The Minnesota DFL Party launched a new ad campaign this week targeting key Republican state senators who are accused of “standing in the way of passing real police reform.”
Jason Lewis, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, said in a recent interview that Democrats don’t “want reform” so much as they “want a political issue.”
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The president was not whining when he tweeted about the continuing “political prosecution” permitted by the two tax returns cases issued Wednesday by the Supreme Court. These two cases, although short-term wins for Trump, illustrate the role of the federal and state courts in the administrative state and reveal the burdens this conglomeration places on a reforming president. Let’s take the worst of the bad news first.
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The president of Turkey on Friday formally converted Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia back into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled a 1934 decision that had made the religious landmark a museum.
The decision sparked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians. Originally a cathedral, Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque after Istanbul’s conquest by the Ottoman Empire but had been a museum for the last 86 years, drawing millions of tourists annually.
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Joe Biden revealed on Thursday the first part of “Build Back Better,” his plan for economic recovery from the COVID crisis.
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A Virginia-based law firm is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for access to records revealing his use of attorneys financed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to engage in a climate crusade targeting oil companies.
The nonprofit Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) filed a lawsuit Wednesday for records detailing how the Democratic attorney general is allegedly deploying Bloomberg-financed lawyers to advance a lawsuit his office leveled against the fossil fuel industry. The firm’s complaint was filed on behalf of the nonprofit group Energy Policy Advocates.
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Protesters who have clashed with authorities in the Pacific Northwest are not just confronting local police. Some are also facing off against federal officers whose presence reflects President Donald Trump’s decision to make cracking down on “violent mayhem” a federal priority.
The Department of Homeland Security has deployed officers in tactical gear from around the country, and from more than a half-dozen federal law enforcement agencies and departments, to Portland, Oregon, as part of a surge aimed at what a senior official said were people taking advantage of demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd to engage in violence and vandalism.
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Even though Derek Jones’ dad was a drummer and his grandmother played piano, he never played music until later in life.
“We always had music going on at the house at our supper table. If Dad was in charge of the music, we listened to Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker, Grand Funk Railroad but if Mom was in control [of the music], we listened to Lionel Richie, Jim Croce, stuff like that,” he said.
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More than 60% of Americans support allowing people to sue police officers for using excessive force against assailants, even if such a move makes the job of police work more difficult, according to a survey published Thursday.
Two-thirds of the public believe civilians should be able to level lawsuits if police officers are engaging in misconduct, a Pew Research Center survey showed. Law enforcement officers are protected through qualified immunity, a doctrine protecting them from civil liability unless they commit clear violations of law.
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President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime political confidant Roger Stone on Friday, just days before he was set to report to prison. Democrats denounced the move as just another in a series of unprecedented interventions by the president in the nation’s justice system.
Stone had been sentenced in February to three years and four months in prison for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. He was set to report to prison by Tuesday.
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A judge issued an injunction Thursday barring the city of Richmond from removing any more Confederate monuments, a process that began last week after Mayor Levar Stoney ordered the statues cleared away amid weeks of protests over police brutality and racism.
Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley Cavedo issued the decision after a hearing in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by an unnamed plaintiff, local media outlets reported. The lawsuit asked for an emergency injunction to halt the removal of the statues and alleged that Stoney violated state law by ordering their immediate removal.
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An all new LIVE STREAM of Descent Into Hell starts at 9 a.m. Central Time on Saturday.
The two-hour special takes a closer look at the life of everyday Chinese citizens under the Chinese Communist Party and will air live on the John Fredericks Radio Network, America’s Voice Network, Dish TV Channel 219, The Epoch Times, ND TV, GTV and GNews in Mandarin.
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A survey conducted by the Minnesota Department of Education found that the majority of parents would feel comfortable sending their children back to school this fall.
Between June 15 and July 6, the agency collected more than 130,000 responses to the informal survey, which was offered in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali. A total of 64 percent of respondents said they would feel comfortable sending their children back to school in September. Of that 64 percent, 94 percent said they would send their children back to school full time.
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The Department of Justice announced the formation of a new Twin Cities Violent Crimes Task Force Wednesday in response to an “extraordinary spike in gun violence and violent crimes.”
Erica MacDonald, U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, said the task force will bring together federal and state resources to assist local law enforcement in investigating, arresting, and prosecuting individuals responsible for gun violence.
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School districts around the country have been announcing reopening possibilities for the upcoming school year. The options often include full-time virtual learning, two or three in-person days at school, or a combination of the two.
In a few districts, I’ve seen four or five suggestions.
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Rejecting President Donald Trump’s complaints that he’s being harassed, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of a New York prosecutor’s demands for the billionaire president’s tax records. But in good political news for Trump, his taxes and other financial records almost certainly will be kept out of the public eye at least until after the November election.
In a separate case, the justices kept a hold on banking and other documents about Trump, family members and his businesses that Congress has been seeking for more than a year. The court said that while Congress has significant power to demand the president’s personal information, it is not limitless.
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Who would have thought the Gates Foundation would endorse tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, and other dead white men?
Sure, you won’t find “mob violence,” “vandalism,” or “destruction of public property” in any grant applications, but the paroxysms of rage racking our country and the desire to rip racism from America by root and branch is the end-product of Big Philanthropy’s governing ideology.
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The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on three senior officials of the Chinese Communist Party, including a member of the ruling Politburo, for alleged human rights abuses targeting ethnic and religious minorities that China has detained in the western part of the country.
The decision to bar these senior officials from entering the U.S. is the latest of a series of actions the Trump administration has taken against China as relations deteriorate over the coronavirus pandemic, human rights, Hong Kong and trade. Just a day earlier, the administration had announced visa bans against officials deemed responsible for barring foreigners’ access to Tibet. Thursday’s step, however, hits a more senior level of leadership and is likely to draw a harsh response from Beijing.
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The missing mayor of South Korea’s capital, reportedly embroiled in sexual harassment allegations, was found dead early Friday, more than half a day after giving his daughter a will-like message and then leaving home, police said.
Police said they located Park Won-soon’s body near a traditional restaurant in wooded hills in northern Seoul, more than seven hours after they launched a massive search for him.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is reporting an error rate of 7.36 percent for its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for fiscal year 2019.
Despite the error rate, and after state government shutdowns over the coronavirus, the federal government significantly extended emergency SNAP funding for states to distribute.
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The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the U.S. Treasury Department this week released the names of 4.9 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan recipient businesses and nonprofits that received $150,000 or more.
The mostly forgivable PPP loans were funded through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
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New unemployment claims increased slightly in Minnesota last week, as well as overall total unemployment, running opposite from the falling national trend reported by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The week-over-week numbers reported for Minnesota the week ending July 4 show 19,886 new initial claims, an increase of 513 initial unemployment claims from the previous week’s 19,373 new claims.
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Republican Senate candidate Jason Lewis said parents should be refunded for property tax payments and tuition if schools aren’t allowed to reopen in the fall.
“The more we learn about COVID, the more it becomes apparent that we have done a huge disservice to our children in the way we have handled this virus. Research has proven that COVID presents minimal risks to young people. But what isn’t minimal is the toll this prolonged lockdown and social isolation has on our kids’ social, mental, and physical well-being,” Lewis said in a statement released Wednesday.
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Jobless claims for the past week were lower than economists had predicted as workers begin returning to their jobs, according to data from the Labor Department shows.
The total number for jobless claims for the week ending in July 4 was 1.3 million, according to the Labor Department data, which is 99,000 fewer claims than the previous week. Economists surveyed by Down Jones had predicted 1.39 million jobless claims, according to CNBC.
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The Supreme Court on Thursday kept a hold on President Donald Trump’s financial records that Congress has been seeking for more than a year. The ruling returns the case to lower courts, with no clear prospect for when the case might ultimately be resolved.
The 7-2 outcome is at least a short-term victory for Trump, who has strenuously sought to keep his financial records private.
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A Republican lawmaker has drafted a bill that would require Minnesota to sell a facility it purchased for the storage of deceased COVID-19 patients.
Due to a projected surge in COVID-19 fatalities, the state of Minnesota spent $6.9 million in May to acquire a warehouse for the “temporary storage of human remains.” As of early June, however, the facility had yet to be used.
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At the end of The Unheavenly City: The Nature and the Future of Our Urban Crisis (1968), Edward Banfield presents a prospect regarding race relations that seems to have been fulfilled since his tumultuous years and ours: a reign of error.
Let me set the stage. America had become the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and the wealth was making its way to the lower classes also. Thus the main “accidental factor” that had locked Americans in a vicious cycle of white discrimination and prejudice on one side and low standards and attainments for blacks on the other would be largely alleviated. Such prejudice, said Banfield, writing during the years of urban riots, was already in decline.
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Brooks Brothers, one of the United States’ oldest and most prestigious retailers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday after 202 years, CNBC reported.
The retailer, credited with dressing 40 U.S. presidents since its founding in 1818, had already been burdened with rising rent when it was devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, which sunk the company’s potential sale, according to CNBC.
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White supremacists placed Planned Parenthood clinics inside cities to “do the Devil’s work,” according to rapper and recently-declared presidential candidate Kanye West.
West, who announced his presidential bid July 4, spoke out regarding his political beliefs in an interview with Forbes where he discussed his disillusionment with President Donald Trump, his political beliefs, and his hopes for a West presidency.
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Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging the Trump administration’s decision to bar international students from staying in the U.S. if they take classes entirely online this fall.
The lawsuit, filed in Boston’s federal court, seeks to prevent federal immigration authorities from enforcing the rule. The universities contend that the directive violates the Administrative Procedures Act because officials failed to offer a reasonable basis justifying the policy and because the public was not given notice to comment on it.
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The United States Supreme Court ruled to uphold conscience exemptions from former President Barack Obama’s birth control mandate in a victory for the Little Sisters of the Poor.
SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that the Catholic nuns are exempt from Obama’s contraceptive mandate.
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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told NowThis’ Ady Barkan that he supports redirecting money from police departments into other areas such as mental health care and affordable housing.
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Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of George Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: a surge in shootings that has left dozens dead, including young children.
The spike defies easy explanation, experts say, pointing to the toxic mix of issues facing America in 2020: an unemployment rate not seen in a generation, a pandemic that has killed more than 130,000 people, stay-at-home orders, rising anger over police brutality, intense stress, even the weather.
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Mandatory voting by mail would undermine election security and endanger Americans’ right to have their votes counted, according to a report released Tuesday by the Honest Elections Project, a voter integrity group.
The report comes on the heels of a vote-by-mail scandal in Paterson, New Jersey, where 1 in 5 votes were disqualified.
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Calls to dismantle this group or that institution have become the topic du jour in American politics. It started with police departments and the criminal justice system, then it spread to museums, and now one Democratic congresswoman is raising the bar on a logarithmic scale.
In a Tuesday press conference devoted to discussing America’s alleged systemic racism, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, D-MN, called for dismantling “the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”
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United Airlines is warning 36,000 employees – nearly half its U.S. staff – they could be furloughed in October, the clearest signal yet of how deeply the virus pandemic is hurting the airline industry.
The outlook for a recovery in air travel has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the U.S. and some states impose new quarantine requirements on travelers.
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U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) should resign after the representative called for the “dismantling” of the U.S. “economy and political systems.”
Omar made the remark during a speech Tuesday to the Minnesota People of Color and Indigenous Caucus, The Daily Wire reported.
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Police are investigating a string of sexual assaults at a homeless encampment in a Minneapolis park, according to various news reports.
Since June 26, Minneapolis Park Police have received three reports of sexual assault in Powderhorn Park, where more than 850 people have set up a 560-tent encampment, according to KARE 11. Two of the assaults involved juvenile victims.
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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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