Good Monday morning. There was still more to say on the president's Minneapolis rally into the weekend, and that leads the DIgest. 1. Middle schoolers’ lens on rally. Eighth grader Margot Trout confessed to being “nervio-cited” after learning her teacher had snagged her a student press pass for President Trump’s rally Thursday night in Minneapolis. The nervousness didn’t stop her, though, as she prepped outside the Target Center. "I'm here just to have a new experience and be able to kind of get out of my comfort zone and to be around people I might not agree with,” Trout said. She and fellow students Wren Pexa, Anastasia Wallace and Trump Vang (Yes, his first name is Trump, no connection to the president) were ready for a lesson in American politics Thursday night they’d never find in a textbook. Teacher Mark Westpfahl encouraged them to get perspectives from Trump supporters and protesters. He said the experience was a powerful civics lesson for his students. "They're seeing democracy in action, and it's not always as pretty and easy as we might make it out in a regular classroom," Westpfahl said. MPR News
2. Somali reaction to Trump, supporters. Abubakar Abdi skipped his usual after-work stop to visit friends at the local Somali mall on Thursday, heading to his Minneapolis home instead to catch President Donald Trump’s speech. As he watched, the 22-year-old IT specialist said he was taken aback by the loud boos at the packed campaign rally when Trump mentioned Somalis. “As you know, for many years, leaders in Washington brought large numbers of refugees to your state from Somalia without considering the impact on schools and communities and taxpayers,” Trump said at the rally. “I promise you that as president, I would give local communities a greater say in refugee policy and put in place enhanced vetting and responsible immigration control, and I’ve done that since coming into office.” Abdi, born and raised in Minnesota, said the president’s words and the crowd’s reaction left him wondering: “What if my former classmates were among the ones booing? What if it was my former teachers booing?” “I didn’t know we were hated like that,” he said. “Donald Trump is one man, but what scares me is the amount of support he has.” Star Tribune
3. Following the glitter trail. The U.S. Secret Service wants a word with the man who threw glitter at President Donald Trump at Thursday night’s rally in Minneapolis. “Today the Secret Service visited my house multiple times, visited my family’s house, left multiple notes on my car and phone messages,” said Nick Espinosa, 33, of Minneapolis. “I’m a bit surprised they are taking something as harmless as glitter so seriously. Clearly, there was no harm done.” Espinosa, who threw gold glitter into the air near Trump at the Target Center, said he was trying to send a message. “I wanted to make it clear that Donald Trump’s hate is not welcome in Minneapolis,” he said. Espinosa posted on Twitter photos of the Secret Service notes asking that he call the Minneapolis office regarding an investigation. “I’m not too nervous,” he said. “I think they’re just trying to intimidate me. I think if they were going to press charges, it would look pretty foolish. I would expect it to go away.” Pioneer Press
4. How the presidential campaign is playing in Nicollet County. If Donald Trump intends to carry Minnesota next year — a promise he repeated at his Minneapolis campaign rally Thursday — he needs to hang on to voters like Mary Waibel in counties like hers that flipped to him from Democrat Barack Obama in 2016. There’s a case to be made for the president’s confidence. Nicollet County, where Waibel and her family farm, was among 19 in Minnesota that helped Trump finish just 44,765 votes behind Hillary Clinton in Minnesota. In 2008 and 2012, all of those counties voted for Obama. “Nicollet County will go red again. There’s an underlying sense of unease” with Democrats’ liberal ideas, said Republican Julie Quist, who lives near Norseland in the triangle-shaped county southwest of the Twin Cities. But last fall’s election results in Nicollet County, Minnesota and other crucial Midwest states and the drive toward impeachment could sour Trump’s 2020 outlook. Of those 19 Minnesota counties that shifted from Obama to Trump in 2016, six — including Nicollet — voted for Democrats in 2018 races for governor, both U.S. Senate seats and the U.S. House. Star Tribune
5. Ties to Giuliani associates. Four Minnesota Republican congressmen and the state party have found their names raised in connection with two indicted associates of Rudolph Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman made a host of political donations that are now being scrutinized after they were arrested on federal allegations that they leveraged their donations in a campaign to force the removal of the former American ambassador to Ukraine, a situation related to the Ukrainian issues at the center of the Democratic-led U.S. House impeachment inquiry of Trump. Among their donations are contributions to Minnesota Republicans or efforts that aided them. Even though the elected officials would not have had any say in the donations — and likely wouldn’t have been aware of them — the presence of their names, and criticism from the state Democratic Party, shows how far the tentacles of Parnas and Fruman can reach into politics. The outsized political giving allowed the two relatively unknown Florida entrepreneurs to quickly win access to the highest levels of the Republican Party — including face-to-face meetings with Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago. Nationwide, some Republicans who received donations announced Friday they would return or donate the money. In Minnesota, Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, called on all the Minnesota politicians and entities that received political benefits from Parnas and Fruman to condemn foreign interference in U.S. elections and return or donate any contributions they received from the men. Pioneer Press | 