Good morning, and welcome to another Monday. Here’s some news you may have missed over the weekend.
A Ramsey County judge is considering whether a county attorney from western Minnesota will be allowed intervene in a high-profile abortion case. MPR’s Matt Sepic reports that Traverse County Attorney Matthew Franzese wants to take the case to a higher court after state Attorney General Keith Ellison said he would not file an appeal. Franzese argues that Judge Thomas Gillgan’s decision to overturn several state laws restricting abortion applies only in Ramsey County and has caused confusion about whether the restrictions may still be enforced in Minnesota’s other 86 counties. Franzese also argues that the district court does not have the authority to decide constitutional claims against the state because there’s no state law that authorizes such a lawsuit. Minneapolis attorney William Mohrman, who represents the Thomas More Society, told Gilligan that the Minnesota Court of Appeals should settle these questions. “My client has an interest in intervening to serve an appeal in this case because he is charged with enforcing Minnesota state statutes, and your injunction prohibits him from doing that, if it applies to him.” The legal director of the group Gender Justice, Jess Braverman is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. Among other things, she said Franzese filed his motion too late, noting that the case had been litigated for more than three years. “There’s no excuse, none, for waiting this long. And if the county attorney believes he has an interest in raising this, and I’ll put in quotes, defense, because it’s nonsensical to me, the time to raise this was then, not now. Nothing has changed.” The judge appeared quite skeptical of Mohrman’s arguments. “Why did you wait three years and post-decision, and post-judgment to raise it?” Gilligan asked. “Timeliness, I think, is very important here.”
The Star Tribune reports on a lawsuit Ellison filed that’s designed to hold oil companies responsible for their role in climate change. Ellison’s Republican challenger Jim Schultz has made the suit an issue as he campaigns. In an interview with the paper he described it as "frivolous" and said the Attorney General's Office should focus on violent crime by hiring more prosecutors in that area. "It has zero chance at succeeding," Schultz said of the fossil fuel lawsuit. "It's fundamentally motivated by headlines and pleasing one side of the political aisle." Minnesota's isn't the only climate change lawsuit in the court system right now — there are more than 20 from cities, counties and states across the country. Very few have been dismissed. "This lawsuit is in the long and successful tradition of Minnesota attorneys general standing up to protect Minnesotans from corporate fraud and deception by Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, and now Big Oil," Ellison wrote in an e-mailed statement. "This is what Minnesotans expect from their attorney general. It's the right fight to be having."
The Pioneer Press took a look at plans to spend the nearly $2.7 billion in COVID-19 aid coming to Minnesota schools from the federal government. From the story: Khulia Pringle, a St. Paul resident who is tracking how Minnesota districts spend federal coronavirus aid as part of a project with the National Parents Union, says mental health is a top concern, especially among parents of color. Not only do mental health supports need to be more widely available, she said, they need to be culturally relevant to students who are trying to deal with ongoing trauma. She said a lot of services now available are “white-washed” and ineffective for students of color. “The situation before COVID for Black kids was horrible. During COVID it was worse than horrible,” Pringle said. “It is just going to get worse if they have no plan. We have kids who are failing and we need to do something about it right now.” Meanwhile, the percentage of Minnesota students testing proficient or better fell by 11 points in math and seven points in reading in 2021 compared to 2019.
Minnesota is on the list of stops where Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will focus on infrastructure investments. Buttigieg is traveling to six states to promote the bipartisan infrastructure law and other elements of the Biden administration's agenda. On Thursday in Minneapolis he'll tout a $12 million grant to support bus rapid transit on Lake Street.
If Republicans win control of the U.S. House in November, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer is likely to try to advance in House leadership. MinnPost has a look at the leadership election that will follow the November midterm: That second election involves a vote by his GOP colleagues that will determine whether Emmer, now the head of the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), fulfills his ambition to rise up the House leadership ranks and become the new majority whip. The whip is responsible for counting heads and rounding up party members for votes. As the No. 3 person in the Republican leadership, Emmer would occasionally stand in for the majority leader and be involved in day-to-day decisions. The leadership elections will take place during freshman orientation, a post-election event that’s held so members from both parties can learn the ropes, participate in a lottery for their Capitol Hill offices and begin hiring staff. Although those new members won’t be sworn in until January, they can cast votes for the leaders of their parties during their orientation, which is expected to take place before Thanksgiving.
Democrats are accusing a Republican-endorsed candidate for the Minnesota Senate of condoning political violence, when he talked about the need for “voting with the ballot before we have to vote with bullets,” the Associated Press reported. The Senate District 52 candidate, Stephen Lowell, countered that he wasn’t advocating violence but instead simply warning about what can happen when people lose faith in their government. Video posted on his campaign social media and recirculated by the state Democratic Party showed Lowell, of Eagan, making the remarks last month at a Dakota County Patriots event. “We need to grow our teeth back. Fast,” Lowell told the crowd. “So, part of those teeth, in this particular set of terms, is voting with the ballot before we have to vote with bullets. Because at the end of the day, when people don’t believe that their elections are stable, they don’t believe that police will protect them, they stop using the democratic, of any kind, method. … And so we have to bring back that faith, and we have to come out and vote.” DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin denounced Lowell’s remarks as “violent” and “dehumanizing” and called on Republicans to send a strong signal that such rhetoric won’t be tolerated. Lowell, a libertarian conservative, denied that that was what he meant. |
