Via Minnesota Reformer

Ashley Murray

Ashley Murray covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. Her coverage areas include domestic policy and appropriations.

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

 

( Minnesota Reformer) – Only six months ago, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s future looked cloudy, her political base shaken. She had barely fended off a primary challenge. Her political judgments appeared questionable. Her critics appeared to have grown in number.

Now House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his Republican allies have shoved her off the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It might look like she has been brought low. Yet the opposite is true. Omar’s ouster caps her rapid rise in stature in her party — not as a gadfly, but as an insider and a rallying point for Democratic Party unity.

Omar got into the U.S. House as a boat-rocker, defeating a long-serving incumbent in a 2016 legislative race before running for Congress in 2018. She replaced Keith Ellison in the 5th District metro Minneapolis seat. 

Omar is a woman and wears a hijab, which inflames Islamophobic as well as sexist opposition to her. Her comments concerning the impact of pro-Israel campaign contributions and the commitments of American Jews to the state of Israel — delivered in a flippant tone better suited to Twitter than to Congress — alienated many in her own party. On the other hand, a lot of progressive voters in the district have been proud to support a Muslim woman, and they admire Omar’s willingness to advocate for Palestine and to criticize imperialism and its legacies. Ellison, also a Muslim, remains a beloved figure among vast numbers of DFLers in Minnesota.

Neither Islamophobia nor sexism explains why Don Samuels almost defeated Omar in her August primary. In 2020, Antone Melton-Meaux primaried her. He was actively supported by pro-Israel groups (which stayed away from the race this year). Omar beat Melton-Meaux easily.

In 2022, Omar faced a new kind of challenge from Samuels, her strongest conceivable opponent. People who know Minneapolis politics knew this would be a real race as soon as Samuels declared. He has deep and extensive connections in the historic Black community of North Minneapolis.

Omar had championed police reform measures that became associated with the “Defund the Police” slogan that proved politically toxic over the past two years. In 2021, she supported a Minneapolis ballot measure that would have replaced the city police department with something new. She also had intervened, needlessly, in city politics by opposing the reelection of Mayor Jacob Frey, who had staked his campaign on his opposition to that ballot measure — and who reaped the rewards by getting stronger support from Black than from white Minneapolitans as he emerged victorious.

Then, in November of 2021, Omar, along with other members of the progressive “Squad” in the U.S. House, voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. They wanted the far more expansive Build Back Better legislation to pass first — but the infrastructure bill was all that President Joe Biden could get through both the House and Senate at the time. It was that or nothing. The infrastructure bill had progressive features and is bringing significant money to Minnesota. Omar was not supporting the governing agenda of her party’s sitting president, a stance that was not especially popular among DFLers, even progressive ones.

After Omar’s close call in August 2022 came her turnabout. As detailed in the national press  she worked closely with Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat, to salvage the compromise Invest to Protect Act of 2022. The law will provide more, not less, federal funding to local police departments, while emphasizing mental health support and violence de-escalation training. Other squad members — Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Cori Bush of Missouri, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — voted against it. Omar’s new pragmatism seemed to show she had gotten the message from the DFL voters in her district. Samuels had criticized her for not being a team player, and she showed she knows how to be just that.

Congressional progressives are tactically divided. Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington leads the faction that wants to be in “The Room Where It Happens,” to quote from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton.” They believe that supporting their party’s leadership is the path to positive policy change. 

Ocasio-Cortez and her allies remain inclined to stake out maximal positions in the hope of shifting national debate leftward.

For now, Omar has sided with Jayapal. Perhaps this will not last, but the politics of Omar’s district favors her new direction.

McCarthy thinks it’s all gain, no pain for him to serve up a Muslim, immigrant Black woman who has been critical of the U.S. as red meat to his party’s base. Yet he may have misunderstood Omar’s rising position within her caucus and the respect she has gotten for her serious, well-informed attention to African issues on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

She has mended fences with Democratic colleagues who have found her Israel-related comments grating — recently signing on to a House resolution supporting Israel. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, a Jewish colleague who increasingly looks poised for statewide office, has defended her against charges of antisemitism. (Phillips and Omar are in position to help one another, and Phillips comes out of this episode smelling like a rose.)

Her party’s ranks rallied around her, and whenever Democrats retake House control in Washington, Omar may turn up in “The Room Where It Happens” on future occasions.

 

Doug Rossinow

Doug Rossinow is professor of history at Metro State University in St. Paul, and the author of many works, including “The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s,” published in 2015.

Via Minnesota Reformer

( The Minnesota Reformer ) – The Minnesota House passed a bill late Thursday that would force Minnesota utilities to move to entirely carbon-free electricity by 2040, after hours of debate that sometimes strayed far off topic.

House Republicans sought to derail the bill and score points with over 30 amendments. The debate— which lasted late into the evening — touched on a range of topics unrelated to electricity: child slave labor, outdoor picnics and Grogu/Baby Yoda from “The Mandalorian.” Rep. Dan Wolgamott, DFL-St. Cloud, presided over the floor session, and he had to remind several Republicans to stay on topic.

The House passed the bill after nearly eight hours of debate 70-60.

Gov. Tim Walz will likely sign the bill if it passes the Legislature. The bill would require utilities to increase their electricity portfolio generated from carbon-free sources — like wind, solar or nuclear — to 55% by 2035. Lawmakers amended the bill so that utilities would need a 60% carbon-free portfolio by 2030 — the bill had originally required 80%. The mandate would increase to 100% by 2040.

DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman, left, and House Majority Leader Jamie Long at a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 26. Photo by Michelle Griffith/Minnesota Reformer.

The bill’s chief author, House Majority Leader Jamie Long, DFL-Minneapolis, offered the amendment, citing municipal utilities and co-ops that are concerned about the ambitious goals. (The bill allows “off-ramps” for utility companies that demonstrate that reaching the standards would have significant impact on reliability or cost.)

The bill would be a boon for wind and solar power developers, but Republicans argued that solar panels made in China and the Democratic Republic of the Congo use slave labor and accused their colleagues across the aisle of supporting slavery.

“How many slaves are going to be needed in China and other places in the world so that you can achieve your green energy goals?” said Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria. “How many more children are going to be needed in order to achieve your blackout goals?”

Long said the federal government is stopping solar panels built with slave labor from entering the country in the first place.

Republicans — who deemed the legislation “the blackout bill” — said barring utilities from using carbon-based energy will cause electricity disruptions and cost Minnesotans thousands of extra dollars each year.

If the carbon-free methods of producing electricity cost the utilities more, they will indeed pass the cost on to ratepayers. But the cost trajectory of fossil fuels vs. solar, wind and other non-carbon sources in the next decade is unclear. A recent study found that states that rely on fossil fuels for electricity are likely to pay higher utility costs than those with more carbon-free sources.

Long said during the House debate that Minnesota is behind other states in transitioning to renewable energy. 

The House passed a similar 2040 clean energy bill in 2021. Republicans on Thursday sharply criticized Democrats for pushing the bill through only one committee, alleging the bill lacked thorough vetting.

House Republicans attempted to pass several amendments that would have bolstered non-fossil fuel energies — like nuclear, hydroelectric and carbon capture — but the Democrats voted them down. The Energy and Policy Institute reported last week that outside fossil fuel groups are pushing Republicans to amend the legislation to include carbon capture, which seeks to take fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions and store them for eventual productive uses before they enter the atmosphere and worsens climate change.

Republican lawmakers argued that their constituents on the Iron Range and in agriculture would suffer because the bill would inhibit economic growth by driving up electricity costs and taking away farm land for solar panels.

“We cannot shun rural Minnesota … and say that ‘We don’t care that you’re not going to have reliable energy,’ ” said Rep. Pam Altendorf, R-Red Wing. “Democrats, you cannot ignore greater Minnesota. You cannot shut them out of this debate.”

Earlier this week, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum sent a letter to Walz and other state officials warning that passage of the bill would violate legal precedent. Republicans attempted to amend the bill to prevent potential legal action from North Dakota, but Democrats rebuffed them. 

Earlier on Thursday, state Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato, told reporters that the bill’s advocates were “very confident” the bill as written would hold up in court should North Dakota sue.

The bill must pass the narrowly divided Senate and win Walz’s signature. Still, it’s something of a capstone for Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, who is completing an arduous trek toward the carbon-free mandate. In 2015, when Democrats were in the minority, she offered an amendment to a Republican energy bill, simply stating that global warming is real and caused by humans. The amendment failed and mustered just one Republican vote.

 

Michelle Griffith

Michelle Griffith covers Minnesota politics and policy for the Reformer, with a focus on marginalized communities. Most recently she was a reporter with The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead in North Dakota where she covered state and local government and Indigenous issues. For two years she was also a corps member with Report for America, a national nonprofit that places journalists in local newsrooms and news deserts. She lives in St. Paul and likes to knit and watch documentaries in her free time.

Via The Minnesota Reformer

( Minnesota Reformer ) – Of the 20 states that have failed to raise the minimum wage above the federal $7.25 an hour standard, 16 have more than 12% of their children living in poverty, according to a States Newsroom analysis of wage and poverty data. Anti-poverty advocates say that’s a sign that there’s an urgent need for lawmakers to increase the federal minimum wage and do more to help struggling families.

Congress had the opportunity to achieve the latter by expanding the child tax credit before the end of the year, but lawmakers did not arrive at a deal with Republicans to include it in the omnibus spending package. The expansion, which was part of the American Rescue Plan, provided as much as $3,600 in monthly installments to qualifying families and is credited with lifting 3.7 million children out of poverty at least temporarily.

Raising the minimum wage would not lead to as fast or drastic an improvement, but a 2019 Congressional Budget Office analysis found that increasing the amount to $15 an hour would lift more than 500,000 children from poverty. And the Economic Policy Institute estimated in 2021, that if Congress passed a $15 minimum wage increase by 2025, up to 3.7 million people wouldn’t have to live in poverty — 1.3 million of those being children.

Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said there is a strong connection between the minimum wage and poverty.

“It’s not a 1-1 connection, but there is a pretty strong connection,” said Zipperer, whose expertise is on the minimum wage, inequality, and low-wage labor markets. “The main determinants of poverty in this country are whether you work and how much you work, so whether you have a job during the year and how many hours a week or weeks per year you work at that job. … And then the third [determinant] is how much you were paid for an hour of work at your job. If you’re getting paid relatively low wages, the minimum wage affects that.”

Congress last raised the minimum wage in 2009, but 30 states now require employers pay more than the federal standard, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Numerous municipalities have also passed living wage laws for city or county workers.

Twenty-seven states, including New Jersey, Florida, California and Missouri, will raise their state’s minimum wage in 2023, after passing legislation or voter-approved ballot measures that gradually increase the state minimum wage over several years or tie it to inflation. Washington ($15.74), California ($15.50) and Massachusetts ($15) will have some of the highest state minimum wages in 2023, although the high cost of living in those states mitigates the effect on poverty rates.

In Missouri, where the minimum wage will be $12 next year, a 2018 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that Proposition B, the ballot measure that is responsible for raising the wage, would increase wages for 677,000 people in Missouri.

States where legislatures have not raised the minimum above the federal $7.25 an hour include Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina. All have child poverty rates of 20% or higher, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by 24/7 Wall Street, a financial news site. Mississippi has the highest child poverty rate in the United States, at 27.6%, with Louisiana following at 26.3%.

Zipperer said that many of these low minimum wage states are concentrated in the Southern United States for a reason. He pointed to the political deals lawmakers made to leave Black workers out of 1930s labor rights gains, which were done for the benefit of Southern Democrats.

“That legacy of racism plagued the initial years of the national minimum wage and labor law generally in the United States, and while it was somewhat improved and overcome through the civil rights movement, you see the parallel to that now where you have a lot of places in the South that don’t have minimum wages and or have very low minimum wages, and so they follow the federal standard which Congress has refused to raise over the past 13 years,” he said.

He added, “That kind of decline in the cost-of-living adjusted value of the minimum wage disproportionately harms the people who are paid the lowest wages in the U.S. economy and because of our sexist and racist labor market, that is women and people of color.”

In Louisiana, for instance, 64% of women of color earn less than $15 an hour, while 58% of Black workers and 50% of Hispanic workers also earn less than $15 an hour, according to Oxfam America’s analysis of U.S. Census data.

The results of that disparity can be seen in an analysis of data on Lousianans’ standard of living done by Talk Poverty, a project of the Center for American Progress. It found:

• 19% of people in Louisiana had incomes below the poverty line in 2019.
• 20% of working age women and 29% of Black Lousianans in 2019 lived below the poverty line.
• Louisiana ranked 42nd in the nation in high school graduation rates and 45th in higher education attainment during the 2017-2018 school year.
• In 2018, 20% of young people aged 18 to 24 without high school degrees were not in school or working.
• From 2017 to 2019, 15.3% of Louisiana households were food insecure.

Peter Robins-Brown, executive director of Louisiana Progress, said several factors contribute to the number of Louisianans living in poverty. Louisiana hasn’t prioritized putting funding into programs that would provide economic relief, has focused its tax reform on benefits for the wealthy and for businesses, and has a particularly unjust criminal justice system that punishes the poor, he said.

“Social services in Louisiana are largely underfunded, making it easier for generational poverty to continue,” Robins-Brown said.

The state also favors landlords’ rights over tenants rights and people living in the southern parts of the state that experience the most severe weather disasters have to live with high premiums for homeowners insurance, which further contribute to economic inequality, Robins-Brown explained.

Although Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is a Democrat, and has expressed support for raising the minimum wage, both chambers of the Louisiana Legislature are controlled by Republicans. Louisiana is one of 24 states without a process for citizens to offer ballot initiatives and voter referendums.

“Both the House and Senate committees that deal with labor issues are low-priority for Republicans and Democrats because industry interests usually predetermine the outcomes in those committees,” Robins-Brown said.

For these reasons, Robins-Brown says Louisianans are depending on the federal government to take action to raise the minimum wage. He said his organization supported expanding the child tax credit because it was been a powerful tool in reducing child poverty.

Congress last failed to increase the minimum wage in 2021, when it was proposed as part of a larger pandemic relief package. Fifty Senate Republicans and seven Senate Democrats voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2025. The exclusion of the expansion of the child tax credit in Congress’ omnibus bill is one more lost chance to reduce child poverty.

“The child tax credit enormously reduced poverty during the recent expansion of that program and unfortunately that was temporary,” Zipperer said. “But I think that’s a very clear demonstration that we actually have, to some degree, the capacity to eliminate a lot of poverty in this country. All it takes is overcoming the political opposition to do that.”

Casey Quinlan is an economy reporter for States Newsroom, based in Washington D.C. For the past decade, they have reported on national politics and state politics, LGBTQ rights, abortion access, labor issues, education, Supreme Court news and more for publications including The American Independent, ThinkProgress, New Republic, Rewire News, SCOTUSblog, In These Times and Vox.

Via ( Minnesota Reformer

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( Minnesota Reformer ) – I visited picket lines in subzero temperatures and the high 90s this year, as I documented the surge in energy that workers are bringing to the labor movement.

It was an exciting year to cover labor, especially in Minnesota, with its high union participation rate and low unemployment rate.

Public support for unions is the highest its been since 1965, while the National Labor Relations Board reported union petitions were up 53% over last year. I expect the labor unrest we saw in 2022 to continue into next year, as workers seek wage increases to match high inflation and employers struggle to fill open positions.

Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner leads a rally of union nurses outside U.S. Bank’s corporate offices in downtown Minneapolis on Nov. 2, 2022. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.

Here’s a recap of three major topics that drove my reporting this year:

Labor strife

Power struggles between workers and the bosses were a defining feature of 2022, even with the midterms, war in Ukraine and Elon Musk competing for our attention.

I reported on unionizing drives at national brands reaching Minnesota, including Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and Amazon. Workers at Planned Parenthood voted to unionize, and workers for the Twin Cities’ largest property management company launched a unionization effort.

Yet despite the surge in union drives, union membership stayed mostly flat. The share of Minnesota workers who are unionized barely moved — from 15.8% to 16% — while nationwide the share of union workers decreased slightly — to 10.3%. That’s a reflection of how hard it is to form a union, labor advocates say.

Workers in new and old unions also flexed their power to collectively stop working in seeking higher wages and better working conditions. Minneapolis teachers struck, as did thousands of nurses and hundreds of mental health workers — twice. Desk attendants in Twin Cities condo buildings also struck.

Minnesota’s public defenders voted to strike. As did social service workers in Hennepin County, bus manufacturers in St. Cloud, and service workers at the University of Minnesota. (They were able to reach deals with higher wages before walking off the job.)

I spent a weekend working in a U dining hall, earning more than the 23-year veteran worker who trained me. I learned about the economic hardship faced by many of the U’s lowest paid essential workers — nearly one in 10 of whom have experienced homelessness while working for the state’s flagship research university.

One of the stories I enjoyed working on the most was this profile of Mary Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association. She led the largest private-sector nurses strike in U.S. history, holding together 15,000 nurses across 15 hospitals. She has the vibe of a friendly Midwestern mom, who likes talking to strangers and is offended by the excesses of millionaires. This worked in her favor as she courted the public’s support over hospital CEOs.

Wage theft 

In May, the Reformer broke the story of dozens of construction workers claiming wage theft while working on the Minnesota Vikings’ owners’ massive Eagan development. The workers are mostly undocumented immigrants, yet came forward with the help of the local carpenters’ union to report their unpaid earnings.

I also reported the story of a woman who says she was raped by another worker on the Vikings’ development and then was fired after she reported it.

The stories about Viking Lakes highlight the appalling prevalence of wage theft and other labor abuses in the non-union construction sector, where underpaying workers amounts to a business model. The stories also illustrate how developers like the billionaire Wilf family insulate themselves from liability through layers of subcontracting.

The mistreatment persists in part because workers seldom report it to the authorities. Yet even when they do, justice is rare and slow-coming.

More than a year after first reporting the wage theft, the state Department of Labor and Industry has yet to conclude its investigation, and none of the workers have been made whole. The investigation has been delayed in part by subcontractors refusing to cooperate with authorities, according to a lawsuit filed against one by Attorney General Keith Ellison. The man accused of rape, meanwhile, has been charged but not apprehended.

Lawmakers did expand the investigative powers of the Commerce Fraud Bureau, which could lead to more criminal prosecutions of wage theft. To date, only one person has been charged (but not convicted) with felony wage theft.

Rent control overhaul 

The St. Paul rent control ordinance drafted by activists and approved by voters took effect in May, but yielded little benefit to renters despite being one of the most stringent policies in the country.

Some St. Paul landlords, facing soaring inflation and energy costs, tried to get around the city’s new rent control law by charging tenants for utilities that used to be included in the rent. Meanwhile, virtually every landlord who asked for an exemption to the 3% annual cap was granted one.

The policy also seemed to scare off new development, with permit applications for new housing plummeting in St. Paul even as Minneapolis and the suburbs saw a building boom. St. Paul was virtually the only city in the nation with rent control that didn’t exempt new construction, but tenant activists believed developers were bluffing when they said investors would flee if the ordinance applied to new apartments.

The dip in new housing permits led the City Council — which was largely opposed to the ordinance before it passed — to pass sweeping changes, including an exemption for new construction.

Despite the turmoil in St. Paul, members of a rent control advisory group in Minneapolis recommended it enact an identical ordinance to the one approved by St. Paul voters. That sets up a similarly contentious debate over how best to address housing affordability in 2023.

Max Nesterak is the deputy editor of the Reformer and reports on labor and housing. Most recently he was an associate producer for Minnesota Public Radio after a stint at NPR. He also co-founded the Behavioral Scientist and was a Fulbright Scholar to Berlin, Germany.

Via Minnesota Reformer

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