My mayor strong, my stonewort starry

Your daily Minnesota news roundup starts … NOW.

In 2021, Minneapolis adopted a strong mayor system, giving the mayor executive authority and separating their powers from the city council. This has led to tension between Mayor Jacob Frey and a council split between progressives and moderate Frey allies, but following a memo from Frey in early September indicating that department heads and staffers would only be at meetings for presentations, the city council has lined up in opposition to the policy.

Since Sen. Paul Wellstone made it a priority, Democratic Minnesota senators have served on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and DFL nominee and member of White Earth Nation Peggy Flanagan wants to continue that tradition.

Construction crews at Fort Snelling uncovered a time capsule placed inside of a six-foot thick wall. The capsule was apparently full of reports and marketing material from 1970, which doesn’t seem like as much fun as, say, an original vinyl copy of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut or a cask of amontillado. But it did inspire current staffers to put together a new capsule, which will include hardtack, a basic army ration that’s essentially … dried out bread.

“Often too hard to chew itself,” said Historic Preservationist Brian Liesinger. “You kind of have to reconstitute it with some water, liquid. But yeah, it was a ration for years in the U.S. Army, not pleasant, but I guess it kept you marching.”

Don’t have too much fun over there, Fort Snelling.

Related: Frey wants to cut funding for violence interrupters. But at what cost?

Franklin Ave. mainstay the Seward Cafe is facing “dire financial straits.” The vegan/vegetarian spot has been a Twin Cities institution since the mid-’70s but costs have continued to rise while sales have dropped.

Mesabi Metallics put on a big celebration near Nashwauk to commemorate the “company’s first concentrate production.” 

At the event, several federal officials emphasized an “America First” sentiment. They also praised the Trump administration for its support of the mining industry.

David Copley, a former mining executive and senior director for global supply chain in the National Security Council, called the project a “big, beautiful greenfield iron mine.”

“President Trump gets it,” he said. “Minerals are the foundational building blocks of everything we need for our re-industrialization efforts, and we cannot rely on our geopolitical competitors for access to these materials.”

Mesabi Metallics is owned by Indian multinational conglomerate Essar.

And finally in your news roundup: It might sound like something you’d get in a salad from a tony restaurant, but starry stonewort is a big problem for at least 40 bodies of water in Minnesota. Lake Koronis in Stearns County spends $170,000 a year trying to control it over an area of 250 acres, or about twice the size of the Mall of America. And there’s not even a Nickelodeon Universe.

The post My mayor strong, my stonewort starry appeared first on MinnPost.

Originally reported by MinnPost by Steve McPherson. Read the full story at the source.