The Uses Of Tragedy: 2025 Year In Review

By J. Patrick Coolican, Minnesota Reformer

December 31, 2025

My Reformer year began when I texted Melissa Hortman to confirm what I’d heard: Minnesota House Democrats would skip the first day of the legislative session, boycotting what they argued was an illegitimate usurpation of power by House Republicans.

I limited my texts to Hortman, mindful of her time, but she always responded, and always truthfully, and often with a quip that properly put me in my place and made me laugh. I texted her on Jan. 5, a Sunday, and she agreed to talk, but only when the Vikings weren’t playing, so we settled on halftime. I scooped the coming DFL boycott of the House.

In one of my last exchanges with her, she commented on something I’d written and added:

“Reading it made me even more eager than I have been to spend the summer dissecting the 2024 election and preparing for 2026…. A Democratic wave is not a forgone conclusion in the 2026 election and will have to be created.”

A colleague and I had a meeting with her on June 12. She was upbeat, self-deprecating and typically frank.

She and her husband Mark Hortman were killed by a gunman on June 14, the same early morning that Sen. John Hoffman and wife Yvette Hoffman were badly injured by the same gunman, prosecutors say.

I spent almost no time reflecting on any of it because there was work to do. We had to cover the immediate aftermath, including the manhunt and charges; the candlelight memorial and the Hortmans caskets lying in state at the Capitol. We published what I hope is a political obituary that will serve as a vital rough draft of history. And then I covered the funeral.

I was in the back row of the Basilica of St. Mary, which gave me an intimate — almost intrusively intimate — view of the Hortman children and the other pallbearers, including Gov. Tim Walz, just as the service was about to begin. As the celebrants quieted and a deathly silence settled over the church, I could suddenly see the anguish of the Hortmans’ family and closest friends so clearly, through the watery lens of tears I’d pridefully resisted to that point. (A personal rule: Never solipsize someone else’s tragedy.)

I channeled my anger productively, with a column about right-wing influencers who sought to stain her legacy for clicks, and another about Glenn Beck’s right-wing media company giving the alleged killer a platform to spout evil lies.

The rest of the year featured other horrors: Children were killed at a Mass to start the school year at Annunciation Catholic School.

A right-wing propagandist unleashed a wave of hatred on Somali Minnesotans.

Sometimes people ask me if we get burned out observing and recording and commenting on so much suffering. Which is a thoughtful question — second-hand trauma is a real thing — but we must also remember that we’re not the ones who sent our kids off to school for the final time.

Instead, I use these events as fuel. I — like the rest of us — have been given a responsibility. Even if it’s just editing a small nonprofit newsroom, there’s work to be done.

I like to think Melissa Hortman would have said the same.

The Minnesota Reformer is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to keeping Minnesotans informed and unearthing stories other outlets can’t or won’t tell..