Conservative Journalist Banned from Gov. Walz’s Press Briefings Without Explanation

A conservative journalist has sued Gov. Tim Walz’s administration after he was barred from participating in the governor’s daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the lawsuit, Scott Johnson, an attorney and writer for PowerLine, was allowed to participate in the daily briefings until April 27, when he was suddenly “excluded from all future daily briefings without explanation.”

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Commentary: Leftism, Not Racism, Destroys Black Upward Mobility

The rioting and looting across the United States have been widely—though not universally—condemned. The “peaceful protests,” on the other hand, have been universally praised. But is this appropriate? Wouldn’t a broader and more balanced discussion be more constructive than praise without reservation?

Obviously, people have the right to peacefully protest injustice, and obviously incidents of murderous police brutality are more than sufficient justification for protests. But that’s as far as it goes. The scope of these protests is disproportionate to the offense, not because the offense wasn’t hideously wrong, but because there are far more dangerous challenges facing black Americans. The biggest challenge of all: leftists who indoctrinate blacks to think they are always first and foremost victims of racism.

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Commentary: School Reopenings in Denmark Did Not Worsen COVID-19 Spread, Data Show

A new Reuters report says data show the school reopenings in Denmark did not lead to an increase in the spread of COVID-19.

Sending children back to schools and day care centers in Denmark, the first country in Europe to do so, did not lead to an increase in coronavirus infections, according to official data, confirming similar findings from Finland on Thursday.

As nations around the world seek to end the restrictive lockdowns designed to curb the spread of COVID-19, many expressed worry that reopening schools could result in a surge of coronavirus cases. That did not happen in Denmark.

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Supreme Court Urged to Rethink Legal Immunity for Police Officers Amid Floyd Protests

The Supreme Court is weighing petitions to reexamine legal immunity that protects officers from being sued in instances of brutal arrests, use of excessive force and the shooting of innocent people in their homes.

The call for reassessment comes during nationwide protests of police brutality, the most recent instance being the death of George Floyd. Floyd died on May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, video of the incident shows.

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California Governor Ends Police Training in ‘Sleeper Hold’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered the state’s police training program to stop teaching officers how to use a neck hold that blocks the flow of blood to the brain and endorsed legislation that would ban the practice statewide.

It marked his first action on police use of force following more than a week of protests across the country over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd died on Memorial Day after a police officer put his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while he was handcuffed and lying on the ground.

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Government Job Losses Are Piling Up, and It Could Get Worse

Jobs with state and city governments are usually a source of stability in the U.S. economy, but the financial devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has forced cuts that will reduce public services — from schools to trash pickup.

Even as the U.S. added some jobs in May, the number of people employed by federal, state and local governments dropped by 585,000. The overall job losses among public workers have reached more than 1.5 million since March, according to seasonally adjusted federal jobs data released Friday. The number of government employees is now the lowest it’s been since 2001, and most of the cuts are at the local level.

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Growing Support to ‘Abolish Police’ Among Minneapolis Progressives

George Floyd’s death has given new life to a leftist movement to abolish the police, an idea with broad support among the Minneapolis City Council and the progressive wing of the DFL Party.

Just a day after Floyd’s death, state Rep. Aisha Gomez (DFL-Minneapolis) released a nearly 500-word statement on “why we talk about police abolition.”

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