Author: Christopher J. Valentino

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to testify at a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday, June 30, 2020 in Washington, DC. The committee is examining efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic while putting people back to work and kids back in school. Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images. WASHINGTON — Anthony Fauci, one of the federal government’s leading public health figures, announced Monday he’ll be leaving his post in December, though he made clear he’s not retiring.  The 81-year-old doctor who runs the National Institute of…

Kristal Dailey looks at a court document from Jefferson Capital Systems’ case against her. Photo by Nick Hagen for ProPublica.This story was originally published by ProPublica. Last November, Kristal Dailey looked at her weekly paycheck and realized about $150 was missing, a quarter of her take-home earnings from a factory just outside Detroit, where she makes just over $18 an hour. “I’m like, ‘What the heck is this from?’” she said. Dailey immediately reached out to her company’s human resources department. That’s when embarrassment and then anger replaced her initial shock. Her check, she learned, was being garnished over a…

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he will cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for Pell Grant borrowers and up to $10,000 for all other borrowers with an income of less than $125,000 for an individual and $250,000 for a household. Biden also announced his administration is extending a pause on student loan repayments until Dec. 31. The decision comes one week before the expiration of a pause of student loan repayments put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite numerous reports in recent weeks that Biden would…

A poll worker at Martin Luther King Center in St. Paul on Election Day 2020. Photo by Nicole Neri/minnesotadigest.com.This is part of an occasional series on election administration. Read part 1, “Who does what?” Part 2, “Who can vote in Minnesota?” Part 3: “How and why polling places are computerized.” Part 4: “How absentee voting works.”  Part 5: “Reconciliation.” Election officials do their best to get results out on election night or the next morning, but always with a note that they are unofficial. Perhaps preliminary would be a better word than unofficial.  These results do come from an official source, unlike news reports of…

Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen speaks as supporters cheer behind him at a rally at an Apple Valley Cowboy JackÕs Wednesday, May 4, 2022Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen on Tuesday said his past comparison of COVID-19 public health policies to Nazism was “legitimate.” Back in April, Jensen said the steps taken to curb COVID-19 spread were comparable to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, citing Kristallnacht — two nights in November when violent mobs destroyed synagogues, businesses and homes. Likening COVID-19 policies to a repeat of Nazism were justifiable, Jensen said in a video posted to his campaign Facebook page on…

Getty Images. Minnesota crisis pregnancy centers target low-income people and provide misleading information about abortion and contraception, according to Attorney General Keith Ellison. Ellison on Tuesday issued a consumer alert for Minnesotans warning that crisis pregnancy centers tout comprehensive health care but actually push pregnant people away from abortion — often through deceiving messaging and methods. Minnesota has 90 crisis pregnancy centers, far outnumbering the state’s eight abortion clinics, according to a report by The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality. “As Minnesota’s chief consumer advocate and legal officer, I want to alert Minnesotans that crisis pregnancy…

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesThis is part of an occasional series on election administration. Read part 1, “Who does what?” Part 2, “Who can vote in Minnesota?” Part 3: “How and why polling places are computerized.” Part 4: “How absentee voting works.”  Election workers count. Not just in the figurative sense of mattering, but in the literal sense of one, two, three. And they don’t just count votes. They routinely count all kinds of paperwork as a pervasive mechanism for ensuring elections run as they ought to. In particular, election workers check that counts that ought to match up do match up, once…

Sen. Amy Klobuchar called for both more police funding and more reform. Photo by Tasos Katopodis-Pool/Getty Images. Republicans on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and law enforcement witnesses at a Tuesday hearing blamed recent violence against officers on anti-police rhetoric, while Democrats distanced themselves from the “defund the police” slogan and said an oversupply of guns made law enforcement jobs more dangerous. Republicans on the panel raised complaints about general attitudes toward police and members of both parties criticized progressive activists’ calls to “defund the police,” which peaked after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020.…

Workers in a pork processing plant, 2016. Photo courtesy of U.S. General Accountability Office. Faced with court rulings that say a Trump administration directive doesn’t protect Tyson Foods from liability caused by workers’ deaths due to COVID-19, the food giant is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the matter. Arguing that recent court rulings against the company will have “drastic consequences for the next national emergency,” Tyson has told the nation’s high court that private companies “will not be so eager to willingly aid the federal government in a crisis” if those rulings are allowed to…

A federal appellate court ruled in favor of unions, including Education Minnesota, of which Denise Specht is president. Courtesy photo.A federal appeals court ruled Monday that four public workers are not entitled to a refund of past union fees, a victory for government unions. The case has to do with so-called fair share fees, which unions collect from nonunion workers for bargaining and to enforce labor contracts. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gathering “fair share” fees was unconstitutional in a landmark case called Janus v. AFSCME. Three teachers sued Education Minnesota shortly after the Janus decision, seeking…