After the biggest manhunt in Minnesota history, authorities have detained 57-year-old Vance Boelter, who is accused of fatally shooting democratic lawmaker and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their Minnesota home early on Saturday in what authorities say were politically motivated assassinations. He is also accused of wounding state Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette at their home in a separate shooting.

“Melissa Hortman was an outstanding leader that was very loved and respected by many people, and what this means for us is that we lost a leader that was very important to us,” says Patricia Torres Ray, a former Minnesota state senator and a former colleague of both Hortman and Hoffman.

Police say they found three AK-47 assault rifles, a 9mm handgun and a hit list written by the gunman that contained the names of about 70 people, including prominent Democratic lawmakers and abortion providers and advocates. Flyers for Saturday’s No Kings rallies were also found, prompting many organizers in Minnesota to cancel their protests.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

That, according to advocates, is why we need the Great Lakes and State Waters Bill of Rights, a new law which was introduced into the New York legislature by Assemblyman Patrick Burke (District 142) on March 19th.

The bill, AO5156A, if passed, would be the first ever state-level “rights of nature” law in the United States. It would recognize “unalienable and fundamental rights to exist, persist, flourish, naturally evolve, regenerate and be restored” for the Great Lakes and other watersheds and ecosystems throughout the state.

Under the current system of law in almost every country, nature is considered to be property. Thus, those who “own” wetlands, forestland, and other ecosystems and natural communities, are largely permitted to use them however they wish, even if that includes destroying or polluting them..

According to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which kickstarted the rights of nature movement in the United States, rights of nature means recognizing that ecosystems and natural communities are not merely property that can be owned. Rather, they are entities that have an inherent and inalienable right to exist and flourish.

“We must be bold”

Today, April 22nd (Earth Day), advocates for the New York bill have been invited to the United Nations to address a high-level meeting on harmony with nature. Alongside New York State Assemblyman Patrick Burke, who introduced the bill last month, and other rights of nature supporters and advocates such as Movement Rights, Ben Price, Education Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which drafted the bill, has also been invited to speak. The invitation was extended by the Plurinational State of Bolivia, which includes some protections for nature in its national constitution.

Besides playing a key role in drafting the New York bill, Price was instrumental to a 2006 rights of nature law passed in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, which was the first time rights of nature were recognized in any western legal system. “Tamaqua didn’t even get statewide media attention, let alone national or international press,” Price says. “Yet it lit a fire and helped to inform Ecuador’s constitutional amendment of the rights of Pachamama (Mother Earth).”

Since 2006, more than 400 rights of nature initiatives have been introduced around the globe, with Latin America accounting for more than any other region.

Here in the United States, rights of nature has been an uphill battle, as courts have ruled previous laws illegal and even pursued financial penalties against communities and lawyers for pursuing it. According to CELDF Executive Director Kai Huschke, the political moment we find ourselves in calls for a willingness to be bold and challenge systems of law and power that aren’t working.

“Rights of nature would not be where it is today had people and communities followed unjust rules,” Huschke says. “We’ve made progress because of people taking risks, being disobedient, and taking action. That’s what we’re trying to facilitate with our current rights of nature work.”

“Making sure future generations inherit more than just our mistakes”

It’s hard to swim against the current inside institutions — like government — that reward sticking with the status quo.

But Assemblyman Patrick Burke, who represents South Buffalo, the City of Lackawanna, and the towns of West Seneca, Ellicott, and Orchard Park, is willing to push these boundaries — especially given the dire state of our waterways.

“When I passed one of the nation’s first microplastic bans as an Erie County legislator, it was because our communities demanded more than environmental regulation, they demanded accountability,” Burke says. “I carry that same responsibility into my role as Chair of the Great Lakes Taskforce [in the New York State Assembly]. The Great Lakes & State Waters Bill of Rights is about restoring balance between people and the ecosystems we depend on, making sure future generations inherit more than just our mistakes.”

Communities lift their voices in support of rights of nature

Across the region, support is growing for the New York bill.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” says Paul Winnie, a member of Tonawanda Seneca Nation who has been active in issues relating to tribal sovereignty, food, and environmental protection for many years. Winnie says that the bill represents an attempt to create a different way of relating to the natural world beyond extraction and exploitation. It’s something “that could combat the existing system to balance out corporate rights,” he says. “It’s trying to reignite that connection to nature.”

Anna Castonguay, Chair of the Western New York Environmental Alliance, also says that this bill would help bring some balance.

“We give legal personhood to corporations,” Castonguay says, “but have limited protections for the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land where we grow our food and live our lives on. The Great Lakes Bill of Rights would make it so that the health and vitality of the Earth and our communities is not an afterthought.”

“Allowing communities to keep polluters out”

Dr. Kirk Scirto, a primary care physician and public health specialist based in Buffalo, says that the bill is really about self-protection.

“Since we depend entirely on Nature for our survival, by destroying it throughout New York, we’re actually hurting ourselves,” Dr. Scirto says. “Striking at Nature is self-injury. This bill would allow communities to protect their rivers, creeks, lakes, and other ecosystems. It would allow each community to protect its water in its own way, without being overridden by state and federal government. Whether it’s a chemical company or a loud crypto mining center, it could allow communities to keep these polluters out if they choose. And it could be used to make corporations restore waters they’ve already polluted! So, it expands both community rights and Nature’s.”

Talking Rivers, an organization based in the St. Lawrence River / Kaniatarowanénhne and Adirondack Watersheds, wrote a memorandum of support for the bill, stating:

“At this critical juncture as it becomes apparent that the federal government is going to scale back, if not outright abandon, efforts to protect our environment, in particular our waters, it is vitally important that state and local governments step up in a major way. The Great Lakes and State Waters Bill of Rights is that major step forward.”

Pope Francis: “Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves”

Carol De Angelo, the Director of the Office of Peace, Justice and Integrity of Creation at the Sisters of Charity New York, a Catholic religious organization, is another supporter of the bill.

“I am grateful that Representative Burke has introduced this bill,” De Angelo says. “Over the years as a Sister of Charity of New York and a longtime member of ROAR (Religious Organizations Along the River), my awareness and advocacy of the Hudson River and all God’s Creation have strengthened as I become more aware of the interconnectedness of all life.”

De Angelo’s belief in the importance of protecting the environment was reinforced by the late Pope Francis, who was the first Pope to address rights of nature and who passed away on April 20th.

“The 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’ confirmed my belief and commitment,” De Angelo says. “In Laudato Si’ #139, Pope Francis says, ‘When we speak of the environment, what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.’ This Bill, in recognizing the rights of nature, calls us to accountability and responsibility in creating a flourishing Earth Community for today’s children and future generations.”

Rights of Manoomin (Wild Rice) in Minnesota

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, an effort to protect a sacred and ecologically important plant — manoomin, more commonly known as wild rice — using a rights-based approach is underway. The Wild Rice Act was introduced by Senator Mary Kunesh, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state senate, in February.

Leanna Goose, an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and co-author of the bill, says it is an attempt to recognize the inherent rights of non-human life forms.

“The issue at the core of the bill is the need to recognize and honor the living beings we share this Earth with,” Goose says. “They have an inherent right — separate from any right ‘assigned’ by humans — to exist and thrive, just as we do. In Anishinaabe culture, we understand that without all living beings we will cease to exist; our survival would not be possible. We show respect to our plant and animal kin, along with gratitude for this. This is what it means to recognize the inherent right of a living being. It is an invitation into a generational relationship of mutuality and whether we acknowledge it or not, that right exists. Recognizing it is a powerful first step toward fostering a deep respect for the Earth and all the living beings that call it home.”

Next Steps

The New York bill, like the Wild Rice Act in Minnesota, faces serious challenges going forward. In other rights of nature campaigns, even laws that have passed have faced legal challenges arguing they are unconstitutional. Ben Price, who says he was invited to the United Nations after Bolivian officials saw the New York bill and recognized it as a counterweight to anti-environmental federal policies, says that these efforts are all part of a larger process of culture change.

“Good things come in small packages,” he says. “Like Tamaqua, the likelihood of this bill having national or global effect may not be obvious. But given the current political atmosphere, people are looking for answers. Climate funding has been canceled. References to environmental harm removed from government websites. Under these circumstances, people rising up and passing laws like this at the local and state level is essential. These efforts are a voice in the wilderness and a bright spot amidst the chaos.”

How to support

With growing threats to water nationwide — including rapid growth in data centers, power plants, nuclear energy, industrial agriculture, and beyond — communities are looking for ways to protect the rivers, lakes, streams, and aquifers.

Tish O’Dell, one of the CELDF organizers behind this bill, encourages people to reach out to her. She says that with the growing media coverage of this effort, people in several states have already expressed interest in bringing rights of nature to their areas. O’Dell also said that individuals, organizations, and businesses can sign on to a list of supporters to make their voice heard and start making connections to form coalitions.

Huschke, the CELDF Executive Director, also reminds supporters that they can donate to support the organization’s rights of nature work, including in New York.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Clint Combs, a freelance reporter for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, was restricted from entering a Minneapolis Board of Education assembly room to cover a board meeting on March 11, 2025.

Combs told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he first arrived an hour and a half before the start of the meeting at the Davis Center in Minneapolis, where the school district’s administration is headquartered. He said there was no media sign-up sheet available when he first arrived, and he then went to cover demonstrations against school district budget cuts that were taking place outside the building.

When Combs returned around an hour later, he said he initially went to an overflow room to cover the meeting, because the main room was “packed” and he assumed there wasn’t space for him. A source texted him, however, and said media were being allowed into the main assembly room.

But when Combs went to the front desk, a man he assumed was security told him there was only one press spot left and asked for his press pass, which Combs had lost the previous week.

“I offered to provide my driver’s license and relevant byline and also said I would call my editors for verification,” Combs said. While they were speaking, two broadcast reporters walked past and were granted access while he was still being denied entry.

“This was concerning because it seemed that my lack of a press credential badge was the only reason I was denied access, despite the fact that there were available slots for other press,” the journalist said.

“The situation is particularly frustrating because it makes it harder for journalists like me to engage with the speakers, many of whom were addressing important workplace issues at the board meeting,” Combs added.

Several weeks before the denial of access, Combs had clashed with Alicia Miller, the head of human resources for Minneapolis Public Schools, after publishing a Feb. 20 article about former school employees who alleged they and others faced race-based retaliation by Miller.

Miller asked the Spokesman-Recorder to retract and remove the article, and to bar Combs from writing about her in the future, questioning his journalistic integrity, the reporter said.

Miller, in response to an emailed request for comment, affirmed that she had asked for a retraction and an apology for what she said were errors in Combs’ reporting. But she told the Tracker that she had previously been unaware that Combs attempted to attend the March 11 meeting.

Regarding the meeting, Donnie Belcher, the executive director of communications and engagement for Minneapolis Public Schools, told the Tracker in an email: “The room was filled to capacity so no one was allowed access after a certain point, but had we known that Mr. Combs (or any journalist) needed access, a staff person could have come out to escort him in.”

Belcher added that press are required to sign in at meetings, and that “we have a special seating area for press within the assembly room where our board meetings take place.”

Combs noted that “restricting access to the main room has a chilling effect that prevents journalists from asking public speakers follow-up questions.”

He added, “It would have been helpful if MPS had a designated RSVP press email or process to address these concerns ahead of time.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Clint Combs, a freelance reporter for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, was restricted from entering a Minneapolis Board of Education assembly room to cover a board meeting on March 11, 2025.

Combs told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he first arrived an hour and a half before the start of the meeting at the Davis Center in Minneapolis, where the school district’s administration is headquartered. He said there was no media sign-up sheet available when he first arrived, and he then went to cover demonstrations against school district budget cuts that were taking place outside the building.

When Combs returned around an hour later, he said he initially went to an overflow room to cover the meeting, because the main room was “packed” and he assumed there wasn’t space for him. A source texted him, however, and said media were being allowed into the main assembly room.

But when Combs went to the front desk, a man he assumed was security told him there was only one press spot left and asked for his press pass, which Combs had lost the previous week.

“I offered to provide my driver’s license and relevant byline and also said I would call my editors for verification,” Combs said. While they were speaking, two broadcast reporters walked past and were granted access while he was still being denied entry.

“This was concerning because it seemed that my lack of a press credential badge was the only reason I was denied access, despite the fact that there were available slots for other press,” the journalist said.

“The situation is particularly frustrating because it makes it harder for journalists like me to engage with the speakers, many of whom were addressing important workplace issues at the board meeting,” Combs added.

Several weeks before the denial of access, Combs had clashed with Alicia Miller, the head of human resources for Minneapolis Public Schools, after publishing a Feb. 20 article about former school employees who alleged they and others faced race-based retaliation by Miller.

Miller asked the Spokesman-Recorder to retract and remove the article, and to bar Combs from writing about her in the future, questioning his journalistic integrity, the reporter said.

Miller, in response to an emailed request for comment, affirmed that she had asked for a retraction and an apology for what she said were errors in Combs’ reporting. But she told the Tracker that she had previously been unaware that Combs attempted to attend the March 11 meeting.

Regarding the meeting, Donnie Belcher, the executive director of communications and engagement for Minneapolis Public Schools, told the Tracker in an email: “The room was filled to capacity so no one was allowed access after a certain point, but had we known that Mr. Combs (or any journalist) needed access, a staff person could have come out to escort him in.”

Belcher added that press are required to sign in at meetings, and that “we have a special seating area for press within the assembly room where our board meetings take place.”

Combs noted that “restricting access to the main room has a chilling effect that prevents journalists from asking public speakers follow-up questions.”

He added, “It would have been helpful if MPS had a designated RSVP press email or process to address these concerns ahead of time.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

The state’s lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Keith Ellison in 2020, charges three major architects of climate denial with running a “campaign of deception” to mislead consumers about the science of climate change and failing to disclose their knowledge of the climate harms of their fossil fuel products.

The latest ruling aligns with rulings in similar cases in Honolulu, Boulder, Vermont, and Massachusetts, all of which are moving closer to trial despite the oil industry’s efforts to derail the cases.

Alyssa Johl, vice president and general counsel of the Center for Climate Integrity, released the following statement:

“This ruling is an important step forward in Minnesota’s efforts to hold ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute accountable for their climate lies. The judge made clear that the state's lawsuit is about accountability for the companies’ deception and failure to warn Minnesotans about the harms of their products for decades, and not an attempt to regulate interstate emissions. Given that these companies’ lies and deception have fueled the climate crisis the state is facing today, the people of Minnesota deserve their day in court.”

Background on U.S. Climate Accountability Lawsuits Against Big Oil:

Eleven attorneys general — in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico — and dozens of city, county, and tribal governments in California, Colorado, Hawai`i, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington, and Puerto Rico, have filed lawsuits to hold major oil and gas companies accountable for deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change. These cases collectively represent more than 1 in 4 people living in the United States. Last year the attorney general of Michigan announced plans to take fossil fuel companies to court.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

A new settlement that will end a payday-like loan operation in Minnesota puts additional pressure on a Native American tribe that has been on the defensive for its high borrowing rates across the country.

The Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians has been telling customers that its practices are allowable, but that stance has become harder to maintain. Shortly before Thanksgiving, the Wisconsin tribe agreed to settle a civil suit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison alleging that LDF broke state law, which requires reasonable lending rates, by charging Minnesotans between 200% and 800% annual interest. The state also claimed LDF had violated statutes on consumer fraud, deceptive trade and false advertising.

In the consent decree, LDF’s top official denied the allegations but formally agreed to stop lending to people in Minnesota unless the tribe adheres to the state’s strict usury laws and other regulations, including licensing requirements.

Tribal Council President John Johnson Sr., the lone defendant in the case, also promised that the tribe’s lending arm would forgive all outstanding loans to Minnesotans, estimated to be worth more than $1 million. A judge must still approve the consent agreement.

“I will not allow Minnesotans to be exploited by predatory lenders,” Ellison said in a press release announcing the settlement.

Johnson did not return calls or emails seeking comment. He is board president of the LDF Business Development Corp., which runs a variety of tribal companies, including its lending operation.

Previously, Johnson has said LDF’s lending practices are transparent and its collection methods are fair and ethical. “In offering unsecured loans, we consciously embrace the risk involved, reflecting our commitment to aid those facing urgent financial needs,” Johnson said in an April email to ProPublica.

The move by Minnesota to cut off lending companies controlled by LDF comes shortly after ProPublica reported extensively in August and September on LDF’s loan operations, finding that over the past decade, the tribe has grown to become one of the leading players in the tribal lending industry. Its loans contribute to the debt people shoulder throughout the country. A ProPublica analysis found companies owned by the LDF tribe showed up as a creditor in roughly 1 out of every 100 bankruptcy cases sampled nationwide.

The Minnesota attorney general’s office reported in its federal court filing that the state had received many consumer complaints about LDF Holdings, the tribe’s lending arm, that described extreme hardship caused by “continuing demands for payment of excessive interest.”

It gave the example of a Burnsville resident who took out a $1,398 loan from the LDF company Lendumo in December 2023 at an annual percentage rate of 795%. The loan snowballed to $8,593.

After Minnesota authorities reached out to LDF on behalf of the borrower, LDF argued that the loan was legal and not subject to state law, but Lendumo resolved the complaint “as a courtesy” — though not before demanding an additional $389, court records state.

“These are the highest, most nefarious APRs that we see,” said Anne Leland Clark, executive director of Exodus Lending, a nonprofit in Minnesota that refinances payday loans for borrowers using tax dollars and private donations. About a quarter of the loans they have refinanced since 2015 are tribal loans, she said.

This summer, in a class-action lawsuit out of Virginia, tribal council leaders agreed to a landmark settlement that cancels $1.4 billion in outstanding loans nationwide and provides $37.4 million in restitution and attorney fees. LDF officials will pay $2 million of that, while the remainder is to be paid by nontribal partners involved in five of the tribe’s lending firms. A final approval hearing is scheduled for Dec. 13.

Despite the national settlement and the action in Minnesota, Johnson has not signaled that the tribe will exit the lucrative lending business or alter its practices. ProPublica previously determined that LDF entered the loan business in 2012 and set up at least two dozen lending companies and websites, some of which remain active today.

LDF works with outside firms to operate businesses offering short-term installment loans. Unlike traditional payday loans, these are not due by the next pay period; typically, they are repaid over months in installments via automatic bank deductions.

One defunct website associated with LDF, Lendgreen, was the subject of a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held that tribes must abide by the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, including provisions protecting debtors from continued collection efforts and harassment during the restructuring process.

Only a few dozen of the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes engage in online lending. Those that do often see it as an economic boon for their community, bringing in much-needed revenue for tribal government operations, which have limited options for expansion in their often-remote areas of the country.

LDF grew its footprint, ProPublica found, by partnering with multiple outside managers and financiers. Revenue data is not public, but historically, in the tribal lending model of payday lending, these outsiders have taken the lion’s share of the profits, according to lawsuits.

In a prior email to ProPublica, Johnson described LDF’s lending operation as an engine for community improvement. “The importance of our business extends far beyond simple economics; it is interwoven with the very fabric of our community, supporting a myriad of vital services,” Johnson wrote.

LDF and other tribal lenders contend that they are able to offer loans at exorbitant rates because of Native American tribes’ sovereign rights and immunities.

LDF’s loan documents have included provisions waiving Minnesota law, according to the state’s lawsuit, and improperly limited consumers’ rights to challenge repayment demands, falsely claiming Minnesota law doesn’t apply because of sovereign immunity.

The attorney general’s office also cited a letter from LDF Holdings to a borrower that stated: “the loan is not subject to state law and the [LDF lender] is not required to be licensed with any state. Your loan is legal.”

The tribe has stressed that it follows tribal law and federal law, which has no interest rate cap except for active-duty military members and their families.

States are not powerless, however, to address the issue.

Courts have ruled that while states cannot pursue tribes for monetary damages, they can sue the executives in charge and obtain injunctions stopping future harm.

“The truth is that out-of-state businesses and businesses incorporated under the laws of other sovereigns must comply with Minnesota law when transacting business in Minnesota,” Ellison wrote.

The LDF settlement is the second enforcement action by Ellison directed at tribal lenders operating in Minnesota.

In February, his office obtained a settlement agreement with top lending executives of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana. It, too, bars the tribe — which denied any wrongdoing — from making future loans in Minnesota. Calling itself an industry leader, the Fort Belknap operation revealed in an annual report that it had processed more than 300,000 loans nationwide in 2021. The tribe’s economic development arm, which legal filings show gets most of its revenue from lending, reported more than $180 million in revenue that year.

In an interview with ProPublica in March, Ellison said other states with strong usury laws could follow Minnesota’s lead. “I hope other states do look at what we did and take note.” He declined to be interviewed for this story.

Minnesota strengthened its usury laws with legislation that took effect in January 2024 governing small-dollar loans. It eliminated a sliding scale of set fees and imposed a stricter APR cap: 36% in many instances, but 50% for licensed lenders that conduct an analysis on whether a borrower can repay.

Johnson told the attorney general’s office that the tribe had stopped originating new loans to Minnesotans as of Dec. 31, 2023, a day before the law took effect, according to the consent decree.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Megan O’Matz and Joel Jacobs.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

At the vice presidential debate against Republican Sen. JD Vance this month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did something he’s done throughout his nearly 20-year career in politics: name-drop the Mayo Clinic.

“If you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump,” Walz said.

Later in the debate, he did it again, after Vance criticized the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law that expanded access to health coverage.

“I come from a major health care state, home of the Mayo Clinic,” said Walz. “We understand health care.”

Walz’s high regard for the world-renowned hospital system in southeastern Minnesota makes sense — he represented the Rochester area in Congress for 12 years, and it’s where he and his wife, Gwen, sought fertility treatment before having their daughter, Hope. The nonprofit Mayo is the state’s largest employer with more than 50,000 employees.

On various occasions, Walz has also acquiesced to the wishes of Mayo, even when those were at odds with the goals of other allies. In 2023, for example, Mayo leveraged its plans for a $5 billion expansion in Minnesota to muscle Walz into helping kill a bill aimed at slowing the speed of rising health care costs, which had passed the state House and Senate.

Years earlier, while still in Congress, Walz tried to push back against Mayo when it consolidated services after gobbling up local hospitals across southern Minnesota. When Mayo announced in 2017 that it intended to close labor and delivery, surgery and intensive care units in the city of Albert Lea, Walz supported workers protesting the reductions as a part of a contract fight with the hospital. But Mayo did not change course.

“He probably could have done more,” said Brad Arends, one of the leaders of a group in Albert Lea called Save Our Hospital that tried to preserve services. “Mayo was the bright shining star and now Mayo is literally a four-letter word in Albert Lea.”

“Mayo," he added, "has a way of hypnotizing people, especially probably politicians."

Mayo’s lobbying abilities extend beyond Walz and Minnesota’s borders. The hospital system has resisted proposals aimed at reining in the cost of health care, and has found success with Democrats in getting its way. Vice President Kamala Harris is running for president in part on lowering health care costs — it's listed third on her policy agenda — and her plan is built around expanding government subsidies and the Affordable Care Act.

When the ACA was first being debated, Mayo helped beat back an attempt to include a national public option, or an insurance plan run by the government. Today, the cost of care at Mayo is 88% higher than the state average, according to health care industry analysts at the nonprofit MN Community Measurement.

“Moderate Democrats, they haven’t been able to stand up to the hospital industry. That’s a pattern all over the country,” said Gillian Mason, the executive director of Healthcare NOW, which advocates for the creation of single-payer, federally managed universal healthcare coverage.

Kendall Witmer, the Minnesota senior communications adviser for the Harris-Walz campaign, said in a statement that Walz “has championed expanding access to affordable and high-quality healthcare, particularly for rural Minnesotans and veterans across the country.” She added that, under Walz, “Minnesota is recognized as a top 5 business state, a top 3 state to raise a child, and the best state for health care in the country.”

Andrea Kalmanovitz, director of communications for the Mayo Clinic, said its physicians treat “some of the most serious and complex medical conditions in the world.” The MN Community Measurement analysis that shows Mayo’s costs are higher than the state average does take into account how sick a hospital’s patients are.

“Mayo Clinic is guided in all we do by our primary value — the needs of the patient come first,” Kalmanovitz said in a statement. “As a nonprofit, we are strongly nonpartisan and work with policymakers to promote understanding of how policy proposals affect our patients and impact Mayo Clinic’s ability to fulfill its mission and further advance the transformation of healthcare.”

Walz siding with the Mayo Clinic reflects the deference he sometimes pays industry giants in Minnesota, a state that claims the fifth-most Fortune 500 companies per capita in the U.S. The headquarters of General Mills, U.S. Bancorp, 3M and Target are in Minnesota. UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest health insurance company, and the food conglomerate Cargill, which is estimated to be the largest private company in the country, also have their headquarters in the state.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said the governor has demonstrated a willingness to water down progressive policies to appease big business.

“Is that caving or is that pragmatism?” asked Jacobs. “I think what you're seeing is how you govern the progressive way in the real world.”

During the 2023 Legislative session, the Minnesota Nurses Association felt confident that it could finally pass legislation requiring hospitals to increase nurse staffing levels after 15 years of losing that fight to the hospital lobby. The 2022 elections months earlier had handed Walz a second term as governor, and for the first time in a decade, voters also gave control of both the state Senate and House to Democrats. The Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act seemed destined to become law after it sailed through the House and Senate.

But two and a half weeks before the end of the session, an email from a Mayo lobbyist landed in the inboxes of Walz’s most senior advisers and set off a panic. “Mayo has long been planning significant facilities and infrastructure investments in Minnesota,” the lobbyist, Kate Johansen, wrote. Without changes to the bill, she added, Mayo would need to take its “enormous investment to other states.”

Mayo was asking for a special exemption from the nurse staffing bill, and it said that it wanted a second bill, which would empower the state to penalize hospitals for raising prices faster than targets set by a newly created commission, scrapped entirely.

If the pressure on Walz wasn’t enough, Johansen also forwarded the message to the state’s top Democratic leaders stressing the urgency. “The decision to withdraw the planned investment described below is, unfortunately, time sensitive and will be resolved in the next few days,” she wrote.

According to Mary Turner, then president of the state nurses union, Walz reached out the next day. He told her he supported the nurses — he had walked a picket line with them months earlier during what was then the largest private sector nurses strike in U.S. history — but that Mayo doesn’t bluff.

Nurses organized a sit-in at the governor’s Capitol office, an effort they nicknamed “Occupy Walz Street.” Although Walz met with some of the nurses, by all accounts the Mayo ultimatum became the final word on the matter. After initially resisting, the bill’s authors drafted the exemption Mayo demanded in response to pressure from Walz.

Mayo said that all hospitals should be able to earn exemption from the law by using advanced staffing software, which Mayo said was more effective in determining staffing needs. But the bill’s authors rejected that proposal, choosing to only carve out Mayo. That upset other hospital leaders, who’d been lobbying against the bill for months. The measure then unraveled in the Senate.

Mayo has another leg up when it comes to influence: Mayo lobbyist Sarah Erickson, who’s with the firm United Strategies, was previously the operations director of Walz’s campaign for governor.

That close contact with the governor’s office can be in the public’s interest. The Mayo Clinic was instrumental in Walz’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing regular updates and expertise on infection rates. It also helped roll out the COVID-19 vaccine.

Setting aside his relationship with Mayo, Walz’s record of standing up to big business is mixed. His sole veto in the 2023 Legislative session was for a bill setting minimum wages and labor standards for Uber and Lyft drivers, after Uber threatened to pull out of Minnesota entirely and set off fears that residents with disabilities and tourists would be left stranded. The following year he signed a compromise version of the bill with lower pay rates that Uber and Lyft ultimately agreed to.

He’s also drawn criticism from the state’s environmental community for not challenging permits issued for a proposed copper-nickel mine formerly known as PolyMet (now called NewRange Copper Nickel), owned by Glencore, one of the largest multinational corporations in the world, which pleaded guilty in 2022 to bribery and corruption charges brought by the U.S. government.

Uber, Lyft and Glencore declined to comment.

Walz signed one of the nation’s strictest bans on PFAS, the forever chemical born at 3M, although the company had already said it would “exit all PFAS manufacturing globally by the end of 2025.” He also signed another prohibiting for-profit health insurance companies from selling plans as a part of Minnesota’s Medicaid program. The only company affected was UnitedHealthcare, the health insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, which sued the state over the law. That lawsuit is pending and the company said in a statement that it strongly believes “that Minnesotans deserve the right to choose among health plans that offer the broadest access to care, the most innovative services and the highest quality benefits to meet their health care needs.”

Walz’s relationship with Mayo, however, has potentially far-reaching implications for federal health care reform. Mayo was hugely influential on the Obama administration when the ACA was being drafted, arguing that the focus of new policy should be delivering more efficient care, not lowering prices. In the summer of 2009, Mayo Clinic leaders voiced strong opposition to the creation of a public option, which advocates say would have helped pull down the ballooning price of both health care treatments and insurance.

Rather than risk losing the hospital’s support, the Obama administration drew Mayo even closer into the process. “They said, ‘Tell us exactly what you want,’” Denis Cortese, Mayo’s CEO at the time, told the Washington Post. By the end of 2009, any plans for including a public option were dead.

In the roughly 15 years since the ACA was born, Mayo Clinic has demonstrated resistance to further efforts to rein in health care spending while stirring up repeated questions about its commitment to rural health care and serving poor patients.

Since 2017, Mayo has closed at least more than a dozen rural clinics and a hospital in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, citing staffing issues. In 2017, the Star Tribune reported that then-CEO Dr. John Noseworthy told employees that patients with private insurance would be given preference over those with Medicaid or Medicare, which pay less for care than private plans.

The hospital has also sued low-income patients for medical debt even though they were eligible for free or discounted care, which nonprofit hospitals are required to offer under the ACA, according to an investigation by the Rochester Post Bulletin. In response, Minnesota lawmakers passed a bill requiring hospitals to screen patients for eligibility for financial assistance before pursuing collections, which Walz signed.

Mayo Clinic's higher costs don’t just affect its patients. The hospital’s significant market share and high prices have contributed to a higher cost of living for families without employer-funded insurance in the Rochester area than in the Twin Cities, even though housing, food and other necessities are cheaper, according to the nonprofit economic think tank Economic Policy Institute’s family budget calculator.

That’s true even for healthy residents who rarely see their doctor, because insurance premiums for individual plans are higher in the Rochester area, which is about 90 miles from St. Paul and Minneapolis. Southeastern Minnesota has the highest average premiums for individual insurance plans in the state, with residents paying nearly 60% more before subsidies than people living in the Twin Cities metro area, according to data from MNsure.

Arends, now the president of the nonprofit Albert Lea Healthcare Coalition, said he would like to see politicians from both parties spend more time pressuring Mayo to lower their costs. “All of them — not just Tim Walz,” he said.

In response to questions about the higher cost of health care plans in southern Minnesota, Kalmanovitz wrote that the premium costs are beyond Mayo’s control. “Providers do not have any input into this process.” She said Mayo has a “robust” financial assistance program that patients can apply for online.

Whether a Harris-Walz administration would try to enact the kind of aggressive cost-saving reforms that Mayo might oppose remains to be seen. While Walz supports a state public option in Minnesota, Harris has backed off of previous support for a federal single-payer system such as Medicare for all. Instead, the campaign has pledged to renew the tax credits that President Joe Biden enacted to lower insurance premium payments, which are set to expire after 2025.

“Vice President Harris’s plans will make prescription drugs less expensive, expand access to health care, reduce medical debt, and continue strengthening the Affordable Care Act, while Donald Trump’s ‘concept’ of a health care plan will raise costs and remove peace of mind for millions of Americans,” Witmer, the campaign spokesperson, said in a statement.

Absent from Harris’ plan, however, is any mention of lowering hospital rates.

Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the nonprofit KFF, adds that Democrats forged bonds with the hospital industry to beat back nearly 15 years’ worth of efforts by Republicans to repeal the ACA.

“Democrats and hospitals have fought side by side during the battles over the ACA,” he said. “I'm sure that goodwill will help the industry in the future.”

In November 2023, Walz attended Mayo Clinic’s unveiling of its $5 billion expansion, a project that CEO Dr. Gianrico Farrugia called a once-in-three-generations opportunity to “redefine the future of health care.”

“There is no more important place on the planet and no more important work being done for humanity than is being done in this spot in Rochester, Minnesota,” Walz said at the event.

Turner, the former Minnesota nurses union leader who is now a president of National Nurses United, anticipates that what was once a local political fight for Walz will travel with him to a national stage should he and Harris take the White House.

“The bean counters are running health care right now. And they're trying to run it, and I've said this before, they're trying to run it like it's a frickin’ factory,” she said. “Once it gets to the federal level, if it isn't Mayo that's going to try to influence it, it's going to be Kaiser or Sutter, or any other huge, huge health care operation.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Max Nesterak, Minnesota Reformer, and Jessica Lussenhop, ProPublica.

Student journalist Tyler Church was briefly handcuffed and detained while reporting student protests against the Israel-Gaza war at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis on Oct. 21, 2024.

The Minnesota Daily, the university’s student-led news outlet, reported that the protest was organized by members of the UMN’s Students for a Democratic Society chapter to pressure the administration to divest from investments in Israeli companies and weapons manufacturers.

Daily reporter Church told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he learned of the building takeover from a push notification from the university, which said that students had stormed Morrill Hall, an administrative building, and were “causing property damage and restricting entrance and exit from the building.”

Church said that after reporting outside alongside two other Daily journalists for about 30 minutes, the protesters let them into the building. He added that the outlet’s editor-in-chief, Spencer White, brought the journalists steel plate vests labeled with “PRESS” to wear while inside.

“More or less, we just looked around, assessed the damages so far, prepared to set up interviews with some protesters and got general coverage of the event so far,” Church told the Tracker. “I had had a meeting set up with one of the protesters, followed by another protester joining. During the middle of that interview, the police had started clearing buildings from the basement, which was where I was.”

Officers with the University of Minnesota Police Department and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office entered the building through basement tunnels at approximately 5:45 p.m., the Daily reported.

“Police broke down the door, weapons drawn, and hauled us to the ground,” Church said. “During that, I said multiple times, ‘I’m with the media, I’m press, I’m with The Minnesota Daily.’ Even still, they told me that it didn’t matter and that I had to get on the ground. They handcuffed me and put me with everyone else who had been detained.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Reynolds makes the blue or clear 13- and 30-gallon-sized Hefty-brand plastic bags that Ellison targeted in the lawsuit, filed in June 2023 in Ramsey County District Court. The lawsuit also made similar claims against 13-, 30- and 33-gallon bags sold under Walmart’s Great Value brand.

If Walmart or Reynolds resume selling the bags after the moratorium, they must be labeled as nonrecyclable, according to the settlement agreements with Walmart and Reynolds reached on August 1.

The two companies have agreed to pay a collective total of $216,670, which includes 100 percent of the profits they made in selling the bags, the state’s attorney fees, and other monetary relief, according to a press release from Ellison’s office.

“Defendants shall establish and enforce marketing claims legal review processes and provide anti-greenwashing trainings to their marketing teams at least annually,” according to the settlement document.

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In a written statement, Reynolds said: “We believe these claims lack merit, but are pleased to put this matter behind us. We remain committed to our sustainability mission to develop innovative products and solutions that simplify daily life and protect the environment.”

A Walmart spokeswoman declined to comment on the settlement.

“Minnesotans have one of the highest recycling rates in America because we love our clean land, air, and water,” Ellison said in the press release. 

“I’m pleased that Reynolds and Walmart, who profited from Minnesotans’ good intentions, have agreed to stop marketing so-called ‘recycling’ bags to us that can’t be recycled and will disgorge the profits they made off those bags,” he said. “Any other companies thinking about greenwashing their products to market them deceptively to Minnesotans should know by now that I will not hesitate to hold them accountable under the law.”

The Minnesota lawsuit is among nearly four dozen filed since 2015, mostly by citizens or environmental groups, that target the plastics industry, according to a plastics litigation tracker at The New York University School of Law.

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But more recently, attorneys general in Connecticut, Minnesota, and New York have raised the stakes with their own plastics lawsuits, bringing with them considerable legal firepower. 

The litigation comes amid a rapidly expanding body of scientific knowledge detailing how burgeoning plastics production and plastic waste damage the planet and threaten public health. 

Plastics are made with thousands of chemicals and were never designed to be recycled. Recycling rates in the United States are thought to be less than 10 percent. Bags are among the harder items to recycle, and their film-like and flimsy nature can clog recycling equipment.

Ellison had argued that Walmart’s and Reynolds’ marketing had violated state laws that prohibit false statements in advertising, deceptive environmental marketing, and consumer fraud. The settlement agreement included a provision that it should not be considered an admission of guilt or violation by the defendants.

The lawsuit showed photos of marketing that Ellison claimed were intended to falsely persuade Minnesotans that the bags were meant for use during recycling and could be recycled. Some of them were a blue color associated with some recycling programs and included a declaration that those were “intended for use in municipal recycling programs where applicable,” according to the lawsuit.

Certain clear bags, the lawsuit claimed, were identified as “transparent for quick sorting and curbside identification.” Reynolds also prominently placed the all-caps word “RECYCLING” on the front label of Hefty “Recycling” trash bags, with packaging that showed an image of a clear bag filled with plastic and these words, the lawsuit alleged: “HEFTY RECYCLING BAGS ARE PERFECT FOR ALL YOUR RECYCLING NEEDS.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Minnesota settles ‘deceptive environmental marketing’ lawsuit over ‘recycling’ plastic bags on Aug 11, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by James Bruggers, Inside Climate News.

• Harris picks Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, they appear together at Philadelphia rally.
• Federal judge sides with Justice Department in Google anti-trust case.
• Tropical Storm Debby cuts through the Southeast with extreme winds, rain and flooding.
• Hamas chooses Yahya Sinwar as militant group’s new leader after assassination of Ismael Haniyeh.
• Bay Area anti-nuclear activists mark Hiroshima anniversary with calls to ban nuclear weapons.
• Mayor London Breed and San Francisco officials tout success of surveillance drone program.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 6, 2024 Harris picks Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, they appear together at Philadelphia rally. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a favorite of many progressives in the Democratic Party, to be her running mate in the 2024 presidential race. They are set to hold their first joint campaign rally this evening. We get analysis from John Nichols, The Nation’s national affairs correspondent.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

NBC affiliate KARE-TV was barred from publishing an improperly filed memo in a high-profile murder case in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 19, 2024. Five days later, the broadcast station filed a petition to overturn the gag order with the state Court of Appeals, the outlet reported.

Joseph Sandoval was charged with the murders of two men at a St. Paul sober home in 2022, and he pleaded guilty in May 2024. Ahead of Sandoval’s sentencing, his attorney filed a sentencing memorandum with the court detailing the failures of the state and the sober home to provide him the medical care he needed given his history of mental illness and drug-induced psychosis, KARE-TV reported.

KARE-TV has followed the prosecution as part of a series focusing on the systemic failings in cases involving individuals found incompetent to stand trial who are released without court-ordered mental health treatment and go on to commit new, sometimes more serious, crimes.

The station obtained a publicly available copy of the memo through the court’s website and attempted to film the July 19 sentencing, but Ramsey County District Judge Joy Bartscher refused to allow the camera in her courtroom.

“I believe that the media coverage would make this case more of a circus than a solemn proceeding in which the Court is making a decision about many people’s lives,” Bartscher said during the hearing. “The purpose of media coverage is supposed to be, supposedly what I have been instructed, is to have transparency about what is going on in a courtroom. I don’t think that that’s what the purpose is of media coverage quite frankly.”

Bartscher then granted a protective order for the memo — first orally and then in writing — requiring anyone who had obtained a copy to refrain from publishing and to destroy their copies of the document.

“It’s my understanding that at least one media outlet was able to access that information that should have been confidential,” Bartscher said. “That memorandum shall not be used for any purpose other than consideration by the Court and parties for sentencing.”

Attorneys representing KARE-TV filed a petition with the Minnesota Court of Appeals on July 24, arguing that the gag order violates the First Amendment and amounts to an unconstitutional prior restraint. “The Court’s July 19 Orders had immediate and far-reaching consequences on KARE 11’s reporting,” the appeal stated.

It added that, without a reversal from the court, the outlet would be “forced to choose between reporting on information it lawfully obtained from the Court’s public docket, and risk being held in contempt, or giving up its constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of the press and depriving the public of information on matters of significant public interest and concern.”

The appeal is still pending and no hearing dates have been scheduled, according to records reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Attorneys for KARE-TV did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

For both companies, much of their production begins with taconite, a low-grade iron ore mined in the northeast Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range, which is processed into pellets that get shipped to the steel mills of Gary, Indiana. The extraction of the ore from taconite rock releases a slew of toxic pollutants into the air, including mercury, lead, and dioxins. In this region, the most concerning of these emissions is mercury. 

Studies have connected mercury to a litany of negative health effects. It’s a neurotoxin that can interfere with brain development in unborn children and an endocrine disruptor that can weaken the immune system. Scientists have yet to determine a quantity of mercury that is safe for human consumption. One recent study found that there is “no evidence” for a threshold “below which neuro-developmental effects do not occur.” And while the taconite industry releases less than a ton of mercury into the atmosphere every year, the metal is toxic in extremely small quantities: a fraction of a teaspoon can contaminate a twenty-acre lake. 

The nation’s six taconite plants, all in this region of Minnesota, are owned by U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs. In May 2023, the EPA proposed a regulation that would require the companies to cut their mercury emissions by around 30 percent. In order to meet that standard, the companies would have to install equipment that would inject carbon atoms into their industrial chimneys so that the carbon would attach itself to the mercury atoms, making the pollution particles bigger and allowing them to get trapped in a filter before they would be released into the atmosphere. The agency estimates that its regulation would cost the industry $106 million in capital costs and $68 million per year thereafter. 

Last month, when the standards were finalized, both companies sued. They argue that the regulation would pose “irreparable harm” to the industry because of the steep costs of implementation. They also argue that the EPA’s proposed method for reducing mercury pollution would actually be worse for public health, causing a 13 percent increase in the amount of the toxic metal deposited in the local environment. 

“EPA is not only requiring industry to restructure its operations and build new pollution control facilities at unprecedented costs, it is requiring facilities to commit to associated disruption of their current operations, spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and risk their productive capacity and indeed ability to operate completely, to design, permit, and install a technology with no demonstrated ability to actually work,” the companies wrote.

Jim Pew, a lawyer at Earthjustice who has litigated multiple lawsuits against the EPA for its failure to curb pollution from the taconite industry, pointed out that the costs of implementing the required equipment would be a tiny fraction of the companies’ annual sales, which totaled $40 billion in 2023. Pew noted that U.S. Steel recently initiated a $500 million stock buyback program, the mark of a healthy income revenue stream. As for the companies’ claim that the technology would increase mercury pollution, Pew called it “meritless.” The companies are “relying on a premise they know to be false” — that taconite plants would add the carbon technology without also improving their filtration system. 

“I find this reprehensible and shameful,” Pew said. “While it’s claiming that it can’t spend money to clean up historic pollution, U.S. Steel is just handing out money to its shareholders.” 

In an email, a spokesperson from U.S. Steel told Grist that the company’s lawsuit was meant to ensure that the EPA’s new regulations are “in line with sound science and regulatory procedures.” The spokesperson went on to say that the company had tested the available emissions-reduction technology at one of their plants in Minnesota and determined that it would not be in compliance with the mercury limits established by the agency. “We remain committed to environmental excellence, as do the nearly 2,000 hardworking men and women of our Minnesota Ore Operations.” Cleveland Cliffs did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Pew sees the lawsuit as part of a multi-pronged attack by the steel industry against federal regulation. Over the past several years, the EPA has also proposed standards for the other types of facilities involved in steel production. These two companies have threatened litigation at every turn, recently petitioning a bipartisan group of lawmakers to send a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, asking him to loosen the new standards for steel mills.

By the terms of the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency was supposed to propose standards to control toxic releases from taconite plants in 2003. When they failed to do so, environmental advocates from the Save Lake Superior Association and other groups  sued the following year. In a federal circuit court, the EPA acknowledged that it had fallen short of its duties, and promised to move with “all due process and speed” to fill the gaps in its regulations. 

Years passed without a federal rule, and in 2007, Minnesota initiated an effort of its own, setting a standard for mercury pollution in water and, two years later, becoming the first state to develop a plan to achieve it. The standard required industries across the state to slash their emissions by a cumulative 93 percent, and over the following decade, power plants, crematoria, and other mercury emitters achieved major reductions. Emissions from the taconite industry, however, remained exceptionally high. Its share of the state’s total mercury releases jumped from 21 to 46 percent between 2005 and 2017.

Mercury contamination is particularly worrisome for tribal nations like the Fond du Lac Band, which fish and grow wild rice throughout the state’s vast network of rivers, lakes, and streams.“We find that across a lot of ceded territory, there’s a lot of good regulation but there’s been a lot of flexibility in enforcement,” said John Coleman, an environmental scientist at the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Tribes repeatedly petitioned the EPA to make good on its 2003 promise. They had good reason to be concerned: One study had found that 10 percent of babies born on the Northshore of Lake Superior have elevated mercury levels in their blood. 

It took the agency until last May to finally propose its regulation, which, of course, is under challenge. Still, for the tribes of northeast Minnesota, the EPA’s rule was a resounding disappointment. Even if U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs reduce their mercury emissions by 30 percent, the companies’ operations would still allow hundreds of pounds of mercury to enter the state’s waterways each year. 

“It is of our view that these proposed standards do not go far enough toward restoring and protecting the health and wellbeing of the environment and our community,” wrote Paige Huhta, the Fond du Lac’s air program coordinator in a letter to the EPA last July. She pointed out that the EPA itself had found that exposure among specific subpopulations, including some tribes, may be more than twice as great as that experienced by the average American. But when the agency finalized the rule this past May, it did not budge from its original reduction requirements.

“Water is an important part of the landscape up here,” said Nancy Shuldt, the Fond du Lac Band’s Water Projects Coordinator. “We have a water rich landscape and water resources form the foundation of tribal lifeways.” 

And because it is a metal, mercury does not break down into less toxic substances like other industrial pollutants. It stays in the environment for hundreds of years. In northeastern Minnesota, and to a specific group of people, much of the damage has already been done.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Tribes in Minnesota are paying the steepest price for the steel industry’s mercury pollution on Jul 17, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

We speak with Israeli American Jewish scholar Raz Segal about the University of Minnesota’s move to rescind a job offer over his comments early in the war on Gaza, when he characterized the Israeli assault as a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal was set to lead the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, but after two board members quit in opposition to Segal’s selection and a smear campaign led by the pro-Israel group Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), the school revoked the offer. Segal says he has been “targeted because of my identity as a Jew who refuses the narrowing down of Jewish identity to Zionism” and calls the JCRC-led opposition a “hateful campaign of lies and distortions” and “crude political intervention.” “This was a completely legitimate hiring process,” states Segal. He says rescission of his offer “spells the end of this idea of free inquiry, of academic freedom, of research and teaching — and all in the service, of course, of supporting an extremely violent state.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The Minnesota attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a home seller who allegedly targeted the East African Muslim community for real estate deals that authorities called “predatory and deceptive.”

The lawsuit alleges that Chadwick Banken and six of his limited liability corporations broke state and federal laws, including Minnesota’s laws against religious discrimination, by using transactions known as contracts-for-deed to sell homes at higher prices than warranted and on worse terms to Muslim buyers.

Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said in an interview that while the complaint focuses on Banken, the case is intended to send a message to others engaged in similar practices.

“He’s not the only one, but he’s one of the worst that I’ve seen,” Ellison said. “When people can’t pay back, they’re out of their house, and they’re out of their money. I can’t think of anything more financially devastating to a family than that.”

Banken did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County district court, follows a ProPublica and Sahan Journal investigation in 2022 that identified a rising market in Minnesota for contract-for-deed home sales, particularly in the Somali community. Many buyers in the East African Muslim community avoid paying or profiting from interest because of their religious principles, and investors have been offering them deals as an “interest free” way to purchase a house.

But buyers told the Sahan Journal and ProPublica that they signed contracts they didn’t understand and would not be able to pay off. The lawsuit said Banken used inflated home prices, abnormally high down payments and six-figure balloon payments due at the end of short contracts to push buyers into default and to ultimately retain ownership of the property.

The ProPublica-Sahan Journal story featured Abdinoor Igal, a long-haul trucker who bought a home from Banken in suburban Lakeville in 2022 and is described in the lawsuit as “purchaser 2.” Officials confirmed that Igal was purchaser 2, and Igal said he has spoken with the attorney general’s office several times.

Igal said he walked away from his house this past winter after making about $170,000 in payments. He slept in his truck for months after sending his wife and children to live in Kenya. He said the lawsuit was news he’d been waiting to hear.

“I’m really excited,” he said. “I can’t even believe how I’m feeling.”

The attorney general’s actions follow a push at the state Legislature to rewrite Minnesota’s contract-for-deed law. The bill would outlaw the kind of property “churning” that Banken is accused of in the lawsuit, and it provides a number of new protections and ways to recoup losses from a contract-for-deed deal gone wrong. It is currently included in an omnibus bill awaiting final approval at the Legislature.

The lawsuit alleges that Banken has sold hundreds of homes in contracts-for-deed deals in the last six years. It also reveals new details about his practices. The name of one of Banken’s six limited liability corporations, Slow Flip LLC, is actually a useful term for the predatory practice, the lawsuit alleges: Buyers submit exorbitant down payments and agree to large monthly installments that they will eventually default on, and then Banken takes the home back and “flips” it to a new purchaser.

According to one email from Banken’s business to a real estate agent, the ideal buyers are described as people with “low credit scores” or a “recent bankruptcy/foreclosure.” Banken also allegedly insisted that buyers enter contracts using their business names to create the false impression in court that he was evicting commercial tenants rather than families from their primary residence. None of Banken’s contracts disclosed the true total cost of the homes or the balloon payments, both in violation of federal Truth In Lending Act requirements, according to the lawsuit.

The contracts, according to the lawsuit, contained monthly interest payments in excess of the market rate, and the down payment, monthly payments and total price of the home went up if the purchaser was Muslim. Ellison said this was particularly galling, given that Banken markets his business as helpful to a community that has been shut out of the traditional home purchasing market.

“He’s not helping,” Ellison said. “What he’s really helping himself to is their money that they probably have mopped floors and pushed brooms for. … He’s setting people up to fail. His conduct is predatory, deceptive. And we hope to bring a stop to it.”

Ellison said buyers should reach out to his office if they feel they’re in a predatory contract-for-deed and that there may be options for restitution in the future.

Igal said that while he is excited to hear that there may be consequences for Banken, defaults and evictions are ongoing, affecting some of his former neighbors. And he is still struggling to put his family’s lives back together.

“My kids, the smallest one, 4 years, she called me and asked me, ‘Daddy, when am I coming?’ And I told her I’m making some money, but I don’t know when,” he said. “It’s not something I can describe.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

This story was produced in collaboration with Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for Sahan’s free newsletter to receive stories in your inbox.

The excitement that Abdinoor Igal felt after buying a five-bedroom house in a new development in a suburb south of the Twin Cities was short-lived.

At the time, it was the realization of a long-held dream — a spacious, modern home for his wife and seven children to call their own. And Igal, a 37-year-old long-haul trucker, had saved for a house for years.

But like many practicing Muslims, he had avoided paying or profiting from interest as a matter of faith, and therefore did not want to get a traditional mortgage. So in 2022, when he heard there was a new, interest-free way to buy a house using a financial instrument called a contract for deed, he jumped at the chance.

But less than two years later, Igal’s dream collapsed. After struggling to make the nearly $5,000 payments each month, last fall he put the family’s belongings in storage and handed the keys to the house, which he had agreed to pay more than $700,000 for, back to the seller. He sent his family to live temporarily in Kenya, where he owns another home and the cost of living is much lower. Meanwhile, he sleeps in the cabin of his semitruck.

Igal said he lost everything he put into the deal, one made directly between a buyer and seller without a bank’s involvement. The total: $170,000, including a $73,000 down payment. He walked away with nothing.

“They really took a very big advantage of me and my family,” said Igal, who first shared his story with ProPublica and Sahan Journal anonymously in 2022. “They make us, like, homeless.”

This week, two Minnesota state lawmakers are introducing legislation that would overhaul contract-for-deed law in the state to try to prevent the same dramatic loss from happening to other homebuyers.

State Sen. Zaynab Mohamed and Rep. Hodan Hassan, both Democrats representing parts of south Minneapolis, are behind the legislation. Mohamed introduced her bill on Monday, while Hassan expects to introduce hers later this week. The legislation follows the introduction of a federal contract-for-deed reform law by Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., this month.

Together, the state measures would enact a raft of new requirements for “investor sellers” using contracts for deed and provide buyers more ways to recoup their losses in the case of a default or bad faith on the part of the seller. Both Mohamed and Hassan are Somali and said they had heard stories of contracts for deed going wrong for constituents and members of their community.

“It could be my mother, it could be my sister,” said Hassan. “Those people are from my community, and some of them are vulnerable because they don’t understand the system and they don’t speak the language.”

The legislation is in part a response to a 2022 Sahan Journal and ProPublica investigation about potentially predatory uses of contracts for deed in Minnesota’s Somali community. The news organizations found a rising market in Minnesota for home sales using contracts for deed and complaints from buyers that they’d agreed to unfavorable terms they didn’t understand.

In recent years, real estate investors have promoted contracts for deed as an interest-free purchase agreement by first buying houses using traditional mortgages, then reselling them to contract buyers — often for tens of thousands of dollars above market price in place of any interest.

The deals were frequently fast-tracked and conducted without the involvement of a lawyer and without an inspection or appraisal of the property. Despite being marketed as interest free, deals like the one Igal signed also ultimately included interest payments at rates higher than the market, according to the contract. If a buyer defaults on a payment, they can be evicted in as little as 60 days.

Proponents of contracts for deed say the arrangements are a way for someone who otherwise couldn’t be approved for a mortgage to become a homeowner. Mohamed agreed that, when promoted honestly, contracts for deed can be “a beautiful process,” but she emphasized that too many sellers are taking advantage of buyers in the Somali community.

“You have to make sure that they have integrity in that process and an understanding that you can’t take advantage of these communities,” Mohamed said.

The bills, if approved by the state Legislature and signed by the governor, would impose regulations on investor-sellers — people that, for at least a year, have not owned or lived in the home they are trying to sell. The bill would prohibit investor-sellers from “churning” properties, or rapidly entering and canceling contracts with multiple buyers, a tactic that unscrupulous sellers can use to collect large down payments without ever losing ownership of the property. Homeowners who bought their home through a contract for deed from someone found guilty of churning or failing to make any of the new required consumer protection disclosures can recover the payments they made, minus the “fair rental value” of the home, as well as the cost of any improvements they made.

The bill gives homebuyers 10 days after receiving all disclosures to cancel their contract. And homeowners who cancel their contract within four years of buying their home can recover a portion of their down payment. If they default, they must receive a 30-day notice from the seller and have 90 days to catch up on their payments before eviction.

Hassan said she was surprised by the balloon payments, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, that are common to contracts for deed.

“That was the shocker for me, the amount of money that goes as a down payment that people are expected to come up with, and then comes the balloon payments that are expected to be paid. I’m like, this makes no sense,” she said. “That’s setting up people for failure.”

The proposed law would require not only that the balloon payment schedule be included in the paperwork, but also that all disclosures must be written in the language that was used to negotiate the deal; if a Spanish-speaking real estate broker set up the sale, for instance, the disclosures must be written in Spanish.

The bill is expected to be first heard in the Minnesota Senate’s Housing and Homelessness Prevention Committee this month.

Igal said in an interview from the road in North Dakota that he had hoped he could get out of the contract with his seller, a company called Banken Holdings LLC, without losing everything. Chad Banken, the company owner, did not respond to a request for comment.

According to his contract, if Igal had managed to make it to the end of his five-year term, he still would have owed over $500,000 for the balloon payment. But Igal said this payment schedule had never been explained to him properly before he signed the contract.

Now, Igal said he hopes to save enough money to send for his family before the beginning of the next school year. If he can accomplish that, he said they will go back to living in a rental apartment. Even though it’s been decades since he first came to the U.S. as a refugee, Igal said he feels like he is starting over from “zero.”

Still, he said he feels good that his story may prevent other families from suffering a similar fate.

“My family already broke down. We are already separate, living in two countries,” he said. “If what I started helps families stay together, I’m happy with that.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop, ProPublica, and Joey Peters, Sahan Journal.

"Drug dealers don't fix drug addictions, and petrostates won't fix the climate crisis," Dominic Eagleton, senior campaigner at Global Witness, said in a statement. "As we hurtle towards climate collapse, we're now being asked to put our future in the hands of Azerbaijan, a petrostate that's propped up by oil supermajors and is massively increasing its gas production."

"We need climate policymaking to be run by climate leaders, not countries with a vested interest in keeping the world hooked on oil and gas."

Global Witness' analysis was based on data from business intelligence agency Rystad Energy. According to the data, fossil fuel companies including BP, TotalEnergies, Iran's national oil company, and Russia's largest private oil company Lukoil will invest $41.4 billion in Azerbaijani gas over the next decade, with just those four companies alone spending $16.8 billion. The full $41.1 billion would be enough to install more than 1,170 offshore wind turbines.

At the same time, fossil fuel companies will extract 411 billion cubic meters (bcm) from Azerbaijan's gas fields over the next 10 years, which would release 781 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's more than double what the United Kingdom burns in a year.

All told, Azerbaijan's gas fields are slated to increase their output by a third from 37 bcm in 2024 to 49 bcm in 2033. Yet scientists have warned that the next decade is crucial for rapidly reducing fossil-fuel use in order to preserve the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that, to preserve a 50% shot at the 1.5°C target, greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 43% of 2019 levels by 2030 and 60% by 2035.

The news from Azerbaijan comes after climate campaigners said the outcome of COP28, hosted by the United Arab Emirates and presided over by the head of the country's state oil company, resulted in a deal full of loopholes for the fossil fuel industry that stopped short of promising to phase out fossil fuels.

"What a sick joke," climate system science expert Paul Beckwith posted on social media in response to the Global Witness data. "COP29 is already a farce like COP28."

Eagleton added: "We need climate policymaking to be run by climate leaders, not countries with a vested interest in keeping the world hooked on oil and gas."

There are also human rights concerns related to Azerbaijan's fossil fuels. Global Witness toldThe Guardian that just two BP-operated oil and gas projects had earned the country more than four times what it spent on the military since 2020. Some have said that Azerbaijan's fossil fuel earnings are being used to fund its military campaign to reincorporate the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region. A September invasion forced more than half of the territory's population to flee into Armenia along a single road, in an exodus visible from space, as the "PBS NewsHour" reported at the time. The Azerbaijani government is also generally known for being corrupt and repressive, according to Global Witness.

Despite this, the European Union has looked to Azerbaijan as a substitute for Russian gas following its invasion of Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed a deal with Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev in 2023 to double the country's gas exports to Europe by 2027. In December, Aliyev said the country was "confidently moving toward the goal," according to The Guardian.

At the same time, Azerbaijani fossil fuels are also helping to finance Russia's war in Ukraine through the company Lukoil, which owns a 19.99% stake in the country's Shah Deniz field as well as a share of the pipeline that moves gas from the field to Europe, Global Witness said.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

But when construction is complete next April, the Lower Sioux — also known as part of the Mdewakanton Band of Dakota — will have a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing campus that will allow them to pioneer a green experiment, the first of its kind in the United States. 

They will have an integrated vertical operation to grow hemp, process it into insulation called hempcrete, and then build healthy homes with it. Right now, no one in the U.S. does all three.

Once the tribe makes this low-carbon material, they can begin to address a severe shortage of housing and jobs. Recapturing a slice of sovereignty would be a win for the Lower Sioux, once a largely woodland people who were subjected to some of the worst brutality against the Indigenous nations in North America. 

They lost most of their lands in the 19th century, and the territory finally allotted to them two hours south of Minneapolis consists of just 1,743 acres of poor soil. That stands in contrast to the fertile black earth of the surrounding white-owned farmlands. 

Nearly half of the 1,124 enrolled members of the tribe need homes. Some of the unhoused camp on the hard ground outside the reservation, with nowhere else to turn. Those who do have shelter live in often moldy, modular homes with flimsy walls that can’t keep out the minus-15 Fahrenheit winter cold. 

Now, they have two prototypes that are nearly done and know how to build or retrofit more. While learning how to make the houses, the construction team developed a niche eco-skill they can market off the reservation as well. 

“The idea of making homes that would last and be healthy was a no-brainer,” said Robert “Deuce” Larsen, the tribal council president. 

“We need to build capacity in the community and show that it can be an income stream.”

That one of the smallest tribes in the country, in terms of population and land in trust, is leading the national charge on an integrated hempcrete operation is no mean feat, seeing that virtually no one in the community had experience with either farming or construction before the five-man team was assembled earlier this year.

“It’s fantastic,” said Jody McGuinness, executive director of the U.S. Hemp Building Association. “I haven’t heard of any other fully integrated project like this domestically.” 

Besides, hempcrete as a construction material is normally the domain of rich people with means to contract a green home, not marginalized communities. That’s because the sustainable material is normally imported from Europe rather than made locally. 

“It’s accessible to people with wealth, who can afford to build a bespoke house. It’s not accessible to the general public,” McGuinness said.

The project is the brainchild of Earl Pendleton, 52, a rail-thin man of quiet intensity, who until recently was the tribal council’s vice president. He grew obsessed with industrial hemp when reading about it 13 years ago. 

Pendleton was intrigued to learn that the bamboolike plant has 25,000 uses, including wood substitutes, biofuel, bioplastics, animal feed, and textiles. 

Hemp can grow in a variety of climates and, depending on the location, can yield more than one harvest a year. What’s more, hemp regenerates soil, sequesters carbon, and doesn’t require fertilizers.

“It blew my mind,” he recalled.

People often confuse hemp with its cannabis cousin, marijuana. But hemp has negligible THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive component that creates a weed high. And this stalky variant is more versatile than the flowery CBD (cannabidiol) type.

Hempcrete is made by mixing mashed stalks with lime and water. The oatmeal-like substance is stuffed or sprayed into the cavities of framed walls. Once it hardens, it resembles cement to the touch (thus the name) but has different properties.

The petrified substance has airtight qualities that can dramatically cut down on heating and air-conditioning needs. Unlike many commonly used building materials, it is nontoxic and resists mold, fire, and pests.

While used in Europe, commercial hemp was banned in the U.S. until the 2018 Farm Bill. Since then, hempcrete has been slow to catch on, due to a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Farmers don’t want to plant without facilities nearby to process the stalks. Potential processors don’t want to buy expensive machinery without guarantees of raw material. And most American contractors don’t know anything about hempcrete.

Aside from the green value, Pendleton saw a chance to pivot from the reservation’s Jackpot Junction Casino, the tribe’s main source of income for the past 35 years. A bronze statue of a warrior spearing a buffalo stands in front.

For many years, as Pendleton managed the floor and worked blackjack, he saw gamblers lose their paychecks, and more. The Lower Sioux weren’t getting richer. The population on the reservation has expanded rapidly since 2000, which meant the per capita cut that each family got from the $30 million yearly profits shrank. For most families, it is the only income they receive.

“We sell misery. It’s nothing to be proud of, the money to be made here,” Pendleton said.

He added that the guaranteed money from the casinos killed many people’s ambitions to get education or training for jobs, or to seek work off the reservation.

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It took a while for him to convince the tribal leadership to endorse his hemp vision. “When I would bring it up eight years ago, they’d say, ‘What? You’re going to smoke the wall?’ They associated it with weed.”

He had some learning to do, too. Pendleton knew nothing about the industry, so he binged on YouTube videos about techniques and drove around the country to meet experts. 

“It was daunting,” he said. 

Once the tribal council got on board three years ago, they cobbled together loans, government grants, and their own funds to earmark more than $6 million to build the first two prototype homes and the processing campus.

They have the potential to plant hemp on 300 acres and, at a given time, grow on between 100 to 200 acres. Test seeds came from New Genetics in Colorado and the Dun Agro Hemp Group, a Dutch company with a new processing facility in Indiana that is seeking partnerships with tribal communities.

Pendleton recruited Joey Goodthunder, a cheerful 33-year-old who had picked up farming cattle and corn from his grandfather, as agricultural processing manager. Goodthunder set to planting in a field called Cansa’yap, or “the place where they paint the trees red,” which is what the tribe used to do to mark territory.

Pendleton lured as project manager Danny Desjarlais, 38, a tattooed carpenter who had been thinking about becoming a long-haul truck driver for lack of other work.

“Earl found out and took me and my kids’ mom out to eat and told her, ‘If he drives a truck, he’s not going to be home every night. I’ll have him home for dinner every night,’” Desjarlais said.

Desjarlais entertained doubts about this bizarre product he had never heard of. Pendleton sealed the deal by taking him to a hemp building conference in Austin, Texas. “That was eye-opening,” Desjarlais said. 

Pendleton signed up three other Lower Sioux, only one of whom had experience putting up walls. And he invited two luminaries in hemp building: Jennifer Martin, a partner in HempStone, and Cameron McIntosh of Americhanvre to teach the different application techniques. They are based, respectively, in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

Intrigued by what this project could achieve in terms of Native sovereignty, Martin traveled to Minnesota again and again to usher the crew through the project.

“What the Lower Sioux is doing is the most compelling and forward-thinking thing that’s happening in hempcrete today,” she said. “No one else is doing anything like this. And Danny is one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with; he’s like a sponge.” 

The venture has, unsurprisingly, experienced bumps. Equipment housed at another company’s warehouse nearby broke down. Replacement parts were backlogged due to pandemic supply chain issues. Since they couldn’t process hemp in the time allotted to build, the crew had to import some.

Goodthunder, meanwhile, struggled with harvesting techniques alien to conventional agriculture, such as leaving cut stalks to rot in the field for weeks so that unwanted seeds separate from the woody inner fiber, called hurd. 

Yet they’ve made progress.

They began with a demo shed in September 2022, placed on a field where the tribe holds powwows, an annual celebration of music and dance. The kids used it as a concession stand to sell sodas and candies. The remaining skeptics all wanted their pictures taken next to it. 

“Once they saw it, they changed their minds,” Desjarlais said. “They said, ‘Let’s build a house.’”

Build they did. In a 14-day blitz in July, the team threw together a 1,500-square-foot lime-green ranch, without any blueprints. It’ll be used as two units of temporary housing for people coming from substance abuse treatment or jail.

“Everyone said, ‘It‘s impossible.’ Even people in the hemp world thought it was impossible,” Desjarlais said proudly. His muscled arm, tattooed with the words “Love Life,” pointed at the hempcrete blocks wedged securely into the 12-inch-thick walls. A pleasant, haylike smell wafted through the house. 

Another four-room prototype is already framed and being filled with hempcrete. It will be rented out to community members when done.

The processing campus where they hope to manufacture blocks or panels of hempcrete has a solar greenhouse to store bags of lime and hemp, as well as equipment such as a combine harvester and a decorticator that separates the hurd from the softer fibers that can be used for textiles.

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The project could serve as an example for the 573 other federally recognized tribes, many of which face similar critical shortages of jobs and housing. Native Americans retain 25 percent of U.S. land tenure in federal trust, and self-governing communities don’t have to wait for permits from other authorities.

Larsen, the tribal president, thinks hemp could provide a lucrative income stream for tribes that have the land to grow it and a trained crew that can offer its skills off the reservation.

“Native American tribes have an advantage, because they can build with materials that are new, without having to get them certified by a national agency,” said McGuinness. “They don’t have the bureaucracy holding them down.” 

What’s more, he’s hearing about non-tribal companies, Dun Agro among them, that are viewing tribal communities as development partners.

Architect Bob Escher, who has four residential designs in the works involving hemp, sees demand for skilled hemp professionals increasing as green building takes off. So far, there are only a handful of these experts in the U.S.

“Who knew five years ago that a hempcrete consultant would be sitting at the same table with structural engineers, electrical contractors, HVAC installers, and interior designers to help me and the client develop the design program,” he said. “This is the pure definition of job creation.”

For now, the Lower Sioux undertaking has caught the eye of four other reservations in Minnesota, as well as Dallas Goldtooth, who plays the Spirit in the hit show Reservation Dogs on Hulu. Desjarlais said the actor was interested in a hempcrete build for his mother, who lives in the community.

Farther north, the Gitxsan First Nation in Canada invited Desjarlais to show them in August how to build. They’ve grown enough hemp for three prototype homes on their Sik-E-Dakh reserve 16 hours north of Vancouver and are seeking $5.5 million (Canadian) to get a similar integrated project off the ground.

Desjarlais left them inspired, said Velma Sutherland, a band administrator. “This could be the start of something big.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Lower Sioux in Minnesota need homes — so they are building them from hemp on Nov 27, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Judith Matloff.

Last November, radioactive tritium from the 52-year-old General Electric reactor was found in an on-site groundwater “monitoring” well. Xcel, formerly Northern States Power, waited until mid-March to report the month-long 400,000-gallon leak, but inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) winked at the four-month delay, saying reporting wasn’t required by law. Xcel publicly claimed to have plugged the leak.

The concentration of tritium was “about 5 million picocuries per-liter” in the groundwater, according to Xcel.   This is 250 times the amount of tritium contamination legally permitted in drinking water (20,000 picocuries per liter). After saying the leak was fixed, Xcel reported that another several hundred gallons of tritium-tainted water had spilled from an overflow tank used to collect some of the initially poisoned groundwater.

The Monticello reactor is a GE Mark I design identical to the three Fukushima units that melted down and partially exploded in Japan in 2011. There are 23 other reactors just like them still operating in the United States. Monticello’s reactor’s old and mostly uninspected pipes are worn out and corroded — a chronic, nationwide problem across the country which is reason enough to retire the whole fleet. The Minneapolis StarTribune reported June 17, 2023 that, “Tritium leaks unfortunately have been relatively common in the nuclear industry, and the Monticello spill was among the nation’s 10 largest.”

“Radioactive tritium leaks found at 48 U.S. nuke sites,” blared the headline in an lengthy Associated Press investigative series (“Aging Nukes” by Jeff Donn), originally published in June 2011.  “You got pipes that have been buried underground for 30 or 40 years, and they’ve never been inspected, and the NRC is looking the other way,” engineer Paul Blanch told the AP. Blanch, who had worked for the industry and later became a whistleblower, added, “They could have corrosion all over the place.”

NRC public affairs officer Prema Chandrathil replied August 10 to some questions I posed, writing, “The now-stopped leak was from a pipe that ran between two buildings on site where the water had already been processed, filtered, and demineralized.” Asked if there were other radioactive materials in the wastewater, Chandrathil wrote, “When the leak was going on there were low levels of xenon and iodine detected near the leak. They decay away and become non-radioactive quickly due to their short half-life. Therefore, tritium is the only type of radioactive material currently present in the groundwater.”

The reply raised more questions than it answered. Iodine-125 has a 60-day half-life, and, because it takes ten half-lives to “decay away,” its gamma radiation spews for 600 days. Iodine-129 has a half-life of 16 million years. If the NRC official meant Iodine-131 — Chandrathil didn’t specify — that isotope decays for 80 days. Nor does Xenon-137 just “decay away” as the NRC public affairs officer said. It decays to Cesium-137 which takes 300 years to “decay away.” Again Chandrathil didn’t report which isotope of Xenon was leaking, Xe-133, Xe-137, or some other.

The Minn. Department of Health web site report on the radioactive leaks says: “A conservative assumption in radiation protection is that any radiation exposure could result in an increase in cancer occurrences in the population, with the risk increasing as exposure increases.” However Xcel has said there is “no” health risk to the public as the affected groundwater contains “very low levels” of tritium.

This reassurance is untrue. Even “very low levels” of radiation exposure create a risk as the state health department noted. Radiobiologists all agree that no one can speak of a “safe” radiation dose level. Every federal agency that regulates industrial releases and medical uses of ionizing radiation warns that exposure to radiation, no matter how small, increases one’s risk of cancer and other illnesses. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says, “There is no firm basis for setting a ‘safe’ level of exposure above background ….”[1] “Based on current scientific evidence, any exposure to radiation can be harmful (or can increase the risk of cancer). ….no radiation exposure is completely risk free.[2]  “[T]here is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk. … Radiation is a carcinogen.[3]

Tritium emits beta radiation in the form of fast-moving particles. The U.S. EPA and other authorities say beta particles are “more penetrating than alpha particles,” and “are capable of penetrating the skin and causing radiation damage.” In her book No Immediate Danger, Dr. Rosalie Bertell says that if beta particles are inhaled or ingested they can inflict biological damage more severe than an external exposure, because the beta particles can penetrate cell membranes.

Xcel attempts to protect Mississippi

In a practical admission that it has lost control of the plume of radioactive groundwater moving toward the Mississippi, Xcel announced August 17, 2023 that it would build an “underground metal barrier” between the leaking facility and the great river. Xcel said the steel wall — 40-feet deep and 600 feet long — would take four to eight weeks to install “along the edge of the plant’s boundary with the river,” and that it is intended to keep contaminated groundwater from reaching the Mississippi River. Yet it is axiomatic that water moving underground can be deeper than 40 feet.

One grim irony of Xcel’s “groundwater wall” is that at Japan’s Fukushima — where three identical GE reactors were destroyed by damage from the shattering 3/11/11 earthquake and follow-on simultaneous meltdowns — the owners also tried to stem the flow of groundwater. Tokyo Electric Power Co. built a deep “ice wall,” to keep groundwater from gushing through cracks in reactor foundations, but the $250 million effort has failed.

Originally licensed in 1971 to operate for 40 years, Monticello was designed to close in 2010. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued Xcel an extension in 2006, allowing it to produce rad waste until 2030. In 2011, the Japanese catastrophe of three simultaneous meltdowns of Monticello-like GE Mark I reactors proved how reliable the design is. Now the risk-takers at Xcel have applied for a second operating extension, and the owners of this leaker want to drive it for 80 years — until 2050 — twice the distance it was designed to run. Boom!

The post Radioactive Leaks from Monticello Reactor in Minnesota Threaten the Mississippi appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Laforge.

In a ruling last week, a Minnesota judge summarily dismissed misdemeanor charges against three Anishinaabe water protectors who had protested at a pipeline construction site in an effort to stop the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. “To criminalize their behavior would be the crime,” she concluded.

Judge Leslie Metzen relied on a rarely-used Minnesota statute that allows a judge to dismiss a case if doing so furthers “justice.” She assessed that in this case justice meant throwing out charges against Anishinaabe people committed to preserving their treaty lands. “The court finds that it is within the furtherance of justice to protect the defendants peacefully protesting to protect the land and water,” she wrote. 

“I’ve never seen a judge dismiss a case in the name of justice,” said Claire Glenn, a staff attorney at the Climate Defense Project who was part of the defense team for the water protectors. She said that research undertaken by the legal team found very few cases where the statute had been cited previously.  

The three defendants, Tania Aubid, Dawn Goodwin, and Winona LaDuke, were emotional as they processed the ruling during a press conference on Monday. Each member of the trio faced a range of charges — including trespass, harassment, public nuisance, and unlawful assembly — for their participation in a protest in January 2021.

“Judge Metzen proved that treaties are the supreme law of the land, and we have every right to protect for future generations,” said Goodwin, who also goes by Gaagigeyaashiik and is a White Earth tribal member. 

LaDuke, however, argued that the system was not strong enough to keep their people’s land and water safe. Since the completion of the pipeline in 2021, regulators have revealed that Enbridge punctured aquifers at least four times during construction. 

“The regulatory system and legal systems are not equipped to deal with the violence of the ecological crimes underway,” LaDuke, former director of the nonprofit Honor the Earth, said. As she sees it, the water protectors had no other recourse than to participate in a months-long series of protest actions meant to halt the project. 

As the Center for Media and Democracy and Grist laid out in a recent investigation, Enbridge reimbursed sheriffs’ offices, the Minnesota State Patrol, the Department of Natural Resources, and even a public relations officer for work related to quelling the protests, funneling a total of $8.6 million to various agencies through an escrow account created by the state Public Utilities Commission.

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According to police reports, a group of 200 protesters blocked traffic on a rural Minnesota road on January 9, 2021, as they marched toward a place where a backhoe was holding a large pipe near a freshly dug hole. Twenty or 30 people entered the pipeline construction site, stopping work. “A Native American woman I did not know, wearing a jingle dress did a dance on the edge of the trench, and would not move back,” wrote Aitkin County Investigator Steve Cook. Police issued dispersal orders, and the protesters cleared out soon after, the reports conclude. 

An officer on the ground pointed to Aubid and LaDuke as potential leaders, and another investigator identified Goodwin after reviewing Facebook videos. But the trio only received citations weeks later — five misdemeanor charges for Aubid and LaDuke, and three for Goodwin. 

It would be months before Enbridge reimbursed law enforcement agencies for the hours they spent policing the protest. According to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, at least four local law enforcement agencies received more than $17,000 from Enbridge for assigning nearly 40 officers to the protest site that day. 

“It was not necessary to have 40 or 50 police officers at any point,” LaDuke said. “This was excessive force used upon all of us — excessive prosecution, and it was incentivized by Enbridge.” 

About two weeks after the protest, Enbridge machinery quietly punctured an aquifer at a similar Line 3 construction site. Over the next year, a total of more than 72 million gallons of water spilled from the earth. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources forced the company to pay $3.2 million in environmental penalties. However, a single misdemeanor was the only criminal charge Enbridge faced, and it came with a deal that said it would be dismissed after a year. 

The aquifer breach was key to the defense attorneys’ argument for dismissal of the charges. At a settlement conference the day before the decision, Joshua Preston, who represented Goodwin, asked the judge to put the case in perspective.

“We just experienced the hottest summer globally on record, a documented fact that led the United Nations Secretary General to issue a statement on September 6 stating ‘climate breakdown has begun,’” he said. “Why does Enbridge get one charge while my client gets three?”

“This is the question history will ask if the state is allowed to move forward in its prosecution,” Preston continued.

At the press conference, Frank Bibeau — who is Anishinaabe and a longtime attorney for pipeline opponents — said that such arguments are typically ignored when they come from Indigenous people: “These are words we say all the time, but they never get heard.”

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Prosecutors filed a total of 967 criminal cases against people attending Line 3 protests. The vast majority were dismissed, some for lack of probable cause, others via negotiated agreements. Not everyone has avoided “guilty” verdicts. In the last three months, two were convicted of felonies for participating in protests. Glenn said those cases involved prosecutorial misconduct that is still being litigated. Fewer than 20 open cases remain. 

In a number of cases, attorneys attempted to argue that the involvement of the Enbridge escrow account means the arrests violated pipeline opponents’ rights to due process. However, these arguments failed to sway any judge.

Preston’s arguments about his clients’ case’s relation to the climate crisis, on the other hand, found a receptive audience in court. “These cases and these 3 defendants in particular have awakened in me some deep questions about what would serve the interests of justice here,” Metzen, the judge, wrote in a memo attached to the ruling.

“Their gathering may have briefly delayed construction, caused extra expense to law enforcement who came to clear their gathering (much of which was reimbursed by Aitkin County through Enbridge), but the pipeline has been completed and is operating in spite of their efforts to stop it through peaceful protest,” she continued. “In the interest of justice the charges against these three individuals who were exercising their rights to free speech and to freely express their spiritual beliefs should be dismissed.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Minnesota judge throws out charges against Line 3 pipeline protesters on Sep 22, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alleen Brown.

The post Minnesota Democrats Codify Abortion Rights, Pass LGBTQ Protections and More. It’s Not a ‘Miracle’ appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Laura Flanders.

The Democratic majority in Minnesota’s state Legislature, along with Democratic Governor Tim Walz, have enacted sweeping progressive reforms this year, with many praising the ambitious agenda as a “Minnesota Miracle.” Democrats have successfully codified abortion rights; protections for transgender people; driver’s licenses for undocumented residents; new gun control rules; the restoration of voting rights for previously incarcerated people; a $1 billion investment in affordable housing that includes rent assistance; stronger protections for workers seeking to unionize; and paid family, medical and sick leave, among other measures.

Peter Callaghan, a staff writer at MinnPost, says Democrats are using their governing trifecta after years of “pent-up demand” from progressives. We also speak with Robin Wonsley, Democratic Socialist city councilmember in Minneapolis, about how Minnesota Governor Tim Walz faced backlash from labor organizers in May after he issued the first veto in his entire tenure blocking a bill that would have granted minimum wage and better worker protections for Uber and Lyft drivers. The veto came just hours after Uber threatened to pull out of Minnesota.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph Source: Chad Davis – CC BY 2.0

Two recent reports describe challenges for policing specifically for Minneapolis and Minnesota more generally.  The first report was the Department of Justice’s Report on policing in Minneapolis which ties into a federal consent decree for reform in that city.  The second report is mine regarding what we know about policing across the State of Minnesota.

Minneapolis and the Department of Justice Report

The Department of Justice initiated an investigation into police practices in the City of Minneapolis (MPD) after the murder of George Floyd.  The report is perhaps the most comprehensive ever done on policing in Minneapolis, with a more detailed analysis and use of statistics than the Minnesota Department of Human Rights Report from last year.  The latter report had concluded  “A pattern or practice of discrimination is present where the denial of rights consists of something more than isolated, sporadic incidents, but is repeated, routine, or of a generalized nature.”

The basic takeaway from the DOJ report is that the police department violated the First (free speech) and Fourth (illegal search and seizure) Amendment rights systematically, especially in terms of its application of use of force against people of color.

In reaching that conclusion it is first important to understand two points concerning the DOJ Report.  First, its focus is on the use of (excessive) force.  It did look at other issues such as police stops and what is often called racial profiling, but most of the report examined racial disparities in terms of use of force.  Second, the US Supreme Court has said that questions of use of force raise constitutional questions, defining them as a Fourth Amendment search and seizure issue.

Overall the picture the report paints of Minneapolis is troubling.   It introduces us to a point many of us have made for years in places such as here and here—Minneapolis is a tale of two cities.  As the Report states:

By nearly all of these measures, the typical white family in the Twin Cities is doing better than the national average for white families, and the typical Black family in the Twin Cities doing worse than the national average or Black families. The median Black family in the Twin Cities earns just 44% as much as the median white family, and the poverty rate among Black households is nearly five times higher than the rate among white households. Of the United States’ 100 largest metropolitan areas, only one has a larger gap between Black and white earnings.

The cause of the racial disparities are many, but when it comes to policing, the DOJ offers several stark  conclusions.  In examining thousands of uses of force, the Report concluded:

Our investigation showed that MPD officers routinely use excessive force, often when no force is necessary. We found that MPD officers often use unreasonable force (including deadly force) to obtain immediate compliance with orders, often forgoing meaningful de-escalation tactics and instead using force to subdue people. MPD’s pattern or practice of using excessive force violates the law.

MPD officers often used neck restraints in situations that did not end in an arrest. MPD officers used neck restraints during at least 198 encounters from January 1, 2016, to August 16, 2022.

Despite banning neck restraints  in 2020, the MPD still used them.

The Report documents the use of unnecessary or excessive force across a range of tactics that include physical restraint, tasers, and weapons.  And there appears to be a racial disparity in such use of force.

Additionally, the MPD fails to provide needed medical care and officers are failing to intervene  to prevent other officers from using excessive force.

The DOJ Report also describes disparate treatment when it comes to traffic stops and searches. For example, it concludes that “We estimate that MPD stops Black people at 6.5 times the rate at which it stops white people, given their shares of the population. Similarly, we estimate  MPD stops Native American people at 7.9 times the rate at which it stops white people, given population shares.”

Finally, the Report documents significant violations of the First Amendment rights of protestors and the media to cover, photograph, or report on police misconduct.

Overall the Report reaches a series of conclusions that the Minneapolis Police Department is out of compliance with the Constitution, in part as a result of poor or improper training or supervision. Necessitating the  City enter into a consent decree and agree to remedial action.

The Price of Injustice: Taxpayer Payouts for Police Misconduct in Minnesota

But is Minneapolis alone?  This is the question I sought to answer in my report that was recently released and updated.

After Minneapolis paid out $27 million to the family of George Floyd  many wondered how much governments payout for police misconduct.  Nationally there is no database on this, nor is there one in Minnesota or any state.  In previous research I made some estimates that the amount was in the billions. I decided to construct a database for Minnesota.

We surveyed all cities in Minnesota with populations of 5,000 or more;  all 87 counties; and the State Patrol, Metro Transit, and the University of Minnesota Police.  This produced an effective coverage of 98%-100% of the population of the state.  Requests were sent to a total of 239 governmental units asking for  a list of all instances of police misconduct resulting in payouts from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2020.  Results were obtained from all 239 surveyed.

Here is a summary of what we learned.

Nearly 30% of all governmental units made some form of payout.

There were a total of  490 incidents that resulted in payouts.

The estimated  total payout is  $60,784,822.

The estimated total payment for Minneapolis is $36,535,708.10.

Minneapolis accounted for 60.1% of total payouts in the state during the ten-year time period.

For the entire state the mean or average payout per incident was $124,500.  For Minneapolis alone, the mean or average payout was $212, 416.   The mean or average for the rest of the state excluding Minneapolis was $76, 255.

In Minneapolis the median payout is between $26,282 and $28,010.  For the rest of the state it is $6,500.  The overall median pay out was $12,000.

My report also asked for information about instances resulting in payouts, and they included use of force, property damage, improper  and improper use of data, among other instances. However, the largest category was unspecified.  We simply do not know or have sufficient data to tell us the factors such as race that led to specific  police misconduct.

The conclusion of the study was that gathering this data was difficult and time consuming and there is still too much we do not know.  I conclude that we need mandated statewide collection and standardization of data about police misconduct if we are going to seriously think about any policy change when it comes to policing.

How the Two Reports Interact

First, the DOJ report is only about Minneapolis.  My report is statewide.  Two, my report covers all instances of police misconduct which resulted in payouts.  Third, the DOJ report gathers its own statistics to analyze, while my report is based on an analysis of self-reported  data from the governmental agencies.  Fourth, the DOJ was able to discuss and examine race issues in Minneapolis, my statewide report lacked the data to do that.

One pushback I received on my report is that not all instances of misconduct are really misconduct.  However, the information reported here is self-reported and governmental entities could  have opted not to report if they did not deem it misconduct.  Two, even if police disagree, my report documented misconduct resulting in settlements by the reporting governmental entity.  Whatever happened the reporting jurisdiction decided that they had to make payouts for what their police did.

However, another way to view how the reports interact is in the focus on Minneapolis.  The two reports look at different time frames but reach parallel conclusions on  issues such as payouts for misconduct.   But what jumps out is that  the total instances of misconduct in Minneapolis and statewide may be higher than thought.

My study reports 172 instances in Minneapolis over a ten-year period that resulted in payouts for police misconduct.  If the DOJ report is accurate, there could have possibly been hundreds of other  instances that  should have resulted in payouts.  Why the under-reporting?

In my study I hypothesize that  of all the instances  where police and civilians interact, only a fraction of them may be circumstances where something goes wrong. Of those, only a fraction involve situations where civilians know something went wrong and then file a complaint or lawsuit and then of those, only some result in payouts. What the DOJ report suggests is that the number and percentage of misconduct in Minneapolis is probably greater than my report indicates.  This too may be true statewide.

Overall, the conclusion of my report is that we need to understand what happened in the instances where payouts occurred and  use them as case studies to help formulate policy change. The DOJ diagnoses the problems in Minneapolis and offers recommendations for change. Whether what is happening in Minneapolis is generalizable to all of Minnesota we still do not know, and neither the DOJ or my report can answer that question.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Schultz.

Although Biden also has at times angered organized labor—particularly in December when he signed a congressional resolution preventing a nationwide rail strike as industry workers were fighting for paid sick leave—AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler still stressed Friday that "there's absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes."

"From bringing manufacturing jobs home to America to protecting our pensions and making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and education, we've never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out," Shuler said. "We've never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers' fundamental right to join a union."

"We've never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers' fundamental right to join a union."

"Now, it's time to finish the job," she declared. "The largest labor mobilization in history begins today, supercharged by the excitement and enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands of union volunteers who will work tirelessly to reelect a president they know has our backs and will always fight for us."

Coming nearly 17 months before the 2024 election, Friday's announcement is the earliest presidential endorsement in history for the general board of the AFL-CIO—which represents 60 unions and more than 12.5 million workers.

Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said that the president—also a former vice president, U.S. senator, and county council member—"has been an unwavering champion of the labor movement his entire career" and the "historic groundswell of support" from the AFL-CIO and unions is "an unprecedented show of solidarity and strength for our campaign."

"Joe Biden ran for president four years ago because he knows the way to grow the economy is to grow the middle class, and that starts with strong unions and labor representation," she continued. "With the early support from the labor movement, our campaign can tap into organized labor's incomparable organizing abilities, which allows us to reach deep into communities and talk to voters about the tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs created by President Biden's first-term agenda."

"These endorsements are personal to President Biden and Vice President Harris," added Chávez Rodríguez, the granddaughter of the late United Farm Workers leader César Chávez. "They are proud to be the most pro-labor administration in our country's history, and this campaign will honor that commitment by working to earn each and every vote come November 2024."

Along with the AFL-CIO, unions individually endorsing the Biden-Harris campaign include the Actors' Equity Association; American Federation of Government Employees; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); American Federation of Teachers (AFT); Communications Workers of America; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; International Union of Operating Engineers; International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers; Laborers' International Union of North America; and National Nurses United (NNU).

"President Biden and Vice President Harris took decisive, lifesaving action at the very start of their term, when their administration confronted the deadly global pandemic," said NNU president Zenei Triunfo-Cortez. "Nurses have their back in 2024 because, when we look at their track record, we can see that they have ours."

AFSCME similarly noted that "before Joe Biden was sworn in, the pandemic was raging, and our economy was in free fall. Politicians—including the former president—shook hands with frontline public service workers for the cameras, then stabbed them in the back when the cameras were off by doing nothing as essential workers were laid off because of budget shortfalls."

"As political extremists try to roll back all the progress we've made and take away fundamental freedoms," said Saunders, "Joe Biden will work with us to address the top issue for public service workers today: resolving the staffing crisis that is pushing millions of public service workers to exhaustion and leaving our communities unprepared for the next crisis."

There is a crowded field for the 2024 Republican presidential primary but twice-impeached, twice-indicted former President Donald Trump—who just turned 77—is leading the polls, despite arguments that the U.S. Constitution bars him from ever holding elected office again for inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection. On the Democratic side, the 80-year-old Biden incumbent faces a pair of longshot candidates: Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Biden's new labor endorsements were intentionally announced ahead of the Saturday event at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, which will be the president's first rally since confirming in April that he is seeking a second term.

Harris was in Philly on Tuesday to meet with leaders from the Service Employees International Union. The Philadelphia Inquirerreported that the vice president said during the event, "Joe Biden lives, breathes, and cares so deeply about the importance of strengthening and uplifting working people, through strengthening and uplifting labor unions."

Calling Biden and Harris "the most pro-labor, pro-public education leaders our country has seen in modern history," AFT president Randi Weingarten declared Friday that "this weekend, the entire labor movement is joining together in an unprecedented show of strength and support to harness the collective power of working people determined to move this country in the direction of freedom, justice, and opportunity for all."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Although Biden also has at times angered organized labor—particularly in December when he signed a congressional resolution preventing a nationwide rail strike as industry workers were fighting for paid sick leave—AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler still stressed Friday that "there's absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes."

"From bringing manufacturing jobs home to America to protecting our pensions and making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and education, we've never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out," Shuler said. "We've never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers' fundamental right to join a union."

"We've never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers' fundamental right to join a union."

"Now, it's time to finish the job," she declared. "The largest labor mobilization in history begins today, supercharged by the excitement and enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands of union volunteers who will work tirelessly to reelect a president they know has our backs and will always fight for us."

Coming nearly 17 months before the 2024 election, Friday's announcement is the earliest presidential endorsement in history for the general board of the AFL-CIO—which represents 60 unions and more than 12.5 million workers.

Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said that the president—also a former vice president, U.S. senator, and county council member—"has been an unwavering champion of the labor movement his entire career" and the "historic groundswell of support" from the AFL-CIO and unions is "an unprecedented show of solidarity and strength for our campaign."

"Joe Biden ran for president four years ago because he knows the way to grow the economy is to grow the middle class, and that starts with strong unions and labor representation," she continued. "With the early support from the labor movement, our campaign can tap into organized labor's incomparable organizing abilities, which allows us to reach deep into communities and talk to voters about the tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs created by President Biden's first-term agenda."

"These endorsements are personal to President Biden and Vice President Harris," added Chávez Rodríguez, the granddaughter of the late United Farm Workers leader César Chávez. "They are proud to be the most pro-labor administration in our country's history, and this campaign will honor that commitment by working to earn each and every vote come November 2024."

Along with the AFL-CIO, unions individually endorsing the Biden-Harris campaign include the Actors' Equity Association; American Federation of Government Employees; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); American Federation of Teachers (AFT); Communications Workers of America; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; International Union of Operating Engineers; International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers; Laborers' International Union of North America; and National Nurses United (NNU).

"President Biden and Vice President Harris took decisive, lifesaving action at the very start of their term, when their administration confronted the deadly global pandemic," said NNU president Zenei Triunfo-Cortez. "Nurses have their back in 2024 because, when we look at their track record, we can see that they have ours."

AFSCME similarly noted that "before Joe Biden was sworn in, the pandemic was raging, and our economy was in free fall. Politicians—including the former president—shook hands with frontline public service workers for the cameras, then stabbed them in the back when the cameras were off by doing nothing as essential workers were laid off because of budget shortfalls."

"As political extremists try to roll back all the progress we've made and take away fundamental freedoms," said Saunders, "Joe Biden will work with us to address the top issue for public service workers today: resolving the staffing crisis that is pushing millions of public service workers to exhaustion and leaving our communities unprepared for the next crisis."

There is a crowded field for the 2024 Republican presidential primary but twice-impeached, twice-indicted former President Donald Trump—who just turned 77—is leading the polls, despite arguments that the U.S. Constitution bars him from ever holding elected office again for inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection. On the Democratic side, the 80-year-old Biden incumbent faces a pair of longshot candidates: Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Biden's new labor endorsements were intentionally announced ahead of the Saturday event at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, which will be the president's first rally since confirming in April that he is seeking a second term.

Harris was in Philly on Tuesday to meet with leaders from the Service Employees International Union. The Philadelphia Inquirerreported that the vice president said during the event, "Joe Biden lives, breathes, and cares so deeply about the importance of strengthening and uplifting working people, through strengthening and uplifting labor unions."

Calling Biden and Harris "the most pro-labor, pro-public education leaders our country has seen in modern history," AFT president Randi Weingarten declared Friday that "this weekend, the entire labor movement is joining together in an unprecedented show of strength and support to harness the collective power of working people determined to move this country in the direction of freedom, justice, and opportunity for all."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Although Biden also has at times angered organized labor—particularly in December when he signed a congressional resolution preventing a nationwide rail strike as industry workers were fighting for paid sick leave—AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler still stressed Friday that "there's absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes."

"From bringing manufacturing jobs home to America to protecting our pensions and making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and education, we've never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out," Shuler said. "We've never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers' fundamental right to join a union."

"We've never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers' fundamental right to join a union."

"Now, it's time to finish the job," she declared. "The largest labor mobilization in history begins today, supercharged by the excitement and enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands of union volunteers who will work tirelessly to reelect a president they know has our backs and will always fight for us."

Coming nearly 17 months before the 2024 election, Friday's announcement is the earliest presidential endorsement in history for the general board of the AFL-CIO—which represents 60 unions and more than 12.5 million workers.

Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said that the president—also a former vice president, U.S. senator, and county council member—"has been an unwavering champion of the labor movement his entire career" and the "historic groundswell of support" from the AFL-CIO and unions is "an unprecedented show of solidarity and strength for our campaign."

"Joe Biden ran for president four years ago because he knows the way to grow the economy is to grow the middle class, and that starts with strong unions and labor representation," she continued. "With the early support from the labor movement, our campaign can tap into organized labor's incomparable organizing abilities, which allows us to reach deep into communities and talk to voters about the tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs created by President Biden's first-term agenda."

"These endorsements are personal to President Biden and Vice President Harris," added Chávez Rodríguez, the granddaughter of the late United Farm Workers leader César Chávez. "They are proud to be the most pro-labor administration in our country's history, and this campaign will honor that commitment by working to earn each and every vote come November 2024."

Along with the AFL-CIO, unions individually endorsing the Biden-Harris campaign include the Actors' Equity Association; American Federation of Government Employees; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); American Federation of Teachers (AFT); Communications Workers of America; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; International Union of Operating Engineers; International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers; Laborers' International Union of North America; and National Nurses United (NNU).

"President Biden and Vice President Harris took decisive, lifesaving action at the very start of their term, when their administration confronted the deadly global pandemic," said NNU president Zenei Triunfo-Cortez. "Nurses have their back in 2024 because, when we look at their track record, we can see that they have ours."

AFSCME similarly noted that "before Joe Biden was sworn in, the pandemic was raging, and our economy was in free fall. Politicians—including the former president—shook hands with frontline public service workers for the cameras, then stabbed them in the back when the cameras were off by doing nothing as essential workers were laid off because of budget shortfalls."

"As political extremists try to roll back all the progress we've made and take away fundamental freedoms," said Saunders, "Joe Biden will work with us to address the top issue for public service workers today: resolving the staffing crisis that is pushing millions of public service workers to exhaustion and leaving our communities unprepared for the next crisis."

There is a crowded field for the 2024 Republican presidential primary but twice-impeached, twice-indicted former President Donald Trump—who just turned 77—is leading the polls, despite arguments that the U.S. Constitution bars him from ever holding elected office again for inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection. On the Democratic side, the 80-year-old Biden incumbent faces a pair of longshot candidates: Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Biden's new labor endorsements were intentionally announced ahead of the Saturday event at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, which will be the president's first rally since confirming in April that he is seeking a second term.

Harris was in Philly on Tuesday to meet with leaders from the Service Employees International Union. The Philadelphia Inquirerreported that the vice president said during the event, "Joe Biden lives, breathes, and cares so deeply about the importance of strengthening and uplifting working people, through strengthening and uplifting labor unions."

Calling Biden and Harris "the most pro-labor, pro-public education leaders our country has seen in modern history," AFT president Randi Weingarten declared Friday that "this weekend, the entire labor movement is joining together in an unprecedented show of strength and support to harness the collective power of working people determined to move this country in the direction of freedom, justice, and opportunity for all."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

As you know if you have ever hung around union people who are in the process of getting extremely mad, “captive audience meetings” are when the boss calls a mandatory meeting for employees, and then proceeds to lie to them about how bad unions are. Of all the tools in the union-busting playbook, captive audience meetings are probably the most brutally effective. Most working people have only a very tenuous grasp on the nuances of what a union is and what it does, so it tends to be very easy for employers to deceive them in outrageous but technically legal ways about the scary things that will happen if they choose to unionize. Also, most working people really need their jobs in order to live, so it tends to be very easy for employers to terrify them that if they unionize they will either be fired, or their job will disappear because of rising costs and whatnot.

Every captive audience meeting, from an Amazon warehouse to a college campus, basically goes:

Hi folks, take a seat, take a brownie if you like. I’m just here to rap with ya a little bit because as you know, we’re a family here. You may have been approached about organizing a union recently. Of course, that’s your right and the decision is totally up to you. We just want you to be fully informed. So: What is a union? It’s a business that wants your dues money. Every heard of Jimmy Hoffa, or the mafia? Yeah. And what happens if you unionize? You can never talk to a friendly manager again. You have to go through some third party. Pretty sad considering we have an open door policy here. Also, I can’t tell you that this business will close if you unionize, but I can say that some businesses do close when a union comes in. Money doesn’t grow on trees, sadly. That would be a bummer! Anyhow we got you all pizza.

These meetings can be tailored to be more friendly or more threatening, depending. I have reported on more of these than I can count at all types of businesses, and they are all full of lies. Highly paid consultants, all of whom should be in jail, write the scripts for these meetings, and sometimes come in and run them. If you ever in your life meet someone who is involved the captive audience meeting industry in any way (at a dinner party or something) you should spit at their feet and tell them to fuck off. They are bad people whose business cards should read “We Lie To Further Oppression.”

If you think about it, it’s pretty wild that these meetings are legal in the first place. What does your employer pay you for? They pay you for your work. They pay you to perform a set of tasks collectively known as “your job.” That’s it. It is highly unlikely that a legitimate part of your job is “being harangued about your boss’s extreme right-wing beliefs.” That’s what anti-union propaganda is, when you get right down to it. It is no different from going about your business stocking shelves at CVS and then being pulled into an hour-long meeting at which your manager explains in detail why communism is the one true and just economic system. It is no different from finishing your shift at the insurance company and then having to sit and listen to an outside consultant argue that the 13th amendment should be repealed, in order to help the company’s bottom line. The argument that you should not have a union—that you should act against your own social and economic self-interests—is kooky and insulting, even more so when that argument is being delivered by the person who is arguing purely for their own social and economic interests. “You shouldn’t have more power at work, because I want that power instead,” is the gist of what every boss who makes an anti-union argument to his employees is saying. “Better wages and benefits and control of your own life is on the table here, and you should reject it,” they are saying. It’s rude! Why would they say that to you—their family?

I would say that holding a captive audience meeting by definition creates a hostile workplace. Our legal system is just not quite enlightened enough to recognize it yet. But common sense is all you need to understand that it is unreasonable to force working people to attend mandatory meetings at which their boss delivers to them the equivalent of an Ayn Rand book reading. All your boss is entitled to is you doing your job, and listening to that shit is not your job. If all workers took a moment to marinate in the sheer shamelessness of a company forcing them to listen to a spiel about why they should voluntarily reject the idea of improving their own lives, captive audience meetings would lose their power. Any boss that tells you that a union is a bad idea is, at minimum, a boss who is willing to lie to you, and who is acting against your best interests. That person is not your friend. That person is your foe. I have a dream… that one day… the act of holding a captive audience meeting will automatically trigger unanimous support for the union, because all the workers will be so insulted by the audacity of such an act. But until that day, banning them is the only fair thing to do.

The PRO Act, the big fantastic labor reform bill that the Democrats cannot pass through Congress, would automatically make captive audience meetings an unfair labor practice. But the PRO Act will never pass until the filibuster is abolished (and maybe not even then—I have no doubt that there are a number of corporate friendly Democrats who say they support it now only because they know it can’t pass). Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel of the NLRB, who is the single most enthusiastic pro-union government official in America, is trying to regulate captive audience meetings out of existence on her own, though her ability to do so is still up in the air, and also anything good she does will automatically be reversed as soon as a Republican president is elected and nominates Simon Legree as her successor.

So the reality is that states are the playing field where these battles can meaningfully be fought. Over time, more blue states will emulate Minnesota’s reforms, creating an ever more stark divide between blue states with higher union density, higher wages, and greater legal protections for workers, and red states with low union density, lower wages, fewer regulations and a worse social safety net. It’s a natural experiment: Which is better, workers who are healthy and happy and earn enough to pay the bills, or the opposite? (We actually know the answer because the South has been running this experiment for several hundred years. You can drive around Mississippi to see the incredible flourishing of wealth that it has produced.) This divide, which in Fox News terms is presented as “Capitalism vs. Socialism,” can more accurately be seen as Semi-Regulated Capitalism vs. Plantation Capitalism, or Moderate Worker Power vs. No Worker Power. The theory that “labor” is not a word for human beings whose flourishing is the proper interest of the state, but rather a word for a cost that should be brought as close to zero as possible in order to accrue wealth for owners of capital, has been entrenched in red states and particularly the South for much longer than I have been alive. It’s confusing, since it actually makes red states poorer. It only makes sense if you leave enormous numbers of poor, non-white people out of your political calculus altogether, because you don’t consider them to be relevant to a discussion of human welfare.

The point is: Captive audience meetings are the equivalent of your boss stealing money out of your pocket and lying about it and then patting your head and calling you dumb and then saying “I didn’t call you dumb.” A friend would never do that to you. If you are ever subjected to such a thing, you should be insulted. You need not respond to such treatment respectfully. You should instead—respectfully, via collective bargaining—kick your boss’s ass.

This essay is republished from How Things Work, a reader-supported site. If you like it, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Hamilton Nolan.

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The Minnesota Board of Nursing has called an emergency meeting to consider removing its beleaguered executive director over an unspecified “personnel issue.”

In an email to board staff Tuesday morning, President Laura Elseth said Executive Director Kimberly Miller was on leave “effective today.”

The move comes at a critical time for the nursing board. It’s been mired in a backlog of complaints against nurses, with some inside the agency blaming Miller for dysfunction in the work environment, according to a ProPublica investigation published in April.

That story detailed how the board’s slow disciplinary process puts the public in harm’s way. The time to resolve complaints had risen to 11 months, on average, and hundreds of cases remained open as of March. As a result, nurses who are accused of serious misconduct are allowed to keep treating patients.

The meeting to determine Miller’s future, scheduled for Thursday, was announced one day after board members, lawyers from the state attorney general’s office and representatives from Minnesota Management and Budget, the state’s human resources arm, gathered in an emergency meeting that was closed to the public. The purpose was “preliminary consideration of allegations against” Miller, according to Elseth.

Management and Budget confirmed last month that the agency had received complaints about Miller and was reviewing them. Additional details about the investigation are not public because they are related to a “personnel issue,” spokesperson Patrick Hogan said.

Current and former staff members and a former board member told ProPublica that Miller’s poor leadership was among the reasons for the backlog and for turnover among the board’s staff. David Jiang, a former board member, wrote in his resignation letter to Gov. Tim Walz that Miller had created a culture among staff that was “strained” if not “dysfunctional.”

William Hager, a former legal analyst for the board, raised concerns about Miller’s capabilities in a 2022 email to another staff member. “I am very concerned the Director seems to have been unaware of this ‘backlog,’” he wrote. Although the board’s backlog started increasing before Miller became executive director in August 2021, it has grown during her tenure.

In a previous interview with ProPublica, Miller acknowledged the backlog and said the board was working to “right the boat,” though she did not respond to questions about complaints surrounding her job performance.

Miller and 11 board members who attended the meeting on Monday did not respond to requests for comment.

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This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Emily Hopkins.

Campaign finance reform advocates on Thursday cheered final passage by legislators in Minnestoa of a bill prohibiting multinational corporations from spending money on state elections.

In a late-night 34-33 vote, the Minnesota Senate on Wednesday approved the Democracy for the People Act, an omnibus democracy bill that will ban companies with at least a 5% ownership stake by multiple foreign owners or a 1% stake by a single foreign owner from making political contributions in Minnesota state and municipal elections. The legislation also prohibits such companies from making "dark money" donations to super PACs.

"If there was a Mount Rushmore for electoral reform bills in the history of Minnesota... this would be on it," said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat.

The measure—which was approved 70-57 along party lines by the state House of Representatives earlier this month—now heads to the desk of Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who has promised to sign it into law "to put up a firewall to keep Minnesota's elections safe, free, and fair."

"Multinational corporations are corrupting representative democracy by drowning out the voices of the people," said Alexandra Flores-Quilty, campaign director at Free Speech For People, whose model legislation heavily influenced the bill. "The Democracy for the People Act will help put power back in the hands of citizens."

According to the Center for American Progress (CAP):

This legislation will close a dangerous loophole opened by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and reduce foreign influence in Minnesota's elections. It contains additional important measures to strengthen the freedom to vote and modernize the state's campaign finance system, including establishing automatic voter registration, enabling voters to opt in to automatically receive a mail-in ballot for each election, preregistering 16- and 17-year-olds to vote upon turning 18, prohibiting intimidation and interference with the voting process, and increasing disclosure of secret political spending.

"Today, Minnesota took a giant step forward to strengthening free and fair elections, setting a strong example for the nation," CAP senior fellow Michael Sozan said in a statement following the state Senate vote.

"At a time when many states are passing laws to suppress voters or subvert elections, Minnesota has become a national leader in protecting elections and empowering voters," Sozan added. "The provision to stop political spending by foreign-influenced U.S. corporations will limit the ability of foreign entities to spend money in Minnesota's elections and strengthen the ability of Minnesotans to chart their state's future."

There has been some momentum toward enacting similar legislation at the national level in recent years, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, and Rep. Jamie Raskin's (D-Md.) Get Foreign Money Out of U.S. Elections Act.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Campaigners who have long pushed cities and states to adopt bans on foreign corporate interference in elections applauded Friday after the Minnesota House of Representatives passed legislation that would make the state the first to prohibit foreign-influenced corporations from spending money on electoral campaigns.

The provision is part of the Democracy for the People Act, which passed 70-57 along party lines late Thursday night after several hours of debate.

The national nonprofit organization Free Speech for People successfully advocated for Democrats in the state House to include the new rule, which would prohibit companies with at least a 5% ownership stake by multiple foreign owners or a 1% stake by a single foreign owner from spending money in Minnesota state and local elections. The companies would also be barred from donating to super PACs.

"Multinational corporations are corrupting representative democracy by drowning out the voices of the people," said Alexandra Flores-Quilty, campaign director at Free Speech For People. "The Democracy for the People Act will help put power back in the hands of citizens."

The organization pushed lawmakers in Seattle to pass similar legislation in 2020, and Hawaii, California, Washington, New York, and Massachusetts are all considering state-level bans modeled on a proposal developed by Free Speech for People.

The group worked closely with state Rep. Emma Greenman (DFL-63B) to pass the legislation.

"This package of commonsense solutions rests on a simple premise," said Greenman during the debate over the bill, "that our state works best when Minnesota voices are at the center of our democracy."

The legislation now heads to the state Senate, where the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL)—the state's affiliate of the Democratic Party—has a majority of seats. Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) has said he supports the bill.

We Choose Us, a statewide grassroots coalition of advocacy groups and unions, conducted polling last November and found that 80% of Minnesota voters back the provision barring election interference by multinational companies.

"Minnesota has long been a leader in democracy and so it's no surprise that the House voted today to put Minnesota on the path to becoming the first state to prohibit foreign-influenced corporations from spending in our elections," said Lilly Sasse, campaign director for We Choose Us. "It's clear to the people of Minnesota that prohibiting foreign-influenced corporations from spending in our elections is good for our democracy. And after today, it's clear that we're on the path to signing it into law."

The group also found broad support for other provisions in the Democracy for the People Act, including automatic voter registration, backed by 73% of Minnesota voters.

The legislation would also permit 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote, establish a statewide vote-by-mail system, protect election workers and voters from harassment, and require voting instructions and ballots to be provided in non-English languages.

"Minnesotans want to ensure that voters always will have the biggest say in the decisions that will impact their lives," state House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-34B) told the ABC affiliate KSTP. "Our legislation will strengthen the freedom to vote, protect our democratic institutions and Minnesota voters, and empower voters, not corporations or wealthy special interests in our elections.”

Free Speech for People is also backing a federal proposal by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to bar multinational corporations from interfering in elections.

"By banning multinational corporations spending unlimited sums of money to influence our elections," said the group, "we are upholding the letter of the law and getting us one step closer to a democracy that is truly by and for the people.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

The Democracy for the People Act, an omnibus democracy bill designed to strengthen voting rights, protect voters and the elections system, and modernize the campaign finance system, includes a provision that will bar foreign-influenced corporations from spending money to influence state elections. It would also create automatic voter registration, authorize pre-registration for sixteen and seventeen-year-olds to vote, and establish a permanent absentee voting list, among other measures.

The new ban on foreign-influenced corporations spending money to influence elections stems from model legislation developed by Free Speech For People, a national nonpartisan non-profit organization that works to renew our democracy. Free Speech For People helped to pass similar legislation in Seattle, Washington in 2020. Five additional states (Hawaii, California, Washington, New York, and Massachusetts) and the federal government are considering similar bans.

Once enforced, Minnesota's new legislation will ensure that any company that is owned five percent by multiple foreign owners, or one percent by a single foreign owner, will be prohibited from spending money directly or giving it to a super PAC to spend in Minnesota state or local elections.

"Multinational corporations are corrupting representative democracy by drowning out the voices of the people." says Alexandra Flores-Quilty, Campaign Director at Free Speech For People. "The Democracy for the People Act will help put power back in the hands of citizens."

"Corporate executives know where their bread is buttered. This bill addresses the threat to Minnesota's democratic self-government posed by corporate political spending by foreign-influenced corporations," says Free Speech For People Legal Director Ron Fein.

"Minnesota has long been a leader in democracy and so it's no surprise that the House voted today to put Minnesota on the path to becoming the first state to prohibit foreign-influenced corporations from spending in our elections," says Lilly Sasse, Campaign Director of We Choose Us. "When we conducted polling in November, we found that over 80% of Minnesotans support this policy. It's clear to the people of Minnesota that prohibiting foreign-influenced corporations from spending in our elections is good for our democracy. And after today, it's clear that we're on the path to signing it into law."

For more information about the new legislation, visit.

To read the bill, visit.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with Minnesota Public Radio and KARE-TV.

Amy Morris started working at Hilltop Health Care Center in Watkins, Minnesota, in June 2021 with a clean nursing license that belied her looming troubles.

Morris, a licensed practical nurse, had been fired from a nearby nursing home seven months earlier for stealing narcotics from elderly residents. The state of Minnesota’s health department investigated and found that the accusation was substantiated, and then notified the Board of Nursing, the state agency responsible for licensing and monitoring nurses.

But even though state law requires the board to immediately suspend a nurse who presents an imminent risk of harm, it allowed Morris to keep practicing.

In September 2021, supervisors at Hilltop discovered that pain pills were disappearing during Morris’ shifts and called the sheriff. Only then did Hilltop learn of allegations of narcotic theft that had been made nearly a year earlier at the other nursing home.

“I thought, ‘How is she practicing now?’” Meeker County Sheriff Brian Cruze recalled.

The answer, ProPublica found, is that the nursing board’s investigations frequently drag on for months or even years. As a result, nurses are sometimes allowed to keep practicing despite allegations of serious misconduct.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In the face of intense criticism eight years ago, the nursing board announced changes to improve its performance. But that progress was short-lived, ProPublica found.

Since 2018, the average time taken to resolve a complaint has more than doubled to 11 months, while hundreds of complaints have been left open for more than a year; state law generally requires complaints to be resolved in a year. Some nurses, like Morris, have gone on to jeopardize the health of more patients as the board failed to act on earlier complaints.

Some of the board’s problems stem from vexingly bureaucratic issues, ProPublica found. For example, the board had started meeting every month to resolve cases more quickly. But, for the past few years, it has gone back to meeting every other month.

Some complaints get caught in a general email inbox, where they sometimes sit for weeks or months before being forwarded to staff for investigation, according to current and former staffers.

And the board, which oversees licensing and discipline for more than 150,000 nurses, has been perennially shorthanded. By state law, the board is supposed to have 12 nurses and four members of the public. But at times, it has operated with barely enough members to make up a quorum. In March, Gov. Tim Walz made five appointments to the board, leaving one vacancy.

Other problems stem from the board’s professional staff, who investigate complaints and prepare the materials the board uses to make disciplinary decisions. Several former employees told ProPublica that the lag time in resolving discipline cases could be attributed to a dysfunctional office environment and a wave of resignations, many of them since the board’s August 2021 selection of veteran staffer Kimberly Miller as executive director.

David Jiang, who resigned from the board in August because he moved out of the state, told Walz in a letter that the board’s problems “arise because of a general lack of confidence from the staff, lack of communications to the board, and, most importantly, a general lack of oversight by the Board.”

Walz’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment about Jiang’s concerns.

William Hager, a former legal analyst for the board, vented his frustrations about Miller’s leadership in an email to another employee in February 2022. “I am very concerned the Director seems to have been unaware of this ‘backlog,’” Hager, who left the board a few months later, said in the email. Miller “has chosen to not learn how to work” the case management system “or engage with software and staff to oversee our work.”

Miller, who worked for the board for more than two decades before becoming executive director, acknowledged the case backlog in an interview but said she was working to “right the boat,” including by hiring a consultant to improve board performance. Although the number of pending complaints is higher now than it was after a critical 2015 state audit, the backlog has been reduced by about a quarter since peaking last summer, according to state data.

“I think that we are on a good course at this point, and we’re making the changes that we need to, and learning to work as a team, and working out our system that I think is going to be really wonderful at some point,” Miller said in an interview. She did not respond to questions about criticism of her job performance.

Miller blamed the backlog on the transition to remote work during the height of the pandemic and on a new case management system that she said board members found difficult to use. She said some cases simply take longer than others. When a nurse won’t agree to discipline as part of a settlement, she said, the board must file the case in the state’s administrative court, where Miller said scheduling a hearing can take “at least a year.”

But a spokesperson for the administrative court said that the court was not the source of delays, and nurse discipline cases are concluded on average in four months from the time they are filed.

The state’s own data, in part, counters Miller’s assertions of progress. The board closed more complaints in fiscal years 2020 and 2021, respectively, than it did in 2022, when vaccines were widely available and many industries were returning to in-person work.

It was not clear why the board did not move quickly to suspend Morris after the substantiated report of pill theft. Miller declined to discuss individual discipline cases, citing confidentiality rules.

ProPublica contacted 10 current and seven former members of the board. None responded to requests for comment.

The nursing board finally issued a temporary suspension of Morris’ license in November 2021 — a month after prosecutors filed charges in the Hilltop case. She is facing felony theft charges for both incidents and has failed to show up in court. She has not entered a plea because she has not appeared to face the charges, and authorities have issued warrants for her arrest.

She did not return messages left on her cellphone and sent by email.

Administrators for both facilities declined to comment. Records show that one Hilltop manager was frustrated by a lack of warning about Morris. The manager complained to a state inspector that there was “nothing flagged on the background study or license verification,” according to the facility’s inspection report.

“This is not a facility system problem but a state system problem,” the manager said.

When Christy Iverson started working for the board last year on investigations of nurse misconduct, she was surprised by the backlog of cases. Some she took on were around five years old. It was embarrassing, she said, to put her name on cases that had been on hold for so long.

Then, about four months into her tenure, she said, she was instructed to help the licensing staff with an influx of applications ahead of an anticipated nursing strike at several hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth areas. Iverson, who had spent over a decade working in leadership positions at an area hospital, said she largely spent her days folding letters and sorting paperwork. So she quit.

The problems she observed weren’t new. A Minneapolis Star Tribune investigation in 2013 had sparked the state audit that found serious delays at the board and led to improvements for a time.

With auditors scrutinizing it in 2014, the board began to dispose of complaints more quickly. The average age of closed cases was reduced from six months to four. But delays then climbed, eventually reaching the current average of 11 months, according to state data.

And despite a state mandate to resolve complaints within a year, the percentage of cases that go beyond that mark has soared from less than 5% in 2016 to 30% now, the state data shows.

Miller said the board is mindful of the backlog and puts a priority on “all of our more egregious cases.”

An internal email provided to ProPublica described how complaints can sit for weeks or even months simply because they weren’t forwarded in a timely manner. Those delays, the employee wrote, were “unprofessional” and “inefficient.”

For example, a complaint about a nurse stealing medication sat in the main inbox for more than two months before it was forwarded to the discipline staff, according to that internal email. It was the fourth complaint the board had received about that nurse. The employee’s email describing these delays was sent to several other employees and the board’s executive director in December. Miller did not answer ProPublica’s questions about the employee’s allegations.

Some delays begin in the earliest stages of processing a complaint, according to former employees and lawyers who represent nurses in front of the board. Eric Ray, a former discipline program assistant from January 2020 until fall of 2021, said in an interview that the board didn’t always meet statutory requirements to notify nurses of a complaint within 60 days of receiving it. Ray said he saw complaints “sitting for months or a year” before the board sent a notice to the nurse.

Miller said the board “did take seriously the 60-day issue” and recently made changes to the management software so that it would remind caseworkers that a letter needed to be sent out.

The notification delays can also hurt a nurse’s ability to mount a defense, according to lawyers who defend nurses in front of the board. As complaints age, they become more difficult to investigate, evidence becomes harder to locate, nurses move on to other jobs and witnesses forget key details.

“This is your professional career on the line,” said attorney Marit Sivertson. “It makes it incredibly difficult for someone to be able to fairly defend themselves.”

The state law that requires the board to resolve complaints within a year also gives the board sweeping discretion to take longer if it determines the case can’t be resolved in that time. Still, Sivertson said that does not explain why so many cases take more than a year to resolve. She and eight other lawyers have met several times to raise these issues with Miller and assistant attorney general Hans Anderson, legal counsel to the board. In October, they presented their concerns at a board meeting. They said they are still waiting for a response.

Del Shea Perry is also still waiting. It’s been nearly five years since the death of her son, Hardel Sherrell, in the Beltrami County Jail in northern Minnesota. The incident sparked public outrage and led to reforms and consequences for some of the officials connected to his care. Sherrell died on the floor of his cell after guards and medical staff refused his pleas for help. A pathologist hired by Perry as part of a wrongful death lawsuit later ruled that he died of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a treatable neurological disorder.

State legislators passed a law named after Sherrell that aims to improve access to health care for jail inmates. Todd Leonard, the jail doctor who monitored Sherell’s condition via telephone, had his medical license indefinitely suspended in early 2022. And this month, Beltrami County and Leonard’s company agreed to settle Perry’s lawsuit by paying Sherrell’s family $2.6 million.

But there have been no consequences for Michelle Skroch, a nurse who worked for Leonard and was directly in charge of Sherrell’s care in the last two days of his life. According to a state administrative judge who ruled in the doctor’s licensing case, Skroch failed to provide care to Sherrell or even check his vital signs as he lay nearly lifeless on the floor of his cell wearing adult diapers soaked in his own urine.

An emergency room doctor had released Sherrell to the jail with instructions to bring him back if his symptoms worsened. Instead, Skroch instructed jail staff not to assist him because she said there was nothing medically wrong with him, according to the judge’s report.

The judge wrote that it could appear from Skroch’s notes that she had “provided some type of care or assessment” of Sherrell. “She, in fact, did not,” the judge wrote.

Video later showed she had only briefly peered into his cell twice and had missed that he was in distress: Sherrell was unconscious on the floor with a white substance coming out of his mouth.

In response to Perry’s lawsuit, Skroch testified that she was able to sufficiently assess Sherrell’s condition without touching him and that she believed his condition was improving. She also noted that emergency room doctors had diagnosed him with weakness and “malingering,” a medical term for faking illness.

In ruling that the medical board had cause to discipline Leonard, the judge also called for the nursing board to investigate Skroch’s “dereliction of duty and shocking indifference.” Noting that the doctor was both Skroch’s supervisor and her romantic partner, the judge wrote it appeared “she was unconcerned about being held accountable by the attending physician.”

Five years later, Skroch still has an unblemished license and her online professional profile identifies her as the nursing director of Leonard’s medical firm. She declined to comment.

Another nurse who provided care to Sherrell at the jail filed an official complaint about Skroch with the nursing board. But she said that after an interview with a board representative about a year after the death, she has not heard an update. The board is required to provide updates every 120 days on the status of a case.

“I have no idea what the board is doing, and it sure as hell shouldn’t take 4 years to investigate,” Perry wrote in a text message.

When a nurse is accused of misconduct, the board can seek discipline ranging from a reprimand, which is essentially a public slap on the wrist, to a license revocation, which means the nurse can no longer work in the field. Typically, the board allows a nurse to continue working while it tries to reach an agreement or takes the complaint to the state’s administrative court.

But in cases when the nurse poses an immediate risk to patients, the board can use its power to issue a temporary suspension and remove the nurse from practice while it investigates.

The board rarely used that power until the state legislature changed the law in 2014. Under the revised rules, the board wasn’t just authorized to use the emergency suspension — it was required to do so in cases where there was “imminent risk of serious harm.”

As a result, the board ramped up its use of temporary suspensions, issuing 55 of them from 2014 to 2017, more than twice as many as it had in the preceding four years, according to data reported to a national database of actions taken against medical professionals.

In 2018, this increase was touted by Daphne Ponds, then a board employee. Speaking at a national seminar on nurse regulation, Ponds, who helped investigate complaints against nurses, told her peers that the Star Tribune’s stories had “made us look bad, made us look ineffective.”

She added, “The legislature had really sent the board a clear message that you have this tool of temporary suspension — you need to use it.”

But about that time, the board had reverted to its pre-audit practices. In 2018, it issued only three temporary suspensions, according to a national discipline database. And it issued only 11 over the next three years.

Miller said the board is now inclined to protect the public by pursuing a voluntary agreement to stop practicing with nurses who’ve been the subject of a complaint. She said this is because there are “more hoops” to jump through to issue a temporary suspension, while the voluntary agreements can be drafted and signed by the nurse in days.

Asked how she reconciles this with a state law requiring a temporary suspension when there is an imminent risk of serious harm, Miller said Minnesota’s attorney general had signed off on the strategy.

Hager, the former legal analyst for the board, said that while a stipulation to cease practicing may work in some cases, it doesn’t work in all of them, especially when nurses don’t want to cooperate. In one case reviewed by ProPublica, a nurse kept her license for more than a year because she refused to sign a stipulation. The board suspended her only after she was convicted of financial exploitation.

Sometimes, the delays hurt patients. In early 2018, the board received complaints about a nurse named La Vang that accused him of stealing narcotics from patients — including one allegation that was validated by the state health department.

But the board didn’t issue a temporary suspension, and Vang got a new job later that year. He stole pain medicines from another patient, LaVonne Borsheim, according to a lawsuit that Borsheim and her husband brought against Vang and the home care company that employed him.

In that lawsuit, Borsheim described pain so severe that she didn’t want to go on living. (Attempts to reach Vang for comment were unsuccessful.)

By the time the nursing board got Vang to sign an agreement to cease practicing in August 2018, the police had already arrested him on charges that he had stolen Borsheim’s drugs. Vang pleaded guilty in federal court to obtaining controlled substances by fraud. At his sentencing, Vang’s attorney said he was in treatment for drug addiction and was embarrassed that he had violated Borsheim's trust. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

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This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Emily Hopkins and Jeremy Kohler.

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A BNSF train carrying ethanol derailed and caught fire early Thursday morning in Raymond, Minnesota, forcing residents living near the crash site to evacuate.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has faced backlash for responding inadequately to the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, said the Federal Railroad Administration is "on the ground' in Raymond following the derailment.

"At present no injuries or fatalities have been reported," said Buttigieg. "We are tracking closely as more details emerge."

BNSF, which is controlled by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, has lobbied aggressively against enhanced rail safety regulations at the state and federal levels in recent years.

An OpenSecrets analysis published earlier this month found that BNSF has spent nearly $13 million on state-level lobbying since 2003. BNSF's parent company is also among the rail industry's top federal lobbying spenders over the past two decades, according to federal disclosures.

BNSF said in a statement that more than 20 train cars "carrying mixed freight including ethanol and corn syrup" derailed in Raymond on Thursday.

The wreck and resulting blaze forced local authorities to issue evacuation orders for people living within a half-mile of the site. The Minnesota Department of Transportation said a nearby highway was also closed due to the fire.

The local sheriff's department said in a press release that "no travel is advised to the city of Raymond" as emergency workers attempt to contain the fire.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Minnesota on Thursday scored a significant procedural win in a lawsuit seeking to hold Big Oil accountable for lying to consumers about the dangers of burning fossil fuels and thus worsening the deadly climate crisis.

In a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with a lower court that the state's climate fraud lawsuit against the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, and Koch Industries can proceed in state court, where it was filed.

"This ruling is a major victory for Minnesota's efforts to hold oil giants accountable for their climate lies, and a major defeat for fossil fuel companies' attempt to escape justice," Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement.

"Big Oil companies have fought relentlessly to avoid facing the evidence of their climate fraud in state court, but once again judges have unanimously rejected their arguments," said Wiles. "After years of Big Oil's delay tactics, it's time for the people of Minnesota to have their day in court."

Fossil fuel corporations have known for decades that burning coal, oil, and gas generates planet-heating pollution that damages the environment and public health. But to prolong extraction and maximize profits, the industry launched a disinformation campaign to downplay the life-threatening consequences of fossil fuel combustion.

"Big Oil companies have fought relentlessly to avoid facing the evidence of their climate fraud in state court, but once again judges have unanimously rejected their arguments."

Dozens of state and local governments have filed lawsuits arguing that Big Oil's longstanding effort to sow doubt about the reality of anthropogenic climate change—and to minimize the fossil fuel industry's leading role in causing it—has delayed decarbonization of the economy, resulting in widespread harm.

Since 2017, the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, along with 35 municipalities in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Washington, and Puerto Rico, have sued fossil fuel giants in an attempt to hold them financially liable for misleading the public about the destructive effects of greenhouse gas emissions from their products.

"Minnesota is not the first state or local government to file this type of climate change litigation," the Eighth Circuit declared Thursday. "Nor is this the first time" that fossil fuel producers have sought to shift jurisdiction over such suits from state courts to federal court, where they believe they will be more likely to avoid punishment.

"But our sister circuits rejected them in each case," the federal appeals court continued. "Today, we join them."

According to the Center for Climate Integrity, "Six federal appeals courts and 13 federal district courts have now unanimously ruled against the fossil fuel industry's arguments to avoid climate accountability trials in state courts."

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice moved for the first time to support communities suing Big Oil by urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Exxon and Suncor Energy's request to review lower court rulings allowing a lawsuit from three Colorado communities to go forward in state court.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The operator of a Minnesota nuclear power plant said the facility would be taken offline Friday to repair a new leak near the Mississippi River, an announcement that came a week after the company and state officials belatedly acknowledged a separate leak that occurred in November.

Xcel Energy insisted in a statement Thursday that the leak at its Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant poses "no risk to the public or the environment," but a team of federal regulators is monitoring the groundwater in the area amid concerns that radioactive materials—specifically tritium—could wind up in drinking water.

Valerie Myers, a senior health physicist with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a local CBS affiliate that "there are wells between the ones that are showing elevated tritium and the Mississippi that are not showing any elevated levels."

"We are watching that because the ground flow is toward the Mississippi," added Myers.

The Associated Pressreported Friday, that "after the first leak was found in November, Xcel Energy made a short-term fix to capture water from a leaking pipe and reroute it back into the plant for re-use."

"However, monitoring equipment indicated Wednesday that a small amount of new water from the original leak had reached the groundwater," the outlet noted. "Operators discovered that, over the past two days, the temporary solution was no longer capturing all of the leaking water, Xcel Energy said."

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Health said in a statement that they "have no evidence at this point to indicate a current or imminent risk to the public and will continue to monitor groundwater samples."

"Should an imminent risk arise, we will inform the public promptly," the agencies said. "We encourage the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has regulatory oversight of the plant's operations, to share ongoing public communications on the leak and on mitigation efforts to help residents best understand the situation."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

"The government shouldn't be able to tell us what social media apps we can and can't use."

"The government shouldn't be able to tell us what social media apps we can and can't use," the ACLU asserted via Twitter. "We have a right to free speech."

In a Wednesday letter led by the free expression advocacy group PEN America, 16 organizations including the ACLU argued that "proposals to ban TikTok risk violating First Amendment rights and setting a dangerous global precedent for the restriction of speech."

"More effective, rights-respecting solutions are available and provide a viable alternative to meet the serious concerns raised by TikTok," the groups contended, pointing to a February proposal by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) to expedite a probe of the company by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States as a possible way "to mitigate security risks without denying users access to the platform."

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) has emerged as the leading congressional voice against banning TikTok, saying Wednesday that he fears the platform is being singled out due in significant part to "xenophobic anti-China rhetoric."

"Why the hell are we whipping ourselves into a hysteria to scapegoat TikTok?" Bowman asked in a phone interview with The New York Times while he traveled by train to Washington, D.C. to speak at a #KeepTikTok rally, where content creators, entrepreneurs, users, and activists gathered to defend the platform.

In his speech, Bowman noted that "TikTok as a platform has created a community and a space for free speech for 150 million Americans and counting," and is a place where "5 million small businesses are selling their products and services and making a living... at a time when our economy is struggling in so many ways."

Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the San Francisco-based digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, concurred with Bowman, tweeting Thursday that "if you think the U.S. needs a TikTok ban and not a comprehensive privacy law regulating data brokers, you don't care about privacy, you just hate that a Chinese company has built a dominant social media platform."

Two other House Democrats—Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and California's Robert Garcia—joined Bowman in addressing Wednesday's rally.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before his speech, Pocan acknowledged "valid concerns when it comes to social media disinformation and all the rest."

"But to say that a single platform is the problem largely because it's Chinese-owned honestly, I think, borders more on xenophobia than addressing that core issue," he stressed.

Garcia, a self-described TikTok "super-consumer," asserted on MSNBC Thursday morning that "before we ban it, I think we should work on the privacy concerns first."

TikTok "speaks to the next generation... LGBTQ+ folks are coming out, people are being educated on topics, I think we need to be a little more thoughtful and not ban TikTok," the gay lawmaker added.

Wednesday's rally came a day before TikTok CEO Zi Chew testified before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, some of whose members expressed open hostility toward the Chinese government.

"To the American people watching today, hear this: TikTok is a weapon by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on you and manipulate what you see and exploit for future generations," said committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.).

Chew—who committed to a number of reforms including prioritizing safety for young users, firewall protection for U.S. user data, and greater corporate transparency—took exception to some of the lawmakers' assertions.

"I don't think ownership is the issue here," he said. "With a lot of respect, American social companies don't have a good track record with data privacy and user security."

"I mean, look at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica—just one example," Chew added, referring to the British political consulting firm that harvested the data of tens of millions of U.S. Facebook users without their consent to aid 2016 Republican campaigns including former President Donald Trump's.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Minnesota last week became just the fourth U.S. state to guarantee universal free school meals, triggering a fresh wave of demands and arguments for a similar federal policy to feed kids.

"Universal school meals is now law in Minnesota!" Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents the state, tweeted Monday. "Now, we need to pass our Universal School Meals Program Act to guarantee free school meals to every child across the country."

Omar's proposal, spearheaded in the upper chamber by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), "would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income, eliminate school meal debt, and strengthen local economies by incentivizing local food procurement," the lawmakers' offices explained in 2021.

Congressional Republicans last year blocked the continuation of a Covid-19 policy enabling public schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to all 50 million children, and now, many families face rising debt over childrens' cafeteria charges.

"The school bus service doesn't charge fares. Neither should the school lunch service."

Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, highlighted Monday that while children who attend public schools generally have not only free education but also free access to bathrooms, textbooks, computer equipment, playgrounds, gyms, and sports gear, "around the middle of each school day, the free schooling service is briefly suspended for lunch."

"How much each kid is charged is based on their family income except that, if a kid lives in a school or school district where 40% or more of the kids are eligible for free lunch, then they are also eligible for free lunch even if their family income would otherwise be too high," he detailed. "Before Covid, in 2019, 68.1% of the kids were charged $0, 5.8% were charged $0.40, and 26.1% were charged the full $4.33... The total cost of the 4.9 billion meals is around $21 billion per year. In 2019, user fees covered $5.6 billion of this cost."

Bruenig—whose own child has access to free school meals because of the community eligibility program—continued:

The approximately $5.6 billion of school lunch fees collected in 2019 were equal to 0.7% of the total cost of K-12 schooling. In order to collect these fees, each school district has to set up a school lunch payments system, often by contracting with third-party providers like Global Payments. They also have to set up a system for dealing with kids who are not enrolled in the free lunch program but who show up to school with no money in their school lunch account or in their pockets. In this scenario, schools will either have to make the kid go without lunch, give them a free lunch for the day (but not too many times), or give them a lunch while assigning their lunch account a debt.

Eligibility for the $0 and $0.40 lunches is based on income, but this does not mean that everyone with an eligible income successfully signs up for the program. As with all means-tested programs, the application of the means test not only excludes people with ineligible incomes, but also people with eligible incomes who fail to successfully navigate the red tape of the welfare bureaucracy.

The think tank leader tore into arguments against universal free meals for kids, declaring that "hiving off a tiny part of the public school bundle and charging a means-tested fee for it is extremely stupid."

Bruenig pointed out that socializing the cost of child benefits like school meals helps "equalize the conditions of similarly-situated families with different numbers of children" and "smooths incomes across the lifecycle by ensuring that, when people have kids, their household financial situation remains mostly the same."

"Indeed, this is actually the case for the welfare state as whole, not just child benefits," the expert emphasized, explaining that like older adults and those with disabilities, children cannot and should not work, which "makes it impossible to receive personal labor income, meaning that some other non-labor income system is required."

Conservative opponents of free school lunches often claim that "fees serve an important pedagogical function in society to get people to understand personal responsibility" and because they "are means-tested, they serve an important income-redistributive function in society," he noted. "Both arguments are hard to take seriously."

Pushing back against the first claim, Bruenig stressed that right-wingers don't apply it to other aspects of free schooling such as bus services. He also wrote that the means-testing claim "is both untrue and at odds with their general attitudes on, not just redistribution, but on how child benefit programs specifically should be structured."

A tax for everyone with a certain income intended to make up the $5.6 billion in school meal fees, he argued, "would have a larger base and thus represent a smaller share of the income of each person taxed and such a tax would smooth incomes over time," while also eliminating means-testing—which would allow schools to feed all kids and ditch costly payment systems.

As Nora De La Cour reported Sunday for Jacobin: "The fight for school meals traces its roots all the way back to maternalist Progressive Era efforts to shield children and workers from the ravages of unregulated capitalism. In her bookThe Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, Jennifer Gaddis describes how early school lunch crusaders envisioned meal programs that would be integral to schools' educational missions, immersing students in hands-on learning about nutrition, gardening, food preparation, and home economics. Staffed by duly compensated professionals, these programs would collectivize and elevate care work, making it possible for mothers of all economic classes to efficiently nourish their young."

Now, families who experienced the positive impact of the pandemic-era program want more from the federal government.

"When schools adopt universal meals through community eligibility or another program, we see improvements in students' academic performance, behavior, attendance, and psychosocial functioning," wrote De La Cour, whose reporting also includes parent and cafeteria worker perspectives. "Above all, the implementation of universal meals causes meal participation to shoot up, demonstrating that the need far exceeds the number of kids who are able to get certified."

Crystal FitzSimons, director of school-based programs at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), told Jacobin, "There is a feeling that we can't go back."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Surrounded by students, teachers, and advocates, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Friday afternoon signed into law a bill to provide breakfast and lunch at no cost to all of the state's roughly 820,000 K-12 pupils regardless of their household income.

The move to make Minnesota the fourth U.S. state to guarantee universal free school meals—joining California, Maine, and Colorado—elicited praise from progressives.

"Beautiful," tweeted Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University.

"No child should go hungry for any reason, period."

UC-Berkeley professor and former U.S. labor secretary Robert Reich wrote on social media: "Let this serve as a reminder that poverty is a policy choice. In the richest country in the world, it is absolutely inexcusable that millions of our children go to school hungry because they are living in poverty."

An estimated 1 in 6 children in Minnesota don't get enough to eat on a regular basis. But 1 in 4 food-insecure kids live in households that don't qualify for the federal free and reduced meal program, leading to "mounting school lunch debts in the tens of thousands of dollars," Minnesota Public Radioreported.

Tens of thousands of children are set to benefit from Minnesota's new law, which could be operational as early as summer school in July. Some of them were there to thank Walz at the signing ceremony, where the sense of elation was palpable.

"As a former teacher, I know that providing free breakfast and lunch for our students is one of the best investments we can make to lower costs, support Minnesota's working families, and care for our young learners and the future of our state," Walz said. "This bill puts us one step closer to making Minnesota the best state for kids to grow up, and I am grateful to all of the legislators and advocates for making it happen."

The Minnesota House—led by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party, the state's Democratic affiliate—first passed the bill in February in a 70-58 party-line vote. The state Senate—where the DFL holds just a single-seat advantage—approved it on Tuesday by a 38-26 margin. The state House rubber-stamped an amended version of the bill on Thursday.

In a now-viral clip from the state Senate's debate over the bill earlier this week. Sen. Steve Drazkowski (R-20) questioned whether hunger is really a problem in Minnesota—even as the state's food banks reported a record surge in visits last year, months before federal lawmakers slashed pandemic-era Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

"I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry," Drazkowski said before voting against the bill. "I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don't have access to enough food to eat."

During Friday's signing ceremony, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (DFL) said, "To our decision-makers who believe they have never met someone who is experiencing or has experienced hunger: Hi, my name is Peggy Flanagan, and I was 1 in 6 of those Minnesota children who experienced hunger."

"By providing free breakfast and lunch to all of our students, we are removing barriers and removing stigma from the lunch room," said Flanagan. "We are helping family pocketbooks, especially for those 1 in 4 who don't qualify for financial assistance with school meals. We are leading with our values that no child should go hungry for any reason, period."

"This is an investment in the well-being of our children, as well as an investment in their academic success," Flanagan added, calling the "generation-changing" bill "the most important thing" she's ever worked on in her life.

"By providing free breakfast and lunch to all of our students, we are removing barriers and removing stigma from the lunch room... This is an investment in the well-being of our children, as well as an investment in their academic success."

As Minnesota Reformerreported: "The majority of Minnesota schools receive federal funding from the National School Lunch Program, which reimburses schools for each meal served, though it doesn't cover the cost of the entire meal. Under the new law, schools are prohibited from charging students for the remaining cost, and the state will foot the rest of the bill—about $200 million annually."

MPR noted that "the legislation is similar to a program that was introduced during the pandemic to provide meals for all students, but was discontinued at the end of last year."

Last month, The Star Tribune editorial board opined that providing free breakfast and lunch to all of Minnesota's students, including affluent ones, is "excessive."

Pushing back against this argument for means-testing, Darcy Stueber—director of Nutrition Services for Mankato Area Public Schools and public policy chair of the Minnesota School Nutrition Association—asserted that meals should be guaranteed to all kids at no cost, just like other basic learning necessities.

"We don't charge for Chromebooks and desks and things like that," she told MPR. "It's a part of their day and they're there for so many hours. It just completes that whole learning experience for the child."

Minnesota Rep. Sydney Jordan (DFL-60A), the bill's lead author, made the same point to counter GOP lawmakers' complaints following the initial passage of the legislation.

"We give every kid in our school a desk," Jordan said last month. "There are lots of kids out there that can afford to buy a desk, but they get a desk because they go to school."

Walz, for his part, stressed Friday that his administration is "just getting started" when it comes to boosting education funding.

"The big stuff," said the governor, "is still coming."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Xcel Energy in late November told Minnesota and federal officials about a leak of 400,000 gallons of water contaminated with radioactive tritium at its Monticello nuclear power plant, but it wasn't until Thursday that the incident and ongoing cleanup effort were made public.

In a statement, Xcel said Thursday that it "took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment."

"Ongoing monitoring from over two dozen on-site monitoring wells confirms that the leaked water is fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility or in any local drinking water," the company added.

The Monticello plant, adjacent to the Mississippi River, is roughly 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Asked why it didn't notify the public sooner, the Minneapolis-based utility giant said: "We understand the importance of quickly informing the communities we serve if a situation poses an immediate threat to health and safety. In this case, there was no such threat."

But Excel wasn't the only entity with knowledge of the situation. The company said it alerted the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and state authorities on November 22, the day the leak was confirmed.

According toThe Star Tribune: "A high level of tritium in groundwater was reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when first discovered, which published the 'nonemergency' report in its public list of nuclear events the next day. The listing said the source of the tritium was being investigated."

As Minnesota Public Radioexplained, "The NRC's November public notice was not in a news release" and was only visible "online at the bottom of a list of 'non-emergency' event notification reports."

Asked why they waited four months to inform residents, state regulators who are monitoring the cleanup said they were waiting for more information.

"We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, however Xcel had not yet identified the source of the leak and its location," Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) spokesperson Michael Rafferty said Thursday.

The source of the leak—a broken pipe connecting two buildings—was detected on December 19 and quickly patched.

"Now that we have all the information about where the leak occurred, how much was released into groundwater, and that contaminated groundwater had moved beyond the original location, we are sharing this information," said Rafferty.

Dan Huff, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), said, "If at any time someone's health is at risk, we would notify folks immediately." However, he continued, "this is a contained site underneath the Xcel plant and it has not threatened any Minnesotans' health."

Echoing Xcel and MDH officials, MPCA said in a statement: "The leak has been stopped and has not reached the Mississippi River or contaminated drinking water sources. There is no evidence at this time to indicate a risk to any drinking water wells in the vicinity of the plant."

Kirk Koudelka, MPCA assistant commissioner for land and strategic initiatives, declared that "our top priority is protecting residents and the environment."

"The MPCA is working closely with other state agencies to oversee Xcel Energy's monitoring data and cleanup activities," said Koudelka. "We are working to ensure this cleanup is concluded as thoroughly as possible with minimal or no risk to drinking water supplies."

Since reporting the leak, Xcel has been pumping, storing, and processing contaminated groundwater, which "contains tritium levels below federal thresholds," according toThe Associated Press.

As the news outlet reported:

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that occurs naturally in the environment and is a common by-product of nuclear plant operations. It emits a weak form of beta radiation that does not travel very far and cannot penetrate human skin, according to the NRC. A person who drank water from a spill would get only a low dose, the NRC says.

The NRC says tritium spills happen from time to time at nuclear plants, but that it has repeatedly determined that they've either remained limited to the plant property or involved such low offsite levels that they didn't affect public health or safety. Xcel reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.

Xcel said it has recovered about 25% of the spilled tritium so far, that recovery efforts will continue and that it will install a permanent solution this spring.

"Xcel Energy is considering building above-ground storage tanks to store the contaminated water it recovers, and is considering options for the treatment, reuse, or final disposal of the collected tritium and water," AP noted. "State regulators will review the options the company selects."

As MPR reported, news of the leak "comes as Xcel is asking federal regulators to extend Monticello's operating license through 2050—when the plant will be nearly 80 years old."

The company says that doing so "is critical to meeting a new state law mandating fully carbon-free electricity by 2040," The Star Tribune reported.

But on social media, commentators pointed out that such pollution "doesn't happen with solar and wind."

"Building more nuclear power plants is a bad solution to the climate crisis," one user from Minnesota tweeted. "A good solution is more wind turbines and solar panels."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

During the 2021 drought, nearly 800 Minnesota farmers with high-capacity wells pumped 6.5 billion more gallons of water than their permits allowed, state records show.

Farms on land owned or operated by R.D. Offutt Co., a potato-growing giant that has become one of the biggest water users in the state, were responsible for 23 percent of the excessive pumping.

“That’s quite a bit of overuse,” said Randall Doneen, a section manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “We’re trying to get people back into compliance.”

The overpumping in 2021 put more stress on already depleted aquifers, lakes, and streams and raised the risk that neighboring wells would run dry.

A Star Tribune review of water permit data reported each year to the DNR found more than three of four water users who violated their permits were agricultural irrigators. But they are unlikely to face fines or other consequences because of laws that the DNR says are too lenient. Many irrigators may not even have to pay for the extra water they used, based on the tiered fee system the state charges heavy users.

In some cases, farmers needed to go over their permits to keep their crops alive, said Jake Wildman, president of the Irrigators Association of Minnesota.

“Nobody wants to have to pump as much we did,” Wildman said. “We all understand rules and regulations are there for a reason. We all want to follow them. I truly believe we did the best we could with the tools we had and climate we were given.”

The permit violations on R.D. Offutt farms is particularly concerning to neighbors and water quality advocates, because many of them are located in the Pineland Sands region of central Minnesota. The same sandy porous soil that makes the land attractive for growing potatoes also makes it vulnerable to pollution.

When too much water is drawn from the ground for crops, it allows pollutants to seep into the soil, potentially contaminating drinking water.

Based in Fargo and founded 60 years ago, R.D. Offutt is one of the largest potato growing operations in the world. Much of their produce is cut into French fries, and the company is a major supplier to McDonalds restaurants.

It rapidly expanded in Minnesota in the past two decades. Many forests and timberlands in the Pineland Sands area, which covers parts of Hubbard, Wadena, Cass, and Becker counties, were cleared and turned into irrigated cropland.

By 2018, the company’s growth concerned DNR officials to the point that the agency stopped approving its well permit applications. The DNR said a comprehensive study was needed to find out whether increased water use was drying up lakes and streams, or hurting water quality in wells in the region. R.D. Offutt had dozens of pending well applications at the time.

Rather than fund the study, the company reached a deal with the DNR that withdrew all but five permit applications. The DNR asked lawmakers to fund the study. They did not, and it was never done.

By 2021, R.D. Offutt was the registered landowner or agent of more than 650 high-capacity well permits in the state. Together, those farms pumped 22 billion gallons of water — about 2.5 billion more than was used by the entire city of Minneapolis’ water treatment plant, which serves about 500,000 people.

The overuse was a result of just how bad the 2021 drought was, R.D. Offutt spokeswoman Jennifer Maleitzke said. It was the state’s most severe dry spell since at least 1988.

“Without measurable rainfall, farmers like us relied on irrigation to make sure crops across the state survived and there were no disruptions to the food supply chain,” she said.

In the years before the drought, R.D. Offutt farms complied with their permits. Less than 1 percent of the company’s permit holders went over their limit in 2020 and 2019.

“Every single growing season is different,” Maleitzke said. “We take our responsibility seriously to preserve the water supply in Minnesota, and we’ve made significant investments during our 60 years of farming potatoes to do just that.”

The overuse shows how irrigators and high-capacity water users face few repercussions if they violate a permit, said Mike Tauber, who lives in the Pineland Sands region in Backus, Minn., and has helped organize petitions demanding in-depth water quality studies.

“They’re thumbing their nose at the agencies,” Tauber said.

Everyone with a permit to draw more than 1 million gallons of water a year is required to report how much water they use. But that reporting is largely done on the honor system. There are no compliance checks.

The city of Blaine opened three new wells and pumped millions of gallons in 2021 and 2022 without getting permits. The DNR learned about it only after 141 nearby private well owners complained about running dry.

Blaine, too, likely won’t face any fines. Lawmakers have given the DNR few ways to penalize anyone that violates the permits.

The DNR could issue an “administrative penalty” ranging up to $20,000, depending on the severity of the breach. But the fine would be forgiven as soon as the user comes into compliance, Doneen said.

The DNR only typically issues a penalty in the most egregious cases, Doneen said. He doesn’t except any fines to be issued for farmers who overpumped during the drought.

But dry spells are precisely when the state should be more aggressive in protecting water supplies, said Carrie Jennings, research and policy director at the St. Paul-based Freshwater Society.

“That’s the critical time when you would want to do it,” she said.

DNR administrators have asked lawmakers in each of the last two years to allow them to increase the fines they can impose on permit violations. A bill in the House would let the agency fine up to $40,000. The agency also would get more discretion over whether fines are forgiven.

“The tools we have aren’t what we need,” said Bob Meier, assistant DNR commissioner.

Permit holders that exceeded the limits would still need to pay the same tiered water-use rates as everyone else. All permit holders pay $140 a year to pump up to 50 million gallons of water. They’re charged $3.50 for every million gallons after that. The price rises again after 100 million.

The average R.D. Offutt permit that was violated had a limit of 43 million gallons in 2021. Those that went over, but still pumped less than 50 million gallons, wouldn’t have to pay any more than the $140 minimum. The users that exceeded the permits did so by an average of 10 million gallons. If they were only permitted to pump 43 million gallons, those users would need to pay an extra $10.50 — roughly the cost of a Big Mac with large fries.

This story was shared with permission through the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Fighting drought, potato farmers in northern Minnesota overdrew their water permits by tens of millions of gallons on Mar 11, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Greg Stanley, Star Tribune.

Not long after Minnesota’s governor signed the law, the North Dakota Industrial Commission, the three-member body that oversees North Dakota’s utilities, agreed unanimously to consider a lawsuit challenging the new legislation. The law, North Dakota regulators said, infringes on North Dakota’s rights under the Dormant Commerce Clause in the United States Constitution by stipulating what types of energy it can contribute to Minnesota’s energy market. 

“This isn’t about the environment. This is about state sovereignty,” North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the chair of the Industrial Commission, said. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a longtime proponent of clean energy legislation, was quick to respond. “I trust that this bill is solid,” he told reporters. “I trust that it will stand up because it was written to do exactly that.”

The potential showdown illuminates an underappreciated obstacle to the energy transition: interstate beef. Feuds between neighboring states threaten to make the difficult task of getting regional power grids off fossil fuels even more complicated and expensive.

North Dakota hasn’t filed a lawsuit yet, but the Industrial Commission has requested $3 million from the state legislature for legal fees on top of $1 million the commission has already allocated to the effort from its “Lignite Research Program” — an initiative funded by taxes on fossil fuel revenue that researches and develops new coal projects in the state. 

It’s no mystery why North Dakota was so quick to go on the offensive. Most of the state’s power comes from coal, and it sells some 50 percent of the electricity it generates to nearby states. Its biggest customer is Minnesota. Minnesota’s new law stipulates that all electricity sold in the state come from renewable sources on a set timeline — 80 percent carbon-free by 2030, 90 percent by 2035, and 100 percent by 2040. That means that North Dakota’s coal-fired power will be squeezed out of Minnesota’s electricity market. 

North Dakota regulators are confident they’ll prevail in a legal dispute, but Burgum said the state is waiting to see whether Minnesota will amend its law before taking the disagreement to court. “This is something where if they make a small change we can avoid the certainty of a lawsuit that’s probably going to have a certain outcome to it,” the governor said in early February. The state successfully sued Minnesota over a 2007 law that sought to ban coal imports to the state from new sources. But outside legal experts aren’t so sure the plaintiffs will be victorious this time. 

“Minnesota is under no legal duty to prop up North Dakota power plants,” Michael Gerrard, founder of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told Grist. The state would find itself in legal trouble if it discriminated between in-state and out-of-state power plants, he said. For example, if Minnesota’s law accepted coal-fired power from plants inside its own borders but banned coal power from North Dakota, that would certainly violate federal interstate commerce law. But that’s not what Minnesota has proposed. The state is requiring clean power across the board, from in-state and outside sources. 

Gerrard pointed to a comparable 2015 case in Colorado. A fossil fuel industry group sued the state over a renewable energy standard it passed in 2004 — the very first clean energy standard passed by popular vote in the U.S. The group argued the standard overstepped Colorado’s authority under the U.S. constitution, a similar argument to the one North Dakota is threatening to make. But a federal court upheld the standard. The decision was written by Neil Gorsuch, who is now one of the more conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“We have one of the conservative Supreme Court justices saying that a state clean energy standard is fine,” Gerrard said. “So I think the outlook, if this case gets to the Supreme Court, would be favorable to Minnesota.” 

That’s significant, especially from a climate perspective. With Republicans in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the chances of new climate legislation passing in this Congress are slim. Looking ahead, Gerrard said, the progress that does take place on combating climate change will likely happen at the state level. “Certainly the moves by some of the blue states to do more on climate change are going to be some of the central elements of climate action for the next two years,” he said. He expects red states and the fossil fuel industry to continue to sue to try to stop clean energy  mandates. “Industry will fight back,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why North Dakota is preparing to sue Minnesota over clean energy on Mar 2, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

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Do you have an experience to share related to new abortion laws in your state? Our reporters want to hear from you. Contact us on Signal at 646-389-9881.

Anti-abortion counseling centers, often called “crisis pregnancy centers,” may soon face an existential choice in Minnesota: Leave behind their explicit agenda of dissuading people from having abortions or risk losing state funding.

While some center operators could see that as a nonstarter, state Democrats may leave the door open for them to continue receiving taxpayer dollars — albeit under a battery of rules some Minnesota lawmakers hope could expand services for pregnant people amid the country’s rapidly shifting abortion landscape.

For nearly 20 years, Minnesota’s public funding stream for the centers has flown mostly under the radar. In 2005, then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, signed into law a program to give grants to nonprofits that provide pregnancy and parenting services that do not “encourage or affirmatively counsel a woman to have an abortion.”

By wide margins, the state Legislature approved the Positive Abortion Alternatives statute, pitched by anti-abortion leaders as providing money for prenatal health care and adoption services. The measure even garnered votes from Democrats who supported abortion rights but wanted to fund more services for pregnant people.

The heated political climate since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has put a new spotlight on public funding for anti-abortion centers. At least a dozen states use taxpayer money to fund the centers, and some Democratic-led states have already defunded, or are considering defunding, them altogether.

In 2019, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used a line item veto to cancel $700,000 of funding for the chain of Real Alternatives counseling centers in her state, and she has vetoed spending on similar centers in the years since, calling them “fake health centers.” In Pennsylvania, which in the mid-1990s became the first state to provide public money for anti-abortion centers, Democratic members of the House Women’s Health Caucus have called for an end to funding through state and federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families dollars.

Minnesota Democrats won sweeping victories in the 2022 midterm elections, and control the state House, Senate and governor’s office. They have acted quickly to pass a raft of legislation further protecting abortion in the state, which has become an island of access in the Midwest. The Republican minority can do little to stop them.

As a part of this coordinated effort, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has proposed defunding the state’s grant program. But some Democrats support another option.

“I believe that this grant program has a purpose,” said Rep. Liz Olson, a Democrat from Duluth who is sponsoring a bill to change the 2005 Positive Abortion Alternatives statute into a Positive Pregnancies statute. “With changes, I do believe it should be funded.”

Abortion rights supporters say anti-abortion organizations have used state money to establish pseudo-medical facilities to convince or even trick clients into carrying their pregnancies to term, often using medically inaccurate information. Counseling center leaders say that the money has gone towards a variety of services for pregnant people, like parenting classes and free diapers, clothes and cribs.

Minnesota Democrats appear at least willing to hear that argument. Olson and a coalition of reproductive rights advocates supporting her bill are now trying to walk a tricky line: continuing to attack centers’ more misleading tactics while acknowledging that they may offer services that contribute to good birth outcomes for mothers and an array of services for families.

“It never made sense to me that we would take resources away from pregnant and parenting people who need support,” said Megan Peterson, executive director of Gender Justice, a St. Paul-based legal and policy advocacy nonprofit that supports abortion rights and helped craft Olson’s bill. “There’s hospitals that have obstetrics programs closing, especially in rural Minnesota. There’s parts of Minnesota where people have to drive six hours to give birth. We have an issue where CPCs are maybe the only place you can get a free ultrasound.”

Although Walz’s proposed 2023 budget would completely cut funding for the Positive Alternatives Grant Program, which last year distributed about $3.4 million to 27 groups at 33 sites around the state, a spokesperson for the governor said that he would be “open to discussing” Olson’s approach.

Roughly two-thirds of Minnesota’s CPCs do not receive state grant funds, so the majority would be unaffected by the legislation. Some grantees rely on the money for a substantial amount of their operating budgets.

Minnesota, according to the Associated Press, has spent more than $37 million on the grant program since 2010. It ranks fifth in the nation for such spending behind Texas, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida.

Efforts to defund anti-abortion counseling centers follow in the wake of a yearslong conservative campaign to defund Planned Parenthood, which has pointed out that its clinics provide a slew of health care services beyond abortion, including maternal care, cancer screenings and contraceptive access.

There are nine abortion providers in Minnesota and an estimated 90 CPCs, many of them in rural areas far from major health care systems. Ashley Underwood, director of Equity Forward, an organization that produces investigative research on gender equity, reproductive health and other issues, said she believes proposals like Olson’s could be a way to convert existing centers into places where pregnant people can go for free health care, minus the agenda.

“People should have access to care that is unbiased and medically sound,” Underwood said. “We absolutely can design a better path forward, and I think that Minnesota is really taking the lead and being an example of how to do that.”

Anti-abortion counseling centers first proliferated in the 1990s and early 2000s; before the end of Roe, one report estimated that nationally they outnumbered abortion clinics 3-to-1. Abortion advocates have accused many of them of a deceitful mimicry: setting up shop close to abortion clinics under remarkably similar names and creating the feel of a medical office by offering services like pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. Some centers are also known to promote the medically unfounded “abortion pill reversal” procedure, or claim abortion is linked to infertility and breast cancer. Free diapers and car seats, detractors said, are just a means to lure in poor pregnant people.

Olson’s Positive Pregnancies Support Act would maintain the centers’ eligibility for public money, so long as they agreed to provide “evidence-based, accurate information” and “ensure that none of the money provided is used to encourage or counsel a person toward one birth outcome over another.”

The measure would allow organizations that provide abortions and affirmative abortion counseling to apply for grants to provide services to pregnant people and new parents. It would require that services such as ultrasounds be provided and interpreted by a licensed medical professional. It stipulates that food, clothing, housing assistance or similar services be provided in a manner that is not predicated on an agreement to view an ultrasound or enroll in certain classes or counseling. And it further shores up privacy protections for clients.

Crucially, it requires that grantees provide referrals for an abortion on request. At a House health policy and finance committee meeting on the bill in January, leaders of groups that currently receive state funds testified that this would be in direct opposition to their mission.

“If we are forced to provide referrals for abortion, we will no longer be able to receive this grant,” said Jill King, executive director of Lakes Life Care Center in Forest Lake, who testified that state grant money makes up 40% of her budget. “A woman who wants an abortion does not need a referral from us. She already knows where to go. If she comes to us, she's looking for a different option.”

Julie Desautels, treasurer for Life Connections in Alexandria, said in an interview that while she is skeptical about the intent of the proposal, her board of directors may be open to applying for the grant.

Desautels said her organization — while founded on “pro-life” principles — is not religiously or politically affiliated and makes clear to its clients that it is not a medical facility; there is no abortion clinic in Alexandria. She said most of her clients are low-income, minority and LGBTQ pregnant people and parents living in a relatively rural part of the state. Life Connections hosts a support group with free childcare called MomTalk; Desautels said it has paid clients’ rent and utilities, and distributed thousands of dollars in gas cards, as well as cribs and car seats. She said it was so well-stocked with formula that it saw clients through the 2022 shortage.

“We had women in our lobby crying because they went from store to store and could not find formula,” Desautels said. “I would say it averages about one person a week that we help ward off eviction or get their utilities turned back on. I’ve got two right now on my table I have to send checks out to.”

Olson said that her biggest hope for the law is not that it keeps existing counseling centers in business, but that it expands the pool of eligible organizations and creates more centers that provide free services around birth — whether they provide abortion services or not. Part of that hope came from her own personal experience.

In 2015, as she neared her due date with her first child, Olson learned from her midwife that her blood pressure was unusually high, a possible symptom of preeclampsia. When she couldn’t get an appointment for an ultrasound to make sure the baby was alright, her midwife mentioned that one option would be to visit a crisis pregnancy center.

Olson decided to wait for an appointment at the hospital and, days later, gave birth to a healthy baby girl. But the experience stuck with her. She imagined what it would mean for pregnant people with no money and no insurance to walk in off the street and be given free prenatal health care. It frustrated her that only facilities with an anti-abortion agenda were getting state money to do such a thing.

“There’s so much wrong with how we do pregnancy and delivery and postnatal care in our country,” she said. “The context, for me, is less about the CPCs and more about expanding access to care through this grant program to make sure that people are getting these types of services in a medically accurate way with trained professionals.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop.

The Democratic-led Minnesota House of Representatives voted Thursday night in favor of legislation to provide free school meals for all students, a move meant to alleviate childhood hunger in a state where 1 in 6 children don't have enough to eat.

The bill, HF 5, provides universal school meals—lunch and breakfast—to all of Minnesota's 600,000 pupils at no cost. House lawmakers voted 70-58 along party lines in favor of the measure.

If approved by the state Senate—in which the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), the state's Democratic affiliate, holds a single-seat advantage—and signed into law by DFL Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher, the policy will cost the government around $387 million during fiscal year 2024-25, according to estimates.

"We're feeding the kids," tweeted Rep. Sydney Jordan (DFL-60A), the bill's lead author, after the House vote.

Rep. Mary Frances Clardy (DFL-53A), another author of the bill, said that "as a teacher of 27 years, I've seen the impact hunger has on our students and their ability to concentrate and learn in the classroom. We have the resources to step up and deliver the food security families need."

However, DFL leaders say the program will save Minnesota families between $800 and $1,000 on annual food costs.

According to a fact sheet in support of the bill, 1 in 6 Minnesota children report not having enough to eat; however, a quarter of food-insecure kids come from households that can't get government food support because their families earn too much to qualify.

"When school meals are provided at no cost to all students, these hungry kids no longer fall through the cracks," the publication said. "They consistently get nutritious food that sustains their energy and focus in the classroom."

Jordan said that "in a state with an agricultural tradition as rich as ours, it is particularly unacceptable that any child go hungry."

"We know hunger is something too many students bring with them to their classrooms," she added. "And we know the current status quo is letting Minnesota school children go hungry."

Republicans, meanwhile, slammed the bill as an example of "reckless spending."

"Paying for lunches for every student, kids that can afford it, families that can afford this, that doesn't make sense," said Rep. Peggy Bennett (R-23A), who offered an amendment to the bill that would expand current eligibility for free school meals, with income limits.

Jordan dismissed the Republicans' argument, saying "we give every kid in our school a desk. There are lots of kids out there that can afford to buy a desk, but they get a desk because they go to school."

Advocates of universal school meals across the country hailed the Minnesota House vote on the bill. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—who helped negotiate legislation allowing schools to temporarily drop regulatory burdens such as income-based eligibility requirements in order to deliver free meals to as many students as possible — tweeted that she is "incredibly proud of our state for leading the way to ensure no child goes hungry and receives the nutrition they need to succeed."

Chef and television personality Andrew Zimmern said on Twitter that he is "so proud today to be a Minnesotan."

"Prioritizing meals for kids should be job one and we can figure out the compensatory issues tomorrow," he added. "No child should be hungry. Ever. This is a big step towards that."

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 20 states have considered or passed legislation to establish universal free school meals, with California, Colorado, Maine, and Vermont being the first ones to enact the policy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Nelson drove 30 minutes to Hubbard County, where he and officers from 14 different police and sheriff’s departments confronted around 500 protesters, known as water protectors, occupying a pipeline pump station. The deputy spent his day detaching people who had locked themselves to equipment as fire departments and ambulances stood by. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter swooped low, kicking dust over the demonstrators, and officers deployed a sound cannon known as a Long Range Acoustic Device in attempts to disperse the crowd.

By the end of the day, 186 people had been detained in the largest mass-arrest of the opposition movement. Some officers stuck around to process arrests, while others stopped for snacks at a gas station or ordered Chinese takeout before crashing at a nearby motel.

These latter details might be considered irrelevant, except for the fact that the police and emergency workers’ takeout, motel rooms, riot gear, gas, wages, and trainings were paid for by one side of the dispute — Enbridge, which spent more than $79,000 on policing that day alone.

When the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission gave Enbridge permission in 2020 to replace its corroded Line 3 pipeline and double its capacity, it included an unusual condition in the permit:Enbridge would pay the police as they responded to the acts of civil disobedience that the project would surely spark. The pipeline company’s money would be funneled to law enforcement and other government agencies via a Public Safety Escrow Account managed by the state.

By the time construction finished in fall 2021, prosecutors had filed 967 criminal cases related to pipeline protests, and police had submitted hundreds of receipts and invoices to the Enbridge-funded escrow account, seeking reimbursement. Through a public records request, Grist and the Center for Media and Democracy have obtained and reviewed every one of those invoices, providing the most complete picture yet of the ways the pipeline company paid for the arrests of its opponents — and much more.

From pizza and “Pipeline Punch” energy drinks, to porta potties, riot suits, zip ties, and salaries, Enbridge poured a total of $8.6 million into 97 public agencies, from the northern Minnesota communities that the pipeline intersected to southern counties from which deputies traveled hours to help quell demonstrations.

By far the biggest set of expenses reimbursed from the Enbridge escrow account was over $5 million for wages, meals, lodging, mileage, and other contingencies as police and emergency workers responded to protests during construction. Over $1.3 million each went toward equipment and planning, including dozens of training sessions. Enbridge also reimbursed nearly a quarter million dollars for the cost of responding to pipeline-related human trafficking and sexual violence.

(Credit: Jessie Blaeser / Grist)

Reporters for Grist and the Center for Media and Democracy reviewed more than 350 records requested from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, pulling out totals described in invoices and receipts and dividing them into categories such as equipment, wages, and training. Each agency had its own method for tracking expenses, with varying levels of specificity. In cases where reporters were unable to cleanly disentangle different types of expenses, those expenses were categorized as “other/multiple.” Generally, totals should be considered conservative estimates for each category.

The $79,000 that Enbridge paid for the single day of arrests on June 7, which doesn’t include all of the Enbridge-funded equipment and training many officers relied on, displaysthe wide range of activities and agencies Enbridge’s money touched. The county attorney’s office of Hubbard County, where the protest took place, even attempted to get Enbridge to reimburse $27,000 in prosecution expenses. In other words, the area’s top arbiter of justice assumed that Enbridge would be covering the cost of pursuing charges against hundreds of water protectors. (The state-appointed escrow account manager denied the request.)

Some of the most surprising Enbridge invoices were from institutions and officials associated with protecting Minnesota’s environmental resources and preserving a balance between industry and the public interest. No agency received more escrow account money than the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, which is also one of the primary agencies monitoring Line 3 for environmental harms. Of the $2.1 million that the DNR received, the funds were mainly used to respond to protests and train state enforcement officers about how to manage protesters, in some cases before construction had even begun. Conservation officers joined police on the front lines of protests, on the pipeline company’s dime.

(Credit: Jessie Blaeser / Grist)

The Aitkin County-run Long Lake Conservation Center, one of the oldest environmental education centers in the U.S., provided facilities to police to the tune of over $40,000, which the sheriff’s office paid using Enbridge funds. And a public safety liaison hired to coordinate among Enbridge, the Public Utilities Commission, and local officials was paid $120,000 in salary and benefits by the pipeline company over a year and a half.

The invoices also document, in unusual detail, the connection between fossil fuel megaproject construction and violence against women: Enbridge reimbursed a nonprofit organization for the cost of hotel rooms for women who had been assaulted by Line 3 workers, according to an invoice submitted by the nonprofit. The pipeline company also helped pay for two sex trafficking stings conducted by the Minnesota Human Trafficking Investigative Task Force, leading to the arrest of at least four Line 3 pipeline workers.

The state of Minnesota also considered police public relations to be expenses eligible for Enbridge funding. John Elder, at the time spokesperson for the Minneapolis Police Department, put out police press releases and responded to journalist queries on behalf of the Northern Lights Task Force, which was set up to coordinate emergency response agencies throughout the protests. Enbridge ultimately reimbursed the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office for 331 hours of his work at a wage of $80 per hour. (St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay said he was not in office during pipeline construction and could not comment on Line-3-related work, and Elder did not respond to requests for comment.)

A year earlier, Elder had handled Minneapolis police PR when one of the city’s officers killed George Floyd, sparking an unprecedented wave of nationwide protests. Elder was behind the notorious press release stating that Floyd had “physically resisted officers” and died after he “appeared to be suffering medical distress.” Hours later, a bystander video went viral, showing that the medical distress followed an officer pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for for more than nine minutes. Fallout from the press release did not stop law enforcement agencies from choosing Elder to lead officials’ public relations surrounding the Line 3 protests.

Water protectors contend that the state of Minnesota’s arrangement with Enbridge trampled their constitutional rights. With 97 criminal cases unresolved across the state, five defendants in Aitkin County are pursuing motions arguing that the escrow account created an unconstitutional police and prosecutor bias that violated their rights to due process and equal protection under the law. They want the charges dismissed. Attorneys with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation previously used the defense against charges filed by Hubbard County that were ultimately dismissed. They’re now preparing a separate civil lawsuit challenging the use of the escrow account on constitutional grounds.

Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe activist and founder of the Indigenous environmental nonprofit Honor the Earth, is among those arguing in court that charges should be thrown out. Aitkin County, the jurisdiction behind the allegations she’s fighting, was reimbursed $6,007.70 for wages and benefits on just one of the days she was arrested. LaDuke believes the money amped up the police response.

“They were far more aggressive with us, far more intent on finding any possible reason to stop somebody,” she said. “Law enforcement is supposed to protect and serve the people. They work for Enbridge.”

LaDuke added that she believes the DNR’s Enbridge money represents a “conflict of interest.” In addition to its role in monitoring the pipeline’s full Minnesota route, the agency is directly responsible for the ecological health of 35 miles of state lands and 66 waterways that Line 3 crosses — and where Anishinaabe people have distinct treaty rights to hunt, gather, and travel. To date, the DNR and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency have charged Enbridge over $11 million in penalties for violations that include dozens of drilling fluid spills and three aquifer breaches that occurred during construction. LaDuke and others have criticized the agency’s response to the incidents, noting that it took months to publicly disclose the first of the aquifer breaches.

Juli Kellner, an Enbridge spokesperson, emphasized that the escrow account was operated by an independent manager who reported to the Public Utilities Commission, not the oil company. Kellner said the account was created to relieve communities from the increased financial burden that public safety agencies accrued when responding to protests.
“Enbridge provided funding but had no decision-making authority on reimbursement requests,” she said.
Ryan Barlow, the Public Utilities Commission’s general counsel, said the commission had no comment about the appropriateness of specific expenses: “If expenses met the conditions of the permit they were approved; if they did not, they were not approved.”

In a statement, the DNR said that receiving reimbursement from Enbridge does not constitute a conflict of interest: “At no time were state law enforcement personnel under the control or direction of Enbridge, and at no time did the opportunity for reimbursement for our public safety work in any way influence our regulatory decisions.”

When asked why its officers were trained how to use chemical weapons ahead of the protests, the DNR said their peace officers’ overall mission is “protecting Minnesota’s natural resources and the people who use them” and that such equipment, while occasionally necessary, “is not used as part of conservation officers’ routine work.”

Hubbard County Sheriff Cory Aukes said his agency’s response was dictated by the protestors and water protectors. “If they want to block roads, threaten workers, and cause $100,000 worth of damage to Enbridge equipment, well, we have a job to do, and we did it,” Aukes said, adding that Enbridge is a taxpayer that officers have a duty to protect. “Enbridge is a big taxpayer in Hubbard county and we would be doing an injustice if we didn’t support them as well.”

“We were in the middle,” added Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida. “There were probably times when it seems like we dealt with water protectors in a more criminal way, but they were the ones breaking the law.” He added that officers had no knowledge of the reimbursement plan and that the funds spared taxpayers the cost of policing the pipeline.

Long Lake Conservation Center manager Dave McMillan, on the other hand, said he knew the money the Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office paid his organization for police officer lodging would come from Enbridge. “My concern was not wanting to become a pawn or a player in this political battle. In the same token, we said if any of the organizations that were protesting said they wanted to come here and use our facilities, we would have said yes,” he said. Enbridge’s connection to the facility runs even deeper: The company’s director of tribal engagement sits on the board of the Long Lake Conservation Foundation, which helps fund the county-run facility.

With energy infrastructure fights brewing over liquid natural gas terminals in the Southeast, lithium mining in the West, and the Enbridge-operated Line 5 pipeline in Wisconsin and Michigan, the ongoing legal cases that have ensnared the water protectors will help decide whether or not the public safety escrow account will be replicated elsewhere.

“Our concern is that this now will become the model for deployment nationwide against any community that is rising up against corporate abuse,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the director of the Center for Protest Law and Litigation, who is representing some of the water protectors. “It becomes very easy to sell this to the public as a savings for taxpayers, when instead what they’re doing is selling their police department to serve the pecuniary interests of a corporation.”

Long before Line 3 construction began, Anishinaabe-led water defenders promised they would rise up if the expanded pipeline was permitted. Members of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission warily looked west to North Dakota, where in 2016 and 2017 public agencies spent $38 million policing massive protests led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. With global concerns about climate change and biodiversity reaching a fever pitch, building an oil pipeline now came with a hefty civil disobedience bill, and the commissioners did not want taxpayers to foot it.

According to the pipeline permit, finalized in 2020, whenever a Minnesota public safety agency spent money on almost anything related to Line 3, they could submit an invoice, and Enbridge would pay it. Nonprofits responding to drug and human trafficking were also eligible for grants from the account. To create a layer of separation between police and the Enbridge money, the state hired an account manager to decide which invoices would be fulfilled.

Minnesota wasn’t the only state considering this kind of account. In 2019, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem passed a law designed to establish “the next generation model of funding pipeline construction.” The law created a fund for law enforcement and emergency managers responding to pipeline protests, paid partly by new rioting penalties, but also with as much as $20 million from the company behind the pipeline. Noem’s office collaborated on the legislation with TransCanada, now known as TC Energy, which was preparing to build the controversial Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. But with Keystone XL defunct after President Joe Biden pulled a key permit in 2021, only Minnesota would have the opportunity to fully test the new model.

Even before Line 3 received its final permit on November 30, 2020, more than $1 million in reimbursement-eligible expenses had been spent. Sheriffs’ offices were already buying riot gear and conducting crowd control trainings in 2016 and 2017, in anticipation of the protests.

Key to coordinating it all was the Northern Lights Task Force, established in September 2018 and consisting of law enforcement and other public officials from 16 counties along the pipeline route or otherwise hosting Enbridge infrastructure, as well as representatives from nearby reservations and state agencies. Task force members met at least a dozen times before construction began, the invoices show, and at times Enbridge representatives joined. It didn’t necessarily matter, however, whether Enbridge was physically in the room, because the company’s money was always there: For the law enforcement agencies that requested it, the corporation paid wages and overtime for each Northern Lights Task Force meeting attended.

David Olmstead, a retired Bloomington police commander appointed by the Minnesota Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to fulfill the duties of the Line 3 public safety liaison, coordinated between Enbridge and public officials. Enbridge reimbursed the homeland security agency Olmstead’s salary and benefits as well as more than $20,000 in lodging expenses that Olmstead charged to a credit card, which included a room at Duluth’s Fairfield Inn that was rented for two straight months at the height of protests in June and July 2021, for a nightly rate of $165.

Indeed, for some, pipeline work became a full-time job funded by the multinational company. In October 2019, the Minnesota State Patrol assigned Captain Joe Dwyer to the role of commander for demonstration preparedness, a position he held for the next two years. “I attended various planning meetings and tabletop exercises,” Dwyer wrote in a letter submitted to the Enbridge account manager. “I also facilitated conversations, provided training and conducted extensive research related to response plans along the construction route with the various stakeholders associated with the project.” Dwyer got a dollar-per-hour pay bump and earned $50.82 hourly working in his new role. Enbridge covered tens of thousands of dollars of Dwyer’s wages.

Howie Padilla, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, which oversees both the Minnesota State Patrol and Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, underlined in a statement, “At no time were state law enforcement resources under the control or direction of Enbridge.”

Olmstead and Dwyer, who did not respond to requests for comment, helped set up a network of emergency operations centers to be activated when protests kicked off. In St. Louis County, the sheriff’s office contracted Paramount Planning, a company that counts Enbridge among its clients, to help run the Northeast Emergency Operations Center. Paramount agreed to coordinate the various law enforcement agencies, create a staffing schedule, and attend meetings, including intelligence-sharing meetings. Enbridge reimbursed the sheriff’s office just under $50,000 for Paramount’s work.

Paramount’s president and owner, Blain Johnson, said he was unaware that Enbridge had paid for his company’s St. Louis County contract. He said that an Enbridge representative attended the emergency operations center’s morning meetings, but that Paramount did not otherwise communicate with the corporation about its work for the St. Louis County Sheriff. Johnson acknowledged, however, that Paramount staff did work for Enbridge on consulting with tribes about the Line 3 pipeline. “Realistically, you could look at it as kind of a conflict of interest, but that part of the company was completely separated from what we were working on with the sheriff’s office,” Johnson said.

Law enforcement leaders also worked with task force members as they arranged dozens of training sessions. Although a large proportion focused on crowd control tactics, others covered techniques for dismantling lock-downs, responding to weapons of mass destruction, policing sex trafficking, upholding the constitution, understanding Native American culture, and using lessons learned from policing the Dakota Access Pipeline. Public officials spent over $950,000 of Enbridge’s money on training expenses, including meals, lodging, mileage, training fees, and wages.

Three quarters of the Enbridge training money went to the Department of Natural Resources. The agency’s enforcement division is not only responsible for upholding environmental laws and ticketing deviant poachers and recreational vehicle drivers, but it also has full police powers on state lands. While riot control may not be in the typical job description of a Minnesota conservation officer, previously known as a game warden, dozens of them trained to control crowds and use less-lethal chemical weapons.

The Enbridge fund wasn’t supposed to be primarily for stuff. To limit purchases, Public Utilities Commission members added language in the permit stipulating that public agencies could only use it to buy personal protective equipment, or PPE.

Over half of PPE funds went toward riot gear valued at more than $700,000, which was purchased from police equipment vendors like Streicher’s and Galls. For 13 county and city police forces, that meant more than $5,000 in riot suits, shields, and gas masks. The Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office took over $70,000 for riot gear, and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office more than $50,000. (Neither office responded to requests for comment.) However it was state agencies that received more than half of the Enbridge reimbursements for crowd control equipment: more than $200,000 for the Minnesota State Patrol, and over $170,000 for the Department of Natural Resources.

(Credit: Jessie Blaeser / Grist)

Enbridge also covered more than $325,000 in clothing — mostly cold weather apparel — as well as over $55,000 for hand, foot, and body warmers. Even the identification patches worn on many deputies’ lapels were paid for by Enbridge — totaling more than $7,000. Another $2,000 went toward porta potty rentals, and over $12,000 more toward gear to protect police as they detached protesters who had locked themselves to equipment, including face shields and flame-proof blankets to guard against flying sparks.

Enbridge paid not only for the time the Sheriff’s deputies took to arrest water protectors and bind their hands behind their backs, but also for the handcuffs themselves, which were dubbed PPE and paid for by the pipeline company. The state of Minnesota approved more than $12,500 in Enbridge funds for zip ties and handcuffs.

“Less lethal” weapons did not count as personal protective equipment, the account manager decided, to the frustration of some law enforcement leaders. The Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office attempted to claim over $10,000 worth of less lethal weaponry from Enbridge, including 250 bean bag rounds, two projectile launchers, 24 distraction devices, 61 batons, and various chemical weapons and ammunition such as pepper spray, 46 tear gas grenades, and 25 tear gas projectiles. And the Wright County Sheriff’s Office asked for Enbridge funds to cover $1,700 worth of pepper spray, sponge rounds, and other less than lethal weapons. All were denied.

Winona County Sheriff Ron Ganrude said sheriffs in southeastern Minnesota had compiled a list of equipment, including batons, that they expected deputies would need as they traveled north to assist on Line 3. Both the Winona County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Park Rapids attempted to use the escrow funds to pay for batons but were denied.

However, even though Enbridge couldn’t buy these weapons, the company did cover trainings on how to use them. Several trainings were provided by the tear gas manufacturer Safariland, costing thousands of dollars. Enbridge also reimbursed over $260,000 worth of gas masks and attachments, including filters for tear gas, presumably to protect law enforcement from the chemicals they themselves would be deploying.

It wasn’t necessarily the counties with the heaviest protest activity that purchased the most equipment using Enbridge money. Among the top five local law enforcement equipment buyers was the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Office, located south of the pipeline route, which purchased more than $37,000 in riot gear using Enbridge money. Also among the top spenders was the Freeborn County Sheriff’s Office, located in one of Minnesota’s southernmost counties. The agency’s only Enbridge-related expense besides equipment was for three officers to spend a two- to three-day deployment assisting other agencies along the pipeline route in the northern part of the state. (The office did not respond to requests for comment.)

(Credit: Jessie Blaeser / Grist)

Otter Tail County Sheriff Barry Fitzgibbons told Grist that his agency still owns and maintains its equipment. “This in no way has impacted our ability to remain fair and impartial,” he said in a written statement.

2021 was a year of unprecedented protest among Northern Minnesota’s pristine lakes and wetlands. Enbridge and law enforcement faced a drumbeat of road blockades, lockdowns to pipeline equipment, marches through remote prairie, and layered demonstrations combining Anishinaabe ceremony with direct action tactics refined by generations of environmental and Indigenous social movements.

The biggest Enbridge escrow account expense was more than $4.5 million in wages, benefits, and overtime for officials responding to perceived security threats during construction. More than just police and sheriff’s offices were involved: The Department of Natural Resources’ largest Enbridge-funded expense was $870,000 in personnel costs during construction.

And it wasn’t just calls for service that Enbridge paid for. Dozens of invoices mentioned “patrols,” where law enforcement would drive up and down the pipeline route or surveil places occupied by pipeline opponents.

The Cass County Sheriff’s Office’s “proactive” safety patrol, described in an invoice, may help explain why that agency expensed far more money for response costs to the escrow account — over $900,000 — than any other county or city, despite facing fewer mass demonstrations than other areas.

Like Cass, Hubbard County at times instituted patrols. They also established mandatory overtime shifts. Line 3 meant that police officers across Minnesota received paychecks padded with Enbridge-funded overtime pay. One officer from the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, for example, earned $778.46 per day in wages and benefits for four 18-hour shifts in July and August 2021 – a total that included hourly pay for his four-hour 150-mile round-trip drive to the closest emergency operations center.

The invoices confirm that Enbridge-funded sheriff’s deputies in Hubbard County surveilled the Namewag camp, which was located on private land and used both as a space for Anishinaabe land-based practices and as a jumping off point for direct action protests. “On 3/6 and 3/7, Hubbard County Deputies observed roughly 30 previously unidentified vehicles arriving and periodically leaving the Hinds Lake Camp (Ginew [sic] Collective Camp) in Straight River Township, Hubbard County,” one invoice states.

It goes on to describe intelligence shared by an Enbridge employee, detailing the movements of various groups of pipeline resistors. “Migizi camp [another anti-Line 3 encampment] is empty at this time and intelligence suggests Migizi and Portland XR [short for Extinction Rebellion] are camping at a public campground,” the message from Enbridge stated.

Enbridge also paid for gas that fueled officers’ cars, hotels they stayed in when assisting other jurisdictions, and food they ate during shifts. During both planning stages and periods of law enforcement action, Enbridge covered at least $150,000 in meals, snacks, and drinks.The oil company bought bagels, Domino’s pizza, McNuggets, Subway sandwich platters, a Dairy Queen strawberry sundae, summer sausage, cheese curds, deep fried pickles, Fritos, Gatorade, and energy drinks, including one called Pipeline Punch.

From planning through construction, police and sheriff’s offices together received at least $5.8 million in Enbridge funds. For state agencies, the Enbridge funds represented a tiny proportion of massive budgets. However, for the Cass County Sheriff’s Office, the Enbridge money added up to the equivalent of more than 10 percent of the office’s 2021 budget. (The office did not respond to requests for comment.) Five other sheriff’s offices received reimbursements equivalent to over 5 percent of their annual budgets.

The biggest Enbridge payouts did not always correspond to the counties with the most protest activity. Only 17 of the 47 counties that received reimbursements were actually intersected by Enbridge infrastructure or saw any arrests.

The range of choices law enforcement agencies made regarding what to invoice makes clear the discretionary nature of the Line 3 response. Clearwater County is home to one of two places where Line 3 crosses the Mississippi River and the site of a number of protests. Although 20 other law enforcement agencies billed Enbridge for assisting the local sheriff, Clearwater County billed nothing to the pipeline company.

Human trafficking

The invoices also offer insight into the way the influx of pipeline workers translated into incidents of human trafficking and assault. “Since the Line 3 Replacement project has come to our area, we have experienced an increase in calls and need for services,” reads a grant application from the nonprofit Violence Intervention Project, or VIP, based in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, a community through which the pipeline passes, just outside the Red Lake Reservation. “We have provided services to several victims that have been assaulted by employees working on the Enbridge line 3 project.”

Enbridge reimbursed the organization for two hotel rooms for assault survivors, since VIP’s shelter was full at the time. The company also paid $42,000 worth of hazard pay for shelter workers during the 2021 winter, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Enbridge’s biggest human trafficking grant recipient was Support Within Reach, a northern Minnesota organization that works with survivors of sexual violence, which used the money to pay for extra personnel costs during pipeline construction and to buy emergency cell phones for advocates.

Additional funds also went to public agencies: Enbridge reimbursed $43,551.96 to local law enforcement agencies working with the Minnesota Human Trafficking Investigative Task Force. The documents describe at least two multi-agency operations in Grand Rapids and Bemidji, and news reports from the time confirm that they led to the arrest of four Line 3 workers.

Kellner, the Enbridge spokesperson, said that any employee caught and arrested for human trafficking would be fired by the company. She added that the four workers who were arrested were subcontractors, not direct employees of the oil company, and were fired by the contractor Enbridge worked with.

The Link, a nonprofit based in North Minneapolis, received $36,870 from Enbridge and used it in part to assist the task force with sting operations and support survivors who were found. Beth Holger, the organization’s chief executive officer, said she did not feel conflicted about taking Enbridge’s money, because it was going to victims: “Yes we took money from a corporation that has caused harm, and we’re giving it to people to help with that harm.”

The $8.6 million in expenses covered by Enbridge by no means accounts for the full public cost of responding to opposition to the Line 3 pipeline.

Several sheriffs’ offices anticipated thousands more Enbridge dollars than they received. The sheriffs’ offices in Cass, Beltrami, and Polk counties each attempted to expense around $25,000 of equipment that was ultimately denied reimbursement.

The state rejected Cass County’s request for an $18,000 fingerprinting system, and Polk County was denied Enbridge money for approximately $9,000 worth of TV sets for its emergency operations center as well as thousands more for tools like saws and chisels used to cut chains, cement, pvc pipes, and other materials used by protesters to lock down to Enbridge equipment and block construction.

Hubbard County Sheriff Cory Aukes said that it was unfortunate that the Hubbard county attorney’s request for prosecutorial funds was denied by the account manager, as Aukes sees the influx of charges and protestors as an undue burden on the attorney’s office as well as the sheriff’s office. He said that his agency had plenty of other expenses that weren’t covered.

He added that he believes it would be fiscally irresponsible to decline Enbridge’s funds. “Shouldn’t they have to fund that? Shouldn’t they be responsible to reimburse these additional costs?” Aukes asked.

To water protectors, however, the greatest costs of the pipeline are its consequences for the climate, water, and the Canadian forest ecosystem decimated by tar sands oil production. The nonprofit LaDuke co-founded, Honor the Earth, issued its own invoice to Enbridge before the creation of the escrow account, estimating that Line 3 would cost $266 billion annually in environmental losses and social damages.

So far, she hasn’t received a response.

This story was originally co-published in partnership with Grist and the Center for Media & Democracy and appears at Common Dreams with permission.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Alleen Brown.

Nelson drove 30 minutes to Hubbard County, where he and officers from 14 different police and sheriff’s departments confronted around 500 protesters, known as water protectors, occupying a pipeline pump station. The deputy spent his day detaching people who had locked themselves to equipment as fire departments and ambulances stood by. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter swooped low, kicking dust over the demonstrators, and officers deployed a sound cannon known as a Long Range Acoustic Device in attempts to disperse the crowd.

By the end of the day, 186 people had been detained in the largest mass-arrest of the opposition movement. Some officers stuck around to process arrests, while others stopped for snacks at a gas station or ordered Chinese takeout before crashing at a nearby motel.

These latter details might be considered irrelevant, except for the fact that the police and emergency workers’ takeout, motel rooms, riot gear, gas, wages, and trainings were paid for by one side of the dispute — the fossil fuel company building the pipeline, which spent more than $79,000 on policing that day alone. 

When the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission gave Enbridge permission in 2020 to replace its corroded Line 3 pipeline and double its capacity, it included an unusual condition in the permit: Enbridge would pay the police as they responded to the acts of civil disobedience that the project would surely spark. The pipeline company’s money would be funneled to law enforcement and other government agencies via a Public Safety Escrow Account managed by the state.

By the time construction finished in fall 2021, prosecutors had filed 967 criminal cases related to pipeline protests, and police had submitted hundreds of receipts and invoices to the Enbridge-funded escrow account, seeking reimbursement. Through a public records request, Grist and the Center for Media and Democracy have obtained and reviewed every one of those invoices, providing the most complete picture yet of the ways the pipeline company paid for the arrests of its opponents — and much more.

From pizza and “Pipeline Punch” energy drinks, to porta potties, riot suits, zip ties, and salaries, Enbridge poured a total of $8.6 million into 97 public agencies, from the northern Minnesota communities that the pipeline intersected to southern counties from which deputies traveled hours to help quell demonstrations.

By far the biggest set of expenses reimbursed from the Enbridge escrow account was over $5 million for wages, meals, lodging, mileage, and other contingencies as police and emergency workers responded to protests during construction. Over $1.3 million each went toward equipment and planning, including dozens of training sessions. Enbridge also reimbursed nearly a quarter million dollars for the cost of responding to pipeline-related human trafficking and sexual violence.

Reporters for Grist and the Center for Media and Democracy reviewed more than 350 records requested from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, pulling out totals described in invoices and receipts and dividing them into categories such as equipment, wages, and training. Each agency had its own method for tracking expenses, with varying levels of specificity. In cases where reporters were unable to cleanly disentangle different types of expenses, those expenses were categorized as “other/multiple.” Generally, totals should be considered conservative estimates for each category.

The $79,000 that Enbridge paid for the single day of arrests on June 7, which doesn’t include much of the Enbridge-funded equipment and training many officers relied on, displays the wide range of activities and agencies Enbridge’s money touched. The attorney’s office of Hubbard County, where the protest took place, even attempted to get Enbridge to reimburse $27,000 in prosecution expenses. In other words, the area’s top arbiter of justice assumed that Enbridge would be covering the cost of pursuing charges against hundreds of water protectors. (The state-appointed escrow account manager denied the request.)

Some of the most surprising Enbridge invoices were from institutions and officials associated with protecting Minnesota’s environmental resources and preserving a balance between industry and the public interest. No agency received more escrow account money than the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, which is also one of the primary agencies monitoring Line 3 for environmental harms. Of the $2.1 million that the DNR received, the funds were mainly used to respond to protests and train state enforcement officers about how to wrangle protesters, in some cases before construction had even begun. Conservation officers joined police on the front lines of protests, on the pipeline company’s dime.

The Aitkin County-run Long Lake Conservation Center, one of the oldest environmental education centers in the U.S., provided facilities to police to the tune of over $40,000, which the sheriff’s office paid using Enbridge funds. And a public safety liaison hired to coordinate among Enbridge, the Public Utilities Commission, and local officials was paid $120,000 in salary and benefits by the pipeline company over a year and a half.

The invoices also document, in unusual detail, the connection between fossil fuel megaproject construction and violence against women: Enbridge reimbursed a nonprofit organization for the cost of hotel rooms for women who had reportedly been assaulted by Line 3 workers. The pipeline company also helped pay for two sex trafficking stings conducted by the Minnesota Human Trafficking Investigative Task Force, leading to the arrest of at least four Line 3 pipeline workers.

The state of Minnesota also considered police public relations to be expenses eligible for Enbridge funding. John Elder, at the time spokesperson for the Minneapolis Police Department, put out police press releases and responded to journalist queries on behalf of the Northern Lights Task Force, which was set up to coordinate emergency response agencies throughout the protests. Enbridge ultimately reimbursed the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office for 331 hours of his work at a wage of $80 per hour. (St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay said he was not in office during pipeline construction and could not comment on Line-3-related work, and Elder did not respond to requests for comment.)

A year earlier, Elder had handled Minneapolis police PR when one of the city’s officers killed George Floyd, sparking an unprecedented wave of nationwide protests. Elder was behind the notorious press release stating that Floyd had “physically resisted officers” and died after he “appeared to be suffering medical distress.” Hours later, a bystander video went viral, showing that the medical distress followed an officer pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. Fallout from the press release did not stop law enforcement agencies from choosing Elder to lead officials’ public relations surrounding the Line 3 protests.

Water protectors contend that the state of Minnesota’s arrangement with Enbridge trampled their constitutional rights. With 97 criminal cases unresolved across the state, five defendants in Aitkin County are pursuing motions arguing that the escrow account created an unconstitutional police and prosecutor bias that violated their rights to due process and equal protection under the law. They want the charges dismissed. Attorneys with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation previously used the defense against charges filed by Hubbard County that were ultimately dismissed. They’re now preparing a separate civil lawsuit challenging the use of the escrow account on constitutional grounds.

Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe activist and founder of the Indigenous environmental nonprofit Honor the Earth, is among those arguing in court that charges should be thrown out. Aitkin County, the jurisdiction behind the allegations she’s fighting, was reimbursed $6,007.70 for wages and benefits on just one of the days she was arrested. LaDuke believes the money amped up the police response.

“They were far more aggressive with us, far more intent on finding any possible reason to stop somebody,” she said. “Law enforcement is supposed to protect and serve the people. They work for Enbridge.”

LaDuke added that she believes the DNR’s Enbridge money represents a “conflict of interest.” In addition to its role in monitoring the pipeline’s full Minnesota route, the agency is directly responsible for the ecological health of 35 miles of state lands and 66 waterways where Line 3 crosses — and where Anishinaabe people have distinct treaty rights to hunt, gather, and travel. To date, the DNR and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency have charged Enbridge over $11 million in penalties for violations that include dozens of drilling fluid spills and three aquifer breaches that occurred during construction. LaDuke and others have criticized the agency’s response to the incidents, noting that it took months to publicly disclose the first of the aquifer breaches.

Juli Kellner, an Enbridge spokesperson, emphasized that the escrow account was operated by an independent manager who reported to the Public Utilities Commission, not the oil company. Kellner said the account was created to relieve communities from the increased financial burden that public safety agencies accrued when responding to protests.

“Enbridge provided funding but had no decision-making authority on reimbursement requests,” she said.

Ryan Barlow, the Public Utilities Commission’s general counsel, said the commission had no comment about the appropriateness of specific expenses: “If expenses met the conditions of the permit they were approved; if they did not, they were not approved.”

In a statement, the DNR said that receiving reimbursement from Enbridge does not constitute a conflict of interest: “At no time were state law enforcement personnel under the control or direction of Enbridge, and at no time did the opportunity for reimbursement for our public safety work in any way influence our regulatory decisions.”

When asked why its officers were trained how to use chemical weapons ahead of the protests, the DNR said their peace officers’ overall mission is “protecting Minnesota’s natural resources and the people who use them” and that such equipment, while occasionally necessary, “is not used as part of conservation officers’ routine work.”

Hubbard County Sheriff Cory Aukes said his agency’s response was dictated by the protestors and water protectors. “If they want to block roads, threaten workers, and cause $100,000 worth of damage to Enbridge equipment, well, we have a job to do, and we did it,” Aukes said, adding that Enbridge is a taxpayer that officers have a duty to protect. “Enbridge is a big taxpayer in Hubbard county and we would be doing an injustice if we didn’t support them as well.”

“We were in the middle,” added Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida. “There were probably times when it seems like we dealt with water protectors in a more criminal way, but they were the ones breaking the law.” He added that officers had no knowledge of the reimbursement plan and that the funds spared taxpayers the cost of policing the pipeline.

Long Lake Conservation Center manager Dave McMillan, on the other hand, said he knew the money the Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office paid his organization for police officer lodging would come from Enbridge. “My concern was not wanting to become a pawn or a player in this political battle. In the same token, we said if any of the organizations that were protesting said they wanted to come here and use our facilities, we would have said yes,” he said. Enbridge’s connection to the facility runs even deeper: The company’s director of tribal engagement sits on the board of the Long Lake Conservation Foundation, which helps fund the county-run facility. 

With energy infrastructure fights brewing over liquid natural gas terminals in the Southeast, lithium mining in the West, and the Enbridge-operated Line 5 pipeline in Wisconsin and Michigan, the ongoing legal cases that have ensnared the water protectors will help decide whether or not the public safety escrow account will be replicated elsewhere.

“Our concern is that this now will become the model for deployment nationwide against any community that is rising up against corporate abuse,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the director of the Center for Protest Law and Litigation, who is representing some of the water protectors. “It becomes very easy to sell this to the public as a savings for taxpayers, when instead what they’re doing is selling their police department to serve the pecuniary interests of a corporation.”

Long before Line 3 construction began, Anishinaabe-led water defenders promised they would rise up if the expanded pipeline was permitted. Members of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission warily looked west to North Dakota, where in 2016 and 2017 public agencies spent $38 million policing massive protests led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. With global concerns about climate change and biodiversity reaching a fever pitch, building an oil pipeline now came with a hefty civil disobedience bill, and the commissioners did not want taxpayers to foot it.

According to the pipeline permit, finalized in 2020, whenever a Minnesota public safety agency spent money on almost anything related to Line 3, they could submit an invoice, and Enbridge would pay it. Nonprofits responding to drug and human trafficking were also eligible for grants from the account. To create a layer of separation between police and the Enbridge money, the state hired an account manager to decide which invoices would be fulfilled.

Minnesota wasn’t the only state considering this kind of account. In 2019, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem passed a law designed to establish “the next generation model of funding pipeline construction.” The law created a fund for law enforcement and emergency managers responding to pipeline protests, paid partly by new rioting penalties, but also with as much as $20 million from the company behind the pipeline. Noem’s office collaborated on the legislation with TransCanada, now known as TC Energy, which was preparing to build the controversial Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. But with Keystone XL defunct after President Joe Biden pulled a key permit in 2021, only Minnesota would have the opportunity to fully test the new model.

Even beforeLine 3 received its final permit on November 30, 2020, more than $1 million in reimbursement-eligible expenses had been spent. Sheriffs’ offices were alreadybuying riot gear and conducting crowd control trainings in 2016 and 2017, in anticipation of the protests.

Key to coordinating it all was the Northern Lights Task Force, established in September 2018 and consisting of law enforcement and other public officials from 16 counties along the pipeline route or otherwise hosting Enbridge infrastructure, as well as representatives from nearby reservations and state agencies. Task force members met at least a dozen times before construction began, the invoices show, and at times Enbridge representatives joined. It didn’t necessarily matter, however, whether Enbridge was physically in the room, because the company’s money was always there: For the law enforcement agencies that requested it, the corporation paid wages and overtime for each Northern Lights Task Force meeting attended.

David Olmstead, a retired Bloomington police commander appointed by the Minnesota Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to fulfill the duties of the Line 3 public safety liaison, coordinated between Enbridge and public officials. Enbridge reimbursed the homeland security agency Olmstead’s salary and benefits as well as more than $20,000 in lodging expenses that Olmstead charged to a credit card, which included a room at Duluth’s Fairfield Inn that was rented for two straight months at the height of protests in June and July 2021, for a nightly rate of $165.

Olmstead, who did not respond to requests for comment, helped set up a network of emergency operations centers to be activated when protests kicked off. He also worked with task force members as they arranged dozens of training sessions. Although a large proportion focused on crowd control tactics, others covered techniques for dismantling lock-downs, responding to weapons of mass destruction, policing sex trafficking, upholding the constitution, understanding Native American culture, and using lessons learned from policing the Dakota Access Pipeline. Public officials spent over $950,000 of Enbridge’s money on training expenses, including meals, lodging, mileage, training fees, and wages. 

Three quarters of the Enbridge training money went to the Department of Natural Resources. The agency’s enforcement division is not only responsible for upholding environmental laws and ticketing deviant poachers and recreational vehicle drivers, but it also has full police powers on state lands. While riot control may not be in the typical job description of a Minnesota conservation officer, previously known as a game warden, dozens of them trained to control crowds and use less-lethal chemical weapons.

The Enbridge fund wasn’t supposed to be primarily for stuff. To limit purchases, Public Utilities Commission members added language in the permit stipulating that public agencies could only use it to buy personal protective equipment, or PPE.

Over half of PPE funds went toward riot gear valued at more than $700,000, which was purchased from police equipment vendors like Streicher’s and Galls. For 13 county and city police forces, that meant more than $5,000 in riot suits, shields, and gas masks. The Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office took over $70,000 for riot gear, and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office more than $50,000. (Neither office responded to requests for comment.) However it was state agencies that received more than half of the Enbridge reimbursements for crowd control equipment: more than $200,000 for the Minnesota State Patrol, and over $170,000 for the Department of Natural Resources.

Enbridge also covered more than $325,000 in clothing — mostly cold weather apparel — as well as over $55,000 for hand, foot, and body warmers. Even the identification patches worn on many deputies’ lapels were paid for by Enbridge — totaling more than $7,000. Another $2,000 went toward porta potty rentals, and over $12,000 more toward gear to protect police as they detached protesters who had locked themselves to equipment, including face shields and flame-proof blankets to guard against flying sparks.

Enbridge paid not only for the time the Sheriff’s deputies took to arrest water protectors and bind their hands behind their backs, but also for the handcuffs themselves, which were dubbed PPE and paid for by the pipeline company. The state of Minnesota approved more than $12,500 in Enbridge funds for zip ties and handcuffs.

“Less lethal” weapons did not count as personal protective equipment, the account manager decided, to the frustration of some law enforcement leaders. However, even though Enbridge couldn’t buy these weapons, the company did cover trainings on how to use them. Several trainings were provided by the tear gas manufacturer Safariland, costing thousands of dollars. Enbridge also reimbursed over $260,000 worth of gas masks and attachments, including filters for tear gas, presumably to protect law enforcement from the chemicals they themselves would be deploying.

It wasn’t necessarily the counties with the heaviest protest activity that purchased the most equipment using Enbridge money. Among the top five local law enforcement equipment buyers was the Freeborn County Sheriff’s Office, located in one of Minnesota’s southernmost counties. The agency’s only Enbridge-related expense besides equipment was for three officers to spend a two- to three-day deployment assisting other agencies along the pipeline route in the northern part of the state. (The office did not respond to requests for comment.)

2021 was a year of unprecedented protest among Northern Minnesota’s pristine lakes and wetlands. Enbridge and law enforcement faced a drumbeat of road blockades, lockdowns to pipeline equipment, marches through remote prairie, and layered demonstrations combining Anishinaabe ceremony with direct action tactics refined by generations of environmental and Indigenous social movements.

The biggest Enbridge escrow account expense was more than $4.5 million in wages, benefits, and overtime for officials responding to perceived security threats during construction. More than just police and sheriff’s offices were involved: The Department of Natural Resources’ largest Enbridge-funded expense was $870,000 in personnel costs during construction.

And it wasn’t just calls for service that Enbridge paid for. Dozens of invoices mentioned “patrols,” where law enforcement would drive up and down the pipeline route or surveil places occupied by pipeline opponents.

The Cass County Sheriff’s Office’s “proactive” safety patrol, described in an invoice, may help explain why that agency expensed far more money for response costs to the escrow account — over $900,000 — than any other county or city, despite facing fewer mass demonstrations than other areas.

Like Cass, Hubbard County at times instituted patrols as well as mandatory overtime shifts. The invoices confirm that sheriff’s deputies surveilled the Namewag camp, which was located on private land and used both as a space for Anishinaabe land-based practices and as a jumping off point for direct action protests. “On 3/6 and 3/7, Hubbard County Deputies observed roughly 30 previously unidentified vehicles arriving and periodically leaving the Hinds Lake Camp (Ginew [sic] Collective Camp) in Straight River Township, Hubbard County,” one invoice states.

It goes on to describe intelligence shared by an Enbridge employee, detailing the movements of various groups of pipeline resistors. “Migizi camp [another anti-Line 3 encampment] is empty at this time and intelligence suggests Migizi and Portland XR [short for Extinction Rebellion] are camping at a public campground,” the message from Enbridge stated.

Enbridge also paid for gas that fueled officers’ cars, hotels they stayed in when assisting other jurisdictions, and food they ate during shifts. During both planning stages and periods of law enforcement action, Enbridge covered at least $150,000 in meals, snacks, and drinks.The oil company bought bagels, Domino’s pizza, McNuggets, Subway sandwich platters, a Dairy Queen strawberry sundae, summer sausage, cheese curds, deep fried pickles, Fritos, Gatorade, and energy drinks, including one called Pipeline Punch.

From planning through construction, police and sheriff’s offices together received at least $5.8 million in Enbridge funds. For state agencies, the Enbridge funds represented a tiny proportion of massive budgets. However, for the Cass County Sheriff’s Office, the Enbridge money added up to the equivalent of more than 10 percent of the office’s 2021 budget. (The office did not respond to requests for comment.) Five other sheriff’s offices received reimbursements equivalent to over 5 percent of their annual budgets.

The range of choices law enforcement agencies made regarding what to invoice makes clear the discretionary nature of the Line 3 response. Clearwater County is home to one of two places where Line 3 crosses the Mississippi River and the site of a number of protests. Although 20 other law enforcement agencies billed Enbridge for assisting the local sheriff, Clearwater County billed nothing to the pipeline company.

The invoices also offer insight into the way the influx of pipeline workers translated into incidents of human trafficking and assault. “Since the Line 3 Replacement project has come to our area, we have experienced an increase in calls and need for services,” reads a grant application from the nonprofit Violence Intervention Project, or VIP, based in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, a community through which the pipeline passes, just outside the Red Lake Reservation. “We have provided services to several victims that have been assaulted by employees working on the Enbridge line 3 project.”

Enbridge reimbursed the organization for two hotel rooms for assault survivors, since VIP’s shelter was full at the time. The company also paid $42,000 worth of hazard pay for shelter workers during the 2021 winter, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Enbridge’s biggest human trafficking grant recipient was Support Within Reach, a northern Minnesota organization that works with survivors of sexual violence, which used the money to pay for extra personnel costs during pipeline construction and to buy emergency cell phones for advocates.

Additional funds also went to public agencies: Enbridge reimbursed $43,551.96 to local law enforcement agencies working with the Minnesota Human Trafficking Investigative Task Force. The documents describe at least two multi-agency operations in Grand Rapids and Bemidji, and news reports from the time confirm that they led to the arrest of four Line 3 workers.

Kellner, the Enbridge spokesperson, said that any employee caught and arrested for human trafficking would be fired by the company. She added that the four workers who were arrested were subcontractors, not direct employees of the oil company, and were fired by the contractor Enbridge worked with.

The Link, a nonprofit based in North Minneapolis, received $36,870 from Enbridge and used it in part to assist the task force with sting operations and support survivors who were found. Beth Holger, the organization’s chief executive officer, said she did not feel conflicted about taking Enbridge’s money, because it was going to victims: “Yes we took money from a corporation that has caused harm, and we’re giving it to people to help with that harm.”

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The $8.6 million in expenses covered by Enbridge by no means accounts for the full public cost of responding to opposition to the Line 3 pipeline.

Several sheriffs’ offices anticipated thousands more Enbridge dollars than they received. The sheriffs’ offices in Cass, Beltrami, and Polk counties each attempted to expense around $25,000 of equipment that was ultimately denied reimbursement.

Hubbard County Sheriff Cory Aukes said that it was unfortunate that the Hubbard county attorney’s request for prosecutorial funds was denied by the account manager, as Aukes sees the influx of charges and protestors as an undue burden on the attorney’s office as well as the sheriff’s office. He said that his agency had plenty of other expenses that weren’t covered.

He added that he believes it would be fiscally irresponsible to decline Enbridge’s funds. “Shouldn’t they have to fund that? Shouldn’t they be responsible to reimburse these additional costs?” Aukes asked.

To water protectors, however, the greatest costs of the pipeline are its consequences for the climate, water, and the Canadian forest ecosystem decimated by tar sands oil production. The nonprofit LaDuke co-founded, Honor the Earth, issued its own invoice to Enbridge before the creation of the escrow account, estimating that Line 3 would cost $266 billion annually in environmental losses and social damages.

So far, she hasn’t received a response.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Documents show how a pipeline company paid Minnesota millions to police protests on Feb 9, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alleen Brown.

“Minnesota has a proud tradition of being a national clean energy leader, but we’ve fallen behind other states,” Democratic House Majority Leader Jamie Long, who authored the bill, told Grist in a statement. “Minnesotans are calling on us to act and we are answering the call.”

The legislation establishes two new mandates for electric utilities in the state: a renewable electricity standard and a carbon-free energy standard. The former builds on a law the North Star State passed in 2007, which required power utilities to get at least 25 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources by 2025. They achieved that goal eight years early. The new standard ups the requirement to 55 percent renewable energy by 2035. The second standard instructs electric utilities that operate in the state to get 100 percent of their power from carbon-free sources by 2040, with targets set along the way — 80 percent carbon-free by 2030 and 90 percent by 2035. Utilities can use a mix of solar, wind, hydropower, nuclear, hydrogen power, and biomass — energy obtained from burning wood and trash — to meet the 2040 goal.  

Minnesota’s two top power utility companies, Xcel Energy and Minnesota Power, previously promised to reach 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2050. This bill speeds up their timeline by a decade, but it also includes “off-ramps” that utilities can take advantage of if the targets prove too onerous. If Xcel, for example, can make a case before state regulators that the benchmarks set by the legislation prevents it from supplying its customers with reliable power, the state may grant it an extension. Utilities can also buy clean energy tax credits to offset their emissions. 

The bill contains provisions that will help streamline the permitting process for new energy projects in the state, set minimum wage requirements for workers hired by the state’s utilities to build large-scale projects, and prevent power from waste incineration plants located in low-income, majority non-White communities from counting toward the 2040 target. 

Environmental justice groups in Minnesota fought hard to get that last provision included in the bill — they argued that waste-to-energy facilities, like the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center in Minneapolis, endanger the health of communities that live around them. The groups said the legislation is a good first step but argued that it doesn’t do enough to disincentivize other garbage incineration plants currently operating across the state.

State Republicans opposed the clean energy standard on the grounds that it would make electricity in the state more expensive and less reliable. “This ‘blackout bill’ is going to make energy unreliable, unsafe, and even dangerous,” the Republican House minority leader, Lisa Demuth, said. “Energy needs to be safe. We need it in Minnesota to be reliable, and this is neither.” Multiple analyses of existing state-level clean energy standards show the mandates have actually improved grid reliability and reduced costs for consumers. 

Minnesota House Democrats attempted to pass similar legislation before, in 2021, and were shot down by the Republican-controlled state Senate. In 2022, the party narrowly clinched a majority in the chamber, which illuminated a new path forward for climate legislation. Minnesota is the first state to pass a clean energy standard since Democrats in Washington, D.C., passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest federal investment in fighting climate change in U.S. history, last August. 

“This is the culmination of a lot of hard work,” Paul Austin, head of Conservation Minnesota, told Grist. “It shows how the federal legislation and the state legislation can work together, and it shows that the states can continue to lead if Congress doesn’t have that window to do major things on climate going forward.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Minnesota to require 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040 on Feb 3, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

“Jim Schultz and his wealthy backers, like the police union, are spending millions of dollars to sow division and fear.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

After months of fruitless negotiations with their multimillionaire employers over fair contracts, safe staffing, and other issues during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, 15,000 nurses at more than a dozen Minnesota hospitals are set to walk off the job later this month in what their union is calling the "largest private sector nurses strike in U.S. history."

"Our healthcare and our profession are in crisis."

"Today is a somber day," Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) president Mary Turner said during a Thursday news conference announcing the three-day strike, which is set to start September 12. "Our healthcare and our profession are in crisis."

"Everywhere in Minnesota nurses have watched CEOs with million-dollar salaries understaff our units, pushing us to do more with less, even before the pandemic hit," she continued. "Nurses do not take this decision lightly, but we are determined to take a stand at the bargaining table—and on the sidewalk if necessary—to put patients before profits in our hospitals."

Last month, MNA's 15,000 members voted overwhelmingly in favor of a strike after nurses say efforts to negotiate solutions to short-staffing, retention, and better patient care failed.

Minnesota Reformer reports:

The strike will begin on September 12, after the required 10-day notice period, and affect 15 hospitals run by many of the state's largest health systems including Allina, HealthPartners, Children's Minnesota, Fairview Health Services, North Memorial, Essentia, and St. Luke's Duluth.

The nurses are seeking 30% increases to pay and benefits over the next three years, a proposal that hospital leaders say is financially impossible after more than two years of financial strain during the pandemic. Hospital leaders have countered with raises of about 10% over three years, which they say would be the largest raises for nurses in 15 years...

Nurses say hospitals are dangerously understaffed, leading to more patient injuries like bedsores and falls. A recent report from the Minnesota Department of Health shows adverse health events were up 33% in 2021 from 2020 and last year, nurses filed nearly 8,000 reports of unsafe staffing levels, an increase of 300% from 2014.

"Corporate healthcare policies in our hospitals have left nurses understaffed and overworked, while patients are overcharged, local hospitals and services are closed, and executives take home million-dollar paychecks," said MNA first vice president Chris Rubesch, a registered nurse at Essentia Health in Duluth, in a statement.

"Nurses have one priority in our hospitals, to take care of our patients," he added, "and we are determined to fight for fair contracts so nurses can stay at the bedside to provide the quality care our patients deserve."

MNA members also highlighted the pay gap between healthcare executives and nurses. For example, M Health Fairview CEO James Hereford's $3.5 million compensation is 40 times that of the average registered nurse at the company's hospitals, while Essentia Health CEO David Herman, at nearly $2.7 million, makes 38 times more than the average RN salary at his firm's facilities.

"Despite the fact that hospital executives continue to earn significant raises on their million-dollar salaries, such as... Hereford, who took a 90% raise in 2019," MNA said, "these same CEOs are offering nurses average annual increases of only around 4%, well below the current rate of inflation and climbing cost of living."

"Hospital CEOs with million-dollar salaries can afford to put patients before profits in our hospital and to do right by Minnesota nurses," the union added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

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For nearly three decades, long before the fall of Roe v. Wade, the blond brick Building for Women in Duluth, Minnesota, has been a destination for patients traveling from other states to get an abortion. They have come from places where abortions were legal but clinics were scarce and from states where restrictive laws have narrowed windows of opportunity.

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For many residents of northern and central Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it was faster to head west toward the Minnesota border than to go southeast to clinics in Milwaukee, Green Bay or Madison. Over the years, thousands of pregnant people climbed the stairs of the Building for Women to get abortions at WE Health Clinic, on the second floor.

Treating travelers from other states is nothing new for WE Health or the other abortion providers around the state, but Minnesota’s role as a so-called abortion access island is. The state’s neighbors have either banned abortion, are poised to do so or have severely restricted the procedure.

Data kept by Minnesota shows that white people make up a larger share of those who travel from another state for an abortion than those who seek abortions in state, raising questions about whether certain groups — particularly people of color — will be able to make the trip.

According to the state’s data, Minnesota residents seeking abortions are a fairly diverse group. From 2018 through 2021, on average, 31% of patients were Black, 9% were Hispanic, 8% were Asian and 2% were American Indian; an additional 6% were recorded as “other.” White patients accounted for 44%.

But among those coming from out of state, people of color made up a much smaller percentage on average of the patient population. White people made up 75% of out-of-state patients.

Experts say some of the disparity results from the fact that the states bordering Minnesota are predominantly white, particularly in the rural areas adjacent to the state. But this also describes Minnesota’s population. So at least some of the difference could be tied to access to transportation or money to travel.

“Minnesota is going to become a haven state, but for what percentage of people that actually need our services?” said Paulina Briggs, WE Health Clinic’s laboratory manager and patient educator. “That’s a huge thing.”

When Roe was overturned in June, the small staff at WE Health Clinic was dismayed but not surprised. In fact, it was prepared to meet the estimated 10% to 25% increase in out-of-state patients.

“We’ve anticipated this for a long time,” Briggs said. “So it’s not like sudden news to us.”

While the clinicians in Duluth may have been prepared for the end of Roe, something much more unexpected happened 2 1/2 weeks later, when a district court judge delivered a surprise ruling that expanded abortion access in the state. Ruling in Doe v. Minnesota, the judge threw out measures that included a mandatory 24-hour waiting period before abortions, two-parent consent for minors and a requirement that physicians discuss medical risks and alternatives to abortion with patients. He also tossed out a requirement that only doctors were allowed to provide abortion care, including by telemedicine, and that after the first trimester, the care had to take place in a hospital.

In contrast to the tearful scenes that played out in many clinics after Roe fell, in Minnesota that Monday morning, abortion providers and their support staff celebrated. Laurie Casey, the executive director of WE Health, was behind her long, crowded desk, doing paperwork when she first got news.

“It’s like, ‘Oh my God, is this real?’” she said. “Something good happened?”

Briggs said: “I think I audibly cheered. Like: ‘Yeah. Hell yeah.’”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Minnesota case, which was filed in 2019, had expected to go to trial at the end of August. Instead, the judge granted abortion supporters a big victory, leaving intact two measures: a requirement that abortion providers collect and report data on their patients to the state, and a law that dictates the rules for disposing of fetal remains.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office represented the state in the lawsuit, announced that he would not appeal the court’s decision. Ellison also pledged that he would not prosecute abortion-seekers from other states and wouldn’t cooperate with extradition orders from outside jurisdictions.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order making similar promises.

Both officials have made abortion access central tenets of their reelection campaigns.

In these early days of a post-Roe reality, it’s not yet clear who will need these protections, though the data can provide clues.

States track demographic data on abortion differently; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than two dozen publicly report the race and ethnicity of patients. Minnesota is the only access island state in the Midwest that releases those numbers; the state also separates that data into resident and nonresident figures.

Illinois is projected to accept far more out-of-state patients than Minnesota, but its health department does not release statistics about the race and ethnicity of abortion patients. Kansas allows abortion up to 22 weeks, protects the right to abortion in its Constitution and reports one of the highest rates of out-of-state patients in the country, at nearly 50% and second only to Washington, D.C. But Kansas’ state health department does not combine where patients are from with demographic data.

From 2008 to 2021, 13,256 patients who live outside Minnesota received abortion care there, an average of about 950 people a year, according to the state health department. Among that population, the racial and ethnic breakdown of patients has held fairly steady.

A number of factors play into the lack of diversity, said Asha Hassan, a graduate researcher at the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota.

“There’s the obvious one that might be coming to mind, which is the effects of the way structural racism and poverty are interwoven,” Hassan said.

Caitlin Knowles Myers, a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont who studies the economics of abortion, added, “Obviously resources like ability to take time off, ability to get and pay for child care, etc., etc. — that obviously prevents poor women from making a trip.”

Then there is the cost of the procedure itself. In Minnesota, residents can use state medical assistance funds to pay for an abortion under certain circumstances; out-of-state residents cannot. According to Our Justice, a nonprofit that provides financial assistance for abortion care and travel to Minnesota, in-clinic abortion services can cost $400 to $2,000, depending on the gestational age of the pregnancy. A locally based telemedicine service and mobile clinic called Just the Pill charges $350 for abortion medication.

Shayla Walker, executive director of Our Justice, said her organization helps people work through the kinds of barriers to travel that pregnant people of color face every day. Undocumented patients, for instance, may not have a driver’s license or other form of identification, meaning that flying from states like Texas or Oklahoma is out of the question.

Of the out-of-state patients who come to Minnesota, residents from neighboring Wisconsin make up the vast majority. And like Minnesota and its neighboring states, Wisconsin is predominantly white: 80.4% of residents identified as such in the 2020 U.S. Census.

From 2008 to 2021, an average of 690 patients from Wisconsin received abortion care in Minnesota each year. The proportion of Wisconsinites has dropped over the years — in 2008, 80% of out-of-state abortion patients reported that they lived in Wisconsin, compared with 63% by 2021. Over that same period, South Dakota residents ticked up from 4% to 16%, and Iowa patients rose from 2% to 6%.

According to Myers, the lack of abortion providers in western and central Wisconsin likely drives the traffic across the border to Minnesota. These parts of the state are largely rural and mostly white. Wisconsin’s more diverse urban centers are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the state, much closer to the Illinois border.

“A lot of them are likely to end up heading south to the Chicago area,” Myers said. “The Chicago area also has a lot of providers and likely a lot of capacity. And the question for Minnesota is, if the Chicago area ends up unable to absorb an enormous influx of patients heading their way from all directions, then you would expect to see patients spilling over into Minneapolis.”

Leaders of the Options Fund, which provides financial help to pregnant people in rural central and western Wisconsin who are seeking abortions, said the majority of the money they provide is for care that takes place in Minnesota.

“Certainly it’s not that people of color don’t exist, of course,” said the group’s vice president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for her safety. “But I think generally, the more rural we get, the more white it’s going to be.”

Of course, the data from Minnesota is backward-looking, from years when abortion was still legal, though restricted or sometimes difficult to access, in surrounding states. There are certain to be shifts in where patients travel from, most obviously North Dakota, where the state’s lone abortion clinic moved from Fargo to its Minnesota sister city of Moorhead, just across the border. And as reproductive rights supporters across the country respond to the end of Roe, abortion funds have reported huge increases in their donations, which may bring travel and abortion care in Minnesota within the grasp of more low-income pregnant people and people of color.

The first week after the Doe v. Minnesota decision, WE Health Clinic’s patients felt the impact. Casey said she was able to tell a mother that her minor daughter could receive an abortion without the permission of her long-absent father or from a judge. Briggs was able to schedule a next-day abortion, which would have been illegal before the judge’s decision.

At some point, a clinic worker went through intake folders and pulled out all the forms certifying that “state mandated information” had been provided to patients. They were fed into the office shredder.

Tossing out their scripts, canceling the physician phone calls 24 hours in advance, no longer going down to the county courthouse to ask judges to grant their minor patients special permission to have an abortion — all of this will save the WE Health Clinic workers hours every week.

Beyond that, the court ruling — which abortion opponents are seeking to have overturned — has the potential to increase the number of providers, as advanced clinicians like nurse practitioners and some classifications of midwives may now be able to get training, and eventually provide abortion care and telemedicine.

This pivotal moment for abortion care in Minnesota and the country at large comes at a moment of major transition for WE Health as well. Casey is looking at retirement in the coming year, which means much of the work of adapting the clinic to serve patients in a post-Roe world will fall to her staff, including Briggs.

Briggs started working at the clinic six years ago, when she was just 21. She wanted to do this work after receiving her own abortion at WE Health as a college student, an experience she found at once “nonchalant” and “empowering.”

She is troubled by the disparities in who might be able to make it across the borders and climb the stairs of the Building for Women, to receive the kind of life-changing care that she did. Just keeping the doors open does not mean the care will be equitable.

Haru Coryne contributed data analysis.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop.

Now, environmentalists and nearby tribal nations hope that recent court victories will shut it down for good. Earlier this month, the Army Corps of Engineers held a hearing to decide whether to reissue a permit for PolyMet to dump waste rock on more than 900 acres of wetlands, a possibility that the downstream Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa vehemently opposes. The Environmental Protection Agency came out in support of the tribe, telling the Corps that allowing the mine to go ahead with its plans would risk contaminating the already-polluted St. Louis River with dangerous levels of mercury. 

As opponents highlight the mine’s environmental impact, PolyMet is touting its potential for producing valuable metals needed to build transmission lines and electric vehicle batteries — making it the latest dispute over how to responsibly mine the materials needed for the renewable energy transition. In Nevada, a lithium mine is facing stark opposition from tribes who say it would damage a culturally, historically, and spiritually significant area. Cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo have reportedly been subjected to exploitative working conditions, including by the company that owns PolyMet. At the same time, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for an increase in domestic mining in response to supply chain issues and increased demand.

Activists say these conflicts are increasingly testing the idea of a “just transition” — one that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past, such as prioritizing extraction over the needs of Indigenous people and the environment, in shifting to new forms of energy. 

“The Band is not opposed to mining,” Band Chairman Kevin Dupuis Sr. said in a press release on the first day of the Army Corps hearing. “But if mining is to occur, we must ensure that our waters are protected, not just for the Band, but for all Minnesotans.”

PolyMet, which is majority owned by the Swiss mining conglomerate Glencore, first unveiled plans for its Northern Minnesota mine, the NorthMet project, in 2005. Since then, it’s faced legal challenges to multiple other permits it needs to move forward, including water pollution, air pollution, and mining permits that are either tied up in litigation or have been sent back to state agencies for further study and adjustment. And it’s not the only disputed mine in Minnesota; in January, the Biden administration canceled two federal leases for the Twin Metals mine, which would have extracted copper, nickel, and precious metals near the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness. 

In the last few years, PolyMet has leaned into its role as a supplier of elements needed to build electric car batteries and other renewable energy infrastructure. The company has said that the area of the NorthMet project contains significant reserves of copper, nickel, and palladium — “metals vital to global carbon reduction efforts” — and that it would become one of the country’s top suppliers once the mine becomes operational, although it can’t guarantee how much of its eventual output would go toward green energy. 

“These metals that we’re producing are really crucial to not only modern society,” PolyMet spokesperson Bruce Richardson told MinnPost, but also “for clean energy and climate change and our own security.”

JT Haines, the northeastern Minnesota program director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, called this view “problematic.” The industry is using the demand for new metals for green energy as a “safe harbor talking point,” he said, to justify destructive mining activities without addressing the core issue of consumption and extraction. Instead, Haines argued, the focus should be on how to recycle and reuse the metals that already exist while reducing consumption and energy use in the first place. 

“It’s clear that we can’t mine or drive our way out of the climate crisis,” Haines said.

The contested permit at the center of the recent Army Corps hearing was issued in 2019 – despite years of opposition from the Fond du Lac Band, which as a sovereign nation has the right to set its own water quality standards and the legal status of a downstream state. Last year, following a lawsuit from the tribe, the EPA determined that the NorthMet project “may affect” water in the Fond du Lac Band’s territory as well as the state of Wisconsin, and asked the Army Corps to suspend the permit. 

At the hearing on May 3, the EPA said PolyMet’s plan to dredge and fill the wetlands with mining waste could contaminate multiple waterways that drain into the St. Louis River, which flows through the tribe’s reservation near Duluth. The biggest concern is mercury, a potent neurotoxin that can be a byproduct of mining. The NorthMet project would also release sulfate, which helps convert mercury into methylmercury — the metal’s most toxic form, which accumulates in fish and other wildlife and can eventually be toxic to humans that consume it. 

The St. Louis River is already one of Minnesota’s most mercury polluted waterways, and the Fond du Lac Band relies on both the river and its upstream tributaries for hunting, fishing, and gathering foods such as wild rice. While PolyMet said it would capture and treat the mine runoff to prevent mercury and sulfate pollution, the Fond du Lac Band’s scientists testified that the discharge would exceed the tribe’s water quality standards, which are more stringent than Minnesota’s. 

The Army Corps is now accepting public comments through June 6, after which it will decide whether to reinstate, permanently revoke, or modify PolyMet’s permit. PolyMet did not respond to a request for comment from Grist. 

Although this is the first time that a tribal nation has used its authority as a “downstream state” to challenge a federal permit that could impair its lands and water, a win in the PolyMet case could set a precedent for other tribes to do the same, said the Fond du Lac Band’s attorney, Vanessa Ray-Hodge. 

“​​It’s an important mechanism for tribes to be able to use and to have available to them to protect their reservation waters from development, just like other states can do all the time,” Ray-Hodge said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Minnesota, the PolyMet mine pits renewable energy needs against tribes and the EPA on May 20, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Diana Kruzman.

Sure enough, Samuels is a known and influential figure in various contexts throughout the city.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

• California Representative Lieu plans to introduce an impeachment resolution next Monday
• Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar introduces articles of impeachment against Trump after he incites mob
• Followers of the far-right movement say there were warning signs leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol this week
• Civil-rights advocates say the police response to Trump supporters was in stark contrast to responses to peaceful civil-rights protests
• California Governor Newsom unveils his new state budget plan, marking the start of months of negotiations
• California state legislators introduce the Keep California Working Act to help small businesses and nonprofits

The post California Representative Lieu plans to introduce an impeachment resolution next Monday; Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar introduces articles of impeachment against Trump after he incites mob appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The independent panel, formed in July 2020, was convened by Laura Nirider, co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project and Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law who brought together a powerful body of experts to review the case.  

Read the findings here.

The post Independent Panel of Legal Experts Call on New Minnesota CRU to Investigate Myon Burrell’s 2002 Conviction appeared first on Innocence Project.

The Memorial Day killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, who has been the subject of at least 17 misconduct complaints over his career — yet only ever received two written reprimands — has reignited calls for police discipline and accountability throughout the U.S. Officer Chauvin, like many others, had faced little to no consequences for any wrongdoing in his career. Allowing the public to have access to law enforcement disciplinary histories is the first step in stopping police from brutalizing and wrongfully convicting innocent people.

New Jersey is one of 21 states where police disciplinary records are confidential. That could change with new legislation, Senate Bill 2656, currently being considered by state lawmakers to make information about misconduct available under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act. Here is how the bill could improve the legal system.

The problem

In New Jersey, police misconduct records — such as excessive force, lying, and falsifying reports — are largely kept secret. Without this information, the public cannot identify officers who violated the rules and hold them accountable for their actions. 

The secrecy around police discipline also blocks people facing potentially life-altering criminal charges from knowing the full background of the officers involved in their cases. That is because a New Jersey Supreme Court rule created a presumption of non-disclosure of police disciplinary records, in which the defense can only access information about misconduct if they already know about the misconduct. This catch-22 means that courts rarely rule in favor of disclosure.

As a result, defendants, prosecutors, judges, and juries are usually left in the dark if officers involved in a case have histories of transgressions. For example, if not informed of officers’ records of perjury or misconduct, defense attorneys cannot accurately assess the credibility of officers involved in their clients’ cases. Police records are important background information for defense attorneys and help them decide whether or not to advise their clients of their best options like whether to plead guilty or fight the charges.

This rule also means that when cases do go to trial, the accused cannot raise concerns about an officer’s credibility, and judges and juries cannot properly assess their testimony. Without the full background of police officers involved in arrests, investigations, and testimony, the innocent are at risk of being wrongly convicted.

What does SB 2656 do?

Senate Bill 2656, sponsored by Senator Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, would make law enforcement records available for release under the state Open Public Record, including:

• Complaints, allegations, and charges filed against police officers 
• Transcripts and exhibits from disciplinary trials and hearings
• Dispositions of proceedings
• Final written opinion/memo on disposition and discipline imposed, including the agency’s complete factual findings and analysis of the officer’s conduct 
• Internal affairs records
• Agency factual findings, analysis, and final opinions on disciplinary hearings
• Video recordings of incidents that gave rise to complaints, allegations, charges, or internal affairs investigations 

How will the bill prevent wrongful convictions?

Police abuse can only be addressed if the problems are known by the public and the actors in the justice system. Senate Bill 2656 will improve scrutiny of bad behavior, which is often shielded from the public, and create pressure to remove those officers who abuse their power and contribute to wrongful convictions. 

The legislation is also critical for fair and accurate outcomes in the legal system. Knowing that a police officer has a history of misconduct will improve assessments at every stage of a criminal proceeding — from charging and bail decisions to convictions. Innocent people will be able to more adequately defend themselves against the corrupt officers who stand between them and prison. 

New York recently joined the majority of states across the country that provide access to police disciplinary records, and now New Jersey should follow suit. This legislation is a decisive measure in beginning to create law enforcement accountability. 

Last week, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed in Minneapolis by a white police officer who pinned him to the ground. His death, which closely followed the unjust deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, has yet again brought the issues of police violence and racial inequality to global attention.

People in dozens of cities across the United States held protests over the weekend and are continuing to protest and call for change still. But whether you’re on the streets protesting or staying home due to the pandemic, there are many ways to get involved — from donating to reading up on these important issues. Here are some ways you can get involved, support protestors, and advocate for justice:

1.  If you’re able, donate to a bail fund in your state so protesters who’ve been arrested can be released quickly and won’t have to spend long periods of time in jail pre-trial. This is a list of local bail funds in 31 states.

2.  Donate to mutual aid and Black-led organizing projects. You can research local organizing efforts in your own town, and here are a few national examples:

You can split a donation between these (and other) organizations here.

3.  Join a local protest. Your local Black Lives Matter chapter is a great place to find out what’s happening in your area.

If you don’t feel comfortable going to a protest, there are other ways to help. Leave a box of water bottles or snacks on the street with a sign for protesters who may need them.

A mixture of water and baking soda can also help neutralize the effects of tear gas, so if you have access, you can also leave gallons of water and boxes of baking soda out for protesters who may encounter tear gas.

4.  Check in with friends, family, co-workers, and loved ones who may be affected or feeling this particularly hard.

5.  Demand accountability from your leaders and law enforcement. New York State is currently considering the repeal of 50-a, a law that shields police from disclosing misconduct to the public and allows the police to deny accountability. This policy impedes racial justice and enables wrongful conviction. You can take action here.

6.  Speak up — Now is not only the time to speak up for justice, but also to have difficult conversations about race, inequality, and justice with people around us, including those who we love and are close to us.

Here are some facts to help get your conversation started:

• Black people make up just 13% of the U.S. population, but 40% of incarcerated people in the country. This is not because Black people commit more crimes, but, in large part, because of the way Black communities and other communities of color are policed and presumed guilty.
• Studies have shown that Black and Latinx people are more likely to be stopped, searched, and suspected of a crime (even when no crime has occured).
• Innocent Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white people, the National Registry of Exonerations reported.
• Minneapolis police officers have killed Black people at a rate 13 times higher than white people. The disparity in rates is one of the largest in the country.

7. Read.

8. Watch.

Watch American Trial: The Eric Garner Story, a film about the case of Eric Garner, who like Floyd was presumed guilty and was killed as a result of excessive force used by the police. 

And, if you haven’t already, watch “When They See Us” about the Central Park Five, which tells the story of five black and brown teenagers who were racially profiled and coerced into false confessions in 1990.

Updated on May 29, 2020, 2:20 p.m. ET: Former police officer Derek Chauvin has been arrested and charged with third degree murder and manslaughter, CNN reported.

Outrage has erupted from Portland to New York after George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis on Monday.

Video footage of the scene taken by a bystander shows officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, with his knee on Floyd’s neck, pinning him to the ground. Floyd, handcuffed and subdued, can be heard pleading with Chauvin to remove his knee.

Over four minutes, Floyd repeatedly cries out “I can’t breathe,” until he becomes unresponsive. Three other officers stand by, ignoring the requests of bystanders to check on Floyd’s breathing. And for several minutes after Floyd appears to stop breathing, Chauvin keeps his knee on his neck, until paramedics arrive to carry his body into an ambulance.

“They executed my brother in broad daylight,” Philonise Floyd, George’s younger brother, told CNN.

“The paramedics drug [sic] my brother across the ground without administering CPR — they showed no empathy, no compassion,” he said.

George Floyd’s final words, “Please, I can’t breathe,” echoed those of Eric Garner, who died after police officers in New York City put him in a chokehold while arresting him in 2014. Garner was arrested for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, which he denied doing at the time of his arrest. But Garner never had a chance to prove his innocence. His death inspired the Black Lives Matter movement.

“They showed no empathy, no compassion.”

The accusation levelled against Floyd wasn’t selling cigarettes, but purchasing them with an allegedly counterfeit $20 bill. Like Garner, Floyd was presumed guilty — not innocent as was his right — and he was killed for it.

The owner of the store convenience store where Floyd purchased the cigarettes told CBS Local News that: “Most of the times when patrons give us a counterfeit bill they don’t even know it’s fake so when the police are called there is no crime being committed.”

But police never conducted an investigation into whether or not the bill was fake.

Embed from Getty Images

Floyd was presumed guilty — and that presumption is inextricable from the implicit and explicit racial biases of law enforcement. These biases also contribute to the use of excessive force and violence against people of color, in particular, young Black men. Data shows that victims of police violence are disproportionately Black.

Floyd’s death isn’t the first in Minnesota to raise a furor over police violence and racial bias.

In 2016, Philando Castile was pulled over in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, while driving with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. Castile informed the officer that he had a gun, which he had a permit to carry, as a precaution, and repeatedly stated that he was not reaching for his gun. Yet seven seconds later, the officer fired into the car killing Castile.

Several studies have found that predominantly Black and Latinx communities are more heavily policed than white communities, and that Black and brown people are more likely to be stopped, searched, and suspected of a crime (even when no crime has occured). Implicit racial bias can influence law enforcement’s investigation of crimes, leading some of them to narrowly pursue suspects who may fit their perception of a “criminal.” Studies have shown that many white people have a strong unconscious racial bias and associate Black people with criminality, so when presented with a suspect that matches these assumptions, they may not conduct a comprehensive investigation into other potential suspects. This is often the first step toward wrongful conviction.

A study by the Council on Crime found that in Minnesota specifically, law enforcement drivers of color at significantly higher rates than white drivers. The report showed that if police had stopped Black and white drivers at the same rate, they would have stopped 18,800 fewer Black drivers and 22,500 more white drivers. Once pulled over, the study showed that drivers of color are also more likely to be searched, but that these searches are less likely to result in the discovery of “contraband.” Just 11% of Black drivers were found to have contraband, compared to nearly a quarter of white drivers searched.

The council concluded that such patterns “suggest a strong likelihood that racial/ethnic bias plays a role in traffic stop policies and practices in Minnesota.” But the impact of racial bias isn’t limited to traffic stops. And when combined with the state’s failure to hold police officers accountable and to adopt policies that promote the de-escalation of violence and regulate the use of force, it can be deadly.

Minneapolis police officers have killed Black people at a rate 13 times higher than white people, according to Samuel Sinyangwe, a data analyst and co-founder of Mapping Police Violence, a platform that tracks police killing data. The disparity in rates is one of the largest in the country.

Officers Chauvin, who pinned Floyd down, and Tou Thao — who did not intervene despite the desperate pleas of bystanders and a 2016 policy requiring officers to intervene when witnessing the use of excessive force — have been the subjects of previous complaints of excessive use of force, the Guardian reported. But neither was terminated until this week, when all four officers involved in the incident were fired. None of the men have been charged or arrested.

Floyd’s death comes just weeks after a viral video of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia prompted national outcry.

At the time of writing, protesters in Minneapolis are now in their third day of mass demonstrations, sparked by the death of “Big Floyd,” as Floyd was known to family and friends. The Texas native, who moved to Minneapolis for opportunity and a better life, is remembered as a proponent of peace, who advocated against gun violence.

His family is still hoping for justice for George, and for changes that will prevent such injustices from happening in the future.

“They took my brother’s life. He will never get that back. I will never see him again, my family will never see him again, his kids will never see him again,” Philonise told CNN. “We need justice.”

The Innocence Project mourns the death of George Floyd and stands with his family and the people of Minneapolis in seeking justice.

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The post Video of police killing of black man in Minnesota sparks outrage – May 26, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

But The Donald was fixated on 2020 even before he pulled off the upset of the century on November 8, 2016. After all, no one seems to have been more surprised by his victory that day than Trump himself.

According to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and his personal attorney Michael Cohen, even on election night 2016, the billionaire tycoon didn’t think he’d win his first presidential bid. His wife, Melania, assured by her husband that he’d lose, reportedly wept as the news came in that she would indeed be heading for the White House. Before his surprise victory, Trump described the election many times as “rigged” and seemed poised to declare the vote illegitimate as soon as the final returns rolled in. The attacks he’d launched on Hillary Clinton during the campaign — on her health, her integrity, her email account — were not only designed to savage an opponent but also to undermine in advance the person that everyone expected to be the next president.

In other words, Trump was already gearing up to go after her in 2020. And this wasn’t even a commitment to run again for president. Although he reveled in all the media attention during the 2016 campaign, he was far more focused on the economic benefits to his cohort, his businesses, his family, and above all himself. He understood that attacking Clinton had real potential to become a post-election profession.

Before Election Day, for instance, Trump was already exploring the possibility of establishing his own TV network to cater to the anti-Clinton base he’d mobilized. The relentless stigmatizing of the Democratic standard bearer — the threats of legal action, the “lock her up” chants, the hints at dark conspiracies — could easily have morphed into a new “birther” movement led by Trump himself. With Clinton in the White House, he could have continued in quasi-campaign mode as a kind of shadow president, without all the onerous tasks of an actual commander-in-chief.

Thanks to 77,744 voters in three key states on November 8, 2016, the Electoral College not only catapulted a bemused Trump into the White House but eliminated his chief electoral rival. Hillary Clinton’s political career was effectively over and Donald Trump suddenly found himself alone in the boxing ring, his very identity as a boxer at risk.

As president, however, he soon discovered that a ruthless and amoral executive could wield almost unlimited power in the Oval Office. Ever since, he’s used that power to harvest a bumper crop of carrots: windfall profits at his hotels, international contracts for his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s family business, not to speak of fat consulting gigs and other goodies for his cronies. Trump is a carrot-lover from way back. But ever vengeful, he loves sticks even more. He’s used those sticks to punish his enemies, real or imagined, in the media, in business, and most saliently in politics. His tenuous sense of self requires such enemies.

Even as president, Trump thrives as an underdog, beset on all sides. Over the last three years, he turned the world of politics into a target-rich environment. He’s attacked one international leader after another — though not the autocrats — for failing to show sufficient fealty. At home, he’s blasted the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives with a special focus on Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s lashed out against “deep state” opponents within the government, particularly those with the temerity to speak honestly during the impeachment hearings. He typically took time at a rally in Mississippi to besmirch the reputation of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court aspirant Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. He’s even regularly gone after members of his inner circle, from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to former Pentagon chief Jim Mattis, blaming them for his own policy failures.

Those relentless attacks constitute the ambient noise of the Trump era. But a clear signal has emerged from this background chatter. Since committing to run for a second term, he’s mounted one campaign of political assassination after another against any would-be successor to Hillary Clinton. Just as he ran a unique campaign in 2016 and has governed in an unprecedented manner, Donald Trump is launching what will be a one-of-a-kind reelection effort. This is no normal primary season to be followed by run-of-the-mill party conventions and a general election like every other.

Trump isn’t just determined to destroy politics as usual with his incendiary rhetoric, his Twitter end runs around the media, or his authoritarian governing style. He wants to destroy politics itself, full stop.

Last Man Standing

Over the course of 40 seasons, the American reality show Survivor has been filmed at many different locations and in a variety of formats. Still, the basic rules have remained the same. Contestants are divided into different “tribes” that must survive in adverse conditions and face extraordinary challenges. A series of votes in Tribal Councils then determine who can stay on the island. Sometimes, tribes or individuals win temporary immunity from expulsion. As the numbers dwindle, the tribes merge and individuals begin to compete more directly against one another. A Final Tribal Council determines the winner among the two or three remaining contestants.

What makes Survivor different from typical game shows — and arguably explains its enduring success — is that contestants don’t win simply by besting their adversaries in head-to-head battles as in Jeopardy or American Idol. Instead, they have to avoid getting voted off the island by fellow contestants. You win, in other words, through persuasion, negotiation, and manipulation.

The first season’s victor, Richard Hatch, “was not the most physically able of the contestants,” psychologist Vivian Zayas once explained. “In fact, out of the twelve individual Challenges, he only won one. Richard was also not the most liked. He was perceived as arrogant and overly confident, and even picked by some to be one of the first to get voted off the island.” Ultimately, what made Hatch successful was his ability to form alliances.

To put it in Trumpian terms, you win Survivor by being best at the art of the deal. At times, this requires ruthlessness, wheedling, and outright lies. It makes perfect sense that Trump would revive his stagnant career by translating Survivor into the business world in his show, The Apprentice. Less predictable perhaps was his application of this strategy to electoral politics.

The 2020 election resembles nothing less than a political version of the Survivor franchise. Donald Trump fully intends to be the last man standing. To do so, however, he must contrive to get everyone else voted off the island. The first to go was the tribe of Republican rivals he defeated in the 2016 primary and who no longer pose a political threat. Next to exit, in the general election, was the leader of the rival tribe of Democrats, Hillary Clinton.

In 2020, having won the equivalent of Survivor’s immunity prize, Trump has earned a pass to the final round in November. He faces no significant challenge within the Republican Party. In fact, nine states — Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, South Carolina and Wisconsin — have scrapped their primaries altogether and pledged their delegates to him. In the remaining primaries, he’s racking up the kinds of results that only totalitarian leaders typically enjoy like the 97% of caucus delegates he captured in Iowa, the 97% of primary voters in Arkansas, and his 86% margin of victory in New Hampshire.

As befits a political survivor, Trump has excelled at forging alliances. An irreligious and profane man, he still managed to win over the evangelical community. Despite his previously liberal record on social issues, he successfully courted the anti-abortion vote. A draft dodger, he’s effectively pandered to veterans and active-duty soldiers. And though he’s a billionaire given to grossly conspicuous consumption, he even managed to woo the disenfranchised in the Rust Belt and elsewhere. After capturing the Republican Party in this way, he then purged it of just about anyone without the requisite level of sycophancy to the commander-in-chief. In 2016, he also fashioned informal alliances with disgruntled Democrats and independent voters. Since then, he’s tried to make further inroads in the Democratic Party by persuading a few politicians like New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew to switch parties. His pardon of corrupt Democratic pol Rod Blagojevich might even win him some additional crossover votes in Illinois.

Trump hopes, of course, that the 2016 alliances he forged among Democratic and independent voters in key swing states will produce the same results in 2020. Indeed, those voters may well pull the lever for him again, even if they supported Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. It’s not just his politically incorrect personality that has won them over. During his presidency, he’s used the power of the state to direct significant resources toward such constituencies.

To compensate, for instance, for losses incurred in his trade war with China, he’s provided $28 billion in farm subsidies over the last two years. Even with the first part of a Sino-American trade deal in place, the president has promised critical rural voters yet more handouts in this election year. Although his tax cuts have certainly put plenty of extra money in the pockets of his wealthy supporters and affluent suburbanites, there’s evidence that those cuts have also advantaged red states over blue ones, just as job growth has favored such states, in part because of the help his administration has given to specific economic sectors like the oil, coal, and chemical industries.

All of this, however, could mean little if Donald Trump faces a popular Democrat in November. So the president has gone into overdrive to ensure that those he considers his strongest potential rivals are voted off the island before the ultimate contest begins.

Going After Biden

Joe Biden formally threw his hat into the presidential ring on April 25, 2019. But Donald Trump’s anxiety about running against him had begun much earlier. In July 2018, according to campaign advisers, the president was already fretting Biden might win back some white, working-class voters in swing states like Pennsylvania. However, the president promptly began to insist that Biden would be a “dream candidate,” resorting to his common and often effective strategy of saying the opposite of what he really thought.

That summer, Trump was well aware that, in election 2020 polls, he was seven points behind his possible future Democratic opponent. So he began to go after “sleepy Joe” (as he nicknamed him) on Twitter. He insulted Biden’s age, intelligence, and political record, but a true hatchet job required a sharper hatchet.

Trump had long sought a lawyer who could do some of his hatchet work for him, a figure akin to Roy Cohn, the anti-Communist huckster who assisted Senator Joe McCarthy and later served as The Donald’s mentor. Several people aspired to play that very role, including Michael Cohen, who became the president’s personal lawyer. But like former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in the end, he proved insufficiently loyal in the president’s eyes.

Rudy Giuliani has emerged as the latest in this line of fixers. He endorsed Trump in 2016 and then entered his administration as an adviser on cybersecurity. In April 2018, after the FBI raided Michael Cohen’s office, Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team. He immediately went to work exploiting his past connections in Ukraine as part of an effort to shift blame to that country for Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections. At some point in the fall of 2018, hooking up with two shady operators, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, he began to investigate Biden, his son Hunter, and the latter’s links to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. When Volodymyr Zelensky became that country’s president in April 2019, Trump felt emboldened, thanks to Giuliani, to press the new leader to relaunch an investigation into the Biden family even though the previous effort had produced nothing.

It was an extraordinarily risky move, coming just after Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his long-awaited report, had described Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s attempts to cover up its Kremlin connections. But that’s how much Trump worried about the man he then expected to be his foremost political rival in 2020. For reelection, Giuliani and Trump knew that nothing illicit actually had to be nailed down when it came to Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian activities. They simply had to damage his father’s reputation through insinuation.

Trump was furious at the impeachment inquiry that followed his “perfect” phone call with Zelensky on July 25, 2019. In the end, however, even though the House investigation exonerated Biden and implicated Trump, it was the Democrat’s reputation that suffered the greater hit.

As Peter Beinart wrote in The Atlantic:

”By keeping Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine in the news, they have turned them into a rough analogue to Hillary Clinton’s missing emails in 2016 — a pseudo-scandal that undermines a leading Democratic candidate’s reputation for honesty. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee last fall launched a $10 million advertising blitz aimed at convincing Americans that Joe Biden’s behavior toward Ukraine was corrupt.”

Biden’s national poll numbers didn’t actually suffer much during the impeachment investigation, but his leads in the early state primaries did. Beginning with an ad campaign in Iowa, the president seemed determined to kneecap Biden in those very primaries. True, the Democratic candidate did himself no favors with lackluster debate performances and his usual verbal gaffes. Trump’s strategy, however, helped ensure that the residents of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada nearly voted the competing tribe’s leading candidate off the island before the big Tribal Council on Super Tuesday. Only a resounding victory in South Carolina kept Biden in the race, propelling him to a surprising comeback on Super Tuesday.

Targeting the Rest

Trump deployed his traditional strategy of attack to minimize the other Democratic candidates for 2020 as well. He ridiculed Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” made fun of Mike Bloomberg’s height, and intentionally garbled Pete Buttigieg’s last name. But the candidate Trump seemed most worried about replacing Biden as the party’s nominee was Bernie Sanders.

After all, Sanders has some of the very strengths that made Trump such an attractive candidate in 2016. The Vermont independent is a political outsider who can credibly distance himself from the failings of both major parties. He has an authentically populist agenda that targets the very corporate fat cats who are Trump’s closest friends, allies, and supporters. He can potentially appeal to voters who didn’t go to the polls in 2016, those who voted for Trump but haven’t been able to stomach his performance in the White House, and young people who otherwise might not bother to turn out at all.

This profile has, for instance, attracted the endorsement of popular libertarian podcaster Joe Rogan. Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, who voted for Trump in 2016 before challenging the president for the party’s nomination this year, has already pledged to vote for Sanders if he becomes the nominee. Even far-right pundit Ann Coulter, once an ardent Trump supporter, declared last year that she’d consider voting for Sanders if he took a harder stance on immigration. “I don’t care about the rest of the socialist stuff,” she told PBS. “Just: can we do something for ordinary Americans?”

Trump himself has expressed concerns about taking on Sanders. “Frankly, I would rather run against Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders,” Trump told reporters last month. “Because Sanders has real followers, whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not — I happen to think it’s terrible what he says — but he has followers.”

A significant number of those followers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania switched parties to vote for Trump in 2016. If they were to go back to Sanders in 2020 — and if the Democrats who voted for Clinton generally maintained their party loyalty — the Vermont independent could win those three states and probably the election in November.

Of course, in his worrying about Sanders, Trump could well be using his simplistic version of reverse psychology. The president could be pretending to be scared of Sanders when he really wants to run against a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” next fall. Citing Republican Party sources, for instance, the New York Times concluded in January that “President Trump’s advisers see Senator Bernie Sanders as their ideal Democratic opponent in November and have been doing what they can to elevate his profile and bolster his chances of winning the Iowa caucuses.” These advisers are well aware that, according to a November poll by NPR/PBS and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last March, only 20%-25% of Americans are enthusiastic about a “socialist” candidate. For these reasons, Trump urged South Carolina Republicans to cross the aisle to back Sanders in the Democratic primary in order to shut down Biden once and for all.

To play it safe, however, the president has also begun to focus a portion of his considerable ire on Sanders. He’s already mounted vigorous attacks on his approach to health-care reform, his opposition to the assassination of the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, his supposed hypocrisy as a “wealthy, fossil fuel-guzzling millionaire,” and above all that socialism of his. It’s just a taste of what’s to come. According to someone who saw the opposition research the Republicans compiled on Sanders in 2016, it “was so massive it had to be transported on a cart.”

And that’s before Trump blows all this material out of proportion through outright lies and misrepresentation.

And the Winner Is …

At the end of August, Donald Trump heads into the Republican Party’s nominating convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, with some advantages he didn’t have four years ago.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton had raised nearly twice as much money as he did. This time, the president has already collected more than $100 million. (Barack Obama had $82 million at this point in 2012.) A war chest like that supports a large ground operation eager to flip some blue states like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, and even New Mexico. Trump has the authority of incumbency, plus a reputation for invincibility that’s been enhanced by his surviving both the Mueller investigation and impeachment by the House. As long as a coronavirus pandemic doesn’t truly shut down the global economy, he will continue to claim, misleadingly, that low unemployment figures and modest growth are his personal achievements.

In a normal political contest, Trump would have to deal with a raft of negatives, including his relative unpopularity, his many policy failures, his embarrassments on the global stage, and of course, the cuts his administration has made in funds to prepare for a possible pandemic. Election 2020, however, is anything but a normal political contest. Trump has been busy gaming the system, focusing virtually all his efforts on Electoral College swing states, while Republicans do their damnedest to purge voter rolls, suppress turnout, and ignore warnings from the U.S. intelligence community of coming Russian election interference.

Donald Trump has also been hard at work stripping politics of its content, a longer-term trend for which he’s anything but the sole culprit. Still, more than any other candidate in memory, he’s boiled elections down to pissing contests and personality clashes. In addition, his nonstop barrage of lies has thoroughly confused voters about what his administration has and hasn’t done. In the process, he’s delegitimized the mainstream media, placed himself above the law, and reduced American politics to a litmus test of loyalty.

It’s not yet possible to predict the winner of the 2020 election, but the loser is already clear: the American public. Trump has sabotaged in a significant way the normal give-and-take, compromise, and negotiation once at the heart of everyday politics. He believes only in power, the more naked the better. He long ago gave up on elite opinion. Now, he doesn’t want to take any chances on the vagaries of popular choice either.

Trump believes that he already owns the island, that he’s now the survivor-in-chief. To maintain that illusion, he’ll do anything in his power to ensure that he’s never voted off the island, certainly not by something beyond his control like actual democracy.

For the second time (after the heart attack last fall), the Bernie Sanders movement is on life support. Let us not sugarcoat this: last night was worse than the worst-case scenario any Bernie supporter had imagined. The drastic slippage in Texas, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, and even Vermont, let alone Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina, represents a mortal threat to the movement. But there’s a glimmer of hope yet, because it was only three days ago that Biden had been written off, so things can change quickly. Of course, we now have the irrefutable fact on the ground of Biden’s delegate haul and his victory in a whole bunch of states, prompted by support from African Americans, older voters, and suburbanites, so it won’t be easy.

But with continued backing from younger and Latino voters, Bernie needs to quickly figure out a counter-strategy to come roaring back. And come back he can, despite the terrain in the rest of March being quite unfavorable to him, as well as the danger of the media narrative going past the point of reversibility.

Though it’s not in Bernie’s nature to follow a game plan of the sort I’m suggesting, I hope his advisers will convince him that at stake is the fate of the movement, and the enthusiasm of the millions of engaged voters he’s inspired, and that he must rapidly shift his approach. Bernie should demand one-on-one debates with Biden, which would certainly be facilitated by Warren dropping out and not sniping at him, but it’s something he should ask for even if the field isn’t cleared.

The gloves must immediately come off when it comes to treating Joe Biden. He’s been let off all too easily this entire campaign, given his atrocious fifty-year anti-liberal record. Blanketing the airwaves to the extent the campaign can, and picking strategic spots to maintain some momentum through the rest of March (probably Ohio, Washington, Michigan, and Arizona), Sanders needs to do to Biden what he should have done to Elizabeth Warren long ago—that is, make his opponent appear ridiculously unelectable, which in fact he is.

1. Press hard on Biden’s record beyond support for the Iraq War, unfavorable trade bills, Social Security cuts, and the bankruptcy bill, all of which Bernie did bring up on Tuesday night. But why does it feel like Bernie’s critique of Biden only starts after 2003? What about Biden’s disqualifying record on the war on drugs, the promotion of mass incarceration, and Patriot Act-like attacks on civil liberties, going back to the 1980s and 1990s? What about his opposition to busing and desegregation? What about his horrible treatment of Anita Hill? What about his complicity with Obama’s barbarous deportation policy? What about his advocacy of the kinds of financial deregulation that led to the economic crash?

Bernie did make a start Tuesday evening, but he has been all too reluctant to go after Biden, even when numerous opportunities to draw distinctions have presented themselves. This lack of appetite to engage almost killed his campaign by way of Warren in the fall, until she was questioned by the media and failed to stand firmly behind Medicare for All. If Bernie keeps calling Biden “my good friend Joe,” he just adds to the impression in voters’ minds that while Biden may have lost a few marbles he is still fundamentally a decent guy and deserves a shot as Barack Obama’s legitimate successor.

2. We’ve heard Bernie’s stump speech, with its completely warranted emphasis on the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and other industries that are the culprits in our economic serfdom, but for now Bernie needs to come up with a brand-new script. Clearly, voters across the country on Super Tuesday rejected association with “democratic socialism” the way it’s been misrepresented in the media, and bought into the reactionary idea that, for example, getting rid of  private insurance would be too disruptive and not even doable in any future political scenario. But Bernie’s dreams for economic equality seem fantastical only by comparison to the utterly false impression of Biden as a capable executive who’s always stood by the little guy.

Bernie needs to zero in on the astonishing aspects of Biden’s resume we haven’t heard enough about throughout this campaign. Biden not only supported the Iraq War but was one of its most enthusiastic cheerleaders. His own president didn’t go for Biden’s advice on Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, so while he may have been a boisterous speechmaker in the Senate his actual record consists of a half-century of gross misjudgments. The same goes for mass incarceration, where he was not just a passive supporter but one of the leading articulators of the whole apparatus of imprisonment that came into being and still exists. He should be challenged on unjustifiable votes in these areas—from wholehearted support for neoliberal trade agreements to Bush/Cheney-like civil rights violations to the persistent aura of misogyny and racism throughout his career—without any regard for his feelings.

3. Change the discourse from “Trump is the most existential threat we face” to “Biden will herald the return of everything that caused Trump in the first place and help bring about something even worse than Trump.” I’ve always been against Bernie taking up the theme of Trump as the worst modern president because each time he does so he makes Biden’s superficial case for electability all the stronger. If Trump really is the greatest threat to the republic, then why take a chance with Bernie who promises a political revolution? Why not go with Obama’s vice president who looks like he might restore dignity and take us back to some semblance of normality?

Bernie hasn’t wanted to go anywhere near that, but I don’t think he can win the nomination without taking on Obama’s horrendous record on domestic and foreign policy, from drones and assassinations to deficit hawkery and deportations. What Bernie has wanted to do so far is to somehow bypass the sad truth about the last Democratic president and not give the electorate too much to absorb, since Obama remains popular, certainly among those who turned out in droves to support Biden on Super Tuesday.

How, then, to break the link between Biden and Obama? It can only be done by making the desire to go back to Obama less appealing. And by pointing out example after example of where Biden made errors of judgment by standing with Obama on the wrong things, such as cutting Social Security and Medicaid in pursuit of an elusive grand bargain with Republican deficit hawks, or by going along with the continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan despite his own doubts. I know this is a lot to ask for from Bernie, and harder still for not having been attempted before, but I don’t see a way around it.

In short, though the situation is critical, all is not lost because Bernie’s hardcore base is not going away. The problem lies in expanding that base, and if we are to be honest about Super Tuesday we must admit that across the country voters rejected the way Sanders was said to be describing the change he promises to bring about in favor of a do-nothing restoration. Though I’ve always supported Bernie’s use of “democratic socialist” to label himself, I would not go out of my way to do so for the time being. Rather, a ferocious attack, including paid advertising, must bring to the surface Biden’s half-century of reactionary stances, of the kind that should make Democratic voters ashamed to be aligned with him. The fact that Biden has reached a palpable level of senility should also not be off the table.

Those of us who have been with this unprecedented social justice movement with our heart and soul for the last many years expect that Bernie goes to this climactic fight with Biden with nothing left unsaid. No punches pulled, no recourse to the affable civility that comes naturally to Bernie, just a tenacious enunciation of the policies that Biden so enthusiastically supported and that led to the very rise of Trump.

In the early morning of February 26, a chill hung in the air as a line of teachers and school support staffers clad in bright red union hats, jackets or some combination thereof stood on a busy street corner outside of Highland Park Middle School in St. Paul, Minnesota.

As cars sped past, some with horns blaring in support, the teachers and school workers—who are members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE)—hoisted signs proclaiming their willingness to fight on behalf of students.

SPFE represents more than 3,500 teachers, education assistants and school and community support staff members. Minnesota state law requires districts to negotiate with their unionized employees every two years, and the current round of contract talks between SPFE and the St. Paul Public Schools, under the leadership of Superintendent Joe Gothard, has been going on since last May.

Now, SPFE President Nick Faber says the union and the students and families they serve can no longer wait for Gothard and his team to step up and negotiate in good faith. On February 20, a majority of SPFE members voted to authorize a strike against the St. Paul Public Schools.

If an agreement between the union and the school district is not reached by March 10, thousands of SPFE members will walk off the job for the first time since 1946.

The key contract items SPFE is pushing for include fully staffed mental health teams in all schools, a greater investment in special education staffing and programming, and an increase in the number of multilingual staff members.

This puts the union squarely in line with other social justice-oriented labor movements that have been revived in recent years, as seen in events such as the teacher strikes in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2019. Like SPFE, the Chicago and Los Angeles unions also advocated for more than the typical bread-and-butter issues of union contracts, such as salary increases and seniority rights, and additionally pushed for better living and learning conditions for students.

All of this is taking place against the backdrop of the recent wave of Red for Ed teacher strikes and wildcat actions that have roiled school districts and state capitals from California to Oklahoma, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and beyond.

These teacher-led movements for greater pay, smaller class sizes, and more respect and stability for public education overall have been credited with inspiring worker strikes in other fields too, including auto workers and Amazon employees. Along the way, organized labor’s profile has risen, making it a sought-after voting bloc in today’s political landscape.

This is likely a main reason why Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar sent out tweetsin support of SPFE’s potential strike, although all three also have established track records of support for union workers.

SPFE’s emphasis on the needs of students has also earned the union crucial support from community members.

Kirinda Anderson is the parent of a seventh-grader at St. Paul’s Highland Middle School, and she joined the teachers as they rallied in front of the school on February 26. As she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those holding picket signs and chanting slogans, Anderson said she came out to implore the St. Paul schools to act with urgency on behalf of all students.

“I attended a budget meeting held by the district in January,” Anderson recalled. “There, the district said they have a three-to-five-year plan to address the need for more mental health support in schools, but our students can’t wait that long.”

They need help as soon as possible, she noted, citing the high levels of trauma many students have to contend with both inside and outside of school.

“If the district is serious about educating all of St. Paul’s children,” Anderson said, “they should settle the contract with SPFE now.”

As chants of “Get up, get down/St. Paul is a union town” and “Sí se puede” rang out around her, Highland Park Middle School music teacher Beth Swanberg struggled to hold back tears when explaining why she was rallying on the street corner before the school day started.

“I have heard that one out of four students, overall, has an undiagnosed mental health issue, and they need so much more support,” she said. They are simply dealing with what’s going on around them, Swanberg stated, from the effects of institutionalized racism to the trauma of gun violence.

It adds up to everyday stress, she said, and that stress is impacting students’ ability to learn and stay focused on school.

Swanberg also drew attention to some of the more global factors that make it hard for teachers and support staff to reach every student they work with. For one thing, she pointed out, special education mandates are woefully underfunded at the federal level, leaving states and school districts to make up the difference by increasing caseloads for teachers, for example, or by pulling money out of general education funds.

Another factor looming in the background, Swanberg believes, is a decades-long disinvestment in public services across the United States. “There has been a starving of public entities—from health care to public schools and public housing,” she argued, to the detriment of the students and families who are most in need of such services.

As if on cue, a new report shows that a large number of Minnesota’s public schools are facing serious budget deficits even though lawmakers authorized a $540 million funding increase in 2019. School districts in the Twin Cities metro area alone are staring down $93 million in funding gaps, according to a local news outlet.

In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, Scott Croonquist of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts put the blame for this gap on the “rising cost of educating students with a growing number of special needs.” It’s a problem Croonquist says won’t be fixed until the state reckons with the chronic underfunding of the special education services districts are legally required to provide.

Teacher salaries in the state—which fall near the middle of average teacher salaries nationally—are also rising just slightly faster than the annual 2 percent bump in education funding authorized by the Minnesota legislature.

On top of this, public education in the state, as well as across the country, has been largely underfunded since at least the early 2000s—right as the standardized test-based accountability movement arose, demanding that “no child be left behind.”

These factors have helped put the squeeze on school districts like St. Paul’s, where two-thirds of students live in poverty, according to federal guidelines, and hundreds lack a permanent home. The city’s schools are also some of the most racially and linguistically diverse in the United States.

The question for many St. Paul teachers and school staffers is what to do about this. Should the narrative of failing public schools be allowed to continue to flourish, with little public discussion of the threat posed by privatization, underfunding, and rising poverty rates for students and families?

Or should SPFE insist on striking in order to fight for the schools and the support systems they believe all kids need and deserve?

“Educators have pushed the district to settle the contract since we started bargaining in May,” Faber said in a statement. If that settlement doesn’t come by March 10, expect to see a wave of union red filling St. Paul’s streets in response.

This article was produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Sarah Lahm is a Minneapolis-based writer and researcher. Her work has appeared in outlets such as the Progressive and In These Times. Follow her on Twitter @sarahrlahm.

What follows is a conversation between journalist Alex Kane and Kim Brown of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

KIM BROWN: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Kim Brown.

AIPAC is the largest official Israeli lobby group registered in the United States. It holds conferences every election cycle. And it used to be a nonpartisan issue for all presidential candidates to attend and speak at these conferences, where they would usually try to outdo each other in their fanatic support for Israeli policies, but this is changing rapidly. Both Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both announced that they will not attend AIPAC’s policy conference this year. AIPAC has been running attack ads against Senator Bernie Sanders because of his demand that the U.S. treat not just Israelis, but Palestinians with respect. Congresswoman Betty McCollum of Minnesota’s fourth district said that AIPAC is a hate group.

Now, AIPAC eventually apologized for the attack ads. On Sunday Bernie Sanders tweeted: “The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do the Palestinian people. I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason I will not attend their conference” Now, AIPAC in turn blasted Bernie Sanders for his tweet and called his decision not to attend shameful. The group called If Not Now is a progressive Jewish organization. They released this video last week calling on progressive candidates to skip AIPAC. Let’s have a listen.

SARAH KATE: I realized the AIPAC conference wasn’t the educational event it was branded but rather something with a deep-set, right wing agenda.

REBECCA MILLBERG: Then Trump came and spoke at AIPAC and Pence came and spoke at AIPAC and Netanyahu kept coming back even as he had more and more racist policies in the state of Israel.

SIMONE ZIMMERMAN: The way AIPAC is policing the discourse on this issue is harmful to Palestinians. It’s harmful to American Jews, it’s harmful to Israelis, and it’s harmful to everybody who considered themselves an ally in the fight for a better future.

REBECCA MILLBERG: To people who are still considering going to AIPAC, my question is why?

JACOB LEVKOWITZ: Today, if you’re a progressive or someone who cares about human rights. If you care about equality, if you care about justice, you should have serious concerns about showing up at AIPAC’s conference.

KIM BROWN: So after Congresswoman McCallum called AIPAC a hate group, Alex Kane interviewed her for 972 Magazine. He’s here with us today to discuss the shift in the Democratic Party in its relation to the state of Israel. Alex is a freelance journalist who writes on Israel Palestine, on civil liberties and on Jewish communities here in the United States. Also, on the war on terror. He writes, as I mentioned, for 972 Magazine; also writes for the Intercept Middle East I forward and other outlets across the web. Alex, we appreciate you joining us today.

ALEX KANE: Thanks for having me.

KIM BROWN: So Alex, we’ve spoken to you here previously on the Real News about an earlier piece you wrote titled How Israel Palestine Jumped to the Heart of U.S. politics in which you already pointed out the division in the Democratic Party. Now as we’re going along through the caucuses, we’re seeing delegates start to add up and right now, the more progressive candidate Bernie Sanders who has a more progressive policy or ideas towards how U.S. should deal with Palestine, he’s fairing much better than the pro Israel candidates like Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg. So in your opinion, how is this issue factoring in to how caucus and primary voters are choosing their candidate this time?

ALEX KANE: Well, I’m not sure how much it’s playing into the actual primaries or caucuses. I mean we’ve only had of course three primaries or, sorry, two caucuses and one primary and of course the next one is in South Carolina and Israel as a particular issue has not come up as a major part of the primary elections itself, right? So I don’t think most voters in the States that have voted think of Israel as a huge issue. I think that will perhaps change as we get to states with larger and more influential Jewish populations, including New York and Florida, so that’s sort of one point to make. But that doesn’t mean that Israel hasn’t been an issue in the overall primary. You’ve seen Israel come up a number of times in the debates and you’ve really seen the split between the progressives and the more establishment candidates there.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren sticking to their line that Netanyahu is a right wing racist whose pursuing policies that entrench Israel’s occupation and in turn making it impossible for a Palestinian state to come into being. And of course Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg also saying that there should be a two state solution, meaning Israel and a Palestinian state living together side by side, but Biden in particular are not criticizing Netanyahu in as harsh terms and not contemplating real shifts in U.S. policy like making U.S. military aid to Israel contingent on changes in Israeli behavior, like stopping Israeli settlements or stopping the steps to AMEX to West bank, so that’s where the issue has come up mostly in debates and on the campaign trail. I don’t think voters are yet thinking about Israel but that may change in the future.

KIM BROWN: We can look back on presidential election cycles 25 years in the past between George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, all spoke at AIPAC and they each made a promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the annexation. Now, of course they all lied except for Donald Trump who actually went ahead with it. But there’s an interesting twist here because what can a Democratic candidate possibly promise at an AIPAC conference, which can out shine what Trump has already done?

ALEX KANE: Well that’s a good point. I mean I don’t think any of the Democratic candidates, if they’d gone to AIPAC and to be clear, none of them have said they’re going to AIPAC and it’s on super Tuesday so none of them probably will be going to AIPAC. But if say Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg went to AIPAC, I don’t think it’s possible for them to outflank Donald Trump on the right on Israel because Donald Trump has essentially ripped the mask off of U.S. policy and made it clear that the United States will stand with Israel and its apartheid regime in the West bank and its overall policies of occupation and discrimination against Palestinians.

And that has totally ripped the mask off of the U.S. policy because U.S. policy for decades has been we want a Palestinian or sorry, for years I should say, not for decades. For years U.S. policy should be that there should be a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, there should be a two state solution there. Israel should withdraw from the occupied Palestinian Territories. Now that is no longer U.S. policy, so there’s no middle ground here, right? I think Trump has really polarized the Israel debate that’s something that leaves people like Joe Biden very uncomfortable, but it’s something that allows Bernie Sanders to step in and really be the progressive candidate on Israel Palestine.

KIM BROWN: Let’s talk about perhaps the waning influence of the AIPAC conference because let’s say at least in the 21st century political era, I want to say the modern political era, but I think it’s a little bit more recent than that. I mean it was really a come to Jesus, pardon the pun, but a kiss the ring sort of moment for all candidates, Republicans, Democrats to go to the AIPAC conference and make not just promises but I suppose intentions of support for Israeli policies. Maybe some slight critique about how to treat Palestinians depending on the candidate, depending on the era of course. But are we seeing AIPAC’s influence on U.S. national elections, especially for the white house, is that teetering off a bit in your opinion?

ALEX KANE: Yes, absolutely. And I think there are essentially two reasons why. The first is a sort of fundamental reason. AIPAC exists to marshal the resources in support of a sort of center right liberal American Jews community, I mean there are splits in the American Jewish community but AIPAC has always been a big tent meant to marshal the resources of American Jews and Christian evangelicals to support candidates who profess their undying love for Israel no matter what Israel is actually doing, so that has been AIPAC. Now, as Israel has carried out more and more belligerent policies towards the Palestinians, launching deadly assaults on the Gaza Strip and entrenching on a deeply brutal occupation and building settlements on stolen Palestinian land, that has made the job of AIPAC very difficult. How are you going to appeal to a Democratic Party base that is for social justice, for equality, and yet defend a state whose very policies are antithetical to that? So that’s first.

That’s one difficulty that AIPAC has to contend with. The other is something that AIPAC did to itself during the Iran debate for instance. AIPAC spent millions of dollars trying to kill president Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative, which is a diplomatic agreement with Iran. AIPAC did not succeed. The Democrats supported Obama’s Iran deal, and AIPAC did eventually succeed when Trump got into office and ripped the Iran deal up and basically put the U.S. on a confrontation path with Iran. So that was a major clarifying moment in the sort of cleavage that has been building up between AIPAC and parts of the Democratic Party. I don’t want to overstate it; the Democratic establishment is still very much with AIPAC, but the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is basically telling AIPAC to shove it.

KIM BROWN: Alex, I’m a little loathed to compare apples to oranges, so to speak, but I’m imagining a black presidential candidate skipping the NAACP conference, for example. What does it mean for Bernie Sanders, a Jewish candidate–not only a Jewish candidate for president, but the front-runner at the moment–to skip this particular conference? And it’s not to paint the Jewish voting block as a monolith, nor is the African American voting black a monolith but there is some sort of divergence in how identity politics works in this particular instance.

ALEX KANE: I think it’s significant because I think many non-Jewish politicians and non-Jews in general, to make a generalization, certainly not everybody, but to make a generalization they think of American Jews as supporters of Israel no matter what. And Bernie Sanders is showing the world that that’s not necessarily true. Now, Bernie Sanders is a supporter of a certain kind of Israel. He wants Israel to be a democracy. He wants Israel to stop occupying another people, to stop having separate and unequal laws when comparing Israeli Jews and Palestinians.

So it’s not that Sanders is not a supporter of Israel it’s just he’s a supporter of a different kind of Israel than the one that exists today. And in fact, that’s really the majority views of most American Jews. Most American Jews don’t like Netanyahu, they don’t like Israeli settlements, they don’t like Israel’s occupation. They are in general more antiwar than the larger American population if you want to break it down by ethnic groups. And so, Sanders is really in the mainstream in the Jewish community. People may not realize that, but he’s expressing views that are really in the mainstream.

Now, the American Jewish establishment is a different matter. His views are very much antithetical to that establishment. Groups like AIPAC groups, like the Anti-Defamation League, but Bernie Sanders aligned with J Street, which is a liberal pro-Israel group that wants Israel to end the occupation but also wants the United States to keep supporting Israel. So Bernie Sanders, essentially, his views are very much in line with the larger American Jewish community.

KIM BROWN: When you get a chance go to 972 Magazine check out Alex Kane’s interview with Congresswoman Betty McCollum. She called AIPAC a hate group after they ran attack ads against Senator Bernie Sanders who announced that he would not be attending this year’s AIPAC conference along with Senator Elizabeth Warren, who said that she would not be in attendance either.

We’ve been speaking with Alex Kane. Alex is a freelance journalist. He writes on issues relating to Israel, Palestine, on civil liberties, on Jewish communities here in the U.S. You can find his latest piece, as I said, at 972 Magazine, but he writes all over the internet. So Alex, we do appreciate your taking the time to speak with us today. Thank you.

ALEX KANE: Thanks for having me.

KIM BROWN: And thank you for watching The Real News Network.

Now she has less than two weeks to make it count.

The Minnesota senator on Tuesday immediately worked to turn her better-than-expected night into enough momentum to be competitive in next-up Nevada and beyond. For Klobuchar, that means consolidating establishment and moderate voters, picking up traction with black and Latino Democrats and introducing herself to most everyone else.

“Hello, America!” she yelled over a cheering crowd at a campaign party in Concord as she was on track to finish in third place. “I’m Amy Klobuchar, and I will beat Donald Trump.”

A third-place finish in New Hampshire counted as a victory for a candidate who spent much of the campaign boasting about being in the “top five” of the crowded field. Klobuchar used the moment to put her no-nonsense appeal in the spotlight. She spoke of growing up the granddaughter of an iron ore miner, becoming the first female senator from Minnesota and defying expectations in the 2020 race. She pledged to take her green campaign bus to Nevada and around the country and to win the nomination.

The senator appeared to benefit Tuesday from former Vice President Joe Biden’s sliding support, picking up moderate and conservative voters looking for an alternative to liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders, the New Hampshire winner, and rejecting political newcomer and second-place finisher Pete Buttigieg.

But Klobuchar’s quest is still an uphill climb. The senator has focused almost all her time and campaign resources in Iowa and New Hampshire, building only spare operations in the states that follow on the primary calendar. She has polled poorly among minority voters, a big obstacle in more diverse states like Nevada and South Carolina. Although she will likely see a bump in support, a surge of donations and new media attention, Klobuchar’s challenge is to set up the infrastructure to capitalize on her moment.

She’s starting from behind. Klobuchar’s Nevada team wasn’t hired until last fall and numbered fewer than a dozen until the campaign redeployed staff from Iowa last week, giving her about 30 people on the ground. Sanders, who essentially tied Buttigieg in Iowa, has been organizing in Nevada since April 2019 and has more than 250 staffers in the state. Biden has more than 80, Buttigieg has about 100 and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has more than 50.

Klobuchar is now hoping the appeal that worked for her in New Hampshire will have a similar impact in Nevada on Feb. 22. The three-term senator campaigned as someone who has won even in conservative areas and who could draw support from Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to beat Trump. She also points to her record of getting things done in Washington and argues that proposals like “Medicare for All,” backed by Sanders and Warren, are nonstarters in the Senate.

But it was Klobuchar’s debate performance that appeared to have the biggest impact on her showing Tuesday. More than half of Klobuchar’s supporters made up their minds in the last few days, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 3,000 Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

Klobuchar went on the attack against Buttigieg and delivered a passionate closing promise to fight for the voters who don’t feel seen or heard by politicians in Washington.

Those selling points helped convince voters like Linda Muchemore, a retiree from Greenland, New Hampshire, who settled on Klobuchar last week after leaning toward Warren.

Klobuchar’s record in the Senate “spoke to me of somebody who could maybe heal the animosity we have,” Muchemore said. ”I found out that I’m not as liberal as I thought I was. Those moderate plans that Amy has speak more to me than Elizabeth’s more radical, Bernie plans.”

Klobuchar’s late surge over Warren was a surprise twist in the race. Warren, from neighboring Massachusetts, has been leading in the polling, but both women have struggled to convince voters that a woman can win. On Tuesday night, Warren congratulated Klobuchar — “my friend and colleague” — and noted how wrong pundits are “when they count us out.”

Klobuchar responded to “my friend Elizabeth” soon after.

“People told me just like they told her that they didn’t think a woman could be elected,” she said. “In my case it was elected to the U.S. Senate. No woman had ever done it before. But I came back, I defied expectations, and I won.”

For much of the race, Klobuchar has lagged toward the back of the pack in fundraising and had just under $5 million in reserve at the end of 2019 — far less than all other leading contenders. Her goal coming out of Friday’s debate was to raise $1 million, a lifeline that would allow her to forge on in contests ahead. She quickly reached that amount and, to her own surprise, she doubled it within 24 hours. By Tuesday, her campaign said that sum had climbed to $4 million — and was still going up.

That post-debate haul is in line with the $4 million Buttigieg raised in the days after landing at the top, along with Sanders, in the Iowa caucuses last week. The money will help pay for ads in Nevada and South Carolina, which holds its primary the week after Nevada, and to beef up the campaign in the March 3 “Super Tuesday” contests, when the largest number of delegates are up for grabs of any date on Democrats’ calendar.

Unlike the other leading contenders in the race, Klobuchar is the only candidate who is not getting extra help from a super PAC or outside group, which can raise and spend unlimited sums so long as they do not coordinate advertising spending decisions with the candidate they support.

In contrast, a super PAC called Unite the County has spent over $6 million on advertising amplifying Biden’s message. The group VoteVets has spent a minimum of $1.6 million on ads backing Buttigieg, according to the Federal Election Commission. Sanders, too, has drawn support from a network of “dark money” nonprofit groups, which don’t have to reveal their donors and won’t have to disclose full spending figures until after the election. And Warren is backed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is not operating a super PAC to support her but serves as a surrogate voice and routinely attacks Buttigieg and Biden.

Much of Klobuchar’s support, meanwhile, comes from donors in her home state of Minnesota, who account for the lion’s share of her presidential fundraising, according to campaign finance disclosures, which only provide information about donors who give over $200. She also supplemented her presidential run with a $3.5 million transfer from her Senate campaign account, records show.

Klobuchar is scheduled to be in Nevada starting Thursday, when she will participate in a town hall sponsored by the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Burnett reported from Chicago. Associated Press reporters Brian Slodysko and Hannah Fingerhut in Washington and Michelle Price in Las Vegas contributed to this report.