by Dan Burns

Mar 8, 2026, 7:30 AM

Is Angie Craig really changing her political ways?

(I was pointed to some of what’s in this by an email I got from Indivisible.)

From last week:

In a key backtrack during Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race, Democratic Rep. Angie Craig said Monday she regrets a vote in support of an immigration law sought by President Donald Trump that provided agents more detention power.

Last January’s passage of the Laken Riley Act, — allowing for detention of noncitizens without bail if they’re charged with burglary, assaulting a police officer or other crimes — saw little Democratic support. But Craig, who represents the swing 2nd Congressional District, was the only Minnesota DFL member to break ranks.
(MPR)

From the email I noted above:

Craig was a leader of the Democratic capitulation caucus in the House for much of last year. She hit the ground running by joining the Republicans last January to pass the Laken Riley Act, further empowering ICE to strip immigrants of their rights. A few months later she voted to thank ICE for its service. To put that into context, there are 214 Democrats in the House. Only about 40 of them voted for both. None of the Democrats from Minnesota voted for either…except Angie Craig.

The dirty cherry on top of all of this is where Craig gets her money. Chuck Schumer is raising money for her. Crypto is coming in big for her. According to the nonpartisan Open Secrets organization, her biggest contributor to her last campaign was…AIPAC!

In the email there’s a hyperlink to a page that confirms what they say about Angie and AIPAC. She has been opposing Trump’s war in Iran, though there’s nothing politically unsafe about that.

Politicians can genuinely change. Certainly for me Joe Biden, after he became president, was a pleasant surprise on much domestic (though not at all on foreign) policy. But faking it and being weasels is much more common.

My own take is that Rep. Craig does understand that she’s made mistakes and has been too tolerant and yielding regarding the Trump administration and its allies in Congress. But she only gets that to a limited extent, and is still far too “centrist” and corporate-friendly in general. And since there’s already a genuine progressive in the race, namely Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, how I’ll be voting in the primary has been a foregone conclusion from the beginning in any case.