Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, 54 years to the day after the first humans walked on the moon.
The man who shot Fargo police officers — one fatally — last week had 1,800 rounds, multiple guns and a homemade hand grenade in his vehicle, officials said Wednesday. The Associated Press reports : Mohamad Barakat, 37, opened fire on officers responding to a traffic wreck Friday before being fatally shot by officer Zach Robinson. Officer Jake Wallin was killed, and officers Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes were hospitalized with critical injuries. “When you look at the amount of ammunition this shooter had in his car, he was planning on more mayhem in our community,” Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney said at a news conference Wednesday. North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley described Barakat's attack as “completely unprovoked.” Robinson ordered Barakat 16 times to put the gun down before firing on him, Wrigley said. Wrigley said Robinson’s use of deadly force “was reasonable. It was justified and lawful in every possible way.” After the attack, officers found 1,800 live rounds, three long rifles, four handguns, explosives, canisters with gasoline and a homemade hand grenade in Barakat's car, Wrigley said. “It’s clear to us that our police officers were ambushed in this attack,” the mayor said.
More evidence that bans on gender-affirming care have led some families to move to states like Minnesota that are less restrictive. MPR’s Dana Ferguson teamed up with reporter Saige Miller of KUER in Salt Lake City to report: Minnesota adopted legal protections for gender care this year. And physicians say it has been a whirlwind. Calls from patients from other states have surged as lawmakers limit access to legal care options there. “It is really strange that it's 2023. And we're making refugees within the United States of America,” said Dr. Kelsey Leonardsmith, a physician who provides hormone care in the Twin Cities. At the Minneapolis clinic where Leonardsmith sees patients, out-of-state patient calls used to be relatively rare. Now they get several each week. “They are really concerned about losing access to their medical care,” Leonardsmith said. “The climate of what it's like to just try to experience the health care system and try to access gender affirming care in hostile places that are passing hostile legislation is really challenging and maybe unsafe.” While hospitals and clinics have trained more providers to offer gender-affirming care services, they’re still having trouble keeping up, she said.
The St. Paul City Council agreed to put two questions to voters over the next two years — one to raise the city’s sales tax for road and park projects and the other to potentially use property tax collections to help subsidize early childhood programs. The Pioneer Press reports: Taken together, the funding requests over road reconstruction, parks improvements, child care subsidies and downtown-area quality-of-life concerns underscore the challenges faced by a high-poverty capital city with a growing backlog of infrastructure needs. Following a pandemic that laid bare deep wealth disparities, those infrastructure needs have at times been overshadowed by human service concerns. Some of those costs — like road reconstruction — appear inevitable, but they raise questions over which level of government or industry should take the lead in paying them and how funding should be structured.
In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey and other leaders are proposing higher utility bills to fund climate change initiatives. The Star Tribune reports: The envisioned fee hikes would generate between $8 million and $10 million annually to pay for weatherizing homes, installing solar panels and other programs — resulting in a tripling of the city's current spending on those items, Frey and a host of officials announced Wednesday. Details of the proposal, including exactly how much the fees would rise for utilities customers, are still being worked out, Frey said. But he estimated the additional cost would be $8 to $12 annually per household, on average. The plan would hike the city's franchise fee, found on every gas and electric bill, as a percentage of the bill. The City Council and the mayor have sole power over those fees; no action by the Public Utilities Commission or other body is required to raise them.
Aug. 1 is rapidly approaching. That’s the day it becomes legal to possess and use marijuana in Minnesota if you’re 21 or older. Some cities are trying to limit public use as MPR’s Dan Kraker reports: Three Duluth city councilors announced Wednesday they plan to introduce an ordinance to ban smoking marijuana in public outdoor spaces. The proposed ordinance would prohibit smoking or vaping of marijuana in all public parks, as well as on streets, sidewalks, easements, publicly owned property and publicly owned or operated parking lots or parking facilities. State law will allow the use of marijuana in public, unless explicitly banned by cities. “This ordinance reflects our commitment to strike a balance between personal freedoms and safeguarding the interests of non-smokers, families and children from secondhand marijuana smoke,” said Duluth City Council member Arik Forsman, lead author of the ordinance.
Gov. Tim Walz has rescinded an appointment to a broadband task force after it was revealed his choice had a history of domestic abuse. The Star Tribune reports: Walz announced last week that he had appointed Jerald Loud to the Governor's Task Force on Broadband, a panel that advises the governor and Legislature on strategies to expand high-speed internet access. More than 30 years ago, a judge found that Loud had "battered" his ex-wife and granted her a restraining order against him. More recently, when Loud was running for the state House in 2016, two of his three daughters told the Star Tribune that they had disowned him, saying he was a bully and "not a father or a family man." The governor was not aware of the past allegations against Loud until the Star Tribune questioned his office about it on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Walz said. Responding to the inquiry, spokeswoman Claire Lancaster told the Star Tribune that "Jerry Loud will no longer serve on the Board." | 