Editorial Board Cheers & Jeers: Inaction has consequences

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Rochelle Olson, the well-sourced author of Cheers & Jeers, is off for a few weeks. Other members of the Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board have stepped in to keep the feature going during her absence:

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Jeers to leadership — or lack thereof — at the State Capitol. Once again, the Legislature adjourned without completing its work, necessitating an impending special session. And while it looks like that will occur in time to avoid layoffs of state workers, mandatory layoff notices may soon be sent to thousands of them. Unlike the partisan process the last several months in St. Paul, the political inaction is bipartisan, bicameral and involves the legislative and executive branches. Minnesota’s state employees, and the citizens they work hard for, deserve much better.

Cheers to the Minnesota Frost. They’ve done it again. From barely qualifying for the 2025 playoffs to PWHL champions — for the second year running — this team turned underdog grit into hockey greatness. Cheers also to Frost fans. They are arguably the classiest fans in hockey — as evidenced by the fact that they genuinely celebrated the Ottawa Charge goalie, who earned the playoff MVP award while the Frost skated off with the championship hardware that matters most. And with all due respect to Michigan, Massachusetts and New York, Minnesota remains the capital of the American hockey world — the mecca where heart, skill and ice converge.

Jeers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, for the recent announcement by his federal agency that it will no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant women. That recommendation is at odds with actual medical experts, which Kennedy, a lawyer, is not. “Despite the change in recommendations from HHS, the science has not changed,” said Steven J. Fleischman, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. Growing evidence shows just how much vaccination during pregnancy protects the infant after birth, with the vast majority of hospitalized infants less than six months of age — those who are not yet eligible for vaccination — born to unvaccinated mothers.” The recommendation also could jeopardize insurance coverage for pregnant women who want to get the shot.

Cheers to the U.S. House’s Republican majority for not including a dubious item on Big Pharma’s wish list in the recently passed spending bill. Although there’s much to dislike in the legislation, such as massive cuts to the Medicaid program, the House GOP commendably left the EPIC Act (Ensuring Pathways to Innovative Cures) on the cutting floor. The act would have undermined a common-sense measure to lower the high cost of prescription drugs: wielding the federal government’s considerable purchasing power to negotiate lower medication prices for seniors and other consumers.

Cheers to state Rep. Spencer Igo, R-Wabana Township, for being the only Iron Range representative to strongly advocate for the Nippon Steel investment in U.S. Steel, even when the deal seemed dead months ago. It was an extremely unpopular position to take in his district, running afoul of the Steelworkers union and the nationalist tendencies of the MAGA movement, but it was also the right decision. With the merger now appearing to move forward, Nippon has reportedly committed $800 million to necessary upgrades to Iron Range mines along with modernizing its entire steelworks to use cleaner, more nimble technology. This will save jobs and improve the industry. Most politicians treated this issue like an outhouse skunk, but Igo showed courage and helped deliver progress in an important industry.

Jeers to new cars with no spare tires. The vaunted “run flat” technology of some new tires means that when you experience tire damage, you can only replace the tire rather than patch it. If you live more than 25 miles from a tire shop, you can’t run the tires flat anyway. Furthermore, when you open the hatch where the spare tire should be, you might find a vacuum instead of a much-needed spare. That sucks.

Cheers to the penny, or as it’s formally known by the U.S. Treasury, the one-cent piece, because not every description can be exciting if it is to be perfectly clear. The Treasury has minted the coin since 1793 but will stop next year, since each costs more to produce than it represents. That’ll save $56 million a year. Existing pennies will continue to circulate, though if the government repossessed them all it could pay down about 0.003% of the national debt. Which is not to minimize. An older generation of Americans can perhaps remember with delight the sound of a parent dropping a few pennies into their piggy banks each night — and the cumulative effect thereof.

Jeers to the Trump administration’s poster makers, whose work is demonstrated in the accompanying image shown during the president’s recent “Golden Dome” missile defense presentation. Are our enemies’ foremost targets really Amarillo, Akron, Kitty Hawk and Worthington? A missile shield may be a problematic idea whose time has come — the threat is plausible, and the technology is more proven than when President Ronald Reagan proposed such a system in the 1980s. But people want to know how things would work, and the details matter. The verisimilitude of imagery coming out of this White House on subjects ranging from national defense to tariff rates to (blast from the past) hurricane projections does not inspire confidence.