With a major funding question before St. Paul voters on the Nov. 4 ballot, the St. Paul Public Schools have rolled out their own white yard signs stamped with school district logo and a QR code that takes visitors to the district website. Once there, voters find a rousing YouTube video with parent, teacher and student interviews about the proposed special 10-year tax levy, set to stirring music.

“Vote Nov. 4. Protect their future. Invest in our community,” read the the district’s yard signs, which are popping up on lawns, school grounds and outside rec centers, mirroring the wording on the district website’s central landing page. “To continue providing high quality education to all of our students, we are asking all of our community to vote on an operating levy.”

Elsewhere on the district website, staff are “invited” to collect yard signs from district headquarters, post them in their front lawns and share them with neighbors.

Campaign finance report

It’s an aggressive push for one side of the ballot question, and apparently backed by taxpayer funds. There’s no record of a campaign finance report detailing manhours, expenses or funding sources behind the school district effort, which is distinct from that of the parent-and-teacher driven “Vote Yes for Strong Schools” campaign, which has rolled out yellow lawn signs.

“Their stuff says ‘Vote Yes.’ Our stuff says ‘Vote’,” said Erica Wacker, a spokesperson for the St. Paul Public Schools, who confirmed that the district is using an as-yet-untallied amount of its own funds for the white signs. “It’s still an ongoing project, so there hasn’t been a final (expenditure) report on the referendum, so it would take some time to compile.”

Some supporters and critics alike of the 10-year, $37 million-per-year special property tax levy have been taken aback by the degree to which the school district may have crossed the line from sharing impartial information to advocacy.

Peter Butler, who lodged a complaint against the St. Paul DFL this month around an unrelated campaign flier issue, said he has not been intimately involved in the school levy question, but he was surprised by the degree of the district’s involvement.

For ballot matters, “the attorney general is very good at saying … you can’t be using taxpayer money (to reach out) just on one side of the issue,” Butler said. “You can inform people, but you can’t advocate. It certainly sounds like they’ve crossed the line there.”

Muddy legal waters

Historically, public agencies in Minnesota have been barred from promoting either side in levy referendums, constitutional amendments and ballot questions, though they are allowed to distribute factual, impartial information, such as the size of a levy proposal and how the money will be spent. By statute, districts must send voters a mailer spelling out those particulars.

During the 2021 ballot initiative around a new citywide rent control ordinance, members of the St. Paul City Council were allowed to use their personal Facebook pages to advocate for or against its passage, but they were told not to use their official council office websites or even their political ward’s Facebook pages in that manner.

“Until recently, the question of whether public funds could be used for such activity seemed settled: With rare exceptions, the answer was no,” reads a previously-published opinion by State Auditor Julie Blaha, which was updated in June.

A 2012 case muddied the legal waters.

In “Abrahamson v. St. Louis County School District,” the Minnesota Court of Appeals and Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that rather than avoid promotion outright, school districts must follow campaign finance reporting laws when they advocate for or against ballot measures to the same extent as a campaign committee.

In other words, expenditures for materials that support a particular outcome can trigger requirements to file campaign finance reports detailing expenses, donors and donation amounts, among other state campaign finance regulations. By state statute, most campaign materials larger than a bumper sticker must be labeled “Prepared and paid for by the (named) committee,” and no campaigning is allowed within 100 feet of a polling place.

St. Paul’s ordinances — which cover city government — go even further to ban campaigning on government property: “It shall be unlawful for any person to use city property for a political purpose.”

Yard signs, website, video

St. Paul Public Schools has been heavily disseminating word of its $37.2 million levy proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot, with no campaign finance record-keeping in sight. The school district has encouraged staff to distribute lawn signs to their neighbors.

“A limited number of SPPS Referendum yard signs are available at the District Administration Building, 360 Colborne Street, by the front entrance,” reads The Bridge, the district’s online newsletter. “Staff are invited to pick up a yard sign to put in their yards or give to neighbors who live in St. Paul.”

Elsewhere, the school district website urges “let’s work together to protect the opportunities our students need” and explains, under the sub-headline “What’s at stake?”, that “without additional revenue, the programs that make our schools strong will be forced to take significant budget reductions or be eliminated entirely.”

The website features a public letter from Schools Superintendent Stacie Stanley, which urges readers to watch a four-minute YouTube video featuring testimonials from levy supporters, including state Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega and school board chair Halla Henderson, as well as a parent, teacher and students.

After about three minutes of highlighting the importance of school funding, a narrator explains the estimated property tax impacts on a median-value St. Paul home ($289,000), which would be $309 per year, in addition to the school district’s normal annual levy.

Stanley herself then appears in the video and encourages voters to go to the polls, though she never explicitly tells the viewer to “vote yes.”

‘If this doesn’t pass’

Quentin Wathum-Ocama, a school district employee who chairs the independent “Vote Yes for Strong Schools” campaign, confirmed that the school district has made stacks of yard signs available at school building open houses. He said he was not otherwise intimately familiar with the mechanics of the district’s efforts, such as whether it used its in-house print shop and marketing budget for the white yard signs, which are distinct from his campaign’s yellow yard signs.

“I can’t speak on behalf of the district,” he said, “but I know they’re walking the line and trying to do what they can within the confines of the law. They’re trying to explain what happens if it passes and what happens if it doesn’t. It feels political because the district is being really upfront and saying ‘if this doesn’t pass, we will cut programs.’ Some people say that feels like a very ‘Vote Yes!’ (effort), but it’s also the truth.”

“I do appreciate the district not sugar coating why they are asking for this,” Wathum-Ocama added. “Let’s say it doesn’t pass, and then the district says ‘we’re going to close this school.’ People will say ‘Nobody told me!’”

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By SYLVIE CORBET

PARIS (AP) — A delegation of French senators visited the Louvre on Tuesday and acknowledged that the museum’s security was “not in line” with modern standards, calling for improved measures at the Paris landmark that was the scene of a stunning heist earlier this month.

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Thieves took less than eight minutes on Oct. 19 to steal jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the world’s most-visited museum. French officials described how the intruders used a basket lift to scale the Louvre’s façade, forced open a window, opened a breach in display cases and fled.

Two suspects were arrested on Sunday and are being questioned by police.

Sen. Laurent Lafon, head of the Culture Committee at the Senate, said “we all noticed that the security equipment is not suitable for a 21st-century museum such as the Louvre. It is our flagship, it must be exemplary, and today we cannot describe the security conditions at the Louvre as exemplary.”

Speaking to reporters after visiting the Louvre with fellow senators, Lafon said “there are many improvements to be made. Our security system does not meet nowadays’ standards.”

Lafon acknowledged there was a “weakness” regarding outdoor cameras that allowed the robbery, but would not enter into further details for “confidentiality reasons.”

The senators called for a speedy start of massive renovation work that was already planned — as soon as possible, since France’s budget for 2026 is currently being debated in the parliament.

The decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan, which includes security improvements, was launched earlier this year. It is estimated it would cost up to 800 million euros ($933 million) to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the famed Mona Lisa a dedicated gallery by 2031.

By CALEIGH WELLS, Associated Press

Amanda Porretto isn’t sure she’ll ever have children.

At 27, she is the average age of new mothers in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She’s feeling the pressure as an only child. Her father wants to be a grandfather and her mother, before she died, always told Porretto that she would eventually want to be a mom.

“Some people think it’s a bad thing” not to have a child, said Porretto, who works in advertising. “I just don’t think I need to bring more people into (the world) when there’s so much here currently that we need to fix.”

Younger generations of Americans are increasingly citing climate change as making them reticent to have children, according to several studies. They are worried about bringing children into a world with increasing and more intense extreme weather events, a result of climate change, which is caused by the release of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide when oil, gas coal are burned. And they are concerned about the impact their offspring will have on the planet.

In a 2024 Lancet study of people 16 to 25 years old, the majority of respondents were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. The study also found that 52% said they were hesitant to have children because of climate change. Adults under 50 years old without children were four times more likely than adults over 50 without children to say that climate plays a factor in their decision, according to a Pew Research Center report published last year. And a study published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found more than half of respondents said “yes” or “maybe” to whether climate change made them question having children.

Climate impact of children

Parenthood and climate change are related not just because of fears for a child’s well-being, but also by concern for the planet’s well-being.

Compared to the carbon emissions of all the other decisions, “having a child is by far, by orders of magnitude, larger,” said Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance, which is a nonprofit focused on humans’ environmental impact.

Unlike other choices, procreation comes with something that bioethics professor Travis Rieder of Johns Hopkins University calls “carbon legacy.”

“You’re not only doing carbon expensive activities like buying a larger house and a larger car and diapers and all that,” said Rieder. “You’re also creating someone who is going to have their own carbon footprint for the rest of their lives.”

That child might have children, and those children might have children, creating an impact that lasts generations, Rieder added. Of course, the logical extreme of minimizing an environmental footprint means having no children, Rieder said, which he is not advocating.

It’s tricky to quantify the impact of a child. That’s because there’s no consensus on what percentage of their impact is the parent’s responsibility, and partly because the impact of that child depends on their parents’ lifestyle.

“One of the best predictors of how carbon-expensive they’ll be is how wealthy you are,” Rieder said.

For example, the U.S. emits 123 times more carbon emissions than Ghana, according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. Adjusted for population size, that means the average American emits more than 12 times as much as the average Ghanan.

Why is it taboo to talk about?

Procreation might have the largest climate impact, but when it comes to actions people can take to reduce their personal contribution to global warming, having fewer children often isn’t discussed.

Researchers who study climate change and family planning give two reasons.

“If a person tells you that they’re expecting or that they are pregnant, the immediate response is to offer some kind of support, congratulate them, that sort of thing,” said Trevor Hedbert, who teaches moral philosophy at the University of Arizona.

The other factor, said Rieder: the impact of procreation sometimes is tied to conversations about overpopulation. The environmental movement in the 1970s expressed fears that there were too many people for the planet’s resources, which led to racism and eugenics, which garnered severe backlash.

Taboo or not, climate is factoring into people’s choices

Ash Sanders, 43, knew when she was young that she didn’t want to have a baby. Then she got pregnant.

“I didn’t want to add another person to the world and have them have more of an impact on a world that was already overstressed and strained by the number of humans that were here,” she said.

Sanders, a freelance writer who covers religion and environment, wanted an abortion but felt pressure by her Mormon upbringing and by the father to have the baby. She said she was called a bad person for not wanting a kid.

She placed her child in an open adoption and sees her regularly. Today she feels conflicted about her decision.

“I feel guilt for bringing her into the world. I mean she likes the world, she’s a happy kid, she’s very cool. I’m a big fan. But I feel guilt all the time,” she said.

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Juan Jaramillo said the environment was always a factor in his parenthood calculus, even when he was a teenager in the 1970s. He later went to school to become a marine biologist.

“Pollution and climate change was not an issue just yet, but all of the rest of the problems that we have now were there back then,” he said.

Plus, he just didn’t want kids. So he got a vasectomy and hasn’t regretted the decision. His decision not to have children and his environmental concerns lined up.

That’s not the case for Rieder, the bioethics professor, who has spent years studying that impact, and still very much wanted to be a dad.

“Having children is a deeply meaningful and important activity to people. It’s also carbon expensive,” he said. “So how do you weigh these things out?”

For Rieder, finding that balance meant having just one child.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By CLAIRE RUSH, Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge in Oregon has blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from pulling sexual education funding over curricula mentioning diverse gender identities.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken issued the preliminary injunction Monday as part of a lawsuit filed against the Health and Human Services Department by 16 states and the District of Columbia, which argued that pulling such money violated the separation of powers and federal law.

The complaint, filed last month, says the department is attempting to force the states to “rewrite sexual health curricula to erase entire categories of students.” It describes the action as “the latest attempt from the current administration to target and harm transgender and gender-diverse youth.” The administration said in court filings that Health and Human Services has the authority to impose conditions for receiving funding grants.

Aiken wrote that the department “provides no evidence that it made factual findings or considered the statutory objectives and express requirements, the relevant data, the applicable anti-sex-discrimination statutes and its own regulations.” The judge added that the department also “fails to show that the new grant conditions are reasonable.”

The department did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, but said in a previous statement after the complaint was filed that it was “committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs,” referring to initiatives focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose state co-led the lawsuit with Oregon and Washington, welcomed the ruling and said he was “pleased to have protected funding for important health education programs.”

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, his administration has sought to recognize people as only male or female.

Health Department went after 2 programs

The health department wants to prohibit the inclusion of what it describes as “gender ideology” in lessons funded by the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) and the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education program. The federal grants are used to teach about abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

The plaintiff states said the grant conditions the department is seeking to impose violate federal law, the separation of powers and Congress’ spending power. They also argued that losing the money would harm state programs by making them less effective in providing sex ed, including to youth at high risk of becoming pregnant or contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

The termination of money under the two federal grant programs could result in a loss of at least $35 million to the plaintiff states, according to the complaint.

In court filings, the administration said agencies have the authority to impose grant terms and argued that claims against the federal government over contracts, including grants, should be heard by a different court, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

In April, the health department asked the plaintiff states to share curricula and materials used for lessons funded by the PREP grant, according to the complaint. In a letter, the department said it was conducting a “medical accuracy review.”

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In August, the department issued new conditions prohibiting grant recipients from “including gender ideology in any program or service that is funded with this award.” That month, it warned states that they had 60 days to change lessons or lose their PREP grants; California was warned previously, and its $12 million grant was stripped Aug. 21.

At the heart of some of the legal debate in the case is the definition of “medically accurate.” Under federal law, curricula under the two programs must be “medically accurate and complete.”

“The agency’s restriction on ‘gender ideology’ ensures that federal funds support curricula rooted in biological and medical science rather than in contested sociopolitical theories regarding gender identity,” the administration said in court filings.

The plaintiff states argued their programs are medically accurate and submitted written declarations from health experts such as Kate Millington, a pediatric endocrinologist and associate professor of pediatrics at Brown University.

“Stating that gender is binary and that other non-binary gender identities do not exist is not consistent with the medical and scientific understanding of gender identity,” Millington said.

In court filings, Minnesota officials shared examples of materials that Health and Human Services flagged for removal, such as curricula mentioning different pronouns and how some people identify with a gender that is different than their biological sex.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown previously said the department threatened to cancel PREP grants if his state didn’t remove wording from a high school curriculum that says: “People of all sexual orientations and gender identities need to know how to prevent pregnancy and STIs, either for themselves or to help a friend.”

The other plaintiffs are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. All plaintiff states have Democratic governors.