The Gammelgården Museum in Scandia wants to hear your immigrant story.

To mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, museum officials are inviting the public to share a story, poem, photograph or piece of art that shows “how an immigrant has positively impacted their life,” said Ann Rinkenberger, the museum’s executive director.

“This could be a family member (current or ancestor), friend, co-worker, artist, business owner or someone they have read about and are inspired by,” she said.

The deadline for submission for “Minnesota’s Global Heart: A Mosaic of Public Memory” is March 15.

Museum officials plan to compile the materials into a book and/or exhibit to share with the public, Rinkenberger said.

“We’re hoping to get a variety of items that represent a breadth of experiences and diverse narratives about how immigrants have shaped the history of Minnesota and/or Scandia,” she said. “We are looking for everyday individuals — living or dead — who have immigrated to Minnesota and have positively impacted your or your family’s life in some way.”

Items can be submitted via email to Rinkenberger at director@gammelgardenmuseum.org or through the U.S. Postal Service at Gammelgården Museum, P.O. Box 62, Scandia, MN 55073.

Items shipped by UPS or FedEx should use the museum’s street address: Gammelgården Museum, 20880 Olinda Trail North, Scandia, MN 55073.

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By MATTHEW PERRONE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Food and Drug Administration plans to start offering bonus payments to agency drug reviewers who complete their work ahead of schedule, the latest in a flurry of changes to longstanding norms and procedures.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary described the effort as a pilot program during a staff presentation Thursday, saying the first quarterly bonus payments would start going out to employees around August. The Associated Press obtained slides and a recording of the presentation.

“My job as your commissioner is to be your advocate and to fight for you,” Makary told FDA staffers, adding that getting approval for the payments took “some wrangling.”

“If you don’t like it, we can get rid of it, but usually everybody loves money,” Makary said.

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The plan raises a number of questions, including exactly how the payments will be distributed across large teams of staffers who typically contribute to drug reviews. Employees who are not directly involved in drug reviews — such as factory inspectors — are not eligible for the payments. The pilot also presents potential ethical dilemmas if FDA reviewers are seen as being rewarded for rushing steps needed to confirm drug safety and effectiveness.

Since the 1990s, the FDA has collected fees from drug companies to help pay for extra staffers to quickly review new prescription drugs and vaccines. Under the agreement with the industry, the FDA has timelines and metrics for completing each review. But the agency has never paid workers directly for meeting or exceeding those goals.

The bonus program is intended “to recognize and reward staff who find ways to be more efficient delivering high-quality work activities that ultimately benefit patients,” according to slides presented to FDA staff.

Senior FDA officials on the call said payments would be based on “weighted time savings” achieved by employees and their teams, as well as ratings-based “work quality and work complexity.”

“This program values speed, but never at the expense of quality,” states one of the slides.

The announcement comes as the agency loses drug review staff to retirements and resignations following broader layoffs and buyouts across many other parts of the agency. Agency records show the FDA’s drug and biologics centers — which oversee prescription drugs, vaccines and biotech drugs — have lost about 20% of their employees since President Donald Trump took office a year ago.

Additionally, some agency reviewers cannot work on certain projects because they are actively interviewing for jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.

The program could also negatively impact the public perception of the FDA, which has often been viewed as too closely aligned with the drug companies it regulates.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the agency, has described FDA staffers as “a sock puppet” of industry since becoming the nation’s top health official last February.

About 70% of the FDA’s drug program is financed by user-fee payments from drug companies submitting their products for review. The arrangement has allowed the agency to hire thousands of additional scientists and cut review times by more than half of what they were prior to receiving the funding.

Since arriving at the agency last April, Makary has announced a series of measures that he says will shorten FDA reviews, including offering one-month drug assessments for new medications that serve “national interests.” In the last two weeks alone, Makary said the FDA would drop its longtime standard of requiring two clinical trials for drug reviews and open a new pathway for therapies that can only be tested in a handful of patients.

The announcements promoting faster, streamlined approvals come as the agency faces criticism over its recent handling of vaccines, gene therapies and other specialty treatments.

The FDA’s chief scientist and vaccine director, Dr. Vinay Prasad, has personally overruled staff in rejecting a string of experimental therapies and biotech drugs, citing the need for additional studies and more definitive evidence.

Earlier this month, Prasad refused to accept Moderna’s application for a new mRNA flu shot, saying its clinical trial was insufficient. Then, less than a week later, the agency reversed course, saying it would review the vaccine after Moderna agreed to conduct an additional study in older people.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

After a run of sold-out pop-ups in January, Steak Frites by Meritage will return on Wednesdays in March.

The downtown St. Paul restaurant, which is usually closed on Wednesdays, will serve the classic French dish steak frites along with moules frites (mussels and fries). And yes, that’s the whole menu — and the whole point. Chef Russell Klein said the idea is to serve just a few things and do them really well.

For $32, guests will receive a prix-fixe menu that includes the following: Warm bread and salted butter, a house salad, choice of steak or mussels and bottomless fries. Yes, you read that right, as many of the best fries in the Twin Cities as you can eat.

In addition, there will be seasonal vegetables and classic ice cream sundaes available to add to the meal a la carte. A limited menu of beer, wine and cocktails will be $11 apiece.

Klein has said the concept is likely coming as a standalone restaurant sometime soon.

If you want a reservation, you should definitely hurry. January’s pop-up booked swiftly, and there is already limited availability for March.

Steak Frites by Meritage: 410 St. Peter St., St. Paul; 651-222-5670; steakfrites.net

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By KAITLYN HUAMANI and BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A young woman who is battling against social media giants took the stand Thursday to testify about her experience using the platforms as she was growing up, saying she was on social media “all day long” as a child.

The now 20-year-old, who has been identified in court documents as KGM, says her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Meta and YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.

The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies are likely to play out.

KGM, or Kaley, as her lawyers have called her during the trial, started using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9.

A turbulent home life

Kaley took the stand wearing a pink floral dress and a beige cardigan and said she was “very nervous” after her attorney, Mark Lanier, asked how she was doing Thursday morning.

Lanier displayed childhood photos of Kaley and her family and asked about positive memories from her upbringing in a quiet cul-de-sac in Chico, California. She spoke of themed birthday parties, trips to Six Flags and her mom’s consistent efforts to make her childhood special.

Still, Kaley’s relationship with her mother was challenging at times. Kaley said most of their arguments were over the use of her phone.

Both the defendants and the plaintiff have pointed to a turbulent home life for Kaley. Her attorneys say she was preyed upon as a vulnerable user, but attorneys representing Meta and Google-owned YouTube have argued Kaley turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles.

When asked about claims that her mother had hit her, abused her and neglected her, Kaley said “she wasn’t perfect, but she was trying her best,” and clarified that she doesn’t think she would label her mother’s past actions as abuse or neglect today. Kaley, who works as a personal shopper at Walmart, still lives with her mother in the home she grew up in.

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Notifications gave her a ‘rush’

As a child, Kaley set up multiple accounts on both Instagram and YouTube so she could like and comment on her posts. She said she would also “buy” likes through a platform where she could like other people’s photos and get a slew of likes in return. “It made me look popular,” she said.

Kaley was asked specifically about the features the plaintiffs argue are deliberately designed to be addictive, including notifications. Those notifications on both Instagram and YouTube gave her a “rush,” she said. She would receive them throughout the day and would go to the bathroom during school to check them — something she still does.

Kaley said while she uses YouTube less often now, she believes she was previously addicted to it. “Anytime I tried to set limits for myself, it wouldn’t work and I just couldn’t get off,” she said.

Filters on Instagram, specifically those that could change a person’s cosmetic appearance, have also loomed large in the case and were also a constant fixture of Kaley’s use. Lanier and his colleagues unfurled a nearly 35-foot-long canvas banner with photos Kaley has posted on Instagram. She said “almost all” of the photos had a filter on them.

The jury was also shown Instagram posts and YouTube videos Kaley posted as a child and young teen. One video that tapped into the popular trend at the time, sharing a nighttime routine, showed a young Kaley scrolling on her phone, showering and taking off makeup and then returning to her phone to go on Instagram. Another video showed her saying she was “crying tears of joy” after surpassing 100 YouTube subscribers — but then she quickly turned to her looks, apologizing for her “ugly appearance.”

“I look so fat in this shirt,” the young Kaley says in the video.

Meta has argued that Kaley faced significant challenges before she ever used social media. The company’s lawyer, Paul Schmidt, said earlier this month that the core question in the case is whether the platforms were a substantial factor in Kayley’s mental health struggles. During opening arguments, he spent much of his time going through the plaintiff’s health records, emphasizing that she had experienced many difficult circumstances in her childhood, including emotional abuse, body image issues and bullying.

Kaley said she did not experience the negative feelings associated with her body dysmorphia diagnosis before she began using social media and filters.

Kaley was asked about her peak Instagram usage, which exceeded 16 hours one day. “I just felt like I wanted to be on it all the time, and if I wasn’t on it, I felt like I was going to miss out on something,” she said.

When she tried to stop using the platforms, she said she was often unsuccessful.

“Every single day, I was on it all day long,” she said.

Therapist: Social media and sense of self ‘were closely related’

Victoria Burke, a former therapist Kaley worked with in 2019, testified on Wednesday, and Burke said her social media and her sense of self “were closely related,” adding that what was happening on the platforms could “make or break her mood.”

An attorney for Meta parsed through Burke’s notes from her sessions with Kaley extensively in a cross examination that lasted about three hours. He highlighted Kaley’s negative experiences with in-person bullying, other school-based sources of stress and anxiety and issues with her family. Mentions of social media in the notes were mostly limited to Kaley saying she didn’t feel she had a place at home, at school or among her peers, but did feel she had a place to be seen on social media.

Burke’s treatment of Kaley lasted about six months and that period took place seven years ago.

Platforms dispute addiction claims

The case has been the subject of intense interest among both advocacy groups lobbying for enhanced child safety protections and the tech world alike, with high profile testimony from the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

During Zuckerberg’s testimony, when he was asked if people tend to use something more if it’s addictive, he said “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“I don’t think that applies here,” he continued. He said he believes in the “basic assumption” that “if something is valuable, people will use it more because it’s useful to them.” Mosseri also said he didn’t believe people could become clinically addicted to social media platforms.

The case is expected to continue for several weeks, and the outcome the jury reaches could shape the outcome of a slew of similar lawsuits against social media companies. Meta is also facing a separate trial in New Mexico.