When I moved to Minnesota from Tucson, Arizona, I really had no idea what cold really was.
I wore down jackets when the temperature got down to 30 degrees on a cold winter’s day, and would walk home in short sleeves because the weather had warmed up. I thought freezing was COLD!
Little did I know…
I learned a lot in college, but one of the lessons that made a deep impression was that the difference between 40 and 100 degrees—pretty cold to very hot—was less brutal than the difference between 50 and -10, especially when wind chill bites through your jacket. That 50 degrees either way is a brutal shift, but if you drink water in 100 degree temperature, you’ll be fine; if you aren’t covered head to toe in protection in -10, you are dead or at least losing limbs.
When it really gets cold in Minnesota, you almost need a spacesuit. With a windchill of -15, it takes less than half an hour to get frostbite, which can cost you a limb. You can dress for the weather, but no sane person chooses to be out in it for long.
It’s getting brutally cold here in Minnesota, with some significant wind chill, so less committed protesters are looking for ways to make life miserable for people without being so miserable themselves.
The weather is getting brutal, with a forecast for Thursday night of -18. It is impossible to describe what kind of pain you feel out in cold like that, but suffice it to say that any sane person with a choice will be inside.
Places like…churches, for instance.
Or…Target.
St. Paul, Minn. (Jan. 9) — A group of leftist women shut down part of a Target store to demand that federal agents not be allowed to use the toilets there. pic.twitter.com/tbj31m3oqu
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) January 19, 2026
Target is a soft Target, so to speak, both because nobody expects anybody to break out into protest there, and because no major corporation wants the public relations nightmare of dealing with something like this. They are damned if they do something, and damned if they don’t.
Anti-ICE activists are now buying salt at Target and then returning it in order to protest ICE.
These people are seriously deranged.pic.twitter.com/BYtIW5fIpb
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 20, 2026
You can see that the Target protesters are older, wealthier, and even more self-satisfied than those on the street. Edina is a wealthier inner-ring suburb, although its demographics are shifting. This kind of protest activity is totally on-brand.
I do think, though, that aiming their ire at Target, of all corporations, may not yield the results they hope for, at least if they actually want to pressure ICE in addition to creating pain and more chaos.
Target, after all, has been an ally both of liberals and of the Minnesota Democratic Party. Being based here, they have some influence over lawmakers, although much less than they would like, given how Target stores were looted and ransacked during the George Floyd riots, and downtown has yet to recover. But still, if protesters wanted Target to push state lawmakers to their side, it is a fool’s errand.
State lawmakers ARE on their side, and Trump doesn’t give a rip about what Target executives think. He is probably chuckling, watching liberals eat their own.
I expect, given the weather, that protesters will look for more opportunities to create chaos where it is warmer than 0 degrees. A Target at 72 degrees is a great deal more attractive than a windy street at -5 or -20.
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