Latest news with #TheTopline
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The Topline: The end of the line?
Get a load of these guys. I wrote a lot about wolves, apparently. (Getty Images) Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: the bottom line. Well Reformers, this is it: the final Topline. Call it the Bottom Line? As this is my last day here, I thought I'd do something a little more self-indulgent than usual and look back at my time at the Reformer, by the numbers. I started at the Reformer on July 18, 2022, making my tenure just a hair under three years. My first story was about wolf attacks, and how they benefit far-right politicians. I published 309 stories in total, including this one, which works out to about one byline every 3.4 calendar days. The most widely-read story I worked on was this one from March about then-Sen. Justin Eichorn's arrest in an underage prostitution sting, although if I recall correctly Michelle Griffith actually did most of the work on it. My most-read solo piece was a November 2023 story about how wolves weren't responsible for that year's disappointing deer hunt. Judging by the state of my inbox at the time, many of those pageviews were hate-clicks from angry guys looking for any excuse to go shoot a wolf. Journalism's not just about the hate-clicks, of course: You're also trying to change things for the better. To that end, my stories inspired three pieces of legislation in St. Paul this year. The first was a bill providing grant money to help solve non-fatal shootings in the state. This came about after I wrote last year about data showing more than half of violent crimes in Minnesota go unsolved. The second would have reformed how so-called 'drug free zones' can be policed after I reported on the aggressive and frankly bizarre drug charging practices used by a prosecutor in Polk County (and basically nowhere else). The third, and the only signed into law this term, was the bill that finally decriminalized bong water in the state. It was inspired by my reporting on Jessica Beske of Fargo, who was staring down the barrel of a 30-year prison term after cops alleged they'd found a bong used to smoke methamphetamine in her car. That case, incidentally, also came out of Polk County. Some very strange things happening up there! It's also worth noting that these stories didn't just arise out of a vacuum. The Reformer had done extensive work on violent crime clearance rates long before I showed up. And Jessica Beske reached out to us only because she had read Deena Winter's prior reporting on drug paraphernalia reform at the legislature. One of the things that drew me to the Reformer in the first place was editor Patrick Coolican's characterization of it as a newsroom that would tell the stories other news organizations can't or won't tell. I got a first-hand taste of this shortly after I started, with a piece about former Republican Rep. Donald Raleigh of Blaine, whose name had turned up on a leaked membership roster of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group. Raleigh's defense was that he never actually agreed with the Oath Keepers' ideology, and had only signed up for their email list as part of 'market research' he was doing for a veteran's organization he founded. He also told us that other news outlets, like the Star Tribune and Buzzfeed, had looked into his ties to the group and decided they weren't worth doing a story on. The implication was that we shouldn't be reporting on it either. I strongly disagreed, and Patrick backed me up on this. Raleigh's story was plausible enough, and that's how we framed our piece. But by the time Raleigh had signed up for their newsletter, the Oath Keepers had a well-established reputation as a fringe group with violent tendencies, and they had been the subject of countless media stories. As a voter, I'd want to know if one of my elected officials was signing up to receive communications from extremist groups, for 'market research' or any other purposes. Especially in the post-January 6 era. We ran the story, and Raleigh lost his seat two months later (although that was due more to the effects of the state's recent redistricting than anything else). I'm delighted with my reporting on Senate President Bobby Joe Champion's ethically questionable ties to the Rev. Jerry McAfee for two reasons. The first, and most journalistically obvious reason, is that it shined a light on Minnesota's extremely lax conflict-of-interest laws, and it got a number of lawmakers to acknowledge that they should maybe try to avoid funneling boatloads of grant money to individuals they have professional relationships with outside of the Legislature. It also sparked a Senate ethics inquiry into Champion's actions, which went nowhere given the even balance of power in that body. But the other reason I love this story is how I stumbled across it in the first place: by wasting time on social media. I was hanging out one morning on Twitter (I will never call it 'X'), avoiding whatever story I was supposed to be working on, when I saw some Minneapolis folks making offhand comments about Champion being McAfee's lawyer. It was a jarring moment, as these people were casually discussing the fact as if it were common knowledge, despite it not having been reported anywhere. A quick visit to Minnesota's court records system confirmed what they were saying, and we were off to the races from there. There are two reporting lessons here, I think. The first is that what passes for common knowledge in some communities will come as a shocking revelation to others. The second: Never log off.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Topline: Tens of thousands of Minnesotans to lose health insurance
Medicaid sign at U.S. Senate Democrats' press conference on Feb. 19, 2025. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom) Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: health coverage losses due to congressional Republicans' cuts; UnitedHealth in free fall; the young children dying to fentanyl; EPA funding to clean up polluted sites; and a bad year for rail. Roughly 150,000 Minnesotans would lose health insurance under congressional Republicans' plan to cut funding for Medicaid and other social services, according to an estimate released last week by Democrats on the Senate Joint Economic Committee. Roughly 110,000 of those losses would come from Medicaid cuts, with an additional 40,000 losing coverage due to cuts to Affordable Care Act funding. All told, roughly 13.7 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage under the spending proposals currently being debated in Washington. The numbers are derived from an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Under those proposals, any cost savings from the reduced Medicaid and ACA spending would be more than offset by expanded tax cuts, primarily benefiting the rich. On net, the GOP tax bill is currently expected to add roughly $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. Minnesota-based UnitedHealth, one of the largest corporations in the U.S., has shed roughly half its value on the stock market in the past month. In the past week alone, CEO Andrew Witty stepped down, and the Wall Street Journal reported the company is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department over potential Medicare fraud. UnitedHealth is one of just 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, so its ongoing slide is having a disproportionate impact on perceptions of the economy's health. The overall Dow is up roughly 5% over the same period UnitedHealth has fallen by half. The company received national attention and scrutiny after the murder last year of Brian Thompson, an executive in charge of its health insurance division. The company has also been the subject of an ongoing investigation by health and medicine news organization STAT over its use of unregulated algorithms to deny patients care and juice profits. A KARE 11 investigation finds that since 2000, 23 Minnesota infants and children under the age of eight have been killed by accidental fentanyl ingestion. The investigation details the story of one fentanyl-addicted mother who left out foil containing residue that her one-year-old daughter ingested. That mother was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison, plus additional time on supervised release. Nationwide, accidental pediatric fentanyl exposures are rising: The nation's poison control centers report there were 120 exposures in 2020, and 539 by 2023. Not all exposures are lethal, but the drug's high potency means that the ingestion of even a minuscule amount can pose a threat to a child's life. Pre-natal exposure, when an infant is exposed to illicit substances in utero due to the mother's drug use, is also a problem, with more than 1,100 cases in Minnesota in 2023 (drug-specific breakdowns aren't available in the data, which come from the federal government). The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced $2.2 million in funding to clean up contaminated sites in Minnesota. The sites include a former landfill in Duluth, as well locations in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Willmar and Cass Lake. 'The $267 million in Brownfield grants will transform contaminated properties into valuable spaces for businesses and housing, creating new opportunities that strengthen local economies and directly benefit American families,' said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The federal agency recently cancelled tens of millions in grants for environmental justice initiatives in Minnesota and other Midwestern states. Minnesota lawmakers voted over the weekend to pull $77 million in funding from the proposed Northern Lights Express rail line to Duluth and direct it toward unemployment insurance costs for hourly school workers. The project, which lawmakers initially funded in 2023, had been dependent on federal funds to move forward. Those funds never came through, and the current budget crunch in St. Paul made the previously-earmarked funds irresistible to lawmakers looking to plug holes elsewhere. House Republican Transportation Chair Jon Koznick spiked the football: 'With the House and Senate voting to shift a significant amount of the state's share of the project's funding, the Northern Lights Express train is effectively dead, and taxpayers are better off because of it.' Sen. Jen McEwen, DFL-Duluth, said on the Senate floor on Sunday she's holding out hope that it will happen one day. 'Although we are making a substantial cancellation because of this austerity that is being imposed upon the people of Minnesota … the Northern Lights Express project is still alive,' McEwen said. It's been a tough year for rail: several months ago the Metropolitan Council and the Minnesota Department of Transportation announced plans to convert the struggling Northstar rail line to bus service.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Topline: What's in the Minnesota Senate tax bill?
Minnesota State Capitol. Courtesy of Minnesota House Public Information Services. Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: what's in the Senate's $365 million tax omnibus; a record-high graduation rate; the summer air quality outlook; and tallying the attorney general's lawsuits against the Trump administration. Last week the Senate Tax Committee approved an omnibus tax bill with $365 million in new revenue over the next biennium. About $315 million of that figure comes from new taxes, with the remainder coming primarily from the expiration of various tax aids and credits. A new tax on large social media companies accounts for the lion's share of the proposed new revenue and would generate $138 million in the next biennium, according to Senate analysts' estimates. The bill would also raise the rate of the net investment income tax from 1.0% to 1.5%, generating $74 million. That tax applies to investment income exceeding $1 million. Another provision would reduce the maximum operating loss deduction in the corporate franchise tax, bringing in another $62 million. About $40 million in additional revenue would come from reducing aid to local and county governments. The bill still needs to pass the full Senate and undergo reconciliation with the House tax bill. Republicans, who share control of the Minnesota House, and allied groups oppose higher taxes — since in this case they're not called 'tariffs' — and have been critical of the Senate bill. So it's unclear how many of these provisions will make it all the way through to the desk of Gov. Tim Walz. Lawmakers are also eyeing $300 million in cuts to the human services budget as the state attempts to forestall future budget deficits. The Walz administration and teachers' groups cheered the release last week of new data showing the statewide high school graduation rate edged to its highest level on record. The rate increased from 83.3% in 2023 to 84.2% in 2024, or nearly a full percentage point. It's the highest rate on record, and the largest year-over-year increase in a decade. 'The graduation data show increases for students in the American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic or Latino and white student groups,' the Minnesota Department of Education noted. 'Graduation rates also increased for English learners, students from low-income families, and students receiving special education services.' The graduation rate among Asian and Hispanic students increased by about 2.5 percentage points, as did the rate among all students eligible for free or reduced-price meals. English learners posted the biggest year-over-year increase at 3.9 percentage points. Relative to 2020, the graduation rate among Indigenous and Black students increased by roughly 4.5 percentage points. This aligns with a 2019 Walz goal to raise graduation rates. Staggering racial disparities remain, however. While nearly 90% of white students graduated, fewer than two thirds of Indigenous pupils did. The rate for Black and Hispanic students is closer to 75%. 'These Minnesota students overcame the disruptions and distractions of a global pandemic and a national racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd to graduate at the highest rate on record,' said outgoing Education Minnesota president Denise Specht. 'It's remarkable, and a testament to the resilience of the students and the quality of instruction and support they received from their educators and families.' While the improvement in the graduation rate is welcome, data released at the beginning of the school year shows that student achievement still lags well behind the pre-pandemic levels, and in some cases continues to fall. Forecasters with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency expect outdoor ozone levels to be unhealthy for sensitive groups between four and seven days this summer, slightly above average. The agency also expects 12 to 16 days of wildfire smoke impacts, up from last summer's forecast of five to seven expected alerts. MPCA will also begin issuing alerts for PM10, which covers airborne particles larger than those that make up wildfire smoke. It's typically caused by blowing dust, which is an issue in agricultural areas between fall and spring, when topsoil can get blown off bare fields. The agency issues regular air quality updates and forecasts on its website. The Star Tribune recently launched an ongoing tally of Attorney General Keith Ellison's lawsuits against the Trump administration. The tally so far is 22, most of which were filed in conjunction with the attorneys general of a handful of other states. The lawsuits cover everything from the administration's anti-transgender actions to the abrupt cancellation of various types of grant funding to Elon Musk's allegedly improper influence over the workings of the federal government. All of the lawsuits are currently open. The tally does not include other legal actions undertaken by Ellison, like filing amicus briefs in other cases challenging administration actions.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The Topline: A staggering drop in Black homeownership
A For Sale sign displayed in front of a home on February 22, 2023. (Photo by) Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: green cities; a stunning decline in Black homeownership; America's most polluted air; an unusually long stretch without homicides; and Minnesota's most conservative county. The Washington Post has used data from the Arbor Day Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service to map tree cover across the country's urban areas. Tree cover is primarily a function of the local climate — they grow readily in areas that were naturally forested before the arrival of Europeans, and less so in places like deserts. More than half of Atlanta is covered by trees, for instance. Less than 9% of Phoenix is. But policy plays a role too, and some cities are taking steps to plant more of them for a variety of reasons, including their cooling effect on the urban environment. Here in Minnesota, where the eastern forests meet the central prairie, you can see the gradient in canopy cover as you drive west. Duluth, for instance, is about 40% trees. Minneapolis-St. Paul is closer to 30%. Less than 15% of Fargo-Moohead has tree cover. A recent report by the Minnesota State Demographic Center shows that the overall rate of homeownership since 1970 has held steady at roughly 72%. But there has been a precipitous decline in Black homeownership over the same period. In 1970, for instance, 42% of Black families were homeowners. In 2022 just 26% were. 'In other words, since the 1970s, Black or African American householders have been increasingly concentrated into rental housing units,' according to the analysis. 'This is a historical trend unique to Black or African American households.' The decline has been consistent across every decade except the 1990s. Another interesting wrinkle: The decline happening almost exclusively among U.S.-born Black families. Among Black immigrants, homeownership rates increased. The numbers suggest that Minnesota's well-known racial disparities, among the worst in the nation, owe more to Black families falling behind than to white ones getting ahead. The fact that Minnesota-born Black families seem to be doing worse than their new immigrant counterparts is especially damning, and a sign that policymakers' efforts to address the state's disparities are failing. They're mostly in California, according to the American Lung Association's latest State of the Air report. But a couple Midwestern cities also make the list, including Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland. The study finds, overall, that nearly half of the U.S. breathes in unhealthy levels of air pollution. 'Air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, making people who work outdoors sick, and leading to low birth weight in babies,' said Harold Wimmer, CEO of the American Lung Association. 'This year's report shows the dramatic impact that air pollution has on a growing number of people.' The findings are especially concerning this year as the Trump administration is taking steps to both weaken federal regulations on air pollutants and to stop collecting much of the data that scientists use to track air pollution around the world. The 62 days between February 15 and April 18 mark the longest homicide-free stretch in Minneapolis since at least 2017, the Star Tribune reports. It's a nice little milestone but bear in mind that homicides are currently falling virtually everywhere in the country, making it difficult to ascribe Minneapolis' recent dry spell to any particular policy or policing decision. So far this year, Minneapolis homicides are down by more than 50% from where they were last year at this time. That's an impressive number, but it remains to be seen whether it's the start of a durable trend or just the reflection of the regular ebb and flow of violent crime. It's Morrison County in north-central Minnesota, population 34,000, per the Star Tribune. More than 70% of the county's voters picked Donald Trump in the last three elections, and the overwhelming majority of them remain pleased with their pick despite the economic chaos he's already caused. Morrison is virtually all white and in the bottom fifth of the state for household income. Several of the voters who spoke with the Star Tribune appear to be deeply misinformed on basic facts about American society. One government employee, who believes antifa was behind Jan. 6 and who is indefinitely postponing building a new home because of Trump's policies, told the paper he remains 100% devoted to the billionaire convicted felon in the White House: 'He's me, just at a lot bigger level.'
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Topline: How an international tourism slump could affect Minnesota
NIAGARA FALLS, CANADA - FEBRUARY 04: Commercial trucks drive towards the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge border crossing to the United States on February 04, 2025 in Niagara Falls, Canada. (Photo by) Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: what a drop in international tourism means for Minnesota; the most conservative and liberal workplaces; how trucks and SUVs drive road congestion; and meaningful jobs. The Washington Post reported last week that international tourism to the U.S. is plummeting at the start of the second Trump administration. In March, 'overseas visitors fell nearly 12% compared with the same time last year, according to data from the International Trade Administration, an agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce,' the paper reports. The reasons aren't terribly complicated: Trump seems determined to turn the U.S. into a pariah state, with every day bringing new horror stories of travelers being detained, deported and refused admittance. In 2023, more than 500,000 international tourists visited Minnesota, according to Explore Minnesota, spending a little over $500 million in the state. The agency had been forecasting 2025 would bring 700,000 international visitors and $700 million in spending, but that's now unlikely. More than half of Minnesota's international tourists hail from Canada. The administration's ongoing belligerence toward our northern neighbor has fueled a fierce backlash. Minnesota businesses relying on those visitors are likely to be especially hard hit. 'I don't want to pay into their economy, I'm going to stay in Winnipeg and go to local events here, put my money here,' one Winnipeg resident told a city newspaper. 'And who knows what'll happen? What if you get your car keyed? We don't know how they're going to treat Canadians going down,' she added. Last month a team of researchers released a new dataset on the political affiliations of workers at hundreds of thousands of American employers. They did this by linking public voter registration data to online worker profiles maintained by many employers. They found that workplaces in their sample tend to lean left, with more than 60% of employees identifying as a Democrat (for simplicity's sake, independents and those not registered with one of the two major parties were excluded from this calculation). But some industries are much more conservative or liberal than others, and the same goes for individual workplaces. At Target, for instance, fewer than 30% of identifiable employees are registered Republican. Privately owned agriculture behemoth Cargill, on the other hand, has close to a 60% Republican workforce. 'In the context of growing political polarization, employers are entering the political arena in unprecedented ways,' the authors write. 'Given the potentially critical role that workers play in shaping these actions, it is critical to have wide-reaching, representative measures of workers' personal politics.' MPR News reports on a recent study using Minnesota traffic data to analyze how the exploding popularity of trucks and sport-utility vehicles affects traffic flows on roadways. Minnesota has some of the best traffic data in the United States, the authors note, with reliable numbers going back to the 1990s. That allows researchers to get a sense of how things have changed. The study looked at the freeway network around Minneapolis and St. Paul, and found that 'the average network throughput decreases from approximately 1850 vehicles per lane per hour in 1995 to about 1600 vehicles per lane per hour in 2019.' The authors attribute that to the growing popularity of small trucks and SUVs, which take up more space on the road. 'The number of vehicles it takes to reach a congested level of traffic is fewer, and so you're more likely to see congestion for the same number of people traveling because people are in SUVs and vans and pickup trucks, but especially SUVs,' co-author David Levinson told MPR. The study found that while the total number of registered vehicles in Minnesota grew by 36% from 1995 to 2019, the number of SUVs increased by more than 1,000%. A recent YouGov survey found that while most American workers say their job makes a difference, 20% told the pollster that their job is essentially meaningless. People with so-called email jobs — sending and receiving emails and Slack messages and attending meetings — were actually more likely to characterize their jobs as meaningful, although this is probably a function of education: More educated people are also more likely to say their jobs mean something, and they're also more likely to do email jobs. Americans who think their own jobs are meaningless are also much more likely to take a dim view of the value of other people's jobs. Incidentally, workers in the U.K. are nearly twice as likely as those in the U.S. to say their jobs are meaningless.
