Elizabeth Shockman

My book is out today! "Behind the Red Velvet Curtain" took me 12 years to report and write. You can request it at the library, buy online or at Subtext or come get a signed copy at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis next month! rowman.com/ISBN/9781538...

Lawmakers in at least 32 states have introduced legislation to limit or eliminate ultra-processed foods in school meals. UPFs are typically characterized by profitability, convenience and use of ingredients never found in a supermarket. https://wapo.st/4khM7Ni

“They’re barely doing anything to protect women and girls, including survivors of sexual violence,” said Shiwali Patel, an attorney who previously worked at the OCR and is now with the National Women’s Law Center. “They just don’t care about women and girls.” www.propublica.org/article/civi...

The endorsements are back for school board seats this election: www.mprnews.org/story/2026/1...

"In St. Paul, Minnesota’s second-largest district, more than 540 fewer English language learner students are in classes this year than anticipated. Superintendent Stacie Stanley said the loss will cost the district nearly $5 million." www.mprnews.org/story/2026/1...

NEW: These Women Were Trying to Escape Domestic Abuse. ICE Detained Them Instead. @melissa-sanchez.bsky.social @annaleighclark.bsky.social

Among the striking findings in the crosstabs from today's Minnesota Poll While over half of all MN voters are VERY confident in an accurate 2026 vote tally, *nearly one-third of MN Republicans express a lack of confidence* www.startribune.com/minnesota-po...

This court has shut down the flimsy “national security” excuse for the White House press ban twice now. Now it’s held that the ban violates the First Amendment, too. Trump can’t purge reporters from the White House because they don’t flatter him.

Fox News attacks the media roughly every 15 minutes, our study finds. (CNN? Every 140 minutes.) buff.ly/HUKerjU

Our analysis found that from 2020 to 2025, the rate of deaths involving ectopic pregnancies nearly doubled compared with the previous six-year period. The uptick was steeper in states with abortion bans.

"The administration has largely used Title IX to open dozens of investigations aimed at removing protections for transgender students, blocking transgender athletes from participating on female sports teams and eliminating gender-neutral bathrooms from schools." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/u...

More than 60 districts with referendums in MN and a request to change the state constitution this November: www.mprnews.org/story/2026/1...

More than a quarter of a million people rallied nationwide to support school students demanding more education funding, according to government figures, with thousands of arrests. n.pr/4zjnVi0

Incredibly important 🧵🧵🧵

My writeup of the first MPS community meeting on school transformation, last night at Camden: sahanjournal.com/education/mi...

"In reading, 48.6 percent of Minnesota students met the state’s grade-level proficiency standards. In math, only 44.9 percent of Minnesota students met the state’s proficiency-levels." www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

In February, the Kansas state legislature passed a law that required all driver’s licenses to reflect sex at birth. Roughly 1,700 intersex and transgender Kansans received a letter saying to get new licenses, including Dakota West. Now, she’s suing. https://wapo.st/3VaB9yX

The new standards, approved Tuesday, apply to students in grades K-12 and focus on topics like mental and emotional health, human growth and development, child abuse prevention, nutrition, sexual health, media literacy and drug and alcohol abuse and prevention.

"'There’s pretty thorough research on women politicians and the fact that they do bring different issues to legislative agendas,'” Ewig said, citing proposals addressing poverty, care for the elderly, healthcare, children and family issues among them. Cheers to @bydanaferguson.bsky.social for this

"Before free school meals, 34% of students who didn’t qualify for free or reduced-price lunch had to skip meals. The numbers were even higher for Black and Indigenous students and other students of color, 70% of whom skipped meals before they were offered at no cost." www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Even though the last successful action by the board was July’s resolution to ban rainbows, the stickers haven’t been removed from teachers’ classrooms. But that might not be the case for much longer, with another school board meeting looming.

Major television networks will halt coverage of presidential events, according to a memo obtained by The Post, over the White House’s ban on CNN, which was barred alongside MS NOW and Politico in recent days. Read more: https://wapo.st/4xDwVxf

More and more people are turning to food shelves. On Minnesota Public Radio, I talked with guests about the reasons and took phone calls from listeners who shared what they are experiencing when it comes to hunger. www.mprnews.org/episode/2026...

www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Big news: The family of Tierra Walker, who died after she couldn't get an abortion, is suing a slate of Texas actors in state court, including AG Ken Paxton. They say the state ban is unconstitutional. This is the first suit of its kind. 19thnews.org/2026/09/texa...

As many as 16 buildings could lose their current academic programming under the proposals, although the district stopped short of describing the buildings as closed schools.

A new global democracy report finds the U.S. at its lowest level of democratic performance in the 50 years it has been measured. n.pr/4xW1mPX

Today @nickdnperez.bsky.social & I FINALLY published an investigation we — and a host of supporting @the74.bsky.social players — have been working on for months. TLDR: We crunched the $$$ to show how a controversial autism therapy is enriching private equity at the expense of vulnerable kids. 1/

NEW: Our analysis found that from 2020 to 2025, the rate of deaths involving ectopic pregnancies nearly doubled compared with the previous six-year period. The uptick was steeper in states with abortion bans.

"Abdullah has no criminal record, but the government is holding him at a military prison set up for terrorism suspects." www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Three Pulitzer winners, a Booker Prize winner, two Booker longlisted authors this year, and a number whose works have been adapted for the screen are among the authors with new books out this month. n.pr/4A5dDTY

Shoutout to Minneapolis journalism for snagging a STUNNING 7 finalist slots in the 2026 Online Journalism Awards for coverage of the ICE surge. @madisonmcvan.bsky.social & Team @minnesotareformer.com team, & MPR's @jcollins.bsky.social and @eshockmanwrites.bsky.social (and me!) need a watch party!

Current* conditions near Beaver Bay, MN:

Harper Moyski was one of two students killed in the Annunciation Catholic Church and School mass shooting nearly one year ago. Since then, her younger sister Quinn and Harper’s three best friends have become a support system for each other as they grieve and heal.

School staff at Annunciation have spent the past year working to meet the needs of their students and their community. They say mental health support has been critical to healing.

The American Federation of Teachers pressed the Minneapolis-based company to take a stronger stand against ICE earlier this year. Union president Randi Weingarten sent multiple letters to Target CEO Michael Fiddelke asking the company to call for an end to the surge.

Council member Cheniqua Johnson said Dayton’s Bluff gets between 4,000 and 5,000 annual visits a year and has some of the highest Wi-Fi and computer usage.

"People come and they ask us, ‘What can we do on this day? What are you doing?’ It's a day really focused on remembrance, but it's also focused on moving your feet and on prayer," said Kristen Neville. "And so, I will be doing that, kind of working in the community."

“The risk that we have right now in our country &in the Twin Cities specifically because of the things that have happened here in the last several years is that the helpers are tired and they also need help. We have to pay attention to the burnout of our teachers.” www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Back-to-school shopping costs have risen nearly 8% due to tariffs. Parents are calculating just how much they can afford to spend on school supplies, what children can reuse from the year before and what on teachers’ lists will have to be abandoned.

2026 MN State Fair Crop Art entry "Witness" based on pStar Tribune photograph by Leila Navi with MPR reporter Sam Stroiza.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

NEW: At some private schools across the U.S., every student uses taxpayer money to pay toward tuition, thanks to the growth of school voucher programs. But these "quasi-public" schools face almost none of the scrutiny given to public schools.

What a broken system. Even though an oversight group found that Texas girls’ volleyball coach Ryan Richardson engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor, sports organizations have failed to stop him from coaching.

At an invitation-only gathering in Italy, white supremacists mapped out strategies to target rural America while local press coverage vanishes www.confrontthehate.com/p/white-nati...

Maryland has one of the strictest data privacy laws in the country. But privacy advocates allege data brokers are violating the law by selling data to police and federal immigration agencies. n.pr/4ikyjk9

“X’s algorithm learns what you hate and shows you more of it, according to a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” www.404media.co/xs-algorithm...

Minnesota doesn’t have an event to celebrate Black booksellers and authors, owner of Black Garnet Books Terresa Hardaway thought while attending a monthly Black Bookstore Coalition meeting. So she launched and curated the first Midwest Black Book Fair to honor stories of resistance and Blackness.