Minnesota Now

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.

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.

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 2020—including 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, we’ve 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 Trump’s campaign.

The two Gen-Z voters joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to share what they took away from the debate.

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.

We all need a little help to get through life sometimes. From everyday questions to more complex problems, we’re asking the experts to lend us a hand. Throughout the series, we’ll hear some direct advice, for us not-so-direct Minnesotans.

Construction season is here. And there’s no doubt you’ve encountered orange cones — sometimes that means zipper merging. We all like to think we know what we’re doing, but many agree that Minnesotans aren’t the best at zipper merging. We asked a professional to clear up the confusion around zipper merging and give us a lesson.

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 — that’s 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. He’s the director of forensics at the University of Minnesota. He’s 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.

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? We’ll talk to a debate coach about what he'll be watching for.

It’s construction season — you aren’t 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! We’ll get a lesson in our latest “Professional Help” segment.

And Suni Lee, Simone Biles, and other gymnastics stars are in Minneapolis for the USA Gymnastic Olympic Trials. We’ll talk to an elite local gymnast about what it takes to compete on sports biggest stage.

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 department’s 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, “Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow.”

And our summer festival spotlight took us to Akeley for Paul Bunyan Days. Our Minnesota Music Minute was “Banjo Song” by folk singer Nolen Sellwood.

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” 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.

Zevin: I’m already laughing at that because I’ve been promoting the book for two years. And it’s kind of embarrassing to say that I still find “Tomorrow” somewhat hard to synopsis. So I’ll add to that “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” 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 — but the real possibility of making meaningful connections in virtual spaces.

You know, I don’t know if I’m 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.

It’s been two years in hardcover. And it’s been great to just see it kind of sell and sell and sell. But with a lower price point, I’m 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, “Hey, now that the price is lower, maybe I’ll try a novel about video games.”

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, we’re 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 doesn’t 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.

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 doesn’t exist in a world that doesn’t have conflict. When the book came out in 2022, there’s 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, “How did you know there would be another gun crime in the U.S. when you wrote this book?” I’m like, “because there’s always another gun crime in the U.S.” 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.

When we went out with the book, it sold in manuscript — actually, it had its first film offers before we even sold the book — 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 don’t 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.

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 it’s 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.