Good morning, and happy Friday. 

At noon today on the radio I will moderate a debate between DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison and his Republican opponent Jim Schultz. I hope you can listen on MPR News or stream online at MPRNews.org. 

There was a debate in the 2nd Congressional District yesterday. MPR’s Mark Zdechlik covered it: Up until now, much of the Minnesota 2nd District congressional race has been playing out in negative TV ads, many being paid for by organizations from outside of Minnesota. That changed Thursday when Democratic incumbent Angie Craig and Republican challenger Tyler Kistner met face-to-face for the first and only debate of this year’s campaign that was held at Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount. The two were quick to offer competing views of the role of the federal government. Inflation came up repeatedly during the hour-long, often feisty discussion.  "How do you fix this? How do you make the cost of living affordable again for people?” Kistner asked. “You start reining in that out-of-control government spending. You start investing back into American energy dominance and start tapping into our own resources and manufacturing here in the United States." Craig denied that Democrats are responsible for the problem.  "Inflation is a serious issue. It is a global, serious issue,” Craig said. “If you look across the world right now, disruptive supply chains from a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic have caused inflation." 

Two northwestern Minnesota counties are seeking a court order allowing a redo of ballots after discovering flaws with ballots printed by a vendor that does work for several counties in the state.MPR’s Brian Bakst reports  Kittson and Roseau County officials asked the Minnesota Supreme Court for direction on fixing ballots that failed to include political affiliation in all partisan races and incumbency status for judges as required by law. The high court has fast-tracked the cases. In their petitions, election officials in the two counties say the information was inadvertently left off ballots by a printing vendor. Both use SeaChange Printing and Marketing for their mail and absentee ballot programs. In both cases, party labels were assigned only in the governor’s race and not any other state or federal contests. Both rural counties rely heavily on mail ballots, not all of which had been sent when the problem was discovered. Court papers say only 25 voters had returned ballots in Kittson County as of late last week. Martha Monsrud, who oversees elections in Roseau County, said 124 ballots had been returned to her office before the problem surfaced. She said a voter alerted her to the omissions.  

ACT scores dropped in 2022.The Star Tribune reports: Nationally, students registered the lowest ACT scores in 30 years, shining further light on the extent to which pandemic disruptions impacted academic achievement. While nearly one-third of Minnesota graduates in 2021 met ACT proficiency benchmarks in English, math, reading and science, only 28 percent did so in 2022. That was better than the national average, where about 22 percent of students met all four subject benchmarks. Although Minnesota students who received diplomas in 2022 scored higher in every subject than pupils in states with similar participation rates, the results also indicate that on average they were ill-prepared to take on entry-level college courses in math, science and subjects that require an intense amount of reading such as history, psychology and sociology. 

MPR’s Matt Sepic reportsthree of the 49 people charged in an alleged quarter-billion-dollar scheme to defraud government meal programs pleaded guilty Thursday. Bekam Addissu Merdassa, 40; Hanna Marekegn, 40; and Hadith Yusuf Ahmed, 33, entered pleas at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis, in the case linked to the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. The three were charged with wire fraud. Prosecutors charged them by criminal information, rather than through a grand jury indictment, so the guilty pleas were expected. Most of the other defendants charged in the Feeding Our Future case have pleaded not guilty. Authorities say the Twin Cities-based nonprofit stood at the center of a network of shell companies controlled by people who used federal child nutrition money to buy cars, luxury goods, jewelry and property in the United States, Kenya and Turkey. Ahmed, a Feeding Our Future employee, admitted taking more than $1 million in bribes and kickbacks, and another $1.1 million in federal meal funds by submitting fake reimbursements. 

Republican candidate for governor Scott Jensen put out a 10-point plan Thursday aimed at shoring up the state’s economy and combating inflation, reports MPR’s Dana Ferguson. The move comes as a new report showed that inflation in September remained at historic highs. Jensen said he would seek to cut the state’s income tax gradually, if elected. And he said he would prioritize mining projects in the state, green light new capital projects and cut regulatory red tape to mitigate the effect of inflation. “What we're trying to do is say when we came up against inflation several months ago, if we did these things, we could mitigate what was happening,” Jensen said. DFL Gov. Tim Walz said inflation is happening around the world and that he still supports a plan to send rebate checks to Minnesotans. “I'm not sure if there's anything more gimmicky than saying a governor in a Midwestern state is going to combat inflation,” Walz said. “I'm just most disappointed that the biggest thing Minnesotans could have seen was a $2,000 check in their pocket that was stopped when Scott told the Legislature to walk in May.” Time ran out in the legislative session before lawmakers could agree on how to use a big budget surplus.  

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