Dean Phillips: Political Violence Just Came for My Friends in Minneapolis
FBI agents sweep a neighborhood near the home of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, who was killed in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, on June 14, 2025. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via AP)
Some people are trying to twist this tragedy into a partisan talking point. That’s the opposite of what Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman would want.
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The voicemail was left at 3:17 a.m. Saturday by the police chief in my hometown in suburban Minneapolis. There was a “critical situation”—a cold-blooded assassin on the loose who had already murdered my friends Melissa and Mark Hortman in their home and shot my friends John and Yvette Hoffman. News reports indicated that the killer, who was taken into custody on Sunday night, was carrying a list of targets. My name was on that list.
As I write this, I cannot quite fathom that a wonderful couple is dead, another is fighting for their lives, and that their killer came in the middle of the night posing as a police officer—only to gun them down for what appears to be their support for women’s reproductive rights.
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