment, how we respond to the moment, not eking out every political advantage, but really asking ourselves, how do we support and protect the community around us? So, pulling our team together daily to ask that question, to find new ways of making an impact that's positive right now.
It's very scary. It's scarier than probably folks realize. It's not like what you see on TV. It's everywhere. It's not just in the Twin Cities metro area, but it's happening in small towns. In a small town yesterday, ICE agents ate lunch at a restaurant and then came back three hours later and arrested and took away three people who served them lunch. And there's heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story happening everywhere in Minnesota right now. So it's scary. It's meant to inflict fear and terror on a population. And our job is to do what we can to safeguard democracy.
Simon Rosenberg:
I just want to say as somebody who's been an observer, the courage, the bravery, the grit, the resilience that the people of Minnesota have exhibited in the last few weeks has just been inspiring, extraordinary… and I just wanted to say thank you in every way that I possibly can. I mean, I know that you're in it every day. I've just been so deeply inspired by the courage of everyday people that we've seen on the streets.
Richard Carlbom:
That's what gives me hope. I think the way we beat this moment, how we win this moment, how we beat back Donald Trump's retribution campaign that he's waging on Minnesota is to stand united and to continue to show up. I'm filled with hope by the thousands of people who have come forward to join our Constitutional Observer training this week. We have 4,000 people who signed up for that training this week. That training is meant to make sure that they can protect themselves and their own constitutional rights while being there… being present in the community to witness what we're seeing.
And what I say, Simon, is people need to believe their own eyes. Donald Trump and Kristi Noem and Republicans from Minnesota are all saying to us… oh, ICE is just doing their job and arresting violent criminals. That's not true. They are acting with lawless abandon. They're arresting US citizens, detaining US citizens overnight in their facilities…they're able to produce IDs. They've just started randomly going door to door to any house that has a black or brown person living at it. It's really terrifying how Republicans have turned a blind eye to the lawlessness and the unconstitutional acts of ICE. I was asked yesterday, what do I want Republicans to say? I'm not even asking Republicans to tell ICE to leave Minnesota. I want Republicans to ask ICE to act within the law and to not violate constitutional rights… that’s bare minimum.
Simon Rosenberg:
When we’ve been writing about it this week at Hopium, we’ve been talking about restoring rule of law as the objective here. Because the rule of law has broken down in Minnesota. And let's talk for a minute about… [how] you have caucuses coming up on February 3rd. Can you talk about the caucuses and what they are? You actually have an election process coming up just in a few weeks. Walk us through… how you are responding… and what else the DFL is doing to respond to the moment.
Part of the premise of this interview is that this could be the first of many. They could be practicing here and bring these tactics to other states. And it's important for Democrats around the country to learn from how you're responding, and how you're thinking about this at the party level, about what you can do and what your role is in all of this. So, can you walk us through about what's coming up with the caucuses? In addition to the trainings you've been doing, which have been enormous… huge numbers of people participating in them. What else are you doing?
Richard Carlbom:
Thank you for that question. So first off, Minnesota is a caucus and convention state and we have precinct caucuses on February 3rd. Precinct caucuses are neighborhood meetings where folks will begin to build our party platform and also elect delegates to their local unit convention. Those delegates move on to their local unit convention where they will elect delegates to the state convention. And then at the state convention in May, we'll of course endorse a candidate who will be on the ballot, both for the primary in August and hopefully in the general election in November. So the precinct caucuses are the start of our democratic process here in Minnesota, leading up to the November midterm elections.
We are very concerned about the impact the current ICE operation in Minnesota could have on precinct caucuses. We don't have the ability to move those, for example, virtual. We just don't have that ability. There are over 4,000 caucus locations around the state of Minnesota. So our team has been working since mid December on a plan to make sure that we make caucuses as safe as possible for people who are attending. That includes providing caucus convener trainings to folks so that they understand both how to convene a caucus but also what happens if ICE shows up at your caucus. We've been working extensively with our lawyers and our network of lawyers so that we can deploy lawyers to specific caucus locations on February 3rd. We are working with our partners and subject matter experts to make sure people have trainings on how to be a constitutional observer. And nonviolent engagement training as well. These trainings are incredibly important in this moment because people need to know their rights and need to know how they should respond should ICE approach them both in community, and frankly, at the caucuses.
So we have been spending a lot of time and energy making sure that people have trainings, that we're over-communicating. We've been preparing for precinct caucuses for months. And as of December, we had to throw out a lot of what we were doing because we have to think about it from a different angle. We've worked with lawyers to understand our rights having rented these facilities where these precinct caucuses will take place, and our ability to keep ICE out of those spaces so that people don't get terrified in that moment. And so we're in overdrive right now with less than 18 days to go until precinct caucuses. So, trying to make sure that we are covering as many bases as possible. And, you know, this the situation is costing us in different ways. We’ve had to add additional security at the party office and we've had to add barricades in our parking lot. We are constantly trying to both be mindful of what we can do in community, but also mindful of how we need to protect our own team here.
And you're right. Donald Trump said two days ago, first Minnesota, then the rest of the country. He named what this is in a social media post when he called it a retribution campaign on Minnesota. And he's mad at Minnesota because we didn't vote for him in 2016, 2020, or 2024. And there are other states that he's going to come after next. And it's so important for states to be ready for that, to be ready to train their folks on how to be safe in their communities, collaborate with immigrant community organizations who have been preparing for this for a long time, and just get to know those people, be in coalition, be in solidarity, and be ready to support one another.
Simon Rosenberg:
Can you talk also about the work you've been doing with influencers in the state and also nationally? It's both a local program and a national program, too.
Richard Carlbom:
Yeah, I want to say DNC Chair Ken Martin and his team at the DNC, right when this started, came to our team. They knew that we've been organizing with content creators and influencers since March of this year. And I'm so grateful that the DNC and the DFL were able to collaborate and have over 200 influencers join a conversation with both local and national Democratic leaders to give people real information about what's happening. In addition to that, we every day are in touch with a number of content creators who are in community themselves and are producing content to make sure that we're getting the truth out.
Here's what I want folks to know. Donald Trump, and Kristi Noem, and our members of Congress in Minnesota and our Republican elected officials are lying. They're actually telling you not to believe your own two eyes. We in Minnesota… and you can see it in videos across the country of what's happening here in Minnesota… we see ICE agents, again, acting with lawless abandon, walking up to US citizens, tackling them, putting them in cars, taking them away, and only hours later dumping them at a random place somewhere else. This is going to happen in other states. And it's so important for us to tell the truth. So we work with our content creators to make sure that they have accurate, truthful information because right now Republicans want you to believe that it's a bunch of paid agitators who are confronting ICE. It's not. It's people like myself. This afternoon, I'm going to be in my own neighborhood watching out for people who are fearful to even leave their house.
Simon Rosenberg:
Listen, the videos… Bluesky has been incredible… how much video content we’re able to access. I’ve been sharing a lot of it at Hopium this week because I think you have to see it to believe it. The thing that was the most extraordinary to me… and it's not the stories necessarily… I saw the story of the real estate influencer who was detained for eight hours just because he was filming… I watched a video where a bunch of people were just standing on a street corner. They didn't have their cameras out. You know, this is happening in neighborhoods. This is where people live. And a bunch of ICE agents ran through the crowd. And pushed people over, you know, and made no effort to sort of say, hey, we're coming through. They just ran through a bunch of just regular peeps hanging out, knocking them to the ground, shoving them over. They’re thugs. It was at that moment when I realized that, my god, there is no break here.
They are just punching and shoving to the ground human beings standing on a street corner, not doing anything provocative, not protesting. And so, if that's the permission structure that they have… and obviously, you know, shooting a mom in a Honda Pilot at point blank range, and then having the administration come out and praise them repeatedly… you know, we're in a place where it's not just lawless, but also just basic decency and humanity has completely broken down.
And it's why, Mr. Chair, I know you've got to go. I just want to make my pitch here, is that we're setting up a fund today to raise $50,000 for the DFL by February 15th. They have expended enormous amounts of money and time creating a response to this extraordinary event. We need to help them get through these February 3rd caucuses with as little trouble as possible because we don't know how long ICE is going to be there. And also, we need to give them money in order to help them teach other state parties and local parties around the country how they've responded to this. And to be teachers… to help raise the capacity for every state party in the country… to help them become prepared for when this comes.
We already have gotten word in the last few days that the next likely state is Maine. There's a Somali community in a small town in Maine. The administration is making noises that they are going into Maine there. We need to be able to provide the training, once they get to the other side of this in Minnesota, to have them become the trainers for all the other state parties to make them effective if and when this comes. And also to anticipate that this is a practice session for things that could happen during the election itself. So thus beginning this process now of not abstractly talking about how we're going to make sure we have free and fair elections, we're going to have a live fire test on February 3rd in Minnesota that we need to succeed and get through.
People have asked me, Simon, how can I help the people of Minnesota? This is one way. We need to help them succeed in this effort, create a model for other state parties, become teachers, innovators to help create more resilience across the country, and also because… you heard the chair today, you know, our hearts are there. But now we need to show that we're with them at every step of the way. And I just want to say thank you for your leadership. Thank you for going through this extraordinary event with such grit and courage and bravery. And you know, from the bottom of my heart, you know, thank you.
Richard Carlbom:
Thank you, Simon. I appreciate all the support.
Simon Rosenberg:
Okay, thanks everybody. Listen, send this video to everybody you've ever met. Let's raise the money for the DFL. Let's help these guys in this moment of crisis for them. We need to stand with the good people of Minnesota, and this is one way we can do it together. Thanks, everybody.
