News Day

Marking her landslide victory, Congressmember Ilhan Omar tweeted Tuesday night: “In Minnesota, we know that organized people will always beat organized money.

“Tonight, our movement didn’t just win. We earned a mandate for change. Despite outside efforts to defeat us, we once again broke turnout records. Despite the attacks, our support has only grown.” Continue reading →

Trump’s antipathy toward the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is longstanding. Not as longstanding as the Post Office itself, which was established by Congress in 1792, under power specifically granted by the Constitution. No matter: Trump and many other Republicans want to privatize the post office and they will stop at nothing in their effort to get rid of it. Their efforts have accelerated in the past few months, as an attack on the post office is now also an attack on the election. Continue reading →

Today’s Trumpian tweet terrified many people: What if he follows through on his tweet and actually postpones the election? What if he cancels the election altogether? What if he loses the election and won’t leave anyway?

We clearly need to prepare. In the service of sanity, I suggest some survival strategies:

Build that wall—around the White House. Not hard to do, since the recently-fortified wall around the White House is probably more gesund than most miles on the Mexican border. All we would need to add is a virtual wall blocking access to Twitter, and we could all try to forget the last four years. Continue reading →

From the time he was a little boy preaching to chickens through his life-long fight for justice for all to these last years as a strong voice in opposition to the travesty of the Trump administration, John Lewis held fast to his ideals of truth and justice for all. The best way I can think of to mourn and mark his death and to honor his life is to lift up his words. Continue reading →

Almost two-thirds of White parents who responded to a Minnesota Department of Education survey said they are comfortable sending their children back to school in September. A slim majority of Black parents said they were uncomfortable or not sure about sending their children back to school. Most Asian and Latinx parents responding to the survey also were uncomfortable or unsure.

Originally published in Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder Continue reading →

Latest orders from the Trump administration: Slow down mail delivery. Reject DACA applications. Stop reporting COVID-19 numbers publicly. Here are the details:  Continue reading →

Joe Friday – Just the facts, ma’am

UPDATED 9:40 p.m.: Good news! The administration has reversed its order to deport international students if their U.S. universities go all-online for fall semester. That’s good news for the students, good news for the universities, and good news for all of us. I wrote last week about the utter stupidity of the order, which would have deprived universities and communities where they are located of more than $50 billion in spending by international students. The Trump administration agreed to rescind this idiotic orderafter hundreds of universities and many states (including Minnesota) sued to have it overturned.

Bad news: The Trump administration, in another move in its continuing war on science, ordered hospitals to stop sending information on coronavirus infections to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Continue reading →

“Supporters of the Decarcerate Minnesota Coalition will gather Thursday, July 2, 2:00-5:00pm in the parking lot of the Department of Corrections at 1450 Energy Park Drive in St. Paul, MN to ask DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell to meet their demands for releasing a large number of Minnesota prisoners impacted by COVID-19. The timing of the rally before Independence Day is targeted to condemn the criminal justice system’s violation of U.S. ideals of liberty and justice.” [Press release of protest on Google docs] 

I won’t be there—can’t go to any pubic gatherings at this time. But I hope that many people go, and I hope that more people think hard about what is happening in and what is wrong with our prisons, here in Minnesota and across the country. Continue reading →

After a Friday night fiasco, it now looks like Trump has succeeded in firing U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, the prosecutor who put Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in jail and who is investigating his current personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and a number of other cases involving Trump administration misconduct. While Berman resisted when Attorney General Barr tried to finesse the firing on Friday night, he acquiesced when Trump himself (maybe) issued the order on Saturday. The whole episode looks unnervingly like Nixon’s Saturday night massacre, when he fired prosecutors conducting the Watergate investigation. Continue reading →

On June 7, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council said they will “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.” What that means, and when it will happen remain open questions.

The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is not going to disappear overnight, or even after the next city council meeting. The process will take time and community involvement and will be strenuously resisted by the police. The council members suggested a vague but ambitious timetable of “over the next year,” and pledged, “We’ll be taking intermediate steps towards ending the MPD through the budget process and other policy and budget decisions over the coming weeks and months.” Continue reading →