The Minnesota State Fair is in full swing this week, with attendees seen lining up outside a popular anti-Tim Walz booth to win “Never Walz” prizes after the Gopher State governor ascended to the second spot on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket.
“Never Walz,” reads a massive sign on a booth at the state fair, which has attracted long lines of people waiting to receive “Never Walz” fans and T-shirts, Fox News Digital has learned.
The booth was set up by conservative nonprofit Action 4 Liberty MN, which allows attendees of the nation’s second-largest state fair to spin a wheel to win “Never Walz” signage and apparel.
“Our amazing supporters spin the wheel for a chance at a free T-shirt and a ‘Never Walz’ fan. We’re a nonprofit organization that promotes liberty by exposing the RINOs and Leftists when they betray liberty, and we work to mobilize our grassroots army of supporters and train them on how to wield their individual political power as effectively as possible,” Action 4 Liberty leader and former Republican Minnesota state Rep. Erik Mortensen told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
The Minnesota State Fair, which kicked off on Saturday and will run through Labor Day weekend, is anticipated to attract 2 million visitors. The “Never Walz” booth is a hot attraction on the fairgrounds, with Mortensen saying that even though they aren’t selling famed fair food, “our lines have been longer than most of the food booths.”
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A crowd waiting in line outside the “Never Walz” booth set up at the Minnesota State Fair. (Action 4 Liberty MN )
Walz is currently serving his second term as governor of the Gopher State, after serving in Congress representing Minnesota from 2007-2019.
Mortensen, who served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2021 to last year, is on Action 4 Liberty’s leadership team and explained that the grassroots group has long been spotlighting how Walz has “destroyed our state.”
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a campaign event on Aug. 7, 2024, in Detroit. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“Action 4 Liberty has been leading the effort in MN for years in exposing Gov. Walz’s thirst for power. In 2021, our state fair booth was themed ‘Never Again’ referring to Walz’ unconstitutional lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine mandates. The booth was used to promote my ‘Never Again’ bill that would remove the governor’s ability to unilaterally declare an emergency and anoint himself the ‘King of MN.’ We Minnesotans know Walz best. He pretends to be some folksy Midwesterner, but he’s a thin-skinned, power-drunk tyrant that has destroyed our state and has repeatedly violated Minnesotan’s liberties,” Mortensen said when asked about the motivation and history behind the booth.
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A “Never Walz” fan that attendees of the Minnesota State Fair can win. (Action 4 Liberty MN )
Videos spreading across social media show long lines of supporters waiting for their chance to spin the “Never Walz” wheel, with Mortensen saying attendees’ response to the booth has been “overwhelming.”
“The state fair representatives and police officers driving the state fair have repeatedly had to ask us to get our line out of the road and get closer to the curb,” he said.
“Most people in line tell us, ‘I’ve been trying to find your booth all day long.’”
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Walz moved to the second spot on the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket earlier this month, when Vice President Kamala Harris named him as her running mate. Harris became the party’s nominee after President Biden bowed out of the race last month amid mounting concern over his mental acuity and 81 years of age.
A line of people wait to spin the wheel at the “Never Walz” booth at the Minnesota State Fair. (Action 4 Liberty MN )
Walz joined his party in Chicago last week for the DNC, where he officially accepted the nomination to run alongside Harris, and invoked his Midwestern, veteran and teaching background as he rallied support at the convention.
“Growing up in a small town like that, you learn how to take care of each other. That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do. They may not love like you do. But they’re your neighbors. And you look out for them. And they look out for you. Everybody belongs. And everybody has a responsibility to contribute,” he said of his childhood in Nebraska before moving to Minnesota.
“For me, it was serving in the Army National Guard. I joined up two days after my 17th birthday, and I proudly wore our nation’s uniform for 24 years. My dad, a Korean War-era Army veteran, died of lung cancer a couple of years later. He left behind a mountain of medical debt. Thank God for Social Security survivor benefits.”
The “Never Walz” booth set up at the Minnesota State Fair. (Action 4 Liberty MN )
Mortensen did not mince words in comments to Fox Digital about Walz’s track record in Minnesota, slamming him as a “masterful shapeshifter” who “morphs into whatever image he feels he must to increase his political position.”
“Walz has signed legislation to strip parents of parental rights if they refuse to allow their minor children to get sex change surgeries. Walz signed the most extreme abortion bill into law that has NO limits on abortion. Because of Walz, 13-year-old girls can now get taxpayer-funded, late-term abortions in Minnesota without even telling their parents,” Mortensen said of Walz’s record.
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Mortensen said that if elected, Walz “rules with an iron fist and seeks to destroy liberties all with a goofy smile on his face.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 21, 2024. (Reuters/Mike Segar)
“Gov. Walz is a dictatorial tyrant that has an insatiable appetite for power. He has made a living amassing that power by being a shapeshifting politician that creates a character he believes will successfully pull the wool over the eyes of voters just long enough to get elected,” he said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign for comment on the booth and Mortensen’s comments, but did not immediately receive a reply.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
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DETROIT – The sound and speed of the Detroit Grand Prix return to city streets in three weeks.
“Racing is in our blood. It’s in our DNA,” event chairman Bud Denker said.
Entering its fourth year downtown, the race hosts the NTT IndyCar Series and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship from May 29 through May 31.
“We’re not here once every 15 or 20 years like the Super Bowl or the Draft or Final Four,” Denker continued. “This event happens in our city every single year. You can plan on it.”
Racing up Franklin Street and down Jefferson Avenue, drivers can always count on a challenge from the nine-turn, 1.7-mile circuit.
“One little error and you’re going to hit a wall and end your day,” five-time Belle Isle winner and Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing sports car driver Jordan Taylor said. “It takes a lot of risk. It takes a lot of commitment. The car has to be fast. This is one of those events where you need everything to go right.”
The Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear took the green flag for the first time in 1982 as a Formula One event, transitioning to IndyCar/CART in 1989.
Through layout and location changes, the event continues to reflect the city’s culture.
“Energy, warmth, and sense of togetherness make the Detroit Grand Prix special,” Reden Le said. A student at the College for Creative Studies, Le designed the poster for this year’s race. “Working on this poster made me actually see how the community in Detroit is so diverse and so fun.”
The fun includes concerts, festivities, and promotions adjacent to the track throughout race week, along with documented economic and charitable impacts.
“We love racing for all those reasons,” General Motors Vice President of Performance and Motorsports Jim Campbell said. “Certainly, to have a race in our hometown means a lot, and it’s also a great way to give back.”
Approximately 1,350 volunteers sign up with the Detroit Grand Prix Association each year, but community assistance goes both ways.
“We put thousands of people to work,” Denker added. “We bring 100 million dollars to the city every year, and we show off these kids.”
Members of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Detroit created seven murals adorning the wall to the right side of the pit lane exit.
Serving as a clear reminder of the community that makes this race what it is, they’re also tough for drivers to see at speeds in excess of 180 miles per hour.
“We’re one of only 20 cities in the world that have a downtown street course event,” Denker said. “We should never take that for granted.”
The track build has already begun, with most construction occurring at night to avoid disrupting traffic.
Friday, May 29, is Fifth Third Free Prix Day, welcoming fans to grandstands one and nine with no ticket required.
Reserved seats for all three days are on sale now.
Copyright 2026 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.
Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam talks greater involvement, Giannis future
Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam says that he will have a greater involvement with the team and that includes the decision on if to re-sign Giannis Antetokounmpo.
In his first press conference to discuss on-court basketball matters with the Milwaukee Bucks, one in which the organization introduced Taylor Jenkins as its new head coach on May 6, co-owner Jimmy Haslam didn’t waste any time in providing a bit of clarity with the direction of the franchise the Haslam Sports Group bought into in 2023.
Haslam, who said he anticipates being around the Bucks more often going forward, flatly stated the team will decide either trade superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo or continue to build the team around him by the NBA draft, which will be held June 23-24.
It was a stark departure from the last calendar year, when the organization and locker room navigated through a consistent barrage of trade speculation about the two-time Most Valuable Player.
“I just think before the draft is a natural time, right, because if Giannis does play somewhere else we ought to get a lot of assets,” Haslam said. “And that’s [general manager] Jon [Horst’s] job to do. And if he’s here, you build the team differently.”
Haslam then took a beat to add, without a prompt, “I just want to stress though, that our relationship with him – despite what is reported by certain ESPN writers – is very positive.”
Questions about Antetokounmpo’s future with the organization didn’t entirely dominate Jenkins’ reintroduction to Milwaukee, as the former Bucks assistant and Memphis Grizzlies head coach was able to lay out some aspects of his vision for the team, his partnership with Horst and how he seeks to re-establish a winning culture.
But Jenkins did acknowledge the looming decision on which direction the team is going to take with – or without – Antetokounmpo was a key point in the hours long discussions he had with co-owners Haslam and Wes Edens, as well as Horst.
“It’s a big one,” Haslam said of the decision over the future of its franchise cornerstone. “It’s a big one. And you gotta get it right. And Jon knows it and Wes knows it. And we didn’t hold back with Taylor. We just said, listen, he may or may not be with us, so don’t come because of that because you want to be straight up with people.”
Horst added that Antetokounmpo did not meet with Jenkins in the interview process, but the head coach and the star have spoken.
And, Antetokounmpo gave an endorsement on the hire to the Journal Sentinel.
“I think he’s an incredible person,” Antetokounmpo said. “Obviously, he’s an incredible coach. I was able to be with him in 2019 and we made the Eastern Conference finals.
“After that he left, he was one of the first coaches that left the coaching staff and went to Memphis and he had an incredible six years in Memphis. He made them contenders in the West. He had incredible culture in Memphis.
“I had the conversation. I don’t think Milwaukee is just getting just a good coach, I think they’re getting a good person. And that’s where it starts with. Having a good person around that’s gonna be able to set the tone, that set the culture and what Milwaukee Bucks basketball is all about. He’s a really good coach.”
As for the prospect of being coached by Jenkins, Antetokounmpo said, “We’ll see.”
And clearly that is the approach the organization is taking as well.
“Giannis has brought Milwaukee its second championship and the first in 50 years,” Haslam said. “He’s a phenomenal player. He’s a phenomenal person. He’s arguably one of the best basketball players in the world and we will do what’s best for Giannis and what’s best for the organization.
“We don’t know whether Giannis will stay with us or not, but we’ll work through that with Giannis in the coming weeks.”
For his part, Antetokounmpo addressed how he was going to approach his immediate future with the team on April 12.
“Nothing – phone on do not disturb,” he said after the Bucks’ season finale in Philadelphia. “Working hard every single day to improve my game, be in the best physical shape that I can be and just stay away from it – all of it.
“I feel like this season, not just because of the way it went, it was draining for me for sure and how everybody approached my situation and the Bucks situation. But again, if it was draining for me, it was definitely draining for the team and for the organization, but I feel like sometimes people just don’t listen.
“They listen to the sources, and the main source is me. It is what it is. So again, do not disturb phone, go about my day, improve and come back better.”
Core42, the cloud subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s G42 Group, has leased 20 megawatts in a converted office building in downtown Minneapolis. The company building the Stargate UAE campus is now filling American offices-turned-data-centres, part of a broader pattern in which the same AI systems emptying offices are generating the demand to fill them with servers.
TL;DR
The building at 1001 Third Avenue South in downtown Minneapolis used to be an office. Now it is a data centre, and its anchor tenant is not a Silicon Valley hyperscaler but Core42, the cloud and AI infrastructure subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s G42 Group. The lease, reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, covers 20 megawatts of capacity in a facility converted from commercial office space by Legacy Investing, a Virginia-based developer that has spent more than 70 million dollars transforming the property. The deal is a small piece of a much larger pattern: the UAE’s most ambitious AI company is building a network of American data centres while simultaneously constructing the largest AI compute facility outside the United States, and the buildings it is filling were, until recently, home to the kind of white-collar workers whose jobs AI is designed to replace.
G42, led by CEO Peng Xiao and backed by Abu Dhabi’s national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has become the UAE’s principal vehicle for AI infrastructure investment. The company is building the Stargate UAE campus, the international flagship of the 500 billion dollar Stargate joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi sovereign investment vehicle MGX, across approximately 19 square kilometres of desert south of Abu Dhabi. The first phase, a 200 megawatt compute cluster powered by Nvidia Grace Blackwell GB300 systems, is scheduled to come online by the end of 2026, with full build-out designed to reach one gigawatt of capacity at a projected cost exceeding 30 billion dollars. The project has already attracted geopolitical threats, with Iran warning of retaliatory strikes against Gulf infrastructure including commercial data centres.
Core42’s US expansion extends well beyond Minneapolis. The company signed a ten-year lease with TeraWulf for more than 70 megawatts of data centre infrastructure at the Lake Mariner facility in upstate New York, with an option for an additional 135 megawatts. G42 has also announced a one billion dollar data centre investment in Vietnam and established Core42’s European headquarters in Dublin. The Minneapolis lease adds a relatively modest 20 megawatts to a portfolio that is scaling globally, but its significance lies less in the capacity than in the location: a converted office building in the centre of an American city whose downtown vacancy rate, like those of most mid-sized US cities, has climbed steadily since the pandemic.
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Legacy Investing acquired 1001 Third Avenue South in 2019 and has since invested heavily in converting the six-storey property from office to data centre use. The company spent more than 70 million dollars on improvements in 2025 alone, expanding the building’s capacity from approximately two megawatts to 21 megawatts. In January 2026, Cloud Capital and Bahrain-based asset manager Arcapita acquired the property for 235 million dollars through a joint venture, reflecting the premium that data centre conversions now command over traditional office valuations.
The economics of office-to-data-centre conversion have become compelling enough to reshape urban real estate markets. US utilities plan to spend 1.4 trillion dollars by 2030 to power the AI boom, and the demand for data centre capacity has outstripped the supply of purpose-built facilities. Converting existing office buildings offers developers a faster path to market than ground-up construction, provided the building’s structural load capacity, power infrastructure, and cooling systems can be upgraded to support the density of modern compute hardware. Not every office qualifies. The buildings that do, typically those with reinforced concrete construction, proximity to fibre networks, and access to sufficient electrical capacity, have become some of the most sought-after properties in commercial real estate.
G42’s American data centre strategy reflects a broader shift in how sovereign AI ambitions are materialising in the United States. The company is not simply building compute capacity abroad. It is establishing a physical presence inside the American power grid, the American fibre network, and American commercial real estate markets. The Minneapolis lease, the TeraWulf deal in New York, and facilities in California and Texas create a distributed infrastructure footprint that positions Core42 as a provider of what the company calls sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure: compute capacity that can serve both G42’s own AI workloads and those of its customers, including the US-based companies that require data residency within American borders.
The race to secure data centre capacity has drawn startups, sovereign wealth funds, and hyperscalers into direct competition for the same constrained resources: power, land, cooling, and fibre connectivity. In Minneapolis, Legacy Investing’s conversion of an office building into a 21 megawatt facility illustrates how developers are working around those constraints by repurposing existing urban infrastructure rather than competing for greenfield sites in the exurban corridors where most large-scale data centres are built. The approach has limits. Twenty megawatts is a fraction of the capacity that a purpose-built hyperscale facility delivers, and the structural constraints of an existing building make future expansion difficult. But for a tenant like Core42, which needs distributed US presence rather than concentrated scale, the urban conversion model offers something that a greenfield campus in rural Virginia does not: proximity to enterprise customers and the network interconnection density of a major metropolitan area.
The geopolitics of UAE-linked AI infrastructure in the United States remain sensitive. G42 severed its ties with Chinese technology companies in 2024 under pressure from the US government, a prerequisite for receiving access to advanced American AI chips. Microsoft invested 1.5 billion dollars in G42 as part of that realignment, and the company has since positioned itself as a bridge between American AI technology and Gulf capital. OpenAI’s decision to pause its Stargate UK project over energy costs and regulatory concerns has made the UAE’s willingness to build at scale and speed more strategically valuable, and G42’s ability to secure chip imports for the Stargate UAE campus has been treated by the US government as a test case for whether AI infrastructure can be deployed in allied nations without compromising national security.
The financial dynamics of AI infrastructure investment have produced valuations and capital commitments that would have been inconceivable five years ago. Oracle’s stock fell 50 per cent despite a Wall Street buy consensus as concentration risk from its OpenAI dependency spooked investors. Alphabet raised its full-year 2026 capex estimate to between 180 and 190 billion dollars. The International Energy Agency predicts that energy use from data centres will double by the end of 2026. Into this environment, a 20 megawatt lease in a converted Minneapolis office building registers as a footnote. But the tenant signing the lease is the company building the largest AI compute facility outside the United States, and the building it is moving into is one of hundreds of American offices being repurposed to house the infrastructure that is making the offices themselves obsolete. The conversion is not just architectural. It is economic. The same AI systems that emptied the office are now filling it with servers.
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