Thirty female bison charged out of a livestock truck at the Belwin Conservancy on Saturday afternoon, drawing cheers from hundreds of onlookers.

The animals traveled two hours from the NorthStar ranch in Rice Lake, Wis., to the conservancy in Afton, where people gathered for the annual Bison Festival to celebrate the herd’s release onto Belwin’s 130-acre Bison Prairie. The event featured other wildlife, exhibits on ecological restoration and samples of bison meat.

Lynette Anderson, an interpretive naturalist and a restoration specialist at Belwin, said the conservancy has brought bison herds to help restore prairielands since 2008 as they are critical to that work.

“They're the keystone species that makes everything happen on the prairie,” Anderson said.

Bison dung fertilizes soil and provides housing and food for small insects, according to Anderson. Their winter coats help disperse seeds as they graze, and bison steps create space for oxygen and water infiltration in soil.

The way bison roll in the ground even creates depressions where water, which is precious in prairies, can collect, Anderson said.

After the Imnizaska Dakota Drum Group led a ceremonial welcome, the bison took off into the prairie where they will graze through summer, living as they had before colonization.

“They took off like a stampede. It was pretty cool,” said Pat Cullen of Woodbury, who lingered afterward with his grandson. “It felt like I was out in the prairie 100 years ago.”

The herd is viewable at Belwin’s Bison Prairie from sunrise to sunset seven days a week, according to Anderson.

The bison, which weigh anywhere between 600 to 800 pounds, will be processed into food later this year.

Anderson said the festival — and the herd’s presence at Belwin — is an educational tool to help people understand the importance of prairie habitat and land protection. It also allows the public to thank bison for their gifts.

“There’s just this great sense of completion, because now we have returned this iconic animal back to its rightful homeland,” she said. “It’s back home on the prairie.

With fewer than 48 hours remaining this session, lawmakers are working on Saturday to pass several key bills before the Sunday deadline.

Minnesota legislators hammered out a budget framework late Wednesday that includes a rescue plan for HCMC, education spending, additional fraud investigators and technology upgrades for counties.

They’ve also passed high-profile bills in the past week, including a bill that makes grooming a felony, a housing finance deal and a bill that requires children’s social media accounts to be stripped of addictive features — though that bill needs one more vote from the House.

However, lawmakers still have key votes before the 11:59 p.m. Sunday deadline.

DFL gun measures sit-in comes to an end

House Democrats continued pressuring Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth to let the House vote on a gun violence prevention package passed by the Senate, after their sit-in, which started at 9 p.m. Thursday, came to an end late Saturday morning.

“We are getting texts and live streams and videos and stories as we have for the last 36 hours from people across the state of Minnesota telling us to stand strong and stand firm for gun violence prevention,” Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis said outside the House chamber Saturday morning.

Greenman’s district includes Annunciation Catholic Church and School, the site of the mass shooting in August that resulted in two student deaths.

“We know Minnesotans’ kids are watching what we’re going to do here, and they have been doing their job, asking us to choose them, not guns,” Greenman said. “And it is now our job to fight for them and fight to end this epidemic of gun violence that is so directly impacting them.”

Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, helped organize the sit-in and said if the bill doesn’t pass this session, Republicans will pay at the polls in November.

“After Sunday, we take the tools of democracy out to the people, and we come back in January with a majority that is willing to pass this, and that's how this ends,” Finke said.

Advocates rallied outside the House chambers at 11:30 a.m. asking Demuth to bring the bill to the House floor when they meet Saturday.

“The people of Minnesota and across the country are asking for us to ban these weapons of war in our communities,” said Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, DFL-Minneapolis, at the 11:30 a.m. rally. She added that included Demuth’s daughter, who is a survivor of gun violence.

Two of Demuth’s children, including her daughter Shelisa, were inside the Rocori High School building during a mass shooting in 2003 and two were in the elementary school building nearby.

“Imagine being the first House Speaker in state history who is also the mother of two school shooting victims and conveniently deferring a gun control bill to the next legislative session,” Shelisa Demuth said in a Thursday post on social media.

Speaker Demuth has pushed back against criticism that she hasn’t allowed a vote on gun measures. Demuth said various individual gun bills have faced votes in the House.

Those votes just happened in committee, she said.

“What you've seen is bills brought forward in committee in March, fully vetted, but they failed in committee,” Demuth said on MPR News’ Politics Friday. They failed without Republican support.

Demuth said she’s not interested in passing legislation in large, catch-all omnibus bills.

“The Senate has chosen to send packages over,” Demuth said. Those packages include the gun violence prevention bill and a bill restricting the power of federal immigration agents in Minnesota.

“We are not doing that,” Demuth said. “We're doing individual bills.”

Egg-cellent news for food banks

The House and Senate repeatedly recessed Saturday to work behind-the-scenes on major bills before they face floor votes. However, the chambers ticked off some smaller items in the meantime.

The House followed the Senate’s lead and unanimously passed a bill that allows poultry eggs to be donated for 30 days after their expiration date, when they are still safe to eat.

As egg prices have risen and more people use food shelves, lawmakers said they wanted to ensure unsold eggs don’t go to waste.

“We're going to see that ability for food waste reduction,” Rep. Andrew Myers, R-Tonka Bay, said.

“We're going to see that ability of thousands of volunteers at local food shelves across the state to get more good protein into those food shelves to help support our neighbors that are in need,” Myers added.

Lawmakers also couldn’t give up an opportunity for a good food pun.

“Let's just whisk this over to the governor,” said DFL Floor Leader Jamie Long of Minneapolis. “I know for one, I'm going to be voting shell yes.”

Anti-grooming bill gets House approval, heads to governor

An anti-grooming bill making it a felony for an adult to groom — or seduce — a child is headed to the governor’s desk.

It was sent back to the House on Saturday after the Senate passed an amended version.

The bill would establish new training for mandatory reporters and expand the education department’s authority to investigate allegations of misconduct beyond three years.

Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, urged her colleagues to pass the bill.

“It’s been a great process — bipartisan,” she said. “Let's just vote green to protect our kids from sexual predators and grooming in schools.”

The bill easily passed the House unanimously Saturday after passing the Senate unanimously Friday. It now heads to Gov. Tim Walz to sign.

Meat raffle bill clears the Senate

The Minnesota Senate passed a bill allowing larger maximum prizes in meat raffles. Currently state law limits meat raffle prizes to a maximum of $70.

But as the cost of meat has risen, the cuts available at raffles have shrunken. The meat raffle bill increases the prize limit — which hasn't been raised in 40 years — to $200.

Sen. Zach Duckworth, R-Lakeville, praised his colleagues for their rare bipartisan work on his bill.

“It’s going to do a lot of good for local charities. In all seriousness, youth sports, a lot of great civic organizations, they're going to be able to raise even more money if this becomes law for a whole lot of really good causes out there. So, thanks everybody,” he said.

The bill still needs House passage and the governor's signature.

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

If you’ve read Allan Levi’s bestselling novel “Theo of Golden” — or you’re waiting for a copy to come available at the library — and you’re looking for the next book that will make you feel hopeful about the world, Diane Rineer of Rediscovered Bookshop in Boise, Idaho, suggests the novel, “The Left and the Lucky,” by Willy Vlautin.

At the book’s heart is a friendship: a father/son-style relationship that forms between Eddie, who is a workaholic painter, and 8-year-old Russell, who lives next door.

Eddie has lost somebody in his life, and he wants to make up for it any way he can. Russell is being badly bullied, both at school and by his teenage brother at home. He begins to linger around Eddie, who gives the boy small jobs to do and a listening ear.

“Eddie doesn’t have much, but he does have a big heart,” says Rineer, “and by the end of the book, you just want to hug him.”

“He’s helped so many people along the way in such big ways with what little he has. It’s just a feel-good story, and I feel like we need more Eddies in the world.”

Rineer is a big fan of Vlautin’s novels, in general, and she says this most recent one has her thinking about the importance of helping people in whatever way you can.

Lisa Roy and Maxi Maroni squish clay slabs onto Styrofoam chunks to create a mountainscape with peaks, valleys and secret hiding spots.

“The caves are really popular. A lot of people kind of fight for a prime spot in the cave. We've had a lot of trolls in the caves that people have made,” Roy said.

“And monsters are a very popular creation,” Moroni added.

The sculpture requires about 300 to 400 pounds of upcycled clay. In just a few days, the community will help transform the mound into a craggy city filled with homes, bridges, mushrooms, animals and all sorts of creatures.

“By the end, people are having a hard time finding spots to put their sculptures on,” Roy said.

This is the third year that Aldo Moroni Studios, a sculpture space at the California Building in northeast Minneapolis, is hosting a free all-ages community sculpture build for Art-A-Whirl. According to the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association, Art-A-Whirl, May 15-17, is the largest open artist studio tour in the country, with thousands of artists participating at more than 100 locations.

Roy, who is the studio manager, said hundreds of participants visit each year, including Mayor Jacob Frey and former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak in 2024.

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“We encourage everybody who comes through the California Building to stop in studio 113, come in and make either a tiny house or whatever they want to put on our mountain,” Roy said. “It’s really fun to kind of watch that come to life over the weekend.”

Moroni is a studio partner and the daughter of Aldo Moroni, the studio’s namesake, who died in 2020 from pancreatic cancer. The legendary Minneapolis artist was known for his ceramic “tiny houses” and for creating “narrative sculptures” — vast miniature cities and civilizations out of clay and wax. He was even coined the “Mayor of Minneaturapolis.”

This community sculpture is very much in the spirit of her father, Maxi Moroni says, who helped start Art-A-Whirl more than 30 years ago.

“He was very vocal about the fact that he wanted this to be a legacy space,” Moroni says. “A legacy space that would kind of continue what he would do — engaging with his community, bringing other people into the process of art and making it really a participatory, engaging experience.”

In a 1985 interview, Aldo Moroni said: “There’s a tradition of alienation in the arts that’s 200 years old, but there’s a bigger 4,000-year-old tradition of artists being involved in society. That’s what I think should be revived.”

Moroni said her father famously would create works, destroy them and then rebuild, while keeping “artifacts” from past civilizations. That’s the case with the “Tower of Babylon,” a Babel-like structure that stands some 8-feet tall in the studio.

“The first version was ancient Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers met, and then he would destroy that, and he would go and he'd build the next city on top of it,” Moroni said.

Then there is the hilly cityscape called “Bridges,” which originally started as “Trumptopia.”

“He did a performative art piece where he did dress as Trump, and he went in and he destroyed it, and then this he built after,” Roy said. “It's called ‘Bridges,” meaning we should be building bridges, not walls. So the community sculpture that we're doing is kind of in the spirit of this.”

And in the spirit of Aldo Moroni, the Art-A-Whirl sculpture will be on view for a week, and then it will be destroyed, to be built anew next year.

The goal, Roy said, is to “just create something beautiful that's going to be temporary, but just a really memorable experience for everyone.”

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The Minnesota Department of Health said more than 99 percent of the state’s public water systems met all federal health-based standards last year.

There are 6,582 public water systems in Minnesota that have their own water source and provide water to 25 or more people. They’re tested for several types of contaminants, including bacteria, pesticides, industrial compounds and nitrate.

In its latest annual report, the health department said a handful of water systems exceeded standards for copper, lead, arsenic, radioactive elements or disinfection byproducts. Those systems notified customers and took corrective action, according to the report.

Minnesota’s public water systems do face ongoing challenges, such as replacing lead pipes that connect water mains to homes. The state has a goal to replace all lead service lines by 2033, and has allocated $243 million to support lead service line removal and replacement.

State and federal funding for replacing lead pipes runs out in 2027. Local leaders and labor unions are urging Minnesota lawmakers to provide additional money, but it remains uncertain whether the Legislature will do so in the waning days of the session.

The health department also is monitoring drinking water for emerging contaminants such as PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They’re often known as “forever chemicals” because of their tendency to persist in water, soil, wildlife and humans. Some are linked to negative health effects, including liver and thyroid disease and fertility problems.

The agency collected more than 1,800 samples from water systems across the state last year to test for PFAS. The majority were below health-based standards, the report states.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted the first-ever legally enforceable limits on some PFAS in drinking water in 2024. It gave public water systems 2029 to meet the limits.

The health department also is developing resources to help water systems prepare for the impacts of climate change, such as drilling backup wells and purchasing emergency generators to use in case of extreme weather.

Social media companies would have new guardrails around accounts for minors, under a bill that passed the Minnesota Senate Friday.

The bill requires parental approval for children under 16 to open a social media account and bans some features that the bill’s authors say make these sites addictive, such as infinite scrolling, push notifications, autoplay videos and targeted advertising.

Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, said the bill also requires that these accounts have the strictest privacy settings and aims to limit the amount of data that these companies can collect about children using these apps.

The bill had bipartisan authorship and easily passed the Senate 66-0.

“Our partisan differences fall away when we're talking about Big Tech and AI regulation, because the devastation, the harm, the addictive features are visible in every kind of community, and it's not a red or blue thing, it is a human thing,” Maye Quade said. “So we have come together as legislators, regardless of party, to say it has got to stop, and we need to do something.”

Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine, an author of the bill, said in a statement that this legislation will protect children.

“We are in the midst of a public health crisis that is affecting the mental and physical health of so many kids across the state, and it’s something we must address for the safety of everyone,” Kreun said. “I authored this bill because I believe it’s very important that we address this problem with commonsense safeguards that keep our kids safe when engaging with addictive social media.”

The bill had already passed the House, but an amendment on the Senate floor means it has to go back to the House for a concurrence vote before it heads to the governor’s office.

If signed into law, Minnesota would join about 20 other states that have enacted laws that regulate social media access for minors. Companies have filed lawsuits challenging some of those laws.

Maye Quade said the authors of the Minnesota bill studied the legal pitfalls used in lawsuits against those states.

Authorities in the Iron Range community of Virginia, Minn., on Friday released body-worn camera and squad car video of Ethan Roy Basche’s fatal encounter with a police officer.

According to a preliminary investigation from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Basche, 31, was holding a torch lighter when Virginia Police Lt. Henry Trunk shot him just before 8:30 a.m. on May 1. In a news release accompanying the video, Virginia police noted that the lighter “was consistent with the appearance of a firearm.”

The BCA previously said that Trunk had responded to a report of a man wearing a ski mask and walking along Second Avenue West “holding and waving what appeared to be a handgun.”

On the video, Trunk is seen stopping his squad car in the middle of the street and can be heard ordering Basche to put his hands in the air.

After Trunk shouts the command a second time, Basche raises his arm and points the lighter in Trunk's direction. Trunk pauses for about a second, then fires three shots from behind his open squad car door. Basche spins 360 degrees before lying on the ground.

The two videos released by Virginia Police can be seen here.

Basche’s obituary describes him as having a “larger than life” creative presence and who enjoyed “the simple life” on the Iron Range.

St. Louis County courts have civilly committed Basche five times, beginning in 2020. According to a 2022 order from Judge Rachel Sullivan, Basche had diagnoses including schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder, and severe methamphetamine use disorder.

In a September 2025 civil commitment order, Judge Bhupesh Pattni noted that Basche had a “documented history of delusional thoughts, paranoia, hallucinations, including command hallucinations that are suicidal and homicidal in nature” and had been unsuccessful with treatment.

A year earlier, Pattni wrote that Basche “expressed that he feared for the life of his mother and for his own safety and that he believed he was being hunted by unknown persons.” In the order, the judge also noted that Basche reported using methamphetamine “to stay up all night to protect his mother and himself.”

A celebration of Basche’s life is scheduled for May 23 at True Hope Fellowship in Virginia.

The BCA continues to investigate the shooting and is expected to send its findings to the St. Louis County Attorney’s Office for review.

The Minnesota Senate on Friday voted unanimously to pass a bill to make the sexual grooming of children a felony.

It would require the Minnesota Department of Education to develop new mandatory reporter training to help school staff identify grooming.

The bill has already passed the House. Senate lawmakers on Friday added an amendment that would add additional funding. It will now go back to the House where lawmakers are expected to sign off and send to Gov. Tim Walz.

The measure gained traction following an MPR News investigation last fall that found police had concluded an Eagan High School band teacher had a “pattern of predatory grooming” in two districts for more than a decade.

Hannah LoPresto, the person at the center of that story, testified repeatedly at the Capitol this session about the need to strengthen state laws. Her concerns brought a rare bipartisan response from lawmakers, with several sharing their own stories.

“I was 9 years old the first time a grown man said something sexual about my body,” said state Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL- Apple Valley who sponsored the bill in the Senate.

“When I was 14 years old, my best friend was in a relationship for years with a 24 year old man. It was not uncommon for girls as young as 13 and 14 to have boyfriends who are in their 20s,” she told colleagues on the Senate floor.

“What is happening to young girls and women in this world is truly, truly awful, and our statutory construction often ignores that reality that far too many of us experience,” she added.

Emphasizing how important the measure was to her, House bill sponsor Rep. Peggy Bennett-R Albert Lea, told colleagues her story of being groomed by a band director when she was in 10th grade.

Both lawmakers credited the courage of LoPresto in helping shape the bill.

“Just watching Hannah’s courage and her bravery and speaking out … I don’t know that we would have gotten to this point right now without them,” Bennett said.

Bennett believes the bill will prevent similar abuse from happening to other students and hopes that by telling her story along with Hannah, Maye Quade and others, survivors will find the courage to come forward.

“That’s where victims, I think, are empowered, when they can speak out. That’s when the shame is lifted, and you can say, ‘You know what? This wasn’t my fault. This was that perpetrator’s fault,’” she said.

“I do want this bill to be a statement to those sexual predators that go after our kids, that go into our schools … to just say we’re coming after you, and I mean that,” she added. “We’re watching. Leave our kids alone.”

Bennett and Maye Quade say their work on the bill has led community members and colleagues to share similar stories of abuse.

“It’s notable that so many legislators connected with (Hannah’s) story and had similar stories,” Maye Quade said. “One of the experiences of this bill is having a lot of staff in this building come up to me and say, ‘Oh, let me tell you about a thing that happened to me when I was in school, or like my classmate.’ It is long past time.”

For LoPresto, seeing the bill move forward and hearing lawmakers applaud her effort has been meaningful.

“Something that I’ve learned through this process is just how common it (grooming) is, unfortunately,” LoPresto said in April after the bill passed the House. “But actually learning that made me feel less alone. And I think it can be comforting for other people who've experienced it to know just how many other people have experienced it too.”

Maye Quade said she is working on more legislation to raise the age of consent in Minnesota to 18 and increase penalties for failures in mandatory reporting as well as removing the statute of limitations for victims to pursue civil penalties.

Correction (May 16, 2026): A previous version of this story incorrectly described a portion of the Senate bill. It has been updated.

Fire crews were working from the ground and the air late Friday to contain a wildfire that prompted evacuations and the closure of a stretch of Highway 61 along the North Shore, a few miles northeast of Two Harbors.

It was one of at least 18 wildfires in northeastern Minnesota on Friday, amid gusty winds and tinder-dry conditions.

The fire near Two Harbors — called the Stewart Trail Fire — was first detected Friday afternoon. It was estimated at 100 acres in size and was 0 percent contained as of Friday night, according to the Minnesota Interagency Fire Center.

“Multiple local, state and federal agencies are responding to the Stewart Trail Fire, along with numerous aircraft capable of providing water and fire retardant drops,” the center reported in an update just after 8 p.m. “Fire crews are expected to remain engaged with the fire overnight.”

Lake County issued evacuation orders for homes and businesses along State Highway 61 and County Road 3 northeast of Two Harbors. Highway 61 remained closed between Two Harbors and Castle Danger as of Friday night — requiring a long detour for drivers heading to and from points farther up the North Shore.

The evacuation zone included landmark restaurant Betty’s Pies, which posted on its Facebook page Friday afternoon that it was “closed for the rest of the day due to a forest fire.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service were working with local fire departments to contain the fire. There was no immediate word on what caused the fire, and no official word on whether any buildings had been damaged.

Elsewhere in northeastern Minnesota, St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay reported that crews responded to a total of 17 wildfires in the county on Friday — but all had been controlled and mop-up operations were underway as of Friday night.

Ramsay said five of those fires were caused by downed power lines — but some others were fires that got away from people who were burning cardboard or other material.

“Please remember how dry the current conditions are and we continue to advise against any outdoor burning,” the sheriff’s office reported Friday night.

At least one of the St. Louis County wildfires prompted evacuations on Friday afternoon — a couple of homes near Babbitt.

Another fire, on the Iron Range near Gilbert, burned an estimated 25 acres and prompted the closure of State Highway 135 between Gilbert and Virginia for part of Friday afternoon.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation reported that another fire Friday afternoon prompted the closure of Highway 33 north of Cloquet for a time. Find updates on highway closures on MnDOT’s 511 website.

The fires started on another day of warm, dry, windy conditions across Minnesota. West winds were gusting to more than 35 mph Friday afternoon at the Eveleth-Virginia Airport — with humidity of less than 20 percent.

Red flag warnings for dangerous wildfire conditions were in effect for most of Minnesota through Friday night, with the DNR warning earlier in the day of the potential for fires to “spread quickly and grow out of control.”

The DNR said this week that amid the elevated fire danger, additional wildland firefighting crews from Ontario and Manitoba were in Minnesota to assist local crews — part of an agreement called the Great Lakes Forest Fire Compact.

“Their presence reflects the value of long-standing partnerships and a shared commitment to helping one another during periods of increased wildfire potential,” the DNR said.

At Silver Lake in Rochester, you can’t miss the Canada geese. They’re everywhere — in the park, in the water — and the nests dotting the shoreline hold the eggs of many more to come.

Rochester locals seem to have a love-hate relationship with the large, black and white waterfowl. Many residents shared fond memories of the geese with MPR News — of feeding them, listening to them honk on an early morning walk. Others complained of the birds’ aggressive behavior and goose poop littered across playgrounds and smeared all along the walking paths.

Rochester has been steadily trying to bring down the population count for years, and it seems to be working. Paul Widman, Rochester’s Director of Parks and Recreation, explained that the habitat in local parks can’t support the huge number of geese that are here.

“What we’re trying to do is create balance here,” Widman said. “Habitat balance to allow other species to come in. Get the vegetation to come back to life.”

But the effort is getting some pushback, as many Rochester residents see geese as a core part of the city’s identity.

‘They were just rampant’

Canada geese are very common all across Minnesota; but few, if any places, have more than Rochester. In the 1920s, Mayo Clinic’s founder Charlie Mayo purchased some and brought them to his family estate, Mayowood. According to the Rochester Post-Bulletin, by the end of the decade, Dr. Mayo’s captive flock numbered in the hundreds.

Another reason Canada geese were drawn to Rochester was because the Silver Lake Power Plant heated the 50-acre lake, giving it open water all winter long. So, for decades, migrating geese would stop in Rochester and stay year round, as there was no reason to fly farther south or return north in the spring.

By the 1960s, the flock at Silver Lake had grown to 4,000-5,000 birds.

For a long time, the city embraced the waddling waterfowl, and it even added food dispensers. For a dollar, visitors could get a scoop of corn kernels to feed the feathered honkers.

“We had thousands of them coming in during that winter migratory season, like, ‘Hey, why should we go further south?’” Parks and Rec director Widman joked. “‘It's great right here. We got warm water. We got food. We got the city feeding us corn.’”

The Canada geese came to be popular among the locals and became an unofficial city mascot. The local baseball team was even named the Rochester Honkers. But between the late 1970s and the mid 2000s, the population had grown out of control, with an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 making their home in Rochester.

Karen Kennedy, 64, recalled a harrowing experience bringing her granddaughter to Rochester’s Silver Lake Park about a decade ago.

"They were just rampant and they were surrounding her,” Kennedy said. “We have video of her screaming, hundreds around. And so we put her on top of the hood of our car."

The population has gone down significantly since then. The city got rid of the corn vending machines in 2007, and the power plant shut down in 2015. But Widman said there are still way too many geese for the local habitat to support.

The geese have few natural predators, reproduce frequently and efficiently and geese typically live for more than 10 years. And years of hunting and agricultural practices have created a much larger population of resident geese — those that no longer migrate. Widman said this is the group he’s most concerned about.

Since 2021, his department has been working on a strategy called “egg addling” to further reduce this population.

What is egg addling?

Egg addling, also known as nest management, is a strategy to prevent the goose eggs from hatching. Widman explained that they follow guidance from the Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society, and that it’s a non-lethal way to manage resident geese.

Widman and his team spend these spring months tracking and visiting the nests across the city, most of which rim Rochester’s lakes. When they come across eggs, they either replace them with wooden dummy eggs or coat the eggs in corn oil, which cuts off the egg’s respiration and stops incubation.

If they took the eggs without leaving replacements, Widman said that the goose would simply create another nest and lay new eggs. He’s hoping the addling will slow the cycle of reproduction.

The goal is not to eradicate the bird entirely. In fact, at this point, that might not be possible. The city just wants to limit how many goslings hatch each year. The addling crews only treat nests once, so any eggs laid after that point will go untouched. And Widman said they don’t treat eggs that are past the halfway point in the incubation process, using a float test to determine the egg’s progress.

“What we want to see is the geese just aging out,” Widman said, “dying of natural causes and not having, you know, 300 goslings each year come in behind them.”

Widman says some cities have taken much more aggressive efforts like euthanizing adult birds in droves. Yet, even though Rochester is using this more humane alternative, he said the city is still getting push back from many residents.

Too many or too few

This is Rochester’s sixth year doing egg addling, but it’s still controversial in town.

Elise Pemberton was concerned enough to interrupt her walk and approach Widman while he was out at Silver Lake addling eggs. Pemberton, 72, has lived in Rochester for almost 50 years.

I remember when there were 20,000 geese on the lake, and that's too many.,” Pemberton said, “but, this is a park. It's not Disney World or a mall, and there’s going to be geese. I'm thinking of the balance of nature in this: How we can respect the geese and leave them with some sort of a nest with something in it? Because they like to have their babies like we like to have our babies.”

Widman talked with her for about 15 minutes, walking her through their strategy and answering her questions. The conversation seemed to assuage some of her fears, and she left with one of the department’s pamphlets in hand that details the egg addling process.

But at the end, Pemberton still stuck up for the geese.

“It gives people a lot of peace and solace to look at these geese and see the babies,” she told Widman and MPR News. “It makes you feel hopeful, well and happy.”

“Believe it or not, that's what we're trying to preserve,” Widman replied.

These types of conversations are fairly common, Widman said. And he also hears from people on the other side — those pushing for the city to take more aggressive efforts to limit the population.

But Widman said most Rochester residents seem to be coming around to accept the city’s approach. And he emphasized that just because the city is looking to control the population, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t love the geese and value their presence.

“If you get here early in the morning and see the geese flying low over the lake, it's beautiful,” Widman said. “But the balance isn't there quite yet. We've got a growing population, crowding out the vegetation, crowding out other species. I believe we’ve reached a point where it would be just as cruel to do nothing.”

Correction (May 15, 2026): An earlier version of this story mistakenly identified the type of geese mentioned. The above story has been updated.

The biggest art crawl in the universe, interactive theater at the historic Searle Mansion, Duluth music, mental health at the movies and painted outdoor folklore in Winona — find out more in this week’s MN Shortlist.

Art-A-Whirl in Northeast Minneapolis Arts District — May 15-17

Art-A-Whirl, one of the biggest art events of the year, returns this weekend to the artist mecca that is northeast Minneapolis. The Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association says it's the largest open artist studio tour in the country and why fact-check that when it feels so true?

The association says more than 1,600 artists, galleries and businesses open their doors at 100-plus locations. Last year, for the art crawl’s 30th anniversary, they estimated there were 120,000 attendees. That said, it’s advised to find alternative forms of transit, from biking and trolleys to free Metro Transit (the Whirl has a handy guide).

Once you’re there, it’s a whirlwind of art demos and markets, live music (The Current also has a handy guide), food trucks and opportunities to meet artists in their workspaces.

A few picks we’re looking at: Community-building a ceramic city at Aldo Moroni Studios all weekend long in the California Building; the “Artlesque: A Dark Mythology Burlesque Show” Saturday at Marble Fae Creative Collective, bra-printing demos Saturday and Sunday at the Casket Arts Building and, most curiously, the “Make Your Own LICK Art (For Dogs)” all weekend long at Logan Park which sounds like it includes loads of peanut butter.

There are also a couple of ongoing exhibitions nearby that have been looped into Art-A-Whirl including: the ”Cinema Red” exhibition at Public Functionary in the Northrup King Building, “Anne E. Orbovich: deep mapping wildness” at Clifton E. French Regional Park; the 5th Annual Book Arts Show at Open Book and “LEGACY: The Women of WARM Gallery” at the Kickernick Building, which you can read more about in this long-form story MPR News did in April.

— Alex V. Cipolle

‘Fefu and Her Friends’ by Theatre Pro Rata — through May 28

In the 1970s, playwright María Irene Fornés created “Fefu and Her Friends,” a play that brought audiences into the story through a clever narrative device. Told in three parts, the first and third acts are fairly standard for theater — the characters mill about a living room of a large estate as they plan a charity event.

Act two, however, breaks up the characters into different locations (the lawn, a bedroom, the study and the kitchen), where four separate scenes happen simultaneously.

Audiences are then broken into four groups and rotate through each of the distinct scenes and locations, unlocking parts of the story and insights to the characters in the play — with the new order the audience learn things contributing to how the play evolves for them.

For this production, Theatre Pro Rata stages “Fefu and Her Friends” at the historic Searle Mansion in Minneapolis, which masterfully evokes the 1930s New England manse where the play is set.

—Jacob Aloi

Season-closing concert at the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra — May 16

The Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra (originally called the Duluth Civic Orchestra) was founded in the 1930s, and it’s about to wrap up its 91st season. The symphony orchestra will perform “Masterworks 6,” Saturday, which will feature Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 — a regal ode to the Rhineland.

The ensemble will also honor its concertmaster Erin Aldridge, who has been with the orchestra for 20 seasons. Aldridge will perform solo violin for one of her personal favorites, Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1.

—Jacob Aloi

‘Myths & Legends of Minnesota’ at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum — May 16-Sept. 13

The Minnesota Plein Air Collective opens an exhibition at the Winona museum that celebrates “Minnesota’s rich tapestry of folklore, cultural heritage and oral tradition as expressed through the landscape, focusing on the lakes, rivers and other waterways of Minnesota.”

Through these nature tableaus, artists dive into local legends, tall tales and personal narratives.

On May 16, artist Neila Harper French and the Outdoor Painters of Minnesota organization will host a “paint-along” demonstration and the collective will host a “paint-out,” both in the museum gardens.

— Alex V. Cipolle

Three exhibition openings at Soo Visual Arts Center — May 16-June 28

The Uptown Minneapolis art center opens three exhibitions by three artists this weekend. There’s “Dream of Dawn” by Yuming “Griffin” Liu, which includes a beautiful and sandy miniature light house installation. Jay Katelansky explores how “Black bodies navigate safely in the United States” using texts in their exhibition “We all live with dreams.”

Artist Savannah Tines, the first artist to participate in SooVAC’s residency, will show sculptural work that “creates speculative ecosystems where nature intersects with the remnants of technological collapse” in the exhibition “A Walk in the Night.”

— Alex V. Cipolle

‘No One Cares About Crazy People’ at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis — May 18

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, marked with major campaigns by organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness to raise awareness and offer education on issues surrounding mental health.

At the Parkway, NAMI Minnesota and NAMI Ramsey County will host a screening of the 2025 documentary, “No One Cares About Crazy People,” which explores the lives of people living with severe mental illness, as well as their loved ones. The documentary is narrated by Bob Odenkirk with a score by Jeff Tweedy, and a brief Q&A will follow the screening.

For further coverage on mental health this month, listen to “Call to Mind” from American Public Media, hosted by MPR News’ Angela Davis.

— Jacob Aloi

Gas prices jumped sharply at many Minnesota stations this week.

The website GasBuddy reports the average price in the state as of Thursday was $4.44 a gallon, up about 22 cents compared to last week.

Twin Cities gas prices are generally more volatile, according to GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan. DeHaan said the state engages in what he calls "price cycling," where gas stations will undercut prices.

"They'll lower prices, even if the corresponding cost does not go down, they will lower prices to have a lower price than their competition. Once stations no longer have room to continue that behavior — that is, once they've lowered prices so far that they might be close to their cost is when prices make that infamous jump that we saw yesterday,” he said on Thursday.

DeHaan said the longer the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the more Minnesota drivers could progressively see prices rising in the weeks ahead.

But DeHaan said the price spike also reflects issues at refineries in the Great Lakes region. A power outage at a BP refinery in Whiting, Ind., caused it to evacuate, and there have been other disruptions, like maintenance that caused some drivers in Ohio to find empty pumps at several stations, according to WKRC.

"Those problems are so significant that they're also having a leeching impact into areas like Minnesota and Iowa as well,” said DeHaan. “We did start to see gas stations in Minneapolis going up to $4.59 a gallon. Part of that is a small impact of the refining issues in your neighboring region,” he said on Thursday.

Many Minnesota counties are seeing prices higher than the state average, including Martin County in southern Minnesota, which is seeing gas at $4.59 a gallon, according to GasBuddy.

Since 2013, 23 artists from Minnesota and surrounding states have participated in the Native American Artist-in-Residence Program at the Minnesota Historical Society. The program was established to support Native American artists in their research of traditional art forms.

During their residency, artists are financially supported and given access to museums across the state for research purposes. Artists then create pieces of artwork based on their research.

Program specialist Chloe Brodt Cashman says the historical society collects a piece from each artist to add to its collection at the end of each artist's residency.

“For example, we have [a] painted hide that's almost 200 years old. Now, we have a brand-new hide to show that continuation of art practice, that resiliency through culture and through arts,” Brodt Cashman said.

Jennifer Adams is a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin. She is currently researching paaxge beadwork, a traditional Ho-Chunk style of beadwork used in regalia and jewelry.

She says it's a lesser-known form of Indigenous beadwork.

Adams’ journey with paaxge beadwork began over a decade ago. She says her family would hold what she calls “immersion camps” for themselves. For a week, they would immerse themselves in Ho-Chunk culture.

Through her research, Adams plans to create a paaxge beadwork pattern book to share with her community. As a part of the residency, artists also propose a community-driven project.

“Things get misconstrued over time, and it's really important that we keep this knowledge alive and passing it on to our children and our youth,” Adams said.

Giizh Agaton Howes is a citizen of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Minnesota. She is the founder and owner of Heart Berry, a business that sells Native American-designed apparel, blankets and other accessories.

Agaton Howes was an artist-in-residence from 2018 to 2019. During her time at the Minnesota Historical Society, she focused her research on moccasins, particularly Ojibwe split toe moccasins.

“A part of the reason that I really like moccasins is because it's really a tool of care and love. It’s for every transition in your life, from when you're born and even after you die,” Agaton Howes said. “I think our ancestors were really smart, and were like, ‘This is this way that you can show love for somebody.’”

Through her time with the program, Agaton Howes created a moccasin pattern book with the help of an apprentice for community members to access to make their own moccasins.

The book is titled “Nookomis Obagijigan,” or “Grandmother’s Gift” in English. Instructions in the book are written in both Ojibwe and English languages.

Giizh Agaton Howes' moccasins.

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Agaton Howes says her project came to fruition at the thought of her grandmother—someone who, she says, never received a pair of moccasins until Agaton Howes made her a pair.

She says knowledge of moccasin making became less common during the boarding school era.

“For me in particular, creating this book, this tool, has been something I've been able to carry into the future and use in so many other ways and, in that same vein, has been able to impact lots of other people's lives and their ability to also engage with this art form,” Agaton Howes said.

Similarly, Cole Redhorse Taylor centered his research on moccasins during his residency, which began in 2018. Redhorse Taylor is a citizen of the Prairie Island Indian Community, near Red Wing. He researched pucker toe moccasins, often associated with Ojibwe culture, and their use in Dakota culture.

He says many people in the Dakota community are unaware that pucker toe moccasins are also part of Dakota culture. During his residency, he researched Indigenous trade in the region.

Redhorse Taylor says the residency program was “pivotal” in his career as an artist.

“As a Dakota person, it really changed my trajectory of how I viewed myself, how I viewed my ancestors, how I viewed our relationship to Minnesota itself, to our homelands,” he said.

For Redhorse Taylor, traditional art forms are a way to connect with his ancestors and are how he presents himself through clothing, such as regalia. Throughout his years as an artist, Redhorse Taylor has made an array of regalia, including moccasins and beadwork.

“That's what makes us beautiful — is to have that cultural knowledge, those cultural teachings. Those are what make us who we are, uniquely as Native people,” Redhorse Taylor said.

Chandra Colvin covers Native American communities in Minnesota for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.

Thursday marks 18 years since Brandon Swanson went missing in southwestern Minnesota.

He was 19 at the time and on the phone with his parents in Marshall after his car went into a ditch. Something happened, he yelled out an expletive, and the line went dead. Despite years of searching by volunteers and law enforcement, he’s never been found.

But Swanson's disappearance was the spark for something good, a law that redefined how missing persons cases are handled in Minnesota.

Jenny Kirk, a former journalist at the Marshall Independent newspaper and a classmate of Brandon's mother, has followed the story since the beginning and said Swanson’s parents were upset when they couldn’t immediately file a police report.

Back then, “if you were an adult, people had to wait for 24 hours,” Kirk told Morning Edition.

“And I can't even imagine the heartbreaking feeling that Brandon's parents, Annette and Brian, experienced when the law enforcement told them that they couldn't help right away,” Kirk said. “And I remember Annette telling me one time that law enforcement told them that, as an adult, Brandon had a right to be missing.”

Their experience prompted Brandon's parents to act. By the next year, the normally quiet and private family helped push for a bill — dubbed “Brandon’s Law” — at the Legislature to ensure missing persons reports can be filed right away, regardless of age.

It also means that law enforcement must start a prompt preliminary investigation, especially when there are suspicious or dangerous circumstances.

“It's a big piece of legislation that I hope, and I really have to believe, that it has made a positive impact. It has to have saved some lives,” Kirk said.

Animal rescues in Minnesota are welcoming dozens of beagles into their care this week from a biomedical research breeding facility in Wisconsin.

Late last month, Big Dog Ranch Rescue and The Center for a Humane Economy announced they bought the beagles for an undisclosed sum from Ridglan Farms near Madison.

The purchase followed a settlement with Wisconsin state regulators where Ridglan agreed to give up its breeder’s license in exchange for avoiding criminal charges.

The company denies claims of wrongdoing and says it has a “deep commitment to animal welfare.”

Early last year, animal rights groups petitioned a court to investigate the breeder. In October, special prosecutor Tim Gruenke found that many of the allegations were too old to prosecute or didn’t rise to the level of criminal liability.

But Gruenke did find that Ridglan allowed non-veterinarians to perform eye operations on some animals without general anesthesia in violation of Wisconsin’s animal mistreatment law.

Twin Cities-based Animal Humane Society welcomed 50 dogs on Thursday. Fifteen will be made adoptable through the Tri-County Humane Society in St. Cloud and Ruff Start Rescue in Princeton. The Bond Between in Minnetonka took in 30 beagles earlier this month.

Sarah Bhimani, director of communications for Animal Humane Society, said the dogs will likely need extra time to acclimate to people.

“They might come into a home and just go into a corner and hide there for a little bit, and might need some time to get comfortable with their new family,” said Bhimani. “And so moving slowly, talking quietly, giving them the space that they need is going to be really important.”

Bhimani says each beagle will undergo a behavior assessment and will likely need special attention from volunteers trained to help dogs that are wary of humans.

“Those volunteers will work with these dogs to help them understand that humans are not scary, that we usually have yummy treats or toys for them to play with,” said Bhimani.

These are dogs that have never been outside, seen grass or had extensive human contact, Liv Hagen, welfare director for Animal Humane Society, told MPR News Morning Edition.

“These dogs essentially don’t know how to dog,” said Hagen. “They don’t know what it means to be loved by a human. To be a member of the family.”

Hagen said the beagles might hide in the initial weeks or months after rescue. New experiences have to come slowly and humans must have patience, she emphasized.

“The world is very new and it's very, very big for them, and so it can be quite overwhelming,” Hagen said. “Every one of these dogs is an individual, so they're all going to respond a little bit differently to these new experiences, but generally, what we see are dogs that are quite under-socialized.”

An agreement that paves the way to the Minnesota Legislature’s session finish includes help for a key Minneapolis hospital, cuts to vehicle registration fees and property tax relief for homeowners, according to terms released late Wednesday.

The pact between Gov. Tim Walz and top lawmakers will still need some massaging before bills are ready for final votes. Those must come by midnight on Sunday.

The outline calls for additional spending on education, debt service for infrastructure, technology upgrades for counties, a safety and security package and additional fraud investigators. It would leave available money from a projected surplus partly unspent to avoid budget problems later.

There will also be a rescue package for HCMC, a vital safety-net hospital in Minneapolis that is on shaky financial ground.

“I’m just incredibly proud how we were able to continue to make the investments we know we need to make, whether it's roads and bridges, education, Hennepin County Medical Center — that critical level one trauma center, dealing with the (federal) bill that came out of Congress that threw so much chaos into how we deal with Medicaid, food stamps and other things," Walz said Thursday.

"Then to deal with some of the issues that have been out there that we needed to get done, giving the tools necessary to fight fraud,” he continued.

GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a candidate for governor, said the budget deal delivers cuts to vehicle registration fees and property tax aid. She said accountability for fraud and affordability were top concerns for lawmakers.

“These are good things that have come forward. Affordability for Minnesotans, fraud protection that is so desperately needed and investment going forward,” Demuth said.

DFL Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy and House DFL Leader Zack Stephenson also lauded the package, with Murphy calling it a “hard-fought negotiation.”

Murphy said the state was responding to a number of difficult issues, from the implementation of a federal tax and spending bill that will affect public programs to the killing of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman.

“We're wanting to make sure that Minnesotans, to the best of our ability, get some support and relief from the things that they're experiencing because of so much that has happened that is outside of our control,” Murphy said.

Stephenson focused on the HCMC element as a key component.

“On the worst day of your life, you're very likely to end up at HCMC. And we want to make sure that that hospital is viable and sustainable in the long term future,” he said on Thursday. “And we took a very important step in that process yesterday.”

HCMC, other hospital stabilization

The assistance for HCMC includes $205 million in state support this year — and beyond that a $500 million reserve account available through 2031 to help ensure that the Minneapolis hospital remains open.

Another $30 million will be set aside to help stabilize other hospitals facing financial challenges.

Rep. Esther Agbaje, DFL-Minneapolis, said the agreement would also include additional oversight measures for the hospital, including a new task force to oversee funding sources for HCMC and sustainability moving forward.

“I think it will do a lot to stabilize them. What they’ve been telling us is that they need a lot of funding, especially with everything happening with uncompensated care, those costs exploding, UCare falling through, and also the incoming effects of HR 1,” Agbaje said, referencing the federal law passed last year that includes cuts to Medicaid. “We hope that this helps put them on a stable ground, level a runway for them to be able to then take off into the future.”

Gov. Tim Walz said the HCMC agreement is imperative.

“I'm proud of what we did, but I want to be very cautious on this,” he said. “This is only the beginning of the health and the hospital crisis across the country.”

Property tax relief

Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, who is vice chair of the Senate Taxes Committee, said in a statement that the agreement’s property tax relief component will total $125 million.

He said that “will deliver real help for approximately 600,000 Minnesotans who are struggling with rising property taxes and higher costs.”

The deal announced Wednesday night also includes agreement on a $1.2 billion bonding bill.

Missing from the joint statement and a signed offer sheet was Republican Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, whose caucus is essential for passing a construction projects bill given a higher vote threshold.

But Johnson issued a separate announcement heralding the cut to vehicle tab fees, which he said amounts to $250 million for a single year.

Gun debate and school safety

Something not in the deal is any action on gun restrictions.

A gun measure package passed in the Senate without Republican support May 4, but so far Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, hasn’t allowed the bill to come to a floor vote.

The bill includes funding for school safety initiatives and mental health programs. It also would require owners of certain high-capacity, military-style guns to register them with the state and it restricts the sale of those guns.

Advocates, including members of Students Demand Action and Moms Demand Action, delivered a foot-high stack of letters signed by thousands demanding Demuth permit a floor vote.

The letter reads, in part: “No single law will prevent the rampant and excessive gun violence that has plagued countless Minnesota families. We recognize there is no singular solution that will save every life, but that reality does not excuse inaction.”

“Speaker Demuth, how many more Minnesotans need to beg for action before you allow this bill to come to a vote?” Timberlyn Mazeikis said before wheeling the stack of petitions into the House chamber.

Mazeikis survived the school shooting at Michigan State University in 2023 and is a Students Demand Action volunteer at the University of Minnesota.

“How many more communities have to experience tragedy? How many more students need to grow up afraid? How many more parents have to bury their children?” Mazeikis said.

“I think we all know it. If this bill comes to the House floor, it will pass,” Gov. Tim Walz said Thursday. “That's clearly why it's not coming to the House floor.”

Demuth said the gun restriction bills have failed in tied committees, which is why they didn’t come to a floor vote.

“We have taken bills up already on the same topics, individually within committee, that have failed on a party line vote,” Demuth said. “So we have absolutely taken votes. They just haven't turned in the way that we're hearing some people want.”

As part of the broader deal, lawmakers approved new funding for school-based mental health programs and anonymous threat reporting.

“We've been very clear since September that we are interested in finding bipartisan solutions to school safety as well as public official safety, that has been a high priority of the Republican Caucus,” House GOP Leader Harry Niska, of Ramsey, said. “We are in a tied House, and so we need bipartisan solutions to be able to go forward.”

DFL lawmakers pledged to stage a sit-in on the House floor Thursday night if the bill remains bottled up.

Advocates of the legislation rallied outside the House chambers Thursday evening as the House debated whether to let the bill face a vote or not. Some even brought snacks to fortify DFL lawmakers for the long night expected ahead.

“We know that they're planning to be here all night, we brought them snacks, we bought some things to drink. We want to support them any way we can,” said Kate Havelin, with Indivisible Twin Cities.

Demonstrators rally inside the Capitol for a vote on a gun safety bill

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Wild arena complex

On the heels of losing a heartbreaking, season-ending loss to the Colorado Avalanche in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Minnesota Wild got at least one small victory from legislative leaders Wednesday night.

The leader agreement includes $50 million in funding for renovations at Roy Wilkins Auditorium and Grand Casino Arena.

State officials say the agreement includes $40 million in bonding for Roy Wilkins Auditorium upgrades and $10 million in cash for Grand Casino Arena upgrades. Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Erin Campbell confirmed the details.

That doesn’t cover the request that the team and city of St. Paul made earlier this session. They jointly sought $200 million from the state — $125 million toward arena renovations and $75 million toward Roy Wilkins updates.

In total, the arena and auditorium upgrade plan is expected to cost around $525 million. The aim is to modernize both facilities.

Sen. Sandy Pappas, who heads the committee crafting the bill, issued a statement.

“As a St. Paulite, I am happy to see funds for the 100-year-old Roy Wilkins Auditorium and thank the Governor for his commitment to our historic treasure. Roy Wilkins serves the whole state — it plays host to high school basketball tournaments, college and high school graduation ceremonies, roller derby games, dance competitions, dogs shows and more.”

In a statement, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her said, “I remain always cautiously optimistic, and I trust the talented legislators, leaders, and staff to get this commitment across the finish line. We are grateful for their investment.”

The Minnesota Wild have yet to publicly weigh in.

Capitol and lawmaker security

The proposal also includes funding to maintain weapons-detection technology at the Capitol, along with additional security staffing beyond of the legislative session. The extra measures would run out next week without additional funding.

Legislative leaders also approved a proposal to allow for law enforcement to offer security for elected officials outside the Capitol complex if they face threats to their health or safety. Such threats have become increasingly common in recent years.

Public construction projects bill

Legislative leaders and the governor approved a $1.2 billion capital investment bill that will fund state and local construction projects. They didn’t spell out exactly what would be included in the package but said chairs of the capital investment committees would be tasked with hashing that out in coming days.

The committees fielded more than $7 billion in requests coming into the legislative session.

The bill is one of the tricker ones to pass because it requires three-fifths votes in both chambers to go forward. That means support from both parties is essential.

Johnson, the Senate GOP leader, said enough Republicans would vote for the bonding bill to pass it.

“We were very reluctant to go up to $1.2 billion unless we had a deal that was something that we thought our caucus could get behind and Minnesotans would agree with at the end of the day,” Johnson said. “And I think what we're looking at right now is a good package.”

SX Decoys sells lifelike replicas of waterfowl that help hunters attract animals like ducks and geese. Scott Butz owns the Fargo-based company and said in the past few years, his business has navigated a lot of challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic strangled supply chains, raising shipping costs. Recently, spikes in oil prices from the Iran War have done the same. And all the while, he’s been dealing with tariffs, or taxes on imports.

“We did have to do a little (price) increase, but the customers accepted it,” he said.

Butz is sympathetic to President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy, which aimed to incentivize domestic production, raise revenue and reduce the country’s trade deficit.

“We're going to get our money back,” he said.

In February, the Supreme Court struck down some of the Trump Administration's tariffs, ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not give the president the authority to impose tariffs.

Shortly afterward, companies that imported goods from overseas and paid those fees began filing for refunds.

But importers are not alone in bearing the costs of tariffs. It’s also the businesses and consumers downstream of them.

“The importer passes along the increase in price to, say, the wholesaler, who then passes it along to the retailer, who then passes it along to the consumer,” said Louis Johnston, an economics professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University.

Johnston said the same kind of dynamic applies in business to business transactions.

But those downstream entities are not getting a refund check.

Shared refunds are ‘hard to imagine’

Allstar Construction replaces roofs and gutters throughout Minnesota and North Dakota.

The company uses imported materials like steel and aluminum, but they’re not the ones actually importing those materials from overseas because they buy from other U.S. businesses.

Allstar’s president, Adam Olson, said it has taken a while for tariff costs to trickle down to him.

His suppliers were working through older inventory of their materials that had not been subject to tariffs, he said, but prices have recently been spiking.

But even though some of the costs of tariffs are being passed down to him, Olson won’t be getting a refund.

“We're not the importer of record, so we're not the ones that are going to be able to apply,” he said. “The refunds are going to start upstream and then hopefully work its way down to the end user.”

But Johnston, the economics professor, is doubtful.

“We don't know for sure, but it's hard to imagine that companies are going to turn around and offer discounts to their customers just because they've now gotten a refund from the government,” he said. “It's possible, it's possible — but I just don't see it as very likely.”

Consumers at the end of the supply chain might also be stuck with some of these costs.

The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that last year, tariffs amounted to a $1,000 tax increase per household.

“I don't really think that consumers should expect to see a lot of movements in the prices this year, in terms of the price actually going down,” said Alex Durante, a senior economist at the think tank.

Durante said most businesses will probably hold onto that money as they wait and see which tariffs stick around and what new ones pop up.

That may make Scott Butz at SX Decoys an outlier, since he’s planning to share the refund with his customers.

“I'm actually going to reward our customers with a big sale this summer,” he said.

But tariff uncertainty continues. Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs, Trump announced a temporary 10 percent global tariff. A U.S. trade court ruled against those tariffs last week, but that order was temporarily paused while the administration appeals.

So, Butz and other importers are not out of the woods just yet.

International student enrollment fell significantly at several of Minnesota’s colleges and universities in the spring semester as the Trump administration’s travel bans, visa restrictions and immigration crackdown chill global education. And many schools are anticipating the number of students coming to study in the U.S. from overseas to drop even more next fall.

In response, the state’s higher education institutions and student advocates say they are ramping up efforts to better support their international students.

More than a hundred members of Minnesota International Educators from across the state convened for a summit at Minnesota State University, Mankato on Tuesday.

Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a national organization, said the last several months have been some of the most challenging in “recent memory,” especially for international students in Minnesota. But she praised how the people of the state responded.

“What Minnesota has demonstrated in recent months has mattered far beyond Minnesota,” Aw told attendees during her keynote speech. “This state showed the nation something powerful: That community is still possible. That courage is still possible. That humanity is still possible.”

International student enrollment at U.S. universities for this spring semester plummeted nearly 20 percent from last spring, according to a new report published this week by NAFSA.

The organization surveyed 149 schools and found that about 62 percent of those colleges and universities reported a significant decline in international student enrollment within both undergraduate and graduate programs from last year.

“We anticipate fall of 2026 to have a larger decline in overall international enrollment than fall of 2025,” Aw said.

In addition to citing the Trump administration’s travel and visa restrictions on students from certain counties, Aw said many prospective students say they no longer want to study in a country in which they don’t think they’d feel welcomed, and some fear for their safety.

“Because of so many policy changes last year, you already had a smaller number of students who applied to U.S. universities. There was a decline in interest in the U.S. to begin with,” Aw said. ”And then you now have to add the [war in Iran] and the cost of flights. All of that is gonna have an impact on enrollment for the fall.”

But Aw said it’s vitally important for schools to continue to bolster their support for international students, both before they arrive in the U.S. and once they’re on campus.

“We know it’s going to be a challenging fall,” she said. “What we know is people are not just sitting idly. They’re moving and they’re making some really key and important decisions that hopefully will help weather some of the storm.”

Hope and resiliency

Not all colleges and universities are experiencing the same declines in international student enrollment. Bethany Lutheran College, a small private school in Mankato, experienced historic levels of new international student enrollment last fall while also retaining currently enrolled students.

But at MSU Mankato, both graduate and undergraduate international student enrollment dropped 10 percent, said William Coghill-Behrends, dean of global studies at MSU Mankato. About half of the school’s international students come from countries in Africa, which he added have “seen a disproportionate number of visa and travel bans.”

But Coghill-Behrends disputed the claim by some that international students drain resources that could be used to support other students, saying that they more than pay their own way.

“This notion that they’re somehow taking away places is just — that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Coghill-Behrends told MPR News, noting that international students are not eligible for federal financial aid. “Our funding structures for support resources are paid for and by international students as a part of their tuition structure. International students add quite a bit of resources to this campus that domestic students also benefit from.”

And It’s not just those on campus who benefit from the presence of international students. MSU Mankato’s international student population contributed $52.5 million to the local economy and supported 211 jobs, according to a 2024 NAFSA report.

NAFSA projects a potential $7 billion loss and over 60,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. if there were more drastic declines in new international student numbers. Though, the actual impact from declines in enrollment won’t be known until the fall semester starts in August.

Despite these troubling trends, there is reason to be optimistic about the future of global education, according to DeBrenna Agbényiga, provost of International University of Grand Bassam in the West African nation of Côte d'Ivoire. Her own child is a recent University of Minnesota graduate, and she says global education enriches all students.

“It has been challenging, and there will be more challenges.” Agbényiga said. “But we have far more opportunities that are going to grow out of this, and this is going to transform higher education overall, not just global education.”

Minnesota’s local school boards have long held the power to decide how kids are taught about a variety of health education topics, including human development, nutrition, sex, child abuse prevention and other issues. That power, though, is about to shift.

New statewide standards set to phase in over the next three years will put health education benchmarks in place across all public K-12 schools. Beyond the basics, the new standards will take on topics including sexual abuse prevention.

“We need our young people to know these things,” said Steve Chapin, who teaches first aid, nutrition, sex education and human development to middle and high school students in the St. James district, two hours southwest of the Twin Cities.

“A healthy student is a better reader, and a healthy student is a better math kid,” said Chapin, who helped draft new statewide health standards meant to guide educators.

“There's so much in it that provides so much good stuff. I want this to be something that everybody grabs on to,” he added. “It's here for us.”

Consent, abuse prevention and media literacy

In 2024, with DFLers in control of the Legislature and the governor’s office, lawmakers passed a bill requiring standards to be developed. A committee formed in early 2025 spent nearly a year working on a series of drafts, the third of which was approved last year by Minnesota Education Commissioner Willie Jett.

The standards have been through several rounds of scrutiny. Public hearings were held last month. They’re now under judicial review. If adopted, they could roll out completely as soon as the 2028-29 school year.

Chapin and dozens of other educators, students and experts spent months putting together the new standards. The third commissioner-approved draft includes guidance on teaching CPR, nutrition, consent, media literacy and puberty as well as preventing abuse, pregnancy and suicide.

Rasana Mamdani, a student at St. Paul Central High School who helped craft the standards, said she was particularly excited about the language requiring teachers to help students with media literacy.

“Our lives (as students) happen on the internet, for better or for worse, and I think that because the internet is inherently a little bit fake, I think that having a really good understanding of what is real and what is not real on the internet is extremely important when it comes to young people's health,” Rasana said.

She said she was also pleased with the parts of the standards that address consent and abuse prevention education.

“I've looked at a lot of consent lessons, and they are vastly different,” she added. “Having consent lessons taught in a uniform way allows for students to all have the same definition of what consent looks like … is really important.”

One benchmark would require educators to teach kindergartners to identify the correct names for all body parts, something research indicates can help prevent abuse. Other benchmarks introduce students to concepts regarding healthy relationships, kindness and active listening skills.

“Every young person in Minnesota is going to get access to the same basic level of health information, no matter where they live, no matter who their teacher is,” said Jill Farris, a standards committee member and director for training and education at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Healthy Youth Development.

‘Government bureaucrats or local control?’

Not everyone thinks the new standards are a good idea. Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, is concerned they are too “ideological” and too much of a burden on teachers.

“Comprehensive sex ed … sounds really good on the outside, but when you delve down into it, there are a lot of issues that are very much ideological and, I believe, belong in the hands of locals to decide what to teach,” Bennett told MPR News.

In a recent post online, Bennett raised concerns about health textbooks some other states have recommended that include discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation.

“These sensitive subject areas cannot be taught in a valueless void,” Bennett wrote. “Who gets to decide whose values go into your child? Government bureaucrats or local control with parental, educator and community input?”

The new standards do not contain requirements to teach gender identity or sexual orientation. Districts are allowed to choose their own health textbooks. And parents are allowed to opt their children out of health education and find alternatives.

Earlier this year, Bennett introduced legislation that would have made the K-12 health education standards, including comprehensive sex education and abuse prevention education, optional for Minnesota districts to teach. The bill did not make it out of committee.

Still, Bennett said she thought every student in Minnesota should learn abuse prevention concepts and skills. The subject is personal to her. During a recent hearing on a bill to prevent sexual grooming of children, she said she was groomed as a child by a school band teacher.

Still, she worries the standards will introduce too much of a burden to K-12 educators.

Chapin understands the concern.

“This is a lot to ask of an elementary classroom teacher, and I personally would rather see districts find funding to hire another educator that could help with this health education push. I just don't know if that's realistic in most districts,” Chapin said.

In St. James, a small district of about 1,000 students, Chapin said educators will need to be creative about implementing standards without cutting back on the active aspects of traditional physical education, but he believes it’s important enough to try.

He believes the standards leave plenty of room for local control and parental input and that parental input will remain a part of health education.

“Districts still have the potential to select curriculum that fits their community,” Chapin said, pointing to the input he seeks from families in St. James and the letters he sends to communicate what he’s doing in the classroom.

“I have huge support from parents,” Chapin said. “I have some that come in and ask some clarifying questions about identity and orientation and things like that. But other than that, we have full support.”