The Minnesota Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended attorney Susan Shogren Smith, who authorities say filed legal challenges in the November 2020 election without permission of the plaintiffs.

The suspension from practicing law came Thursday, on the heels of a petition for disciplinary action against Shogren Smith filed by the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility saying that she has conducted professional misconduct.

The Brooklyn Center attorney was given a $10,000 sanction in 2021 after a judge found she “bamboozled” voters into signing on as plaintiffs without their knowledge or permission to file legal challenges against the election of five congressional Democrats.

Calls to Shogren Smith on Friday were not returned.

The petition for disciplinary action noted that a three-judge panel had determined she had committed a “fraud on the court” and gave her an additional $15,000 sanction. The petition claims that Shogren Smith has failed to pay the $25,000, according to court documents.

“Respondent’s misconduct is serious,” the state Supreme Court document said, “and involved not just lack of competence and failure to communicate with clients, but dishonesty to the courts and disregard for the discipline process.”

The court documents said her actions were “not a brief lapse of judgement” but something that occurred for several years.

Shogren Smith is a member of the MN Election Integrity Team, a conservative group that sought to prevent the state from certifying its election results while President Donald Trump and his allies promoted unfounded claims of election fraud.

On Dec. 1, 2020, she filed five complaints in Ramsey County District Court, naming as defendants Secretary of State Steve Simon and the Democratic candidates who won their Congressional races.

Those legal challenges were filed in the names of 14 separate voters, at least four of whom had no idea they were participating.

“Susan Shogren Smith … perpetrated a fraud against this court and, more importantly, perpetrated a fraud against these plaintiffs,” Ramsey County Chief District Judge Leonardo Castro said at the time the first sanction was imposed.

In February of 2021, Republican activist Corinne Braun discovered her name was connected to one of the cases.

“To my horror, I saw that I had sued Steve Simon and Ilhan Omar. It was a surreal moment for me,” she said, likening the discovery to finding her car had been broken into.

Braun testified she had received an anonymous email asking to add her name to a list of disgruntled voters. She filled out the form and signed her name and then forwarded the email to about 5,000 people on her mailing list.

As Shogren Smith explained in court, what Braun had signed was an affidavit that agreed she “will be joining with other voters across Minnesota to contest Minnesota election results.”

Braun, though, said she didn’t understand the implications.

Shogren Smith acknowledged she never spoke with the plaintiffs or informed them of the outcome of the case, even when Braun and two other unwitting plaintiffs were ordered to pay $3,873 to the defendants at the conclusion of the case.

Shogren Smith said at the time, she believed someone else with the MN Election Integrity Team was having those conversations with plaintiffs.

“I absolutely believed that those conversations were happening with these plaintiffs,” she said.

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An Apple Valley woman is the 72nd person federally charged for her role in the $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic, acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson announced on Friday.

Dorothy Jean Moore, 57, of Apple Valley, was charged in a federal indictment with three counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering, Thompson said in a news release.

According to the release, Moore launched two purported federal child nutrition program sites in late 2020 under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future. Moore completed and signed meal count forms, claiming to have served 1,500 meals to children each day at each of her sites, which she said she operated out of community churches.

Moore claimed and received reimbursements for those meals through the Feeding Our Future program, the release said. In addition, she said she operated a catering company called Jean’s Soul Food and claimed additional federal reimbursements for food from that company used at the other sites.

The release cited her bank records, saying they show she used “little of the reimbursement dollars she received to purchase food. Instead, Moore used those funds for other purposes, including to purchase cars and fund an enhanced lifestyle.”

She is the 72nd Minnesotan charged with defrauding the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s child nutrition programs during the pandemic, when regulations temporarily were loosened and a variety of businesses and nonprofits were allowed to help feed hungry kids while schools were closed. Federal prosecutors have called the scheme the nation’s largest coronavirus pandemic fraud, amounting to more than $250 million.

“This fraud is outrageous, brazen, and seemingly never-ending,” said Thompson in the release. “Stealing from a program designed to feed vulnerable children is not only criminal — it’s unconscionable,” said Special Agent in Charge Alvin M. Winston Sr. of FBI Minneapolis.

Moore made her initial appearance in U.S. District Court Friday.

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By DEEPA BHARATH, Associated Press

“Captain America doesn’t wear a beard and a turban, and he’s white.”

Vishavjit Singh looked at the boy who uttered those words, and then he looked at himself — a skinny, bespectacled, turbaned, bearded Sikh in a Captain America suit.

“I wasn’t offended, because I knew that this kid was going to have this image of me, a Sikh Captain America, forever in his mind,” Singh said. “This image has so much power to it that it opens up conversations about what it means to be American.”

Vishavjit Singh, who educates youth about Sikhism through his Captain Sikh America character, poses for a portrait in costume at home, in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, Friday, May 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Representation of non-Abrahamic religions and spiritual traditions, particularly in the mainstream comics universe, is minimal. Even when they are portrayed in comics, their presentation, as Singh and others in the field point out, is often inauthentic and sometimes negative.

Recently, however, comic book writers and academics who study the intersection of religion and comics observe a renaissance of sorts, which they say is happening because people close to these faith traditions are telling these stories with a reverence and sincerity that resonate with a wider audience.

A Sikh superhero with a message

Singh’s journey to make that connection began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, triggered anti-Sikh hate incidents. Having faced hate and exclusion throughout his life, he decided to spread his message of kindness and inclusion by capitalizing on the appeal of comics and superheroes — an area where he found Sikh representation to be “virtually zero.”

He suited up as Captain Sikh America in Manhattan for the first time in summer 2013 — one year after a self-proclaimed white supremacist opened fire inside a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six and injuring four others.

New York’s reaction to Captain Sikh America was joyous.

“Strangers came up and hugged me,” Singh said. “Police officers wanted photos with me. A couple wanted me to be part of their wedding ceremony. I felt I had a certain privilege I’d never had before.”

In 2016, Singh gave up his full-time job to travel around the country to schools, government agencies and corporations to share his story and educate youth about his culture and faith. He doesn’t speak directly about religion but rather the core values of Sikhism.

“I talk about equality, justice and about the universal light being present in every speck of creation,” he said.

Africana religions in comics

Marvel’s Black Panther heralded better representation for Africana religions in the U.S., according to Yvonne Chireau, a professor of religion at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. However what is seen in Black Panther or other comics is a synthesis of different African religions and cultural practices, she said.

For example, one page might talk about the Orishas, divine spirits that play a key role in the Yoruba faith of West Africa, while another might feature Egyptian gods. One of the first superheroes with African religious roots, Chireau said, was Brother Voodoo, created in the 1970s by Marvel publisher Stan Lee, writer Len Wein and artist John Romita. He was the first Haitian superhero.

The turn of the last century was a time of revival for Black-centric comics, she said, adding that immigration from African and Caribbean countries, including Haiti, led to increased understanding of religious practices originating in those places.

“It’s definitely gotten a lot better and much more authentic because the people who are telling these stories care about those religious practices,” she said.

Incorporating Black mythology and spirituality

Brooklyn-born Haitian American comic book writer Greg Anderson Elysée said he didn’t learn about African and Caribbean religious traditions until he was a teenager. Elysée was raised Catholic, but he now considers himself agnostic. For the past decade, he’s written comics about Is’nana, the son of Anansi the Spider, the god of wisdom, knowledge and mischief in the Akan religion of West Africa.

This image provided by Greg Anderson Elysee shows six covers from Greg Anderson Elysée’s Is’nana comics series about the adventures of the son of Anansi the Spider, a god in the Akan religion of West Africa. (Greg Anderson Elysée via AP)

What drives his vision and his creativity, Elysée said, is the need to see more Black mythology, deities and spirituality showcased with the same level of respect as European fairy tales and Greek mythology.

“When I went looking for anything on African spirituality in the bookstore, I found it in the occult section as opposed to the religion or mythology section,” he said. Common depictions of African faith as voodoo and witchcraft are colonialist narratives aimed at demonizing Indigenous spiritual practices, he added.

“When I started going to ceremonies and rituals, I saw how much power there is in it. When we know who we are — whether you believe in the religion or not — it fills you with joy, a purpose and a sense of being.”

Elysée is excited and relieved by the reaction to his work.

“While this is entertainment, you also don’t want to offend those who believe in it and truly get so much power from it,” he said. “Some of my portrayals of these religions in my comics may not be 100% authentic, but there is a level of research and respect that goes into every piece of it.”

Zen comics that heal, ground and center

Zen Buddhism has informed much of John Porcellino’s work. For over three decades, he has produced and self-published King-Cat Comics and Stories, a largely autobiographical mini-comic series. Porcellino was drawn to Buddhism in his 20s after what he describes as a period of intense mental suffering and health problems.

As a punk rock fan, Porcellino saw commonalities between punk and Zen because “they are both concerned with the essence of things rather than appearances.” Both are ways of life — simple yet nuanced.

This image provided by John Porcellino shows “The Weight of my Bones” by John Porcellino, part of his King-Cat Comics and Stories, his long-running series that reflects the author’s Zen practice. (John Porcellino via AP)

He gave the example of a wordless story titled “October,” featured in King-Cat’s 30th issue, that shows him as a high school student walking home one night from school. When he gets home, his mom asks him to take the dog outside; as he steps out, he sees the stars.

“It’s the experience of being in everyday, mundane life … and then suddenly breaking through to some kind of transcendence,” he said.

Porcellino views these comics as a healing presence in his life.

“They are an important part of my spiritual practice,” he said. “Any time I have a major crisis in my life, my first reaction is to sit down and start making comics and put my focus into that. It just helps ground me.”

This image provided by John Porcellino shows “Non-thinking” by John Porcellino is part of his King-Cat Comics and Stories, a long-running series that reflects the author’s Zen practice. (John Porcellino via AP)

Why representation matters for children

Teresa Robeson, who wrote a graphic novel about the 14th Dalai Lama, said that even though her mother was Catholic and raised her in the faith, her grandmother was Buddhist. She grew up in Hong Kong, with memories of relatives praying to Buddhist gods, taking in the fragrance of burning incense and the sound of Buddhist chants.

Though she practices neither Catholicism nor Buddhism at this time, Robeson jumped at the opportunity to tell the story of the Dalai Lama in graphic novel form because the book focused on a pivotal moment in the spiritual leader’s life, when he fled Tibet for India after the Chinese occupation.

This image provided by Penguin Random House LLC, shows the book cover of “Who Is Tibet’s Exiled Leader?: The 14th Dalai Lama” (Penguin Random House LLC via AP)

Robeson liked the idea of representing a religion and culture that do not get much attention in media.

“Children’s books are like mirrors and windows for kids,” she said. “It’s helpful especially for children of immigrants who don’t often see themselves in mainstream literature. They don’t see anyone who looks like them or prays like them. At the same time, it also helps kids who are not Asian or Buddhist to learn something about those communities.”

The comics renaissance in India

Amar Chitra Katha was a comic book company started by the late Anant Pai in Mumbai in 1967 as a way to teach Indian children about their own mythology and culture. The first title was “Krishna,” an important god in Hinduism and protagonist of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the religion’s main sacred texts.

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Pai was an engineer turned comic books seller who used varied marketing techniques, including walking around with planks, nails and hammers in his bag so he could build shelves for bookstores that refused to display his comics because they lacked shelf space, said Reena I. Puri, the company’s managing director and a 35-year veteran of the business.

Pai started with Hindu mythology and gods but soon expanded to other faiths, releasing a globally successful comic titled “Jesus Christ” and others about Buddha, Sikh gurus and Mahavira, who founded Jainism. Later came secular comics about historical figures and folktales.

But religion remains the mainstay of Amar Chitra Katha, and books that teach children about faith, history and culture are also the most popular in the diaspora, Puri said.

“Most recently we’ve also portrayed (Indigenous) religions and have gathered folktales relating to these traditions from all over India,” she said.

Amar Chitra Katha comics faced criticism in the past for their portrayal of gods as fair-skinned and “asuras” — often the antagonists to the gods — as dark-skinned with demonic facial features. But that has changed, Puri said.

“We’ve educated ourselves and realized that our ancient texts were not as racist or colorist as we may be today,” she said. “We’re correcting those misconceptions now.”

Atheism, paganism and … Lucifer

British comic book writer Mike Carey is known for his 2000-2006 DC Comics series “Lucifer,” which depicts the titular character’s adventures on Earth, in Heaven and in various realms after abandoning Hell. Carey counts himself an atheist who went to Sunday school only “for the fun, stories and chocolate.”

Carey portrayed Lucifer as the “son of God, but as a rebellious disobedient son who wants to find himself as distinct from his father.”

He has also explored pagan themes, particularly what he called the “weird interface between British folklore and British religious traditions.”

Carey delved into the concepts of faith, God and morality in a series titled “My Faith in Frankie,” which tells the story of a teenager with a personal god called Jeriven who gets jealous of her boyfriend.

Even though many of his comics and novels explore religion and ethics, Carey said, he has never “felt any temptation whatsoever to believe.”

“I’ve become more and more entrenched in that position, because organized religions are like any organization that sustain themselves, amass power, wealth and authority,” he said. “So I’ve never really grappled with religious issues. What I do sometimes is explore, play with and tease out moral issues that were important and meaningful to me.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

I have a lot of Democratic friends who are extremely disappointed with their party leaders. They tell me that the Democratic Party is currently rudderless, weak, passive, lacking a compelling message. I try to be polite, but I want to tell them: “The problem is not the party leaders. The problem is you. You don’t understand how big a shift we’re in the middle of. You think the Democrats can solve their problems with a new message and a new leader. But the Democrats’ challenge is that they have to adapt to a new historical era. That’s not something done by working politicians who are focused on fundraising and the next election. That’s only accomplished by visionaries and people willing to shift their entire worldview. That’s up to you, my friends, not Chuck Schumer.”

There have been only a few world-shifting political movements over the past century and a half: the totalitarian movement, which led to communist revolutions in places like Russia and China and fascist coups in places like Germany; the welfare state movement, which led in the U.S. to the New Deal; the liberation movement, which led, from the ’60s on, to anti-colonialism, the civil rights movement, feminism and the LGBTQ movement; the market liberalism movement, which led to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and, in their own contexts, Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev; and finally the global populist movement, which has led to Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Brexit and, in their own contexts, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

The global populist movement took off sometime in the early 2010s. It was driven by a comprehensive sense of social distrust, a firm conviction that the social systems of society were rigged, corrupted and malevolent.

In 2024, I wrote about an Ipsos poll that summarized the populist zeitgeist. Roughly 59% of Americans said the country was in decline. Sixty percent agreed “the system is broken.” Sixty-nine percent agreed the “political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people.” Sixty-three percent said “experts in this country don’t understand the lives of people like me.” The American results were essentially in line with the results from the 27 other countries around the world that were polled.

The Republicans have adjusted to the shift in the zeitgeist more effectively than the Democrats. Trump tells a clear story: The elites are screwing America. He took a free trade party and made it a protectionist party, an internationalist party and made it an isolationist party. Recently, George F. Will compiled a list of all the ways Trump is departing from conservative orthodoxy and behaving and thinking in ways contrary to the ways Republicans behaved in the age of conservative market liberalism. Will’s list of Trump pivots is worth quoting in full:

“1. Combating the citizenry’s false consciousness by permeating society, including cultural institutions, with government, which IS politics.

“2. Confidence in government’s ability to anticipate and control the consequences of broad interventions in modern society’s complexities.

“3. Using industrial policy to pick economic winners and losers because the future is transparent, so government can know which enterprises should prosper.

“4. Central planning of the evolution of the nation’s regions and the economy’s sectors, especially manufacturing.

“5. Melding governing and party-building by constructing coalitions of government-dependent factions, as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal did with the elderly (Social Security, 1935), labor (the 1935 National Labor Relations Act favoring unions) and farmers (the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act).

“6. Rejecting conservative growth-oriented tax simplification — lowering rates by eliminating preferences — to use taxes (including tariffs) as tools of social engineering. Bypassing the appropriations process, the tax code can transfer wealth to favored constituencies.

“7. Limitless borrowing from future Americans to fund today’s Americans’ consumption of government goods and services

“8. Presidential supremacy ensured by using executive orders to marginalize Congress.

“9. Unfettered majoritarianism, hence opposition to the Senate filibuster.”

Trump has taken the atmosphere of alienation, magnified it with his own apocalypticism, and, assaulting institutions across society, has created a revolutionary government. More this term than last, he is shifting the conditions in which we live.

Many of my Democratic friends have not fully internalized the magnitude of this historical shift. They are still thinking within the confines of the Clinton-Obama-Biden-Pelosi worldview. But I have a feeling that over the next few years, the tumult of events will push Democrats onto some new trajectory.

The crucial point was made by Bulgarian-born political scientist Ivan Krastev on “The Good Fight” podcast with Yascha Mounk. He said, “In every revolution, there is always more than one revolution.”

He went on to explain: “If this is a revolution, revolution changes the identity of all players. No political party or actor is going to get out of the revolution the way they started it. You can have Lenin after Kerensky; you cannot have Kerensky after Lenin. It is a totally different story. The Democratic Party is going to be as dramatically transformed by the Trumpian revolution — for good or for bad — as the Republican Party is.”

If you’re thinking the Democrats’ job now is to come up with some new policies that appeal to the working class, you are thinking too small. This is not about policies. Democrats have to do what Trump did: create a new party identity, come up with a clear answer to the question: What is the central problem of our time? Come up with a new grand narrative.

The Democrats’ first core challenge is that we live in an age that is hostile to institutions and Democrats dominate the institutions — the universities, the media, Hollywood, the foundations, the teachers unions, the Civil Service, etc. The second is that we live in an age in which a caste divide has opened up between the educated elite and everybody else, and Democrats are the party of the highly educated.

Democrats recently had an argument about whether they should use the word “oligarchy” to attack Republicans. They are so locked in their old narratives that they are apparently unaware that to many, they are the oligarchy.

If I could offer Democrats a couple of notions as they begin their process of renewal, the first would be this: Cultural elitism is more oppressive than economic elitism. The welfare state era gave Democrats the impression that everything can be solved with money funneled through some federal program. But the populist era is driven by social resentment more than economic scarcity.

Every society has a recognition order, a diffuse system for doling out attention and respect. When millions of people feel that they and their values are invisible to that order, they rightly feel furious and alienated. Of course they’ll go with the guy — Trump — who says: I see you. I respect you. If Democrats, and the educated class generally, can’t change their values and cultural posture, I doubt any set of economic policies will do them any good. It is just a fact that parties on the left can’t get a hearing until they get the big moral questions right: faith, family, flag, respect for people in all social classes.

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My second notion is this: Pay attention to Dwight Eisenhower. Ike was a Republican president in the middle of the welfare state era. He basically said: I’m going to endorse the basic shape of the New Deal, but I’m going to achieve those ends more sensibly. You can trust me.

For today’s Democrats that means this: If people rightly distrust establishment institutions and you are the party of the establishment institutions, then you have to be the party of thoroughgoing reform. You have to say that Trump is taking a blowtorch to institutions, and we are for effectively changing institutions.

Do you really think professional politicians are going to lead the tectonic shifts that are required? That takes intellectuals, organizers, a new generation, all of us. It’s the work of decades, not election cycles. Clear your mind. Think anew.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.