The Health Department revoked the licenses for group homes owned and managed by Sekou Dukuly, the executive director of the National Port Authority of Liberia, as well as those connected to Andrea Sampson, a former Anoka County Attorney who prosecutors say used some of her properties to traffic women before converting them into group homes and billing Medicaid.
Golden Touch Health Care was one of several Minnesota group home companies linked to Sekou Dukuly, who has served as the managing director of the Liberian National Port Authority since 2024. He told state authorities in 2025 he was the licensed assisted living director for its three group homes — even though an MPR News/APM Reports investigation found he lived overseas.
Politicians in Minnesota and commentators in Liberia were stunned to learn that the managing director of the West African country’s National Port Authority was simultaneously serving as the assisted living director for three group homes in the northwestern Twin Cities.
Companies linked to Sekou Dukuly received $36 million in taxpayer money over the past decade to care for disabled adults in Minnesota group homes — despite multiple residents dying and repeated findings of neglect. Dukuly has also misrepresented his finances in Minnesota family courts, and he’s caught up in a lawsuit concerning a business venture overseas. But the state kept sending payments to the group home companies even after he took a job in the Liberian government, more than 5,000 miles away.
At least 50 Minnesota group home clients have died since late 2022 under circumstances serious enough to trigger a state maltreatment investigation. But many penalties amounted to fines of $5,000 or less, and most homes kept their licenses. When Ryan Riggs died in the backyard of his group home, the state’s initial fine was just $1,000.
A half-century ago, the Indigenous Tsimshian village of Metlakatla, in Southeast Alaska, preserved its reservation when others in Alaska were terminated. Today, the reserve sustains a thriving fishing industry — and the tribe is fighting in court to expand its territory.
Taxpayer-funded group homes help thousands of Minnesotans with physical or mental disabilities live as independently as possible. But the industry’s rapid growth in the Twin Cities’ northwestern suburbs has led to problems that leave vulnerable people in danger and local governments struggling with the consequences. Nowhere is that clearer than in Brooklyn Park, the state’s group home capital.
Federal immigration agents waited three minutes to call 911 after one of their officers shot Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis. After a brief medical assessment, they left her bleeding in her car. Agents didn’t give her CPR and turned away the help of a man who said he was a doctor.
A company allegedly used to launder money stolen from the government in the Feeding Our Future fraud case owns at least five houses where taxpayer-funded group homes operate. Those group homes have collected millions of dollars from the government.
The GOP activist, who has touted election fraud conspiracies, came forward after trying for years to remain anonymous. The U.S. Supreme Court declined his case.
At least 26 states have passed laws about how schools teach reading since APM Reports’ Sold a Story podcast began in 2022. But proponents of the disproven ideas about reading exposed in the podcast haven’t given up.
In 2017, the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, California, exposed a new threat to public health: Wildfires can contaminate drinking water with toxic chemicals which federally mandated testing is not designed to catch. Into that regulatory void has stepped Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University who has made it his personal mission to help water utilities recover after devastating fires.
For decades, the federal government has surveyed high school students — and repeatedly followed up with them as adults. The goal was to gather data on their educational choices and careers so researchers could draw connections between them. Trump put an end to that effort as part of his quest to dissolve the Department of Education.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is one of the few federal education initiatives that the Trump administration has vowed to preserve. But the administration has slashed the staff responsible for keeping the series of tests up to date. And the board overseeing the assessment has eliminated more than a dozen scheduled tests over the next seven years, citing “cost efficiencies.”
The Trump administration tried to kill the largest reading experiment ever funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s research arm — just months before the yearslong study was complete. The administration agreed to finish the research only after it was sued.
Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have accelerated overdoses for Black men ages 55 to 74, who have suffered disproportionately for decades. One Ramsey County nonprofit is working to fill the gap.
Nursing homes are designed to care for patients with physical infirmities. But nationwide, 1 in 5 residents has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia or psychosis — conditions few of the facilities are equipped to handle. A new data analysis from APM Research Lab shows that can lead to higher levels of abuse, putting both residents and staff at risk.
The Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot Amir Locke and until recently led MPD’s use-of-force training is not the only trainer whose record has raised concerns over the department’s commitment to changing its culture.
The school reform program, first developed in the 1980s, has been declining in popularity for the past two decades — even though a mountain of research shows it gets great results, especially when it comes to elementary reading skills. Schools that have dropped the program cite logistical challenges, cost, administrative turnover and a perceived lack of flexibility.
Some people say antidepressants left them with debilitating symptoms for years — even decades — after going off the medications. Their ranks are growing online as they push for recognition and research.
Alaska’s Legislature adjourned last week without addressing an issue that many residents of coastal, Native villages see as urgent: expanding access to commercial fishing careers.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled that the lawsuit against educational publisher Heinemann and three of its top authors was invalidated by a legal doctrine that bars claims of “educational malpractice.”
