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Strib editorial excerpt



On Tuesday, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. By Wednesday, the opposition had mobilized with lightning speed for its one of its first political attacks, dubbing Walz “Tampon Tim” in reference to a new state law providing free menstrual products to school students.

The nickname was trending nationally this week on Twitter, an indicator of its political currency. Chaya Raichik, whose scurrilous “Libs of TikTok” account on X (formerly Twitter) has more than 3 million followers, was one of the first to amplify it. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly added to the momentum, endorsing the nickname via tweet. Former First Lady Hillary Clinton weighed in from a different angle, with a tweet supporting the Minnesota measure.

Social media users swiftly took sides as well, and as usual, facts and context were missing, especially from those who see the new law as evidence of a radical Minnesota under Walz’s leadership. But a closer, more informed look at the issue should yield a different conclusion. This is good and necessary policy. Providing free menstrual products is a practical, compassionate remedy to address an under-the-radar reason for student absenteeism. Some families can’t afford menstrual products, and when that happens students stay home instead of going to class, falling behind as they do.

There’s a lot of talk about closing educational achievement gaps in Minnesota and elsewhere, particularly for low-income students. The new state law, which has a price tag of about $2 million a year, is an actual solution to help address this, one that’s relatively low-cost. And there’s real-world data to back it up. New York City schools reported a 2.4% increase in attendance after a state law went into effect requiring free period products for students, according to the advocacy group Alliance for Period Supplies.

Minnesota is far from alone in providing this type of assistance. More than half of the nation’s 50 states have taken steps to help students who struggle to afford tampons and pads. Ohio, led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, now requires period products in schools and has provided $5 million in funding for this, the Alliance for Period Supplies reports. Alabama and Georgia provide grants for schools to make free products available.

Other states, such as Washington, Nevada, Illinois and Utah, require schools to provide these products, though they didn’t fund them. To Minnesota’s legislators’ credit, the new law provides dollars to schools and is not an unfunded mandate.

Other background information is also useful as the dubious online debate continues.

The new law went into effect in January and applies to students in grades four through 12. The legislation itself was passed during the 2023 session as part of a broader educational bill, which Walz then signed. Rep. Sandra Feist, DFL-New Brighton, was the bill’s chief author in the Minnesota House. Sen. Steve Cwodzinski, a retired teacher and DFLer from Eden Prairie, championed the measure in Minnesota Senate.

But the most powerful advocates for it came from outside the State Capitol. Young Minnesotans reached out to Feist about this issue. After Feist introduced it, these students testified on its behalf as the legislation made its way through various committees. Among them was Elif Ozturk of Golden Valley, who is now 18 and will attend Columbia University this fall.

In an interview, Ozturk told an editorial writer she got involved after seeing other students struggle to afford these products in junior high. She spoke to counselors and was told that some students had to leave class or couldn’t attend because they lacked pads or tampons. Ozturk dug into the issue and discovered that other states had taken steps to help students’ access these products. She thought Minnesota should do the same.

“If we don’t talk about it, it’ll never be fixed. These people who are in power, predominantly old men, have no clue what young girls go through every single day,“ Ozturk said.

Other advocates for the law’s passage: school nurses, who testified movingly about how students struggle to afford these products and the educational and emotional consequences when they can’t.

A specific but ill-informed attack on the new Minnesota law is in dire need of a reality check. Critics contend, wrongly, that it mandates menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms. This has unfortunately been used to stoke ongoing culture wars over transgender individuals.

But the law’s actual language provides considerable flexibility for school districts to implement it, according to Deb Henton, the executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.

That might mean making these products available for free in various locations for all who need them, such as unisex bathrooms, girls’ bathrooms, the school nurse or the front office, but not necessarily in boys’ bathrooms. Henton, in an interview, lauded the “local control” the law provides for implementation, and said she’s fielded no concerns about its rollout.

At Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest school district, the free products are not found in traditional male-only bathrooms, a spokesman said. But they are provided for free to all in “nongendered bathrooms,” girls’ bathrooms or from health staffers.

There’s nothing radical about Minnesota’s new law. Instead it’s a smart, low-cost measure to address educational achievement gaps, one that many states are embracing. Weaponizing this measure is laughably out of touch and likely to backfire not only with women, but all who care about them.

We've got a longtime humor columnist, James Lileks, who is being shifted to more factual duties, and whose last column will appear Monday. The column that will precede the final one was written as the beginning of a Minnesota goodbye, so in effect, it is taking him two publishing days to say farewell.

He won the first of six terms in Congress in 2006 from a mostly rural southern Minnesota district and used the office to champion veterans issues. Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, rising to command sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks in the military, although he didn’t complete all the training before he retired so his rank for benefits purposes was set at master sergeant.

Actually, Walz doesn't drink coffee or alcohol. That and other info in this Strib excerpt:






After weeks of swirling speculation over Kamala Harris’ running mate, the sitting vice president has tapped Gov. Tim Walz for the Democratic ticket.

Those who have known Walz for years have collected nuggets of information about the life and times of the second-term DFL governor.

He and his wife since 1994, Gwen, have two children: Hope, who recently graduated from college in Montana, and Gus, who is in public high school in St. Paul.

The couple met when both were high school teachers in temporary classrooms in Nebraska. The first lady said she was irked by his loud voice disrupting her classroom.

Their children were conceived through IVF and fertility treatments — as Walz has said, “There’s a reason we named her Hope.”

Walz doesn’t drink alcohol or coffee. His beverage of choice is Diet Mountain Dew, lots of it. He got a DWI in Nebraska in 1995 before he quit drinking.

He is unfailingly punctual.

He rides in the front passenger seat of the state SUV when he’s driven by state troopers because he gets carsick in the back seats.

He taught English in China in 1989 and can still converse in Mandarin.

He grew up in Valentine, Neb.

He is a 1982 graduate of Butte High School in Butte, Neb. He had 24 kids in his graduating class and always adds that “12 were cousins.”

His father died of lung cancer when Walz was 19.

His mother, Darlene Rose, still lives in Nebraska and occasionally comes to visit him at the Capitol.

Walz earned his undergraduate degree from Chadron State College, a public school in Chadron, Neb. He earned an M.S. from what is now Minnesota State Mankato.

He taught geography at Mankato West High School before being elected to Congress. He also coached football and helped the school win a state championship. He was the faculty adviser to the student Gay-Straight Alliance.

Walz is a runner who has slimmed down and has talked about doing the Twin Cities Marathon or 10-mile race that stretches past the governor’s residence on Summit Avenue in St. Paul.

He owns and tinkers around on a vintage blue International Scout, a four-wheel-drive vehicle that International Harvester stopped producing in 1980. He has custom plates that read, “ONE MN,” his campaign slogan for his gubernatorial bid.

He and his chief of staff Chris Schmitter have been together professionally much longer than most reality-show marriages. Schmitter, 40, has been with Walz for 18 years.

In his state Capitol office, he has on display hundreds of challenge coins that he’s traded and collected for years with military from around the world. Walz served in the Army National Guard and recently started receiving a monthly pension payment.

The governor made good on a promise to his son by adopting a rescue dog after he won statewide office and held a news conference to herald the arrival of the black Lab mix in 2019. The gentle giant, named Scout, silently greets visitors at the door and hangs out with guests during public events. The governor and Scout make daily morning visits to an off-leash Twin Cities dog park.

Walz was elected to Congress in 2006, the same year as Attorney General Keith Ellison, former U.S. Reps. Beto O’Rourke of Texas and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. When Giffords visited Minnesota to celebrate the passage of gun safety measures, both Ellison and Walz said she was the star of the freshman class, the one everyone thought would one day be elected president.

Marty, are you doing OK? Your post on yesterday's daily was kinda alarming.

Aug. 4 is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, so do your part.

CHAPIN, S.C. (AP excerpt) — Donald Trump says he is pulling out of a scheduled September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC and wants them to face off on Fox News, making it increasingly unlikely that the candidates will confront each other on stage before the November election.

In a series of Truth Social posts late Friday, the Republican nominee and former president said his agreement to a Sept. 10 debate on ABC “has been terminated” because he will no longer face Democratic President Joe Biden, who ended his campaign last month after a disastrous performance in their first debate.

Trump now says he will appear on Fox News on Sept. 4 in Pennsylvania with rules that he called “similar” to his debate with Biden, but with a full audience instead of a mostly empty studio. Trump said that if Harris, the likely Democratic nominee, does not agree to the new network and date, he will do a “major Town Hall” with Fox News.

Michael Tyler, a Harris spokesperson, said Trump “is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out.”

It was not immediately clear whether ABC would turn its Sept. 10 event into a Harris town hall in Trump’s absence. Tyler said Harris is committed to the time slot and would appear “one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience.”


Trump has gone back and forth on debating with Harris since she entered the presidential race. He had told reporters he felt an obligation to debate but also said in a recent Fox News interview that he thought Americans “already know everything” about both candidates Harris has pressed Trump to keep the commitment he made when Biden was in the race. Noting Trump’s criticisms of her, Harris dared him recently to “say it to my face.”

In his Truth Social posts, Trump also cited his litigation against ABC News as “a conflict of interest” in his participation in the network’s debate. Trump sued the network in March following an assertion by anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump had been found “liable for rape.” A New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll but rejected her claim that she was raped.

But Trump agreed, two months after filing his lawsuit, to the Sept. 10 debate on ABC, as well as the June 27 debate on CNN that helped knock Biden out of the race. David Muir and Linsey Davis, not Stephanopoulos, are set to be ABC’s debate moderators.

BTW, if anyone is wondering, his last name is pronounced "Walls," not "Waltz."