Minnesota Now

Minnesota is home to many inventions, including the rollerblade! It may come as no surprise in a state with so many skaters, skiers and hockey players. Well, this weekend, thousands of rollerblades will hit Highway 61 for the longest point-to-point inline skating marathon in the world. The race stretches from Two Harbors to Duluth. This Saturday, the NorthShore Inline Marathon will also celebrate...

After federal agents shot and killed Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti in January, people flocked to the site of his death, near Nicollet Avenue and 26th Street in south Minneapolis, to lay flowers, notes and candles. Jadah Green lives nearby and has been taking care of the makeshift memorial since the beginning. Now, she and the neighborhood group called Whittier Alliance are calling on their neighbo...

Early voting for the November midterms begins Friday. And ahead of this year’s elections, a Minnesota organization has been working behind the scenes to build out what they’re calling a “democracy protection initiative.” The effort evolves out of the response to this winter’s surge of federal agents. COPAL, an organization centered on supporting Latino communities across the state, launched the Im...

On Thursday, the ICE agent who shot and wounded a man in Minneapolis in January will make his first appearance in state court. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension took Christian Castro into custody Wednesday. He also faces federal charges for allegedly lying about the circumstances that surrounded the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis. Reporter Matt Sepic joined Minnesota Now with the latest.

Minneapolis Public Schools has announced plans for potential school closures. As many as 16 buildings could lose K-12 programming. MPR News education reporter Elizabeth Shockman laid out the district's plan to address budget issues. And we heard from a parent in the district. We checked in with the city of St. Paul on homeless encampment closures, police drones, the budget and other issues in a co...

In a recent interview with host Sanni Brown for MPR’s Carbon Sound, Minneapolis-based therapist and author Resmaa Menakem shared this advice for creatives: “Do the weird stuff. Play!” he said. “Creation springs from those types of things.” Menakem has a new creation. He teamed up with playwright Kristen Adele Calhoun to write an Afrofuturist play called “ Mothership ,” about five humans who flee E...

Minnesota’s most recent high school graduates have spent this summer and fall beginning their next steps. What follows high school is different for each individual, but a new report identifies some patterns in the education and employment records of hundreds of thousands of people who graduated from 2008 to 2023 in greater Minnesota. Kelly Asche led this work for the Center for Rural Policy and De...

The Minneapolis school district announced plans Tuesday night to close more than a dozen of its schools. MPR News education reporter Elizabeth Shockman joined Minnesota Now to explain the proposal. And MPR News host Nina Moini talked with north Minneapolis parent Shakiya Carter, who opposes the closures. Carter is one of the founders of the group Minneapolis Families for Public Schools.

It’s been more than a month since the City of St. Paul shut down an encampment where more than 100 people lived. Since then, seven people from the Pig’s Eye encampment have made use of available shelter beds, according to a report from the city at the end of August. Many former Pig’s Eye residents have moved to other, remaining encampments in the city. St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her’s office said this...

Both leading candidates for Minnesota governor say officials in the Walz administration should be fired for their handling of fraud in state programs. They were responding to a story by a Minnesota Star Tribune reporter detailing the fraud response. We'll talk to him. Minneapolis has a new fire chief. Reginald Freeman is taking over a department that's facing staffing challenges and responding to...

Minneapolis swore in its 19th fire chief, and the department's first ever outside fire chief hire, last week. Chief Reginald Freeman has a pretty unusual resume for a Minneapolis fire chief — he has led fire departments in Oakland, Calif., and Hartford, Conn., served as a civilian fire chief for the Department of Defense in Iraq and ran fire and EMS operations in Saudi Arabia. He's taking over a d...

These days, Natasha Howard is jersey no. 1 on the Minnesota Lynx. She returned to the team this season after nearly a decade of competing on other WNBA teams and internationally. The last time Howard played for Minnesota, they won the 2017 championship. She won two other titles with the Seattle Storm and was named the 2019 Defensive Player of the Year. Howard is a three-time all star and now, she’...

Later this week, a royal blue cargo van will roll into Faribault and Northfield, offering no-cost legal help to community members. The Justice Bus is a mobile office set up to help with civil cases related to issues like eviction or custody arrangements. There are four of these in the state, each dedicated to a different region. Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services has one. The group’s outre...

A new Minnesota Star Tribune report is taking a closer look at how the Walz administration responded to fraud allegations across state government and why it took years for the administration to recognize a broader, interconnected problem. The in-depth report is based on interviews with people who worked in and around the administration, as well as testimony from a congressional investigation. Ryan...

Leaders of major artificial intelligence companies are calling for more regulation of AI. President Donald Trump is dismissing those concerns and says more regulations would put the U.S. behind China. A local AI ethics expert weighs in. Minnesota is ending the use of hotels for people facing mental health crises. Hennepin County had already stopped turning to hotels before this change. We'll hear...

For the Minnesota Vikings, the very beginning of the new NFL season was rough. Starting quarterback Kyler Murray left the field with a concussion early in Sunday’s home opener against the Green Bay Packers. But Carson Wentz came in as backup and helped the Vikings win 39-22. Minnesota Now sports contributors Wally Langfellow and Eric Nelson joined the program with those sports headlines plus other...

Starting this week, Minnesota will no longer allow the use of hotel rooms to provide what’s called “crisis respite.” It’s a Medicaid-funded program aimed at providing care and supervision to people experiencing mental health crises. Case workers have turned to hotels for help in some cases since 2020, but after concerns about oversight and safety, the state stopped allowing new hotel placements in...

The CEOs of the country's top AI companies are unifying in their call for a global slowdown on AI development, after two former researchers at Anthropic shared concerns that AI is becoming too powerful too quickly and could ultimately threaten humanity's survival. Manjeet Rege is the director of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas and also author of the b...

It’s been 25 years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 unfolded and left nearly 3,000 people dead. We reflected on how that day forever changed our lives. We heard stories about Minnesotans who were on hijacked planes, inside the Twin Towers, and watching with horror from home. We also spoke to a Minnesota social studies teacher and his former student, who belongs to a generation born after 9/11,...

This weekend will be the 25th annual Selby Ave. JazzFest in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. What started as a way to bring people together post-9/11 has now grown into a community celebration. We got a preview this year’s big festival from Ernest Bisong, festival director and the artistic director at Walker West Music Academy, which hosts the festival.

The wildfires in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness are officially fully contained after nearly two months. That doesn’t mean all the fires are fully extinguished. There are likely some hot spots smoldering, deep in the soil that won’t be out until the first snowfall. However, it’s good news ahead of the fall tourism season for the region. This weekend, the city of Ely is celebrating fall w...

As the tragic events of 9/11 began to unfold 25 years ago, millions of teachers and students were just starting their school day. Among them was Waseca High School social studies teacher John Hanson and his students. They were in the midst of class when a colleague came knocking on the door. She told him something had happened and that he needed to turn on the TV. That was when Hanson and his stud...

A Somali man who had been living legally in the Twin Cities is now in ICE detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Adam Abdullah was arrested in St. Paul in December and has no criminal record. MPR News reporter Matt Sepic talked with him from detention. Dunwoody College of Technology is launching a new program to help high school students learn trade skills. Plus, the pastor of a rural Lutheran church...

Hispanic Heritage Month officially begins next Tuesday. Congress established the month in 1988 to celebrate Latino history, identity and culture in the U.S. Since then, it’s kicked off with an award ceremony in Washington, D.C. This year, the Hispanic Heritage Awards are leaving D.C. for the first time and coming to Minneapolis. During Thursday’s ceremony at Orchestra Hall, the people of Minnesota...

September is National Recovery Month. It’s observed nationally to raise awareness about addiction and mental health and celebrate people in recovery. Pastor Seth Perry of Elim Lutheran Church in Scandia has spent the past few years trying to reduce mental health stigma in his community. He told MPR News in 2024 that opening up about his own struggles with mental health changed the way he approache...