APM Reports

The Minnesota Department of Health’s role in the state’s booming group home industry has been at the center of two of the biggest news stories in Minnesota over the past week. On Thursday, the Health Department revoked the licenses of three group homes where Sekou Dukuly, a high-ranking government official in Liberia, was licensed as the group home’s director up until last week.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services is suspending payments to all group home companies affiliated with a high-ranking government official in Liberia, citing “credible allegations of Medicaid fraud,” following an MPR News and APM Reports investigation this week. The Department of Health says it will shut down three group homes he managed and will transfer their residents to other facilities.

The revelation that a Liberian government official has been running Twin Cities group homes from thousands of miles away has led to bipartisan calls for reform in Minnesota and divided reactions in West Africa. Despite the outcry echoing on both sides of the Atlantic, the Walz administration has remained silent.

In 2024, at a ceremony in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, an emcee praised the business acumen of Sekou Dukuly, the newly installed director of the West African nation’s government-owned port system. Dukuly had been “delivering multimillion-dollar profit increases everywhere he worked,” the emcee said. Dukuly didn’t make his money in international shipping, however. He cashed in on Minnesota’s booming group home industry.

Utah officials are shutting down Provo Canyon School’s girls program — one of the state’s most notorious teen treatment programs, which has been plagued by abuse allegations. The action came after the state’s licensing agency received complaints last month from the nonprofit Disability Law Center, state officials said Tuesday. The program also had faced closure demands from former residents, including celebrity Paris Hilton.

The New Yorker staff writer David Owen opened a recent piece with a personal story: To hide that she couldn't read, his niece would pretend she was reading, turning pages when her classmates did. Owen joined Sold a Story host Emily Hanford for a live conversation about his December 2025 article “Dyslexia and the Reading Wars.” The event was part of the Eyes on Reading series at Planet Word, a museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to words and language. This podcast is designed to be heard.

Ryan Riggs died alone by a chain link fence in the backyard of the group home that was paid to take care of him. Disabled by a traumatic brain injury after crashing his motorcycle in 2024, the 44-year-old needed more help than his family could handle. His wife, Julie, moved him to a site run by Fortunate Homes in Brooklyn Center, believing it was the best place for him. About six months later, Ryan Riggs went missing from Fortunate Homes.

Across Alaska’s coastline, from the Indigenous communities of Bristol Bay to the Tlingit and Haida villages of the panhandle, rural harbors that once bustled with commercial fishing boats now sit unused and empty. Abandoned boats covered with mold and algae line the shores of one Southeast town; others have seen their fleets sold off and relocated. In the Indigenous village of Metlakatla, though, it’s a different story.

Officer Jessica Heinzen heard the call come in from Brooklyn Park dispatch about a man “likely on drugs” threatening his roommates. She recognized the man’s name and the address of the group home where he lived, and she was not surprised. Arriving at the house, a group home worker told her the man had walked off after acting erratically for days. His case manager recently quit and he was skipping his antipsychotics for street drugs, the worker explained.

Listen: ICE agents are trained in CPR. They didn’t use it on Renee Macklin Good 0:00 | 00:05:08 An analysis of videos, 911 calls, fire department records and dispatch logs conducted by MPR News and APM Reports raises questions about whether the federal agency that mortally wounded Renee Macklin Good did enough to try to save her life. It took more than 10 minutes after Macklin Good was shot by a federal immigration officer before someone gave her CPR.