A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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This fall, Minnesotans will vote on whether to renew a proposal earmarking some money from the state lottery to fund environmental programs, including parks projects, conservation and clean water efforts. Back in 1988, voters approved a Minnesota constitutional amendment dedicating a portion of lottery proceeds to the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. Since then, voters have thrice renewed the proposal. Like earlier measures, this one would continue directing 40 percent of the net proceeds generated to the Minnesota Lottery to the... 
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When Jen Schultz won the first of her four House terms at Minnesota’s Capitol in 2014, she joined a stable of Democratic legislators from the area and the 8th Congressional District was in the party’s hands, too — albeit by a very narrow margin. A decade later, it’s a far different picture. Outside of her home base in Duluth, Republicans hold sway in much of northeastern Minnesota. And the 8th District has elected a Republican in U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber in three consecutive elections. Schultz, who left the Legislature after the 2022 session... Website
More than 40 athletes competing in the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic games, representing various countries, have connections to Minnesota — whether they live here, train here or were born here. The athletes are competing in basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, taekwondo and more. MPR News will be tracking how the athletes with Minnesota ties are doing throughout the Paris Games. Check back here frequently for updates on competitions and who made it to the podium. The Paris Summer O... Website
Minnesota is among a cluster of states and territories holding presidential nominating contests in the main multistate voting event of the 2024 primary campaign. For that reason, it’s called Super Tuesday. Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are favored in their respective primaries and could inch closer to the delegate totals needed to gain the party nominations. Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and former Republican Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina — the last major rivals to Biden or Trump — both... Website
Watch your bank account or your mailbox. A Minnesota tax rebate is on its way as the back-and-forth over the way it is structured and the amount still stirs in political circles. When the Legislature earmarked more than $1 billion for a tax rebate in May, DFL Gov. Tim Walz’s administration projected an early fall timeline for getting the money out the door. But internally, there was pressure from Walz himself to make the gears spin a bit faster. “Pretty ambitious, I said I’d like these to go out before school starts,” Walz said at a news co... Website
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has revoked a key permit for the proposed NorthMet copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota, formerly known as the PolyMet project. The Army Corps rescinded the permit, known as the Clean Water Act “Section 404” wetlands permit, because the agency said the it could not “ensure compliance with the applicable downstream water quality requirements” of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation lies downstream from the proposed mine on the St. Louis River. The decision does not deal a...
Just over a century ago, a work crew dug up the remains of nearly 200 Ojibwe people from a burial ground at the end of Wisconsin Point, a long peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior across the water from Duluth. Among the exhumed was Chief Osaugie, who signed two major treaties with the U.S. government in the mid-1800s. The remains were reburied in 1919 in a mass grave at St. Francis Cemetery on the mainland in Superior. The bodies were moved to clear the way for an iron ore dock and other infrastructure that U.S. Steel wanted to build. But... Website
The Minnesota State Fair is upon us, and all of that food can be daunting. So we called on Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine food writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl to get us prepped for what to eat — and also what to avoid. For you, what makes an ideal state fair food? For me — and I'm very passionate about this — fair food should give you a feeling that you can only get at the fair. The sweet corn roast is the perfect example. Sweet corn is only in season one time a year. It's specifically grown for us at the fair, so it’s ripe every single day. An... Website
Members of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe have voted in a historic advisory referendum to eliminate a requirement that enrolled members must have 25 percent tribal blood. Out of nearly 7,800 ballots cast, 64 percent of voters said the “blood quantum” requirement should be removed from the tribe's constitution, which was adopted under pressure from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in the early 1960s. In a second referendum question 57 percent said individual bands or reservations should be able to determine their own membership req... Website
Minnesota lawmakers have cut a deal on how much money from the big projected budget surplus will go to cut taxes, give a boost to schools and be used to enhance public safety. The agreement came Monday with one week to go in the 2022 session. Many specific details will still have to be sorted out, but the signed framework will devote $4 billion over three years to tax cuts, $4 billion to new spending and leave about $4 billion unspent in case the economy sours. Of the new spending, $1 billion will go each to education and programs in the area... Website
On the first day of a first-of-its-kind public hearing this week on the fate of a key permit for the proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommended against reissuing the permit, saying the project risked increasing levels of mercury and other pollutants in the St. Louis River downstream from the proposed mine. While only a recommendation, it could deal a potentially severe blow to the controversial $1 billion mine proposed near the northeastern... Website
Virginia is lying on her back in a hospital gown, about to have her second baby. "She's 39 weeks pregnant," explains Melissa Seibert, inpatient services director at Cloquet's Community Memorial Hospital. "And she couldn't make it to Duluth hospital because she thinks she's gonna have her baby sooner." Virginia doesn't have anything to add to the conversation - because she isn't a person. She's a life-like birth simulator that can replicate a wide range of birth scenarios from a cesarean section...
For the first time since Covid-19 arrived, new infections in Minnesota are topping 10,000 a day. And those are just the folks who are getting lab tests. That number does not count the number of people using at-home Covid-19 tests. “All five of the top days for cases recorded in Minnesota by sample data were within a week after Christmas,” said MPR News data reporter David Montgomery. “Before then, all the records had been set back in November 2020.” The ripple effect is being felt across the state, as sick employees — or those with positive... Website
With measurable snowfall coming to northern Minnesota the past week, cross country skiers are hitting the trails. And it’s a good bet that a majority of those skiers coat the bases of their skis in wax that contains per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances — a family of human-made chemicals known as PFAS — that have polluted water supplies around the world, including in Minnesota. The so-called “forever chemicals” are used in a huge variety of products, from nonstick cookware to fire-suppressing foam, carpet and clothing. For decades they’ve a... Website
U.S. regulators on Friday opened up Covid-19 booster shots to all adults, expanding the government’s campaign to shore up protection and get ahead of rising coronavirus cases that may worsen with the holidays. While all three vaccines used in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and the single-dose Johnson & Johnson — continue to offer strong protection against severe Covid-19 illness and death, their effectiveness against milder infection can wane over time. Here are a few things to know about boosters and why health officials are urging people to ge... Website
State transportation officials are posting 12 highway signs in northeastern Minnesota to mark the boundaries of a treaty signed in 1854 by the U.S. government and three Ojibwe bands: the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The Minnesota Department of Transportation installed the first sign on Nov. 1 on southbound Highway 61, just south of the Canadian border and near the entrance to Grand Portage State Park.... Website
Catharine Richert/MPR News Starting this week, Minnesota kids age 5-11 now have access to Covid-19 vaccines, as the state started rolling out doses of the Pfizer shots tailor-made for younger children. “Getting our children vaccinated will help our kids be kids again,” said Gov. Tim Walz in a news release announcing the next phase of the state’s vaccination campaign. “Now that the vaccine is approved for kids ages 5-11, Minnesota is ready to administer these shots quickly, efficiently, and equitably. I encourage families to make a plan to get... Website
Gov. Tim Walz toured a Covid-19 testing site in Duluth last Thursday morning — one of more than a dozen community testing sites around the state. He said officials were getting ready to announce an additional expansion of testing capacity around the state as hospitals deal with another surge in Covid cases that are filling up ICU beds. Officials announced last week that the state was opening its 14th testing facility in Morris on Tuesday. “We’re going to massively expand our testing capacity across Minnesota again,” Walz vowed. The governor als...
Minnesota’s spreading Covid-19 outbreak has been pummeling greater Minnesota for weeks, and hospitals are feeling the impact. For the first time in the pandemic, there are more Covid patients hospitalized in greater Minnesota than in the Twin Cities region. The pressure is significant. Covid accounts for less than 10 percent of hospitalized patients in the Twin Cities area and in southeastern Minnesota, but that percentage is nearly twice as high or more in much of the rest of the state. Across Minnesota, 864 people are in hospital beds with Co... Website
Minnesota’s current Covid-19 surge won’t relent. The newest data show the disease still firmly entrenched in the state. While a jump in testing can explain much of the latest increase in case counts, the numbers also show the current wave stubbornly refusing to crest. “These are numbers we had hoped we would not see again,” Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm told reporters Sept. 24 after the state reported nearly 3,000 more cases. Within the next few days, the state expects to top 700,000 total known cases in the pandemic, she added. After i...
Dan Gunderson MPR News The St. Louis County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on cervid farms. Those are farms that raise primarily deer and elk in captivity. There are 257 cervid farms in Minnesota and 172 that raise captive white-tailed deer, according to the Minnesota Board of Animal Health. Those farms have played a role in the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Minnesota, including a case in Beltrami County earlier this year that marked the northernmost spread of the disease in the...
Hospital systems serving swaths of northeastern and northwestern Minnesota are struggling with the newest surge of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations amid a shortage of health care staff and rising numbers of non-Covid patients. “We were running as though it were a sprint to begin with. And it really turned out to be a marathon. And as any sprinter will tell you, you can’t run a marathon at that pace,” said Harmony Tyner, an infectious disease physician at St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth. The Essentia Health system, with operations in Minnesota,... Website
Brian Bakst MPR News Demand is high in Minnesota for $100 vaccine incentives, prompting the state to set aside even more money for the program. As of early Tuesday, more than 30,000 people had already applied for the bonus for getting an initial COVID-19 shot between the end of July and the middle of this month. That exhausted the $2.5 million that Gov. Tim Walz had put toward the incentive. As a result, the Walz administration moved another $13.8 million into the account. It relies on federal American Rescue Plan money. A legislative panel... Website
What health and safety guidelines should schools be following? Minnesota schools are no longer under a mandate to require masking in their buildings. That’s because Gov. Tim Walz’s authority to issue this mandate expired now that Minnesota is no longer under a state of emergency. Instead, health officials recommend schools require masks in their buildings, regardless of an individual’s vaccination status. Experts also recommend maintaining 3 feet of distance in buildings, staying home if sick and getting the Covid-19 vaccine if eligible. Schoo... Website
Covid-19 cases are on the rise again in Minnesota and across the country, but with most restrictions lifted and Gov. Tim Walz’s emergency powers gone, the response to this latest spike is in the hands of local leaders and businesses. The number of Covid-19 cases reported Tuesday was up 61 percent over the previous Tuesday’s report from the state. Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said that’s largely because of the highly transmissible delta variants rapid spread through unvaccinated Minnesotans. “We’re concerned that we’re going to see... Website
