Good morning and welcome to Wednesday.
The cost of almost everything is going up right now, and staying warm is no exception.MPR’s Kirsti Marohn reports fuel prices are on the rise, and that means most Minnesotans will be paying considerably more to keep their homes warm this winter. Whether you use natural gas to heat your home — as about two-thirds of Minnesotans do — or some other energy source, you should probably brace for an unpleasant surprise when you open the first heating bill of the season. A major factor affecting fuel prices right now is the war in Ukraine. Concern over Russia withholding natural gas from Europe is creating global uncertainty.
Will the Iron Range send a slate of Republicans to the Minnesota Legislature?Walker Orenstein at MinnPost has the story: There’s a sense in the GOP that many northeastern voters are actually Republicans — mostly rural, friendly to guns and to industry over environmentalists, for example — they just don’t know it yet. The main six counties in northeastern Minnesota — Cook, Lake, St. Louis, Koochiching, Itasca and Carlton — are older, whiter and more male than the state as a whole, though there is a proportionally larger American Indian population in most of the counties. Fewer residents in most of those counties hold bachelor’s degrees than the state average. Larry Cuffe, the mayor of Virginia, said the shift to Republicans, at least on the Range, is in part because of Gov. Tim Walz’s pandemic regulations and local support for gun rights. “But I think the primary driver up here is the huge groundswell of anti-mining south of us,” said Cuffe, who supported Trump in 2020 and the Republican Andrea Zupancich to replace Bakk, but has also endorsed Lislegard. Aaron Brown, a writer and college instructor in Hibbing, said the changing landscape on the Range isn’t just due to mining politics. “When your grandpa spent his whole life complaining about U.S. Steel you tended to be a DFLer,” he said. “When your grandpa spends his whole life complaining about the Twin Cities, you become a Republican.”
The Minnesota Reformer has more on the Feeding Our Future story: The wife of Minneapolis City Council Member Jamal Osman incorporated a nonprofit that reported feeding 2,500 children per day under a federal program that’s been rocked by alleged fraud in Minnesota. Ilo Amba incorporated a nonprofit called Urban Advantage Services in November 2020, registering its office at the south Minneapolis home she shares with Osman. The registered address was changed to a downtown office building suite on Dec. 21, 2021 — about a month before the FBI began raiding homes as part of its wide-ranging investigation that has already netted 49 indictments, with more expected. Reached by phone, Osman, who was elected in 2020, said he didn’t have time to talk and hung up. Amba did not return a phone call seeking comment. Neither Osman nor Amba has been charged with a crime.
And MPR’s Matt Sepic reports that three of the people charged in an alleged quarter billion dollar scheme to defraud government meal programs are expected to plead guilty this week. Most of the 49 people charged in the alleged scheme surrounding Feeding Our Future have pleaded not guilty, but Bekam Addissu Merdassa, Hadith Yusuf Ahmed, and Hanna Marekegn are expected to enter guilty pleas at separate hearings on Thursday. The three, who are all charged with wire fraud, would become the first defendants in the sprawling investigation to admit guilt.
Gov. Tim Walz was asked by the Minnesota Daily what he would do to stop the kind of fraud prosecutors are alleging in the Feeding Our Future case. Here’s how he responded: “This kind of criminal fraud is completely unacceptable, and the people who carried out this scheme will go to prison. Federal regulations that govern these kinds of programs were relaxed early in the pandemic, which made it much easier for this kind of scheme to succeed. Those regulations are now back in place, which will go a long way toward preventing fraud of this scale and nature from happening again. But we need to do more, which is why we’re also working at a state level to tighten processes and make improvements going forward. I’m committed to rooting out fraud and protecting taxpayer dollars.”
The Star Tribune has a profile of DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison. From the story: Whoever emerges from one of the state's most contentious races will manage an office that has largely focused on the unglamorous work of consumer protection and state government representation. As Ellison often stresses, the attorney general handles criminal prosecutions only at county attorneys' request. Nonetheless, many law enforcement officials said their relationship with the Attorney General's Office has frayed over Ellison's term. "This is the first three to four years that the attorney general has not been a part of the discussion of what's best for public safety. I haven't seen him," said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, one of the 22 sheriffs that joined the state's largest police association in giving their support to Schultz. Ellison, who has the support of many county attorneys, said there's "absolutely" more to be done with police on public safety concerns. But he added that some endorsements come down to politics, and "some folks are just plain-old conservative." "I support them, they can endorse whoever they want," said Ellison of police. "I'm here to work with them."
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