Minnesota Now

Another winter spring storm is taking aim at Minnesota. After a warm and sunny start to the week, snow could make its return to the southern part of the state. MPR meteorologist Sven Sundgaard joined Minnesota Now to explain.

The Trump administration is ignoring judge’s orders in immigration cases, most notably on the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador. We talked to a University of Minnesota immigration law expert about what this move means.

It’s been five years since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We learned how the virus exposed racial disparities in health care. We also looked at how the pandemic impacted downtown Duluth and how the city is trying to bring people back.

A Minnesota law professor joined the show to discuss her new book, in which she argues that forgetting women's historic struggles for equality perpetuates injustice.

The Timberwolves are on a historic 8-game winning streak. We got the latest from our sports contributors.

Over 100 years ago Monday, a group of suffragists met with the new president, Woodrow Wilson, to ask him to support votes for women. The women left that meeting without any promises and spent years fighting for the passage of the 19th Amendment. They picketed the White House and endured violent harassment, arrests and jail time.

In a new book, a Minnesota law professor argues that their struggle — and others like it — are still obscured by stories that keep men at the center. Jill Hasday is the author of “We the Men: How Forgetting Women’s Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality.” She joined Minnesota Now to talk about her research for the book.

March Madness begins this week. You wouldn’t find a Minnesotan team if you were to check out the brackets for the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments this year. But a Minnesotan is a face of the women's tournament. Paige Bueckers is in her final season with the number two seed, the University of Connecticut.

Wally Langfellow is the founder of Minnesota Score Sports Magazine and co-host of the sports talk show 10,000 Takes. Eric Nelson is the other host of that show and Minnesota Vikings NFL reporter for CBS' Eye on Football and Sirius XM. They both joined MPR News host Nina Moini to talk about basketball and other sports news.

On Saturday the Trump administration announced that it would use a law from 1798 to deport members of a gang. It did not provide evidence that the roughly 250 immigrants from Venezuela that were getting deported belonged to a gang.

On Sunday, a federal judge ordered the administration to stop the deportations and turn the deportation flights around. The Trump Administration has said that because the flights were over international waters when the order came down, it did not need to comply. The situation is setting up a major legal battle over presidential power.

For perspective on the situation, Nadia Anguiano joined Minnesota Now. She is director of the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic at the University of Minnesota.

Five years ago, the state of Minnesota and the rest of the world was experiencing the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, we’ve learned people of color experienced a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 cases and deaths. In Minnesota, deaths from COVID-19 were concentrated in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field is the associate director of the Minnesota Population Center and a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. She is part of a team that published a study looking at the racial disparities in mortality rates from COVID-19 across neighborhoods in Minnesota.

Wrigley-Field joined Dr. Kevin Gilliam, the medical director of NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center in north Minneapolis, to talk about their perspectives on disparities in health care.

On March 13, 2020, Gov. Tim Walz declared the COVID-19 pandemic a peacetime emergency. Unmasked and unaware of what was to come, Walz announced that day that cases had increased from nine to 14 from the previous day.

That has turned into 1.9 million cases in Minnesota as counted by the health department. And the deaths of more than 17,000 Minnesotans.  

The Minnesota Now team has spent the last month going out across the state and asking listeners and readers to share their story. 

On Minnesota Now, we hear from many different people in Minnesota over the phone and in the studio. But we don’t often meet them in the community, where news — and life — happens. In our “Out to Lunch” series, MPR News host Nina Moini sits down for a meal with people from Minnesota news and culture to get to know them better.

Bishop Richard Howell has been a pastor at Shiloh Temple International Ministries in north Minneapolis for more than 40 years. And he's led the ministry through a difficult five years since the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd.

Moini and Howell met up at Good Day Cafe in Golden Valley for a conversation about his life and work over lunch.

Minnesota is seeing rollercoaster weather this week, with temperatures swinging from the 30s to the 70s. MPR Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner joins MPR News host Nina Moini with details on what’s next, including a possible spring storm in the forecast.

Thursday marks five years since Gov. Tim Walz declared a “peacetime emergency” and the state went into lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools moved to remote learning, bars and restaurants were shuttered and people were told to stay home. Nearly 17,000 Minnesotans have lost their lives to the virus.

Former Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm led the state through the first two years of the pandemic. She frequently hosted the state’s daily COVID press conferences. She joins MPR News host Nina Moini to reflect on the early days of the pandemic and her role in the Minnesota’s COVID-19 response.