Cleanup continued Saturday after tornadoes damaged dozens of homes in southeast Minnesota on Friday afternoon.

The Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office said about 30 homes were damaged — a dozen with significant damage — in Marion Township, southeast of Rochester.

“Emergency services have disconnected electricity and natural gas in the affected area for safety. Personnel from Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Rochester Fire and Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office have conducted door-to-door checks to assess needs and ensure resident safety,” the sheriff’s office reported Friday night.

The National Weather Service classified the tornado near Stewartville as EF2 with winds peaking at 130 mph.

It traveled for nearly 10 miles while on the ground for 14 minutes in a path 175 yards at its widest.

The National Weather Service said some of the worst destruction was near Marion Road northeast of Highway 52. Several homes had roofs ripped off or exterior walls collapse.

The sheriff’s office said about 20 homes were damaged in Stewartville. A temporary shelter was set up in Rochester for people displaced from their homes.

Tornado damage

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The National Weather Service said another EF2 tornado in Wabasha County reached 125 mph, traveling about 7.5 miles in a path 150 yards at its widest.

It damaged homes near Plainview and Elgin, including ripping a roof off a farmhouse, before ending in Wabasha.

The severe storms continued moving east into western Wisconsin, with additional reports of tornadoes near Osseo and Black River Falls later Friday afternoon.

The State Patrol said a driver sustained non-life-threatening injuries when his semi was overturned by a tornado along Interstate 90 southeast of Rochester just before 2:30 p.m. Friday. But the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office said Friday night that it had no reports of other injuries or fatalities from the severe storms.

People’s Energy Cooperative reported several hundred homes and businesses were still without power Saturday morning in Olmsted and Wabasha counties — down from several thousand in the immediate wake of the storms.

Line crews worked into the night Friday to repair broken utility poles and downed power lines, and the co-op said those workers would be back in the field on Saturday.

The Olmsted County Board issued a disaster declaration following the storms. The county set up an online form for residents to report property damage from the storms, to help officials determine the extent of damage.

The National Weather Service office in La Crosse, Wis. — which covers the Rochester area — said crews would be in the field on Saturday to survey the strength and path of the tornadoes. They issued 26 tornado warnings Friday, a record for the office.

Severe thunderstorms produced tornadoes Friday afternoon in southeast Minnesota, damaging dozens of homes.

There were no immediate reports of serious injuries or deaths from the storms.

The National Weather Service reported multiple sightings of tornadoes south and east of Rochester between 2 and 3 p.m., including a report from the Rochester Airport tower.

The weather service reported a damaging tornado in the Marion area southeast of Rochester just before 3 p.m. and another tornado near Plainview.

The Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office reported about 30 homes were damaged — a dozen with significant damage — in the Marion area. A temporary shelter was set up in Rochester for people displaced from their homes.

Videos and pictures from southeastern Rochester showed homes with walls and siding ripped off. At least one was missing a roof. Trees were blown down and blocked roads in the area.

Much of the damage occurred along Marion Road, which cuts through the southeastern part of the city. A large swath of the road was closed to traffic Friday afternoon.

Damage to homes and trees was also seen in nearby Stewartville, just south of Rochester. The sheriff’s office said about 20 homes were damaged in Stewartville.

According to a crash report from the Minnesota State Patrol, a driver of a semi-truck was injured when a tornado caused his truck to flip along Interstate 90 southeast of Rochester. The driver survived with non-serious injuries and was taken to a nearby hospital.

Minnesota utilities reported more than a thousand homes and businesses without power as of Friday evening, down from several thousand earlier in the day. That included many People’s Energy Cooperative customers — with the co-op reporting significant outages in the Stewartville and Marion areas south and east of Rochester, and also in the Plainview area.

Southern Minnesota tornado damage

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“We are seeing significant power outages in our service territory with reports of trees and poles down,” the utility reported in a social media post just after 3 p.m. “If you encounter downed lines or damaged equipment, please stay clear and call 911. We have crews heading to various locations in our service territory to assess damage. It may be several hours to understand the extent of the damage and work to restore power.”

Rochester Public Schools held students at their designated safety spots for a time. The district issued an update shortly before 3 p.m. stating that buses at elementary schools would begin loading and bringing students home. Middle and high school students were transported after that.

Storms also produced hail Friday afternoon across southern and eastern Minnesota.

Minnesotans between the ages of 21 and 64 who apply for Medicaid will need to demonstrate that they have been working, attending school or volunteering for at least 80 hours each month to qualify for or retain health insurance under the joint federal-state program.

This requirement follows President Trump’s signing of HR. 1 into law, a sweeping tax and spending bill, last July.

The new law is set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, leaving Minnesota lawmakers grappling with how to implement changes to the state’s administration of Medicaid funds before the legislative session ends on May 18.

Both Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature said they need to either pass legislation or update existing rules soon to ensure that state programs comply with the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services new requirements.

But some state legislators have raised concerns about the lack of clear guidance from CMS on how to implement the upcoming work requirement changes.

This uncertainty puts the state at risk of noncompliance, which could result in the loss of Medicaid matching funds, the percentage of state spending matched by the federal government.

To meet the upcoming deadline, Minnesota needs to quickly implement a plan to upgrade agency databases and modernize verification processes.

Sen. Melissa Wiklund, DFL-Bloomington, chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, said lawmakers are working on proposals to address impacts of HR. 1.

“DHS has received some guidance from the federal government, but they haven't received all the final guidance on how to implement some of these provisions, and that is making it tricky for us because our session is fixed in time,” Wiklund said. “So, we have to get something created and passed before our adjournment date.”

‘The clock is ticking’

The new federal law includes the largest cut to Medicaid in history, reducing funding by $1 trillion. As a result, nearly 12 million Americans are expected to become uninsured over the next decade, and according to Minnesota health officials, an estimated 140,000 Minnesotans are likely to lose health coverage.

These upcoming cuts come in addition to a federal hold on $243 million of Medicaid funding that the Trump administration imposed because of possible fraud in state programs. This funding has not yet been released by CMS, despite the federal government approving the state’s corrective action plan aimed at preventing fraud.

Medicaid, known as Medical Assistance in Minnesota, provides health coverage for about 1.2 million residents, offering affordable health insurance to more than one in five Minnesotans, including children, people with disabilities and seniors.

To qualify for Medical Assistance, individuals must meet specific income requirements based on factors such as age, pregnancy status and family size. Enrollees do not pay a premium for coverage, nor do they share costs for comprehensive health services.

A 2023 analysis by KFF shows that most Medicaid enrollees in the U.S. are employed.

Specifically, 92 percent of adults under the age of 65 are working or cannot for reasons such as caregiving responsibilities, illness or disability, or being enrolled in school. The remaining 8 percent of adult Medicaid recipients indicated that they are either retired, unable to find work or not working for other reasons.

Currently, Medicaid enrollees are required to prove their eligibility at least once a year. But the new law will change this, mandating that states check recipients' eligibility every six months. This means more paperwork and consequently, some people may lose their eligibility or decide to opt out of Medicaid as these changes roll out over the next few years.

Tina Rucci, director of public policy at disability advocacy organization The ARC Minnesota, said this situation creates additional barriers for people with disabilities and others who rely on Medicaid for healthcare access. She pointed out that it places extra responsibilities on counties, which will need to verify all eligibility information and manage double the paperwork.

She is urging Minnesota lawmakers to collaborate to mitigate the potential negative impacts of the legislation on Medicaid beneficiaries, and she noted that states are required to inform Medicaid enrollees between June 30 and August 31, 2026, about what the new work reporting requirements will entail.

“We have to trickle that down into the community, and that takes time,” Rucci said. “So, the clock is ticking, and we just want to make sure that we have time for people to understand all of these intricacies before they might accidentally miss the exemption period and fall off their coverage.”

‘Where do we start?’

The Minnesota Department of Human Services analyzed the Medicaid provisions in the 2025 tax and spending bill and found that work-reporting requirements create high costs for taxpayers to ensure that only a small number of people are employed. They estimate that this will lead to a $200 million loss in federal funding each year due to fewer people having coverage, along with a possible $165 million increase in administrative costs for the state, counties, and Tribal entities.

Rep. Danny Nadeau, R-Rogers, introduced a bill Tuesday aimed at helping Minnesota comply with federal Medicaid work requirement regulations. But action on the bill was postponed.

No one testified either in favor of or against the bill, according to the House of Representatives, “but social service organizations submitted letters expressing” their opposition. Many of these letters highlighted concerns that the bill would deny essential health coverage to low-income individuals, as it appears to go beyond what is required by federal mandates.

In an interview with MPR News last month, Nadeau said the new work requirements allow the state to create a better system for verifying Medicaid eligibility. He added that agencies are working on this, but Nadeau thinks the Legislature should be more involved too.

“One of the requirements is you can volunteer for 80 hours a month. Well, we don't have a way to capture that,” Nadeau said. “The proof of that. So, there's a lot of unknowns right now.”

Rep. Mohamud Noor, DFL-Minneapolis, said the state cannot ignore the numerous changes that need to be addressed.

“The implementation risks are too high for us not to be able to do things quickly and to be able to have all hands-on deck from the counties to the state,” Noor said. “If we don't do that, we will end up creating a lot of backlogs, and too many people may lose their coverage.”

Noor added that safeguards must be put in place so people can continue to maintain their health insurance coverage and do not face wrongful denials.

“I don't think any of this can wait. So, the question is, where do we start?” Noor asked. “And how we can make sure that we protect services for the most vulnerable Minnesotans.”

Correction (April, 17, 2026): An earlier version of this story misstated the breakdown of working-age Medicaid recipients in the U.S. The story has been updated.

With a legislative deadline fast approaching, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and the owner of the Minnesota Wild are again pressing state lawmakers for $200 million to help fund renovations at the Grand Casino Arena complex, formerly known as the Xcel Energy Center.

Previous attempts to secure state funding have failed, including a $397 million ask last session that was eventually narrowed down to $50 million — four times smaller than the current request.

Last month, the city and team announced that they reached an agreement on a $600 million plan for renovations at the arena. Most of those renovations are for security and accessibility improvements. The proposal would also pay for upgrades at the St. Paul RiverCentre and Roy Wilkins Auditorium, the latter of which is about a century old.

After the proposed state funding, the remaining $400 million would be financed by the city of St. Paul and the Wild. The deal would not involve raising property taxes for city residents.

Her noted that the facilities are used for more than entertainment, including high school graduations and bar exams. She said the renovations are a key part of her vision for revitalizing downtown.

“There is a large vision for what the rest of the downtown surrounding area will look like, but that can only happen if we get the investment we need in this particular complex,” she said.

If the request again stalls at the Capitol, Her said there is a “plan B,” though it is “not ideal.”

Now on his third attempt at asking the legislature for renovation funding, Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold said he feels there will be “progress this legislative session.”

“I am very committed to downtown St. Paul, and there is no plan B in my thought process here. This is Plan A, Plan B, Plan C,” Leipold said. “We want to stay in St Paul, but we need the support of the state legislature to guarantee that that happens.”

The renovation would create more public gathering space and an indoor and outdoor patio on the upper level of the arena. It would make usable a convention space on the lowest level of the Roy Wilkins Auditorium. Leipold said the facilities bring in more than 2.1 million people each year.

It's been years in the making and it’s historic as Benjamin E. Mays will become one of the only Afrocentric schools in the state.

Danielle Hughes, principal of Benjamin E. Mays, and Stacie Stanley, superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, spoke to Minnesota Now about the program.

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.

Ten years after Minneapolis icon Prince’s death, the city of Minneapolis and Paisley Park are planning a celebration of his legacy — along with a few thousand fans.

City leaders announced plans Thursday for a block party and Prince sing-along on June 6. Musical director Sanford Moore will conduct a Minneapolis-based choir of 100 vocalists, plus any Prince fans who want to join in on his biggest hits. Organizers said they’re anticipating up to 15,000 people at the event.

L. Londell McMillan was Prince’s attorney and manager. He announced the event at a press conference in front of a towering 110-foot mural of the music legend, steps away from his home venue at First Avenue.

“Although Prince in the physical is passed, he lives,” McMillan said. “He remains with us. You hear it everywhere you go.”

Organizers said the sing-along idea is a callback to the day Prince died in April 2016, when fans took to the streets outside First Avenue and for a spontaneous sing-along after the news broke.

The event will mark what would have been Prince’s 68th birthday on June 7. Organizers said to come ready to sing – and bring their best purple and sequins.

“If Prince taught us anything, it's that subtlety is overrated,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said.

The sing-along is part of the annual Prince celebration weekend, with events in downtown Minneapolis and at Paisley Park.

The man who killed 34-year-old Mariah Samuels in Minneapolis in September faces a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole following his conviction on first-degree murder charges Wednesday.

David Eugene Wright, 51, was Samuels’ ex-boyfriend. She took out an order for protection against Wright after he pistol-whipped her a month before her killing. She contacted Minneapolis police to complain that Wright had violated his protection order, including on the morning of her killing, when an officer declined to provide her with domestic violence resources, according to the initial investigation of the incident by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Prosecutors said Wright rode up to Samuels’ family home in north Minneapolis on a bicycle on Sept. 14 and shot Samuels about 10 times. She was declared dead at the scene. A medical examiner’s report later said she’d died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement following Wright’s conviction that Samuels did everything the system asks of domestic violence survivors, but the system still failed her.

“Each part of that system Mariah interacted with must hold itself accountable and take a hard look at what can be done to avoid these failures in the future,” Moriarty said.

Samuels’ family has accused Minneapolis officers of failing to help protect her. In response, police chief Brian O’Hara vowed to do a thorough review of the case and ordered all officers to be retrained in how to handle domestic violence calls.

O’Hara and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey both said at the time that Samuel’s killing was a tragedy, but said that inadequate staffing in the department’s domestic violence unit was a factor.

Samuels was a mother of two who loved animals and lived her life passionately, according to her family. They have said her case is similar to both Allison Lussier, an Indigenous woman found dead in her apartment in 2024, and Davis Moturi, a Black man who was shot by a neighbor after months of harassment. Supporters of all three allege that Minneapolis police did nothing to protect them after they reported harassment.

The city of Minneapolis could be headed for a “never-ending loop” in a dispute over the reappointment of its commissioner of community safety, according to the city attorney’s office.

The Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Jacob Frey are at odds over whether to reinstate current commissioner Todd Barnette to another term. The council voted last week not to confirm him. Frey vetoed that vote, and says he wants to keep Barnette in his position.

The council is expected to try to override that veto at next week’s meeting, but they likely won’t have the votes. The council denied Barnette’s reappointment in a 7-6 vote; they would need nine votes to override the veto.

The city attorney’s office says a failure to override the veto could get the city stuck in a legal stalemate. In that case, Barnette’s nomination would stand — but he can’t take the job without approval from the council.

In a lengthy memo this week, the city attorney’s office said the only way out of that loop would be for Frey to nominate someone new, or for enough council members to change their votes to either approve Barnette for another term or override the mayor’s veto.

“Our City Charter forces the Council and the Mayor to find compromise — and compromise is the heart of democracy,” Frey said in a statement responding to the city attorney’s memo.

Several council members who voted against Barnette’s reappointment said they want Frey to nominate a new candidate.

“The council followed the process. The question now is whether the mayor will respect our decision or continue using a never-ending loop of vetoes to strong-arm the council and distract from the important public safety work we must do together,” council member Aurin Chowdhury said in a statement.

Barnette has said he wants to continue in the job, and plans to accept another term if the council and the mayor can agree to it.

Owatonna’s fire department is still using a station house built in the early 1900s, when many firefighting apparatus were still pulled by horses. The police station is housed in a former bank and is more than 60 years old.

Owatonna city officials propose building new fire and police facilities. But many residents have questions about the project and are pushing back, hard enough to force the question of whether the city should issue $65 million in bonds to pay for the police and fire stations to be put to the city’s voters later this year.

Nearly 2,500 Owatonna residents signed the petition. Many aren’t sold on the proposal, said Melissa Zimmerman, who coordinated the effort to gather signatures.

“One [concern] is the cost of the project: $65 million dollars. Two is the location: They want to put it on a national historic register property. And number three: the public needs a voice,” said Zimmerman.

The old bank that houses the city’s police station was built in the 1960s, said City Administrator Jenna Tuma. And she said It lacks some basic amenities most police stations have.

“[It doesn’t have] a victim's room, an interview room, holding cells or an evidence room that's located in an appropriate space,” she said.

Meanwhile, the fire station is more than 120 years old.

Earlier this year, the city approved a plan to use bonds to pay for the $65 million cost of building new police and fire facilities that would be paid off over two decades with tax dollars, but the plan was met with concern from residents.

Tuma said residents would likely see about a $35 per month tax increase if the plan moves forward.

“I think people signed the petition because they wanted to learn more about the project. I think some people signed the petition so they could have a vote in it,” said Tuma.

City officials will decide in coming weeks whether the question will be put on the ballot during the August primaries or on the general election ballot in November.

The Minneapolis City Council held a public hearing Wednesday on a proposed ordinance that would limit how landlords screen tenants, including banning questions about immigration status, but did not take a vote.

The proposal would amend the city’s housing maintenance code to prohibit landlords from asking about a renter’s immigration status and add protections against retaliation based on a tenant’s real or perceived status. It would also bar landlords from denying applicants solely for using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).

“This ordinance is really important,” said council member Jason Chavez. “Because since the height of the Operation Metro Surge, many of our neighbors have been impacted, including renters whose immigration status or perceived immigration status has been used to threaten and retaliate against renters who are struggling to pay rent.”

No members of the public testified during the hearing.

After the presentation, council member LaTrisha Vetaw asked to move the item forward without recommendation, saying she wanted more time to review the ordinance. Committee members were not opposed.

If adopted, the ordinance would allow for enforcement actions including fines and potential impacts to landlords’ rental licenses.

At this stage, the ordinance includes exceptions allowing landlords to comply with any legal obligations under state or federal law, such as requirements tied to government housing programs, or when responding to a subpoena, warrant, or other court order.

The proposal will continue through the council process and is likely to come back before members for a vote at an upcoming meeting.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is among the people selected by Time magazine for its annual list of the 100 most influential people.

Frey is included in the “Leaders” section of the list, which was announced Wednesday.

Frey’s entry notes the third-term mayor’s experience leading Minneapolis through the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic — and more recently through this winter’s federal immigration enforcement surge, the largest in U.S. history. That included the fatal shootings of two Minneapolis residents by federal agents.

“As the enforcement surge recedes, Frey is trying to knit together a city where businesses and daily life were hollowed out by fear,” the magazine reported.

Frey told the magazine that delivering core city services — showing the city working for its residents — is part of how he’s moving forward from Operation Metro Surge.

Time’s other selections among the “Leaders” section of its list this year included Pope Leo XIV, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Last year, Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier was named to the Time 100 list alongside fellow WNBA star Breanna Stewart. The selection highlighted their creation of Unrivaled, the women’s professional 3-on-3 basketball league.

A new report shows many parts of greater Minnesota are diversifying and growing. However, sustained population growth looks unlikely with an aging Baby Boomer generation and declining birth rates. That's the topline from the 2026 State of Rural report by the Center for Rural Policy and Development.

Ben Winchester says there's even more to the story around these trends — and it has a lot to do with housing. As a rural sociologist with the University of Minnesota Extension, he studies housing dynamics across the state. MPR News host Kelly Gordon talked with him on Minnesota Now.

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.

Minneapolis city officials say low-income renters have a harder time finding affordable housing that allows cats and dogs compared to people with higher incomes.

A report presented to a city council committee on Tuesday showed that landlords sometimes charge prohibitive pet fees and deposits.

The report included data on 100 rental listings that allowed pets:

• 22 percent included mention of dog breed restrictions

• 52 percent indicated specific pet rent

• 41 percent listed a non-refundable, one-time pet fee

In some cases, those fees and deposits were negotiable. And city officials said landlords must allow service animals.

But council member Aurin Chowdhury said her ward office gets a lot of calls from renters who say they’re having a hard time finding affordable places to live with their pets.

Chowdhury said some homeowners have also told her they want to downsize, “but they have, particularly a bully breed, a larger dog. … They want to move into renting because they don’t need that large family home anymore, and it’s been really difficult for them to make that change in life, because they feel like they are locked in to the place that they have.”

City officials said breed or size restrictions have contributed to a recent increase in the number of dogs surrendered to shelters. They said the number of pets surrendered to Minneapolis Animal Care and Control doubled between 2021 and 2025. And they said of the 2,077 animals surrendered to MACC in 2024 and 2025, 13 percent of owners who gave a reason said they did so due to a housing concern.

Tuesday’s presentation included examples from ordinances passed in other cities that cap how much landlords can charge renters for their pets.

The council has been looking at the issue since December. Council members expressed interest in making it easier for low-income renters to find pet-friendly housing.

“I’m a dog mom,” said council member Pearll Warren. ”I love my dog.”

Warren urged pet owners to treat their animals well and encouraged people to train their dogs to minimize the chance for damage to rental properties.

“I know that it’s frustrating for property owners, (and) for individuals who have animals,” she said. “They’ve come into a home and they’ve done damage to the home — but wonderful places like the Humane Society offer things like puppy kindergarten. My dog went, it was wonderful.”

A Minnesota man was set to meet the woman of his dreams in the fall of 2024 after connecting on TikTok. Sam Nordquist bought a round-trip ticket to Rochester, N.Y., where he expected to stay for two weeks.

But he never saw his Oakdale home again.

Linda Nordquist said she witnessed her 24-year-old son falling head over heels with his new girlfriend.

“They were literally on the phone, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they would sleep on that phone,” she said.

Linda Nordquist said she spoke with Precious Arzuaga and she seemed nice. But Sam’s sister Kayla Nordquist was not a fan of the 14-year age gap between the two, she said. And the mother and sister both disagreed with Sam’s planned trip to visit Arzuaga in upstate New York.

“I really didn’t want Sam to go. I said, ‘you don’t know anybody there. We’ve never been in New York. We don’t know nothing about it. You’d have no friends, no family there.’”

Sam, the youngest of his mother’s three children, pushed back, according to Linda Nordquist.

“You have to let me grow up and spread my wings,” Sam Nordquist told his mother.

“So I said ‘fine,’” she said.

In late September, Linda Nordquist said her goodbyes at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

“I took Sam to the airport, gave him a kiss on the cheek, told him be safe and to check in with me. He said, ‘I will.’”

The day of his return flight — Oct. 12 — came and went. No Sam.

Everything was fine at the beginning of the trip, Linda Nordquist said. But the calls became less frequent, and his family started to worry — to the point where Kayla Nordquist asked Sam for a video of him and Arzuaga as proof of life.

“I promise you I’m not hurting your brother. I would never hurt him. I really love your brother,” Arzuaga said directly to the camera in the recording.

A more than 2-minute video appears to show Precious and Sam in her home. Sam doesn’t speak much in the video, and Precious has her arm around Sam.

“I’ve never put your brother in a situation where he feels he’s scared. I just love him, and I care for him a lot,” Arzuaga said in the video.

In February 2025, Linda Nordquist reported her son missing. Four days later on Feb. 13, she and her adult children were on the road to New York’s Finger Lakes region to help in the search.

Linda brought a bullhorn so Sam could hear their voices during the search. She also had some of Sam’s clothing for the dogs involved in the search to sniff his scent.

Then, a call came in from New York law enforcement, Kayla Nordquist said. “I remember the words, ‘I’m sorry, but we found a body,’” she recalled.

Police said Sam Nordquist was physically and sexually assaulted. He was also psychologically abused. His body was found wrapped in black trash bags.

Seven people including Arzuaga and her adult son, Thomas Eaves, are accused of torturing and killing Sam Nordquist. The other defendants are Jennifer A. Quijano, Kyle R. Sage, Patrick Goodwin, Emily Motyka and Kimberly Sochia.

They have all pleaded not guilty. Arzuaga was also charged with two counts of coercion for forcing her two children, then aged 7 and 12, to participate in Nordquist’s torture.

New York investigators say Sam Nordquist was held against his will for about a month in Arzuaga’s apartment at Patty’s Lodge. They estimate he died Feb. 2 due to the multiple injuries he sustained.

“Our investigators executed a search warrant at Patty’s Lodge room number 22 in the town of Hopewell as part of an investigation into the disappearance of Sam Nordquist,” Capt. Kelly Swift said in a press conference after the body was discovered. “Our investigation has revealed a deeply disturbing pattern of abuse that ultimately resulted in Sam’s tragic death.”

The suspects allegedly moved his body in an attempt to conceal the crime, investigators said.

“The facts and the circumstances of this crime are beyond depraved. This is by far the worst homicide investigation that our office has ever been a part of it,” former Ontario County District Attorney Jim Ritts said.

Former first Assistant District Attorney Kelly Wolford said Sam was restrained and had no access to his phone.

“He was denied proper nutrition and hydration. He was fed feces. He was forced to drink urine and chew spit. They physically restrained him. They forced him to obey their commands, treating him like a dog,” Wolford said.

An Ontario County Grand Jury charged each defendant with first degree murder. This charge carries the most significant penalty under New York state law, according to Wolford.

“It’s a rare circumstance where we stand before you and charge this subdivision of murder in the first degree, where it alleges that somebody was tortured to death,” she said.

The charge, she added, specifically requires that prosecutors prove that the defendants tortured Sam Nordquist.

“And that they did so because they enjoyed it. That’s what murder in the first degree is,” Wolford said.

All seven defendants will be tried separately and the first case set for trial will be Arzuaga’s in September. The other six have not been scheduled yet, but Eaves, Arzuaga’s son, and another defendant will appear in court April 22.

Nordquist was an Black transgender man. Some have asked why hate crime charges have not been applied against the defendants. Wolford said the case is bigger than a hate crime.

“Sam was beaten, assaulted, sexually abused, starved, held captive and we cannot make sense of that. We cannot put that on his gender, and we cannot put that on his race,” she said during a press conference last year. “And I know many will ask the question, why? Well, as I stand here today as a human being, we’ll never know the answer, why. Because what human being could do, what happened to Sam.”

It’s been just over a year since Sam’s funeral, but his memory is still alive. His case made its way to all corners of the world. Linda Nordquist said people from all over — Africa, Ireland, Australia, just to name a few — have reached out to the family. A 1,500-member “Justice for Sam” Facebook page was created and Linda and Kayla Nordquist are active members.

But keeping his memory alive means remembering the trauma of their loss as well. Kayla Nordquist said it’s been tough.

“A whole year has gone by, and my heart feels the same. It’s completely shattered since the day I found out that he was gone,” she said. “I don’t think any amount of time will ever put it back together. I’m still heartbroken.”

The horrifying details of the case haunt seemingly average aspects of the Nordquists' daily lives.

“A year has passed, and I still have not been able to smell bleach without wanting to throw up.”

The seven defendants used bleach on Sam, according to the indictment, so they won’t use it. And Linda said she avoids certain trash bags that look like the ones wrapped around Sam's body.

“Me and Kayla won’t use a black garbage bag with gray handles. I have turquoise,” she said.

Linda Nordquist, Kayla Nordquist and her three children recently drove to New York for some meetings with the new Ontario County District Attorney and his staff. They also visited a willow tree planted last June for Sam Nordquist. It’s right on Canandaigua Lake, one of the main Finger Lakes.

Rochester, New York-area supporters of Sam Nordquist and his family have raised money for them after his death. Some advocates are working to honor Sam Nordquist again with a Japanese cherry blossom tree to be planted in Oakdale — where he lived with his mother.

When all seven trials are over, Linda Nordquist plans to move out of the home she shared with her son, she said.

“When I do move, I am taking pictures of Sam’s bedroom, and I’m gonna have it replicated,” Linda Nordquist said. “It’ll be how he has it. In a new place.”

Sam’s mother and sister said they will attend every trial in his case.

Fifty years ago this month, 1,500 people flooded a new art gallery in downtown Minneapolis. It was 1976, and the air was filled with cigarette smoke and chatter from the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. People who were in attendance say the atmosphere was buzzing, because something was different about this space: Every piece of artwork on display was made by a woman.

“It was so many people that they had to take turns coming in and out of the space,” artist Patricia Olson recalls. “It spilled out into the alleyway and out into the street.”

This was the opening of the WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space, a feminist gallery, in the Wyman Building.

“Everybody at the next gallery meeting just kind of sat back and said, ‘What the heck was that?’” Olson says. “It was overwhelming, and we felt that we had arrived.”

A WARM front

WARM stands for the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota, a feminist art collective that artists Susan Fiene and Lynne Lockie had launched three years earlier.

On April 10, an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the gallery opened at the Kickernick Gallery, which is just across the alley from where the original WARM gallery once stood. “LEGACY: The Women of WARM Gallery” features the work of 73 of WARM’s original 90 members, from tiny sculpture to massive paintings and a virtual reality experience.

“During the winter of 1973-74, we created a phone tree to locate other women artists,” Fiene recalls in the exhibition catalog. “WARM needed structure for the gallery project. We hammered out the constitution on my dining room table.”

Members created WARM as a platform for women artists when galleries and museums were barely showing work by women at all. They created a mission statement: “To establish women's artistic and cultural experience as a valuable and integral part of society.”

WARM would go on to become one of the most prominent women’s art collectives in the country, drawing the attention of the groundbreaking feminist artists Judy Chicago, Betye Saar, Alice Neel and Miriam Schapiro, the latter of whom attended the 1976 gallery opening and reported that “it is the most elegant of the five such collective art galleries in the United States and that it is very professional.”

The “Legacy” exhibition has provided an experience for the members of WARM, as well as the hundreds of students and artists they mentored, to reflect.

“It never occurred to me when I was a young woman, making things at my dining room table and then in my basement, while I was raising three little kids, that I could actually become an artist,” says artist Harriet Bart. “Through WARM, I learned it was possible through cooperation and hard work.”

Mona Lisa and other stories

Bart and Hazel Belvo are old friends as well as artists whose work has been collected by leading art institutions, from the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Walker Art Center to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

They sit next to each other, with a stack of old photos and other WARM ephemera, in Belvo's airy home studio up on a hillside in Golden Valley. Bart opens a pamphlet with the “Mona Lisa” on its cover and reads.

“‘If the ‘Mona Lisa’ had been painted by a woman, the world would probably never have seen it,’ which I think is really true,” Bart said. “So, if you believe a creative talent must not be wasted just because it belongs to a woman, help make sure it doesn't happen. Become a member of the most controversial art gallery in the Twin Cities.”

Bart and Belvo remember how, in the 1970s, even local galleries and museums were not representing women. Bart ticks off data from exhibitions at the Walker Art Center: “These are solo shows: 1979 — five men, two women. 1980 — seven men, one woman. 1981— six men, one woman,” Bart says. “Then the group shows: in 1979 there were 75 men, 15 women; 1980, 67 men and 12 women; and in 1981, 171 men and 68 women.”

“Numbers speak,” Belvo says.

WARM, Belvo and Bart say, wanted to change those numbers. They point to the Walker Art Center exhibitions of late: In the past year, there have many blockbuster solo art exhibitions by women, including Dyani White Hawk’s “Love Language” and Christine Sun Kim’s “All Day All Night”

“This is a really important movement, a very important time in the history of women and art, and in particular in our area,” Bart says. “Those of us who know the story are fading away.”

‘Most unnatural and most fabulous’: Warming to the art of consensus

A few days later, and a few days before the exhibition opening, Bart joined other WARM members Patricia Olson and Vesna Kittelson at the Kickernick Gallery, surrounded by the artwork of the feminist collective: Quimetta Perle’s textile featuring Georgia politician Stacey Abrams; Marty Nash’s bold, abstract acrylic painting; Joyce Lyon’s pond surface in oil stick; and Vicki Lee Johnston’s mysterious nestlike sculpture made of steel and sheep hair.

They reminisce about the exhibitions, the grant writing and gallery sitting that was part of a member’s duties, and the visiting guest speakers of the feminist celebrity kind — such as art historian Linda Nochlin, who had penned the seminal feminist essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” just two years before WARM formed.

Members also created the triennial publication, the WARM Journal, which featured the work of local poets and writers.

“One of the problems back in the mid-70s was that women's work was not being written about. When it was written about, it was not written about in any sort of way that made sense from our point of view as artists,” Olson says.

“If you don't understand a woman's life, you don't understand the work that women are making,” Bart adds.

There were also monthly member meetings, which many say became foundational to their future careers.

“Those Saturday meetings were endless, and we sat in our directors chairs in the circle, and we worked on any given topic or subject that needed to be dealt with to reach consensus,” Bart says. “I learned a lot about trust and listening: Instead of just listening to my own voice, listening to the other voices and how we could do things together that we couldn’t do alone.”

“We did not want to have a hierarchical organization,” Olson adds. “There were absolutely no guidelines for putting together an organization like this. We were feeling it out, which was both exciting and wonderful, and it was consternating at the same time.”

Kittelson had recently arrived in the U.S. from what was then communist Yugoslavia when she joined WARM. She says these meetings were eye-opening.

“The process was fascinating, unknown to me, and the first signs of my comprehension of democracy,” Kittelson says. “It was natural here, but to me, it was most unnatural and most fabulous.”

‘Where would I be without them?’

For the next 15 years, the gallery was run collectively by its 90 members. It closed in 1991. Members point to a few causes: The rent increase at the Wyman Building and the progress WARM had made. Many members went on to exhibit their work across the country and teach at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the University of Minnesota, St. Catherine University and more.

“Many of these people stayed in touch,” Olson says. “They became colleagues in other projects. They formed deep friendships and deep aesthetic connections with each other.”

Even with the gallery closure, WARM continued to mount exhibitions and ran a mentorship program through 2018. That same year, archivist and artist Heather Carroll, a mentee of WARM, curated an exhibition at St. Catherine University, “Roots and Fruits: Exploring the History and Impact of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota.”

“I am definitely a fruit of WARM. Where would I be without them? They've been my teachers, my mentors, my friends,” Carroll says. She has also been compiling an ongoing WARM oral history project for the Minnesota Historical Society, which she will present May 28 at the Kickernick.

“I'm looking back to look forward. What can we learn from the women of WARM and the way they did things and bring it into the now so that we can do better?” Carroll says.

Some WARM members have died since the gallery closed in 1991, while others left Minnesota long ago. Many, however, continue their art practices — like Bart, who recently moved into an art studio in the Kickernick building. Much of the art in the “Legacy” exhibition was made by WARM artists in the past few years.

A 50-year crescendo

On April 12, dozens of WARM members came from across the state and country to attend an opening reception at the Kickernick, which also had a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

“I'm feeling exhilarated,” Patricia Olson says. “It probably rivals the 1,500 that showed up at the original opening 50 years ago.”

“It's like a crescendo, a 50-year crescendo,” Belvo says.

Member Quimetta Perle traveled to Minneapolis from the East Coast, where she’s still making art.

“I've gotten to see a lot of my friends and colleagues from 50 years ago,” Perle says. For Perle, WARM was “a gallery in which I could show absolutely anything I wanted without any censorship whatsoever, and that was so important and so thrilling.”

Member Dani Roach recalls how difficult it was to balance a career working in libraries and her artistic pursuits when she became a member in the 1980s.

“A number of the other artists had full-time jobs too, and you saw that it could work, that you could squeeze some time to make your work, to sit at the gallery, to go to meetings,” Roach says. “I look back on those years — I have no idea how I did it, and I'm so glad I did it.”

‘We could do this too’

Painter Nicole Drilling studies a frame covered in glass doorknobs with the text “Easy” within, a piece by WARM member Susan Bacik.

“Look at all these people here. They touched so many lives and made so many things possible through the power of coming together and deciding their own fate,” says Drilling, tears in her eyes. “This is very inspiring.”

Drilling was an MCAD student and a mentee of MCAD professors Patricia Olson and Elizabeth Erickson, who passed away in 2024. Drilling doesn’t see this kind of support system for women artists today.

“These women were like, ‘We're not getting shown anywhere. The only way we do it is if we do it ourselves, and we do it together,’” Drilling says. “These times absolutely call for that. The show is very timely for taking a moment to recognize that we could do this too.”

The Minneapolis City Council’s decision to start a process that could result in the decriminalization and legalization of adult bathhouses is a pivotal chapter in LGBTQ+ history in the city. Council members who support the measures say the ordinance was fear-based and needs to be updated to reflect modern times.

Artist and activist Patrick Scully, owner of Patrick’s Cabaret in Minneapolis, remembers what it was like before the bathhouses were extinct. In 1979, it was six years before he would be diagnosed with HIV, and by 1988, every bathhouse in the city would be closed — but not before several pivotal moments in city history led by the Minneapolis police vice squad.

In the early hours of Dec. 1, 1979, Scully was watching television at a friend’s house when the news of the Locker Room Baths raid came on. Two undercover Minneapolis police officers in towels gave the all clear as dozens of police filed in with flashlights, batons and dogs, grabbing men and ticketing them for their alleged crimes for what later became known as the biggest adult bathhouse raid in U.S. history.

Of the 125 men who were ticketed, nine were arrested for the then-felony of sodomy. One of the men was Doug Victor, a bathhouse employee, who spoke out about the charges. He burned his citation at city hall and shouted to local media, “I am a sodomite!” Victor’s arrest sheet went into explicit detail about the sexual acts he was performing.

According to eyewitnesses, after things settled down, the police removed a 12-foot naugahyde penis that hung from the ceiling of the bathhouse, strapped it on top of their car and drove it back to the precinct in the middle of the night. Rumors say there are photos somewhere of officers posing with it, but they’ve been long lost to history.

LGBTQ+ historians, activists and those who frequented the bathhouses say the increased police surveillance of adult bathhouses, fear of the AIDS crisis and city redevelopment and gentrification all worked in tandem to close the bathhouses — and the ordinance that passed in 1988 banning them.

Nearly 40 years later, the Minneapolis City Council is deciding if this decision should be reversed. At a meeting on April 9, council members voted to send the proposed ordinances to staff so they could research and present their findings at a later date.

The history of the baths, and the raids that followed

In the 1970s and 1980s in Minneapolis, sexual culture was alive and well, local historian Myra Billund Phibbs says. There were plentiful adult bookstores, pornography theaters, adult bathhouses and a decades-long culture of downtown cruising — casual sexual activity in public places, like along the river.

At the time, adult bathhouses in Minneapolis were community spaces, historically frequented by gay men, where people could also engage in sexual activity or relax after going out to bars. Bathhouses often had local gay activists working there; there were free condoms toward the end of their run. Some even offered cookies and chocolate milk in the lounge area or a place to dance in a disco.

There were three bathhouses in the city: Locker Room Baths, Hennepin Baths and Big Daddy’s Bathhouse. Locker Room, later known as the 315 Health Club, was the most favored. It opened at its first location near present-day Target Center in 1969 and usually made about $2,000 a week — and up to $500,000 a year — with low overhead and minimal licensing, according to Billund Phibbs. The owners of the Locker Room allegedly had ties to organized crime.

Hundreds of guests came nightly, and the bathhouse was most popular after bar close, between 1 and 2 a.m. There were 60 private rooms, a dancefloor, a sauna and an orgy room that was later closed. The walls were painted all black, and heavy metal music often adorned the space.

Bathhouses were seen as a more racially integrated, inclusive space; this wasn’t always the case at bars. They also served patrons across social classes, and they were a cheap place to stay for the night if people were sobering up or fleeing a violent situation.

Until 2001, same-sex sexual activity between consenting men was illegal in Minnesota. When talking about the history of the bathhouses, Scully says that fact has to be centered in conversations.

“All of this is taking place in an environment in which same-sexual activity in Minnesota is illegal. Any sexual activity comes with a threat that you could get arrested for it, you could go to jail,” he said

In an interview with the Twin Cities Reader during his legal battle, Doug Victor talked about what he said was an unneeded amount of attention on the sexual acts of gay men.

“People think we’re sex fiends, perverts — but there are so many other aspects to my life other than what I do in bed. But that’s what it comes down to, to me. That’s what I am to them. That’s what they want to regulate. That’s where they want to f--- with me.”

Hennepin Baths emerged in the 1950s and was usually for an older, more affluent crowd. It was located in the basement of the Lumber Exchange Building but closed in 1979 for violating city hotel ordinances. Big Daddy’s Bathhouse wasn’t as nice of a venue, according to patrons, and it closed in 1983.

Before the Locker Room raid of 1979, there was a “raid” at Big Daddy’s, but it wasn’t exactly by the book.

The head of the police department’s vice squad, the deputy mayor and a businessman spent the evening of June 28, 1979, out drinking, according to Billund Phibbs and local news reports. They decided to go to Big Daddy’s, which was located on the Block E strip of Hennepin Avenue.

Without a warrant or any approval, the three men went to the bathhouse and began yelling homophobic remarks at patrons and pulled 30 people out of their rooms and began searching through their personal belongings. Witnesses said the three men were so drunk, they had to hold onto the walls to support themselves.

In an interview with the newspaper now known as the Minnesota Star Tribune on June 29, 1979, the head of the vice squad said, “I don’t have to have any warrant. I can go in anywhere and inspect anything anytime I want.” A Hennepin County grand jury decided to take no action on the raid, citing there wasn’t enough evidence.

The night ignited the gay community as the news spread. The head of the vice squad called Big Daddy’s “a whorehouse for men” (he later said he was misquoted), and protesters demanded police and city administration be reformed.

The mayor, police chief and vice squad head were all set to be replaced by more liberal counterparts and, as a final goodbye, they conducted the massive raid on the Locker Room in December.

“This was seen as a parting gift by the outgoing police chief,” said Billund Phibbs. “They knew that Tony Bouza was coming in, they knew he was coming in as a reformer, and the vice squad in particular very, very deeply resented that and essentially wanted to do something that left him a message.”

In early February of 1980, there was a second raid on the Locker Room, and 102 men were ticketed, exactly one day before Tony Bouza would take over as the next chief. According to an article in the paper, Bouza — a former New York City policeman — said his philosophy on vice laws was “not to intrude into the privacy of the individuals.”

Archives from coverage of adult bathhouses

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While the Big Daddy’s raid began more conversations within the LGBTQ+ community, the Locker Room raid pushed them mainstream.

According to Billund Phibbs, many people in Minneapolis didn’t even know about the bathhouses at the time. They blended into the background of Hennepin Avenue, but that soon changed. Documents from the Tretter Collection archives at the University of Minnesota show local media began writing about the raids almost weekly and covered council discussions on bathhouses extensively until the passage of the 1988 ordinance.

Brian Coyle takes a stance

The beginning of the 1980s brought the elections of the first openly lesbian Minnesota state legislator, Karen Clark, and the first openly gay Minneapolis City Council member, Brian Coyle. Coyle became a pivotal part of the bathhouse ban because, at first, he was firmly against it, but he later voted in favor of the ban.

The first positive HIV test in Minneapolis was in 1982. At the time, New York and San Francisco were seeing high numbers, but in Minnesota, it felt like something far away. By 1988, 447 cases of HIV were reported to the Minnesota Department of Health, and 252 Minnesotans had died from AIDS-related illness.

New York and San Francisco decided to close their bathhouses in 1985 and, soon after, Minneapolis did the same. Billund Phibbs said bathhouses were used as the scapegoat for HIV transmission and were deemed “hotspots.”

David Lurie was the city health commissioner at the time. He researched the effectiveness of closing the bathhouses in other cities and told city council that it resulted in no change to HIV transmission — people would continue engaging in sexual activity elsewhere. Yet, even with these findings, he recommended a contradictory policy in 1987 suggesting “high-risk sexual behavior” be prohibited.

Coyle wasn’t convinced that bathhouses weren’t a high contributor to positive HIV cases. Noah Barth, who studies queer public history and is an exhibit developer, said while looking through Coyle’s personal papers at the Minnesota History Center, it was clear he was torn. Coyle also tested positive for HIV in 1986 and had not gone public with his diagnosis. He later died from AIDS-related illness in 1991.

“Brian Coyle was instrumental in the bathhouse ban passing, but what I discovered from his collection was a complicated story,” Barth said. “I wonder, at the time, if he wasn’t thinking so much about the ramifications of closing the bathhouses and was more thinking along the lines of, ‘Well, this couldn’t make the HIV epidemic worse, right?’”

“Ultimately, I think he chose the wrong thing to do, but there were many people who thought he chose the right thing to do,” Barth added.

Coyle’s history is complicated for many people, Barth said. While he helped open the door for future LGBTQ+ people in Minnesota politics, he closed the door on much of his community when he supported the ban, according to Barth and Scully.

Part of Brian Coyle's personal papers at the Minnesota History Center

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In a March 30, 1988, issue of the paper now known as the Minnesota Star Tribune, Coyle said, “For me, this is not easy. I have some people who won’t speak to me. This is one of those tougher issues because it’s so emotionally laden and passionate. It deals with the stuff of life and death. I’ve been taking the flak on it for months.”

On April 1 of that year, the Minneapolis City Council voted 11-0 to approve the ban. The Locker Room, the final bathhouse standing, closed just one day before the vote. Months later, Block E was demolished and the city prioritized the construction of luxury housing on Hennepin Avenue.

‘It’s weird we don’t have these spaces’

While working as a policy aide for the Minneapolis City Council, Claire Kingstad got an email from Phil Duran, the former legal director for OutFront Minnesota. Embrace North, a sauna in Linden Hills, was facing problems due to the bathhouse ordinance. The sauna is not an adult bathhouse, but a zoning law labeled them as a sexually oriented business.

Duran had asked Kingstad if she had heard of the work he and Karri Joe Plowman led in 2017 and of the history of the bathhouse ban. She hadn’t, but it soon took over the bulk of her work with Ben Carrier, another policy aide. They formed the Safer Sex Spaces coalition, a group dedicated to overturning the ban.

The two worked together to amend the code in 2023 and update it with standards from the CDC. Previous language, they said, was “harmful and stigmatizing.” All 13 council members voted in favor of the new language. Kingstad and Carrier also worked closely with sex workers in the city and groups like SWOP, the Sex Workers Outreach Project, and SWIM, Sex Workers in Minneapolis, who are also in favor of the ban being overturned.

Other cities in the U.S. revisited bathhouse bans, if they had them, in past years; but Minneapolis’ has remained in effect.

There is one adult bathhouse in the state, the Duluth Family Sauna. While it doesn’t explicitly cater to the LGBTQ+ community, there are private rooms and the basement is called “the bullpen,” a space reserved specifically for men.

“I would argue that we are one of the queerest cities of many in the country,” Kingstad said. “We have a very high density of LGBTQ residents, and it’s weird we don’t have these spaces here. And it’s frankly something that I would say is expected for a city that is an inclusive, welcoming queer and trans refuge place.”

Plowman, the founder of Twin Cities Leather, said the ban “just doesn’t make any sense” to them, and they see overturning it as a form of restorative justice.

They add that there are cities in red states that have bathhouses. “That’s what I’ve always thought is humorous, is that we’re such a great progressive state, but the two cities that don’t have facilities like this are two cities based in religion. That’s Boston and Minneapolis. That’s Catholic and that’s Lutheran,” Plowman said.

“That’s what it really comes down to, in my opinion: We’re following some old ideology and that we’re squeamish about this,” he added.

Plowman and others said that sex parties and sexual gathering spaces in Minneapolis didn’t go away after the ban, they just moved to other places. Sometimes they were safe sex parties, like ones that Patrick Scully hosted, and other times they were in places that weren’t practicing safe sex.

Dylan Boyer and Jay Orne with the Aliveness Project have helped host the monthly Safer Sex Spaces coalition meetings. Boyer, the director of development for the Aliveness Project, testified in the 2023 language update and shared his story of accessing an HIV test for the first time at a bathhouse in Chicago.

For Boyer and Orne, they think the best path forward is from a public health standpoint. They say HIV is no longer a “death sentence,” with medication advancements like PrEP. As the times change, they say city ordinances must keep up.

In 2018, the city of Minneapolis signed on to be a fast track city and take on initiatives to end HIV. It follows the 90-90-90 goal, meaning 90 percent of people living with HIV are aware of their status, 90 percent of people diagnosed are on antiretroviral therapy and 90 percent of people on medication achieve viral suppression. The year 2030 is the goal to hit that, but Boyer said he doesn’t think the city has done enough to be successful. But reversing the bathhouse ban could point them in the right direction.

“[Bathhouses are] one of those spaces that we can really connect with folks that are on the outskirts of that care, and not knowing their status and not knowing what prevention looks like for them. This is a population that we’re able to tap into, that we are not currently able to reach,” he said.

During the April 9 meeting, three more council members joined the ordinances as co-authors. But a few members questioned if now is the right time to pursue the ordinances, including council member Elizabeth Schaffer. She questioned the spending of staff time and dollars on researching the ordinances.

“These resolutions are simply disconnected from the reality of everyday residents and people trying to do business in our city,” she said.

Several council members pushed back against Schaffer, and council member Aisha Chughtai said that members of the council were spreading "homophobic rhetoric.”

Schaffer said the ordinances were “not a high priority” for most of the members in the diocese and “no one in the city of Minneapolis is criminalizing anyone for their sexuality.” She also read an email from a constituent who said they were a part of the Minnesota Alliance Against AIDS and supported Coyle’s run for council; decades later, they remain against bathhouses.

Research by staff on the ordinance is likely to wrap up in May, with a public hearing in June.

The next era of baths

Orne said his dream would be to have an Aliveness Thrive satellite clinic in a bathhouse to provide education and care. He wants to contribute to new and improved bathhouses that are run with the health of the LGBTQ+ community at the forefront, while being more inclusive to other identities outside of gay men.

“There were times where I had bad times in those spaces [bathhouses], and I think we can design them today in a way that’s really going to help people rather than just leave them to keep hurting,” he said. “That’s where folks are. We need to go there and create spaces for them rather than just lonely hotel rooms.”

Patrick Scully said it’s been hard to watch the city council teeter back and forth with their support or disagreement with the ban over the years. Scully’s message for the city council is simple: He wants them to picture him when they think about the ordinance.

“You need to pass this law as if you were me. You need to pass this law in my best interest,” he said. “Because if this is regulating behavior that you can’t imagine yourself ever engaging in, then you need to do a deep dive into understanding the lives of the people whose behavior you’re seeking to regulate and ask yourself: Am I really OK with playing God like that?”

A prominent Minnesota Catholic bishop with close ties to President Donald Trump is sharply criticizing the president for his social media comments over the weekend lambasting the pope.

President Trump posted a long tirade on his Truth Social account Sunday night criticizing Pope Leo XIV, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” and “WEAK on Nuclear Weapons.” The president accused the first ever U.S. born pope of “catering to the Radical Left,” and he credited himself as the reason Pope Leo was elected by his fellow cardinals last year to lead the Vatican.

The pope has been critical of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, calling Trump’s threat last week to destroy Iran’s “entire civilization” as “truly unacceptable.” It appears those comments and the Pope’s even harsher criticism of the war on Saturday are what sparked Trump’s social media diatribe.

Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, who has been a close Catholic ally of the president, called Trump’s verbal attack on the pope “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful," adding that the comments “don’t contribute at all to a constructive conversation.”

“It is the Pope’s prerogative to articulate Catholic doctrine and the principles that govern the moral life,” Barron wrote on X. “In regard to the concrete application of those principles, people of good will can and do disagree.”

Barron softened his criticism a little by adding that he thinks there are “many ways that the Trump administration has reached out to Catholics and other people of faith.” But he added that “the President owes the Pope an apology.”

Pope Leo’s comments the day before may have provoked Trump’s ire.

At a special prayer vigil Saturday night at St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo denounced the “delusion of omnipotence” that is fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran and said political leaders need to stop and negotiate peace.

"Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life," Leo said.

Even after Trump’s lengthy critique of him Sunday night, Pope Leo told reporters Monday he’s not backing down.

“I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do,” said Pope Leo aboard his plane as he started his trip to Africa.

That same day, Trump told reporters at the White House that he will not apologize to the pope.

“He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran. Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result,” Trump said.

In his tweet, Bishop Barron, who sits on the president’s Religious Liberty Commission, offered an olive branch and called for an end to the war of words between the White House and the Holy See.

“I would warmly recommend that serious Catholics within the Trump administration–Secretary Rubio, Vice President Vance, Ambassador Brian Burch, and others–might meet with Vatican officials so that a real dialogue can take place,” Barron continued in his post. “This is far preferable to the statements on social media.”

Barron has a wide base of support on social media, and his words come with some heft. He is well known for his Word on Fire media empire of books, videos, web casts, and blogs and has amassed 2.5 million YouTube subscribers.

In November, he was one of the candidates for the most prominent leadership role in the American Catholic Church – president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He did not win the election.

The City of Minneapolis is gearing up to start construction at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue — the intersection where George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. In a public meeting Monday, city staff said they plan to break ground in June.

The rebuilding plan was approved by the City Council in December after years of debate over what to do with the site. The final plan calls for roads open to two-way traffic and maintains the existing roundabout design in the middle of the intersection, with space set aside for memorials.

Construction this year will cover phase one of the project: roadways and sidewalks on 38th Street to the east of the intersection, and on Chicago Avenue south of the intersection. The remaining blocks, and the intersection at the heart of the square, will be rebuilt during phase two in 2027.

At a public meeting Monday, city staff said they’re adding details on detours and schedules to the city’s project website, as well as launching a weekly email newsletter with construction updates.

Mary Altman is the Minneapolis public arts administrator. At Monday’s community meeting, she said city staff are making plans to preserve art currently in the square.

“The city's goal is to make sure that we have an active memorial space at all times during construction,” Altman said.

Some of the artwork — like the iconic raised fist sculptures surrounding the square and at its center — will be temporarily relocated during construction. Altman said city staff are working to plan the relocation with artists behind some of the other art in the square, including Mari Mansfield, the artist who created the list of names of victims of police violence on Chicago Avenue.

Some local residents and activists say they’re still frustrated with the project as the city prepares to break ground.

Currently, community members and local activists keep up the square’s many memorials and artworks, plus regular gatherings and events. Several of those involved protested the city’s plan for reconstruction and say it’s not the city’s place to decide the future of a site where its officer killed Floyd.

A group of community members drafted their own plan for reconstruction, which called for more pedestrian-only space and one-way traffic on a stretch of Chicago Avenue.

George Floyd Square’s lead caretaker Jeanelle Austin said she wanted the city to give more consideration to that plan.

“It's fair to say in the community that there is a desire for the infrastructure changes, but what that change looks like is a different imagination, I think, that the community has put forth from what public works desires,” Austin said.

The City Council considered building a pedestrian-only plaza in the intersection but ultimately voted against it. A public works study that said the project would take several years and raise logistical and legal challenges, and several community members and business owners pushed the council to keep the streets open.

City staff say the intersection is due for regularly slated construction to replace aging infrastructure and lead pipes. In rounds of surveys and community meetings dating back to 2022, many residents and business owners in the mixed-use intersection said they wanted new streets that kept traffic, plus alleyway and driveway access.

The approved plan will also add a sidewalk-level bike lane on Chicago Avenue south of 38th Street. It calls for a wide pedestrian space in front of Unity Foods — formerly Cup Foods — where Floyd was killed, so cars don’t drive over the spot.

The streets at the center of the intersection will be raised to sidewalk level, and the city plans to install gates so the streets can be easily closed to traffic for events.

The city is holding another public meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Phelps Park.

Friends and family of a Wisconsin man shot and killed last week by a Superior, Wis., police officer are speaking out against the shooting, calling it unjustified and demanding the release of body camera footage of the incident.

David Ducado Menton, 42, from Solon Springs, Wis., was shot around 10 p.m. on April 7, following what law enforcement officials described as a “physical altercation” with the officer.

At a rally outside the Douglas County Courthouse in Superior on April 13, loved ones described Menton as someone who had a tough life and who made mistakes, but also as a passionate, fun-loving, thoughtful person who would do anything for his friends and family, even though he didn’t have much.

“I can't imagine the whole rest of my life without him,” said Autumn Khalar, who has a young son with Menton’s brother. “He's an uncle to my son, and we can't get him back.”

Khalar said she went grocery shopping at Walmart with Menton the night he was killed. Afterwards they stopped to visit a friend when an officer pulled up, looking for the friend who had a warrant out for his arrest.

According to Khalar, Menton got spooked, because he also had an outstanding warrant. He went to their car, and then walked toward his friend’s apartment building. Before Menton made it inside, Khalar said the officer grabbed him and tackled him to the ground.

Shortly thereafter, she said, the officer shot him.

“He didn't even see it coming. And it was why? Because he had a warrant for missing court? I get he has a history. But that does not excuse what happened that night. It was extremely wrong. He doesn't get to die like that. I'm not gonna allow that.”

Khalar acknowledged that Menton resisted the officer. She said he was moving around, trying to get up on his hands and knees. Still, she said the officer didn’t have to shoot him.

“His life shouldn't have ended this short. He should just be in jail right now, getting another chance to turn things around. But instead, his life is over.”

When Menton was 20, he shot and killed his father in self defense at their home near Chisholm in northeast Minnesota, after his father returned home early in the morning and fired a shot at him and his brother, according to several news reports from the time.

More recently, Menton was convicted of several felony charges in northwest Wisconsin, including drug-related charges in 2020.

“He's made some mistakes in his life, but he did not deserve to go out like that. He's gonna be missed by a lot of people in this community,” said his friend Kyle Dodrill.

According to the account released by state officials the day after the shooting, Menton attempted to flee the scene as the officer approached. The officer and Menton then “engaged in a physical altercation. During the altercation, the officer discharged their weapon, striking the subject.”

Officers also recovered a handgun at the scene. It’s unclear whose firearm it was.

The Superior Police Department has not identified the officer who shot Menton. The officer is on standard administrative leave. The officer was wearing a body camera. Footage from the incident has not been released.

A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Justice said the agency’s priority is to investigate the incident “in a thorough and objective manner.” It will then provide the investigation’s reports to the district attorney, who will decide whether to file criminal charges.

In a statement issued Monday afternoon, Superior police chief Paul Winterscheidt acknowledged community members are looking for answers.

“Our officers involved responded to a rapidly evolving and dangerous situation. They are now navigating not only the weight of that moment, but also the scrutiny that follows,” Winterscheidt said.

“We will always support our officers when they act in good faith, in accordance with their training, and in service to protecting this community. That support is not conditional on public opinion or social media narratives; it is grounded in the facts, the law, and the responsibilities they carry every day.”

One of the most iconic scenes in 20th-century American cinema unfolds in the movie “Fargo,” where a villain loads a human foot into a wood chipper as a pregnant cop arrives to arrest him.

Actor Peter Stormare played the villain, Gaear Grimsrud, and will be on hand Tuesday night for the film's 30th anniversary screening at the Fargo Theater.

“I can't wait, and I've never seen the movie,” he said. “So now I can see the movie and see what made it so good.”

That’s right: Stormare has seen clips from the movie but never seen “Fargo” all the way through.

“That's a good thing about human beings. We don't like to look at ourselves, and we don't like to listen to ourselves on tape,” he said.

Stormare and the Coen brothers

Stormare landed the role of Gaear Grimsrud after acting at The Public Theater in New York City alongside Frances McDormand, he said. McDormand is married to Joel Coen, who directed “Fargo” with his brother, Ethan.

Stormare said the brothers wanted to cast him as Grimsrud after seeing his performance in New York.

“They asked me, also, ‘Can you get a beard?’ [Grimsrud] had a beard that was also blonde. So they dyed my hair and my beard blonde, platinum blonde. And I met them in Soho, and they started laughing and said, ‘You look like Kenny Rogers on methamphetamine.’”

Stormare complained that his look was causing too many people to stop and stare at him, and he asked to ditch either the beard or the hairstyle.

“And they said, ‘No, you're right. Just have the hair.’”

Grimsrud is a violent man whose presence is menacing, as he is a man of few words.

“That was what made him special, because he didn't speak much,” Stormare said. “But when he spoke, he sort of spoke in his own language.”

To perform Grimsrud, Stormare said he channeled Clint Eastwood’s performances from movies like “Dirty Harry” and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

“His daring approach to acting, no one had done before. He was a groundbreaking trendsetter, for me, who knew that silence speaks louder than words,” Stormare said.

Stormare’s character may have been mostly silent, but the rest of the cast had lots to say in the film — and their accents scream Minnesotan.

Minnesota accents and other stereotypes

Ethan and Joel Coen grew up in the Twin Cities, and the accents and speech patterns of their characters had to match their vision.

The end result was exaggerated accents, with characters frequently exclaiming “Oh geez,” “You betcha” and “Oh ya” along with other stereotypical Minnesota-isms.

To nail down the accent, the Coen brothers reached out to a friend of theirs who was a reporter in Minnesota, according to Todd Melby, author of “A Lot Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere,” a book about the making of “Fargo.”

Melby also works as an editor for MPR News.

“Joel and Ethan said to him, ‘Our next project takes place in Minnesota. So we want to find someone who's got that accent. Do you think you could do interviews with people, and that way, we would have several people to choose from who are real Minnesotans, who sound like they're from Minnesota?’” said Melby.

Melby said the Coen brothers also played up the weather. Characters wade through deep snow, and the sun rarely appears.

“It wasn't just that people were insulted because of the accent; their weather was also insulted. Like, it made the weather look really, really bad,” Melby said.

He adds that the Minnesota stereotypes in “Fargo” rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But the film had an undeniable impact on the state.

“‘Fargo’ put Minnesota on the map nationally. Before that, Minnesota culture — the snow, the accents — had never been portrayed on the big screen,” he said.

Now, 30 years later, the region has embraced the film. The Fargo Theatre has a wooden statue of Marge Gunderson, and tourists can check out the famous wood chipper featured at the end of the film. The Fargo-Moorhead visitors center has both the original and a replica, which tourists take advantage of for photo ops.

“Some people put their babies in the chipper as a joke. Other people, if they have a tiny little dog, will put their tiny little dog in the chipper. They also have a fake leg you can put in,” Melby said.

Tuesday night, though, the hottest place in town will be inside the Fargo Theatre.

Emily Beck, the theater’s executive director, said the venue had to close during the pandemic. Attendance hasn’t gotten to what it used to be. She hopes that this showing of the movie will help rebuild interest in the theater, which is celebrating its own 100th anniversary.

“I hope that this brings some people in, maybe for their first cinematic experience, but primarily people who haven't been to a movie theater for a while,” Beck said. “And I hope they sit down, have a fantastic time and they're reminded of how precious and unique that experience is.”

The movie begins at 7 p.m. with a Q&A session with Stormare shortly after. It’ll be the first in the Fargo Theatre’s new centennial film series, which will screen a film from each decade since the theatre opened.

A conservation group has listed a major river in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area as the third most endangered river in the country on its annual list of threatened waterways.

It marks the fourth time American Rivers has included the South Kawishiwi River on its list of 10 most endangered rivers — it was also selected in 2013, 2018 and 2021.

The river winds in and out of the federally protected canoe wilderness area in northeast Minnesota. Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, has proposed building an underground mine for copper and nickel along the pristine river’s shoreline near Ely, just south of the Boundary Waters.

The designation from American Rivers comes as the U.S. Senate is poised to take up a resolution later this month that would reverse the 20-year long ban on mining in the area, which could open the door for Twin Metals to reapply to open a mine there.

Conservation groups argue that mining for metals such as copper and nickel, which carries with it the potential for more severe water pollution than iron ore mining in Minnesota, could cause irreparable harm to one of the nation’s most cherished and highly visited wilderness areas.

“Spoiling some of the purest, most pristine waters for a foreign mine and foreign corporate interests is a short-sighted move that could cause irreversible harm to the region,” said Elizabeth Riggs, Great Lakes regional director for American Rivers.

In 2023, the Biden administration imposed a 20-year mining moratorium covering about 350 square miles of federal land south of the Boundary Waters, including where the Twin Metals mine would be located.

The land is located outside the Boundary Waters but within its watershed. As a result, water pollution from mining could flow into the federally protected wilderness area.

In January, the U.S. House passed a resolution introduced by Rep. Pete Sauber, R-Hermantown, to overturn the moratorium. It would also prohibit future administrations from imposing another ban.

Stauber’s resolution utilizes a law called the Congressional Review Act that allows Congress to overturn federal agency rules with simple majority votes in both chambers. That means it couldn’t be blocked by a Senate filibuster, which, under the upper chamber’s rules, requires 60 votes to call legislation for a vote.

But the Senate is running out of time to take up the measure. Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters, said Congress faces a deadline of April 24 or April 27 to pass the resolution and send it to President Trump for his signature.

Lyons said Senate leadership has signaled the vote could occur in the next 10 days. She said public lands advocates are lobbying furiously against the measure. That includes descendants of former President and noted land conservationist Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who sent a letter to Congress urging members to reject the resolution and “seek ways to permanently protect the Boundary Waters.”

“We are having a lot of really good meetings, a lot of surprising meetings, about what overturning these protections would mean,” said Lyons, who describes it as an unprecedented effort to overturn public land management decisions. “It really kind of opens up a Pandora's box in terms of public land decisions.”

When Stauber introduced his resolution in January, he said the “dangerous and illegal mining ban was thrust upon my constituents and our way of life in Northern Minnesota and put our nation’s mineral security in jeopardy.”

Julie Lucas, executive director of the industry group Mining Minnesota, said overturning the moratorium wouldn’t mean an automatic green light for mining projects. They would still have to go through years of applying for permits and environmental impact studies.

“It's about getting us back into the conversations and back into environmental review. Because these are significant deposits there, and we should be looking at what it would mean to mine those.”

Lucas says those in the mining industry also value the preciousness of the Boundary Waters.

“We didn't go into this industry because we don't love the environment. We went into it because we want to make mining better.”

Southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin could see severe storms Monday afternoon.

Storms are expected to develop between about 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and continue into the evening. Heavy winds and tornadoes are possible, with potential tennis ball-sized hail.

Drivers should avoid traveling in the worst of the weather if possible and get off the road if heavy hail starts or if visibility is too challenging, said Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesperson Anne Meyer.

“Don’t stop on the freeway, don’t stop underneath a bridge. You want to get off the roadway completely and get to an area to really wait out for better weather,” she said.

Meyer said drivers should keep an eye on the forecast for their location and destination before heading out.

“These spring storms can change throughout the day,” Meyer said. “Definitely stay up-to-date.”

The most severe storms are expected in southeastern Minnesota, including Rochester, Mankato and the Twin Cities.

Send your storm and hail photos to tell@mpr.org with your name and city.

In a notice on its website, the district says its technology team discovered on Sunday that an outside actor had accessed internal school systems. Staff shut down those systems to prevent any further access, and some are still down. The district says those systems are “needed to safely have school.”

Classes are canceled for the north Metro district’s 6,000 students. Child care, after-school activities and community education programs are also canceled.

The hack came a week after a similar incident in Winona County, where a cyberattack led to a shutdown of the county’s main IT system. It was the latest in a growing number of attacks against local governments’ technology systems.

The district is working with a third-party cybersecurity team and law enforcement to fix the problem and said it plans to update students and families Monday.

There’s a new effort afoot in northern Minnesota to better understand why the state’s moose population has remained stubbornly flat since it declined sharply about 15 years ago.

The Northern Moose Alliance also wants to better engage the public about scientists’ efforts to recover the iconic animal’s numbers in the northwoods. This winter, they placed GPS collars on 60 young moose, around nine months of age, that will allow them to track the animals as they grow to full adulthood.

Those “in-between” years, before juvenile moose become full-grown adults, represent a gap in research in the state. And those years are critical. They often determine whether a young moose survives long enough to join the breeding population and, ultimately, help moose numbers start to grow again.

“This project is aimed at really looking at what's happening with those younger moose,” said Michelle Carstensen, wildlife health program supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “Are there challenges to getting them to one year old? When do they really reproduce? And how many calves are they contributing to the population?”

By teasing out answers to those questions, scientists from state, tribal, academic and nonprofit partners hope to gain clues that might allow wildlife and land managers to create better moose habitat in specific locations that could improve the odds of young moose surviving and becoming productive adults.

Collaring Moose

The project’s first phase began this winter, when researchers placed the tracking collars on young moose across the state’s core moose range, stretching roughly from Two Harbors to Ely to Grand Portage at the tip of the Arrowhead region.

Those collars will allow researchers to closely monitor their movements. They’re also equipped with mortality sensors that send notifications via satellite when a moose stops moving for six hours. Researchers will then investigate to determine the cause of death.

The group partnered with a helicopter capture company to perform the work. When crews spotted a young moose from the air using thermal imaging, they hovered above and shot it with a tranquilizing dart to sedate it.

They landed, attached the collar and quickly collected biological samples and assessed their overall health–including how many parasites, especially winter ticks, they were infested with.

The work was conducted during intense periods of extreme cold, high winds and poor visibility.

“We’re flying in a helicopter with no doors,” said Seth Moore, the director of natural resources for the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, one of the partners in the project. “So you have a wind chill that is absolutely brutally cold.”

But the work was successful. No moose died during the collaring effort– which is something that plagued the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources when it placed research collars on adult moose and calves over a dozen years ago, part of a landmark study that attempted to pinpoint the reasons behind the moose population’s crash in northeast Minnesota from nearly 9,000 animals 20 years ago to about 4,000 today.

“We're monitoring them daily for their survival,” Carstensen said. “I'm going to knock on wood, but so far, we haven't had a mortality.”

Researchers said the young moose they collared appeared healthier than anticipated. But they’re entering the most challenging time of the year.

They’ve made it through the majority of winter, but they’re still waiting for green-up to bring better forage with more nutritional value. Winter ticks are taking their last big blood meal.

It’s also the time of year when wolves can be most dangerous to moose. When a crust layer develops on top of deep snow during freeze-thaw cycles, moose will “post-hole right through” because they’re so heavy, Carstensen said. But wolves can run on top.

“As the winter fades and spring appears, wolves get that advantage, and it tends to be at a time when moose can be weaker,” said Carstensen. That’s why April tends to be a prime month for moose to die from predation.

“And they're usually taking advantage of young moose that are coming out of winter in the poorest condition, old moose or moose that have other pre-existing health conditions, like brain worm or really heavy tick loads,” Carstensen added.

More moose?

Earlier research has confirmed the many factors that contributed to northeast Minnesota’s plummeting moose population.

Winter ticks cause severe blood loss and energy depletion. Parasites, including liver flukes and brainworm–which is transmitted by white-tailed deer– further diminish moose health. Wolves and bears – which target moose calves – also threaten moose, especially when they’re already weakened by disease or parasites.

There’s no smoking gun. But scientists widely agree that climate change is the overarching culprit for moose decline in Minnesota, the southernmost part of their range. Mild winters have allowed ticks and deer to expand their range northward. Moose also suffer from heat stress in the summer.

Despite those challenges, moose numbers have stabilized at around 4,000 over the past decade.

“Stability is good. Reversing a decline and getting to stable is a great first step,” said Morgan Swingen, wildlife biologist for the 1854 Treaty Authority, an intertribal natural resources agency based in Duluth that’s co-leading the project along with the DNR. “But we would like to see the population increase again, and in order to do that, we need to have reproduction and survival happening.”

The hope is that by learning the challenges young moose face, wildlife and land managers can develop more specific strategies that give moose the best chance at recovering.

If they find that moose are struggling to reproduce, for example, that could mean better habitat or forage is needed in specific locations. If researchers find young females are having plenty of calves, but those calves are having trouble surviving, that could suggest action may be needed to manage deer populations to control parasites, or bear or wolf numbers because of predation concerns.

Researchers plan to place more collars on young moose the next two winters and track the animals for six years. The work is supported by a $1.8 million grant from state lottery proceeds through the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.

Northern Moose Alliance scientists are also asking people to share trail camera photos of moose to help track hair loss caused by winter ticks. Researchers plan to share updates and videos highlighting their field work.

“People care deeply about moose,” said Tom Irivine, executive director of the National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation, another project partner. “We want the public to be able to follow along and become part of the solution to protecting this cherished and iconic species.”

For decades, about a third of the state fell under the so-called “shotgun zone,” which only allowed deer hunters to use shotguns loaded with single-slug shotgun shells, legal muzzle-loading long guns and legal handguns.

The law was implemented in the 1940s to increase deer populations in the southern and western parts of the state. Using shotguns, which had a shorter range than rifles, resulted in less efficient deer harvesting because hunters were forced to get closer to the deer.

But technological improvements increased the range of shotguns, and deer populations in the targeted areas grew, prompting the state legislature to repeal the law, which then opened statewide rifle use to hunt deer.

Now, it’s up to the counties in the previous shotgun zone, which runs south of a line from Moorhead to Taylors Falls, to decide whether to allow the use of rifles in next year’s deer hunting season.

But concerns remain around the safety of the rifles for hunting. Clay County, in northwestern Minnesota, held a public hearing on Tuesday on whether to allow deer hunters to use rifles.

Clay County Board of Commissioners had three choices: maintain its previous shotgun rules, allow rifle use or allow rifles only to the east of State Highway 9.

The hearing room was packed with about 40 people, and most speakers opposed rifle use. Many were concerned about the potential for harming bystanders or other unintended targets.

“I've got a couple hundred cows around my place, and I’ve got a couple of pastures around there, and all of a sudden, if [hunters are] walking through there, they can shoot a cow, I mean, they wouldn't even see it if they're over half a mile away,” Clay County resident David Heng said.

Other speakers, though, were more open to the idea of allowing rifles or, at least, to compromise with permitting the firearm’s usage east of Highway 9.

“I think it addresses a lot of the concerns in there for people and the more populated areas, where you can have people shooting rifles and maybe not be so worried about the open country [compared to the] hill country,” Clay County resident Josh Noennig said.

He added that rifles could provide greater accuracy, giving hunters pause before firing.

“I feel like when the deer isn't 10 yards in front [you], and you have that option to shoot at 100 or 150 yards, you have more time to make that decision, as opposed to just maybe pulling that trigger right away when the deer moves and, ‘Oh, something was behind it,’” Noennig said. “In terms of that, it does make it safe for hunting at a distance and gives you more time.”

Minnesota Deer Hunters Association Executive Director Jared Mazurek stressed that the ban on rifles in the shotgun zone did not have to do with safety.

“In reality, this was all about limiting harvest in order to allow that population to recover to the point where we could then look at using rifles in the future, and we have reached that point,” he said.

The MN Deer Hunters are pushing for all counties to allow the use of rifles. Hunting zones can span multiple counties, so if one county has different rules from another, it could cause confusion among hunters, law enforcement and officers with the Department of Natural Resources, Mazurek said.

On top of that, many rifles have less recoil than shotguns, so they can be more accessible for youth.

“It gives individuals the opportunity to choose the weapon that they are comfortable with, to hunt the season that they are able to hunt, and to hunt in the way that fits them the best,” Mazurek said. “And if we can get more people engaged in doing that, I think we can at least stop this trend of hunter decline.”

And Mazurek notes that rifles have been permitted, including in the previous shotgun-only zone, to harvest other species. They were forbidden for hunting white-tailed deer in the restricted zone.

“So if you can trust the hunter to go on a coyote hunt on your flat agricultural landscape, why can't you trust that hunter to do the same with a white-tailed deer and make an ethical shot, clean harvest, and follow the firearm safety rules, right?” he said.

The DNR has asked counties to notify it of any changes to their firearm rules by May 5.

The fishing opener is just weeks away, and state health officials have updated their guidelines on how much fish is safe to eat from lakes and rivers across the state, in an effort to better protect Minnesota anglers and others from harmful pollutants including mercury and PFAS.

The updates from the Minnesota Department of Health include recommendations to eat smaller walleye and northern pike, because older, larger fish tend to contain more mercury.

The revisions also for the first time include specific guidelines for northeast Minnesota, where mercury levels in fish are among the highest in the state, and new suggested limits for the Vermillion River in Dakota and Scott counties in the southern Twin Cities metro area, where PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” have been found in fish.

The changes in the mercury guidelines aren’t because of an increase in levels of the toxin, although mercury levels in Minnesota’s fish have been slowly but steadily growing for the past 30 years. Rather, they’re based on a new analysis of mercury data going back to 1967. It also represents an effort to simplify the recommendations by limiting the number of lakes and rivers with waterbody-specific guidelines.

Public health officials are trying to thread a needle that recognizes the health benefits of eating fish– which contains omega-3 fatty acids that help with heart health and brain function– while also keeping people safe from certain toxins. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin to the brain which can impact learning and memory in a fetus during pregnancy, and can continue to impair the brain through infancy and childhood.

“But we also know that, especially people that are pregnant and planning pregnancy, if they're eating moderate amounts of fish low in contaminants, that often their infants have better neurodevelopmental outcomes,” Angela Preimesberger, MDH’s fish consumption guidance program lead, told MPR News. “And so that's why we don't want people to stop eating fish.”

Health officials offer more restrictive guidelines for people who are especially sensitive to the toxins, including children under 15, and people 15 and older who are or could become pregnant, along with those who are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed.

In Cook, Lake and St. Louis counties in northeast Minnesota, the new guidelines for sensitive groups recommend that people:

–Do not eat muskie, northern pike 26 inches or longer, or walleye 18 inches or longer

–Limit consumption to one serving per month of bass, catfish, lake trout, northern shorter than 26 inches, walleye shorter than 18 inches, and yellow perch

–Limit consumption to one serving per week of bullhead, crappie, inland trout, lake herring (cisco), whitefish, and sunfish (such as bluegill)

For the general population, the new guidelines recommend:

–no more than one serving per month of muskie

–no more than one serving per week of bass, catfish, lake trout, northern pike, walleye and yellow perch

–no more than two servings per week of crappie and sunfish

–no more than four servings per week of bullhead, inland trout, lake herring, and whitefish

Health officials also added length-based guidelines for walleye and northern pike. Sensitive populations should not eat more than one serving per month, and the fish should be less than 20 inches long. In northeast Minnesota, officials recommend those groups eat walleye and northern smaller than 18 inches.

Some lakes with higher mercury levels in northeast Minnesota have more restrictive guidelines. The department of health added 17-inch guidelines to nine lakes in northeast counties, following questions from MPR News and other media.

Those lakes include Mit Lake in Cook County, and Crane, Colby, Esquagama, Lower and Upper Comstock, and Lower and Upper Pauness lakes, all of which are in St. Louis County.

But those recommendations don’t go far enough for some, especially for Crane Lake, a huge lake on the edge of Voyageurs National Park that’s a popular destination for anglers.

Large walleye tested in Crane Lake contain much higher for levels of mercury than what’s considered safe, especially for sensitive groups. Despite that, the new regulations there are less restrictive than the 15-inch walleye limit that was previously recommended for sensitive groups.

“The mercury is really high in those walleyes. There should be an advisory that tells pregnant women not to eat them,” said Eric Morrison, a volunteer with the Northern Lakes Scientific Advisory Panel.

Morrison would like to see state officials list average mercury content in fish in various lakes, so people can know what they’re eating.

The Department of Health’s Preimsberger acknowledges it can be confusing to figure out which fish is safe to eat, so she recommends checking specific lakes and rivers before going fishing.

“Check before you go and see if there are any guidelines for the particular water body where you're going to fish, whether it's a lake or a river, and then you'll know how many of those fish you can safely eat.”

Mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities outside of Minnesota and within the state, including six huge taconite plants in northeast Minnesota, which are the state’s largest mercury emitters.

It falls to the earth in rain and snow, and then runs off into waterways, where it’s converted into a toxic form that works its way up the food chain, bioaccumulating in fish. Larger and older fish accumulate more mercury.

In Cook, Lake and St. Louis counties, several factors contribute to lakes and rivers having fish with higher mercury concentrations than elsewhere in the state.

The region, which includes the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, has abundant mucky, microbe-rich wetlands, which provide ideal conditions for mercury methylation, the process that turns mercury toxic.

New PFAS guidelines

Health officials have also added consumption guidelines for fish caught in the Vermillion River from headwater streams in Scott and Dakota counties, including the South Branch of the river, to the Hastings Dam, due to PFAS contamination in the waterway.

PFAS are human-made chemicals that do not break down over time and have been widely used for decades to make products ranging from cookware to clothing to carpet. They’ve been linked to harmful impacts on child development, including low birth weight in infants and a weaker immune system in children. They may also cause changes in liver function and increase cancer risks in people of all ages.

“Eating fish is not your only route of exposure to these contaminants,” said Preimsberger, “but where we find these levels are elevated, we encourage people to eat fish in other water bodies.”

The fishing season for trout in inland streams in Minnesota opens Saturday. The fishing season for most other species in Minnesota opens Saturday, May 9.

State auditors this week said they have “significant concerns” about the Department of Natural Resources’ plan to rollout a new app-based system that will allow hunters, fishers, boaters and users of off-road vehicles to purchase licenses on their smartphones.

“I think there’s issues all over the place,” said Joe Sass, IT audit director for the Office of the Legislative Auditor, which released a special examination of the system Wednesday.

The electronic licensing system, or ELS, was originally planned to launch in March of last year, but it has experienced significant problems and delays throughout the development process.

According to the audit, part of the problem is the sheer amount of data that must be handled by the new system.

“If we just look at hunting and fishing licenses, we have about 2.7 million transactions every year. That’s a huge amount of data,” said Kelly Straka, fish and wildlife division director for the Minnesota DNR.

The DNR has not announced a new date for the launch of the system, but are planning to begin a “phased launch” sometime this spring, after the state fishing opener on May 9.

The first phase will include hunting and fishing licenses and the next phase will incorporate boating and off-road vehicle licenses.

“You don’t want to roll it out right before a big opener, right? That’s a huge load on a new system,” said Straka.

The auditors warn that if the issues are not addressed before the launch, many individuals could run into issues when applying for permits. He notes that veterans, those with disabilities, applicants under the age of 16, and non-Minnesotans are especially likely to experience problems with the system.

“These slightly atypical but certainly very common scenarios are potentially more problematic,” said Sass.

The OLA audit indicates that PayIt, the technology company the DNR hired to help develop and implement the app, is partly to blame for the slow launch of the new licensing system.

“The vendor has certainly missed deadlines and is providing a platform that is not ready for go live,” said Sass. “At the same time, it’s the agency’s responsibility to make sure that they’re holding their vendor accountable, enforcing the provisions in the contract, and really getting the system that functions and that Minnesotans deserve.”

The DNR has responded to the OLA’s concerns, saying in a memo that employees and the vendor are working to address the issues flagged in the audit, but the DNR is still moving forward with the plan for the phased launch.

The Minnesota DNR’s Kelly Straka says the app will be ready for hunters and fishers to buy licenses in the near future.

“I feel confident that we will be launching this system shortly after the fishing opener,” said Straka. “I’m confident that we're going to check those boxes certainly before we officially set a date for launch.”

Three Minneapolis environmental activists started a hunger strike Friday, in a push for the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners to close the county’s trash incinerator.

Natasha Villanueva stopped eating as of Friday morning. She lives in the north Minneapolis neighborhood adjacent to the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, known as the HERC, and she worries about the pollution from the site.

At a press conference outside Hennepin County Government Center Friday morning, she said she’s contacted her commissioners and shown up to several public meetings to ask questions about the incinerator and push for a closure plan. She said she hasn’t gotten a satisfying response from her elected officials.

“We have come to this point because no action has been taken,” Villanueva said.

The Hennepin County board made a plan in 2023 to close the HERC between 2028 and 2040. But activists say the board is working too slowly toward that plan. They say the air pollution from the incinerator needs to stop sooner — especially given its location in north Minneapolis just outside downtown, in a neighborhood where pollution levels and asthma rates are already high.

The hunger strikers say they plan to drink only water during the strike and not eat until the board meets their demands. They’re asking the board to call a vote to commit to a closure by the end of next year. They also want the board to form a community task force to decide what to do with the site after it closes.

Nazir Khan is the director of the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table, one of the organizations pushing for the closure of the HERC. He’s also going on the hunger strike. He said it’s meant to escalate pressure on the board to set that vote.

“All we need is one commissioner to call the votes,” Khan said. “The only way to get them to do that, since they don’t care about the people, is to wake enough people up so this becomes a crisis for them.”

The third striker, Joshua Lewis, said he’s looking at the hunger strike as both a political and a spiritual action.

“No community should have to organize a hunger strike just to demand the right to breathe clean air,” Lewis said. “No child should grow up under a sky marked by waste infrastructure and political neglect.”

The three hunger strikers, joined by a few dozen supporters, went into the commissioners’ offices on Friday to deliver a letter from Villanueva outlining the plan for the strike and their demands. Villanueva asked a front desk worker if she could speak to her commissioner, board chair Irene Fernando; the employee said none of the commissioners were in the building.

Villanueva said she’s frustrated by the lack of response. She said she also did not get an answer when she reached out to Fernando to inform her that she was starting the hunger strike.

“It was part of a pattern of disregard for constituents, and to me, that’s unacceptable and led to our escalation,” Villanueva said. “We deserve a response from our elected officials.”

Fernando’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment from MPR News.

In a statement sent to MPR News, commissioner Heather Edelson said she shares the goal of closing the HERC, but that it will take time.

“I care about the people behind this movement, and I am genuinely concerned for their health and safety,” Edelson said. “A hunger strike is a serious and risky step, and I hope we can continue this conversation in a way that keeps everyone safe.”

The county’s plan to shut down the HERC says a significant reduction in solid waste is needed first. Some of the steps toward that — including banning recyclable and organic materials from landfills and reducing single-use plastics — would involve policy changes at the state level.

About half of the county’s trash currently goes into the HERC. It’s burned to produce electricity, which the county sells on a wholesale electricity market.

Facilities that convert waste into energy are meant to repurpose trash and divert it from landfills. But activists say it’s not worth the air pollution that comes with burning trash — especially in a residential neighborhood.

Commissioner Edelson said the county needs to avoid putting more waste into landfills.

“Because landfills are not a viable long-term solution given our climate and equity goals, we must first build a stronger, more sustainable waste system, and that work is well underway,” Edelson said.

Hunger strikers say they’re working with a medical team to monitor their health as the strike continues. They’re planning to keep reaching out to their commissioners and set up protests outside the county government offices to keep the pressure up.

State of Minnesota officials said they are making progress in their effort to revalidate nearly 5,600 medical care providers across the state amid federal accusations of widespread fraud in the program that provides health insurance coverage to low income residents.

The Trump Administration froze more than $259 million in Medicaid funding to the state, and it is threatening to withhold billions more annually over fraud concerns. Last month, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved the state’s corrective action plan, a decision called “encouraging” by state officials.

Nonetheless, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has refused to release the money, and a federal judge this week declined to block the Trump administration from continuing to withhold funds.

In a briefing Thursday, Minnesota Medicaid director John Connolly said the decision was disappointing, but the corrective action plan is underway. The state is evaluating a total of 5,583 Medicaid providers in the 13 service areas that have been determined as having a high-risk of fraud. That includes checking their licenses and conducting unannounced inspections.

So far, 550 health care providers have completed the process and have been approved. About 2,500 providers — a little less than half — have not responded yet or have incomplete applications. And 160 have been disenrolled — Connolly said most of them were inactive.

“We're approaching disenrollment much more aggressively than we have in the past, but it's imperative that we meet the federal government's requirement to execute this corrective action plan,” he said.

Late last year, then-U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson alleged that $9 billion in fraud had been committed by Minnesota Medicaid providers, but he provided no evidence to back up the figure and state officials have said they don’t know how it was reached.

“We don't yet have a number, so we don't know that to be true, and numbers that are placed out there at this point are speculative, because investigations are continuing,” Connolly told reporters in February.

He added Thursday that, so far, inspections of Medicaid providers haven’t found evidence of widespread fraud.

“We're finding providers doing the work that they said they would do, and of course, operating as they stated in their paperwork,” he said. “That is the vast majority of providers in the program, and what we found to date in the site visits.”

Connolly added it is critically important that the federal government restore the funding as soon as possible.

“More than 20 percent of Minnesota's population relies on Medicaid for life-saving and life-affirming health care services,” Connolly told reporters Thursday. “We have to ensure we secure the funding for those necessary services.”

The state should complete the revalidation process by the end of May, Connolly said. But it's not clear when the federal government will release the money and how much future funding will be withheld.

“(Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Administrator (Mehmet) Oz and the vice president signaled that they could very possibly do this again in future quarters, in which case we would have another set of deferrals and another set of documentation requests,” he said. “So, this could go on for many quarters.”

Connolly said despite the potential funding shortfall, there won’t be an immediate impact on the services themselves or revalidated providers.

“At some point in the future, should there be a financial or cash flow impact of the state as a result of these actions, it would take an action of the legislature to to stop financing or to stop including that service or benefit in the program,” Connolly said.

Winona County’s main IT system is still down as of Friday, but it’s bringing individual systems back online in a phased approach following a cyberattack to its network Tuesday.

Ben Klinger, Winona County Emergency Management Director, told reporters Friday morning that county operations remain open and staffed, but some services are slower than normal. As systems are verified and deemed secure, they’ll gradually come back online.

“We train and plan for situations like this, and those plans are working,” Klinger said. “Early in the incident, we made the decision to take parts of our network offline to contain the threat. The step was necessary to protect our systems, even though it created a disruption. While technology is a major part of how we operate, it is not the only way we operate. The work of Winona County continues with or without computers.”

Klinger said a lot of county processes are currently being done with pen and paper. However, services within the Department of Motor Vehicles and Vital Statistics are currently unavailable. The DMV, for example, requires an internet connection with the state to operate. If there’s an immediate need from these departments, Klinger said residents can go to neighboring counties for assistance.

Emergency services have been operating without disruption since the cyberattack began Tuesday.

The county is being supported on site by the Minnesota National Guard cyber protection team and is also receiving assistance from third-party cyber security and data forensics teams. At the county level, Klinger said its IT staff have been “working around the clock since this began.”

“This is detailed, methodical work — identifying affected systems, securing the network and restoring operations safely,” Klinger said. “Progress is being made.”

This is the second time Winona County has experienced a cyberattack already this year. Klinger said the systems were restored after the January attack, but that investigation is still ongoing. He said the attacks appear to have been committed by different cybercriminals.

Klinger addressed the question he said many are asking at the press conference: How does something like this happening again?

“The reality is cyberattacks are not unique to Winona County,” Klinger said. “They are happening across the country — to governments, hospitals, schools and private businesses. They are complex and evolving events. What matters is how we respond. And I can tell you this, the people working on this, from our local staff to state and federal partners, are committed to seeing this through.”

According to the state’s 2025 Cybersecurity Incident Report, attacks against federal, state, and local governments are rising in frequency and sophistication. In recent years, the city of St. Paul and Rochester Public Schools have been targets of attacks. The report indicates that 269 public entities and government contractors in Minnesota reported possible cybersecurity incidents last year.

“Cyber attackers have gotten really good at hacking humans,” said John Israel, the state of Minnesota’s chief information security officer. “They're finding ways to really trick people. They've turned this into a business operation with very mature teams that are focused on finding vulnerabilities, exploiting them and getting to the maximum impact that they can.”

Israel said that these criminal agents are financially motivated and relentless. They’re generally focused on encrypting and locking down IT systems and stealing data that they can hold hostage – threatening release if the organization doesn’t pay the ransom. Israel said the perpetrators are often part of overseas groups.

Klinger said because the investigation is ongoing, authorities cannot say if the hackers accessed county residents’ personal or financial information nor if the cybercriminals are demanding a ransom.

“We do not want to release any of that type of information [that could] jeopardize the investigation,” Klinger said in an email to MPR News. “Our goal is to hold the criminals accountable.”

In the meantime, Klinger said Winona County is working to strengthen the security of its networks and build even more firewalls into its system to prevent future attacks.

Klinger said he doesn’t yet have a sense for when the attack will be completely resolved, but he’s hoping to know more by next week.