My economist colleague John Phelan reported today that Minnesota’s economy has been struggling in terms of growth and jobs between 2014 and 2025. Electricity unaffordability is a key reason for that, not just since 2014, but from 2001 through to 2026, driven by...
Remember last year, when taxpayers got stuck with a $430,000 legal bill to prepare Gov. Tim Walz for a single congressional hearing? His administration hired outside lawyers to prepare him for a June 12, 2025 hearing. The public didn’t learn what the...
Yesterday afternoon, your correspondent took in a couple of hours of Feeding Our Future jury trial No. 3, at the federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. This afternoon I took in a couple of hours of the jury trial of Muna Fidhin, 45, of Burnsville. She is...
Yesterday, I wrote about revisions to official data which show that Minnesota’s economic performance in recent years has been even worse than previously thought. As Figure 1 shows, since that inflection point for per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth...
Walz/Flanagan Administration still haven’t released single payer cost study As candidates race toward the finish line in the final month of campaigning, health care affordability and fraud have risen to the top of mind for Minnesota voters. Amy Klobuchar’s...
Photo of Sheikhdoon Mohamud from federal criminal complaint According to a federal criminal complaint filed today, a local Somali man, Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, 18, has been plotting to either travel to Somalia and fight on behalf of foreign terrorist...
New York Times reporter and 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones recently published an essay titled, “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” It’s an update to her 2016 piece titled, “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City,”...
President Donald J. Trump announced on September 30, 2026 that the “Largest-Ever Steel Plant [is] Coming to Iowa.” This is Iowa. Not Minnesota, where the iron ore is mined by the same company of Mesabi Metallics. Although not asserted, MN energy affordability...
Every year, Education Minnesota — the state teachers’ union — automatically deducts money from member teachers and education support professionals (ESPs) for its political action committee, or PAC. The union’s PAC money is spent on political parties (mostly one...
“When the facts change, I change my mind,” the economist John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said. “What do you do, sir?” Back in April, I wrote: “It’s official: Minnesota is now a below-average per capita income state.” Minnesota has long been able to...