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EDINA, Minn.–An in-home caregiver named Edison is supposed to live in a unit on the seventh floor of the Cedars of Edina apartment complex, according to a list supplied by the state government.

“We scrolled through the electronic directory where the names are listed alphabetically. There is no one listed here named Edison,” @workerfreedom’s Matt Patterson says.

But when The Daily Signal tags along on a visit to the Gallagher Drive location by activists seeking to decertify the union that represents such caregivers, no one by Edison’s full name can be found in the directory of residents.

“As you can see, we scrolled through the electronic directory where the names are listed alphabetically,” canvasser Matt Patterson tells this reporter. “There is no one listed here named Edison.”

Which is odd, Patterson adds, because Edison’s name is a new one that Minnesota’s had just provided on a list of Medicaid-eligible home caregivers represented by the union, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota.

“We’ll want to make sure this person has actually moved and is not residing here,” he notes.

Patterson, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Worker Freedom, is working with a local lawyer to expose what they suspect is voter fraud, unauthorized collection of dues from Medicaid …read more

Contrary to what “pragmatists” in U.S. government agencies concluded, top officials with the Soviet Union were behind the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, a biographer of Ronald Reagan told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview.

Paul Kengor, a Grove City College political science professor and author, has acquired what he calls never-before-seen information about the Reagan administration’s “supersecret investigation” into the shooting and wounding of the pope.

The information details the role of the Soviet GRU, the Russians’ brutal foreign military intelligence unit, and KGB spy agency head Yuri Andropov in the attempt on John Paul II’s life, Kengor said.

President Reagan and his CIA chief, William Casey, had suspected from the outset that the Soviets had a hand in the shooting of John Paul II on May 13, 1981, in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, he said.

But their suspicions weren’t confirmed until after Casey organized his own secret probe spearheaded by two female researchers, according to Kengor’s just-released book, “A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century.”

“Their suspicions ran completely contrary to the establishmentarians in the institutional CIA, at the State Department, and among the White …read more

ST. PAUL, Minn.–State lawmakers want Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration to explain its apparent faith in a politically connected union despite evidence of fraud since the union won an election to represent thousands of residents who care for disabled relatives in their homes.

State Rep. Marion O’Neill, chairman of the Subcommittee on Employee Relations, plans to schedule a hearing to ask the head of Minnesota’s labor relations agency to detail how an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union recruited home caregivers and the state administered the election.

“I want to see how many [ballots] they actually did send out, and I want to see the original receipts for the mailing,” O’Neill told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“I want to see copies of the returned ballots,” she said. “I want to see who signed them and verify that those signatures are authentic, and not fabricated and not forged.”

Thousands of home caregivers now seek to decertify the union.

And before state legislators vote yea or nay on a new contract with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, O’Neill and others are asking the Dayton administration to answer some hard questions about allegations of voter fraud that potentially violate state and federal law.

In 11 affidavits obtained …read more

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J.—House Republican leaders made a big mistake by trying to rush through their plan to replace Obamacare, conservative star Newt Gingrich says.

And, Gingrich adds, President Donald Trump should have waited longer to step in.

Instead of setting unrealistic timelines that don’t account for the complexity of health care policy, the former House speaker said during a speaking engagement, Republican leaders should have allowed for a vigorous debate that could stretch out for months.

“I actually think the system, if you let it, works pretty well,” Gingrich told an audience of about 1,000 at Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics.

“But to work well takes time,” he said. “You have to have hearings, then you have to have markups, then you have to find out what is good, and the leadership has to realize it may not be perfect. Maybe it could be improved.”

The day after Gingrich spoke, one of his successors, House Speaker Paul Ryan, pulled Republican leadership’s Obamacare replacement bill—the American Health Care Act—for lack of enough votes as conservatives and some centrists refused to embrace it.

Trump got involved and put himself on the line too early in the Obamacare repeal debate, Gingrich argued.

“The time for President Trump to …read more

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Patricia Johansen has worked as a home caregiver for her two special-needs grandchildren for about 10 years.

Since she never agreed to join the union that represents such Medicaid-eligible caregivers in Minnesota, Johansen was surprised to discover that union dues had been deducted from her benefit check for about four months.

In an affidavit, the Fergus Falls resident says she is convinced the union, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, forged her signature so it could start deducting the dues.

Johansen’s story is one reason a state lawmaker is scheduling a hearing where she expects the head of the state’s labor relations agency, a political appointee of Gov. Mark Dayton, to explain how SEIU Healthcare Minnesota won a unionization election–and why it should continue to represent the home caregivers.

State Rep. Marion O’Neill, chairman of the Subcommittee on Employee Relations, told The Daily Signal that she wants the Dayton appointee to appear before the joint panel of the Minnesota House and Senate to address evidence of “fraudulent signatures, nonexistent voters, and ballot tampering” in a 2014 unionization election.

Johansen’s experience is one such discrepancy.

“We …read more

ST. PAUL, Minn.—When the union representative came to her door last month, Mary Barton invited the cheerful young woman in because she seemed friendly, and it was raining.

But about two weeks ago, that visit to her home somehow led to $27.90 in union dues being deducted from Barton’s benefit check as a home caregiver to her disabled daughter.

“She never said anything about [union] membership, and she just said we would like your support,” Barton told The Daily Signal, describing the visit by the union rep who gave her name as Yuliya.

Now, Barton and her husband Mike are warning other caregivers in Minnesota’s Twin Cities region not to fall for the same tactics.

They support efforts by lawyers working with other caregivers to decertify the union, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union called SEIU Healthcare Minnesota.

Mary Barton is a personal care assistant for the couple’s 20-year-old disabled daughter, Catherine.

The Daily Signal is not using the family’s real names for this report because of their concern of being harassed by the union.

The Bartons live in a southern suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul that has been the focus of SEIU Healthcare’s efforts to recruit members from among personal care assistants, or PCAs as they …read more

Forget everything government officials, many media outlets, and “activist scientists” have warned about the damaging effects of carbon dioxide, because in reality there’s no cause for alarm, a group called the CO2 Coalition urges.

Scientists, engineers, and policy analysts who are part of the nonprofit organization turned out in force Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, outside Washington.

“Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant, it is in fact the very elixir of life,” Craig Idso, a science adviser to the CO2 Coalition, said during a panel discussion at CPAC exploring the benefits attached to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The CO2 Coalition, founded in 2015, describes its mission as “educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.”

Contrary to what “activist scientists,” political figures, and media outlets have told the pubic, Idso told CPAC attendees, higher levels of carbon dioxide actually will work to the advantage of future generations.

“Adding CO2 to the atmosphere enhances plant water use efficiency,” he said.

Increased levels of carbon dioxide could boost plant growth and make plants more resistant to droughts, he said. This could lead to increased food …read more

For conservatives, the “lunacy,” “wrongness,” and “criminality” of climate change theories is the gift that keeps on giving, the executive editor of the London branch of Breitbart News Service said Thursday during a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Three major strands characterize the climate change movement, James Delingpole said during the CPAC panel, sponsored by E&E Legal Institute and titled “Fake Climate News Camouflaging an Anti-Capitalist Agenda.”

Delingpole identified these three strands as a sort of religious view that sees man “as a cancer and blight to the planet,” a “follow the money” component in which well-placed individuals “make money off scams” at public expense, and a political component that exists, he said, because “the left has always wanted to find scientific justification to tax and regulate us and control our lives.”

Joining Delingpole were Steve Milloy, a lawyer and author who founded the web site JunkScience.com, and Tony Heller, who has written under the pseudonym Steven Goddard at the blog Real Science, which he founded. John Fund, a columnist for National Review, acted as moderator.

When he was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2008, Fund recalled, he noticed that activists there were substituting the words …read more

Donald Trump prevailed where other Republican presidential candidates failed in Midwestern states in part because of new right-to-work laws that have diminished the power and influence of the teachers’ unions, according to labor policy analysts.

“Unions have been knocked silly in Wisconsin, thanks to the one-two punch of Act 10 and right-to-work,” @workerfreedom’s Matt Patterson says.

Final election results have Trump narrowly winning Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes by a margin of 47.9 to 46.9 percent over Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate. Trump had 1,409,467 votes to Clinton’s 1,382,210.

In Michigan, the margins were even closer with Trump winning that state’s 16 electoral votes with 47.6 percent against Clinton who had 47.3 percent of the vote. Trump had 2,279,805 votes to Clinton’s 2,268,193.

“Did the labor reforms enacted in Wisconsin and neighboring Michigan help Donald Trump win those states?” Matt Patterson, executive director of the Center for Worker Freedom, said in an email to The Daily Signal. “No question in my mind. Hard to fight when your bazooka’s been replaced by a squirt gun.”

Two teachers’ unions, the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the Michigan Education Association, both experienced a significant drop in membership since those states passed right-to-work legislation. Such laws prohibit employers from …read more

There’s good Elon and there’s bad Elon. …read more