A proposal to turn the defunct Minnesota Star Tribune printing plant, one of the few remaining industrial sites in downtown Minneapolis, into a data center has become a contentious and defining issue in the neighborhood.

The Minnesota Design Center and the North Loop Neighborhood Association on Saturday reviewed three sessions of community input collected at a series of workshops last week from more than a thousand Minneapolis residents.

And the first public presentation about the developer’s plans for the site met strong public opposition Wednesday night. Hundreds of residents spilled out the doors of the North Loop Neighborhood Association's meeting room, across the street from the plant.

Local hostility to the plan mirrors rising public skepticism of data centers in Minnesota and around the country as some centers have driven up local utility bills and tech companies have signed secret agreements with cities about future projects.

The developer, Virginia-based Legacy Investing, has already signed a purchase agreement for the property with the Star Tribune and submitted a conditional use permit application to the City of Minneapolis.

The city will decide whether the project moves forward. Data centers have been top-of-mind for city leadership, and the Minneapolis City Council is in the process of updating its zoning rules for the centers.

Legacy Investing does not need the neighborhood association to sign on to the project, but Wednesday evening, two representatives of Legacy Investing attempted to get public buy-in at the neighborhood’s planning and zoning committee meeting.

“We understand how important this is to the community, and we are excited to truthfully work with and collaborate with you to reinvent this portion of the North Loop that we know is so important to this entire constituency,” Ari Chernikoff, vice president of development for the company, said.

Chernikoff and his colleague, Daniel English, pitched what they describe as a small, 20-megawatt, data center that they say wouldn’t strain the local energy grid or use more water than “two to four residential homes worth of water consumption.” That’s a lot less than nearby commercial buildings, Chernikoff said.

Legacy Investing would buy the plant and some land around it. Chernikoff said the data center would be an economic boon to the city, but also “provides an economic engine for these adjacent parcels to allow them to be developed into whatever the city sees as its highest and best use.”

However, scant public details are available about Legacy Investing’s plans for the 13-acre site.

Fernando Burga, senior research fellow with the Minnesota Design Center, facilitated the discussions over the last week and spoke to the crowd of more than 50 people on Saturday. Over 1,140 comments were collected on concerns and ideas for alternative plans for the former Star Tribune publishing plant.

“We considered next steps moving forward through developing other actions, including an engagement hub that will continue the efforts of mobilizing interest around this topic,” Burga said, adding that the design center staff would compile and analyze the input and release its findings next month.

Minneapolis City Council Member Michael Rainville, who represents Ward 3 covering the North Loop neighborhood, was also at the meeting, but told the crowd he couldn’t speak on the potential data center project because city council may need to vote on the issue in the near future.

Jo Vos, co-chair of the neighborhood planning and zoning committee, said Wednesday she requested more details about the proposal and didn’t receive them ahead of the meeting. Typically, she said, developers have given her committee more information.

“We've usually always gotten enough information to make a decision on,” Vos said.

The developers say it’s too early to know which company will make use of the data center. They didn’t present numbers on how much revenue their development would give to the city and they didn’t estimate the number of jobs created.

The skepticism from the public and the committee members was palpable in the room.

“I've worked in a data center in the past. These do not create real jobs,” said North Loop resident Jared Olson. “The construction jobs are transient. Any project there would create construction jobs.”

Burga said the speed of the project is “highly suspect from a development perspective.”

“I'm impressed and surprised by the lack of preparation,” Burga said, going on to say if Chernikoff and English were his students he’d give their presentation a D minus.

The developers, who have also developed a 30-watt data center in the Sleep Number building in downtown Minneapolis, said they would work to share more information with the committee.

“Daniel and I are standing in front of you today because this is important to us, right?” Chernikoff said, earning laughs because the developers were video calling into the meeting.

Committee Co-Chair Vos said she supports any plan that preserves the Star Tribune building and emphasizes mixed-use development of the property around it.

However, Vos said the committee didn’t have enough information to decide whether to support the data center plan. “We're kind of like in limbo,” she said.

Ultimately, the committee decided to write a letter capturing the unusual public energy at their meeting, requesting more details from Legacy Investing, and requesting the city slow down its permit approval process for the project.

The full board of the North Loop association meets at 6 p.m. Aug. 26. They’ll decide whether to agree with the planning and zoning committee’s letter asking the developer for more information and asking the city to delay the project by a month.

Matt Bruns, a North Loop association zoning committee member and board member, said “barring some massive amount of data and their plan being complete in the next week” he can’t imagine the board will have enough information to decide if it supports the plan.

Either way, the meeting is sure to be packed.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says his country will initiate retaliatory tariffs against U.S. imports starting Sept. 8. The move came hours after the Trump administration began enforcing 50 percent tariffs on a slew of Canadian goods.

Trade negotiations between the United States and Canada fell apart Friday night, shortly before a midnight deadline for the 50% tariffs to take effect on $20 billion worth of Canadian products.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a bulletin to businesses Friday warning that its officers would be ensuring importers complied with the new rates starting immediately after the deadline passed.

Carney said late Friday that "Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses."

In a statement shared on social media, Carney said important progress had been made in recent weeks toward "improving Canada's position as having the best deal in the world with the U.S." That progress, however, did not meet Canada's objectives, he said, adding: "As a result, this evening, I have decided to suspend trade negotiations with the U.S. and have directed negotiators to return to Ottawa."

The prime minister blamed the U.S. for the collapse in negotiations. "Last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal," Carney said, concluding, "Canada has what the world wants. And we will not allow any nation to determine our future."

On Saturday morning, in a fresh post on social media, Carney wrote his negotiators had worked "in good faith" for more than a year, and his government would in the coming days "release the details of these new tariff measures, which will come into force the Tuesday after Labour Day."

The U.S., in turn, pointed the finger at Canada. Shortly after midnight, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer responded to Carney with a statement posted on social media saying Canada had "declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week."

"Despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days," Greer said.

He added that earlier this week "the United States agreed to provide even better treatment to Canada, offering significant tariff reductions on steel, aluminum, autos, and lumber."

"The offer would have led to supply chain coordination on aerospace, complementary actions to address unfair trade practices, critical minerals cooperation, increased enforcement against imports produced with forced labor, and the announcement of formal U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) negotiations," Greer said in his statement.

This is a developing story that may be updated.

Copyright 2026, NPR

A Brainerd company that builds ice fishing houses will pay more than $100,000 to settle a claim that it discriminated against an employee with cancer.

The Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigated the complaint against Timberland, which operates in Brainerd as Glacier Ice House.

The department said the employee took disability leave in 2023 to receive cancer treatment.

During the leave, the employee lost their job as part of widespread company layoffs, but wasn't given the same opportunity as others to transition to other positions in the company, the investigation found.

The department said Glacier company leaders mentioned the employee's medical condition as a factor in their decision.

“No Minnesotan should have to choose between fighting cancer and fighting for their job,” stated Rebecca Lucero, state human rights commissioner.

Under the settlement agreement, Glacier will strengthen its policies and training related to employees with disabilities. The human rights department will monitor the company’s compliance for the next three years.

The employee will receive a settlement of $115,000.

A call to Glacier Ice House's president, Jason Jaeckels, was not immediately returned.

Sierra Nicole Reece recorded the six-second TikTok right before bed, when she was already cozy in her bonnet, glasses on, at her dad’s home in New Jersey.

“Forget Coachella. I'm trying to go to the Minnesota State Fair. They got brand deals for that?”

This was in mid-April, when corporate partnerships with influencers at the California music festival dominated online discourse. Reece was on the job hunt after getting her MBA abroad and had been experimenting with content creation to build up her portfolio in digital and marketing strategies.

She thought nothing of the video and fell asleep.

Then overnight it blew up. On Instagram, the video drew over 4 million views — and attention from Minnesota organizations.

“I’m listening 👀,” reads the top-liked comment from the Minnesota State Fair account.

A Twin Cities-based influencer manager ended up reaching out to Reece. Together, they brainstormed and pitched a brand trip to the Minnesota State Fair and area tourism agencies, which ultimately agreed to sponsor her.

For Reece, a food culture aficionado who had long envisioned visiting the Minnesota State Fair, it was an exciting opportunity. She had enjoyed the Twin Cities during work trips but never had the chance to attend.

“Minnesota State Fair season, every year, I'm locked in. I'm like, ‘Oh my God, what's everybody eating? What are we doing, guys?’ Like that is one of my favorite times of year,” Reece said in an interview with MPR News.

“I've known about Sweet Martha's forever. I probably watched a YouTube video on it a long, long, long time ago,” she added. “That bucket of cookies has just lived rent free in my head for my entire adolescence.”

Growing influencer partnerships in Minnesota

The Minnesota State Fair has gotten more national attention with the growth of social media, according to Maria Hayden, who oversees the enterprise’s social media and marketing.

Over the years, there’s been an explosion of local and out-of-state influencers producing videos on the fair. The food is a major draw.

While the State Fair isn’t necessarily looking to boost its attendance numbers — about 2 million people visit each year, making for big crowds and long lines at times — Hayden’s team has jumped on the social media train, turning to influencer collaborations to reach new audiences and showcase different perspectives.

“There's so many different things you can do and explore at the fair. We want to make sure that we're helping contribute to amplifying a diverse range of things people are interested in,” Hayden said.

Explore Minnesota spokesperson Ben Johnson said the Reece collaboration is part of a larger marketing campaign around the Minnesota State Fair.

“It's really one of those flagship, quintessential Minnesotan events that really touches on so many parts of what makes our state great, and it really speaks to our mission, which is to promote Minnesota as a great place to visit,” he said.

The state tourism agency is charged with economic development: getting people to visit, then stay and create businesses in Minnesota. Johnson said Explore Minnesota has been working with content creators for a decade to drive traffic to the state.

One partnership with a content creator who has a broader Midwestern audience allowed Explore Minnesota to double their average views on a video and garner about fives times their average for interactions, according to Johnson.

“These are new audiences who may not have considered Minnesota as a travel destination, and so we just think that's important and a tremendous return on investment,” he said.

For Reece’s trip, the Minnesota State Fair provided admission tickets and assisted with planning. Visit Saint Paul is covering lodging, food and a stipend, and Explore Minnesota is covering work time, deliverables and expenses.

Johnson said the state agency receives hundreds of pitches a year and is selective about who it works with. Reece not only had a viral moment that the state could capitalize on, but she has an affinity for Minnesota and is based in Atlanta, a major flight market for the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Visit Saint Paul senior marketing manager Ava Diaz called the partnership “a huge win” that benefits the whole state, particularly after the federal immigration enforcement surge over the winter.

“People really value and can see our sense of community here, which is incredible,” Diaz said. “And not only that, like how much our communities uplift and support and advocate for everyone in it and the diversity that we have here.”

Reece plans to partner with local content creators

Two local content creators will be Reece’s guides to the State Fair and collaborators on the project: Sade Young and Mezan Ghebre, who respectively run the accounts “Sade in the Cities” and “FeedMeez.”

“This is going to be three Black women covering a state fair from our perspective, which is like unheard of,” Reece said. She hopes their videos will help support local businesses and be helpful to area residents, too.

“It's the Great Minnesota Get-Together. It's rooted in this idea of community and community building for Minnesotans, and that was at the core of what we’re trying to do,” she said.

A Republican legislator who fielded questions Thursday about the reopening of a detention center in Appleton said the discussions were respectful, even though people have strong opposing views.

State Rep. Paul Anderson co-hosted a town hall forum on the Appleton Detention Facility — formerly known as the Prairie Correctional Facility — which will begin housing people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers later this year.

The federal government bought the 1,600-bed facility, which will result in a loss of local tax revenue for the area. Anderson says that was one of the most common concerns raised by residents.

"I'm really hoping and encouraging folks negotiating that there should be some kind of a hold harmless for the city of Appleton, especially to negate the negative impact of them losing that big a piece of their tax base, that was a big concern of residents," he said to Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer on Friday.

Appleton city officials have said they expect to lose about 30 percent of the city’s tax base starting in 2028.

Anderson said he and Republican State Sen. Torrey Westrom, who co-hosted the forum, were asked if there’s anything they can do to help the area.

“Well, we can't do anything on our own,” he said. “It has to take a governor signing a bill that the Legislature would pass.”

He added that one possibility is an increase in Local Government Aid for the city.

CoreCivic Senior Director of Public Affairs Ryan Gustin said the company strives to be a “good partner” with local communities.

“To that end, we continue to be in dialogue with local officials about opportunities to partner through memoranda of understanding and other means that support the successful operation of the facility in a manner that is mutually beneficial to the community, CoreCivic, and our government partners at ICE/DHS,” Gustin said in a statement.

Gustin also said the facility will create 525 jobs.

“These positions are expected to include detention and security staff, medical and mental health professionals, case management and programming staff, administrative personnel, maintenance employees, food service workers and transportation staff,” he said.

He added that the starting salary for a detention officer is $32.50 an hour.

News of the reopening of the facility has sparked weekly protests. Earlier this month, residents told MPR News that while they understand the appeal of the potential economic boost, they found the idea of housing ICE detainees in their town “morally reprehensible.”

Anderson said he understands that people have strongly held views on the facility, but “they're not going to stop the national trend of detaining people and deporting folks that are not here legally. So you know, let's work together and make this a positive thing economically for Appleton, even if you don't agree with what's happening there.”

Reporter Jon Collins contributed to this story.

It’s been hot in Hubbard County, and farmer Joe Morgan has noticed.

“It was relentless,” he said. “It was like three weeks of being in the 90s, and that puts a lot of stress on the plants.”

The northwestern Minnesota county has been in a severe drought since June, and it’s affected Morgan’s business, Midheaven Garden. Last week, he showed up to the Red River Market in Fargo without any lettuce, since it was too hot to plant them in the ground.

That’s despite his farm being covered in ways to fight against rapid shifts in the weather. He irrigates his crops when they’re too dry and grows many of them in greenhouses to extend their growing season and protect them from the elements.

At the same time, greenhouses can get hot very quickly, so he’s planning to buy covers to shade them.

“Every year you're trying to make improvements,” Morgan said. “One of them is just to purchase items to act as an insurance policy, to try to have less of a gap. Because two weeks without head lettuce, people are expecting me to have an item … and I want to be dependable and serve my customers.”

Morgan grew up farming this land with his parents and six years ago, after careers in cabinet making and operating heavy equipment, he decided it was time to return. But, farming, he said, is different than when he was a kid.

“It’s just bigger extremes,” he said. “If we get rain, we're going to get a lot of rain in a little bit of time, and then when the heat comes, it comes in a big shot. It's just higher fluctuation than I remember as a kid.”

In Minnesota, climate change is already making the state warmer and wetter, meaning higher temperatures and more rainfall, on average. Experts say it’s not clear what that means for the future of drought in Minnesota.

“In order for you to develop drought, you really need a lack of precipitation and warmer temperatures,” said State Climatologist Luigi Romolo. “That's the perfect recipe for drought. With the models telling us that it's getting wetter and warmer, we don't really have a good sense of how drought might change in the future.”

More rain helps ease drought, but warm weather draws more water from plants, soils and bodies of water, drying out the landscape.

“If the increase in precipitation can't offset the demand that's created by the increase in temperatures, then what we're going to see is more frequent drought and more intense drought,” Romolo said.

As Morgan has already noticed on the farm, climate change is expected to change the nature of precipitation. According to the University of Minnesota, the state is seeing more intense rainfall events than ever before, but is also expected to see longer dry spells and rapid transitions between the two.

“The best thing that folks can do is to come up with drought plans that might take into account all different kinds of possible scenarios,” Romolo said.

National study calls for new drought frameworks

Across the country, climate change is already making drought more difficult to assess and project, because it’s creating new normals, according to Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan.

“In the 50s and 60s and 70s, the climate was not changing very quickly, so the statistics of what happened in the past were a good guide to what would happen in the future,” he said. “But now, with human-caused climate change, things are changing really fast, and the statistics are changing.”

That was the impetus for a year-long study conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and chaired by Overpeck.

The 200-page report contains many recommendations for federal agencies on how to better monitor and model drought. For modeling, the report recommends a two-pronged approach. For short-term assessments, it recommends using recent baselines of about 30 years to determine whether there’s a drought.

But long-term drought assessments are trickier, because that involves factoring in changes to many variables — including temperature, water demand and soil moisture — that will be affected by climate change and figuring out what those changes mean for drought.

“We just want to make sure that our models not only get the temperature well, but they also are able to forecast how precipitation is going to change, and how the combination of temperature and precipitation is going to end up giving us what we're dealing with on the land surface or in the rivers,” he said. “So there's some new science and continued scientific research that needs to take place.”

This matters because decisions need to be informed by the frequency and severity of drought. For example, Overpeck said major public safety issues, such as forest fire management, depend on understanding current and future drought conditions.

“We want to be able to give forest managers a better indication of what that situation is going to look like by year going into the future, and then allow the forest managers to come up with strategies for treating the forests either through prescribed burns or thinning, or just letting the fires burn,” he said. “Those are the big choices going into the future.”

Decisions about drought today

Parts of Minnesota have been in drought for months and a small part of the state entered extreme drought this week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map released Thursday. That drought extends into North Dakota, which recently announced a drought emergency.

The Red River forms the boundary between the two states, and the Red River Basin Commission nonprofit helps facilitate cooperation between stakeholders who depend on it for business or drinking water. But the available models can make it hard to make decisions.

“At the end of the day, drought projection is notoriously poor,” said Executive Director Ted Preister. “Projection of when a drought is going to come, or going to be alleviated, or how long it will keep going, is still a lot of guesswork. So, the basin commission, we advocate for not waiting for that.”

He said if rainfall gets rarer but more intense, greater investment will be needed to capture water where it falls. That includes building more reservoirs.

“That means you have to have a whole bunch of these retention facilities scattered everywhere, so that if it's a very small, localized nine inches, you can capitalize on that because you have something in the stream that will grab that water and set it off to the side,” he said.

That will be expensive, he said, and at the same time, attitudes need to shift about how water is used by cities, farmers and others in the basin.

“Everybody that is using and counting on water needs to think about, ‘How do we be more efficient with every drop?’” he said.

Some businesses are more impacted by drought than others. Andrew Johnson owns Pelican Paddle Company, which rents kayaks for use on the Pelican River in Pelican Rapids.

But the business has been unable to operate for four weeks because of low river levels. Summer is when kayaks are most in demand, but for the past few years, low precipitation has meant frequent pauses. That’s prompting tough questions about the future.

“It’s hard to rely on something and then you can't make full pass at it through the summer,” he said. “It's definitely something we're thinking might not be viable long term.”

Minnesota’s future

It’s not yet clear how drought will change in Minnesota. But Overpeck said the American Southwest may be a glimpse into the future. The region has been in a historic multi-decade drought.

“The worsening drought situation out there is a canary in the mine shaft for us here in the Midwest because we are going to have really major problems with our forests, with our agriculture, as the climate continues to warm,” he said.

Overpeck said how bad drought gets in the Midwest depends on a variety of factors; not only the variables he hopes get incorporated into new models, but also the decisions people make.

“It's going to be a really hard situation,” he said. “And the public might agree that it's a hell of a lot smarter just to try and work harder to stop climate change because it's climate change and the burning of fossil fuels that's making it so much worse.”

This story is part of our series on Native economic development, "Beyond the Bet."

Gas in Minnesota and around the region is hovering around four dollars a gallon, which often puts a fill-up well north of $50. At the charging station on the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community south of the Twin Cities, entrepreneur Bob Blake said charging an electric vehicle runs about fifteen bucks.

Blake, a member of Red Lake Nation, said the idea for a network of tribally owned EV stations came to him during a pipeline protest in North Dakota a decade ago.

“There was a helicopter coming down and there was all this sand in our faces,” Blake said of the protest. “And I thought to myself, there's got to be a better way to do this.”

The chargers belong to the tribe. Blake's nonprofit, Native Sun Community Power Development, built them and signed them over. It has done the same at 80 charging stations on tribal land across the Midwest, each one owned by the tribal nation where it sits. A developer would normally hold an asset like that and sell the power for decades. Blake does not, which means the revenue stays in rural Native communities. He calls the project Electric Nation.

“If the fossil fuel companies are going to continue to build pipelines through tribal nations’ homelands, then what we're going to do is we're going to build an electric vehicle charging station network pipeline through our communities,” Blake said. “They may win the battle, but we're going to win the war.”

Blake is a little surprised that the project got as big as it did.

“Someone said, ‘Bob, your little nonprofit did an infrastructure project,’ and I was thinking about it, and I was like, ‘Wow, we did do an infrastructure project,’” Blake said. “But that was never the intention.”

Blake said tribal communities don't see the same investments that other communities do.

“It really makes us be more genius, in the way that we have to figure out capital stacks and tax structures and investment vehicles,” he said. “It makes the Native entrepreneur think about two different worlds, because we have to bridge them to put together our endeavors.”

Adam Crepelle is a law professor at Loyola University Chicago who studies the barriers to economic development in Indian Country. Those barriers can include things such as jurisdictional uncertainty, dual taxation, and issues with federal land leasing. He said in the dominant American economy, entrepreneurs often start a business by borrowing against something they own, usually a house and the land it's built on.

“Whereas if you're in Indian Country and you have trust land, that cannot be repossessed because the federal government owns trust land," Crepelle said. “So, that eliminates that source of capital, essentially.”

Blake has used federal grant dollars to fund his projects. Since the start, he said people often see him as just the solar guy. He views it a little differently. He said developing renewable energy is part of his responsibility to his home community at Red Lake Nation. He said his own community, like other tribal nations, continues to struggle with high unemployment and geographic isolation.

"If I can fight poverty with renewable energy and distributed energy resources, then I can make my community healthier," Blake said.

Last fall the Trump administration canceled federal money Blake's nonprofit had been awarded for the second phase of his Electric Nation project. Blake, along with grantees in seven other states, sued the U.S. Department of Energy. Officials there admitted in court that grants were cut based on how states voted in the 2024 presidential election. The funding was restored this summer.

Crepelle said the economic benefits to tribal nations are felt beyond reservation boundaries.

“Whenever tribes do well, it helps the surrounding state,” he said. “It creates jobs for non-Indians too, and it's no good for the state to have a big pocket of poverty. So, whenever tribes win economically, it helps everyone.”

Blake's nonprofit has already started installing more chargers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

This story comes from the Upper Midwest Newsroom, a public media collaboration between Wisconsin Public Radio, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Prairie Public in North Dakota and Minnesota Public Radio News made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Google is trying to smooth over some ruffled feathers in two small Minnesota towns where the tech giant hopes to build a couple of massive data centers.

Wednesday evening, Google hosted what it called a community celebration in Pine Island, about 20 minutes northwest of Rochester, with free food, live music and family activities.

That same night in Hermantown, outside of Duluth, the company held an open house to answer questions from area residents about the hyperscale data center it wants to build there.

MPR News Rochester-based reporter Molly Castle Work and Duluth-based reporter Dan Kraker gave us a look inside the events.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, known as DEED, says the state lost about 1,900 non-farm jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis.

The finance, government and construction sectors lost the largest number of jobs. Angelina Nguyễn, director of DEED’s Labor Market Information Office, said the share of Minnesotans who have jobs or are looking for work is falling.

“The state's labor force participation rate has been declining every month since January of this year, and yes, we are concerned about that,” Nguyễn said.

Officials say inflation is causing uncertainty and the state's labor market still hasn't fully recovered from Operation Metro Surge. But year-to-year, Minnesota has added 44,000 jobs since last July. That’s an increase of 1.5 percent, outpacing national job growth.

“We again are proud of the resilience of the Minnesota economy and proud of our people in general of how we have withstood the difficulties we face and optimistic about the idea that if not for those headwinds, we'd be growing even faster,” DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek said.

Nationally, the economy lost 23,000 jobs last month.

Minnesota’s hemp farmers have weathered a boom, a bust and years of changing rules. Now, a federal ban on most hemp-derived THC products is the latest blow to an industry they helped build.

For Jeremy Saueressig, that means no hemp in his Hastings fields this year. He’s among the few Minnesota farmers still growing hemp for THC. After growing the crop since 2019, he planted more soybeans instead.

“Missed opportunity,” he said, looking over his fields of soybeans. “The lost opportunity of another year of R and D, another year of moving the market, setting networks.”

That’s because of a looming federal ban on most hemp-derived THC products set to take effect Nov. 12. Saueressig’s hemp crop is typically turned into THC drinks and edibles or CBD products.

Leftover hemp at the farm

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Saueressig is among farmers across the country cutting back on hemp as the market faces uncertainty. Farmers in Colorado, Vermont and Kentucky are making similar decisions, with some cutting acreage, abandoning hemp altogether or being left with harvest they can't sell, according to MJBizDaily.

Saueressig says he’s sitting on 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of harvested plant material from last year that should’ve been sold by now. With the federal ban nearing, buyers are limiting their risk and holding back on purchases, which is driving down demand.

“I know of farmers that are sitting on leftover biomass from last harvest that they are having trouble moving, and because of that sentiment, a lot of farmers are not growing at all this year,” said Dennis Mistrioty, president of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a national hemp advocacy group.

That’s creating ripple effects through the supply chain. Burnsville-based Northern Diversified Solutions, a hemp manufacturer, works with about a half-dozen growers in Minnesota including Saueressig to make THC emulsions used in drinks and gummies. All six decided not to grow this year.

“They're not going to grow something that they don't believe they can sell,” said Kyle Marinkovich, founder of Northern Diversified Solutions. His company has supply secured for the next year, but the future is unclear.

Congress works to delay ban as farmers cut down on hemp

The federal hemp ban will limit hemp-derived products to 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container. In comparison, Minnesota limits hemp-derived products at 5 milligrams THC per serving, 50 milligrams per package of edibles, and 85 milligrams in large-format beverages.

The Senate has already voted to push that deadline to Dec. 11 as part of a bill championed by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, but the House has yet to sign off on the bill and is expected to take it up next month.

The one-month delay would give hemp businesses and farmers a little more time to prepare and also give Congress more time to determine what comes next for the industry.

But the ban has already damaged the hemp-THC market.

“It's been really challenging because innovation and creativity and growth has been stunted by uncertainty,” said Mistrioty, who’s also a hemp farmer based in Milwaukee. “We don't know where things are going to end up this fall, and you don't want to spend money and resources on a long-term payout when that long term might not exist at all.”

In Burnsville, Marinkovich says the uncertainty is affecting his manufacturing business. Northern Diversified Solutions had doubled its business every year since it launched in 2019, but sales are flat this year.

He says that's not because consumers have stopped buying hemp-derived THC products, but because distributors and retailers are ordering less to avoid being stuck with unsold inventory when the federal restrictions take effect.

If the ban goes into effect, it could shutter Marinkovich’s business.

“We would be at best a much smaller operation, and more likely, unless some of our other products could pick up the slack, we'd probably have to shut,” he said. “Yeah, it's dire.”

According to U.S. Hemp Roundtable, the U.S. hemp-derived product market is worth about $28.4 billion. The advocacy groups puts the economic impact of hemp farming at $6.86 billion and says farmers retain a larger share of hemp’s value than they do from traditional crops like corn and soybeans.

“My farmers here in Wisconsin have indicated that per acre, hemp has been more profitable than corn and soybean,” Mistrioty said. He says the crop's smaller scale can also create opportunities for small farms.

Ban is latest blow to farmers who have faced challenges building the hemp industry

Nationwide, commercial hemp production was legalized through the 2018 Farm Bill.

“Starting in 2019, that is when we saw cannabinoid production come onto the scene and really explode,” said Katy Mutschler, who oversees the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's hemp program.

That year, the state licensed more than 350 growers. By 2020, that number had climbed to a peak of 461.

The boom didn't last. Mutschler says the market became oversaturated as more farmers grew hemp for cannabinoids, while the industry struggled to develop enough processing capacity and demand. Prices fell.

Many of those growers eventually left the industry. According to a recent analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the decline isn't unique to Minnesota.

“After the initial wave of novelty and interest, growing hemp for extracts was less profitable than initially thought,” wrote Joe Mahon, regional outreach director. “While industrial hemp for fiber and seed is relatively low maintenance and grows well in the district’s climate, hemp flower requires a lot more hand-holding.”

On top of all those factors, Minnesota farmers growing hemp for cannabinoids have also faced changing rules under the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management, which was established after the state legalized recreational cannabis in 2023.

Angela Dawson started growing hemp under her 40-Acre Co-op soon after the 2018 Farm Bill passed. She developed her own strain of hemp to grow, and produced body products and gummies containing CBD.

She struggled to find banks willing to work with a hemp business, in her assessment confusing her with a cannabis business. Then the state’s changing rules around packaging and labeling made it harder to stay afloat.

“We had a customer that was going to order a bunch of the product, and then the rules came and they canceled their order, and so we were left with a whole bunch of product that was not labeled right and didn't have anywhere to sell it to. So that was one big hit,” she said.

Dawson decided to leave the hemp industry in 2024.

In 2025, Minnesota had about 60 licensed hemp growers. Among them was Saueressig, the Hastings farmer who spent years experimenting with strains and techniques to try to improve profitability.

“Historically, looking at the hemp growing and biomass market, it hasn't been very lucrative financially,” he said. “We just have put in enough risk where we can keep going with everything else.”

The lower profit margins, combined with the federal ban and new licensing rules under Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management, influenced his decision to take a break from growing hemp this year.

Future for hemp farmers is unclear

For many farmers, the difficulties and uncertainty around hemp have been too much. Dawson is instead moving into Minnesota's adult-use cannabis market and plans to open a dispensary in the Eat Street area of Minneapolis next month.

“We had a really great success when we were growing hemp outdoors and I'm really sad that we're not doing that anymore,” she said. “But you know, we're pivoting with the times.”

Saueressig hopes to plant hemp again next year if the ban is overturned. Current federal law defines hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight. He wants federal lawmakers to raise that threshold to 1 percent, which he says would give farmers more flexibility in what they can grow, improving their odds of success.

U.S. Reps. Angie Craig of Minnesota and Andy Barr of Kentucky have introduced legislation that would regulate hemp-derived THC products instead of banning them, including raising the federal THC threshold for hemp plants to 1 percent by dry weight.

Although hemp hasn't been particularly lucrative for Saueressig, he says the plant has too many potential uses and benefits to give up on it.

“I do see a future for it. I really do,” he said.

It’s the fine print of federal laws that has made — and potentially unmade — the hemp-derived THC industry. Most recently, the U.S. Senate voted to delay a nationwide ban on these products from Nov. 12 to Dec. 11. The move was part of a government funding measure the House will need to approve when it returns from recess at the end of this month.

One of the businesses watching this closely is Bent Paddle Brewing in Duluth. The brewery began selling hemp-derived THC drinks in 2022 and now has a countdown clock for the ban on its website, set to the November date.

Bent Paddle co-founder and CEO Bryon Tonnis joined MPR News host Nina Moini to talk about how he’s navigating the uncertainty and what a ban could mean for breweries in the state.

Correction (Aug. 20, 2026): This story has been updated with the correct effective date of the ban, under the Senate-approved vote to delay.

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.

Target reported its second straight quarter of comparable sales gains on Wednesday, saying that a merchandising overhaul under the retailer's new CEO is attracting more customers and boosting sales throughout its stores.

The retailer also benefited from a tariff refund of $994 million after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this year that the Trump administration had overstepped its authority when the tariffs were implemented.

There is a lot of interest in how tariff refunds from the U.S. government will impact retailers and whether those refunds will be used to lower prices for customers.

Chief Financial Officer Jim Lee, when asked about tariff refunds this week, said the company continues to invest in lowering prices. Target reduced the prices of more than 10,000 items over the past year and “there’s more to come even as we’re facing headwinds overall,” Lee said.

Comparable sales, those coming from stores and digital channels operating for at least 12 months, rose 3.8 percent in the second quarter. The company also upgraded its annual profit and sales outlook, citing the solid performance during the first half of the year.

Target is emerging from more than a year of weak comparable sales. A 5.6 percent jump in the first quarter offset a 3.8 percent decline in 2025. The second-quarter gain followed a 1.9 percent drop a year ago.

Target CEO Michael Fiddelke, a 20-year company veteran who became chief executive in February, said the latest quarter was “an important step forward in the plan we laid out earlier this year to open a new chapter of growth for Target.”

Target also reported an increase in the number of customers going to its stores and shopping on its website from May through July.

“We’re encouraged by the progress made so far, and we’re also clear-eyed about the important work still ahead,” Fiddelke said.

In March, Fiddelke unveiled a $6 billion plan to reverse Target’s sales slump and to reclaim the retailer’s reputation as a place to go for affordable yet stylish apparel and home goods.

More than half of Target’s back-to-school merchandise is new, the company said.

That includes a limited-time collection of teen and tween clothes, school supplies and accessories in pastel colors and floral prints from the women’s lifestyle brand LoveShack Fancy. Target also collaborated with Hollister on a dorm decor collection.

Target recruited fashion designer and TV personality Isaac Mizrahi this summer to fill the newly created role of creative director at large. Mizrahi has been brought in to mentor Target designers, advise on product design and innovation, and forge new partnerships.

It is Mizrahi's second partnership with Target. He became the first major fashion designer to collaborate with the retailer in 2002 for a successful run.

Fiddelke is also remodeling Target stores and improving staffing. The company has more than 100 full-scale remodels underway, with a goal of reaching 130 this year, Fiddelke said Tuesday.

During the second quarter, comparable store sales — sales from established physical stores — increased 2.7 percent, while increased same-day deliveries pushed digital comparable sales up 8.7 percent.

Target is one of the first big retailers to report second-quarter financial results, which could give industry analysts and economists another read on whether ongoing price pressures from the conflict in Iran impacted consumer behavior.

The Commerce Department released a report Friday showing weak retail sales in July. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, also released Friday, showed greater pessimism about the economy this month, likely driven by stubbornly high prices.

Target's overall sales increased in all six of its main merchandising categories, led by double-digit growth in what the company calls Fun 101 — a division that includes consumer electronics, toys, trading cards, sports paraphernalia, books and gaming items.

Net income was $1.87 billion, or $4.11 per share, for the three months ended Aug. 1, easily beating the $2.34 per share that Wall Street had expected, according to a survey by FactSet. It also outpaced last year's $935 million, or $2.05 per share. Yet this year also included millions from tariff refunds, which amounted to $1.65 in earnings per share, Target said.

Net sales rose 5.3 percent to $26.54 billion for the period.

Target now expects sales to increase 5 percent, up from its earlier predictions for a 4 percent gain. It also expects earnings per share for the full year to be in the range of $9.90 to $10.90. Analysts expect $8.52 per share for the year, according to FactSet.

In May, Target reiterated its guidance from March for earnings per share to be near the high end of $7.50 to $8.50.

A tribal nation announced Tuesday it is putting money into a Minnesota-based magnet maker whose technology doesn’t rely on rare-earth minerals. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community is loaning $150 million to Niron Magnetics to further the company’s plans to open a manufacturing plant in Sartell, just north of St. Cloud, in 2027.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Chair Cole Miller says the company’s manufacturing goals align with the tribe’s cultural values around environmental stewardship.

“We prioritize investments that align with our Dakota values — including being a good steward of the earth,” said Miller in a statement Tuesday. “We recognized Niron's potential early on to benefit the broader Minnesota community and have remained committed to investing in its success.”

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community is located southwest of the Twin Cities. The tribe’s successful gambling operations have allowed it to begin investing in housing and manufacturing.

Niron Magnetics makes magnets found in everything from cellphones to the equipment used to cool data centers.

In a brief interview with MPR News, Niron Magnetics CEO Jonathan Rowntree said the tribe is a core part of Niron’s success. He said the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community was an early investor in the company, going back to 2016, while the technology used to create the magnets was in development at the University of Minnesota.

“We share a lot of common values,” said Rowntree, pointing to the company’s desire to produce magnets sustainably.

Niron Magnetics uses iron and nitrogen to make its magnets, which it says are abundant and can be sourced domestically. The federal government has also committed $150 million in support of the company’s manufacturing plant.

The plant in Sartell broke ground last September. Rowntree says the plant is designed to turn out 1,500 tons of magnets a year when fully operational. He says the company expects to hire 175 full-time, highly skilled workers through 2027.

Correction (Aug. 20, 2026): A previous version of this story misstated how many magnets the plant would produce.

Neighbors in the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis are coming together this week to discuss a proposed data center.

Developer Legacy Investing has signed a deal to buy the old Minnesota Star Tribune printing facility with intentions to turn it into a data center.

Mary Binkley, president of the North Loop Neighborhood Association, and Fernando Burga, a senior research fellow at the Minnesota Design Center at the University of Minnesota, shared more about the workshops they’re holding.

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.

Correction (Aug. 19, 2026): This story was updated to correct Fernando Burga’s title.

This story is part of our series on Native economic development, "Beyond the Bet."

Hoping to boost his tribe’s economy beyond gambling some 15 years ago, former Tribal Council member Earl Pendleton went searching for a project that could bring jobs and investment to benefit the entire Lower Sioux Indian Community.

Scrolling through YouTube videos, he saw people building homes with hempcrete, an insulation made from the woody inner core of the hemp plant. It seemed like a perfect match — a sustainable economic model rooted in the earth.

Native American farmers would grow hemp; the crop would be processed into hempcrete on the reservation. Native crews would build needed homes insulated with hempcrete.

“Earl always had this vision of having a full circular economy, a fully integrated business,” said Danny Desjarlais, who runs what’s now the Lower Sioux’s hempcrete business in rural southwestern Minnesota.

Pendleton’s vision took root in 2017 when the tribe signed on to a state pilot project to test-grow hemp, an opportunity made possible only after Congress legalized industrial hemp for research purposes in 2014.

In 2024, the tribe opened its hempcrete plant. The operation is now part of a quiet, national surge in Native-owned startups, although steep challenges remain to keep the business growing.

“We’re kind of biting off quite a bit here and trying to do it all,” Desjarlais said as he showed me around the operation recently. “We’ve scraped our knees a few times and we’re learning along the way as well.”

The odds don't seem to faze him. He’s enthusiastic about the sustainability and health benefits that spring from using hempcrete in building homes and other structures on the reservation and elsewhere. He's building a home for his family using hempcrete.

‘Thinking seven generations ahead’

Type “hempcrete” into YouTube and you'll land on plenty of explanatory and enthusiastic videos — mostly from Europe and Australia — lauding the building material.

Hempcrete mixes the core of the hemp plant with a lime-based binder and water to make a concrete-like material. While it’s not load-supporting, it makes for exceptionally good thermal insulation, with energy bill savings anywhere from 30 to 70 percent.

Hempcrete is long-lasting, carbon negative, 100 percent recyclable and it eliminates the need for using traditional insulating products made from petrochemicals and plastics.

Perhaps most impressive, hempcrete is mold resistant, pest resistant, and fire resistant, the three major risks to buildings.

“I came into this conventional builder, and my eyes have been opened, and now there’s no way I could go back and build that same way and expect my community members to live in those toxic materials,” Desjarlais said.

“We always talk about thinking seven generations ahead, and that’s what we're really doing here with these homes.”

It made perfect sense for the Lower Sioux Community. It was an entrepreneurial opportunity but also a way to improve the community's housing stock. The reservation has roughly 160 existing homes and, according to federal housing data, needs 200 more.

Entrepreneurs meet the credit crunch

The Lower Sioux Indian Community’s hempcrete operation is part of a larger resurgence in Native American entrepreneurship. There are more than 400,000 Native-owned businesses in the United States, up 36 percent since 2012, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

While the growth in tribal-owned casinos is widely recognized, Indigenous entrepreneurs are finding success in a wide variety of businesses, including telecommunications, agriculture, construction, and the arts. The push for economic diversification is strong.

“If you go around to any Native conference, or you sit in any tribal council chambers, I think you hear the word diversity constantly, or diversity of their economic outlays,” said Casey Lozar, director of the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “It's a really important thing.”

While the gains in entrepreneurship are impressive, Native startups have long dealt with steep barriers to success, including high rates of reservation poverty, limited access to capital, negative racial stereotypes and, in many cases, geographic isolation.

Despite the recent rapid growth, Native American businesses account for just over 1 percent of firms in the U.S.

Funding barriers run especially deep.

Most entrepreneurs fund their startups through accumulated family wealth, a second mortgage against home equity, or a signature loan backed by strong credit, but those paths are largely closed to Native entrepreneurs, said Robert Miller, a law professor at Arizona State University who studies Native entrepreneurship.

Reservation land, he added, is often held in federal trust, which makes it difficult to mortgage; poverty limits savings; and thin credit histories keep banks wary.

Results from a recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis's Center for Indian Country Development bear that out. The survey found that 45 percent of Native-owned small businesses seeking financing received none, compared with 36 percent of non-Native businesses.

The same survey showed Native-owned firms are, on average, located farther from banks and credit unions than businesses elsewhere in the country.

‘It kind of chooses them’

Those headwinds are visible up close with the hempcrete business. Like all ambitious startups, though, Desjarlais has found the gap between lofty business aspirations and gritty reality is a struggle.

For instance, the operation’s 10,000 square foot hemp warehouse is half its planned size. The processing equipment isn't big enough to bring hempcrete to scale. Dejarlais and his five-member crew have built only a handful of homes. The tribal council wants him to find outside funding.

The business has made headway on the policy front. Last year, Desjarlais and his colleagues led a broad coalition that successfully petitioned Minnesota's Department of Labor and Industry to move hempcrete toward formal inclusion in the state building code.

There has been funding too. The federal Environmental Protection Agency awarded the tribe a five-year, $5 million grant for weatherization and hempcrete construction, and the Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation provided seed money to outfit the construction crew with a forklift and proper safety equipment.

Tribal governments aren’t required to disclose revenue from their casino operations (and rough estimates from third party business are just that–rough), the tribe’s casino — Jackpot Junction in Morton, Minn., — is the Lower Sioux Indian Community’s chief source of revenue. Like other tribes, though, the concern is to reduce the community’s reliance on casino dollars and build a more diversified economic model.

Passionate about getting the hempcrete word out and growing the business to benefit his neighbors living on the Lower Sioux Indian Community reservation, Dejarlais has also started a nonprofit called the Green Buffalo Institute.

“It's basically geared to trying to educate others, especially tribal communities, about these materials and how to use it and why they should be using it,” he said. “Hopefully more people will have us out to do their workshops or have us out to do a building.”

Each house they work on helps prove the concept.

Near the government center on the reservation stands a remodeled home Desjarlais thinks is more than 100 years old, the oldest on the reservation. He and his crew completely gutted the house.

The walls are now insulated with hempcrete, and the exterior of the two-bedroom home is striking, dark and clean-lined.

“It was a complete overhaul,” he said. “It’s the first one that we ever did like that. And I think it's only the second in the country to be a complete retrofit.”

The appeal of hempcrete isn't limited to the reservation.

Desjarlais's crew recently built a home for two Mayo Clinic physicians who discovered hempcrete in the same way as Pendleton, the tribal leader — scrolling through YouTube.

The doctors researched the material extensively before choosing it for what they call their “forever home,” telling Desjarlais they couldn't find anything healthier to build with. For him, the moment confirmed something he'd already come to believe. "When people find out about it," he said, "it kind of chooses them."

This story comes from the Upper Midwest Newsroom, a public media collaboration between Wisconsin Public Radio, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Prairie Public in North Dakota and Minnesota Public Radio News made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

American Indians on tribal lands in the United States have historically faced some of the nation’s worst economic conditions.

Casinos have helped improve bring jobs and development to many Minnesota tribes over the past four decades. And, now, the number of other types of businesses owned by Native entrepreneurs and tribal governments is growing — and becoming more diverse.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with MPR News senior economics contributor Chris Farrell and two Native business owners featured in the new series from MPR’s Upper Midwest Newsroom “Beyond the Bet,” exploring the diversification of Native entrepreneurship.

Guests:

• Robert Blake is the founder and CEO of the solar development business Solar Bear. He is also founder and executive director of Native Sun Community Power Development, a nonprofit organization that is building out an electric vehicle charging network on tribal lands and promoting clean energy through education and workforce training. He lives in St. Paul and is a citizen of the Red Lake Nation of Ojibwe people in northern Minnesota.

• Madonna Peltier-Yawakie is co-founder and president of Turtle Island Communications, Inc. based in Brooklyn Park, Minn. The company provides engineering and technical consulting services to tribes, states and federal agencies to expand broadband internet service in reservation communities. She is a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota.

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.    

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her proposed a 6.8 percent increase in the property tax levy — about $58 per year for the owner of a median-value home in the city — in her inaugural budget.

But Her also asked departments to reduce spending by 4 percent to avoid an even steeper tax increase. Her addressed City Council members and the community on Thursday morning at Allianz Field — a location she highlighted in her speech as an example of her administration’s efforts to welcome new businesses, expand the city’s tax base and identify new sources of revenue within city government.

“We’re already seeing the results of that approach, with nearly a billion dollars in investments in downtown,” Her said. “And right outside this very window we’re seeing a breath of fresh air and development up and down the University corridor.”

The cuts were expected as the city faces a $26 million budget gap, according to the city’s projections.

In her Thursday address, Mayor Her proposed a $20,000 cut to her own compensation, and she said her office’s three highest-paid employees will forgo the 2027 cost-of-living increase.

“When savings are necessary, we should first examine management structures, reorganize where it makes sense, and reduce administrative costs before asking our lowest-paid employees to do more with less,” Her said.

Her said the city is eliminating positions where appropriate, and reassigning staff to refocus resources.

She said the cuts brought down the proposed property tax increase — which had started at more than 12 percent.

“I’ve always been honest with residents that we would not be able to reduce property taxes in the near term. What we can do is grow the tax base so that the cost of providing essential services is shared more broadly,” she said.

Spending on cybersecurity, climate resiliency

The proposed budget also includes areas where the mayor would like to spend more money.

Her’s budget includes investments in cybersecurity improvements identified through the after-action review of the 2025 cyberattack on the city.

She also wants to invest in modernizing the city’s payroll and benefits systems, and adding a workers' compensation analyst to reduce workers’ compensations costs down the line.

The budget also triples spending on climate resilience — including expanding the city’s tree canopy, developing electric-vehicle car-share options and improving energy efficiency in St. Paul homes.

The proposed budget would use gas and electric fee revenue to hire a climate director who would coordinate with the mayor’s office and city government staff.

Changing the subject

Her’s budget address was a way for the mayor to shift the conversation, after recent controversy. But in her budget address, she said her speech may have been boring to some.

“Good government should be boring. We are putting our head down, doing the work, and not getting distracted from the challenges and opportunities ahead of us. That’s how we can lower property taxes down the line and attract new neighbors and residents,” she said.

St. Paul’s clearing of encampments has drawn pushback from critics, and Her addressed that in her speech.

“I know that the past few weeks have been difficult not just for our communities but also city staff. People have strong opinions about the city’s decision regarding the Pig’s Eye encampment enclosure, and I understand that not everyone agrees with how we handled it,” Her said.

But she said conditions at the encampment couldn’t continue. She said they were unsafe for the people living there.

Her also made headlines recently not for her policies, but for an investigation into sexual harassment. St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry filed a complaint against the mayor over text messages she sent to city employees.

Ward 1 City Council member Anika Bowie said she wants to let the process play out, but there is an elephant in the room.

“What makes a good leader is someone who can remain focused in the world as a woman of color who's in elected position. There is a lot of distractions that can be thrown at you,” Bowie said. “At the end of the day, people have voted for you to be focused.”

Mayor Her said she’s cooperating with the investigation.

Campaign promises

When then-state Rep. Her ran for the city’s top job against Mayor Melvin Carter in 2025, she promised to diversify the city’s economy.

“We need a St. Paul that is focused on expanding our revenue stream so that our budget isn't balanced on the backs of our residents’ property taxes and rents,” she told MPR News after her election to office.

City Council President Rebecca Noecker said she agrees with the idea of coming up with different revenue streams.

“We need to be creative, especially again at a time when we don't have help from the federal government, when our state government has consistently failed to deliver on their promise of local government aid,” Noecker said.

Her campaigned on revitalizing the downtown and Midway neighborhoods and on creating a more business-friendly city.

Noecker said she wants to make sure that next year’s budget preserves services that people depend on — the basics of city government that affect peoples’ everyday lives.

“The budget is the document that reflects our values as a community and that shows how we're planning to spend our dollars at a most basic level. What we're prioritizing, whether that's city services, whether that's staff, whether that's capital projects like streets,” Noecker said.

What do residents want to see in the budget?

Stephanie Veatch, of Dayton’s Bluff, was outside a Mississippi Market on East 7th Street after a shopping run. She said infrastructure should be in the budget.

“I hope that the budget continues to address some of the public infrastructure that we need improvements on here and continually need improvements on. We need better roads. We need better sewers,” Veatch said.

Robert McWhite, who lives in Cathedral Hill, said he has seen the waterways out west like the Colorado River.

“When I come back to Minnesota, I realize how lucky we are to have all these wetlands. So I would just suggest that we protect those wetlands. They're really our bread and butter here in Minnesota,” McWhite said.

Lauralie Millikan, who lives in the Mac-Groveland neighborhood, was riding her bike in the Starbucks lot in Highland Park.

“We need some more money for infrastructure, streets, parks. I think we need an adequate budget for crime prevention, for the police,” Millikan said.

Millikan doesn’t think Summit Avenue needs new bike lanes.

The St. Paul City Council will hold budget meetings at on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. beginning next week. The public is encouraged to attend.

Change sprawls constantly across the storefronts on the postcard streets of downtown Ridgewood, New Jersey.

The big avenue, East Ridgewood, cuts across streets called Walnut, Chestnut and Oak, and then abuts the train station that connects this commuter suburb to New York City. It's a town where anything is reachable within five, 10 minutes of driving, and its center is the proverbial Main Street.

"Ridgewood has always been known as the place to go shopping," says Joan Groome, who has lived here since 1968, when she opened a ski shop above a family-run store selling gifts and art.

Over the years, Groome watched a wave of big-box chains sweep through Ridgewood and then a wave of banks. Local retail like hers strived and survived or went under; doors have shut on a beloved stationery store, a family-owned pharmacy, a hardware shop.

Now a new shift is reshaping this downtown, as it has many around the U.S.: Stores that sell things are giving way to shops that sell services — spas, gyms, restaurants.

"We have now 11 barbershops in town," says Groome, now the executive director of the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce. Around her, on just this one block, three ice cream cafés have opened, with a milkshake shop opening soon.

Last year marked the first time that the majority of U.S. retail space was leased to tenants selling services rather than goods, according to real estate data firm CoStar. This change is a response to changing spending habits, and it is shaking up malls, suburban shopping hubs and Main Streets nationwide.

A long-term trend at play

This year, in the 20 biggest metropolitan areas, CoStar data shows retail tenants declining for the third year in a row, while personal services and entertainment are ballooning: escape rooms and virtual golfing, medical spas and Pilates studios.

"Over the very long term, consumers have switched a lot of spending from retail goods to services in terms of share of wallet," says John Mercer, who tracks the state of retail at the analytics firm Coresight Research. "We think that that kind of long-term pattern will continue."

This shift was temporarily interrupted by the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic but has since roared back. And it's generally fueled by the wealthier spenders, though Mercer says surveys also suggest that some people choose to trade down to cheaper goods to redirect that saved money to services, for outings and experiences.

Much of the change is driven by what's on trend: wellness, beauty, fitness. And, of course, online shopping plays a huge role: When any purchase is a click away, people who physically go out to shop are often looking for more — for fun, an activity.

As Groome puts it: "You can't stroll Amazon."

Math is different for a mall vs. downtown

The building where Groome once had her ski shop is now a sushi spot. Her old bank — complete with the preserved vault and deposit boxes — is an Italian-inspired restaurant with a rooftop bar. Plenty of Ridgewood stores still sell things — clothes, shoes, home decor, antiques — but there are also over a hundred eateries, dozens of coffee shops, spas, salons, a stretching studio.

A trendy bakery recently opened across the street from Bookends, a small bookstore with a basement for book signings, which has been open since the 1980s. Store manager David Logan says the new neighbor has brought him new business.

"People walk out of there, and I've got my door open, so they see we're open," he says. Many leave the café straight for Bookends, he says. Often, it's mothers with little children, who linger in the kids section with activity books and Legos.

This is how the shift toward more services has played out in some of the busier malls. Shopping centers have been adding arcades, gyms and even health clinics as a way to draw people more regularly. But the math is less straightforward for downtowns, where a new eatery or gym tends to replace a shop, so more services often mean fewer shops.

"Because there's not as much retail," Logan says, "people are basically coming in just to go to the restaurant, and they may not necessarily walk around town."

Can't stroll down Instagram either

A few doors down, behind the counter of her jewelry store, Gina Jeon is also conflicted.

"I wonder if a town changing from beautiful boutique shops to more food and services — I wonder if that enriches the value of the town or takes away from it," she says.

Jeon's shop, Hot Jewelry Box, is an explosion of crystals and gemstones, silver and gold. She custom-makes jewelry by hand, letting shoppers pick their designs, and rearranges a section of the store every day — trying to give people reasons to visit, in person, again and again.

Jeon thinks more beautiful shops get people to shop more, while more restaurants don't. As she talks, she's hooking a charm onto a beaded chain for shopper Kate Ulrich, who's here for the second time in two days, to buy a green-and-red version of the necklace she'd previously bought in blue, green and white.

"I just like it because you can kind of mix and match your own, and you don't have to pay these like crazy internet prices that we're all duped into paying," Ulrich says. "It's like they just upcharge everything on Instagram because you see it, you love it, you have to have it."

Ulrich grew up down the highway and came to Jeon's shop as a child, when the store first opened two decades ago. Now she drives a half hour to Ridgewood to see her sister, who recently moved here with family, and they do exactly what local shop owners hope.

"It's fun to kind of walk the stroller up and down the street," Ulrich says. "You can kind of peer into everywhere because … it's something to do."

They snack and shop, buying things and little treats along the way — maybe some of that endlessly available ice cream — strolling, which you cannot do on Instagram either.

Copyright 2026, NPR

For nearly 150 years, Pillsbury United Communities has worked across Minneapolis to provide everything from youth programs and employment services to food assistance and a world class theater.

Its work is rooted in a simple idea: The people who live in the neighborhood are the ones who know how to make their lives there better.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with the new president and CEO of Pillsbury United Communities about taking the helm at a time when local communities are facing so many challenges, and how the arts and connection can help people heal.

Guests:

• Signe Harriday is the new president and CEO of Pillsbury United Communities, one of the Twin Cities’ oldest and largest nonprofits. The organization runs several community centers in Minneapolis and programs aimed at uplifting communities. She previously acted, directed and taught with Pillsbury House + Theatre before becoming the organization’s artistic producing director in 2021.

• Antonio Cardona is director of advancement at Pillsbury United Communities. He was previously the vice president of career readiness at Project for Pride in Living. Before that, he worked at Pillsbury for 15 years, primarily overseeing workforce development and charter schools.

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.    

A Minnesota-based magnet maker is set to receive a $150 million federal loan through the Department of Defense.

The loan will help Niron Magnetics accelerate opening a facility north of St. Cloud in Sartell, where it will make magnets for use in cell phones, electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense weapons. And it will do so without the use of rare-earth materials.

“The goal here is to bring that facility fully on board over the course of the next year for the first phase coming on board in 2027 and the full plant by 2028," said Mark Schramek, vice president of government affairs for Niron Magnetics. “We have secured a large portion of the funding for the full project, and this will allow us to basically move this forward to a full completion.”

Schramek said the Sartell plant, where they broke ground last year, is expected to bring in nearly 200 high-quality, full-time jobs to the area. That’s comparable to the number of employees currently at its Minneapolis-based facility.

Niron Magnetics manufactures magnets through a process that combines iron and nitrogen, which the state has an abundance of, into iron nitride. The magnetic powder is then formed into different shapes and sizes based on what it will be used for.

The method, which was developed at the University of Minnesota over a decade ago, cuts out the dependence on foreign-mined rare-earth elements needed to make traditional magnets. And it lowers environmental impacts.

According to Niron, their magnets are more powerful than ones containing rare-earth elements.

With demand for magnets increasingly spurred on by data center cooling pumps, robotics and electric vehicles, among other factors, Niron is planning to expand its operations in the near future. And some politicians want to see it happen in Minnesota.

“We actually are currently undergoing a nationwide site selection on where we are going to build our next 10,000-ton, high-volume manufacturing plant,” Schramek said. “That process is ongoing today, with a goal that we will actually select a site for that by fall of this year.”

When operational, the Sartell plant will produce 1,500 tons of rare-earth free permanent magnets annually. By comparison, the Minneapolis facility has a production capacity of over 5 tons a year.

It’s been a dry summer for many Minnesotan farmers as drought conditions blanket much of the state.

But rain has come for key production areas in recent weeks. Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen called the showers “crop-saving rain” at this year’s annual ag trade show, Farmfest, in Redwood County in southwest Minnesota.

“Right here, we were dry, but the crop looks really good,” Minnesota Farmers Union President Gary Wertish added. “We've been blessed here, just getting some timely rains in this immediate area.”

That rain could make a big difference for farmers’ fields, according to senior marketing analyst Mark Schultz with Northstar Commodities.

“The rain that you picked up last Friday was anywhere from a 20 to 30 bushel per acre swing on the size of your crop,” said Schultz. “I think it was just that big of a difference maker in the crop.”

That rain could help strengthen this year’s crop production. Last year, Minnesota had record or near-record yields of corn, wheat and soybeans. University of Minnesota Extension Professor Edward Usset said this year’s crop is looking “as good or better” than last year’s.

“We have a shot at setting yield records again in all three crops,” said Usset. “A lot can happen in the last four or five weeks of this crop, but we have that chance to do it.”

Southwest and central Minnesota will still need more than five inches of rain in the coming months to reverse drought conditions, according to projections by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Minnesota producers will have a clearer picture of yields on Wednesday when the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes its latest crop production report.

The Senate in an overnight vote Saturday approved a short-term measure to fund federal agencies into early December and avoid a potentially chaotic government shutdown during the middle of campaign season.

The late-summer action on a funding fix is unusual. Normally, Congress waits until the final days or hours of a funding deadline to pass short-term patches, but this time senators acted nearly two months before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The 90-6 vote showed lawmakers are still smarting from the two historic shutdowns that occurred this past year and want to avoid another before voters go to the polls. The funding bill also included a delay to a federal hemp ban, which threatened to upend Minnesota’s $200 million cannabis market.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune wanted the funding dealt with before senators went home for the next five weeks to focus on their reelection campaigns and other matters. It got caught up with other issues that pushed votes into the night, but the bill had broad bipartisan support. The House will also have to approve the measure when members return from their August recess before it can go to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature.

The bill generally funds the federal government at current levels though Dec. 11, but includes a variety of exceptions that senators negotiated with the White House.

Democrats secured language to ensure no money could be transferred to the Border Patrol. They also rejected the White House's request of $1 billion for early work on a new "Trump-class" battleship that the administration announced on Dec. 22.

"The only person who wants these golden ships is Donald Trump so he can slap his name on them," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.

Hemp provision became a point of contention

The bill also includes language delaying a national ban on most intoxicating hemp products. That one-month delay prompted outrage from some Senate Republicans who say that too many such products are falling into the hands of often unsuspecting children. The packaging of the products often relies on bright colors and intentionally mimics popular snack brands to attract consumers.

Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., said that since 2017 there has been nearly a 10-fold increase in cannabis-related emergency room visits by minors in his home state.

"This is a public health crisis that deserves this Senate's immediate attention," Budd said. "Our children should never be the testing ground for an industry willing to exploit a loophole in federal law for profit."

The original ban was included in a funding bill from November 2025 passed to end a 43-day government shutdown, the longest in history. Minnesota’s DFL delegation, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, voted against that bill while Republicans backed the ban.

Klobuchar said during her Senate floor remarks Minnesota had not had the same experience as North Carolina.

“I note in my state we have safety rules in place that have worked very well,” said Klobuchar, who is running for governor. “The product is taxed. We have not had issues with it since we put those rules in place.”

The hemp industry said the delay buys time for Congress to craft legislation that protects hemp farmers and businesses while also putting in place safeguards to protect children.

Trump himself has called Budd to discuss the issue, though the president did not specifically ask the senator to drop his effort, Budd's spokesman said.

"Senator Budd had a friendly phone call with President Trump discussing the legislative efforts regarding THC," said spokesman Christian McMullen. He said the senator outlined his concerns about "any delay to closing the hemp loophole."

Budd tried to strip the hemp delay from the bill, but the Senate turned aside his effort.

The bill delays a Trump administration rule on grants

Democratic lawmakers, along with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, also got language in the bill that would block, for the duration of the funding patch, new regulations on federal grants. The regulations would require a senior political appointee to review grants before they are awarded to ensure, among other things, that they advance the president's policy priorities. Democrats worry it's an effort to kill grants destined for Democratic-leaning states.

"They are not interested in making our tax dollars work better — they just want them to work for Donald Trump," said Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The White House Office of Management and Budget says its effort is about improving accountability to ensure taxpayer dollars aren't wasted or misused. The issue is sure to be a topic of future negotiations on a full-year spending measure.

But Collins said the vast majority of the nearly 500,000 people and groups weighing in on the rule are opposed to it.

"I don't think in my time that I've been privileged to serve in the Senate that I have ever seen a proposed rule generate that many negative comments," Collins said.

A proposed data center in the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis is sparking plenty of debate. A plan to turn the Minnesota Star Tribune's former printing facility into a data center has some community members concerned for the environment, while others are excited about the potential economic benefits.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke with data center researcher Yiyang Zeng about the impacts data centers have on both the environment and economy.

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player above.

The U.S. job market unexpectedly stalled in July.

A report Friday from the Labor Department shows that employers cut 23,000 jobs last month, and job gains for May and June were revised sharply lower.

The unemployment rate dipped to 4.1 percent, but only because more than 260,000 people dropped out of the workforce.

It was the second month in a row that the monthly jobs tally came in weaker than forecasters had expected.

"We are increasingly hearing from workers that they are anxious about their job security and they are frustrated by the fact that they are stuck in roles that are not necessarily good for them," said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at the job search website Glassdoor. "And that's on top of workers who are not in a job right now and feel frozen out of the job market."

Glassdoor's worker confidence index slumped in July to a record low.

The Fed’s job gets harder

Restaurants and retailers cut thousands of jobs last month and local government also saw large job losses. Healthcare continued to add workers, but at a more modest pace than earlier in the year.

The softening job market may complicate the Federal Reserve's job, since it's also battling stubborn inflation. The Fed may be more cautious about raising interest rates at a time when the labor market appears less stable.

For people who are working, average wages have risen 3.2 percent in the last twelve months. That's likely not enough to keep pace with inflation, however, so workers' paychecks don't stretch as far as they used to.

"Part of the reason that workers are feeling bad about today's job market," Zhao says, is that "a lot of those wage gains have been eaten up by rising energy prices."

Copyright 2026, NPR

Revol Greens, which grows lettuce and other greens in a massive greenhouse near Owatonna, may lay off nearly a hundred employees and close its facility in October if it can’t find a buyer for the company or an infusion of funding.

The lettuce grower told state regulators Wednesday that it would be forced to close its Medford facility about an hour south of the Twin Cites and layoff approximately 89 employees if the site or company does not secure financing or get bought out before Oct. 4.

John Carkoski, Revol Greens Vice President of Operations, emphasized in a press release Friday that Revol Greens is still committed to finding a path forward.

“We continue to evaluate all available strategic alternatives, including financing, partnerships, site-level opportunities, and other transaction structures that could support the future of the business and preserve continuity for our customers and employees," Carkoski wrote.

Revol Greens has not ceased operations and intends to continue normal greenhouse operations through October, as it continues discussions with potential investors, lenders, and partners.

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

This announcement comes at a time when many consumers across the country have been avoiding lettuce because of a national outbreak of a parasitic infection linked to iceberg lettuce. While none of Revol Greens products were contaminated, Carkoski explains that the Cylcospora outbreak is one of the challenges the company is facing right now.

“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 said.

Consumer consumption of lettuce and other greens has dropped significantly as the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention investigates the multi-state outbreak of cyclospora infections linked to iceberg lettuce. Since May, it has identified at least 10,000 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.”

All job losses are expected to occur on Oct. 4. There is no union at the facility.

The glowing red “1st” atop downtown St. Paul’s First National Bank Building was fully lit again Thursday night.

The iconic landmark was illuminated at 9 p.m., accompanied by fireworks.

The sign had been slowly deteriorating for several years until Downtown Revival Trust bought the building earlier this year. The organization’s founder Jamie Rand said the light is about 95 percent fixed and expects it to be fully completed in six months.

Downtown Revival Trust purchased the building in May for $3.8 million with plans to spend $7 million on upgrades. One of those upgrades will be making the sign change colors, Rand said.

Rand plans to change its colors for Minnesota Wild games, purple for Prince’s birthday and green for St. Patrick's Day.

The light is currently turned on through a switch on the 30th floor, but he said it’ll eventually be changed through an app.

“Sign’s been dark for way too long,” he said. “It’s my hope by relighting the sign and all the other restoration work that I'm doing. We’re spending millions of dollars, this is just one little piece of the puzzle. I want to be the light to be a strong visual reminder of what downtown can be.”

The sign is three-sided, and Rand said one side was almost completely not working. The other two sides were operating at about 30-35 percent. Rand said it took three different sign companies to make the sign work.

"I’m not stopping here, I believe in St. Paul. I believe in downtown," he said.

Founder of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance, Joe Spencer, said he’s excited about what the relighting will mean for downtown.

“When that sign went dark, that said something, right, and we had a tough couple of years, but so too does this sign getting relit also mean something and it means something real,” Spencer said. “It’s important for us to create a shared sense of place. It’s an important part of our shared story, and that is a key, an important part of a downtown revitalization.”

Rand said he plans to keep First National as an office building with plans to open the skyway to increase foot traffic. He said he’s close to announcing “a few large leases” soon.

Investments by public and private groups have resulted in a collective $1.293 billion investment in downtown, according to Spencer.

“Just in the last year, we've counted up over 20 storefront businesses that have opened in downtown St. Paul,” Spencer said. “We have this palpable sense of momentum, and I want to say again, this doesn’t happen by accident, it happens because of intention, it happens because of partnership.”

Small businesses in northeast Minnesota that cater to canoeists and other summer visitors are calling for economic relief after being decimated by wildfire-related losses, even though Gov. Tim Walz indicated Wednesday that a special session to provide aid to businesses affected by the Boundary Waters fires appeared unlikely.

“It is an extremely devastating blow, and I fear for some of the businesses in this town that they may not survive this,” said Tanner Spicer, owner of Voyageur North Outfitters in Ely, who had hoped for a special session.

More than 80 businesses and nonprofits in northeastern Minnesota sent a letter to Walz and state legislators Thursday, calling for a special session for fire relief, or for an economic relief package passed when the legislature reconvenes in January.

The letter asks for grants of up to $150,000 for businesses and groups that lost at least 20 percent of revenue between July and August when compared to last year.

“We can't and don't expect a comprehensive solution today,” said Ben Seaton of Hungry Jack Outfitters. “But our officials waiting for the perfect time, the perfect words, or the perfect solution only leaves the rest of us without those very things we need so very badly right now.”

The lightning-caused fires that ignited and spread through the area last month led the Forest Service to close the entire Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for about two weeks. Resorts and other businesses that were in evacuated areas had to close, and the region was blanketed in unhealthy smoke for a couple days, keeping visitors and the money they usually spend in the area away.

Since then, cooler, wetter weather has helped firefighters gain some containment of the fires. Most evacuation orders have been lifted, and the U.S. Forest Service has reopened much of the wilderness.

But the tourism-focused businesses in Ely and elsewhere around the Boundary Waters earn nearly all their revenue for the year during the busy but short summer months. And many lost nearly all their income in July. Spicer said that’s money that cannot be made up.

“A lot of businesses lost hundreds of thousands of dollars already, and they need some relief,” said Republican State Rep. Roger Skraba, who represents Ely and the surrounding area in the state legislature.

Skraba, along with DFL State Sen. Grant Haushchild, have called for a special session to provide economic aid to businesses impacted by the fires. They also hosted two economic forums – one in Ely, a second along the Gunflint Trail– to hear from businesses impacted by the fires.

At the Grand Marais session, David Seaton, co-owner and operator of Hungry Jack Outfitters told the lawmakers he lost 98 percent of his revenue, calling the month of July, “disastrous.”

“Every one of our cabins [was] canceled. Every one of our outfitting groups could not do their trip,” Seaton said.

Cook County Commissioner Ann Sullivan said small businesses in the area are facing pushback from their insurance companies for claiming damages due to business interruption.

“At a time when cash flow has been turned off, the spigot is turned off, a lot of [small business owners] have large bills looming for canoe fleets, and also for merchandise and mortgages,” Sullivan said at the Aug. 1 discussion. “We heard from almost everyone that business interruption insurance coverage is either not available to them or is being denied. I have not heard one insurance company claim that they are going to support our businesses.”

Hauschild said they’re also targeting other sources of funding to provide businesses with some aid, from nonprofits and state agencies, including Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation and DEED, the Department of Employment and Economic Development. “We're just working on a holistic approach to provide relief,” he said.

The United Way of Northeastern Minnesota (UWNEMN) has raised more than $190,000 as of August 6 for individuals and small businesses that lost income as a result of the wildfires.

The agency plans to award grants ranging from $2,500 to $5,000 to help businesses with payroll assistance, rent, mortgage and other expenses. Individuals can apply for funding ranging from $500 to $1,500.

So far the United Way has received more than $300,000 in requests. “After weeks of critical revenue during what should have been these communities’ busiest season, we know recovery won't happen overnight,” said UWNEMN Executive Director Erin Shay. “For many, the financial impacts will continue long after these fires are out.”

Canoeists and other visitors have begun to return to northeast Minnesota. About two-thirds of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness have now been reopened.

But people continue to cancel trips for later in the summer and fall, said Spicer. “I was just on the phone with another customer who canceled their trip for September because they're afraid of the fires and the smoke, even though we haven't had smoke since day two of the fires,” he said.

Businesses continue to battle the perception that it’s unsafe or unhealthy to visit, Spicer added. “The news makes it doom and gloom all over the place, and people think we're burning to the ground, and it's not that way,” he said. “You wouldn't even know there's a fire going on.”

He encourages people to support Ely businesses on-line and by buying gift certificates. He also wants people to call their legislators to ask for economic aid for businesses harmed by the fires.

“The skies are clear. The smoke is gone. Our businesses are open,” said Hauschild. “We want people to plan late summer and early fall trips up to northern Minnesota.”

Target Field concession workers have announced a one-day strike set for Wednesday at the sold-out Noah Kahan concert.

The labor action follows a similar one in June when the Twins played the Los Angeles Dodgers. According to UNITE HERE Local 17, many fans were still waiting to get into Target Field in the third inning due to the strike.

Delaware North, the company that manages concession stands at Target Field, said the venue will be fully staffed for the Noah Kahan show.

Union Secretary-Treasurer Sheigh Freeberg doesn't believe the company's claims.

"Last time they said the exact same thing,” Freeberg said. “They said it will be exactly the same. It will be totally, fully staffed, but that's not the truth.”

He added that stands were not open or were not set up. “Fans had a terrible experience waiting for an extremely long time," he said.

Freeberg called it “bravado” from the company.

The union and the concessions vendor have been in negotiations since March.

Delaware North said in a statement they offered non-tipped, part-time workers a $20 an hour wage and a health care plan, comparable with other venues in town.

“The union is in agreement that the employers finally made movement on the first year's wages. They have agreed to move a good number of people to $20 an hour,” Freeberg said. He added that it is about 300 members.

Both sides also don’t agree on who is considered non-tipped.

“Along with that, in the second year and the third year of the contract, they're only proposing 75-cent wage increases, which is pretty minimal given how much everything costs and how high inflation is,” he said.

Freeberg also said the health care proposal would only apply to about 10 out of the union's 500 concession and hospitality workers.

Chipotle Mexican Grill said Tuesday that it had removed jalapeños from some of its restaurants after determining the peppers could potentially be tied to a salmonella outbreak public health officials are investigating.

In a brief statement, Chipotle maintained that the “health and safety of our guests and employees is our highest priority” — and that it had pulled the jalapeños out of an abundance of caution and “replaced them with product from different growers” in all locations where a previous common lot had been distributed.

The company did not specify where the initial peppers came from but noted that the jalapeños in question were sent across multiple states to several retailers.

The Minnesota Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed that it was investigating a salmonella outbreak tied to several Mexican-style, quick-service restaurants — with jalapeños as the suspected source. Officials identified 110 cases in the state. Chipotle made up the majority of those where they were able to reach impacted consumers for an interview — who ate at the chain between mid-June and mid-July — but not all.

“Based on all the evidence so far, the food that made people sick was served at other restaurants as well,” Carlota Medus, senior epidemiologist supervisor in the Minnesota Department of Health's Foodborne Diseases Unit, said in a statement.

Medus said Chipotle had been cooperative over the course of the investigation — and that given the measures the company put in place, her department was not concerned about the chain at this time. Still, she said it was “too soon for us to know if the outbreak is ongoing” and that it's possible contaminated food is being served elsewhere.

The Minnesota Department of Health noted that other states are contributing to the investigation, without elaborating further. On the federal level, the Food and Drug Administration is conducting the traceback probe, covering but not limited to jalapeños.

The FDA on Tuesday confirmed it initiated its traceback investigation “of multiple ingredients” on July 22, in response to a cluster of salmonella illnesses identified by both state officials and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a statement, the agency said it appreciated Chipotle's cooperation and that it would “provide additional information if and when there is an actionable public health update.”

The CDC did not respond a request for further comments Tuesday afternoon.

Symptoms of salmonella poisoning include diarrhea, fever, severe vomiting, dehydration and stomach cramps. Most people who get sick recover within a week. Infections can be more severe in young children, older adults and people with weakened immune systems, who may require hospitalization.

Chipotle has been battered by larger outbreaks in years past — notably between 2015 and 2018, where a string of E coli., norovirus and food poisoning illnesses sent sales plunging. The California-based company has since boasted stronger food safety practices.

The latest salmonella outbreak arrives at a tough time for restaurant-goers and the dining industry nationwide. A handful of fast-casual chains are still wrestling with the fallout of a separate, wider cyclospora outbreak linked to shredded lettuce that has sickened thousands of Americans.

Chipotle hasn't been tied to or named by government investigations into those cyclospora illnesses. Still, the company is among those bracing for lower sales because of that outbreak.

Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill plunged nearly 10% Tuesday.

The health of high-ranking Republican Rep. Tom Emmer was in question for a bit after a colleague suggested a serious ailment.

U.S. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer didn't attend a forum Tuesday for congressional members and candidates at Farmfest in western Minnesota. Rep. Pete Stauber, a fellow Republican, first said Emmer is dealing with a personal concern.

Later, Stauber defended Emmer's absence in a more concerning tone after Democratic candidate Doug Chapin questioned why Emmer hadn’t shown up to look farmers in the eye.

“You have no idea what Congressman Emmer is dealing with right now,” Stauber said in a serious tone. “If you did you would have never made that comment. He is fighting for his damn life today."

Stauber left the event without taking questions.

Emmer's office and campaign didn't address questions about his situation or the Stauber remark. A spokesperson pointed to a Washington reporter’s social media feed instead.

Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News posted on social media that he had spoken with Emmer since Stauber’s comment and said “he is not gravely ill, nor did he sound like it.”

Stauber’s office issued a statement later that contradicted the congressman’s earlier statement. According to the Star Tribune, the written Stauber statement put out after the initial comment had spread said, “Rep. Emmer is not fighting for his life. He had a series of foot surgeries."

Emmer had surgery in April and has been seen moving around Washington in a wheelchair. He did a Fox Business interview this week from a remote location and there was no indication of distress in his voice.