Sports betting sites make it easy to wager on just about anything in a game. But what happens when someone shows signs of problem gambling? Do these platforms intervene, or encourage them to keep betting?

ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson spent 10 weeks testing the sports betting apps DraftKings and FanDuel. Even after losing thousands of dollars, he was invited to join DraftKings’ VIP program, which offered perks and promotions.

Pearson joined Minnesota Now to talk about what he found in his reporting.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

The sun rises above a patch of shriveled corn stalks. Some lack ears; others are blackened. Peter Bakken, a Rock County farmer, walks out from between rows of stalks. He holds two ears of corn. One grew just fine while the other was short and barely developed.

“This ear, this plant just ran out of gas, and that's all it produced,” said Bakken. “The corn cannibalized itself.”

When a corn stalk can’t access the nutrients it needs to grow, it starts to feed on the only other source of food it has: itself.

The resulting stalk is limp, with little strength left to stand. It can die in the process, and even if it doesn’t, it becomes vulnerable to the wind that can snap it over. That patch of Bakken’s corn is a casualty of a drought that’s engulfed southwestern Minnesota.

Bakken, who also raises cattle, said the grass his cows fed on ran out. Without rain, the pasture didn’t grow back. He had to feed them with reserves he kept for winter.

“We weren't overgrazing. We weren't undergrazing,” said Bakken. “Absolutely unprecedented. We'd never had to do that in my 40 years of farming.” Other area farmers who submitted condition reports to the U.S. Department of Agriculture similarly said they had never or rarely seen drought this bad.

Rock and Pipestone counties faced dry conditions all summer. In late September, the USDA designated them as natural disaster areas.

For farmers, that meant stressful days and tough decisions. Now, as harvest is underway, producers are making one last push to get the crops out of the ground.

Weather worries

Southwestern Minnesota often gets dry during the summer, according to Ben Cathey, chief meteorologist for MPR News. But the region frequently contends with moist, hot summers.

The area produces a lot of corn. During the summer, the corn’s leaves “sweat” out its water content. That vapor adds to how hot and humid the region feels. That likely affected the region’s heat, Cathey said.

“We're not getting a lot hotter on an average daytime high, but the overnight lows are getting warmer,” said Cathey. “If the moisture stays, the temperature can't cool as easily, and so these overnight warm temperatures with high humidity are definitely an impact.”

Minnesota has seen increasing temperatures throughout the years. The state’s southern region has shown an average annual temperature increase of 2.2 degrees.

Cathey said it's not just the heat that has experts worried.

“The increasing spikes in both drought and flood is definitely concerning because as a farmer you want a reliable source of moisture for your plants, or if you're a rancher, you want a reliable source of water for your animals,” said Cathey.

As much as farmers would like regular rainfall during the summer, once harvest starts, that rain is much less welcome. Especially when it pours.

A race against the clock

Soybeans usually boast a bright yellow color in good seasons. But this summer’s drought, toned some of Murray County farmer Bryan Biegler’s beans purple.

He thought that they’d get to harvest them early, considering how dry the summer has been. But then, downpours made him raincheck harvest. Farm equipment doesn’t work well in muddy terrain, and soybeans need to be harvested when they’re dry. However, the late rain brought its own set of problems.

“When we got that wet weather, and it stayed wet for so long, some of the beans started getting a little mold in them,” Biegler said. “There's not a lot of it around here, but I've seen others.”

Some of his own beans have gotten damaged. But not enough for them to be turned away by the local grain elevator. Now, with the sun finally out on a recent Friday in early October, Biegler watches as his farm help fill up trucks with soybeans.

As soon as they’re done, he makes his way to the truck. They need to quickly move the crop to the local grain elevator to sell.

It’s sunny, warm and nice outside; too nice.

“It's warmer right now than what we're used to, and it's maturing the beans along a little bit faster than I was hoping for,” said Biegler.

If the sun dries out the beans too much, they lose their yield — and their value per acre — so Biegler is working around the clock to avoid losses. He’s also hoping to finish harvesting the beans to get to work on his corn. His stalks suffered during the drought and they are brittle in some areas.

“If you get this big hard wind it could start tipping over, and then it gets to be more of a challenge picking it up and getting it harvested,” said Biegler.

He had a rough summer with only two rainfalls this growing season. Still, he’s thankful for the water.

“If we wouldn't have had those, we would have had a lot of dryness then,” said Biegler. “The yields would have really been crap then.”

He expects to lose out on some crop yields this year, but overall, he still expects to reap a decent haul. And despite the tough conditions, other farmers still have hope for a better season next year.

‘Mentally taxing’

Peter Bakken from Rock County has a sticker placed on the door to his shed. It reads, “A healthy farm is nothing without you.” To him, it’s a reminder to be mindful of one’s mental health. Especially after a year as hard as this one.

“I'll be really glad when this year is done because it's just mentally taxing,” said Bakken.

His cattle ran out of feed during the summer once all the grass had been munched on and it couldn’t grow back due to drought. Some of his cows passed away from heat stress. He had to move the rest to a fenced area with dry ground. He said that’s to prevent overgrazing the pasture in an effort to preserve its quality for next year. When rain fell later in the year, his cows had to live with mud beneath their hooves.

Usually, he would only have to focus on the day-to-day needs of his operation, knowing rain would eventually come.

“But when those things don't happen, then your mind goes to thinking to the future of ‘how am I going to manage this if I don't have water, or if I don't have grass, or if I don't have feed,’” said Bakken.

His animals were Bakken’s top priority. Their care took precedence over taking care of himself. Each day passed with him clinging on to hope that rain would come back or that the heat would relent.

“When we went from 95 degrees down to 80 degrees. It was like a huge blessing because the relief from the heat was like,’ oh, we finally got through it,’” Bakken said. “But every day watching the forecast was disheartening in the fact that ‘man, it's going to be 95 degrees again today.’”

Bakken points to the fields of green surrounding his farm. It’s grass that sprouted after feeding from the rain. The sight fills him back up with optimism.

His gaze falls on the cows he’s taken care of this whole year.

“You can watch the cattle as it cools off and how much happier they are,” Bakken said. “They, like us farmers, are a resilient breed.”

Special thanks to Danger Boat Productions and the Minnesota Humanities Center for their Sketches of Minnesota events around the state that helped inform this report.

Noah Adams, a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller who hosted All Things Considered for 18 years, has died.

Adams died Friday at his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio, according to his wife, Neenah Ellis. He was 84.

He guided listeners through major events like Ronald Reagan's landslide electoral victories, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. But to the people who worked alongside him in the newsroom, Adams' journalism shone through in the softer features he reported.

Adams would ride trains across the country, or spend days in small towns talking to whoever he came across. He'd ask questions. He'd listen. He'd write down notes and observations. And then he'd produce long, thoughtful radio pieces that helped listeners understand and appreciate the world a little bit better.

"He was always observing," recalled Melissa Block, who produced pieces alongside Adams for years before hosting All Things Considered herself. "He would have a little reporter's notebook and he would be taking notes in shorthand. His writing is almost illegible — it would just be the vaguest sketches of things. But somehow, when we came back, he would capture the character of a place or a person or a town in the most vivid, rich, simple language. It was a complete picture based on his unbelievable powers of observation."

Adams, who was born in Kentucky, came to NPR in the mid-1970s, when the network was still new, and still figuring things out.

He was private — intensely private — but told people he'd bopped around a series of jobs before falling into radio. He worked construction. He sold cars, as he recounted once in an on-air essay. In 1972, he started working at the public radio station at the University of Kentucky. Three years later, he applied for a job as a production assistant on All Things Considered.

For years, the show's staff has begun each morning with a long meeting about the day's news, and what should and should not be included in the two-hour broadcast. Like all meetings, it can be rote or boring, and many staffers can, at times, view it with some cynicism.

Adams never saw it that way. "You would pay attention to all the mysteries out in the world," he once recalled in an NPR essay looking back at his career. "You'd have a deep curiosity about the yearning. You'd notice who was in trouble, why? What does Washington mean?"

Listening carefully, and caring

Like most reporters, Adams yearned to get out of the newsroom and into the world. He tried to steer his reporting away from officials and politicians in Washington.

"He never liked talking to people who he knew had pre-programmed things to say," said Block. "He wanted people who were genuinely speaking from their heart and with conviction and sincerity. And that's how he was. That's how he approached things."

He'd also try to write and talk about dogs as much as possible, working them into scenes, and into interviews.

It's how Adams began one memorable interview in 1987. He was talking to an 8-year-old girl named Betsy Walter, whose parents had gotten divorced. To get her comfortable, he started chatting about dogs.

The approach stood out to the producer Adams was working with that night: a young Ira Glass. "It's the fastest, most efficient warm up of a child," Glass remembered years later. "He's not talking down to her. And then he just launches into the interview."

Adams was so good that day — at getting Betsy comfortable, at getting the quotes they wanted from the interview — that Glass took the tape of the full interview home with him, to save.

As Glass listened to the taping and studied Adams' approach, he realized how well and quickly Adams connected with the girl. How he framed his questions in just the right way, so the interview became a conversation that produced memorable quotes about the pain and confusion of divorce.

Over the years Glass would repeatedly cite Adams and his interviewing style as an inspiration for the feel and tone of the public radio program he'd go on to create: This American Life.

Glass admitted that as a young producer, he was intimidated by Adams and his quiet confidence. "You know, he was paired with [co-host] Susan Stamberg," Glass recalled. "And Susan Stamberg's character on the air, as the host of All Things Considered, was this warm, mensch-y, chatty New York lady. And he was this sort of cool, traditional broadcaster next to her."

A voice for rural America

In 1987, Adams left All Things Considered. Another public radio icon, Garrison Keillor, had walked away from A Prairie Home Companion, and Adams went to Minnesota to launch a new variety show to replace it. "I remember [thinking] wow, the nerve!" said Glass.

The variety show didn't work out, and two years later, Adams was back at All Things Considered, where he was paired alongside Robert Siegel and Linda Wertheimer.

The two men brought different experiences and views of the world to the show. "Noah was a voice for our going to rural America, doing stories about what was happening in small towns far from the Interstate 95 corridor," said Siegel.

"He was a productive writer," said Siegel. "He admired good writing and good writers. And he tried to be as good as he could be."

Adams wrote five books, including “Piano Lessons” (1996) a memoir about a year he spent learning to play the piano at age 51, “Far Appalachia, Following the New River North” (2001), and “The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur & Orville Wright,” (2003).

Adams' writing for the radio reached its peak, according to Siegel and many others, in an extraordinary 1981 radio documentary called "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown."

Jim Jones, the head of the cult that eventually committed mass suicide in the jungle of Guyana, had recorded hundreds of hours of audio. NPR got its hands on it, and Adams, producer Deb Amos, and author James Reston, Jr. made it into an experimental documentary.

One aspect of it was controversial: Adams narrated it not as a journalist, but as a fictional composite character presented as a survivor of the cult. His delivery was purposely flat, and filled with trauma.

To Siegel, the documentary was NPR as Noah Adams wanted it to be: "Experimental use of sound. Interesting writing. I think he aspired to our not just having tomorrow's front page on tonight, but to have the rich back-page [features]" he said.

Adams helped shape NPR at a moment when the network's identity was still malleable. At a time when it wasn't quite a fully professionalized and institutionalized news gathering operation, Adams wanted the network to live up to the ideals formed during that era, says Melissa Block.

"To really capture the character of the country and the voices of everyone in their own style, in their own perspective, from their own perspective," she explained, "and to pay attention to things that were outside of the centers of power."

Quietly, purposefully, with his notebook and his typewriter, that's what Noah Adams did.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Xcel Energy is proposing to keep electricity rates flat for two years as Minnesotans’ complaints about rising utility costs mount.

The state’s largest electric utility says under the plan, filed with the state Public Utilities Commission last week, it would postpone any requests to raise its electricity rates until at least November 2028.

In exchange, Xcel wants permission from state regulators to use federal tax credits from planned battery storage projects sooner than expected.

Xcel expects to receive those credits from the federal Inflation Reduction Act for five battery projects near the retiring Sherco coal plant in Becker, at its Blue Lake facility in Shakopee and in Nobles County.

Xcel says the plan would allow it to continue to invest almost $4.5 billion in Minnesota’s electric system over the next two years, and help offset rising costs.

“This request demonstrates Xcel Energy’s commitment to keeping rates stable today while continuing to deliver safe, reliable electric service and make investments that power tomorrow,” said Bria Shea, president of Xcel in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, in a news release.

The proposal comes as state regulators examine the cost of electricity at a time when many Minnesotans are struggling to pay their utility bills.

Xcel's most recent rate increase, which state regulators approved in June, was 5.8 percent over two years. That proposal generated thousands of comments opposed to the increase.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and consumer advocates asked the Public Utilities Commission to reconsider the decision, but it declined.

Instead, it launched a statewide investigation to examine the affordability of electric and natural gas service provided by regulated utilities, including Xcel.

Demand for food is at an all-time high as Minnesota’s hunger relief network struggles to keep up with the pace amid higher grocery and fuel prices.

Second Harvest Heartland reports that at the end of fiscal year 2026, the regional food bank distributed more than 172 million pounds of food to food shelves statewide in the last year — a record amount. According to Toni Scott, chief supply chain officer at Second Harvest, that’s a 500 percent increase over the last two decades and a 20 percent increase in the last four years.

“What we haven’t seen is a slowdown,” Scott said. “The number of visits is accelerating, and food shelves are opening more hours. They’re doing things to increase access, and we just feel like we are not keeping up.”

Factors driving these numbers include government shutdowns, Operation Metro Surge, inflation and rising fuel costs. Scott said diesel prices have risen 70 percent since March, which added $20,000 in monthly expenses to Second Harvest’s budget. As of Friday, the average diesel fuel price in Minnesota hovered around $6.18, according to AAA.

Minnesota residents made more than 9 million visits to food shelves last year, according to The Food Group, a Twin Cities-based nonprofit that works statewide with food shelves to alleviate hunger and meet residents’ nutritional needs.

Those numbers are increasing due to federal cuts to safety-net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, Scott said.

“So as we see more financial pressures coming,” she said, “and more families affected by SNAP cuts and other policy changes, we know that we will continue to see those increases and are just doing all we can to try and keep up.”

Food shelves are doing what they can to manage the increased strain on their services. Scott said Second Harvest has looked at other parts of its budget to trim in order to meet the demand, including where to source specific produce as freight has gotten more expensive because of diesel prices.

That meant the food bank had to scale back on the types of food it gets, like citrus from California. Off-season produce might get more difficult to get because of the high gas prices on incoming freight. Scott said other food shelves are struggling with this increased cost burden.

“We have been doing everything we can to optimize our network and find efficiencies, but that increase is so significant that it’s not something we can offset with efficiency,” she said. “So, [we’re] pulling other levers to make sure that we can continue to serve our neighbors.”

Second Harvest, Scott said, continues to advocate for more state and federal money. Last legislative session, The Food Group and Partners to End Hunger Coalition secured $5 million in one-time funding for food shelves — on top of $4.6 million that was already allocated — and $5 million in one-time funding for food banks.

“This is not a place where we will pass on costs to our partners or neighbors, and so as we can continue to experience these increases that extend beyond what we had in our budget initially, we absolutely have to find other places to support that,” she said. “We are committed to maintaining service in the community and the amount of food we are getting out.”

New monthly data from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development shows what officials are again calling a “mixed bag.” Month-to-month labor market figures generally declined and stagnated, but Minnesota is still outpacing the rest of the country on some metrics, including job growth, over the year.

One notable exception is wages, which have stayed flat in Minnesota since last September while prices have risen by 3.7 percent, according to the latest Consumer Price Index. That means workers in the state have lost purchasing power. Wages grew by 2.9 percent nationally.

DEED Labor Market Information Director Angelina Nguyen said that could be a result of how Minnesota’s labor force has been changing.

“The job growth that we've seen happened to be in industries that tend to pay lower, like education and healthcare services, or retail, or leisure and hospitality,” she said. “So the way job growth is distributed may be holding down the average hourly earnings.”

The state lost a total of 4,600 nonfarm jobs last month on a seasonally-adjusted basis while the country saw a small increase in jobs. The state’s unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent and the nation’s grew to 4.2 percent.

During that same time, the state’s labor force grew by about 800 people. That's basically 0 percent, but officials tout that it marks a break in a nine-month fall in the number of Minnesotans working or looking for work.

That figure has fallen by more than 34,000 people since last September, or a little over one percent.

Meanwhile, the state’s labor force participation rate, or the percentage of the population who are working or looking for work, fell last month. It’s down to 66.7 percent compared to 68.1 percent last year.

"We are puzzled,” Nguyen said. “In terms of jobs growth, Minnesota is doing fine. There's something going on with our labor force that we don't yet have enough data to put a finger on why we are seeing worsening labor force stats."

DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek said the labor force could be taking a hit because of the surge in immigration enforcement earlier this year.

“You would expect that that would cause some people leaving the state who were impacted by Metro Surge, and therefore also leaving the labor market,” he said.

He also said Minnesota’s population is aging and foreign-born workers typically help supplement retiring workers. But that’s not happening as much anymore.

“As international immigration policy has been changed radically by the federal government, we now have far fewer folks arriving in Minnesota from foreign locations,” he said. “Therefore the thing that was offsetting our aging workforce is no longer doing so.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s veto of regulations on autonomous rideshare vehicles in the city survived an override vote by the City Council on Thursday.

After the vote failed, backers of the rules on robotaxis said they’ll make another attempt to regulate the industry.

The council needed nine votes to override Frey’s veto — but only seven council members supported the attempt.

Among other measures, the proposed regulations would have required human safety monitors inside autonomous rideshare vehicles.

Supporters of the proposal said it’s needed to protect thousands of rideshare jobs. Frey had said what the council passed amounted to a back-door ban on companies like Waymo — and he called for “thoughtful regulation for safety.”

Speaking after the vote, council member Robin Wonsley said she and her fellow supporters of the proposal will “continue the efforts and fight to hold big tech accountable and protect our communities from the economic and physical dangers of autonomous robotaxis.”

“I look forward to continuing the work to pass regulations on big tech robotaxis that put workers and local government in the driver’s seat,” Wonsley said. “We’re not done. We’re going to continue the work.”

Waymo has been test-driving its vehicles in Minneapolis since last winter, with people behind the wheel — but has not yet started taking customers.

In St. Paul, the City Council this week made its own move toward regulations on the industry. The council adopted a resolution directing the city’s planning commission to study autonomous vehicles and suggest potential guardrails around safety, data-sharing and worker protections.

Summit Brewing Company announced Thursday that it reached an agreement with its lender and found a new lender, avoiding a foreclosure risk that was announced a month ago.

In a press release, Summit CEO and President Brandon Bland, said the loan previously held by BMO Bank has been acquired by a new lender. The lender was not identified in the announcement.

Bland said in the press release that the new lender is working with the brewery to execute a “recapitalization and long-term growth strategy aimed at strengthening Summit’s balance sheet and supporting its vision for the future.”

“Today is a day of gratitude and genuine excitement for all of us at Summit,” said Bland, in the press release. “That starts with our employees, who have shown up every day through months of uncertainty. Their professionalism has inspired all of us to keep pushing toward a resolution, and I can’t thank them enough.”

Summit’s brewery, taproom and operations will continue as usual. The company does not anticipate any changes to supply.

BMO Bank filed a lawsuit in September to collect more than $8 million worth of unpaid debt.

In a lawsuit filing, BMO Bank alleged Summit Brewing Company missed a loan payment deadline at the end of last year. The bank then agreed to a forbearance timeframe until July 31. The court filings indicated that Summit informed the bank it didn’t have the ability to repay the loan.

Do local businesses still own Main Street in Minnesota’s rural communities? Or are national chains and large corporations changing the fabric of what it means to be a small town?

That’s the question MPR News host Kerri Miller posed during her most recent Rural Voice town hall, held Sept. 28 at The Broadway event center in downtown Albert Lea, Minn.

Business owners and community leaders agreed that keeping local businesses local is key to maintaining small town feel and charm. But doing that is no small feat.

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Business owners say they work long hours, money is always tight and even if the business is a success, figuring out how to grow sustainably is a challenge.

Organizations designed to support local businesses, like the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation, say it’s a story they hear a lot. They pointed to the critical role community support and innovative financing models play in sustaining rural businesses.

The Minnesota State colleges and universities system’s board of trustees on Wednesday approved a plan to redirect millions of dollars to help struggling universities.

The plan will reallocate up to $25 million each year for the next four years to financially challenged institutions. The majority of that amount — about $15 million a year — will go to St. Cloud State University and Bemidji State University.

Those two schools have faced enrollment declines and budget deficits. Minnesota State officials say they have already undergone budget cuts, including cuts to academic programs and their workforce, but their cash finances have weakened to an unacceptable level.

The officials said the funding shift is needed as a temporary solution while they work on a plan to realign the entire system of colleges and universities. The system has a structural deficit of about $30 million, which is projected to grow to $100 million in two years if no action is taken.

Chancellor Scott Olson said recently the system needs to "right size" itself, and that could mean closing some institutions or campuses.

Minnesota State leaders recently announced they plan to close the community and technical college campus in Detroit Lakes as soon as the summer of 2028.

The funding reallocation proposal was developed with input from Minnesota State leaders and has received a lot of feedback. Some officials at two-year colleges voiced concern about their financial burden.

At Wednesday’s board meeting, trustee Roger Moe said it’s not uncommon in Minnesota State’s history for some institutions to depend on funding from others.

"Sometime over the past 25 years ... practically every campus has had to rely on the collective strength of the system,” Moe said.

The financial challenges aren’t unique to Minnesota State higher education institutions. Colleges and universities across the U.S. are facing declining enrollment due in part to a shrinking number of college-age students, a problem known as the demographic cliff.

Minnesota’s state colleges and universities have faced rising costs and flat state funding that hasn’t kept up. They’ve also faced a decline in international students due to federal immigration policies.

The system plans to ask the Legislature for increased funding next year for the realignment plan, and to help some schools demolish old buildings to save on maintenance costs.

For decades, the coal mining industry has been reckoning with a disease called black lung. Now a similar condition is disabling and even killing workers who cut artificial stone, for trendy quartz countertops and backsplashes. It's called silicosis, and you get it by breathing in tiny crystals of a mineral called silica.

The nation's largest manufacturer of artificial stone is Cambria, a company based in Minnesota. But California is the epicenter of silicosis cases in the U.S. and regulators in that state could soon ban the making of these products.

For more on what health professionals in California and around the country are seeing in silicosis patients, MPR News host Nina Moini talked with Dr. Sheiphali Gandhi. She leads the California Silicosis Support and Research Network at the University of California-San Francisco, where she is an assistant professor of medicine.

MPR News reached out to Cambria, which has faced hundreds of lawsuits related to silicosis, and has not received a response. The company has said repeatedly that it maintains safe working conditions, partly by wetting facilities to keep dust out of the air. It blames lung disease on smaller fabrication shops in the supply chain.

The Minnesota Department of Health tracks silicosis cases using hospitalization data. Cases have decreased over the last 15 years, according to a spokesperson.

“Recent events in other states have raised the profile of silicosis among public health professionals and we are working to learn more about the silicosis issue,” the spokesperson said in a statement to MPR News. “MDH will continue to monitor our data for any significant changes and will explore changes to state statute that may ease the burden of reporting on providers and ensure quality data.”

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Last year, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping tax and spending bill — originally called the One Big Beautiful Bill. It included significant changes to Medicaid, the government health insurance program that helps people with lower incomes pay for medical care.

Some changes to eligibility rules have already taken effect while changes to work requirements are scheduled to begin in 2027.

MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about what the changes mean for Minnesotans who rely on Medicaid and for the healthcare system as a whole.

If you’re looking for affordable medical care, you can find local resources here: Community Health Centers.

Guests:

• Robin Rudowitz is a senior vice president and director of the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at KFF, an independent source for health policy research, polling and news.

• Jonathan Watson is the CEO of the Minnesota Association of Community Health Centers.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS. 

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

Big tech’s giant data center proposals have touched raw nerves in several Minnesota towns, sparking firestorms of criticism aimed at local government leaders, some of whom signed non-disclosure agreements to keep project details secret until after elected officials approved the plans.

Seeing how data centers have churned up local politics and spurred newcomers to run for office, some city administrators came together to seek help. The end result is a new toolkit developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota to help local government officials better understand and weigh the pros and cons of having Google, Meta or some other big tech company build a massive data center in their community.

"The way we've been framing it is how do you proactively address a data center?” said Elise Harrington, a University of Minnesota public affairs professor who is the tool kit project lead. “How do you think about it before you have one?"

It’s the culmination of a year of research by the University of Minnesota and the Freshwater Society, a water conservation nonprofit. It was developed to help city leaders separate facts from fiction and to guide what city codes they can enact to mitigate environmental impacts if big tech pitches in their city next.

Arming local leaders with facts

Harrington and her group of researchers released the tool kit last Friday afternoon in Rochester, where dozens of city planners, administrators and elected officials from cities and towns across southeast Minnesota gathered for a workshop to learn about the tool kit and try it out.

Al Roder, city administrator for the nearby town of Byron, is part of the reason this tool kit exists in the first place.

He and some of his peers in other southeast Minnesota cities had been talking a couple of years ago about how they could prepare for the seemingly inevitable arrival of data center proposals.

“We just started having a conversation about data centers and how do we answer all these questions with facts instead of emotions?” Roder said. “Because so much of what I hear is emotional arguments for or against. Where are the facts?”

He had observed how these emotions had created deep rifts in cities like Pine Island, about 20 minutes away, after Google proposed its Project Skyway data center there, dividing residents into heated factions of those who support the data center and those who vehemently oppose it.

Roder and his counterparts in nearby Stewartville and Lewiston wanted to get ahead of such controversies. If Google or some other big tech company came to Byron, Roder wanted to be armed with facts and have city rules preemptively laid out for prospective data centers.

“These are rules that we decided before we were in the heat of battle,” Roder told MPR News. “These are the conditions that we would find acceptable for our community. It's easier to do that before somebody's knocking on the door.”

So they reached out to the community development folks at the University of Minnesota Extension for help gathering facts they could use to guide these discussions.

What does the tool kit include?

The guide, which will be made available to the public Wednesday, includes sections on how data centers can impact energy and water usage, and how these impacts can be regulated at the local level to manage environmental impacts. It also includes guiding questions for city leaders to ask if they get an inquiry from big tech about a data center proposal as well as examples of how to address data centers in local code.

That’s why Greg Krushke attended the workshop. He's the community development manager for the city of Owatonna, and he’s in the midst of modernizing the city’s zoning and subdivision code that was developed back in the 1980s. He hopes the tool kit will help inform how they write the code and what is included in it.

He said it’s especially helpful to come together with peers at a workshop like this one to talk with one another and share experiences.

"What are they learning from others, and how can we be able to apply some of this and be able to use it to help ourselves and our neighbors?" Krushke said.

A regional approach

Andi Sutton, executive director of the Southeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnership with University of Minnesota Extension, said she was thrilled that so many local government decision makers showed up for Friday’s workshop in Rochester.

Local data center decisions are not made in a vacuum, and she hopes the workshop, which has convened leaders from across the region, will spark these conversations early since the environmental impacts of data centers don’t stop at city borders.

That’s especially true in southeast Minnesota, which has a unique geologic landscape. It’s made of karst, a type of rock that’s very porous.

“It means that the way that water moves through our region is different from other parts of Minnesota,” Sutton explained. “We have sensitive aquifers. We have water that’s in use for agricultural purposes, for ecosystem purposes. So what one community does with the water that they have will very quickly and inevitably have an effect on another community.”

Sutton hopes this workshop jump starts these conversations and leads local planners to ask their neighbors questions as they weigh the pros and cons of data center proposals; questions like, “Who is my neighbor in terms of energy, water, infrastructure or roads?”

“All of these questions get pushed to their limits by data centers as a development opportunity,” Sutton said. “We're so grateful that we're able to help supply information as answers to some of those questions or even recommendations. These are important questions to ask very early and often of your peers, of your neighbors, of your citizens, so that you have all the information you need to move forward with a decision that suits your community as well as the region.”

Officials with the Minnesota State colleges and universities system are expected to vote Wednesday on a proposal to shift funding from some of its smaller colleges to help two universities that are struggling financially.

The plan would reallocate up to $25 million each year for the next four years to "financially challenged" institutions. Most of that amount — a total of up to $15 million each year — would go to two schools: St. Cloud State University and Bemidji State University.

The money would be shifted from the Minnesota State system's other institutions, with the majority coming from two-year colleges.

Leaders say the stopgap measure is needed to financially support St. Cloud State and Bemidji State, which have faced enrollment declines and structural deficits.

Drops in enrollment

At St. Cloud State, for example, the number of students has fallen by 40 percent over the past two decades to just under 10,000 this year. Both universities have already cut academic programs and reduced their workforce.

Minnesota State officials say it’s not unprecedented for the system to financially support its institutions. But it’s the first time the system is proposing to transfer funds from its smaller colleges to some of its largest universities, and at such a large scale.

"We are starting to see individual institutions' financial health weaken beyond an unacceptable point, where serving the students at those individual institutions is at jeopardy,” said Bill Maki, Minnesota State's vice chancellor for finance. “And those institutions have already made significant budget reductions, several rounds of them."

Maki said the funding shift is a temporary solution and not a perfect one. But he said the board needs to take action now while it works on a larger plan to realign the system.

“It’s intended to be for up to a four-year period, but knowing that Minnesota State is going to need to look different,” Maki said. “Because what we can’t do is create a situation where we’re creating more institutions that are having financial difficulties by supporting the ones that currently are.”

Minnesota State has a structural deficit of about $30 million, which is projected to grow to $100 million in two years if no action is taken. Chancellor Scott Olson said recently the system needs to "right size" itself, and that could mean closing some institutions or campuses.

Minnesota State leaders recently announced they plan to close the community and technical college campus in Detroit Lakes as soon as the summer of 2028.

Objections to the proposal

The proposed funding shift has met with some pushback. Two-year colleges have raised concerns about the impact on their bottom lines.

Kevin Lindstrom, president of the Minnesota State College Faculty, said his organization understands that some institutions occasionally need support from the entire system. But he questioned the amount of the transfer and whether it will be any help.

Lindstrom noted that up to $40 million could be transferred to St. Cloud State over the next four years, which he called “an extraordinary amount” that would have negative consequences for two-year colleges.

“It all seems to be done without the prospect or some sort of clear indication that it’s going to make a difference,’ he said.

Two-year colleges have had to make tough choices in recent years and tend to operate pretty efficiently on lean budgets, Lindstrom said. Some could carry the burden of the financial shift, but for others, it could be a problem, he said.

Lindstrom and others question whether it makes sense to keep supporting struggling universities when there's no sign that the current financial picture will change in the near future.

The financial challenges aren’t limited to Minnesota State higher education institutions. Colleges and universities across the U.S. are facing declining enrollment due in part to a shrinking number of college-age students, a problem known as the demographic cliff.

There’s also been a decline in people’s perceptions about the value of a college degree and whether it’s worth the cost of tuition in a changing job market.

Minnesota’s state colleges and universities have also faced rising costs and flat state funding that hasn’t kept up.

Minnesota State officials plan to continue working on realigning the system of 26 colleges and seven universities, which serves about 270,000 students. They will present options for restructuring to the board of trustees in January.

Maki said they likely will be asking the Legislature for additional one-time funding for the realignment plan, and to help some schools demolish old buildings to save on maintenance costs.

State regulators are investigating the affordability of electricity and natural gas rates, and they’re asking Minnesotans to share how those costs have affected them.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has opened an investigation into the affordability of electric and natural gas utilities whose rates are regulated by the state.

The commission has scheduled the first of three informational sessions for 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. It says a panel discussion will cover how customers experience utility costs and how affordability should be defined and measured.

“We want to hear varying perspectives and get input from local and national experts about what affordability means to them and what they believe could make a difference,” said Katie Sieben, chair of the commission, in a news release.

The Public Utilities Commission routinely considers rates and costs when deciding on utility rates and nearly every other matter that comes before it.

However, this investigation is unique, one advocate says, because it’s a broader look at how Minnesota is doing when it comes to energy affordability and what should be done about it.

Since the pandemic, the number of people struggling to pay their electric bills has risen significantly, and it hasn’t improved much since then, said Annie Levenson-Falk, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota, which represents utility customers.

"You add on the pressures of inflation and the other economic pressures that people are facing these days, and I think that helps explain why we're hearing so much about affordability, including energy affordability,” she said.

The number of households whose utilities have been disconnected has hit record levels in recent years. The amount Minnesotans owe on unpaid utility bills also has spiked, Levenson-Falk said. Residential customers owe about twice the amount they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.

“The cause of that is primarily people falling farther and farther behind,” Levenson-Falk said. “So people who are having trouble paying their bills are in a much deeper hole than they were a few years back."

Double whammy of hot summer and rate increases

There are several factors driving higher utility bills. This summer was one of the warmest in Minnesota’s history, which meant many people used the air conditioner more frequently and for longer durations.

However, it’s not just the weather. Several utilities, including Minnesota’s largest, Xcel Energy, have sought rate increases in recent years, citing the cost of modernizing the electric grid and gas infrastructure. Supply chain issues and tariffs have raised the costs of those upgrades.

Those rate increase requests have generated an unprecedented number of public comments. And some consumer advocacy groups pushed back on the commission’s decision to increase Xcel’s return on equity, the rate of profit Xcel is allowed to collect from its electric customers’ bills.

The Public Utilities Commission is accepting public comments until Oct. 16. Following the investigation, it will issue a report recommending possible actions to make gas and electric costs more affordable.

“We need to look at the full range of options — including actions that utilities, the governor, the Legislature and the federal government — could take to keep bills as low as possible,” Sieben stated.

Hundreds of people lined the St. Croix River to watch four “pilots” race down the river in giant, hollowed out pumpkins Sunday.

The Pumpkin Regatta at the 21st annual Stillwater Harvest Fest is one of only a few across the country. This year, the weather was especially favorable for viewing and racing.

Stillwater native Tim Brown, who has competed every year for the last decade, took home the first place trophy for the third time.

“I think the first time I won was in 2016 so to be able to do it in my mid-40s is pretty cool,” Brown said.

The regatta is a family affair for Brown who was competing alongside his cousin and past winner, Matthew Schmidt.

“Happy to beat my cousin — that’s the biggest goal,” said Brown.

For first-time racer, Laura Fairchild, it was less about winning and more about honoring her son, Justin Ross Fairchild who served in the U.S. Army and died in 2007.

No matter who took home the trophy, though, the four racers all walked away with a unique experience — and perspective into what it takes to navigate a giant pumpkin down a river.

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Brown said. “Who would’ve thought a pumpkin could float and be paddled?”

A growing get-together

The Stillwater Harvest Fest began as a giant pumpkin weigh-off more than 20 years ago. It’s since grown into a two-day event that now includes live music, food trucks, vendors and, of course, the regatta.

Cassie McLemore, director of events for Summer Tuesday, Inc, says as the festival has gotten bigger — so have the pumpkins.

For perspective, in 2010, a pumpkin at the Stillwater Harvest Fest weighing around 1,800 pounds broke the world record for largest pumpkin. The largest pumpkin at the festival this year weighed-in at 2,305 pounds.

“[The St. Croix Growers Association] has a really robust group of growers that have been doing it a long time,” McLemore said. “They use the seeds from the year before to grow bigger pumpkins the next year.”

When the pumpkins used in the regatta were hollowed out before the race, event organizers shared the seeds with lucky spectators.

By this time next year, there will be a whole new crop of giant pumpkins to weigh and paddle in.

In an English class for adults in the southwestern Minnesota city of Marshall, about 10 people hailing from other countries are learning about American customs while practicing their grammar and pronunciation. Many of them are here to prepare for the workforce.

Teacher Stacy Abraham leads the class in reciting a paragraph rife with errors that students are tasked with fixing.

Meanwhile, Leonardo Silva is crawling between desks while sucking on his own fingers.

In his defense, he’s just 1 year old.

His mom, Brazilian immigrant Kezya Silva, tried her best during the Thursday morning class to focus on her work while she wrangled him. At one point, she had to take a break from writing notes to breastfeed him.

Besides needing to learn English, Silva is facing another obstacle, one that many other workers in Marshall share: finding affordable childcare.

“Because of my son, I’m not working,” Silva said. “I don’t have anyone to leave him with.”

She’s not alone.

“We have folks that would be in the workforce if they had available and affordable childcare, but that's a shortage that we have,” said Mayor Bob Byrnes. “We do have several childcare centers … but there's still a much larger need.”

Over the last 15 years, Marshall’s labor force — the number of people who have a job or are looking for one — has been declining, down 11.1 percent from 2010. During the same time period, Minnesota’s labor force grew by 7.8 percent.

At the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, where analysts crunch these numbers, there’s no precise explanation.

“There's a huge variety of factors, just like everything,” said Luke Greiner, one of DEED’s regional analysts. “It'd be nice if there was a tidy smoking gun that we could all figure out how to solve.”

It might not be immediately noticeable in the city. Marshall has many small and large businesses, and in August, the city’s unemployment rate was 4.7 percent, slightly lower than the statewide rate.

But the unemployment rate doesn’t include people who have stopped looking for a job altogether. And on the ground in Marshall, many residents said people are staying home because of the difficulty of finding affordable childcare.

Why childcare is hard to find in Marshall

A 2025 report funded by the state of Minnesota estimated that the Marshall area has a shortage of more than 400 childcare spots.

MPR News spoke to three childcare providers in Marshall. All were at or near capacity and said increasing costs, staffing issues and burdensome regulations have strangled supply.

“My waiting list is long, and I'm at capacity for everything,” said Michele Gregoire, owner of Stepping Stones Childcare and Preschool. “I don’t have any openings till ‘28.”

Infant care is the most constrained because there’s high demand to get children into a center early. But it’s also the least profitable because it requires the highest adult-to-child ratio: 1 adult for every 4 infants.

“It doesn't pay in the infant room enough to support that teacher,” said Kari Dahl Condezo, who runs the independent childcare center at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall.

That means the other age groups are already helping subsidize infant care and there’s little incentive to expand, despite how important infant care is to clients and the business itself.

“Typically at a center, the families start as an infant with the program, and they typically never leave,” Dahl Condezo said. “They grow with you and they become part of your family because they keep having, typically, more children.”

And some Minnesota programs that reduce the demand for childcare can have a disproportionate effect on supply, according to Karen DeBoer, who is director of nonprofit Child Care Aware in southwestern Minnesota.

For example, Minnesota has expanded its voluntary prekindergarten program, which offers free preschool to some children. That reduction in demand can hurt childcare providers since they can’t afford to operate with just a few students.

“I have to replace my furniture. I have to have equipment. I have to have materials. I have to have supplies,” DeBoer said. “My expenses don't change overall just because I have six fewer children every day, and for a childcare center, they're having difficulty finding staff willing to work for the wages they're able to pay.”

If they raise those wages, childcare becomes even less accessible.

“The more families have to pay, the more they're going to opt for those cheaper options, and the fewer children that are enrolled in programs,” she said. “It’s just this vicious cycle.”

If the lack of childcare is contributing to the decline in the labor force, it’s also affected by it. Staffing qualified employees was already hard to do and other state policies have made that tougher, according to childcare providers.

While Minnesota's paid leave program may be a boon for workers looking to care for their child at home, it's a headache for many business owners who now need to be able to fill staffing gaps when a worker takes leave.

For childcare providers, that means finding someone with specialized education and training.

“If somebody were to come to you and ask if you wanted to open up another center, the answer would be no, because you can't find staffing,” Gregoire said. “We need it. Marshall needs it. But where are we going to put it? Where are we going to get the staff?”

Another option is family-run, home-based childcare. But providers said complicated regulations have made those harder to run.

“These family care providers, they're just missing,” Greiner said. “We had way more of them before. They've been on a fairly steady decline, and that is a challenge in rural areas because you typically have a larger share of your child care at family-based care versus centers.”

Marshall’s shifting demographics

Changes to the makeup of Marshall’s population may be another reason the labor force is falling.

Marshall is older than it used to be. According to Census data, 11.4 percent of Marshall residents were at least 65 years old in 2010. The latest estimates put that figure at 17.1 percent.

“Our baby boomer population has more or less phased into retirement age,” Greiner said.

And those trends are affecting the childcare industry, too.

“A lot of the family child care (providers) that have closed in Marshall have been a good amount of providers that have been retiring,” said Kim Swalboski, owner of Canoga Park Childcare. “They've been doing it for a long time and finally reached that age, and you just don't have enough new providers, like younger providers, that are entering the field.”

Immigration is part of the reason why, despite an aging population, Marshall’s population has continued to grow.

But immigrants face barriers from entering the labor market, said Greiner, with the state’s economic development department. So even with a higher population, there may be fewer total people actively working or looking for work.

For instance, it is harder to find a job without a high school degree or English proficiency, which foreign-born workers are less likely to have.

“Those two pieces, they serve as a gate to the broader economy,” Greiner said. “If you don't have that GED or high school diploma, those people are basically competing against high school students.”

Adult Basic Education services are available statewide to help people develop skills such as English and math at no cost. Stacy Abraham teaches one of those English classes in Marshall out of Southwest Minnesota State University.

In her eight years teaching there, she estimates she’s helped more than 200 students reach their goals, whether that be getting a specific job certification, a degree or just English proficiency.

Almost all of her students are immigrants, including many refugees, and the classes are grant-funded and offered at no cost.

“In society we don't have that help for people that … have the abilities, they just need a little bit of help,” she said. “It's really fun to just help people and especially people who feel like they're not good at something, or you know, ‘I'm just never going to make it.’”

One of her students, May Htoo, has been learning English for just a few weeks. He said he’s been in the country for 15 years but moved to Marshall this year after being laid off from a job in South Dakota. Now, he’s learning English to help himself get another job.

And Kezya Silva, who brought her son to class, moved to the U.S. last year and started learning English earlier this year.

Abraham said she’s doing very well in the class, even though she mostly attends online. Technology can often be a barrier for other students, but not for her. She uses an AI translator to help her in class, and her pronunciation is advanced compared to other students.

Her goal is to get a job next year, but for now, that’s out of reach.

“On Zoom, she'll mute because her baby is talking or needs something,” Abraham said. “She's like, ‘Oh sorry, teacher.’ I’m like ‘It’s OK, it’s fine! You need to take care of your kid.’”

Marshall’s future

Greiner, with the state’s economic development department, said he’s broadly optimistic about the economy of rural regions like southwestern Minnesota.

“It doesn't take much imagination to wonder, ‘Is the hardest parts of decline behind us?’ he said. “The way I see the region, I see the past, which is not a lot of positive for some of this stuff. And in the future … we have projected population stability, projected job growth. Even though it's real slow, it's not decline.”

He said these communities have a lot to offer, such as valuable land and thriving industries. Marshall itself is a regional hub; Mayor Byrnes estimates that the town’s population nearly doubles during the day as people drive to the city to work at places like Avera Medical Group, Turkey Valley Farms and Southwest Minnesota State University.

And while the town’s labor force numbers haven’t recovered, they’ve at least leveled off in the last couple of years.

“It's too early to say it's part of a trend,” Greiner said. “It's just hard to believe that it would go to zero.”

Special thanks to Danger Boat Productions and the Minnesota Humanities Center for their Sketches of Minnesota events around the state that helped inform this report.

Amid growing opposition to Google’s proposed Pine Island data center near Rochester, a major local business organization is voicing its full support for the project.

The Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce, the second largest chamber in the state, announced it is formally backing the controversial massive data center proposal, known as Project Skyway.

Pine Island, where the data center would be built, is about 15 miles north of Rochester, but the chamber’s president, Ryan Parsons, said the economy of the entire region will benefit from new jobs the project will create.

"The job growth that will occur as a result of this in the short term is going to be 700 construction jobs,” Parsons told MPR News. “When we look long term, this will generate a little over 100 new employees in this Google project."

Parsons says this will make the data center the second largest employer in Pine Island after the Land O'Lakes dairy processing facility.

The mega project has been taking a lot of heat recently from southern Minnesota political candidates like DFLer Jake Johnson, who is running to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad, as well as local residents and environmentalists. The fierce community opposition has even spurred some political newcomers to run for local office in Pine Island, as well as in other communities across Minnesota.

The big tech companies behind the hyperscale data center proposals, and their developers, are taking notice of the grassroots opposition to them. Google, for example, recently launched a charm offensive in both Hermantown, near Duluth, and Pine Island, where it is hoping to build enormous data centers. The company held open houses and community celebrations to try to smooth over some ruffled feathers and win over naysayers in town.

Parsons said he’s aware of the opposition to Project Skyway, but he maintains that the immense capital investment and job growth will do wonders for the region.

“This is an outstanding opportunity for a community, especially as they look at what they'll need to continue to grow,” Parsons said.

Google has also promised to invest $24 million into Pine Island schools over the course of 20 years if its project is approved, in addition to the significant amount of property tax revenue the company will pay.

Parsons encourages opponents of the project to learn more about them, explaining that Google and the developer, Ryan Companies, have been very willing to share information, provide resources and answer questions about the proposal.

Critics say that recent openness to sharing details about the projects comes after months and even years of developing their proposals in secrecy, having local government officials sign non-disclosure agreements to keep the plans from being revealed. Google didn’t even acknowledge it was behind the Pine Island project until after the City Council had approved the proposal.

The data center is currently on pause as a judge considers whether the project requires further environmental review.

By Katelyn Vue, Sahan Journal

For two decades, Mai Xiong’s family has greeted and served food to many travelers, Hmong families and schoolchildren on field trips to HmongTown Marketplace. Xiong and her husband operate Annie’s Restaurant, which they took over 10 years ago from her brother.

“I think everybody is pretty much rooted here,” she said of the vendors.

Several vendors who spoke to Sahan Journal called HmongTown Marketplace a landmark, an economic engine and a longtime gathering spot for elders to reconnect in the Hmong community. But HmongTown Marketplace could close after St. Cloud-based Stearns Bank sued owner Toua Xiong in mid-September, seeking $6.6 million in loans, interest and late fees.

“It’s the main source of income for a lot of us vendors,” Mai Xiong said of the marketplace. “It was really shocking.”

Toua Xiong opened HmongTown Marketplace at 217 Como Ave. in 2004 with more than 200 vendors. Originally a lumberyard, the complex took years to convert into a shopping center with air conditioning, heat and sprinklers, he told Sahan Journal.

At a visit to the market on Sept. 30, the earthy smell of Hmong herbal medicine filled the air. Hmong vendors carried fanny packs, ready to make cash transactions with customers. Traditional Hmong clothing adorned with beads and coins lined the walls.

Many Hmong people, including Xiong, immigrated to the United States after serving in the CIA-backed military during the Vietnam War. Xiong said he came to the United States as a young man with his wife, and built a new life from scratch.

He created HmongTown Marketplace because he wanted to help newly arrived Hmong Minnesotans start their own businesses and support their families. He also wanted to showcase Hmong culture and traditions to young people and those from different backgrounds.

“These vendors are the people representing our fathers and mothers who brought us here, and they didn’t have the opportunity to go to school to get educated,” Xiong said. “When their children would like to know what the Hmong life looked like in Laos, they come here, and see it.”

Stearns Bank filed a mortgage foreclosure of HmongTown Marketplace, and asked a judge to appoint a receiver to collect rent and sell the property. Stearns Bank alleges that Xiong failed to pay them back for loans on HmongTown Marketplace and the old Sears building in Maplewood, which both went into default sometime in 2025.

Xiong said Stearns Bank contacted him in October 2023, offering to help him buy and renovate the Sears property with a loan. He said the bank told him he would need to refinance HmongTown Marketplace to have the money to buy the Sears property. Xiong also said the bank gave him an interest reserve and funds to cover new architectural designs for the Sears property, promising they would later pay for the renovations.

The Sears property is listed as a defendant under the name “Hmongtown 2,” according to the lawsuit. Xiong and his wife, Nou Vang, and their other businesses are also listed as co-defendants in the lawsuit.

In Stearn Bank’s latest filing, on Oct. 1, Stearns Bank proposed the financial advisory firm Cordes & Co. to be the receiver of HmongTown Marketplace. If approved, the company has the power to hire or terminate employees, change the locks on the property, establish pay rates for employees and collect rent. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 24 at 9 a.m. via Zoom for a Hennepin County judge to decide on the matter.

Stearns Bank’s Director of Marketing Sarah Cords and an attorney representing the bank, Andrew Steil, declined to comment.

Boiling point

Xiong filed counterclaims to the lawsuit on Oct. 6.

“We’re actively discussing ways to get out of the lawsuit without a trial,” said Tim Maher, the attorney representing Xiong.

“But banks don’t want to own property, they don’t want to be landlords, they want to lend money … If we find a way to resolve it, they’re not going to want HmongTown Marketplace,” Maher added.

Xiong alleges in the counterclaims that Stearns Bank defrauded him by promising a loan for construction to renovate the Sears property, demanded that he use his family’s house as collateral to acquire loans, and threatened to foreclose on HmongTown Marketplace if he didn’t agree to sign forbearance forms, acknowledging his loans went into default.

Xiong purchased the Sears property in November 2023 for $5.25 million. He said he agreed to build a Stearns Bank branch in HmongTown Marketplace, and included a branch in his plans for the Sears property. But he said he immediately hit roadblocks.

Xiong said he went to Stearns Bank three times with designs for the 181,500 square-feet Sears property, but the bank rejected all of them.

“They said you need to go back to your architecture people and your construction people to scale it down,” he said. “That was really much of 2024.”

Xiong said he attempted to lower the costs of renovations by hiring an independent contractor to conduct a feasibility study, and by taking out some of the design elements.

“I think they set me [up] for failure,” he told Sahan Journal. “They say they’re helping the Hmong community, but acting that way, they’re not supporting the Hmong community.”

“This is my life, my livelihood,” he said. “When we started this one, my wife and I were very young. We were in our early 30s.”

Xiong said he could no longer pay property taxes due to mounting financial pressure from the loans. Since May 2024, he owes Ramsey County more than $550,000 in property taxes, including interest and late fees.

The effort to keep the Sears property afloat is draining the development of HmongTown Marketplace. Starting in 2024, Xiong said, he had to start pulling money from HmongTown Marketplace to make payments on the Sears loan. Xiong said he had planned to replace wooden structures for the outdoors farmers’ market, resurface the parking lot and renovate the facade of the marketplace facing Como Avenue.

“Because of the cash flow that has been consumed over at the Sears [site], we’re not able to do anything,” he said. “We’re just trying to survive.”

Heart of the community

Yuepheng Xiong, who manages Hmong ABC, a small bookstore in the HmongTown Marketplace, said he has developed friendships with other vendors over the years. The bookstore has been at the marketplace since 2010, he added.

“I don’t know exactly how many vendors are here, but we don’t know where we would go. It’s a big community inside HmongTown here,” he said.

Yuepheng Xiong said he began to worry about HmongTown Marketplace after he heard about the Sears expansion project at Maplewood Mall.

“It’s no big surprise, but we’re sad about the news; it made us feel uneasy,” he said of reaction to the lawsuit. “Financially, we’re concerned that they’ve spread themselves too thin, between here and what they called Hmongtown 2. We’re concerned how they’ll manage two places, and still be able to maintain this building and support us here.”

Some of the vendors told Sahan Journal that they see some of the worn-out parts of the marketplace, but they also don’t want someone they don’t know to replace Xiong as the owner.

“We feel that it’s off from the heart of the community,” Yuepheng Xiong said of the Maplewood location. “I don’t see anybody moving from here to Maplewood.”

Pang Lee, a food vendor at the marketplace since 2018, said the loss of the center will harm the community, especially elders.

“If it closes down, it definitely will affect them,” because they won’t have a place where they can freely shop in Hmong without worrying about needing an interpreter, she said.

She also said there was a noticeable drop in customers immediately after the lawsuit was announced, and she saw online rumors spread that the marketplace was closing down.

“We’ve been here for so long, and so many people know about us — like the whole state of Minnesota,” she said. “I think just being the first place, that just makes us so much more special. When you think about the Hmong community, you think about HmongTown.”

Shoppers Xee Chang and her 17-year-old daughter Aryel Xiong told Sahan Journal that they come to the marketplace three or four times a month.

“I also think it’d be really weird to not have it, because there’s a lot of Hmong kids around our age, and older than us, who grew up coming here a lot for whatever is around here,” Aryel said. “So if they weren’t here, then basically our childhood is gone.”

Minneapolis is celebrating its third annual Latino Business Week through Oct. 11, with events for business owners, and for community members to come shop at their local Latino-owned stores.

At a kickoff event Monday, city leaders and business owners said it's especially needed after the federal immigration enforcement surge slowed down business this winter.

Rodrigo Cardoso owns a shipping and professional services business at Mercado Central, a Latino marketplace on Lake Street. He said recovery is underway — but for many businesses, it’s slow going.

“Some of them, thankfully, they have kind of recovered, although we have experienced, inside this building by itself, some losses of businesses that had to close, and some others are just trying to keep up,” Cardoso said.

And even before the immigration enforcement surge, those businesses were seeing drops in customers, dating back to the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term. Business owners cited fear over immigration enforcement in the community.

But the building’s food court was busy Monday morning. Between the bright murals on the walls, shoppers filled tables with platters of menudo, tacos and pupusas.

José Payan’s family owns Tortillería La Perla, with a restaurant location inside the building. Payan said he’s always glad to see more people find his restaurant – both to keep up the business income, and to keep up the vibe in the building.

“We have been a hub for the community itself. It's becoming a major point for news and any major communications that we need to make to our community,” Payan said.

Mayor Jacob Frey visited Mercado Central for the kickoff to the week.

“We should be supporting Latino-owned businesses every day of the week, every week throughout the year, but this week especially,” Frey said. “Support all of the amazing businesses that are up and down East Lake, up and down Central Avenue, up and down Nicollet.”

The week’s events are partly funded by relief money approved by Frey and the city council earlier this year, aimed at helping businesses recover from lost income during Operation Metro Surge.

Events this weekend will invite community members to check out their local businesses. A Latino business pop-up market is scheduled for Saturday along Historic Main Street. And Mercado Central will host a celebration on Sunday, inviting neighbors to come shop and participate in hands-on activities and demonstrations at the market’s restaurants.

More events throughout the week are geared towards business owners, with chances to network and learn skills.

From trade wars, to animal disease and high diesel prices, there is a lot going on in the agriculture world.

Minnesota's Department of Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen just returned from a conference where all of that was discussed with some of Minnesota's most important trade partners: Canada and Mexico.

Commissioner Petersen spoke to Minnesota Now host Nina Moini with more on what he learned 35th annual Tri National Agricultural Accord.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

The way we build careers and make money is changing. MPR News host Angela Davis talks with journalist Lee Hawkins about how people create businesses, move forward after career setbacks and make financial decisions — and what we can learn from their journeys to success.

Guest:

• Lee Hawkins is a contributor to American Public Media — a unit of American Public Media Group, the parent company of MPR News — and a Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University. He is a Minnesota native and a journalist who spent 19 years at The Wall Street Journal. He is the host of “Must Be the Money,” a podcast produced by Marketplace, and author of the book, "I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free.” He is also host of the podcasts, “What Happened in Alabama” and “Unlocking the Gates: How the North Led Housing Discrimination in America,” produced by APM Studios.

• Chris Farrell is a senior economics contributor for MPR News and Marketplace.

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On Monday, the Rochester City Council will vote on a measure that would provide an infusion of funding to support businesses impacted by the years-long massive construction projects and Mayo Clinic’s expansion downtown. But after four businesses recently closed and others teeter on the brink, some business owners say it’s too little, too late.

Businesses on the once busy Second Street corridor in Rochester have been forced to operate for almost a year now amid cranes, backhoes, front loaders and other loud construction equipment that have blocked their storefronts and turned away traffic. The road is getting torn up and rebuilt for a new bus rapid transit line, which will eventually have a fleet of buses running up and down it every few minutes in a loop.

It’s a signature component of Rochester’s 20-year, $5.6 billion Destination Medical Center redevelopment project aimed at remaking the city to accommodate the city’s population growth and make it more attractive to patients, their families and other visitors who come to Mayo Clinic from all over the world.

But, the construction is hurting local businesses. Four shops and restaurants have closed so far this year on Second Street, two of them just this past week. And many more say they’re struggling to hang on. The bus rapid transit line isn’t scheduled to open until next August, leaving businesses with nearly another year to contend with the construction mess that is keeping many customers away.

“It’s really, really bad,” said Joy Loera, owner of Uni Uni Bubble Tea on Second Street. “When we signed the lease, we had no idea this [would] be going on.”

Jenna Bowman, Rochester’s Strategic Communications and Engagement Director, said the city is working hard to try to support these businesses, and she’s hoping that the continuation of the city’s Business Forward program with an extra infusion of $500,000 can help them ride out the construction-related downturn.

The fund that can be used on marketing and promotional efforts to support businesses impacted by the construction. In the first year, the city spent $231,000 on everything from signage to help people navigate the maze of construction to find a local restaurant to free professional photography for the local businesses.

Now, the Destination Medical Center board has approved spending an additional $500,000 on the assistance program. The Rochester City Council will vote on whether or not to co-sign the financial aid on Monday.

It’s unclear how the new funds will be spent if approved, but Bowman said the city intends to take what the business community wants into consideration, so they can continue what’s been working and revise what has not. And she acknowledged that the city is learning in real time.

“The [bus rapid transit system] is the largest public infrastructure project in Rochester history,” Bowman said. “This is new for all of us. Sometimes no one has all the answers, but collectively we hopefully can find some good answers. That is my hope with this next phase, if you will, is that there is an ability to find some wins here for everyone.”

However, the Business Forward fund does not allow for direct payments or loans to the impacted businesses, and business owners like Will Forsman of Cafe Steam said that’s what’s most needed.

“[We need] money. Cash," said Forsman who owns a small chain of coffee shops in downtown Rochester, including one on Second Street. “None of these businesses want to ask for a handout. It's incredibly embarrassing, and we don't take a lot of pride in it. But they're being forced to do this because they're left with no other option.”

There is some precedent for Minnesota municipalities supporting business more directly during massive construction projects. Back in 2011, when the light rail transit system was under construction across the Twin Cities, the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis offered impacted small retail businesses and restaurants the ability to apply for $20,000, interest-free, forgivable loans to help them get through the downturn.

But the city of Rochester said that’s not currently a topic of conversation and that city government has strict requirements on how taxpayer dollars can be used.

Forsman said he’s concerned that the additional funding won’t really help because it’ll just be more of the same. He said for him and his neighbors, marketing isn’t usually the issue, it’s the fact that potential customers can’t find their shop or they choose to avoid going downtown all together due to the menace of traffic cones, detours and construction work.

“This program reads as a PR stunt,” Forsman said. “[The city wants to show] that the powers that be have listened to businesses that are struggling on that street and heard that they're having difficulty advertising or marketing themselves, which is perhaps not the issue. The issue is that people physically cannot get to these businesses. You can advertise them all you want, but it will do nothing to be able to allow for customers to actually access the businesses.”

And Forsman noted, it won’t do anything to help the businesses that have already closed their doors for good.

What’s cooler than being cool? Being the coolest. And four finalists have been chosen for the third annual Coolest Thing Made in Minnesota contest.

Run by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the competition helps highlight new and old products that are manufactured in the state.

The contest began with 64 products that have been whittled down to the top four by public voting. A winner will be chosen through a final round of voting and announced Tuesday.

The products weren’t necessarily invented by Minnesotans or in Minnesota. To qualify, the product must be manufactured in the state and the company must have existed for at least two years.

"These Minnesota-made products need to be spotlighted just because I think there's a big misnomer that a lot of these products or devices innovations have been offshored,” said Elizabeth Sherry, the director of development and strategic partnerships for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

This year’s finalists range from life-saving to recreational products, and they’re made by a mix of small and big businesses.

“The glory of this contest is that we have a range of different products,” Sherry added. “It's brand new products that you might not have seen. … and then we also have seen products that have been around for 100 years.”

Two are finalists from last year: a teardrop trailer from Eagan-based Vistabule and an all-terrain wheelchair made by ATZ Manufacturing in Marshall.

“The wheelchair is actually a medical need, but they're used for recreational purposes,” Sherry said. “Their goal is to make sure that those folks that no longer are able to have those capabilities to go hunting, going on the beach, taking long hikes and walks have that ability to do that now with their wheelchair.”

Another finalist, the Fire Boss built by Wipaire, helped fight fires in Ely over the summer.

“These types of airplane systems, they are able to scoop water and dump water down on wildfires as they're in progress,” Sherry said. “So it saves time, it saves gas, and it can help mitigate fires faster.

The youngest company to be a finalist is Solventum, which spun out from 3M in 2024. Its Bair Hugger system is used in hospitals to keep patients warm.

Public voting ends on Tuesday, the same day the winner will be announced at the chamber’s 2026 Manufacturers’ Summit.

Revol Greens, which grows lettuce and other greens in a massive greenhouse near Owatonna and had planned to close this weekend, is now going to remain open for at least a few more weeks as it works to finalize a deal to stay in business.

The lettuce grower told state regulators in August that it planned to permanently close its facility Oct. 4 and lay off nearly 100 employees, but in a new filing with the state this week, the company said it is postponing the closure and that it hopes to continue operations.

“The postponement is due to ongoing efforts to close a transaction that may allow operations at the facility to continue,” Revol Greens Interim CFO Michaele Gobel wrote. “If those efforts are unsuccessful, the plant closing and related employment losses are expected to occur during the 14-day period beginning Oct. 15, 2026, and ending Oct. 29, 2026.”

Revol Greens has not yet responded to MPR News’ request for comment.

If the Medford-based company is able to close the deal, dozens of jobs could be saved. In August, Revol Greens said that it anticipated 89 employees would be laid off if the company did not secure financing or find a buyer for the business by October.

The Minnesota company, which grows its lettuce in a huge, climate-controlled, 10-acre greenhouse, opened in 2017 and has an additional greenhouse in Texas.

Its original decision to close came at a time when demand for lettuce and other greens slumped as many consumers across the country were avoiding lettuce because of a national outbreak of a parasitic infection linked to iceberg lettuce. While none of Revol Greens products were contaminated, Revol Greens vice president of operations explained in its August press release that the Cyclospora outbreak was one of the challenges the company was facing.

“While Revol Greens greenhouse-grown products have continued to meet rigorous food safety and quality standards and were not implicated in the outbreak, the resulting uncertainty in consumer demand has created challenges throughout the leafy greens sector and has impacted ongoing financing discussions for many companies serving the category,” Carkoski wrote when the planned closure was announced in August.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has been investigating the multi-state outbreak of cyclospora infections linked to iceberg lettuce. Since May, it has identified nearly 20,000 cases of the gastrointestinal disease — and likely many more that have yet to be confirmed. At least one outbreak has been linked to Taylor Farms, which sells its products in grocery stores and to fast food restaurants and other eateries.

“Our leafy greens are grown year-round in our controlled-environment greenhouses in Minnesota and Texas, where every step of the growing process is designed with food safety in mind,” the company wrote on its Facebook page in mid July.

“From treated water and plant and mineral based fertilizers, to automated harvesting that minimizes human handling, our growing practices help us maintain a highly controlled environment from seed to harvest.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he will veto an ordinance City Council passed Thursday that would require human safety monitors in driverless rideshare vehicles.

“Requiring a driver in a driverless car doesn’t make sense,” Frey said in a statement. “Minneapolis is open for business, open to innovative technology, and open to a variety of transportation options. Thoughtful regulation for safety is necessary, but not through a backdoor ban.”

The Minneapolis City Council narrowly approved the ordinance earlier on Thursday on a 7-6 vote, not enough support to overcome a mayoral veto. Proponents argue the measure is necessary to protect thousands of rideshare jobs.

The robotaxi industry is booming nationwide, and the most widely known driverless rideshare vehicle operator — Waymo — has already been testing its fleet in the Twin Cities.

Supporters of autonomous vehicles say welcoming the industry in Minnesota would boost the economy, provide greater consumer choice, prevent drivers from discriminating against disabled riders, and increase safety. Those advocates — and Waymo itself — argued that the city ordinance will stifle the service in Minneapolis.

“At the end of the day, this boils down to safety,” council member Jamison Whiting said before voting against the ordinance Thursday.

Whiting said the data is clear: his research convinced him that autonomous vehicles are far safer than human drivers.

Critics see the emerging industry as the latest Big Tech attack on labor — and worry driverless cars actually introduce new safety, public nuisance and privacy concerns.

“Immigrant workers have come to me and said that this is an existential threat to them,” council member Aurin Chowdhury said Thursday. A majority of rideshare drivers in Minnesota are immigrants, according to state data.

At the Minnesota Capitol this spring there was bipartisan agreement that statewide regulation was needed, but disagreement about the safety of the vehicles and their impact on the local economy ultimately tanked efforts to pass legislation. That has left cities in the lurch to deal with driverless cars themselves, but it’s unclear if local governments have the legal authority to do so.

Progressives on the Minneapolis City Council championed the ordinance now headed to the mayor’s desk, which would require human safety monitors in autonomous vehicles. Skeptics of that proposal have scoffed at the concept of drivers in driverless cars — but advocates argue without that requirement, thousands of rideshare drivers could be put out of work.

“Automation has a demonstrated track record of leading to job displacement,” council member Robin Wonsley said during a Tuesday committee meeting. “I would hope we all want to make sure workers are not displaced as a result of us making sure we’re making technological strides in our city.”

The ordinance would also require that the human safety monitor have a driver’s license and that the monitor be paid minimum wage. Supporters also argue the measure gives the city more time to study the issue of autonomous vehicles because — if passed — the ordinance wouldn’t go into effect until October 2027.

Council member Elizabeth Shaffer, who opposed the ordinance, said Thursday that it didn’t make sense to advance a proposal before the council receives a report from city legislative staff about the robotaxi industry and how it could impact Minneapolis. That report is due to the council’s zoning committee Monday.

A spokesperson for Frey said before Thursday’s vote that he considers the ordinance “a bait for the state to come in and pre-empt us.” Frey has pushed for the state to take the lead on autonomous vehicle regulation instead.

While Waymo continues test-driving its fleet in the Twin Cities — with humans behind the wheel, and not yet taking customers — it’s not clear when the company might launch its rideshare service here.

A spokesperson for Waymo previously said that the proposed Minneapolis ordinance goes too far, and would limit the company’s ability to operate in the city.

Another proposed health system merger is poised to further reshape Minnesota’s healthcare industry.

Bloomington-based HealthPartners and Duluth-based Essentia Health announced Tuesday that their respective boards of directors have approved a merger plan.

If approved by regulators, the merger of the two nonprofit health systems is set to be complete by the start of next year. The new organization would take the HealthPartners name and have about 45,000 employees staffing dozens of hospitals and clinics across Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota. It would be one of the largest healthcare systems in the region.

“This combination is about doing more for the people and communities who count on us,” HealthPartners President and CEO Andrea Walsh said in a statement announcing the merger.

“HealthPartners and Essentia Health share a belief that everyone deserves access to high-quality care and coverage, close to home and centered on their needs,” Walsh said. “Together, we can build on the strengths of both organizations to improve health, expand access and create a stronger future for the communities we serve.”

Essentia Health CEO Dr. David Herman said the two organizations “share similar missions and values, deep roots in this region, and a focus on improving health and well-being.”

“As a combined nonprofit health system, we will be able to better innovate and grow our workforce. That strong foundation will make us even better partners for our patients, working together to help people live their healthiest lives, wherever they call home,” Herman said in a statement.

It’s the third major proposed merger involving Minnesota health systems in 2026.

North Memorial Health and South Dakota-based Sanford Health completed a merger earlier this year.

And a proposed merger of Allina Health and California-based Sutter Health remains under review by state regulators.

Speaking with reporters Tuesday afternoon, Walsh and Herman said the merger is needed to confront challenges facing the broader healthcare sector, including rising healthcare costs and health insurance premiums, lower reimbursements, and workforce shortages.

“What we believe is HealthPartners and Essentia together, coming together, we can combine complementary strengths to improve health experience affordability and quality, and to navigate some of the industry trends that are a challenge not only in Minnesota but across the nation,” Walsh said.

“That’s what other health systems are finding — that when you have complementary capabilities, you’re stronger together,” Herman said.

Herman described the proposed merger as the two systems leading, rather than reacting, to a healthcare environment he described as “dynamic” and even “chaotic.”

“We know that while we’re strong, our patients, our communities, and our colleagues depend upon us. And coming together when we’re strong, working on things that we know are important — like access, affordability, getting your best care and your best health wherever you choose to live — are the things that are important,” he said.

HealthPartners and Essentia Health said Tuesday that they have “complementary strengths in care delivery, health plan coverage, urban and rural community health, research, medical education and innovation.”

They said the merger would give patients access to more medical expertise and specialists and give employees more career pathways within the organization.

Walsh would lead the combined organization, with Herman serving as president of combined clinical care group operations.

HealthPartners and Essentia said their patients and members should not see any changes or interruptions to health care or insurance coverage. Walsh and Herman said there are no plans to close clinics or hospitals.

For now, Essentia Health facilities will retain that branding. Herman said the plan is to convert them to the HealthPartners name at some point in the future, once the two systems are fully combined.

The Minnesota Nurses Association issued a statement saying it has “serious concerns” about the merger plan — with the union also saying its members who are employed by both health systems had no advance notice of the proposal ahead of Tuesday’s public announcement.

“Minnesota has now seen three major back-to-back healthcare consolidation announcements, and nurses are deeply concerned about what that could mean for our patients and communities,” MNA President Chris Rubesch, a registered nurse at Essentia Health, said in a statement. “Every time control over healthcare is concentrated in fewer hands, we need to understand what patients and communities stand to gain, what they could lose and who will be accountable for those outcomes.”

In a statement following Tuesday’s merger announcement, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office will gather public comments on the planned merger, as it reviews the proposal.

“Proposed healthcare consolidation requires close scrutiny,” Ellison said in a news release. “As we have done several times now, we will conduct a thorough review of this potential acquisition to ensure it complies with the law and is in the public interest.”

HealthPartners operates nine hospitals — including Regions Hospital in St. Paul — as well as dozens of clinics. It also offers health and dental insurance plans covering more than a 1.5 million people.

Essentia Health operates 14 hospitals and dozens of clinics in central and northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota.

In 2025, Essentia Health was part of a proposed health system alliance involving Fairview Health Services and the University of Minnesota — but that proposal did not move forward.

In 2022, Essentia had also explored a possible merger with Wisconsin’s Marshfield Clinic Health System but later ended those discussions. Marshfield later merged with Sanford Health.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

Growing diesel costs have been a pain for farmers who need the fuel to run equipment in their fields. Now, as harvest approaches, farmers face yet another obstacle as railroads have raised their shipping costs.

Railroad fuel surcharges have more than doubled in the past year as diesel prices have reached over $6 a gallon. Railroads carry about 1.6 million carloads of grain each year, according to the Association of American Railroads. That makes up 24 percent of domestic grain movements.

It’s not uncommon for railroads to add fees due to changing fuel costs. However, when these surcharges happen, the cost often trickles down to farmers in the shape of lower crop prices. That’s according to Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition.

“Agriculture is a very competitive industry, and so what will often happen is if [grain shippers] try to pass those costs on to an importer from another country, what that importer very likely will do is say, ‘Well, I guess I'm going to buy more soybeans from Brazil or Argentina if you're trying to pass these costs on to me,’” Steenhoek said.

The grain shipper also doesn’t want to absorb those costs, which means the hot potato lands in farmers' hands.

“Farmers have options where they can sell to; maybe an elevator close by or a processor further down the road,” Steenhoek said. “But there is kind of a limit to how many points of sale a farmer has access to. So a lot of times the farmer just simply has to absorb that cost.”

Too early to see significant price changes

Some local grain elevators where farmers sell their crops have started to see changes in crop prices. However, David Ripplinger, a bioenergy economist at North Dakota State University, said it’s difficult to separate how much of that change is due to fuel surcharges and how much is due to normal changes around harvest time.

“You already have low prices because you have all of the supply coming online,” Ripplinger said. “So parsing out the exact impact of high diesel prices would take a little bit of math that I haven't done. I don't know if anyone's done that yet.”

There’s also another pressure point on the horizon that could affect transportation costs. Major railway company Union Pacific is looking to buy fellow railway, Norfolk Southern. Proponents of the deal say the merger could help optimize grain transportation. But Steenhoek said it could also mean increased base costs for transporting grain.

“One of the things that we have seen throughout history is that when you limit the number of transportation providers competing for the business of a shipper, in agriculture, in this case, that often results in higher rail rates being assigned to that railroad customer,” Steenhoek said.

Steenhoek added there’s already skepticism surrounding railways. He said there’s a frustration among agriculture shippers who feel the transportation cost hike is also a way to increase profit and revenue.

“As a customer, you don't want all the power to be on the other side of the table,” Steenhoek said.

Farmers eye surcharges

For now, current fuel surcharges may take some time to affect prices. Todd Davis, Indiana Farm Bureau chief economist, said he hasn’t seen crop bids change significantly from typical harvest patterns. But then again, he said, harvest has just begun.

“So the question will be, as farmers harvest and that grain enters the marketing channels, and we have transportation costs paying higher fuel expense: What is that going to do to bids?” Davis said.

Illinois farmer Adam Henkel is no stranger to rail surcharges. He’s seen them before and felt their effect on his prices. He said it’s not something you see as a line item.

“I think most of our suppliers are going to tell us, ‘Hey, we had to get this fuel surcharge in there,’” Henkel said. “So they're going to tell us about it, but we won't physically see it listed separately as most companies or most businesses would.”

Still, even with a fuel surcharge, Henkel looks forward to selling his crops, which include corn and soybeans. Recent U.S. Department of Agriculture crop reports show corn and soybean yields are lower than expected. Less supply means each bushel is worth more than last season.

“I did not lose money this year, but I'm not gonna sit here and brag about having a record year,” Henkel said. “There won't be all new machinery sitting on the farm next year.”

President Donald Trump on Monday announced plans for a new $15 billion steel plant in eastern Iowa that would be one of the largest in the United States — and use iron ore mined in Minnesota.

The new mill in eastern Iowa will be built by Mesabi Metallics, a Minnesota-based company owned by India’s Essar Group, an industrial conglomerate. The White House said the plant will begin producing steel in 2030 and create more than 2,000 jobs in the United States. When it’s fully built out, it’s expected to produce 10 million tons of steel a year, more than any other in the U.S.

The steel plant will be supplied by the new $2.5 billion iron ore mine that Mesabi developed on Minnesota’s Iron Range and officially opened earlier this month. It’s the first new iron ore mine in the state in a half-century.

The resulting steel will be produced from start to finish in the United States, the White House said.

The president touted the 50 percent tariffs on steel imports that he imposed last year as the impetus for the steel plant.

“Our steel industry is roaring back to life. Everyone is building their plants here because they don’t want to pay tariffs,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “It’s really not that complicated.”

The Mesabi Metallics mine’s opening comes at a critical time in northeastern Minnesota, after closures last year at two of the region’s six taconite facilities.

Mesabi has hired more than 200 workers so far, out of a planned 350 full-time employees at the mine near Nashwauk.

But news that Mesabi plans to build a steel plant in Iowa — and not in Minnesota — was called a “gut punch” by Republican state Rep. Spencer Igo, who represents the portion of the Iron Range where the new mine is located.

Igo said the mine is a “big win” for the Range — but he said Mesabi’s next investment going to Iowa “should frustrate everyone who cares about the future of northern Minnesota.”

“We cannot keep watching billions of dollars in investment and thousands of good-paying jobs go elsewhere and pretend there is nothing we can do about it,” Igo wrote. “The people of the Iron Range want this opportunity, and we have the workers, the resources, and the communities ready to support these projects. State leaders need to start making Minnesota a place where companies want to build and create jobs, not a place they look to leave behind. The most important part of public policy is partnership, and the state of Minnesota is missing that.”

Mesabi Metallics said the new Iowa steel plant will “reshape American steelmaking with a supply chain that is 100 percent American: mined, melted and poured.”

Mesabi CEO Joe Broking said in a statement Monday that the steel plant announcement “bolsters the long-term economic strength of Mesabi Metallics’ mine and pellet plant in Nashwauk, Minnesota, by tying it to a low-cost steel facility.”

“Mesabi Metallics is looking forward to further investment in Minnesota, and we look forward to continuing our work with the state to expand the mine capacity and build an additional hot briquetted iron facility in Minnesota,” Broking said.

Hot briquetted iron is a purer form of iron is used to feed smaller steel mills known as electric arc furnaces.

Broking added: “We have greatly appreciated the support of Governor Walz and the work of the DNR and MPCA to successfully permit the first new iron mine in Minnesota in 50 years.”

Broking told Itasca County officials earlier this month that Mesabi Metallics plans to submit permits to the state of Minnesota for a new iron plant in Nashwauk by the end of the year.

But he also told commissioners that before making the investment, the company needs to see more efficient state permitting and more competitive incentives. He also said Mesabi would need to regain control of state mineral leases that were awarded to rival mining company Cleveland-Cliffs in 2023.

The White House is framing Monday’s steel plant announcement as part of Trump’s push to revitalize American steel.

It comes as Trump is trying to energize Republican voters as his party faces challenging midterm elections. Iowa has found itself with competitive races for the Senate and the governor’s mansion this year.

As artificial intelligence companies create increasingly powerful models, lawmakers are calling for rules to regulate the technology. MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about the debate over AI regulation, who should oversee it and what the guardrails could be.

Guests:

• Daniel Schwarcz is a professor of law at the University of Minnesota.

• Chris Farrell is the senior economics contributor for MPR News and Marketplace.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.