BEVERLY SHORES, Ind. (WLS) — A 17-year-old boy is missing in Lake Michigan near Beverly Shores, Indiana, officials said.

Indiana Conservation Officers confirmed they are investigating after a 17-year-old from Eagan, Minnesota was reported missing in the lake Tuesday afternoon.

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The officials said their search efforts have been hindered by “dangerous water conditions.”

Beverly Shores Fire Department remained on the scene Tuesday evening, continuing their shore-based search throughout the night on ATVs.

Conservation officers will resume the search in Wednesday morning

No other details about the missing teen have been released. It was not known if he was with other people, or how many, at the time he went missing.

No further information was immediately available. Indiana Conservation Officers said more information is expected to be released later Tuesday night.

The “small but mighty” largely liberal Minnesota Jewish community started their work day on Tuesday morning with the highly anticipated news of Vice President Kamala Harris selecting their governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate over runner-up Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania. 

With Shapiro, as the second Jewish Vice Presidential nominee in history, came antisemitic attacks over his support of Israel. 

Ethan Roberts, Deputy Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, told The Jerusalem Post that his organization was disturbed by the unfair negativity directed at Gov. Shapiro, who holds the same positions on Israel and antisemitism as Walz. 

“I’ve never met Gov. Shapiro, but I know Gov. Walz,” Roberts said. “And it was clear to us that all of this negativity at Gov. Shapiro was that he was the wrong kind of Jew, and we condemn that as being antisemitic.”

Though Roberts said Walz is excellent, bringing to the table six years as governor, 12 years in Congress, 24 years of the National Guard and experience as a teacher. 

“I’d like to believe that Governor Walz was selected because of all of the things that he brings to the table, and not because the far left were given a veto over Gov. Shapiro,” Roberts said. 

Roberts added he thinks it’s important for people who don’t know a lot about Walz to understand that all of the options that were before Harris, including Walz, were pro-Israel options. 

“If anyone thinks that somehow, because Governor Walz was selected and not Governor Shapiro, they got the candidate of the far left or the squad, they didn’t,” Roberts said.  “Absolutely not.”

According to Roberts, people were looking at the fact Shapiro was Jewish and the positions he was taking, which he called unacceptable. 

“What [JCRC] was trying to say is that Walz has the same position,” Roberts added. “If it’s about the positions, you should be against all of them.”

Beth Kieffer Leonard is a board member of the Jewish Democratic Council of America and is heavily involved in the Minneapolis Jewish community, previously serving as president and campaign chair for the Minneapolis Jewish Federation and serving on The Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors since 2008. 

JDCA was quick to endorse Walz after the announcement of his selection broke Tuesday morning. 

To Jewish voters across Pennsylvania and beyond who were hoping for Shapiro as the pick, Kieffer Leonard said Democrats want to win, and that’s what the focus should be on. 

Walz has an understanding of rural and urban America, two important things Kieffer Leonard said have been missing from the Democratic Party. 

“If people understand what’s at stake in this election, it will be obvious that everything that Gov. Walz has done to date is about bringing people together and providing them with opportunities, both as individuals or in whatever group you align with,” Kieffer Leonard said. 

She added Democrats have to find the winning ticket and all get behind it, keeping the bigger picture in focus. 

Walz’s Record

“Being a proud Minnesotan, it’s hard not to have a dog in the hunt with Gov. Walz, who I’ve been a supporter of for a very long time, including when he was in Congress, and have been proud to be a Minnesotan with him at the helm of our state.”

As an educator, he advocated tremendously Holocaust education, and then as a governor, he mandated legislation requiring Minnesota schools to teach the Holocaust, Kieffer Leonard said to The Post. 

From his days as an educator through Congress and to the Governor’s mansion, Kieffer Leonard said Walz has been “steadfast in his support of Israel” and even more so since October 7, as he’s maintained that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas. 

In Congress, Kieffer Leonard said Walz voted in favor of aid to Israel at every option he had, including voting to provide for Israel’s air defense system, and wanting to expand the strategic partnership between US and Israel. 

Locally, Kieffer Leonard said Walz has repeatedly condemned acts of antisemitism around the country and reaffirmed Minnesota’s solidarity with its Jewish friends and neighbors. 

Steve Hunegs, executive director of the JCRC, told The Post that Walz has been a “stalwart friend of the Jewish community, the JCRC, and a strong supporter of a robust US-Israel relationship.”

Hunegs noted three JCRC events within the past year or so where Walz showed his support for the Jewish community, starting with the JCRC’s 2023 annual event which honored Holocaust survivor Dora Zaidenweber, whose testimony before the Minnesota House of Representatives helped lead to the mandate of Holocaust education across the state. 

Walz then attended JCRC’s vigil on October 9, speaking with “great eloquence” about the need to defend the US-Israel relationship, according to Hunegs, who said Waltz’s line at the vigil about the need for moral clarity in that moment really resonated with people. 

Walz also ordered the flags at the Capitol at half-mast after October 7. 

“So in that way, he’s been front and center with the community, there at our side,” Hunegs said. “Certainly expressing some of the most important principles with respect to the Jewish community, and Israel and antisemitism.”

Hunegs highlighted Walz for being the first governor in Minnesota’s history to appoint a Jewish member to the state’s Court of Appeals, who later became the senior judge. 

He also praised Walz for repeatedly opposing BDS resolutions or petitions calling for the Minnesota State Board of Investment to divest directly or indirectly the state’s pension holdings from Israel. 

Hunegs described Walz as a man with Midwestern roots who is also deeply conversed in international relations, understanding that Minnesota and the broader Midwest do not live in isolation. 

If the Harris-Walz ticket wins the White House, Hunegs said he expects Walz to approach Israel policy by “expressing himself in a powerful way about the importance of the relationship between the US and Israel.” 

Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate, according to three sources with knowledge of the pick, adding a popular Midwestern state executive to the Democratic ticket as the party gears up to hold onto key Northern battleground states this fall.

In picking Walz, who’s in his second term and also served 12 years in Congress, Harris will have as her No. 2 someone with a proven record of winning over white working-class voters in Rust Belt states while also boasting a robustly progressive record.

Democrats will hope that mix of attributes helps a Harris-Walz ticket shore up support in the onetime “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — longtime Democratic strongholds at the presidential level that Donald Trump flipped in 2016 and Joe Biden flipped back in 2020. This year, they’ve been seen as Biden’s, and now Harris’, most viable path to victory.

Walz, 60, had initially been viewed as a long shot in a field of vice presidential contenders that included rising party stars, some of whom have been mentioned as future presidential candidates, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Now Harris has chosen a governing partner who has leaned in at times to a folksy, Midwestern reputation while also proving to be a reliable attack dog against Trump.

Walz’s experiences earlier in his life, as a public school teacher and a member of the Army National Guard, could also buttress his ability to speak to different voting blocs — including veterans and organized labor — that Harris will need to win in November.

Walz, a Nebraska native, enlisted in the National Guard when he was 17 and served for more than two decades, with both domestic and overseas deployments. He later was a high school social studies teacher and football coach in Mankato, about 80 miles south of Minneapolis, before he won a congressional seat in a largely rural and agricultural district in 2006.

He represented Minnesota’s 1st District for 12 years before his successful run for governor in 2018. A 1995 reckless driving arrest in Nebraska, during which, an officer said, Walz had failed a sobriety test, came up in his campaigns for House and the governorship, but he was elected anyway. Walz called it a “gut check moment” in an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2018, saying he stopped drinking afterward.

Walz’s allies have spoken frequently about how his background representing rural communities is much needed in the party, noting that he won re-election in a red-trending district — one that was about evenly divided in 2012 but swung heavily to Trump in 2016 — and could help Democrats compete for some moderate or conservative voters skeptical of Trump this time around.

Walz also had the most Capitol Hill experience of anyone on Harris’ reported short list, with relationships in Congress that could help a new president move a legislative agenda.

As governor, Walz has overseen a bonanza of progressive policy accomplishments — particularly during his second term, during which Democrats have also controlled both chambers of the Legislature. 

He has signed laws protecting abortion rights, legalizing recreational marijuana, restricting gun access and providing legal refuge to trans youths whose access to gender-affirming and other medical care has been restricted elsewhere. Progressives elsewhere have pointed to Minnesota as a case study in how to effectively use the power of a legislative trifecta to achieve policy priorities.

Walz also enacted laws expanding paid family leave, banning most non-compete agreements, providing universal school meals for students and capping the price of insulin in Minnesota (three years before Biden did it nationally) — a list of legislative wins his colleagues and supporters have said would translate nationally.

Walz doesn’t have the same degree of name recognition as many of his presumed competitors to be Harris’ running mate, though he spent a year leading fundraising efforts for Democratic governors as chair of the Democratic Governors Association. In recent days, Walz has turned up the publicity dial, trying out attack lines against Trump and Sen. JD Vance in a slew of media appearances.

In a late July interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he ripped Trump and Vance as “weird,” gaining wider notice. Harris herself began using the “weird” line almost immediately.

Walz also explicitly used his media appearances to attack the GOP ticket by playing up his strong cultural ties to the middle of the country — and to demonstrate to Democrats how he would intend for the party to win over those voters.

“What I know is that people like JD Vance know nothing about small town America,” Walz said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on July 23. “My town had 400 people, 24 kids in my graduating class, 12 were cousins. And he gets it all wrong.”

“It’s not about hate. It’s not about collapsing in. The golden rule there is mind your own damn business,” Walz said, adding that Republican “policies are what destroyed rural America. They divided us. They’re in our exam rooms. They’re telling us what books to read.”

“And what I think what Kamala Harris knows is bringing people together around the shared values, strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class, health care that’s affordable and accessible, those are the things,” Walz said.

Picking Walz doesn’t come without risks. While his selection underscores Democrats’ effort to aggressively go after Midwestern voters, he doesn’t bring a specific battleground state advantage: Minnesota hasn’t gone red in a presidential race since 1972.

In addition, as Walz’s stock has risen in recent days, critics have reintroduced questions about his governing record. They include concerns over a delay calling in the National Guard as protests engulfed Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd by city police officers in May 2020, as well as the fact that the biggest pandemic fraud case in the U.S. happened under his watch.

Another presumed liability for Walz’s VP chances early on had been his role as a co-chair of the Democratic National Convention rules committee — a job that, in the chaotic days after Biden dropped out of the race, led him to help Harris quickly become the party’s presumptive nominee.

Any potential criticism over a conflict of interest was largely rendered moot when precisely zero high-profile competitors challenged Harris for the nomination.

Walz told reporters that “anybody [who] wants to put their name in” to be nominated” can do so.