Let’s see… Xcel invites so many from the City that there may be “a quorum of all Red Wing Boards & Commissions members and City Council members.” It’s obviously a lobbying shindig, THREE HOURS LONG. I’m guessing it’s the current rendition of their “Community Breakfast.”

Oh, we tried! Alan Muller and I went, and they wouldn’t let us in, because we were not invited. (Also turns out my Birkenstocks and Alan’s shorts are not allowed — if we’d been invited, guess that’s in the email.) The woman at the desk made a LOT of calls, left many messages, so quite a few Xcel employees are aware we were there wanting to be admitted.

Look who was there — turns out it wasn’t “just” Red Wing, but Goodhue County too! “My” District 1 County Commissioner is there, as well as the Land Use Management Director.

City says “all Red Wing Boards and Commissions.” I’m on Red Wing’s Charter Commission… and I see Goodhue County folks there, and I’m on Goodhue County’s Planning Commission. First I heard of this was the “Notice of Quorum” above.

This Xcel Energy “Private Event” was not announced at Monday’s City Council meeting, but there was an announcement of the Sturgeon Lake Road Overpass Ribbon Cutting to be held July 31, 2025, the day after the PINGP secret private “Plant Tour” three hour meeting!

Who was invited?? Who was not!!! SNORT! Who decides?

Why is this lobbying meeting held in private, on a site with attendance severely restricted with a gate and guards (I should note that at the gate, the two security guys had BIG guns). Shouldn’t it be open to the public? What are they saying and doing that they don’t want public?

Official business? There are Xcel issues on the City’s agenda so often, like their extortion of responsibility for the emergency sirens; request for additional dry casks; Integrated Resource Plan; the LATE PUC comment with watered down language… It’s likely no specific agenda item, pending or past, was discussed, but it’s easy to do umbrella lobbying about nuclear power, additional casks, and “need” for generation.

Does this pass the smell test for local officials of Minn. Stat. 471.895?

It’s been a long time since I attended the annual Xcel Energy community breakfast… SEVENTEEN YEARS!

Breakfast on Xcel May 14th, 2008

Today’s meeting will be over soon — better get this posted!!

Incompetence is as incompetence does… Punishment and retribution for outing Trump administration’s behavior and practice? It’s way too familiar. More on that later.

Here’s what “Attorney General” Pam Bambi had her staff do at “her direction,” filed yesterday:

Read the Misconduct Complaint against Judge Boasberg below — OMFD! Judge Boasberg speaks the truth — “the Trump Administration would “disregard rulings of federal courts” and trigger “a constitutional crisis.” The Trump Administration would, and HAS, admitted that they’d ignore court orders. Ask Emil Bove!

... Bove said to a group in a March meeting to ignore the court orders or they "would hamper Trump's efforts to deport millions of undocumented immigrants."

And in HuffPost (and Emil Bove “is deputy attorney general and one of Trump’s court picks”):

This is obscene.

After this administration goes the way of the brontosaurus, I can just imagine what the rest of her life will be like.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, the Complaint of Erez Reuveni, with some documentation of disregard of court orders and retribution against him:

Power outages all over Xcel territory. It was at 66k when I first looked, now we’re at 52k. That’s a LOT. Even Frontenac State Park is out and trees down.

Red Wing isn’t too bad, and they’re getting folks back online.

Keep an eye on the MISO LMP map here: https://api.misoenergy.org/MISORTWD/lmpcontourmap.html

Right now at high noon, reflecting the many power outages:

This letter below from the U.S. Department of Justice to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has been sitting on my screen for a while — it’s important stuff, and more important, it’s not only Minnesota.

UPDATE: MN’s SoS Steve Simon’s response.

Secretary of State Steve Simon to feds: Nah

Bottom line:

Although some of these letters were sent some time ago, mid-May, and others in June, I’ve noticed concern about them is just now surfacing in establishment media. ??? This is important, DOH! DoJ is going after voter files in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, here in Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin – available letters are linked below.

The letters, this DoJ effort, ostensibly grew from Executive Order 14248, PRESERVING AND PROTECTING THE INTEGRITY OF AMERICAN ELECTIONS, issued March 25, 2025. The false notion is that elections are tainted, corrupt, fraudulent:

Free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion are fundamental to maintaining our constitutional Republic. The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.

EO 14248 in its entirety:

Nevermind that voter fraud is essentially non-existent, errors are as rare, and suspicion is a product of intense Trumpism blathering lies… well, except for Jake’s voter registration fraud! Voter fraudsters caught are a majority Republican! Voter fraud surfaces in Iowa, Florida and Texas October 30th, 2016. As important is that those voting twice, voting when ineligible, fraudulent registrations, they’re usually CAUGHT! There is no epidemic of voter fraud or voter registration fraud. Here’s a Minnesota example of voter registration fraud, CAUGHT! “No fraudulent ballots were requested or cast in connection with the case.”

What this hysteria does is support efforts to restrict voting, to put higher bars to registration and voting, but enacting heightened proof of citizenship (non-citizens aren’t voting, it’s a non-issue); making registration much more difficult by requiring documentation that’s hard to get; counting of provisional ballots; restricting and eliminating voting by mail; tightening “spoilation” remedies; reduction of polling places and reducing staff creating long, long lines, etc. It’s all anti-democracy (with a small “d”) at its core. And that’s what Project 2025 is all about.

Project 2025_Mandate For Leadership statement regarding voting:

Justice Department’s early moves on voting and elections signal a shift from its traditional role

From the article, “…no evidence of fraud.” DOH!

Multiple reviews in the presidential battleground states affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win in 2020, Trump and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits, and even Trump’s attorney general at the time said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

The “shift from its traditional role” change from Civil Rights to Criminal division means that the focus is not on voting rights, but on limitations and searching for non-existent violations of registration and voting laws. Oh well… onward they go, wasting time and resources, but they’d not regard efforts to limit voting as a waste.

Here are some of the DoJ letters to states — Democracy Docket has done a good job of getting them:

Short version:

It took Commerce-EERA two days to upload all of this — 867 pages of the Narrative [row 78 below), 127 filings. My eyes are crossing just trying to get it posted here. Methinks an extension of Comment period would help! [p.s. I cannot figure out how to get rid of that far right column… hmmmm, a common problem these days!]

1	20257-221382-01	FEIS – Map 21 Segment 2 NLCD
2	20257-221382-02	FEIS – Map 22 Segment 2 Water Resources
3	20257-221382-03	FEIS – Map 23 Segment 2 Recreation Resources Mapbook
4	20257-221382-04	FEIS – Map 24 Segment 2 Ecological Classification System
5	20257-221382-05	FEIS – Map 25 Segment 2 Existing Infrastructure
6	20257-221382-06	FEIS – Map 26 Segment 2 Detailed Map Book Part 1
7	20257-221382-07	FEIS – Map 26 Segment 2 Detailed Map Book Part 2
8	20257-221382-08	FEIS – Map 26 Segment 2 Detailed Map Book Part 3
9	20257-221382-09	FEIS – Map 26 Segment 2 Detailed Map Book Part 4
10	20257-221382-10	FEIS – Map 26 Segment 2 Detailed Map Book Part 5
11	20257-221382-11	FEIS – Map 26 Segment 2 Detailed Map Book Part 6
12	20257-221382-12	FEIS – Map 26 Segment 2 Detailed Map Book Part 7
13	20257-221382-13	FEIS – Map 27 Segment 2 Zoning
14	20257-221382-14	FEIS – Map 28 Segment 2 Residences and Structures
15	20257-221382-15	FEIS – Map 29 Segment 2 Prime Farmland
16	20257-221382-16	FEIS – Map 30 Segment 2 Cultural Resources
17	20257-221382-17	FEIS – Map 31 Segment 2 Sensitive Ecological Resources
18	20257-221382-18	FEIS – Map 32 Segment 2 Surface Soil Texture
19	20257-221382-19	FEIS – Map 33 Segment 2 Wildlife Resources
20	20257-221382-20	FEIS – Map 34 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) NLCD
21	20257-221382-21	FEIS – Map 35 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Water Resources
22	20257-221382-22	FEIS – Map 36 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Recreation Resources
23	20257-221382-23	FEIS – Map 37 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Ecological Classification System
24	20257-221382-24	FEIS – Map 38 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Existing Infrastructure
25	20257-221382-25	FEIS – Map 39 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Detailed Map Book Part 1
26	20257-221382-26	FEIS – Map 39 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Detailed Map Book Part 2
30	20257-221382-30	FEIS – Map 39 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Detailed Map Book Part 6
32	20257-221382-32	FEIS – Map 39 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Detailed Map Book Part 8
33	20257-221382-33	FEIS – Map 39 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Detailed Map Book Part 9
34	20257-221382-34	FEIS – Map 40 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Zoning
35	20257-221382-35	FEIS – Map 41 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Residences and Structures
36	20257-221382-36	FEIS – Map 42 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Prime Farmland
37	20257-221382-37	FEIS – Map 43 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Cultural Resources
40	20257-221382-40	FEIS – Map 46 Route Segment 17 (Highway 14 Option) Wildlife Resources
41	20257-221382-41	FEIS – Map 47 Segment 1 and 2 Route Options
42	20257-221383-01	FEIS – Map 48 Segment 3 NLCD
43	20257-221383-02	FEIS – Map 49 Segment 3 Water Resources
44	20257-221383-03	FEIS – Map 50 Segment 3 Recreation Resources
45	20257-221383-04	FEIS – Map 51 Segment 3 Ecological Classification System
46	20257-221383-05	FEIS – Map 52 Segment 3 Existing Infrastructure
47	20257-221383-06	FEIS – Map 53 Segment 3 Detailed Map Book
48	20257-221383-07	FEIS – Map 54 Segment 3 Zoning
49	20257-221383-08	FEIS – Map 55 Segment 3 Residences and Structures
50	20257-221383-09	FEIS – Map 56 Segment 3 Prime Farmland
51	20257-221383-10	FEIS – Map 57 Segment 3 Cultural Resources
52	20257-221383-11	FEIS – Map 58 Segment 3 Sensitive Ecological Resources
53	20257-221383-12	FEIS – Map 59 Segment 3 Surface Soil Texture
54	20257-221383-13	FEIS – Map 60 Segment 3 Wildlife Resources
55	20257-221384-01	FEIS – Map 61 Segment 4 NLCD
56	20257-221384-02	FEIS – Map 62 Segment 4 Water Resources
57	20257-221384-03	FEIS – Map 63 Segment 4 Recreation Resources
58	20257-221384-04	FEIS – Map 64 Segment 4 Ecological Classification System
59	20257-221384-05	FEIS – Map 65 Segment 4 Existing Infrastructure
60	20257-221384-06	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 1
61	20257-221384-07	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 2
62	20257-221384-08	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 3
63	20257-221384-09	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 4
64	20257-221384-10	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 5
65	20257-221384-11	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 6
66	20257-221384-12	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 7
67	20257-221384-13	FEIS – Map 66 Segment 4 Detailed Map Book Part 8
68	20257-221384-14	FEIS – Map 67 Segment 4 Zoning
69	20257-221384-15	FEIS – Map 68 Segment 4 Residences and Structures
70	20257-221384-16	FEIS – Map 69 Segment 4 Prime Farmland
71	20257-221384-17	FEIS – Map 70 Segment 4 Cultural Resources
72	20257-221384-18	FEIS – Map 71 Segment 4 Sensitive Ecological Resources
73	20257-221384-19	FEIS – Map 72 Segment 4 Surface Soil Texture
74	20257-221384-20	FEIS – Map 73 Segment 4 Wildlife Resources
75	20257-221384-21	FEIS – Map 74 Segment 4 Route Options

78	20257-221369-01	Final Environmental Impact Statement – Narrative
79	20257-221369-02	FEIS – Appendix A DEIS Comments and Responses
80	20257-221369-03	FEIS – Appendix B Scoping Decision Part 1
81	20257-221369-04	FEIS – Appendix B Scoping Decision Part 2
82	20257-221375-01	FEIS – Appendix B Scoping Decision Part 4
83	20257-221375-02	FEIS – Appendix B Scoping Decision Part 3
84	20257-221375-03	Appendix C – Spatial Data
85	20257-221375-04	Appendix D – Alternatives Summary
86	20257-221375-05	Appendix E – Supplemental Information Inquiry Responses
87	20257-221375-06	Appendix F – MnDOT Correspondence
88	20257-221375-07	Appendix G – Data Analysis Tables
89	20257-221375-08	Appendix H – Sample Route Permit
90	20257-221375-09	Appendix I – Property Values Supplement
91	20257-221375-10	Appendix J – Electric and Magnetic Fields Supplement
92	20257-221375-11	Appendix J – Agricultural Impact Mitigation Plan
93	20257-221375-12	Appendix L – Greenhouse Gas Calculations
94	20257-221375-13	Appendix M – Threatened and Endangered Species
95	20257-221376-01	FEIS – Map 1 Applicant Proposed Segments
96	20257-221376-02	FEIS – Map 2 Project Overview
97	20257-221376-03	FEIS – Map 3 Segment 1 ROW Sharing and Paralleling
98	20257-221376-04	FEIS – Map 4 Segment 2 ROW Sharing and Paralleling
99	20257-221376-05	FEIS – Map 5 Highway 14 ROW Sharing and Paralleling
100	20257-221376-06	FEIS – Map 6 Segment 3 ROW Sharing and Paralleling
101	20257-221376-07	FEIS – Map 7 Segment 3 ROW Sharing and Paralleling
102	20257-221376-08	FEIS – Map 8 Segment 1 NLCD
103	20257-221376-09	FEIS – Map 9 Segment 1 Water Resources
104	20257-221376-10	FEIS – Map 10 Segment 1 Recreation Resources Mapbook
105	20257-221376-11	FEIS – Map 11 Segment 1 Ecological Classification System
106	20257-221376-12	FEIS – Map 12 Segment 1 Existing Infrastructure
107	20257-221376-13	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 1
108	20257-221376-14	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 2
109	20257-221376-15	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 3
110	20257-221376-16	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 4
111	20257-221376-17	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 5
112	20257-221376-18	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 6
113	20257-221376-19	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 7
114	20257-221376-20	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 8
115	20257-221376-21	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 9
116	20257-221376-22	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 10
117	20257-221376-23	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 11
118	20257-221376-24	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 12
119	20257-221376-25	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 13
120	20257-221376-26	FEIS – Map 13 Segment 1 Detailed Map Book – Part 14
121	20257-221376-27	FEIS – Map 14 Segment 1 Zoning
122	20257-221376-28	FEIS – Map 15 Segment 1 Residences and Structures
123	20257-221376-29	FEIS – Map 16 Segment 1 Prime Farmland
124	20257-221376-30	FEIS – Map 17 Segment 1 Cultural Resources
125	20257-221376-31	FEIS – Map 18 Segment 1 Sensitive Ecological Resources
126	20257-221376-32	FEIS – Map 19 Segment 1 Surface Soil Texture
127	20257-221376-33	FEIS – Map 20 Segment 1 Wildlife Resources