Gov. Tim Walz is expected to call another special session by the end of the week in order to extend his peacetime emergency powers.
House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park) alerted members and staff in a Monday email about the likely special session.
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Donald Trump gave the greatest speech of his career on Friday night at Mount Rushmore, an address that will soon take on historic importance. The president has now forced his opponents out of their fetid hothouse of snobbery, humbug, and subversion. In the process he has forced the Bush Republicans, who led the party between the retirement of Ronald Reagan and the rise of Donald Trump, to show their colors.
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The personal protective gear that was in dangerously short supply during the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. is running low again as the virus resumes its rapid spread and the number of hospitalized patients climbs.
A national nursing union is concerned that gear has to be reused. A doctors association warns that physicians’ offices are closed because they cannot get masks and other supplies. And Democratic members of Congress are pushing the Trump administration to devise a national strategy to acquire and distribute gear in anticipation of the crisis worsening into the fall.
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After violent antifa riots were allowed to rock downtown Portland, Oregon, for over a month, Border Patrol agents over the holiday weekend were finally deployed to restore order.
Acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan expressed frustration over the situation on Fox News Sunday: “Where are the local political leaders?” he asked. “These are not protesters, these are criminals.”
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The $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has supported more than 51 million jobs since its launch in April, the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration announced Monday as it released information on 4.9 million loans disbursed by the program.
“The PPP is providing much-needed relief to millions of American small businesses, supporting more than 51 million jobs and over 80 percent of all small business employees, who are the drivers of economic growth in our country,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement Monday.
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Confederate statues would be removed from the Capitol under a provision included in the Democrat House Appropriations Committee’s 2021 draft budget bill released Monday.
The nearly $4.2 billion funding proposal would mandate the removal of monuments to Confederate generals and would also call into question those statues of people who have “unambiguous records of racial intolerance,” according to a press release from the Appropriations Committee.
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Millions of coronavirus vaccine doses are being manufactured, even before testing has been completed, the National Institutes of Health director said in an interview recently.
Doses of potential vaccines are being made to shorten the time it traditionally takes to develop a drug for public use, director Dr. Francis Collins told Intelligencer. Collins said he is “guardedly optimistic” that at least one vaccine will pass through the large phase of trials by December.
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Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s orders sent more than 6,300 coronavirus patients to nursing homes at the height of the pandemic, new numbers from state officials show.
Thousands of elderly coronavirus patients died after Cuomo issued an order March 25 mandating assisted-living facilities admit coronavirus patients, and state officials are now reporting that the number of admitted carriers is even higher than previous estimates.
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The job market took a big step toward healing in May, though plenty of damage remains, as a record level of hiring followed record layoffs in March and April.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that the number of available jobs rose sharply as well, but remained far below pre-pandemic levels.
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Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said Tuesday he has tested positive for COVID-19 after months of downplaying the coronavirus’s severity while deaths mounted rapidly inside the country.
The 65-year-old populist who has been known to mingle in crowds without covering his face confirmed the results while wearing a mask and speaking to reporters huddled close in front of him in the capital, Brasilia. He said he is taking hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug that has not been proven effective against COVID-19.
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Work crews on Tuesday took down a monument to Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, the third major statue to be cleared away in less than a week as the Confederacy’s former capital rushes to remove symbols of oppression in response to protests against police brutality and racism.
As a crowd cheered, crews strapped the huge bronze equestrian statue in harnesses and used a crane to lift it from its granite base to be trucked away. Some in the crowd chanted “Black Lives Matter” after the statue was removed. One person sang, “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye.”
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The Supreme Court has upheld the right of the United States government to distribute aid to foreign organizations in accordance with American interests. The June 29 decision in Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International represents a significant win for the protection of American freedoms.
The case affirms a vital principle of U.S. foreign involvement, one dear to the heart of the American taxpayer—U.S. money spent abroad must support U.S. interests and priorities. If a foreign organization wants our money, it cannot violate American positions.
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Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan shared a post on social media over the Independence Day weekend calling Mount Rushmore a “symbol of white supremacy.”
“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today. It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land, then carve the white faces of the colonizers who committed genocide,” said the post, which Flanagan shared on her Instagram.
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