Political pay-Bakk? In the Hibbing Daily Tribune, Eric Killelea writes: “At the end of January, the six Ojibwe bands forming the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe based in Cass Lake wrote a letter in support of a federal bill to ban copper-nickel mining in Superior National Forest, in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. … Several days later, trades unions began calling State Sen. Tom Bakk to condemn the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa in his northeast Minnesota district for being part of the tribe’s letter. They specifically pointed fingers at Chavers, the chairwoman of the Bois Forte, saying that in signing the letter she attacked the proposed copper-nickel projects they hoped would boost the economy of the region. … Banking on such promises, the trades union told Bakk they wanted to boycott the band-owned Fortune Bay Resort Casino and The Wilderness Golf Course on Lake Vermilion for being attached to the MCT’s letter, even though it was the tribe and not the band that authored the letter. … Earlier this week, Bakk called Chavers. The way he tells his story, they know each other and their families played softball together. But the shared history did not stop him from siding with the trades unions, canceling his event at Fortune Bay and rescheduling it for a later date at Giants Ridge in Biwabik.”

A deep dive in the Washington Post on the case of Mark Pavelich. John Rosengren writes: “He walks into the courtroom, hands cuffed at his waist, an armed deputy in a flak jacket at his side. He wears a white-and-gray striped jumpsuit with ‘Lake Co. Jail’ in large red letters on the back. Short with neatly combed hair, a trimmed gray beard and brown plastic-rimmed glasses, he does not glance at his 87-year-old mother in the front row or at his sister beside her, or his brother or two cousins and a friend. He sits at a small table beside his attorney and faces the judge. … This does not look like someone who beat his neighbor so badly with a metal bar in August that the man was hospitalized with two cracked ribs, a bruised kidney, a fractured vertebra, and welts over his legs, arms and back. Nor does he look like the American hero who set up the goal that beat the Soviets in the 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice.’”

Mayo research. MPR’s Catharine Richert reports: “In 2004, Dr. Michael Ackerman got an unexpected phone call. … On the other end of the line was a medical examiner in Kentucky who had recently performed a befuddling autopsy on a 12-year-old Amish girl. … That phone call would ignite more than a decade of genetic sleuthing across multiple states to understand why a healthy Amish child had died without an obvious explanation. The mystery of her death — and later, the deaths of more than a dozen other Amish children — would vex researchers and clinicians for years, until Ackerman and his colleagues finally made a breakthrough in their Mayo lab. … Those findings were recently published in the JAMA Cardiology medical journal. Now, those same researchers are working to find a treatment.”

Developing story. The Star Tribune’s Paul Walsh reports: “One man fatally stabbed another Monday at a state-run mental health residence in West St. Paul, and a suspect was arrested at the scene, authorities said. … The stabbing occurred shortly before 4 a.m. at the home in the 1500 block of Christensen Avenue, according to Police Chief Brian Sturgeon. … The chief said the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was on the scene throughout the morning and assisting in the investigation.”

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In other news…

How are you observing? “Gov. Tim Walz Proclaims ‘Grain Bin Safety Week’” [WCCO]

Dystopia now: “Target’s Delivery App Workers Describe a Culture of Retaliation and Fear” [Vice]

Premiered Sunday: “Andrew Zimmern moves from entertainer to advocate on his new MSNBC food show” [Washington Post]

As if times weren’t bad enough for journalists: “The Press Bar in St. Cloud, Minnesota likely a total loss after early morning fire” [KMSP]