Editorial

Every 10 years, we get a chance to count how many people live in the United States. In addition to the basic count, we learn where people live and basic demographic information such as age, gender, race and ethnicity.   Governments use that data to fund and plan a variety of social, educational and public safety expenses. Most importantly, the count

The Stearns County Commission perhaps thinks it avoided making a politically charged decision about resettling refugees when it tabled the issue at a Jan. 7 meeting. The commissioners plan to take up the issue again on Jan. 28. In September, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that local governments had to agree in writing to allow refugees to be placed within

What does it take to get six Democrats and three Republicans to work on the same goal? The answer: When Minnesota needs federal money to rebuild roads, bridges and highway interchanges. Most of Minnesota’s congressional delegation wrote to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao asking why the state didn’t get any funding through the Department of Transportation’s Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage

In case you hadn’t noticed, 2020 will be an election year. Enough Democrats to populate two volleyball teams have been campaigning for a year for an election that’s still 11 months away. Donald Trump started campaigning for re-election the day after he was sworn in. Analysts tell us most voters are alienated and unmoored, and that electoral politics are far

Americans want to read local news. There’s just one problem: they don’t want to pay for it. Some 86 percent of Americans say everyone should have access to local news, even if they don’t pay for it, but just one in five Americans has supported local news in the past year by subscribing to, donating to or purchasing a membership

Help paying for health care. Repairing crumbling roads and bridges. Gun safety laws. Action on climate change. A realistic immigration policy. Citizens want action on all these issues and most people agree on the solutions. Yet nothing happens. Presidential candidate Tom Steyer thinks he has the answer and the answer is not who gets elected but the need for basic

Republicans who vote in Minnesota’s new presidential primary next year will have only one choice on the ballot. Even though he’s not the only announced candidate, only Donald Trump’s name will appear. Last month, the state Republican Party notified the Secretary of State that the “list” of candidates for the March 3, 2020, primary will be a short one –

When online message boards, chat rooms and discussion lists first appeared in the digital world, they were much different than today’s social media environment. In the 1990s, they were viewed as digital “bulletin boards,” much like physical bulletin boards, where contributors could post words and photos for public display. At the time, lawmakers, under pressure from free speech advocates, wrote