Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha announced Thursday that she won’t seek reelection in 2026.

Blaha, a Democrat, was first elected to the position in 2018 and won a second term in 2022. The state auditor is tasked with overseeing tens of billions in public spending across roughly 5,000 local governments in Minnesota. State finances are under the supervision of the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor.

Blaha is one of Minnesota’s constitutional officers elected by the state at large, the others being the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

In 2018, Blaha told the Pioneer Press that she decided to run for auditor after hearing that some Republican lawmakers were considering eliminating the office.

After more than six years in the position, Blaha said she feels ready to pass the office to a successor when her term expires in January 2027.

“I’ve had the honor of serving as Minnesota’s State Auditor. My goals were to rebuild an office that was under attack and protect Minnesotans’ rights to make decisions in their local communities,” she said in a news release. “I am proud to have accomplished those goals.”

State-level councils

Besides overseeing local finances, the state auditor sits on state-level councils including the Executive Council, Rural Finance Authority and the Minnesota Housing Authority.

The auditor also serves on the State Board of Investment and has a say in how Minnesota invests more than $130 billion in state funds.

Before becoming state auditor, Blaha was a middle school math teacher in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, where she served as teachers’ union president. She’s also the former secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO of Minnesota.

Besides her work as an educator and union leader, Blaha is also known for her success in the Minnesota State Fair’s crop art competition, where she took the blue ribbon in 2019 for a piece commemorating the engagement of Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and former Minnesota Public Radio reporter Tom Weber.

While running for office, Blaha described herself as a “bean counter.” Her 2018 crop art submission included those words.

First elected in 2018

Blaha won her first term in 2018 with 49.4% of the vote to Republican Pam Myhra’s 43.2%.

But in 2022 she only narrowly defeated Republican challenger Ryan Wilson. That year, Blaha got 47.5% of the vote to Wilson’s 47.1%.

Wilson criticized Blaha for failing to identify red flags in what became the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, where a number of people with nonprofits have been convicted for stealing more than $250 million in federal funding for school meals from the Minnesota Department of Education.

Blaha said her office didn’t want to interfere with ongoing investigations and said Wilson did not understand the auditor’s role, as the fraud involved a state agency and not local government.

Blaha and Wilson also disagreed on whether the state board of investment should consider the effects of climate change on its investment returns and avoid assets tied to fossil fuel production.

Wilson said the investment board should try to maximize its returns and that it’s the Legislature’s job to set restrictions. Blaha argued that major financial firms such as J.P. Morgan Chase take climate risks into account while investing.

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Today is Thursday, Sept. 4, the 247th day of 2025. There are 118 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 4, 1949, more than 140 people were injured following a performance by singer Paul Robeson in Peekskill, New York, as an anti-Communist mob attacked departing concertgoers.

Also on this date:

In 1781, Los Angeles was founded by Spanish settlers under the leadership of Governor Felipe de Neve.

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In 1944, during World War II, British troops liberated Antwerp, Belgium.

In 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered Arkansas National Guardsmen to prevent nine Black students from entering all-white Central High School in Little Rock.

In 1972, U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz became the first to win seven medals at a single Olympic Games, winning a seventh gold at the Munich Olympics in the 400-meter medley relay.

In 1972, the longest-running game show in U.S. history, “The Price is Right,” debuted on CBS.

In 1974, the United States established diplomatic relations with East Germany.

In 1998, Google was founded by Stanford University Ph.D. students Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

In 2016, elevating the “saint of the gutters” to one of the Catholic Church’s highest honors, Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa, praising her radical dedication to society’s outcasts and her courage in shaming world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created.”

In 2018, the Senate Judiciary Committee began confirmation hearings for future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on a day that saw rancorous exchanges between Democrats and Republicans.

Today’s Birthdays:

Golf Hall of Famer Raymond Floyd is 83.
Golf Hall of Famer Tom Watson is 76.
Actor Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs is 72.
Actor Khandi Alexander is 68.
Actor-comedian Damon Wayans Sr. is 65.
Baseball Hall of Famer Mike Piazza is 57.
DJ-musician-producer Mark Ronson is 50.
Actor Wes Bentley is 47.
Actor Max Greenfield is 46.
Singer-actor Beyoncé is 44.
Actor-comedian Whitney Cummings is 43.
Actor-comedian Kyle Mooney (TV: “Saturday Night Live”) is 41.

Every day is a new adventure with the Twins’ bullpen. This, of course, is not entirely unexpected after a trade deadline in which the Twins depleted their bullpen by trading their top five arms to contending teams.

On Tuesday, the Twins’ bullpen gave up nine runs, sending them to an ugly blowout loss. Wednesday, it was a ninth-inning lead that the bullpen gave away, spoiling a great start from Zebby Matthews. Down to their last out, former Twin Michael A.Taylor sent a two-out, two-run double to left field that hit the foul line and helped lift the Chicago White Sox to a 4-3 win in front of an announced crowd of 11,904 at Target Field.

“Game of inches. I thought it was as close as it could get,” third baseman Royce Lewis said. “It could have been two inches foul and I would have loved that.”

A fan sits in the outfield stands prior to the start of the game between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins at Target Field on September 03, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)

Chicago’s three-run inning started when lefty Kody Funderburk allowed a one-out single and walk, leading to his departure. His replacement, Justin Topa, allowed a run-scoring single just over the head of second baseman Luke Keaschall that cut the Twins’ lead to 3-2.

Topa then got one out before Taylor’s big swing.

“That’s not the way we anticipated the game going at the end of the game,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We pitched really well all the way up until the very end.”

While the Twins (52-88) had an opportunity to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth with Byron Buxton leading off the frame with a double and Trevor Larnach walking right after him, they couldn’t advance either runner and lost their fifth straight game to the team with the American League’s worst record.

That was one of a few missed opportunities for the Twins, who did not plate Buxton innings earlier when he led off the fifth with a triple and came up empty handed after loading the bases in the fourth inning.

Despite all of that, the Twins had held a lead for most of the game, striking first for a pair of runs in the bottom of the first inning. One scored on a Keaschall double, and Keaschall came around to score after Matt Wallner singled and right fielder Brooks Baldwin could not handle the ball.

They scored again in the sixth inning on a Lewis RBI single, his third hit of the game. The third baseman also swiped two bags in the loss, bringing his total on the season from three to five.

And those three runs, for much of the night, seemed as if they could be enough in support of Matthews, who turned in one of his better starts of the season.

Royce Lewis #23 of the Minnesota Twins steals second base against Chase Meidroth #10 of the Chicago White Sox in the second inning at Target Field on September 03, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)

After limiting a very good San Diego Padres team to three runs (two earned) over six innings in his last start, Matthews held the White Sox (62-77) to one run — an Edgar Quero home run to left field in the second inning — again in six innings pitched. Matthews gave up just three hits in his outing, but just one in his final four innings of work as he retired 12 of the last 13 batters he faced.

“It feels good keeping the team in the game, being able to go out there and get six,” Matthews said. “That’s a quality start. As a starter that’s kind of what your goal should be, so being able to do that back to back starts is big.”

Cole Sands followed him into the game and turned in a pair of perfect innings, striking out four of the six batters he faced to protect the lead at the time. But after that, the Twins just couldn’t finish it off.

“We’ve just got to go out there and make the pitches,” Baldelli said. “Whether it’s the last inning of the game or not, obviously limit free passes, things like that. But we will have better days out there.”

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U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel on Wednesday dismissed a challenge to Minnesota abortion laws that claimed abortion infringes upon parental rights.

The lawsuit, first brought forward in November 2024 by several plaintiffs, including the Women’s Life Care Center and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, argued that “unwanted” and “involuntary” abortions take away parental rights and violate the 14th Amendment. Brasel heard a motion from the state to dismiss the lawsuit on July 11.

As Brasel put it, plaintiffs were seeking to institute procedures where an abortion decision receives the same court review as a termination of parental rights under Minnesota’s child protection statutes.

In her judgment dismissing the case, Brasel said the plaintiffs are arguing for a right between a “pregnant mother and an unborn child” that has not been recognized under the Constitution.

“The intellectually honest approach in this case would be for Plaintiffs to acknowledge that they are seeking to establish a new fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive due process clause,” she wrote. “Plaintiffs are perfectly entitled to try and establish such a right. But they have continued to argue that such a right already exists in case law, which is simply not true.”

Brasel also said plaintiffs failed to properly identify which Minnesota laws related to abortion are being challenged in the suit.

“Plaintiffs repeatedly invoke the phrase ‘Minnesota’s abortion laws’ as the focus of their lawsuit. But they get no more specific than that … One possible target could be the series of post‐Dobbs laws passed by the Minnesota Legislature, including the PRO Act. But Plaintiffs disclaim that they challenge those laws. … There is still no statute, regulation, or case that Plaintiffs identify. The core of their challenge is to the legal regime of abortion in Minnesota, writ large.”

Minnesota has several legal protections for abortion dating back to 1995, when the Minnesota Supreme Court decided in Doe v. Gomez that the Minnesota Constitution guarantees the right to an abortion. The Minnesota Legislature also passed the “Pro Act” in 2023, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe. v. Wade, which had established the constitutional right to abortion. The act codified in state statute the right to make decisions about reproductive health.

Attorney General Keith Ellison said on Wednesday that anti-abortion groups are looking for “every possible gap in the armor protecting abortion access in our state.”

“This latest attack on abortion access in Minnesota is a reminder that anti-choice interest groups are constantly seeking new ways to ban abortion or make reproductive health care services harder to obtain,” he said. “For decades, those anti-choice interest groups worked to erode the abortion protections provided by Roe v. Wade until they finally found a way to eliminate those protections entirely. Now, they are trying the exact same thing at the state level.”

Harold Cassidy, attorney for the plaintiffs, said Wednesday that he plans to appeal the ruling. He said the “errors” of the District Court are clear and that he is confident his appeal will prevail.

“In the end, the rights of the mothers in Minnesota will be protected,” he told Forum News Service. “The way they’re abused under Minnesota law must be brought to an end. There is coercion that must stop. The abuse of women must stop. Men forcing women to have abortions against their will must stop.”

“And the law of Minnesota not only … makes it possible, the way that the state constitution has been interpreted, makes it mandatory,” he added.