Good morning, and happy Friday to you.
Program note: On the radio at noon today on MPR News I’ll be talking to the Republican endorsed candidate for attorney general Jim Schultz and then to Doug Wardlow, who’s challenging him in the August primary. And later, a look at what’s driving the high price of gasoline.
Arguments over the size of the Minneapolis Police Department ended up before the Minnesota Supreme Court Thursday.MPR’s Jon Collins reports: A district court ruling last year on the lawsuit that ordered the city to comply with the minimum staffing outlined in the city charter was overturned by the court of appeals in March. Attorney James Dickey of the Upper Midwest Law Center told the court that current staffing is about 120 officers less than his clients believe are required. He said the low staffing for the police department, which has lost hundreds of officers since George Floyd’s murder, has led to a return to the days of “Murderapolis.” ”In the meantime, our clients have been facing, as they rightly put it, a hail of bullets ripping through their neighborhood and killing the most vulnerable, as the city refuses to change its approach to policing and restore the Minneapolis Police Department,” Dickey told the court. Minneapolis Assistant City Attorney Greg Sautter told the court that the charter requires the city council to fund police at a certain level, but doesn’t interfere with Mayor Jacob Frey’s control over the police department. “Here there is no dispute that the mayor has been using his discretion continuously as he operated the police department through the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the civil unrest after the murder of George Floyd, the rise in crime that’s plagued America … and the departure of more than 300 peace officers from the Minneapolis Police Department,” Sautter told the court.
Longer prison sentences for violent offenders, deploying the State Patrol to high crime areas and quicker deployment of the National Guard “preemptively if needed upon intelligence information” of possible unrest are elements of a public safety platform laid out Thursday by Republican candidate for governor Scott Jensen. MPR News reports: The physician and former state senator who was endorsed by his party last month said DFL Gov. Tim Walz has been too timid about fighting crime. Jensen said he’d appoint judges who would hand down longer sentences and would seek a new law with specific prison sentences for carjacking. "We can do this Minnesota, but it all starts with one question — do you feel safer than you did four years ago?” Jensen said at a news conference near the Minnesota Capitol. “When I ask people across the state of Minnesota, whether it's in greater Minnesota or the urban areas, do you feel safer than you did four years ago? They're saying 'no.'” Walz proposed $300 million for community intervention and policing programs and has been trying to get Republican leaders to agree to a special session to pass a public safety bill and other spending bills and a tax cut.
MPR’s Dan Kraker reports:The Minnesota Auto Dealers Association has filed a lawsuit challenging the state's "clean cars" plan adopted late last year, which is intended to increase the number of electric vehicles for sale in Minnesota and reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. The group has long opposed the new rules, which are modeled after California regulations. The dealers sued unsuccessfully to block them last year in federal court. They fear that Minnesota auto dealers will be burdened with an oversupply of electric vehicles that consumers don’t want and they won’t be able to sell. In this challenge, filed with the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the auto dealers association argues that the rules violate state law by improperly delegating the state’s authority to the California Air Resources Board. The group also argues that Minnesota doesn’t qualify to adopt the California rules under federal law. “Dealers are all in for the adoption of EVs and are making sizeable investments in their businesses to get ready for an expected increase in demand,” MADA president Scott Lambert said in a statement. “But they’re making plans based on consumer appetite, not what California dictates.”
Despite early glitches with the state website, nearly 200,000 Minnesotans have already put in applications to receive a COVID-related bonus payment of up to $1,500. The money is meant to support those who worked in especially high-risk environments during the pandemic – teachers, those in health care fields, food service and retail workers, to name just a few of the jobs qualified for the bonuses. Like any governmental process, applying for the front-line worker pay is complicated and could be confusing. Here’s a place to find out what you need to know.
The first televised hearing of the House Jan. 6 Committee featured the testimony of a Capitol police officer who was injured in the riot.NPR reports officer Caroline Edwards told the committee and the nation about her experience that day. The committee played video of her being violently slammed to the ground by protesters breaking through a barrier outside of the Capitol, knocking her unconscious — the first of several injuries she sustained that day. "I couldn't believe my eyes," she recalled of the scene, which she compared to a war zone. "There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding, they were throwing up ... I saw friends with blood all over their faces, I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage, it was chaos. I can't even describe what I saw."
Overall, the committee hearing sent the message that the attack on the Capitol on Jan.6 was an “attempted coup” and a direct result of former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.The Associated Press reports: With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and startling testimony from Trump’s most inner circle, the 1/6 committee provided gripping detail in contending that Trump’s repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory led to the attack and imperiled American democracy “Democracy remains in danger,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the panel, during the hearing, timed for prime time to reach as many Americans as possible. “Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” Thompson said. “The violence was no accident.” | 