KTOE Noon News 7-2-25

Top Stories for Noon 7-2-25: 

• Vine Art Exhibit “From Palette to Paper” on Display at Carnegie Art Center
• Hourly school workers in Minnesota are still eligible for unemployment insurance benefits this summer thanks to a one-hundred-million-dollar state investment. Lawmakers took seventy million dollars from the Northern Lights Express project to cover most of the cost for the next four years. Many Republicans opposed the U-I benefits for school workers but agreed to reallocate funding from the proposed passenger rail line between the Twin Cities and Duluth.
• U.S. Senator Tina Smith is blasting a Republican-backed budget bill, calling it “disastrous and cruel.” The Minnesota Democrat says the plan would strip health care from 16 million Americans, including nearly two hundred thousand Minnesotans, while handing massive tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. She also warns it could force rural hospitals to close and defund Planned Parenthood. Smith says Minnesotans across the political spectrum oppose the cuts, and she’s urging them to speak out as the bill heads back to the U.S. House.
• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is joining a multistate lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to personal Medicaid data. Ellison says the move violates federal law and creates a “climate of fear” that could discourage families from seeking medical care. The California lawsuit aims to block the use of this health data for immigration enforcement. Medicaid, a.k.a. Medical Assistance, provides health coverage to low-income residents, including children, pregnant women, and seniors.
• Governor Tim Walz is authorizing state emergency assistance for parts of St. Louis County that suffered damage in the wildfires from May 11th to 24th. Walz says, “The fires that spread across northern Minnesota earlier this year caused severe damage and major loss.” The total assistance will be determined once all the damage assessments are complete.
• An African American former General Mills employee says his objection to the company’s Black History Month flyers led to his firing. L. Lee Tyus Jr. recently filed a lawsuit against the Minneapolis-based food giant. The plaintiff, who worked at the St. Paul facility, claims the company’s flyer described racist atrocities as fun facts. One of the events was the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, also known as the Black Wall Street massacre. Tyus said shortly after he brought the issue to the human resources department and filed a formal complaint through the business’s international ethics platform. The plaintiff is seeking at least 50 thousand dollars in damages for each of the three counts in the complaint.

• MAPS Community Education ACES School Age Care Achieves I-SAC Accreditation