War, politics and prediction markets

Good morning, Reformers. 

State Sen. Matt Klein, DFL-Mendota Heights, was fined by the prediction market Kalshi this week for betting he’d win the primary election in Minnesota’s 2nd District. 

Then, on Thursday, federal prosecutors indicted a U.S. Army special forces soldier involved in the plans to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro for placing 13 bets — profiting more than $400,000 — related to the military operation.

That’s all on top of a surge in suspicious betting activity surrounding the war in Iran, suggesting those with inside information are profiting off of the war.

And, of course, the Trump family is heavily invested in prediction markets. 

Prediction markets, it seems, are the new frontier for government corruption.

Max Nesterak and Alyssa Chen analyzed 14 Medicaid programs at “high risk” for fraud, and found that spending on the programs doubled in the past five years. 

Michelle Griffith reports that legislative Democrats and Republicans agree on the importance of assisting Hennepin County Medical Center, but have yet to strike a deal to do so.

Brian Martucci reports that Operation Metro Surge may have cost the Minnesota economy thousands of jobs in January and February.

Max wrote about continued calls by Democratic lawmakers and clergy for the humanitarian release of a 23-year-old Burnsville woman, Andrea Pedro-Francisco, who has been in immigration detention for 9 days while suffering excruciating pain from an ovarian cyst.

Jeniffer Shutt from the States Newsroom D.C. bureau covered a deal among Congressional Republicans that would fund ICE and Border Patrol for the next several years. 

Stateline’s Tim Henderson reported Friday afternoon that a court struck down a Trump administration policy that closed the U.S. border to asylum seekers. 

Shalina Chatlani, also of Stateline, reported that the Trump administration will require every state within 30 days to turn in a plan to revalidate the health care providers that participate in their Medicaid programs.

Reformer editor J. Patrick Coolican evaluates the kind of governor Sen. Amy Klobuchar may be. “The open secret of Minnesota Democratic politicos is that her political style and personal attributes are uniquely ill-suited for the office,” Patrick writes. But what if those same qualities are actually what Minnesota needs right now?

Cole Hanson writes that residents in a Little Canada manufactured home park had soaring water bills over the winter after a management company used a company not licensed to do plumbing work in Minnesota to install the community’s water meters. The meters had been leaking for weeks, causing residents’ water bills to climb.

Becky Rom, national chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, argues that the proposed mine at the edge of the Boundary Waters is a distinctly anti-American project.

Cara Letofsky scrutinizes the founding ideology of Cities Church, which has been the site of anti-ICE protests because a pastor also works as the director of St. Paul’s ICE field office.

Sue Abderholden, former longtime executive director of NAMI Minnesota, writes about how the fraud crackdown risks hurting vulnerable Minnesota residents. Two of the three “clubhouses” in Minnesota for people with mental illness are at risk of closure.

Cherokee Ramirez-Baez writes that a lack of transitional assistance for foster youth aging out of the system leads to an alarming amount of financial difficulties. The Minnesota Office of Higher Education recently partnered with local advocacy groups to implement a program to help former foster youth succeed in college.