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Monday morning, the Supreme Court ruled former President Donald Trump has some immunity from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. We broke down the ruling with a law professor from the University of Minnesota.
A law went into effect Monday which unseals birth records for some Minnesota adoptees. We spoke with an expert about the impacts on adoptees and birth parents.
WCCO-TV turned 75 Monday. We heard from a former WCCO news director and general manager.
Plus, we heard an update on the story of a transgender man from Russia who took refuge in Minnesota.
Our Minnesota Music Minute today was âBucket of Blueâ by Wish Wash, and our Song of the Day was âSpanish Townâ by Jaggedease.
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Monday marks the 75th anniversary of WCCOâs first ever television broadcast in the Twin Cities.
Ron Handberg wasnât at WCCO-TV way back in 1949 when the station broadcast its first ever newscast, but he was responsible for shaping the station throughout the second half of the 20th century.
Handberg got his start at WCCO radio in 1960 and was the producer of the first Scene Tonight shows on WCCO-TV in the late â70s. He joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on the show to paint of a picture of his early years on WCCO.
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Monday is the first day Minnesota adoptees over 18 can request their original birth recordâeven those from closed adoptions that happened decades ago.
The law was championed by adoptees citing the right to know their own history. Also affected are the birth parents who must rapidly come to terms with the idea of being contacted by a child they believed they would never see again.
Alexis Oberdorfer is the vice president of services at the Minnesota Childrenâs Home & LSS. She joined MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer to share the details of the law change and how it will affect both adoptees and birth parents.
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In April, we told you about a Russian transgender man who fled with his partner to Minnesota after learning it was trans refuge state. It was a harrowing journey that captured the hearts of many Minnesotans.
While Erik Beda made it to Minnesota in March, he was separated from his partner Ivan at the border. Minnesotans stepped in to bring the couple back together. And Minnesota Now Senior Producer Aleesa Kuznetsov was the only journalist invited as Erik and Ivan reunited.
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On Monday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution over the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
The court decision was 6 to 3, divided along partisan lines. The decision sends the case back to lower courts, and that move will likely delay a trial for Trump on plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
University of Minnesota law professor Jill Hasday joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to explain the decision.
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President Joe Biden gathered with his family at Camp David over the weekend to regroup after a debate that many viewed as disastrous for his reelection campaign. He showed more energy at a North Carolina rally as his campaign pushed back against calls by some Democrats to drop out.
Support for Biden has faltered among parts of the coalition that elected him in 2020âincluding young voters. In one survey covered by NPR, only a third of voters ages 18 to 26 supported Biden and another third supported former President Donald Trump. The rest preferred third-party candidates.
For our series State of Democra-Z, weâve been talking to a group of young voters who work in politics. Cori Stockard is an incoming senior at the University of Minnesota and president of the College Democrats, and Cory Hallada is an incoming senior at St. Olaf who has interned with former president Trumpâs campaign.
The two Gen-Z voters joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to share what they took away from the debate.
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Minneapolis will be the center of elite gymnastics. Target Center is host to the USA Olympic Gymnastics Trials this weekend. All eyes will be on St. Paul native Suni Lee and Waconia native Shane Wiskus. And of course Simone Biles will be on the mat too.
Minnesota has started to make a name for itself when it comes to producing Olympic gymnasts. Part of that is thanks to the elite gym, Twin City Twisters in Champlin. They are responsible for training Olympic medalist Grace McCallum and world champions Maggie Nichols and Lexi Zeiss.
And there are some young athletes that could be the next Minnesota natives to be on the Olympic stage. Maliha Tressel is a Junior Elite gymnast who trains with Twin City Twisters. She joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about the upcoming trials and what it takes to compete at a high level.
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We all need a little help to get through life sometimes. From everyday questions to more complex problems, weâre asking the experts to lend us a hand. Throughout the series, weâll hear some direct advice, for us not-so-direct Minnesotans.
Construction season is here. And thereâs no doubt youâve encountered orange cones â sometimes that means zipper merging. We all like to think we know what weâre doing, but many agree that Minnesotans arenât the best at zipper merging. We asked a professional to clear up the confusion around zipper merging and give us a lesson.
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President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will face each other in a presidential debate for the first time in the 2024 election cycle on Thursday night. They are virtually tied in the polls, with just over four months left until election day.
A quarter of voters view both major party candidates unfavorably, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center â thatâs more than there have been in at least three decades. So is it possible to win people over on the debate stage?
We wanted to hear from someone who knows what makes for a winning debate strategy so we called up David Cram Helwich. Heâs the director of forensics at the University of Minnesota. Heâs also director of a summer speech and debate camp for high school and middle school students, which is currently underway at Augsburg University. He joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer from camp.
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President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are gearing up for a debate tonight. Polls show it is a tight race. What can they do to win over voters in the debate tonight? Weâll talk to a debate coach about what he'll be watching for.
Itâs construction season â you arenât the only one facing road rage when it comes to all the the traffic and zipper merging that comes with road work. And it might be because not everyone knows how to zipper merge! Weâll get a lesson in our latest âProfessional Helpâ segment.
And Suni Lee, Simone Biles, and other gymnastics stars are in Minneapolis for the USA Gymnastic Olympic Trials. Weâll talk to an elite local gymnast about what it takes to compete on sports biggest stage.
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A bag of cash, a list of jurors hidden in a water bottle and a juror who was followed home: It was all part of an alleged plot to bribe a juror in the Feeding Our Future court case. Five people have now been charged.
The Minneapolis Police union contract that would increase the departmentâs budget by millions gets a public hearing. We heard from the many stakeholders who made their voices heard in a nearly four hour meeting.
Plus, we talked to a Dakota writer about what her Two-Spirit identity means to her. We heard a conversation with an author coming to town. She wrote the best-selling book, âTomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow.â
And our summer festival spotlight took us to Akeley for Paul Bunyan Days. Our Minnesota Music Minute was âBanjo Songâ by folk singer Nolen Sellwood.
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âTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrowâ is a New York Times best-selling book about love, art and video games.
The author, Gabrielle Zevin, will be in Minneapolis on Friday to promote the paperback launch of her book two years after release. MPR News reporter Kyra Miles spoke with Zevin ahead of the event.
For those who might not know, can you give a quick synopsis in your own words?Zevin: Iâm already laughing at that because Iâve been promoting the book for two years. And itâs kind of embarrassing to say that I still find âTomorrowâ somewhat hard to synopsis. So Iâll add to that âTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrowâ is the story of Sam Mazur and Sadie Green, who have a three-decade-long friendship and artistic collaboration. And for me, the crux of the story is maybe how difficult it is to connect even though we have ever-increasing means to do so â but the real possibility of making meaningful connections in virtual spaces.
So Iâve recommended this book to a lot of people. But I think something that I always disclaim to people when I recommend it is how perfectly imperfect the characters are. How do you go about creating these flawed but realistic characters?You know, I donât know if Iâm trying to create people that are imperfect, but I am trying to create people and people are imperfect. I think there are some people that want to read characters that are maybe better than us in some way, but I am not that reader. I think the thing that moves me most in fiction is the sort of gap between the way we perceive ourselves and the way we perceive others.
So whatâs exciting for you about this paperback launch?Itâs been two years in hardcover. And itâs been great to just see it kind of sell and sell and sell. But with a lower price point, Iâm excited that it gets to even more readers, readers who maybe felt resistant to the idea [of] a literary novel about video games, will think, âHey, now that the price is lower, maybe Iâll try a novel about video games.â
I read lit-fic, but I am really a romance reader. And while I donât see this book as a romance, would you consider it a love story?I mean, I think all stories are love stories or lack-of-love stories. I think, in a sense, you can find it in even the most like ostensibly just esoteric literary fiction. At core, weâre talking about: Were you loved enough? Did you love enough? And so I see all stories as love stories, even as somebody who writes literary fiction. But that said, I think the word romance has a burden that it doesnât need to have, you know. I think the book is not a romance, not in the way people think of romance. But I do think it is about two people who have a romance of the mind, but not a romance of the body.
This book originally came out as the world was emerging from a pandemic. And now this paperback is emerging into a world where we have lots of major international conflicts going on. How do you think that will affect first time readers of this book?I think the worlds that my characters find themselves in in the book is the world. It has all of the things in it, not necessarily the particularity of 2024, you know, but it doesnât exist in a world that doesnât have conflict. When the book came out in 2022, thereâs a little bit that has to do with gun violence in the book, or maybe not a little bit, maybe a significant part of the book. And at the time I was doing interviews, journalists would ask me, âHow did you know there would be another gun crime in the U.S. when you wrote this book?â Iâm like, âbecause thereâs always another gun crime in the U.S.â And so if you write books that are, again, more in the world, I think they they feel more maybe naturally continuous with the way we live right now.
I want to ask you whatâs next. But I also know that the book has been optioned as a movie. How are you thinking everythingâs gonna fit into a two-hour movie?When we went out with the book, it sold in manuscript â actually, it had its first film offers before we even sold the book â they actually kind of happened at the same time. But I said to my agents that I really thought it should be a limited series. And so of course, the best offers that came back were for movies. I donât feel desperately sad. There are some authors who are very eager to see their characters come to life on screen. But I never felt that way. Even though obviously it would be meaningful, probably financially, it would bring your books to a broader audience, and there are advantages to that happening, but I also just love the way a book can just exist as a book.
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This week our summer festival spotlight series takes us to Akeley, a small northern Minnesota town of 400 people, located just 40 miles south of Bemidji.
Akeley claims to be the birth place of Paul Bunyan. So itâs only fitting the town celebrates the giant lumberjack every summer. This year will be the 75th year of Paul Bunyan Days.
MPR News host Cathy Wurzer talked to Akeley Chamber of Commerce President Peggy Davies about the festivities, which kick off Friday and last all weekend.
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During Pride month, many folks around the state are reminded, or learning for the first time, that gender and sexuality is a spectrum that goes beyond the traditional LGBTQ+ umbrella.
One identity that often gets misrepresented â or even left out entirely â is Two Spirit, an identity unique to Indigenous people.
Yanktonai Dakota poet and New Native Theatre senior artistic producer Charli Fool Bear shared what her Two Spirit identity means to her in a conversation with MPR News host Cathy Wurzer.
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In a city struggling to maintain police officer staffing levels, the Minneapolis City Council is holding public hearings on a tentative union contract that would make Minneapolis officers some of the highest paid in the state.
Despite pressure from the mayor and his allies to quickly approve the contract, council members want the public to have time to consider whether the city is getting enough reforms to make up for the additional 20 million dollars it will cost over the next two years.
MPR News senior reporter Jon Collins reported on the nearly four hour meeting on Tuesday night.
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Prosecutors Wednesday announced jury bribery charges against three of the defendants in the recent Feeding Our Future trial along with two other people.
MPR News correspondent Matt Sepic joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to share what he heard at a news conference at the U.S Attorneyâs Office in Minneapolis.
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Weâre well into the official start of summer, and teenagers across Minnesota have a break from their jam-packed school schedules. Between homework, extracurricular activities and part-time jobs, many teenagers donât have time for much else during the school year â which makes summer the perfect time for those things that get sidelined. Like therapy, for example.
A therapist joined the show to explain why summer therapy for teens can be beneficial. Lexi McMullen is a Moorhead-based family therapist at The Village Family Service Center.
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Princeâs album âPurple Rainâ turned 40 on Tuesday. The man behind the beat of the album, record producer and musician Bobby Rivkin âBobby Zâ joined Minnesota Now.
Rivkin played in Princeâs band, The Revolution, from 1978 to 1976. After Princeâs death in 2016, he and other members of the band reunited and kept performing.
The band played two anniversary shows on Friday and Saturday to commemorate Purple Rain. Some fans who took part in the weekendâs celebrations got a preview of an upcoming musical based on Purple Rain, the film, where Rivkin is serving as a musical advisor for the project.
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On Tuesday afternoon a state senate committee will hold a hearing at the Capitol on what they call a pattern of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incidents at the University of Minnesota since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, as well as the administrationâs handling of these incidents.
Included is accounts from Jewish students and community members about what they feel is an anti-Jewish atmosphere on campus. Also up for discussion, the universityâs decision to rescind an offer to Israeli historian Raz Segal to lead the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. DFL State Senator Ron Latz, the chair of the committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, joined the show to talk about it.
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A state senate committee is trying to learn more about what it calls a pattern of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incidents at the University of Minnesota. Lawmakers invited professors, students and administration to speak at a committee hearing later Tuesday afternoon. The committee chair joined Minnesota Now.
Forty years ago Tuesday, Prince released Purple Rain. We talked about the album with one of the people who helped make it â and learned about a Prince-themed musical coming to Minneapolis.
If you have kids in your life, you know they are some of the busiest people among us. We talked to a therapist who says summer break is a good time to focus on teen mental health.
We remembered an icon of the Minneapolis folk music scene, âSpiderâ John Koerner.
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