Don’t mock Mississippi, learn from it

The Ciresi Walburn Foundation, whose mission is to promote educational and equitable opportunities for all Minnesota children, launched a new billboard campaign last week that misses the mark. The ad reads: “Minnesota Nice. Mississippi Smarter. Let’s teach kids to read!”

There’s no denying the problem the foundation seeks to highlight. Reading proficiency in Minnesota has dropped sharply since COVID-19. Today, only about half of students are reading at grade level. High school proficiency is at a decade low, and Minnesota has slipped in national rankings. Even more troubling are the persistent achievement gaps: Black, Hispanic, and American Indian students are far less likely to meet reading standards than their white peers. These inequities demand urgent attention.

But mocking Mississippi is not the way forward. Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the nation and has the highest percentage of Black residents. Suggesting it’s somehow “embarrassing” that Mississippi students outperform ours carries racist undertones, as if the state’s demographics should automatically predict failure. That message is not only offensive — it’s wrong.

Decades of research show that race and poverty are not destiny when it comes to achievement. Mississippi has made real progress by investing in evidence-based literacy instruction and teacher training. Their students are improving because of intentional policies, not in spite of who they are. Rather than belittling them, Minnesota should be learning from their example.

We cannot afford to waste energy on stereotypes or smug comparisons. Our children deserve real solutions. That means facing the data honestly, closing opportunity gaps, and adopting proven practices. If we truly want every Minnesota child to read at grade level, we need leadership and investment — not billboards that punch down on other states.

Charlie Braman, Edina

 

Ukraine attacks. too

A headline in Wednesday’s paper, “Before diplomatic meetings, Russia keeps bombing,” shows the liberal bias and leaves us with misleading information unless you read the entire article. Yes, Russia continues to bomb, but you have to get to the second-to-last paragraph to see that Ukraine has also “escalated attacks”. It only makes sense that if you are negotiating, that you continue your current position and operation.

Ron Wobbeking, Hastings

 

Appeasement

We just witnessed one of the most embarrassing acts of appeasement and capitulation since Neville Chamberlain allowed Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia leading up to WWII. For the tough-guy image Donald Trump likes to portray, he looked like a flabby lap dog next to the strutting Vladimir Putin.

We watched as a murdering, kidnapping war criminal and dictator received a red-carpet reception on American soil. Let that sink in. Our president just welcomed a former KGB officer turned dictator who murdered several of his opponents, kidnapped Ukrainian children, and ordered the bombing of civilian targets, with all the lavish hospitality and courtesy of someone deserving of our country’s honor and respect.

This international pariah, whose goal is to destroy American democracy and the NATO alliance, just outmaneuvered our president at every level and regained legitimacy on the world stage at our nation’s expense. I was embarrassed for our military personnel who had to stand by while our president humiliated himself and our country before America’s number one adversary.

Greg Kvaal, Mendota Heights

 

The value of a single human being

The picture of a woman holding her severely malnourished daughter at a hospital in the Gaza Strip (Aug. 15) is heart-breaking beyond words and epitomizes the horrors and utter madness of the conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world that victimize the most innocent among us.

Is this what life is all about, an unending struggle for basic human needs amidst a constant barrage of bombs, bullets and the acrimonious threats and accusations from the powers that be?

With daily stories giving updates on the deaths, injuries and destruction, it’s easy to become numb, even indifferent, to the carnage and suffering from the raging conflicts. But seeing the picture of that sweet girl clinging to her mother with a look of haunting sadness makes us realize the value of a single human being.

English poet John Donne famously wrote, “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

Louis DiSanto, St. Paul

 

An homage to Coach Thole

On Aug. 6 legendary Stillwater Area High School football coach George Thole passed away. Coach Thole came to Stillwater in 1971, and to the then-quaint, small St. Croix River town community he brought a whole new attitude and approach to high school athletics.

Prior to George’s arrival, the Ponies had enjoyed modest success in several sports … golf, tennis, swimming, to name a few, but wins on the gridiron had always been elusive. Coach Thole, along with assistants like Coaches Foley, Meyer, Drommerhausen and Klancher, immediately instilled a new work ethic in the team … along with then-relatively-new weight training, and the famous “Bayport Veer” offense, which was taught to area youngsters coming up in the program to develop the continuity required to operate it once they became varsity players.

Coach Thole also had high expectations for each new team he welcomed in the fall, and made sure his team shared those high expectations. Hard work and winning weren’t just hoped for, they were expected. Coach Thole and the Ponies won their first of four state championships just four years after his arrival in Stillwater, beating Richfield High School at Parade Stadium on a surprise halfback-option pass involving players Butterfield and De St.Aubin, and suddenly Pony football was on the map. What to do on a fall Friday night in Stillwater was no longer in question, and crowds of upward of 5,000 fans would pack Miller Field. It was a regular occurrence when the Ponies played an away game for the home team to be dramatically outnumbered by the traveling Pony faithful.

As the Stillwater football team began its dominant run, other school sports teams seemed inspired, and under coaches like Christiansen and Podolske in track and field, Olson and Johnson in soccer, Luke and Madeline in swimming and diving, Pavlovich in softball, Parchetta in skiing , Michels in baseball, and Mutschler in basketball, conference and state titles have been won.

Coach Thole has been inducted into several sports Halls of Fame, he has left a lasting impression on those he coached, and his record will be difficult to surpass. To this writer, however, one of his most significant accomplishments was how through his coaching and teaching he managed to raise the level of self-esteem of an entire community. So proud to be a Stillwater Pony.

Mike Miller, Lakeland

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Two east metro sites known to be tainted with petroleum and other contaminants will soon be on the mend thanks to grant funding.

More than $1.6 million in Contamination Cleanup and Investigation grants were awarded to eight communities across the state last week, including one in St. Paul and one in South St. Paul, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

The grant program, which started in 1993, helps fund the assessment and cleanup of contaminated sites for private redevelopment, according to a news release from DEED.

“Cleaning up contaminated sites helps attract private investments, increase local tax bases, support job growth, address housing needs and promote community growth and vitality,” said DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek in the release.

This grant round is expected to support the investigation or cleanup of over 184 acres of contaminated land, adding nearly $2.2 million to local tax bases and leveraging more than $50 million in private investment, according to DEED.

St. Paul

Undated courtesy rendering, circa Aug. 2025, of The Beasley, a planned 20-unit affordable condominium development from the Rondo Community Land Trust. The Beasley site at 642 Selby Ave. received a cleanup grant from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development for nearly $103,000 on Aug. 12, 2025. (Courtesy of Rondo Community Land Trust)

The city of St. Paul was awarded nearly $103,000 for the cleanup of the Beasley site, a 0.3-acre property near the intersection of Selby Avenue and Dale Street.

Historically developed for residential and commercial uses, including the longtime neighborhood service E&J Drycleaners, the site at 642 Selby Ave., next to Mississippi Market, is planned to be redeveloped into 20 affordable condominium units with ground floor retail and will be known as The Beasley.

Leading the project is the Rondo Community Land Trust, a Selby Avenue organization that has sought to preserve affordable housing and local ownership in the historically Black Rondo neighborhood. The name of the housing complex is a nod to James Beasley, the longtime owner of E&J Drycleaners, according to the land trust.

The condos will be affordable to households earning 80% of the area’s median income, which equates to $104,200 annually, Finance and Commerce reported. Designed by LSE Architects, the new building is planned to include a rooftop garden, a community room, electric vehicle charging stations and an outdoor patio with a fireplace.

Construction of the housing complex, which still hinges on a successful funding application to the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, is planned for next spring.

If all goes according to plan, the project is anticipated to create nine new jobs, increase the local tax base by nearly $142,000 and leverage $6.5 million of private investment, according to DEED.

South St. Paul

South St. Paul took home the lion’s share of the funding – approximately $660,000 – for the clean up of the 36-acre Wakota Crossing site.

The site, formerly home to the South St. Paul Municipal Wastewater Treatment Works and used as an uncontrolled dump, will be redeveloped to add over 180,000 square feet of light industrial space with two stormwater ponds.

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Awarded to the South St. Paul Economic Development Authority, the project is expected to create 89 new jobs and retain 15 existing jobs, increase the local tax base by nearly $88,000 and leverage $8.4 million of private investment, according to DEED.

The other six grants were awarded to the cities of Duluth, Mankato, Virginia, Wabasha, Floodwood and Two Harbors, according to grant size in descending order.

“This grant program helps Minnesota communities explore and pursue ways to convert contaminated properties into functional sites for business or housing development,” Varilek said in the release.

Since 1993, the grant program has awarded more than $212 million in grants that has helped assess and clean up over 4,300 acres of land, resulting in over 26,000 new housing units and the creation or retention of more than 52,000 jobs, per the release.

If President Donald Trump were to issue an executive order to abolish mail-in voting, as he announced he would on social media on Monday, it would almost certainly be unconstitutional. It would also be baffling — because eliminating vote-by-mail would probably hurt Republicans more than it would help them in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump has been thrashing about for months looking for ways to manipulate the midterms. He is so afraid that Republicans could lose Congress that he persuaded Texas Republicans to conduct a mid-decade redistricting to carve out five additional GOP congressional districts. He ordered the Department of Justice to create a federal database of information on voters, presumably to hunt for illegal voting and serve as a precursor to federal control of state elections. And now he’s attacking the mail-in ballot, which Trump has long claimed, without evidence, cost him the 2020 presidential election.

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump wrote in an error-filled post on Truth Social. Not according to Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, which says that election rules “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” What’s more, the US Supreme Court has ruled that statewide vote-by-mail systems are constitutional, upholding a 1998 ballot initiative that adopted the practice in Oregon.

Trump’s lengthy post also claimed that “Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”

Trump is likely responding to the shift in behavior he engineered by denigrating voting by mail after his 2020 loss. For decades, Republicans were the beneficiaries of mail-in balloting, and they encouraged their high-propensity voters to bank their votes early and avoid the risk of bad weather, power outages, technology failures or other major disruptions on Election Day.

The practice began after George W. Bush’s narrow victory over Al Gore in 2000. Republican legislators across the country passed no-excuse absentee voting laws to encourage their voters to cast their votes early. The effort was so successful that when red states were attempting to crack down on alleged voter fraud in the last decade with more stringent voter identification laws, their focus was on in-person and early voting. Republican legislators explicitly exempted mail voters “because they understood that their voters were casting mail ballots more frequently than Democrats and they didn’t want to disadvantage themselves,’’ said Michael P. McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida.

But Trump has been obsessed with mail-in voting since 2016, when he lost Colorado to Hillary Clinton as that state launched its first all-mail election. State officials delivered a ballot to every registered voter and implemented elaborate safety protocols before votes were tabulated. But Trump concocted a host of conspiracy theories about widespread vote fraud. He amplified those claims across the country when he lost in 2020, and they are now part of Trump’s brand.

In his book on the 2020 election, McDonald breaks down how the Republican mail-in balloting advantage shifted during the pandemic to benefit Democrats. As Democratic-run states were moving to provide safe mail-ballot options, Trump resisted: He didn’t want to admit that the pandemic required such safety precautions. But voters had their own preferences when it came to their own personal safety and, in 2020, a record 43% of all ballots were cast by mail. While the numbers dropped to 30% in 2024, that was still higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to the US Election Assistance Commission.

It’s hard to know exactly what Trump intends with his post. Maybe it is directed at blue states such as Colorado, California, Vermont and Washington, where officials deliver ballots to every eligible voter even if they haven’t requested to vote by mail. That would at least make logical sense. At the same time, it doesn’t — a quick look at recent voting history shows how it might backfire.

Republicans benefitted from mail-in voting prior to 2020 because many of their voters were in the military, were business travelers who couldn’t be home to cast in-person ballots, were older white voters, or were voters who lived rural areas where in-person voting was inconvenient, McDonald explained. “If you really wipe out those mail ballots, then you can actually hurt Republicans.”

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And while Trump may think that Democrats are voting by mail in higher numbers than Republicans, a data analysis by The New York Times found that despite Trump’s attempt to disparage the practice, Republicans made almost universal gains in mail voting during the 2024 election — including, the report notes, in “battleground states like Pennsylvania, red states like Florida and blue states like Connecticut.”

In his post, Trump says he will “lead a movement” to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines that don’t use paper ballots. Those are suggestions worth debating. But if he plans to make it happen by violating the Constitution to interfere with the midterm elections, Republicans should see it as a red flag — as Democrats do. The president isn’t trying to eliminate fraud, or defeat only Democrats. His goal is to consolidate his power.

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.

In 1874, during the brief era of Reconstruction, white people staged a racist uprising in New Orleans. Angered by the presence of African Americans in law enforcement and other government posts, members of the Crescent City White League stormed the local customs house and killed 11 police officers.

Two years later, a contested presidential election led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South and the end of Reconstruction. In 1891, New Orleans erected a memorial to White League members who died in the 1874 riot. And in 1932, the city affixed a plaque to the memorial stating that the 1876 election “recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.”

But you can’t see the memorial — or its plaque — in New Orleans any longer. It was taken down in 2017, following years of protest by civil rights advocates.

I’ve been thinking about that episode over the last few months, as President Donald Trump’s administration steps up its efforts to purge our historical landscape of anything remotely negative about the United States. In March, it ordered the Smithsonian Institution to eliminate “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from its museums. And in my hometown of Philadelphia, over a dozen displays about slavery at Independence National Park — including an exhibit describing George Washington as an enslaver — have been flagged for review.

Like other liberal historians, I’m outraged by Trump’s cowardly attacks on our guild. A nation that really believed in its “greatness” — a term the president loves to use — wouldn’t be afraid to confront its worst chapters.

But I think my fellow liberals have been complicit — to borrow the term du jour — in historical censorship too. Nobody on my side of the political aisle objected when the New Orleans monument came down. Instead, we celebrated a victory over hate and bigotry.

I’m not saying that racist memorials should remain on their pedestals. But when they’re pulled down, they should be placed somewhere else where we can see them. Otherwise, we won’t learn the awful history they embody.

Consider the fate of Silent Sam, the Confederate statue that stood for over a century on the campus of the University of North Carolina. It, too, was built to extol white supremacy: At its unveiling in 1913, a UNC trustee said that Confederate soldiers had “saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South.”

But in 2018, demonstrators pulled down Silent Sam. And when UNC Chancellor Carol Folt proposed that the statue be displayed in a museum, the university erupted in yet more protest.

In a statement, the university’s psychology department said that preserving Silent Sam in any form on campus would “create a hostile learning environment for black students.” The monument “undermines our shared community values of equality, respect, and acceptance of all people,” the department added.

A few months later, Folt caved and declared that Silent Sam would be removed from campus. Its presence at UNC — even in a museum — posed a threat to the “well-being of our community,” she said.

Sound like anyone you know? In his fulminations against allegedly “divisive” history, Trump insists that it threatens the entire American community. By casting the United States “in a negative light,” Trump warns, historians are promoting “a sense of national shame.” Instead, we should be “instilling pride in the hearts of all Americans.”

In other words: smiley faces only, please. Some things are just too troubling to see. So let’s take them down, or blot them out, so we can all feel better.

False equivalence alert: Trump is clearly seeking to suppress knowledge of white racism, while the statue protesters were trying — in good faith — to protect nonwhite races from hateful symbols. And he’s the president, of course, so he has vastly more power than anybody else.

But the upshot is exactly the same: History gets censored. And we condescend to Americans when we imagine they can’t handle it.

We see a similar dynamic in the ongoing debate over book bans in schools and libraries. I am appalled by recent efforts by right-wing ideologues to remove works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and many others. But where were my fellow liberals when schools were dropping “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn“ because it uses the N-word 200 times? Sitting on their hands or cheering from the sidelines, as another reminder of racism bit the dust.

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That was the “good” kind of censorship, because we did it. And we are good.

But every act of historical suppression is bad news, for all of us. That’s why I was glad to read that the New Orleans monument will be part of forthcoming exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The exhibit “reflects on the histories and legacies of post-Civil War America as they continue to resonate today” by displaying“monuments in the exhibition will be shown in their varying states of transformation,” a museum news release declares.

That’s precisely why we need to see these symbols: to understand who we are, how we got here and where we need to go. We are in a state of transformation, too, and we must not look away. That’s what Trump wants us to do.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the advisory board of the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.