Noel King

So it's an interesting turn of events on that front.

I want to ask you about this statement that was signed by about 60, as I understand it, 60 CEOs.

Minnesota has a lot of big companies, right?

State is an economic powerhouse in some ways.

And so there was a statement sent out kind of like calling for calm, even as people had been asking, like, where are the business leaders?

Why are they not saying anything?

Do you feel like that statement does anything here?

Do you feel like that statement comes down on one side or the other?

I think it was carefully crafted to be neutral and it was taken by Democrats, including even the Democratic Farber Labor Party chair, as a betrayal because there's no neutrality in this situation.

But I think that it is an important signal to the Trump administration that they should start looking for a way out.

You're right, though, they had been completely silent.

We published a story a couple weeks ago, 10 days ago, making that very point.

We called a bunch of these corporations and the lobby group that represents the biggest companies, and they didn't even get back to us.

I think they were bruised by the George Floyd experience, where many of them made robust statements in support of DEI and racial equity.

And of course, there was a backlash to that and then a backlash to the backlash.

And so I think they chose silence.

And at a certain point, that became untenable.

So it's one of the signals to me that there's some cracks in the Trump armor.

J. Patrick Kulikin is editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Reformer.

And speaking of cracks, President Trump said on Truth Social this afternoon that Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz called him and they seem to be, quote, on a similar wavelength.