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School board in New Ulm needs to focus on safety in school mask policy

We are sure the District 88 School Board in New Ulm will hear plenty from parents when it meets today to decide what the district’s COVID-19 masking policy will be this year. The board has three options on masking that it will be considering: recommending it but not requiring it; requiring it for kindergarten through 8th grade students through September, or requiring it for all students and staff. At a previous board meeting where the issue was discussed — before the COVID case count began rising — those who spoke were adamant that the board should respect the rights and personal ...

Let’s not botch the Afghan pullout mission

President Joe Biden has set Aug. 31 — next Tuesday — as the deadline to finish the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He is being roundly criticized by Democrats, Republicans and leaders in the G-7 for that. The U.S. will not be able to get Americans and their allies out of Afghanistan, especially the Afghanis who cooperated and worked with us over the past 20 years. We agree with the critics. It was a mistake to set a pullout date in the first place. It was a signal to the Taliban forces who have been waiting for their time to stage their week-long sweep to power in the ...

State GOP needs to regroup, rebuild trust

The Minnesota Republican Party is in a chaotic state following the ousting of State Chair Jennifer Carnahan last week. Carnahan’s connection with fund raiser Anton Lazarro, arrested on federal warrants of child sex trafficking, made it hard for the party to keep her on. But Lazarro’s problems brought to light other criticisms of the way Carnahan has led the party. Last week the State Republican Committee negated several nondisclosure agreements Carnahan had forced several ex-staffers to sign, and four of them quickly voiced charges that Carnahan had created a hostile work ...

State fair will be big test of COVID transmissions

The last time the Great Minnesota Get-Together actually got together, in 2019, 2.1 million people visited the fairgrounds over 12 days. The following year the fair was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year the fair is on again, organizers buoyed by the big lull in new cases earlier this summer and the cessation of the state’s emergency declarations. But as the fair prepares to open next week, COVID infection rates have been rising, spurred on by the quicker spreading delta variant and the slowdown in vaccinations. State and federal health officials are again encouraging ...

Haiti needs help

As our attention is drawn to the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan and the Delta variant’s takeover of our COVID-19 battle, we should not forget the suffering going on in Haiti. A major earthquake has shattered that already fragile country on Saturday, killing at least 1,941 as of Tuesday. Tropical Depression Grace was expected to hit on Monday, adding drenching rains and flooding to their misery. The western hemisphere’s poorest nation has an ineffective, disjointed government, and has barely recovered from the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country, killing an estimate ...

U.S. security at stake

In less than a month the U.S. will mark the 20th anniversary of the disastrous Sept. 11 attack by al-Qaida on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. We went to war in Afghanistan to drive out the terrorists based there and oust the Taliban government that harbored them. 20 years. The cost has been high: according to U.S. News & World Report, 2,448 American service members were killed in Afghanistan through April, along with 3,846 U.S. contractors; 66,000 Afghan national military and police and 47,245 Afghan civilians. We have spent $2 trillion on the ...