(Reuters) – Donald Trump wrongly declared on Friday that he won the 2020 governmental election in Minnesota and he stated he would win this year in the state that has actually not chosen a Republican governmental prospect in over 50 years.
Throughout an address to the Minnesota Republican politician Celebration’s yearly Lincoln-Reagan Supper in St. Paul, Trump duplicated the unproven claim that the last governmental election, which he lost to Joe Biden, a Democrat, was polluted by prevalent scams.
“I understand we won (Minnesota) in 2020,” Trump stated to applause. “We have actually got to beware. We have actually got to see those votes.”
Ahead of their Nov. 5 governmental rematch, Trump project authorities have openly and independently firmly insisted that Trump can beat Biden in Minnesota. While an upset in the state appears possible, offered ballot and the state’s political history show that the previous president deals with an uphill struggle.
Significant independent surveys reveal Biden with a slim however constant lead in Minnesota – generally in between 2 and 4 portion points. A Trump project authorities would not state straight whether they prepared to devote resources to the state.
While Minnesota’s backwoods have actually swung towards Republicans over the last years, suburbs around Minneapolis have actually approached Democrats, showing wider across the country patterns.
Throughout the speech, Trump duplicated his require a “enormous deportation” of immigrants in the nation unlawfully, and he doubled down on guarantees to build a brand-new rocket defense system, comparing it to Israel’s “Iron Dome” program.
He likewise once again hinted that North Dakota Guv Doug Burgum, a previous main competitor who presented Trump on Friday night, was a leading competitor to be his vice-presidential running mate.
“A great deal of individuals believe it’s that guy right there,” Trump stated of Burgum. “He’s great.”
Similar to other current speeches, Trump took individual and even profane jabs at Biden throughout the night, at one point stating the president was “filled with shit.”
Throughout governmental projects, it prevails for significant prospects to insist they can record states that seem a reach. Biden authorities state they have a shot at taking Florida, though he is routing by around 10 points there in many surveys.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Dallas; Modifying by William Mallard)
Former President Donald Trump stated on Friday that he won Minnesota in 2020, in spite of Democratic governmental prospects bring the state for more than 40 years.
“I believed we won it in 2016. I believed we won it in 20 — I understand we won it in 2020,” he stated throughout a speech at the Minnesota GOP supper in St. Paul. Trump included, “We got to see those votes.”
The incorrect claim was the most recent in a wave of election denialism and conspiracy remarks the previous president has actually made considering that his 2020 governmental loss.
President Joe Biden won Minnesota in 2020 with 52.4% of the state’s votes, compared to Trump’s 45.3%. The margin in between the 2 prospects was more than 233,000 votes.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won Minnesota in 2016, however by a tighter margin than Biden. Clinton protected 46.9% of Minnesotans’ votes, while Trump protected 45.4%.
Democrats have actually won Minnesota in every governmental election considering that 1976. The cycle before, the state went to Republican politician Richard Nixon.
Throughout his speech, Trump asserted that he would “win this state” in November.
Trump formerly stated of Minnesota in an interview released by KSTP on Wednesday, “I believed I won in 2020 quickly.” In an interview that aired on KNSI Radio in March, Trump in the beginning stated of Minnesota in 2020, “I believed we won it last time. I’ll be sincere. I believe we did win it” before including, “We didn’t rather make it.”
Biden project representative James Vocalist knocked the previous president as “unhinged about his 2020 loss.”
“In 2020, Joe Biden beat him by 7 million votes, consisting of by more than 230,000 in Minnesota — and this November Joe Biden is going to beat him once again due to the fact that Americans are worthy of much better than a weak, desperate, and pitiful loser like Donald Trump as their leader in chief,” Vocalist stated in a declaration.
Trump made a comparable incorrect claim about Wisconsin last month too.
“We won this state by a lot. It came out that we won this,” Trump stated at a rally.
Nevertheless, Trump lost the state in 2020 by more than 20,000 votes. He brought in 2016, ending up being the very first Republican to win the state considering that Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Ballot recommends that Biden and Trump continue to be secured a tight race. An NBC News survey carried out in April revealed 44% of signed up citizens choosing Biden and 46% choosing Trump in a head-to-head match.
This short article was initially released on NBCNews.com
Lawmakers are considering spending $6 million to test the use of “sprint” paramedics in three northern Minnesota counties and confront the state’s worsening rural emergency response.
The hope is that paramedics, roving the Iron Range and northwest lakes region in cars and trucks, could shave minutes off response times, and sort out calls that don’t need fully loaded ambulances in the first place.
“Could mean the difference in surviving and not surviving,” said Jim Rieber, who has led efforts to use sprint paramedics in Otter Tail and Grant counties.
When rural EMS agencies are notified about medical emergencies, they often page paid or volunteer first-responders to hustle to the station and drive ambulances to the scenes. This long-standing approach is breaking down in some small towns, because the pool of first-responders is shrinking and taking longer to assemble.
Sprint paramedics by comparison would drive directly to the scenes in standard vehicles and begin treatment, even with ambulances on the way.
The solution gained House approval Tuesday and is awaiting Senate action after it was proposed by a legislative task force to address problems in Minnesota’s system of emergency medical services, or EMS. Lawmakers also proposed replacing the existing licensing agency, and its industry-selected leadership with an agency that features more state oversight and a commissioner appointed by the governor. A 2022 audit found the state was lax in its existing oversight of its EMS providers.
Newly released response time data highlights the concerns, especially when looking at the 10% of emergency ambulance runs in Minnesota that took the longest in 2023. Ambulances in Hennepin County took 13 minutes on average to respond to these longest calls once they were notified by 911 dispatchers. The average was 17 minutes in St. Louis County and 22 in Otter Tail. In Lake of the Woods County, the average was 44 minutes.
Rieber said response times are acceptable when local crews are available, but when they aren’t, EMS agencies are relying on neighboring communities to send ambulances from miles away. That often happens when agencies send ambulances and don’t have enough medics to provide backup for other calls.
Some disparity in urban and rural response times is inevitable, especially in a county such as Otter Tail that spreads over 2,000 miles and is dotted by 20 small towns and hundreds of cabin-country lakes.
Sprint paramedics could close the gap, said Becca Huebsch, the EMS director in Perham, Minn., by being placed strategically in vehicles with life-saving equipment. Their start positions would vary each day depending on which local EMS agencies in Otter Tail and Grant counties were the most understaffed. Problems are often greatest on weekdays for small EMS agencies, because their volunteer first-responders work full-time in other communities.
Paramedics have more training than emergency medical technicians, who make up the bulk of rural ambulance crews, and can do more complex life-saving techniques such as inserting breathing tubes and intravenous lines. Depending on the type of 911 call, a sprint paramedic might be sent first to assess a patient, or at the same time as a single EMT in the nearest ambulance. If a transport to a hospital is needed, the paramedic would leave the sprint vehicle behind and monitor the patient during the ambulance ride. In some cases, the paramedic could handle treatment on scene and keep ambulances with advanced-life support equipment from being dispatched unnecessarily.
“It opens up flexibility we’ve never had before,” Huebsch said.
Rieber said EMS agencies have been pressed since the COVID-19 pandemic, which burned out volunteer medics and thinned their ranks.
“Before, you paged (about an emergency call) and you had 20 people, and the first two people there went out,” he said. “Now, you have six people left on the ambulance service, and they have already done six or eight calls that week,” he said.
Sprint paramedics have gone by many names, such as fly cars and intercepting paramedics, but the concept borrows from successes at larger urban ambulance services. Fire departments in the Twin Cities often have paramedics on board fire trucks or send them ahead in separate vehicles. The University of Minnesota deploys SUVs with mobile ECMO equipment, which can maintain blood-flow and circulation for patients in cardiac arrest.
Rieber said the state’s test project, including St. Louis County, would be among the first in the nation to use sprint paramedics to confront rural shortages and response challenges. When sprint paramedics aren’t on calls, they would visit frail residents in the region or check those who were recently discharged from hospitals. Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park pioneered that approach a decade ago, sending local firefighters to check on discharged patients.
EMS leaders said they are underpaid by the federal Medicare program for ambulance runs, and the state legislation isn’t solving this problem. Rieber said agencies used to make up the difference through higher reimbursements by private insurers, but they have started paying at Medicare levels as well. EMS agencies also don’t get paid when medics stabilize patients on scenes and don’t transport patients.
Rural agencies as a result can’t afford sprint paramedics on their own, Huebsch said, so the goal of this test is to prove their worth and justify ways to pay in the future.
In a solemn, pre-dawn ceremony, the flag that’s been flying over Minnesota’s Capitol for decades was lowered for the last time.
Voices hushed in a crowd of more than a dozen onlookers at 5 a.m. on Saturday as the flag with Civil War-era imagery was carefully carried from the darkened Capitol rooftop to the building’s front steps, where two National Guard members folded it into a tri-cornered shape and presented it to the state’s historical society for preservation.
As the sun rose, a new official banner was hoisted on the same flagpole overlooking St. Paul, a stripped-down design featuring distinct state symbols that supporters hope all Minnesotans can identify with for at least 100 years to come.
“I’m just watching history happen,” said Anita Gaul, a college history professor from southern Minnesota who helped redesign the flag and drove to St. Paul for the ceremony. “As we see it more and more and get used to it, people will really come to embrace it and identify with this new flag.”
The historic changeover to mark Statehood Day follows a whirlwind process late last year to rethink and redesign the symbols that have represented Minnesota for most of the state’s history. Minnesota’s former flag — the state seal at the center of a blue backdrop — was criticized for decades for imagery that was seen as problematic for its representation of Native American communities.
The new flag, which is already flying in front of some Minnesotans’ homes, will replace 120 of the former flags in nearly two dozen buildings around the Minnesota State Capitol complex. Local governments will have more time and discretion to make the switch.
The new design is not without its detractors, who see a hastily redesigned flag that strips away more than 100 years of state history. People have rushed to flag shops to grab a version of the former state flag. State Republicans have started selling T-shirts with the old emblems and the words “don’t PC our flag,” while some county boards have voted to reject the new design.
“I think for a very long time, especially in my neck of the woods, I’m going to see the old flag flying at a rate that far exceeds the new one,” said Rep. Bjorn Olson, R-Fairmont, who served on the commission to redesign the flag and carried a bill that stalled this year to put the new design up for a public vote this fall.
“It’s not about whether you like the flag or not,” he said. “It’s about whether Minnesotans should have the right to choose what represents them.”
Late last year, a 13-member commission created by the DFL-led Legislature was given a timeline of four months and a budget of $35,000 to redesign both the flag and the state’s seal.
The central image on both shows a white settler plowing a field in the foreground with a rifle and an ax resting on a nearby tree stump. In the background, a Native American man on horseback rides westward toward the setting sun.
That imagery dates back to the late 1800s and was criticized as a celebration of the idea that settlers were destined to take over the land. Others said Minnesota’s flag was hard to decifer from a distance and too much like more than a dozen other state flags that also featured their seal on a blue backdrop.
Commission members sifted through thousands of flag submissions from the public, who drafted up new banners flying pans of hot dish, laser-eyed loons, lakes and lots of pine trees.
The commission narrowed it down to a single finalist and made tweaks of their own to come up with the new design, a deep blue abstract shape of Minnesota with a white eight-pointed star, a nod to the state’s motto as the “star of the North.” Next to it is a solid block of light blue that represents Minnesota’s many lakes, rivers and streams.
Vexillologists, who study flag designs, gave Minnesota’s old flag an F but rate the new design as one of the best flags in the country. The new flag is a simplified version of a concept submitted by Andrew Prekker, a 24-year-old Luverne resident.
The new seal design features prominent state symbols such as a red-eyed loon on a Minnesota lake surrounded by pine trees, the North Star and sprigs of wild rice. Above the image are the words: “Mni Sóta Makoc̣e,” Dakota for the “land where the waters reflect the sky” and where Minnesota derives its name.
“You will see a state seal that is modern. That is inclusive. That no longer has imagery that some find deeply not just offensive, but painful,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said to members of tribal nations this week. His office is the keeper of the state seal.
There are 71 versions of the current seal in 10 buildings in the Capitol complex. Lowering flags will be simpler than removing some versions of the state’s seal around the Capitol, which are affixed to everything from podiums and floors to etched into door handles.
Lee Herold, the owner of Herold Flags in Rochester, spent decades advocating for the Legislature to adopt a flag design that the public will embrace and fly proudly outside of their homes or display on coffee mugs and other merchandise.
Instead he’s seen the sales of the version of the old flag increase dramatically since the redesign, some months outselling sales of the United States flag, which has never happened before.
In recent weeks, he’s also seen an uptick in sales of the new flag as more people learn about the design.
“My goal was to have a flag that was popular, and that may still happen yet,” he said. “Time will tell.”
Star Tribune staff writer Rochelle Olson contributed to this story.
BLACKDUCK, Minn. (AP) — A woman killed two children in northern Minnesota, set a house on fire and left with another child, according to an indictment announced Monday.
Jennifer Marie Stately, 35, was indicted on counts of premeditated murder, murder while committing child abuse, arson, murder while committing arson, and felony child neglect. Her attorney, Paul Engh, said in an email to The Associated Press that there is a “firm basis” for a not guilty plea, but did not elaborate.
Authorities did not name the victims, but the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that they were Stately’s children, ages 6 and 5.
The indictment said Stately attacked the children with a knife on March 15 at the Red Lake Indian Reservation, set fire to the home, then left with a third child. The Star Tribune said the third child was her 3-year-old son.
One of the children died from a stab wound. The other died of smoke inhalation from the fire, according to the indictment and a news release from U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger.
An Amber Alert was issued soon after the fire was discovered. About an hour later, a motorist spotted a vehicle matching the description and called 911. Deputies in Todd County stopped Stately and found the surviving child, who had “visible signs of child neglect,” the news release from Luger’s office said.
Photos You Should See – April 2024
Stately appeared in court Monday and was ordered jailed, pending further court proceedings.
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said the case demonstrated the value of Amber alerts.
“We are grateful to the Minnesotan who acted quickly and bravely in this case, and to all Minnesotans who join in the search when a child needs them most,” Evans said in the news release.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Top officials for former President Donald Trump’s campaign believe they can flip Democratic strongholds Minnesota and Virginia into his column in November, they told donors behind closed doors at a Republican National Committee retreat Saturday.
Brandishing internal surveys, pollster Tony Fabrizio and senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita delivered a set of presentations that focused on finances, messaging and the political map, according to two people who were present at the Four Seasons resort here. Fabrizio’s numbers, posted on a slide shared with NBC News, showed Trump ahead of President Joe Biden by small margins in the key swing states from 2020 — including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.
The Trump camp’s discussion of expanding the electoral map deeper into the Democratic territory of Minnesota and Virginia comes as Biden’s re-election team says it is eyeing North Carolina — which Republicans have won in three consecutive presidential races — and Florida, where the GOP has prevailed in the last two presidential elections. Biden took the 2020 contest by a margin of 74 electoral votes, with victories in the pivotal states of Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia coming from a cumulative advantage of about 44,000 votes.
“I think that the Biden campaign is deliberately playing a faux game by talking about [how] they’re going to expand the map in Florida and North Carolina,” LaCivita said in a telephone interview with NBC News. “But we have a real, real opportunity in expanding the map in Virginia and Minnesota.”
The top lines of the internal polling shared with donors are relatively consistent with sparse public surveys that show Biden with a small edge in Virginia, while Trump’s advantage in his own polling in Minnesota is at odds with the few public surveys in that state. But all of the public polls in Minnesota and Virginia — and the trials run by Trump’s campaign — fall within their margins of error, suggesting tight races in both states.
Trump’s team tested head-to-head, four-way and six-way races in each state, according to LaCivita. In the six-way trial in Minnesota, which includes four independent candidates, Trump and Biden were tied at 40% apiece, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 9%, he said. When the field was narrowed to four candidates, Trump led Biden 46% to 41%. In a head-to-head matchup, Trump led Biden 49% to 46%.
Biden won Minnesota by about 7 percentage points in 2020, and the state has not favored a Republican nominee for president since Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign.
In Virginia, Trump’s internal survey showed Biden leading Trump 40% to 37% in a six-way test that included Kennedy at 8%. Biden led Trump 48% to 44% in a head-to-head matchup. And, in a four-way race, Biden had a 42%-to-41% advantage over Trump.
Trump aides declined to make the full surveys, including their methodology, available to NBC News. Campaigns often use the promise of playing offense on new turf as an incentive for donors to give money to support those efforts.
“Trump’s team has so little campaign or infrastructure to speak of they’re resorting to leaking memos that say ‘the polls we paid for show us winning, don’t ask us to show you the whole poll though.’ Sure, guys,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said.
“While we have 150 offices open with hundreds of staff across the key battlegrounds, the RNC is closing offices and hemorrhaging money on legal fees,” she added. “Joe Biden has hit every battleground at least once, while Trump’s in the courtroom or on the golf course. We’ll see how that translates in November.” “
Jonathan Allen reported from Washington, D.C.; Matt Dixon from Orlando, Florida; and Olympia Sonnier, Dasha Burns and Abigail Brooks from Palm Beach, Florida.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
A Minnesota ice cream shop has responded to allegations a longtime employee was fired after a customer left her a $100 tip.
The Monday, April 29, response by The Freez in Moorhead, Minnesota, comes a day after a Facebook post by Seth and Lisa Swenson went viral on Facebook.
In their post, the Swensons say their daughter was fired April 25 — a day after receiving a warning about an April 22 incident.
“She was recently let go because of a generous tip that a customer left for her,” the Swensons, who said the daughter had worked at the shop for five seasons, said in the post. “Our daughter was offered a $100 tip and told the customer she couldn’t accept it. The customer put $100 in the tip jar and drove away. At the end of her shift, our daughter’s employer was upset and accused our daughter of ‘taking’ $100 from a customer.”
According to the written notice, which the parents shared on Facebook, the employer said some elderly customers may deal with illnesses “that make it hard for them to understand their actions.”
“No one in their right frame of mind tips $100 at a place where every menu item is under $12,” the notice read.
The Swensons say the shop has a policy that they cannot accept bills of more than $20 for payment. But the parents say the policy did not apply to tips.
The parents’ post has more than 1,000 shares and 185 comments as of Tuesday morning, many from people taking the worker’s side.
Commenters called the alleged firing “dumb” and “unacceptable.”
“This is not right,” one person said.
But in its response, The Freez said “there’s more to the story.” The shop said it did not fire the worker for accepting a tip.
“We won’t go into details, it’s a personal matter,” the shop said in a Facebook post. “However, we believe that if parents are posting for an adult child — they haven’t asked the right questions of their adult daughter.”
The owner of the shop said it has been bullied since the Swensons made their post. The shop has a 1.7 rating out of 5 on Facebook, with a large portion of its more than 1,100 ratings as of Tuesday being in response to the alleged firing.
Logging in northeast Minnesota. Photo by Chad Davis for Minnesota Reformer.
Senior managers at both the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be held to account for allowing the misuse of federal grants to facilitate logging in Minnesota’s wildlife management areas and aquatic management areas.
Both agencies cooperated to fund and allow aggressive logging, which has devalued habitat and undermined the legitimacy of federal grants.
It seems the only accountability that will work is to step outside the respective agencies’ control systems and go public, while relying on the Office of Legislative Auditor to do its work. The OLA recently announced a special review of DNR’s oversight of wildlife management areas.
The issue began in 2018 when the DNR completed what’s called a sustainable timber harvest analysis and adopted the subsequent Sustainable Timber Harvest Initiative.
The analysis said the following: “Maintaining current harvest levels, or increasing above current harvest levels, will impact the agency’s ability to move the forest toward goals for biodiversity and habitat for both young and old forest-dependent wildlife.”
But in the face of this analysis, the initiative increased timber harvest on state lands. It relied heavily on computer-generated models, thus removing most local staff planning and the flexibility of how many forest stands to harvest. This affected wildlife management areas because these areas are to be managed for habitat — not timber production based on economical harvest ages. Timber management for wildlife should ensure a balance of younger, mature and over mature aged forests in each management area for deer, bears, birds and a host of other wildlife.
Many wildlife management areas were acquired using federal Pittman-Robertson grant funding via a 75% cost share. And all WMAs are managed, at least in part, using that same funding. There is a federal nexus from this cost share: The areas are to be used for the purpose for which they were acquired, and the DNR commissioner must assent to the Pittman-Robertson Act.
In 2019, 28 WMA managers and staff wrote a memo to the commissioner stating their concerns about the Sustainable Timber Harvest Initiative. .
The DNR viewed this communication as being insubordinate, and nothing changed.
The grant funding and logging activity continued. The agencies used a provision of the National Environmental Policy Act called a “categorical exclusion” to remove the logging from the scrutiny of an environmental analysis, despite the protestations of front line natural resource workers. NEPA requires an environmental assessment when controversy is present and, per federal regulations, the DNR (the grantee) is responsible. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife did not require an environmental assessment for distribution of federal grant funds in this case. Even though logging occurred in wolf, lynx and bat habitat.
In 2020, U.S. Fish and Wildlife performed a field review/site inspection of some wildlife management areas. The agency did not release their report — and continued to provide grant funding. The DNR continued to award logging contracts.
The report — acquired by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, in 2023 — found the DNR claimed approximately $1.4 million in program income from timber sales under the Pittman-Robertson grant. But selling timber without regard to habitat disregards the spirit of the law, and pretending that doing so reduces the cost of the grant to taxpayers is misleading, at best.
In 2022, the controversy became quite public. PEER wrote a letter to the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and published it on their website — natural resource professionals publicly stepping outside the agency to seek compliance. The FWS began to meet with the DNR in an effort to diminish the logging and require environmental documentation.
And in 2023, the FWS began to withhold some grant funds, which were later restored. But there remains an impasse on the timber harvest question on wildlife management areas, especially as to how cumulative harvests meet the relevant law — the National Environmental Policy Act — as there has never been an environmental review done for this activity in wildlife management areas. .
Setting aside all the bureacratic jargon and back-and-forth: People who know the delicate ecology of these areas are sounding the alarm about logging and its impact on wildlife.
Public pressure has made a difference in encouraging the federal government to hold DNR’s feet to the fire. But there still hasn’t been any substantive changes in policy, even though the DNR commissioner cannot override federal law.
The best and simplest solution is to stop treating wildlife management areas like conventional state forest — we need a timber harvest system for WMAs that considers the best interest of the critters, and not just profit-seeking timber companies.
We hope the Office of Legislative Auditor comes to the same conclusion.
The post State and federal officials are endangering wildlife, misusing federal grants for logging appeared first on Minnesota Reformer.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Opening statements are expected Monday in the fraud trial of seven people charged in what federal prosecutors have called a massive scheme to exploit lax rules during the COVID-19 pandemic and steal from a program meant to provide meals to children in Minnesota.
The seven will be the first of 70 defendants to go on trial in the alleged scam. Eighteen others have already pleaded guilty.
Prosecutors have said the seven collectively stole over $40 million in a conspiracy that cost taxpayers $250 million — one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the country. Federal authorities say they have recovered about $50 million.
Prosecutors say just a fraction of the money went to feed low-income kids, and that the rest was spent on luxury cars, jewelry, travel and property.
The food aid came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was administered by the state Department of Education. Nonprofits and other partners under the program were supposed to serve meals to kids.
Photos You Should See – April 2024
Two of the groups involved, Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition, were small nonprofits before the pandemic, but in 2021 they disbursed around $200 million each. Prosecutors allege they produced invoices for meals that were never served, ran shell companies, laundered money, indulged in passport fraud, and accepted kickbacks.
But the AP found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion, while another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represented 10% of the $4.3 trillion the government disbursed in COVID relief by last fall. Nearly 3,200 defendants have been charged, according to the U.S. Justice Department. About $1.4 billion in stolen pandemic aid has been seized.
The defendants going on trial Monday before U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel in Minneapolis are Abdiaziz Shafii Farah; Mohamed Jama Ismail; Abdimajid Mohamed Nur; Said Shafii Farah; Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin; Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff; and Hayat Mohamed Nur. They have all pleaded not guilty. Their trial is expected to last around six weeks.
“The defendants’ fraud, like an aggressive cancer, spread and grew,” prosecutors wrote in a summary of their case.
Prosecutors say many of the purported feeding sites were nothing more than parking lots and derelict commercial spaces. Others turned out to be city parks, apartment complexes and community centers.
“By the time the defendants’ scheme was exposed in early 2022, they collectively claimed to have served over 18 million meals from 50 unique locations for which they fraudulently sought reimbursement of $49 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program,” prosecutors wrote.
Among the defendants awaiting trial is Aimee Bock, the founder of Feeding our Future. She’s one of 14 defendants expected to face trial together at a later date. Bock has maintained her innocence, saying she never stole and saw no evidence of fraud among her subcontractors.
The scandal stirred up the 2022 legislative session and campaign in Minnesota.
Republicans attacked Gov. Tim Walz, saying he should have stopped the fraud earlier. But Walz pushed back, saying the state’s hands were tied by a court order in a lawsuit by Feeding Our Future to resume payments despite its concerns. He said the FBI asked the state to continue the payments while the investigation continued.
The Minnesota Department of Education now has an independent inspector general who is better empowered to investigate fraud and waste.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A used-car dealership is accused of profiting millions from fraudulent and deceptive business practices, Minnesota officials said.
On April 23, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Midwest Car Search, alleging the business profited by illegally charging for service contracts, falsely advertising and selling cars as “certified,” and failing to provide sales information in the primary language of the buyer.
“Affording your life is tough enough without bad actors taking advantage of you,” the attorney general said in an April 23 news release announcing the lawsuit.
The suit said Midwest Car Search illegally claimed “all” of its used cars were “certified,” but sales data confirmed none of the 3,245 cars sold between 2017 and 2022 qualified as such, according to state law.
McClatchy News reached out to Midwest Car Search for comment on April 24 but did not immediately hear back.
Midwest Car Search is also accused of signing up buyers for “vehicle service contracts” without their consent, costing customers over $1,500 on average, the complaint said.
Even buyers who declined the contract were charged for it, the suit alleges.
A review of 200 sales revealed the dealership “did not disclose even one of these vehicle service contracts to consumers in the manner required by Minnesota law,” according to the lawsuit.
The dealership profited $4.5 million from fraudulent vehicle service contracts alone, according to the complaint.
The attorney general said the dealership also operated under an unregistered trade name — “Coches MN” — to target Spanish-speaking customers, conducting sales in Spanish, but only providing contracts in English.
According to Minnesota law, if the sale of a vehicle was conducted in Spanish, a Buyer’s Guide must be provided in Spanish to ensure “consumers are appropriately informed of the terms of a sale,” the suit said.
“MCS routinely failed to provide any Buyer’s Guides, mandated disclosures, or other documents in Spanish,” according to the lawsuit.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A state senator and former broadcast meteorologist was arrested on suspicion of burglary early Monday in the northwestern Minnesota city of Detroit Lakes, police said.
Democratic Sen. Nicole Mitchell, 49, of Woodbury, was being held in the Becker County Jail on suspicion of first-degree burglary. Formal charges were still pending Monday afternoon, Detroit Lakes Police Chief Steve Todd said.
Mitchell did not immediately return a call left on the jail’s voicemail system for inmates. It’s not clear if she has an attorney who could comment on her behalf. The police chief said he didn’t know of one.
Mitchell was arrested while the Senate is on its Passover break. Her arrest comes at an awkward time for Senate Democrats, who hold just a one-seat majority with four weeks left in the legislative session. Her absence would make it difficult to pass any legislation that lacks bipartisan support.
Mitchell worked as a meteorologist with the U.S. military and for KSTP-TV and Minnesota Public Radio before she was elected to the Senate in 2022 from a suburban St. Paul district. She still serves as lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, commanding a weather unit, her official profile says. She worked for The Weather Channel earlier in her career, her profile says.
Dispatchers received a 911 call at 4:45 a.m. from a homeowner about “an active burglary in process at her residence,” Todd said in an interview. Officers searched the home and arrested Mitchell, Todd said.
Photos You Should See – April 2024
The police chief said he could provide few other details because the case was still under investigation. He said he was waiting to hear back from the county attorney’s office, and that a complaint detailing the allegations might not get filed until Tuesday.
Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the case.
An obituary posted by a Detroit Lakes funeral home shows that Mitchell’s father, who died last month, and stepmother lived on the same block of the same road in Detroit Lakes as where the senator was arrested. The stepmother did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Mitchell’s arrest took Senate leaders by surprise. The Senate Democratic Caucus said in a statement that it’s “aware of the situation and has no comment pending further information.”
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mark Johnson, of East Grand Forks, said he was shocked but knew very few details.
“The public expects Legislators to meet a high standard of conduct,” Johnson said in a statement. “As information comes out, we expect the consequences to meet the actions, both in the court of law, and in her role at the legislature.”
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The morning of March 31, 2023, for Megan Kingsbury began with a funny text exchange with her younger sister, 26-year-old Madeline “Maddi” Kingsbury, who lived in Winona, Minnesota. But that would be the last communication, Megan Kingsbury says, she would ever have with her sister.
Later that evening, Megan Kingsbury says her mother, Krista Naber, reached out to see if she had spoken to her sister recently because Naber had not heard from Maddi Kingbsury in hours. Megan Kingsbury says she wasn’t worried at first, but then Maddi Kingsbury did not respond to her new messages or phone calls either. “…regardless of how busy she was or what she had going on, she always got back to us,” Megan Kingsbury told “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant. Her interview is featured in “The Disappearance of Maddi Kingsbury,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, April 13, at 10/9c on CBS and Paramount+.
Madeline “Maddi” Kingsbury
Maddi Kingsbury/Facebook
Megan Kingsbury and her family quickly became concerned about Maddi Kingsbury, a mother of two who worked as a clinical research coordinator for the Mayo Clinic. Since most of the immediate family lived hours away from Maddi Kingsbury, they reached out to her friends who lived closer. Megan Kingsbury says she contacted Adam Fravel, who lived with Maddi Kingsbury and was the father to her kids. She says Fravel told her he was also concerned because he had not heard from her either. Fravel told Megan Kingsbury he was at his parents’ home with the kids nearly an hour away. Megan Kingsbury asked Maddi Kingsbury’s close friend, Katie Kolka, who also lived in Winona, if she could check on her sister. Kolka told Megan Kingsbury when she got to Maddi Kingsbury’s home, it was dark and no one was there. But, she says, Maddi Kingsbury’s vehicle was parked in the driveway.
The next morning, on April 1, Megan Kingsbury and the family filed a missing persons report with the local police department. As the investigation took off, Megan Kingsbury had an idea for how she could help find her sister.
“So I took to social media, TikTok mainly … I had seen tons of videos of people calling for help for, for something in some way and you can get a lot of traction with that,” she told Van Sant.
One of Megan Kingsbury’s first posts — showing her freshly out of the shower, wrapped in a towel and appearing panicked — asked her followers a simple request, “TikTok, I need you to do your thing. This is my sister Madeline Kingsbury. She’s missing…help us find her.”
That post would eventually get over a half million views on the app. “And I got flooded with messages from people every day,” she said.
For 68 days, Megan Kingsbury documented her sister’s disappearance on TikTok.
CBS News
Megan Kingsbury says responses came far and wide, including from other countries. She told Van Sant that when she asked her followers to call the tipline if they had any information about her sister to share, so many people called that “… they had to bring in extra help just to go through all the tips that came in.”
In one of the searches, nearly 2,000 people volunteered to help look for Maddi Kingsbury, allowing authorities time to search new locations.
While Megan Kingsbury was spreading the word about Maddi Kingsbury’s disappearance, investigators were reading text messages, reviewing surveillance footage, interviewing family and friends and monitoring tips. One tip, according to a search warrant, came in 10 days after Maddi Kingsbury vanished. A neighbor of Fravel’s parents told investigators their trail camera captured Fravel riding the family’s utility terrain vehicle with a shovel on its bed on the neighbor’s property. When investigators seized the vehicle, cadaver dogs alerted to a scent on the shovel. Cadaver dogs, according to the search warrant, are trained to ignore live human and animal scents, and only indicate human remains.
Fravel’s family told “48 Hours” that there is an innocent explanation for the dogs. They say Fravel’s dad used that shovel to move a dead raccoon the previous weekend.
Maddi Kingsbury and Adam Frazel
Fravel family
During the search, Fravel released a statement through his attorney that read in part, “I have cooperated with law enforcement at every turn … I did not have anything to do with Maddi’s disappearance. I want the mother of my 5-year-old and 2-year-old to be found and brought home safely.”
On June 7, 68 days after Maddi Kingsbury was last seen and heard from, a deputy found human remains in a culvert along a dirt road less than five miles from Fravel’s parents’ home and nearly an hour from Maddi Kingsbury’s home in Winona. Maddi Kingsbury’s family was notified by the medical examiner that they were certain the remains were of her.
“I was on the floor and like screamed, crying…what do you say when somebody tells you something like that? There’s nothing that you can say,” Megan Kingsbury told “48 Hours.”
The next day, authorities notified the public that the remains were a match. But there was another development. Fravel was arrested and charged with Maddi Kingsbury’s murder. According to the autopsy report, the official cause of death was homicidal violence.
In a few emotional posts on TikTok, Megan Kingsbury shared the devastating news with her followers. “…the whole situation is just so sick,” she said in one of the posts.
Fravel is currently being held on a $3 million bail and awaiting trial. “I believe Adam 150% that he is innocent, that he didn’t do this,” his sister, Theresa Sis Mejía, told “48 Hours.” Fravel continues to deny any involvement with Maddi’s death and his lawyers are fighting the charges.
Despite the tragedy, Megan Kingsbury says she is using her TikTok platform to share her process of grieving in hopes it will help others. “I think it’s important to share your grief journey … I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people who’ve gone through something similar, and it’s helped them kind of face their own grief and, I guess, feel freer to share it with other people,” she said.
A dog was fatally shot while sitting on her owner’s porch in Minnesota, the family said.
On March 30, deputies with Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to South Bend Township, according to a post on Facebook.
“Lily Anne was the best dog in the world and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind,” Lily’s owner Alyssa DeBill said in a March 31 Facebook post. “She gave the best kisses & snuggles.”
While investigating, a neighbor told deputies they were outside when they heard two gunshots, officers said.
DeBill said her two stepsons were in the living room of her two-story house when Lily was fatally shot in the chest, according to her Facebook post.
Deputies learned someone had left a “threatening” note on DeBill’s door saying to “keep their dogs from barking,” officials said.
DeBill plans to have Lily cremated so the entire “family can have a piece of her with them always,” a GoFundMe page said.
“She truly was the best girl,” DeBill said.
The investigation remains ongoing and anyone with information is asked to call 507-304-4863, deputies said.
South Bend Township is about a 100-mile drive southwest of Saint Paul.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The final three people accused in the killing of a young mother have pleaded guilty in a rare situation where Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz took the case away from Hennepin County prosecutors and handed it to Attorney General Keith Ellison amid public criticism that the original plea deal was too lenient.
In a plea agreement, Erick Haynes pleaded guilty Monday to one count of first-degree murder in the 2022 death of Zaria McKeever. Eriana Haynes and Tavion James pleaded guilty to one count each of aiding an offender after the fact for helping to cover up the shooting, Ellison’s office said in a news release.
Erick Haynes will be sentenced April 12. First-degree murder in Minnesota carries a mandatory life sentence with the possibility of parole after 30 years. The state will recommend a four-year sentence for Eriana Haynes and a sentence of three years and six months for James, Ellison’s office said.
The indictment of Erick Haynes said he sent two juveniles into an apartment with guns to kill McKeever’s new boyfriend on Nov. 8, 2022. Instead, the juveniles shot McKeever, 23, five times.
On March 22, 17-year-old Foday Kevin Kamara pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree intentional murder for his role in the killing. Kamara had agreed to be certified as an adult. The state agreed to recommend that Kamara get 10 years and 10 months at his sentencing May 8. Minnesota inmates typically serve two-thirds of their sentences in prison and the rest on supervised release.
“With all defendants in this case having now pleaded guilty for their roles in this heinous crime, today is another important step toward justice for Zaria and her family,” Ellison said in the news release.
Photos You Should See
McKeever, of Brooklyn Park, was the mother of a 1-year-old child.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty had offered Kamara and another defendant juvenile plea deals that would have spared them lengthy adult sentences in exchange for their testimony. Moriarty said at the time that prosecuting them as juveniles offered the best chance for rehabilitation.
Ellison and Walz intervened over Moriarty’s objections after the other juvenile’s plea deal had already been accepted.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Minnesota’s Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of voting rights for felons on supervised release, with oral arguments scheduled Monday in a conservative group’s challenge to the new law.
Last year Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill restoring the vote to around 55,000 Minnesotans with felony convictions who had been released but are still on probation. The change came after decades of effort at the Capitol and an unsuccessful American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to challenge the previous restriction.
Lawmakers moved quickly last spring to restore voting rights after the Supreme Court ruled against the ACLU challenge, and said the issue was up to the state Legislature. But soon after the bill became law, a conservative legal group filed a challenge in Anoka County.
The Minnesota Voters Alliance argued the law couldn’t stand because the state Constitution says people can vote once their civil rights are restored, meaning they need to complete their entire sentence, including probation.
An Anoka County judge dismissed the conservative group’s challenge in December 2023, ruling the Minnesota Voters Alliance didn’t have standing to intervene. The group appealed the case directly to the Supreme Court, and in January justices said they’d grant the case accelerated review.
Twenty-three states restore voting rights upon release from incarceration, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maine, Vermont and Washington, D.C. allow incarcerated people to vote.
Minnesota was one of 16 states, including South Dakota and Wisconsin, that only allowed people with felony convictions to vote after completing their entire sentence, including probation.
The Minnesota Voters Alliance lawsuit was one of two challenges to the felon voting rights law since it went into effect last year.
In October, a Mille Lacs County judge told people convicted of felonies in his court that they could not vote as part of their sentencing.
The Mille Lacs County judge said the law was unconstitutional, but the Minnesota Court of Appeals said he did not have the authority to make that ruling.
Feysal Jama Ali, 18, of Minneapolis, pleaded guilty earlier to being an accomplice after the fact in the killing of Otis Elder, 38, of St. Paul, during a marijuana deal Jan. 10, 2022. Ali was sentenced Wednesday as part of his plea deal.
Ali’s cousin, Mekhi Camden Speed, then 17, shot Elder. Speed pleaded guilty and was sentenced in July to over 16 years after pleading guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder while committing an armed robbery.
Speed lived in an apartment building in downtown Minneapolis where police served search warrants Feb. 2, 2022. Locke, 22, who was not named in the warrants, was sleeping on a couch in Speed’s brother’s girlfriend’s separate unit when a SWAT team burst in, looking for Speed.
A Minneapolis officer shot Locke as he emerged from under a blanket with a handgun that his family said he was licensed to carry. Prosecutors did not charge the officer who shot him, saying it was justified because Locke pointed his gun at the officer. Locke’s family has said body camera video suggests he was startled awake. They have campaigned since then for a ban on no-knock warrants.
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Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Minnesota’s four-year graduation rate dipped slightly this year, with about 83.3% of high schoolers earning their diplomas on time — tempering a rebound seen last year when graduation rates ticked back up to levels similar to those before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Leaders at the Minnesota Department of Education say the small decrease is due, in part, to errors in tracking students, particularly when they transferred schools. That finding “re-emphasizes the need for schools to keep track of — and report — every single student during their high school career,” the state Education Department wrote in a news release announcing the graduation rates this week.
The data also shows slight decreases in the graduation rates for Black, Asian and Latino students and students learning English. In 2022, the graduation rate for Black students jumped to its highest rate ever, 73.5%. Though it dipped to 72.1% in 2023, it still represents an upward trend over the past five years as the state has tried to narrow the achievement gap.
The graduation rate for white students and students identifying as two or more races increased in 2023, and the rate for American Indian students and students receiving special education remained largely unchanged from the previous year.
“High school graduation is a crucial milestone for every student in our schools; it’s essential for individual success and the well-being of our communities,” Education Commissioner Willie Jett said in a news release. He highlighted recent initiatives around literacy, student mental health and supporting students’ needs as ways the state is working to increase graduation rates.
Graduation rates are “an important indicator of the success of our education system,” said Michael Rodriguez, dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota.
According to the 2022 Minnesota Student Survey, most students aim to graduate: Just 1% of the state’s students in grades eight, nine and 11 indicated on the survey that they did not plan to graduate from high school.
“The hard reality is that not all students are supported at the same level to meet those requirements,” Rodriguez said.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has picked Nicole Shanahan, a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office, to be his running mate in his independent bid for president, he announced on Tuesday.
An unconventional choice, Shanahan, who is 38, brings youth and considerable wealth to Kennedy’s long-shot campaign but is little known outside Silicon Valley.
Shanahan leads the Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization she founded to direct money toward issues including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes. She also is a Stanford University fellow and was the founder and chief executive of ClearAccessIP, a patent management firm that was sold in 2020.
Shanahan was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin from 2018 to 2023, and they have a young daughter. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Kennedy made his announcement.
On Tuesday, Shanahan talked about her hardscrabble upbringing in Oakland, the daughter of a mother who immigrated from China and an Irish and German-American father “plagued by substance abuse” who “struggled to keep a job.” Touching on her family’s reliance on government assistance, Shanahan said that, although she had become “very wealthy later on in life,” she felt she could relate to Americans being “just one misfortune away from disaster.”
“The purpose of wealth is to help those in need. That’s what it’s for,” Shanahan said. “And I want to bring that back to politics, too. That is the purpose of privilege.”
Nicole Shanahan waves from the podium during a campaign event for presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, in Oakland, California.
Eric Risberg / AP
Before the announcement, Kennedy’s campaign manager and daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, praised Shanahan’s work on behalf of “honest governance, racial equity, regenerative agriculture and children’s and maternal health.” She said the work “reflects many of our country’s most urgent needs.”
Kennedy said in an interview Monday with “The State of California” on KCBS radio that his VP search placed a priority on “somebody who could represent young people.” On Tuesday, he said that Shanahan — who he noted, like him, has “left the Democratic Party” — also shares his concerns about government overreach and his distrust in major political parties’ abilities to make lasting change.
“She’ll tell you that she now understands that the defense agencies work for the military industrial complex, that health agencies work for big pharma and the USDA works for big ag and the processed food cartels,” Kennedy said at his Oakland rally. “The EPA is in cahoots with the polluters, that the scientists can be mercenaries, that government officials sometimes act as censors, and that the Fed works for Wall Street and allows millionaire bankers to prey upon on Main Street and the American worker.”
Kennedy also said that, in part, Shanahan’s heritage played at least some role in his selection of her.
“I wanted someone who would honor the traditions our nation, as a nation of immigrants, but who also understands that to be a nation, we need to secure borders,” he said.
Kennedy had previously signaled interest in picking a celebrity or a household name such as NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, “Dirty Jobs” star Mike Rowe or former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who was a wrestler and actor.
According to campaign finance records, Shanahan has long donated to Democratic candidates. It was unclear if Shanahan would use her own money on the campaign, but she has already opened her wallet to back Kennedy, giving the maximum amount allowed to Kennedy when he was still pursuing that party’s nomination before switching to an independent bid in October.
She was a driving force and the primary donor behind a Super Bowl ad produced by a pro-Kennedy super PAC, American Values 2024, for which she contributed $4 million. In response to criticism following the ad’s release, the super PAC said its “idea, funding, and execution came primarily” from Shanahan.
The super PAC can accept unlimited funds but is legally barred from coordinating with Kennedy’s team.
But as a candidate for vice president, Shanahan can give unlimited sums to the campaign directly. That’s potentially a huge boost for Kennedy’s expensive push to get on the ballot in all 50 states, an endeavor he has said will cost $15 million and require collecting more than 1 million signatures.