Minnesota's largest newspaper published a column cheering Gov. Tim Walz for pardoning a convicted child sex offender who had been days from deportation, and the public response was fierce.
Columnist Rochelle Olson's piece in the Minnesota Star Tribune included a section titled "Cheers to Gov. Tim Walz," applauding the governor's vote to pardon Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct for repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl between 2002 and 2004. The column ran over the weekend and immediately drew condemnation from elected officials, commentators, and ordinary readers who found the framing indefensible.
What made the backlash sharper was what the column left out. Fox News Digital reported that Olson's column never mentioned the victim was a child and never disclosed that Vang raped the girl repeatedly over a two-year period. Instead, Olson compared Vang's crimes to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, writing: "Vang's actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and those folks received presidential pardons."
The Minnesota Board of Pardons, composed of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, voted unanimously on June 10 to grant Vang clemency. Only two of the three votes were required. The pardon came roughly one week before Vang's scheduled deportation, the Washington Examiner reported.
Vang had pleaded guilty in 2005 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was sentenced in 2006 but received a suspended 12-year prison sentence, 30 years of supervised probation, and served just eight months in a county workhouse, the New York Post reported. Ramsey County prosecutors had opposed the clemency bid, noting the victim faced pressure from her own family not to cooperate, a factor that contributed to the lenient original sentence.
Vang entered the United States as a refugee from Thailand in 1994 and became a permanent resident before his legal status was revoked following the conviction. A final order of removal was issued in 2006, but he remained in the country for two decades.
The pardon threatened to upend federal deportation efforts entirely. The Department of Homeland Security warned that the clemency "removes Vang's qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States," according to Newsmax. DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis called the pardon "disgusting," stating:
"Gov. Tim Walz's decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on July 10 that the federal government had overridden the state pardon's practical effect. Rubio terminated Vang's legal status, and federal agents took him into custody. Vang was deported to Laos.
Rubio did not hold back in his statement to Fox News Digital:
"Tue Lue Vang admitted to committing heinous crimes against a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. He attempted to pay his victim for her silence and dismissed his acts of child abuse as a 'minor thing.' Just days before he was scheduled to be deported, the Minnesota Governor pardoned him, setting him free to endanger American families once again. That's why I terminated his legal status in the United States. Vang has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again."
Walz, for his part, doubled down in the days after the deportation. Rather than conceding the point, the governor posed a series of rhetorical questions: "Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can't all be judged by our worst day?"
The governor's framing, casting a convicted child rapist's deportation as a question of fairness and second chances, only added fuel to the criticism. Just the News noted that Walz acknowledged Vang's "horrific crimes" while simultaneously questioning whether removing him from the country served any purpose.
The Star Tribune column that set off the backlash was notable as much for what it excluded as for what it said. Olson praised Walz for refusing "to back down from his vote to pardon a Hmong man convicted of felony sexual assault in 2006." She noted that Vang received unanimous support from the Board of Pardons. She referenced a letter the victim sent to the board supporting clemency.
But Olson did not tell readers that the victim was 10 years old. She did not mention that Vang raped the child repeatedly over two years. And she drew a comparison that struck many readers as grotesque, equating a child sex crime with the January 6 Capitol breach and arguing that participants in both had received pardons.
That comparison became the single most criticized element of the column. Author Dennis Neale posted on X: "The Star Tribune likens repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl to protesting in the Capitol on Jan 6. You fluppin' idiots." Another user on X wrote: "Minnesota's largest paper actually figured out a way to shove January 6th into this as a way to excuse an illegal immigrant who sexually assaulted a child. One of the most insane things I've ever seen."
Online commentator Dustin Grage called the column "absolutely disgusting." Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, wrote: "The degeneracy of the modern left would be impossible to exaggerate because it is impossible to exaggerate infinity."
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, posted the sharpest rebuke from an elected official, writing on X:
"The Minnesota Star Tribune is cheering on Tim Walz protecting an illegal alien monster who raped a 10 year old girl. No one should read this depraved rag. They are sick."
A Star Tribune spokesperson responded to Fox News Digital's inquiry with a brief statement: "The Minnesota Star Tribune regularly publishes a wide range of opinions across the political spectrum." The spokesperson added that "our opinion columnist agreed with a unanimous pardon by the Minnesota state board of pardons, including Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson."
That response treated the column as an unremarkable editorial judgment, one opinion among many. It did not address the column's omission of the victim's age or the repeated nature of the assaults. It did not address the January 6 comparison.
This was not the only controversial clemency decision from the Minnesota Board of Pardons in recent months. Breitbart reported that in May, Minnesota pardoned another Laotian citizen whose criminal history included convictions for robbery, armed robbery, and DUI. A pattern of clemency decisions that happen to benefit foreign nationals facing deportation raises its own set of questions, questions the Star Tribune's editorial page appears uninterested in asking.
Strip away the rhetorical polish and the timeline tells a plain story. A man raped a 10-year-old girl repeatedly over two years. He pleaded guilty. He served eight months. He spent 20 years in the United States after a final deportation order was issued. Days before federal authorities could finally remove him, the governor of Minnesota led a unanimous vote to pardon him, a move DHS warned could erase the legal basis for his removal.
The federal government found a way around the pardon and deported Vang anyway. And the governor responded by asking whether deportation made anyone safer.
Then Minnesota's flagship newspaper published a column cheering the governor's decision, compared the rape of a child to a political protest, and omitted the facts most likely to disturb its readers.
When a newspaper has to hide the details of a story to make its own argument work, the argument has already failed.
