You can display the Full post on your Blog Page
Sitting with pen musing all in ken
Twigs and dolls filled the pages
A flashing demonic offered tonic,
The rhythm of the sages
Hunt clues will be released at about midnight at TwinCities.com/treasurehunt each day of the hunt.
Where has the medallion been discovered in past years?
2026 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt Clue 2
2026 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt Clue 1
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Fernando Mendoza bulldozed his way into the end zone and Indiana bullied its way into the history books Monday night, toppling Miami 27-21 to put the finishing touch on a rags-to-riches story, an undefeated season and the national title.
The Heisman Trophy winner finished with 186 yards passing, but it was his tackle-breaking, sprawled-out 12-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-4 with 9:18 left that defined this game — and the Hoosiers’ season.
Indiana would not be denied.
Mendoza’s TD gave turnaround artist Curt Cignetti’s team a 10-point lead — barely enough breathing room to hold off a frenzied charge by the hard-hitting Hurricanes, who bloodied Mendoza’s lip early, then came to life late behind 112 yards and two scores from Mark Fletcher but never took the lead.
The College Football Playoff trophy now heads to the most unlikely of places: Bloomington, Indiana — a campus that endured a nation-leading 713 losses over 130-plus years of football before Cignetti arrived two years ago to embark on a revival for the ages.
Indiana finished 16-0 — using the extra games afforded by the expanded 12-team playoff to match a perfect-season win total last compiled by Yale in 1894.
In a bit of symmetry, this undefeated title comes 50 years after Bob Knight’s basketball team went 32-0 to win it all in that state’s favorite sport.
Players like Mendoza — a transfer from Cal who grew up just a few miles away from Miami’s campus, “The U” — certainly don’t come around often.
Two fourth-down gambles by Cignetti in the fourth quarter, after Fletcher’s second touchdown carved the Hurricanes’ deficit to three, put Mendoza in position to shine.
The first was a 19-yard-completion to Charlie Becker on a back-shoulder fade those guys have been perfecting all season. Four plays later came a decision and play that wins championships.
Cignetti sent his kicker out on fourth-and-4 from the 12, but quickly called his second timeout. The team huddled on the field and the coach drew up a quarterback draw.
Mendoza, not known as a run-first guy, slipped one tackle, then took a hit and spun around. He kept his feet, then left them, going horizontal and stretching the ball out — a ready-made poster pic for a title run straight from the movies.
The Department of Justice is assembling a first-ever national voter database. It has demanded that states turn over their complete voter registration lists — loaded with private information such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers linked to names, home addresses and dates of birth.
It has also turned the federal immigration database into what it calls a national “voter verification” tool to remove large numbers of voters from the rolls.
Each of these moves evades federal privacy protections, but they might not seem objectionable to many Americans. After all, the government already knows much of this information, plus our TSA facial profile and our tax and business information.
But the nation’s Founders gave authority over election administration to the states precisely because they were worried about centralizing too much power in the federal government. And in the context of the Trump administration’s other activities — such as the surge of federal immigration agents into blue cities and the president’s unsubstantiated claims that “we have very dishonest elections” — the data grab is downright frightening.
First, there are no safeguards against false matches that wrongly flag eligible voters as noncitizens. A county administrator in Texas warned in a court filing in October that nearly one-fourth of the voters in Travis County were incorrectly identified by the federal program as potential noncitizens.
Second, the DOJ hasn’t said how it will keep the data safe from hackers and cybersecurity breaches, raising the risk that millions of Americans could be exposed to fraud and abuse.
Finally, there is no guarantee that the administration won’t use the voter list to undermine U.S. elections. Once the DOJ has nationwide voter information, it could use insignificant discrepancies to question the validity of election outcomes. (We saw how far President Donald Trump was willing to go down that path after the 2020 election.) And DHS could use the immigration database to send its agents into polling places in the name of “verifying” voters. Naturalized immigrants or Hispanic citizens might decide to stay home rather than risk a confrontation. Trump ally Steve Bannon bragged on his podcast last fall that “since we’re taking control of the cities, there’s going to be ICE officers near polling places.”
The federal government could use the database to go even further, voting experts told me, and seize control of state voting operations or suspend voting in certain states, something that has never happened in U.S. history.
Sound far-fetched? In a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump said “the elections in our country are rigged” and that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after he lost the 2020 election. It was just the latest sign that he continues to harbor the long-discredited views that voting machines are dangerous and that the US election system is rife with fraud.
Such scenarios are why 23 states and the District of Columbia — including the Republican-controlled state of Georgia — have pushed back on the DOJ and refused to give it unrestrained access to their voter files. The DOJ has sued them all, and groups like the ACLU, Common Cause and other voting advocacy organizations have sided with the states.
Only eight states have either provided or said they will provide their full statewide voter registration lists, but a dozen others — including the Republican-controlled state of Florida — have only turned over what’s already publicly available, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is keeping track.
I’ve spoken to many county and state-based election supervisors over the years and am often impressed that, no matter their party affiliation, they are committed to ensuring that our one-person, one-vote system stays honest. I’ve watched rabid partisans get into the job and mellow once they see the elaborate safeguards in place and the importance of maintaining the public’s trust. They bristle at the president’s unhinged claims.
“If Donald Trump were here right now, I would look at him and I would say, ‘Mr. President, you need to get off of your darn social media and shut up. You are propagating more unrest,’” Alan Hays, a former Republican state legislator who became the supervisor of elections in Lake County, Florida, told me one week before the 2024 elections.
Hays said then that the public had undergone a “loss of confidence” in the elections system because of “just blatant lies that have been propagated across this country by a relatively small, but loudmouth group of people.” He wanted Trump to “shut up,” but the president has since kept talking — and seeding doubt.
Trump’s claims of fraud may be the predicate for the president, now underwater in the polls in every conceivable measure, to claim that if his party loses seats in the midterm elections it is because the voting was “rigged.” What’s worse, he could use such claims to pursue policies that preempt fair elections.
The surge in ICE agents to Minnesota may be the dress rehearsal for November, when armed federal forces could be patrolling polling sites across the country — and treating Americans like enemy combatants. If Trump succeeds in undermining trust, intimidating voters and disenfranchising American citizens, he will have achieved what all authoritarians desire: Control of the people through the appearance of consent of the governed. It’s the kind of stagecraft Trump might just be able to muster.
But our system is designed to check this kind of power. At least 35 states are resisting so far. Let’s hope they prevail.
Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.
Burning trash and wood to generate electricity will now be considered a carbon-free source under Minnesota’s landmark clean energy law, after a decision by state utility regulators following a contentious hearing on Thursday.
The law that passed in 2023 requires 100% of electricity produced in Minnesota to be generated from carbon-free sources by 2040. The goal was to significantly cut the amount of greenhouse gases the state emits, which contribute to global climate change.
But the law didn’t specify which power sources would qualify. Instead, the legislation defined “carbon-free” as “a technology that generates electricity without emitting carbon dioxide.” Lawmakers left it up to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to determine what meets that definition. The commission has held a series of proceedings in the years since the law passed to hash out how to implement the new law.
Technologies like wind and solar are straightforward — they produce electricity without generating any greenhouse gas emissions.
What’s proved controversial is deciding how to treat power plants that burn municipal waste or wood waste, which generate significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
But those materials can also contribute to climate change even if they aren’t burned to create electricity. For example, wood scraps left to decompose release carbon dioxide. Trash in a landfill releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. That’s why some argue that burning wood and trash for power is still environmentally beneficial.
In a raucous meeting Thursday that was twice interrupted by protesters, the five members of the state PUC ruled that facilities that burn municipal waste or biomass to generate electricity can still be considered carbon-free, even if they emit large amounts of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions.
They can do that if they pass a life-cycle analysis that proves that burning trash or biomass in that facility generates fewer greenhouse gases than what would most likely occur if the wood or waste were disposed of in another manner.
Commissioner Audrey Partridge described a hypothetical example of a Minnesota county that collected wood waste from forests damaged by storms and insects. The county recycled 10% of the wood and burned the rest so the pest infestation wouldn’t spread, resulting in the release of 100 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
A utility wanted to instead burn that wood in a biomass power plant. If a life cycle analysis found that would release fewer than 100 tons of carbon, then that would be considered “carbon-free” under state law.
“If taking this waste and using it to generate electricity provides a climate benefit, then it should qualify,” Partridge said. “I believe that this is the best path for implementing this law and for improving the climate.”
But several environmental groups and attendees in the audience strongly disagreed. The meeting was disrupted twice, with people repeatedly shouting, “This is not the bill the people passed!”
DFL State Sen. John Marty, of Roseville, co-authored the 100% clean energy bill and addressed the PUC during its meeting Thursday. He was one of 42 legislators who wrote a letter to the Commission, urging them to not consider fuels such as biomass and waste incineration to be considered carbon-free under the law.
“I urge you to follow the plain wording of the law and the vision the legislature showed in 2023,” Marty told the commissioners. “It’s not ambiguous.”
“I know you’re looking at the life-cycle analysis,” Marty continued. “But I would suggest that if the Legislature wanted a life-cycle analysis, we could have done so.”
Only about 2% of the electricity generated in Minnesota comes from biomass and trash incineration. But environmental groups worry that this decision will lead to an increased use of incinerators to generate power, increasing the amount of greenhouse gases and particulate matter pollution emitted into the atmosphere.
“It’s possible that some of our biggest coal plants will be converted to partially burn trees, which is terrible for the environment, and it’s just a huge step backwards from the law that was passed in 2023,” said Hudson Kingston, legal director for the environmental group CURE.
Hudson said biomass and waste-to-energy plants should instead be compared against solar and wind projects, which don’t emit any greenhouse gas emissions.
Duluth-based Minnesota Power told the PUC it is considering converting part of the Boswell coal-fired power plant in Cohasset to biomass when that coal facility closes in 2035.
The utility also operates a biomass plant in Duluth that generates about 1 percent of all the electricity it produces. “But it serves an important purpose in terms of reliability and also serves northern Minnesota by providing a safe and sustainable place to dispose of diseased wood and storm debris,” said Minnesota Power spokesperson Amy Rutledge.
The utility said it looks forward to working with state agencies on a life-cycle analysis of the facility.
It’s unclear what the decision means for the future of the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, or HERC, a controversial waste incinerator in downtown Minneapolis that neighborhood activists have tried to shut down for years.
Commissioners Joe Sullivan and Partridge said the state legislature has already determined that electricity produced at the HERC cannot be considered carbon-free.
But community advocates are concerned that the burning of trash there could still be allowed because the HERC is not specifically mentioned in the PUC’s decision.
“We don’t have any faith,” said Nazir Khan with the Zero Burn Coalition in Minneapolis. “What we would have to see is an explicit removal of HERC. I don’t see it in the decision option as it’s laid out, despite what they said.”
The decision could be the subject of litigation. The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which has sued over the issue before, said it’s still regrouping after the PUC decision to determine its next steps.
Baytown Township taps state, federal programs for community center solar panels
Calling all Minnesotans: Have you tested your home for radon?
Judge allows a third offshore wind project to resume construction as the industry challenges Trump
Sharks are famous for fearsome teeth, but ocean acidification could make them weaker
Zebra mussel larvae confirmed in Landfall lake