Nice Minnesotans Finish Last
The Week in Review: January 12, 2026
Having grown up in the NY/NJ area (very different from growing up in either New York OR New Jersey), I always struggled to break through the code of “Midwest Nice.” There’s something refreshing, perhaps even relieving about the gruffness of the people I grew up around: You never have to worry that they’re masking what they’re really feeling.
Minnesota governor Tim Walz decided that it would be in his best interest for Democrats to go against the conventional social norms of his state and to instead “be a little meaner.” Yet Darel E. Paul writes that the Democrats’s attempts at being “a little Trumpier” has backfired: “In the grand sweep of Tim Walz’s career, those qualities did not help him succeed. They brought down on himself and his state the ire of the master of Trumpian style himself.”
As New Yorkers often say, “you can’t fake real.”
Also in Compact this week:
Brad Wilcox on how the New Right is more right than wrong on family policy
Ilan Wurman on the true history of birthright citizenship
Michael Behrent on the bloody vision of Laurent Obertone
Delano Squires on the war on black fathers
the team discusses the protests in Iran and the subpoena is issued to Jerome Powell on the pod
As a native NYer who lived in MN I loled. One my coworkers who had just resigned was from the Bronx. She pulled me aside and said “they will tell you to be yourself but they will never accept you for who you are” 😂