Good morning and welcome to your busy mid-week Capitol View.
First, let us remind you there’s an election very soon. Minnesota voters choose the DFL and Republican nominees for U.S. Senate, as well as most of the state’s U.S. House seats and dozens of seats in the state Legislature, in a primary on Aug. 11. Head here for a rundown of what’s at stake.
The Wabasha County Republican Party didn’t have its Facebook hacked after all. Brian Bakst reports : “A local Republican Party official resigned from a post Tuesday after a Facebook post that compared Minnesota’s new mask mandate to Nazi Germany. For a time, the Facebook page of the Wabasha County Republican Party showed a black-and-white photo of a Nazi soldier talking to a man wearing a Star of David. A caption likened the star that became a Holocaust emblem to the coronavirus mask precautions. After initially suggesting the local party page had been hacked, Minnesota Republican Party Chair Jennifer Carnahan said that a review found the post originated by a Wabasha GOP board member.”
New documents suggest Minneapolis police officers have received scarce training on the dangers of improper restraints. Riham Feshir reports : “Newly released Minneapolis police training records shared with and reviewed by MPR News are giving critics more reason to question whether officers were adequately trained on the dangers of improper restraints. A review of the documents, which span the past seven years, shows only a brief mention of ‘compression asphyxia’ and plenty of references to a controversial cause of death known as ‘excited delirium.’ It’s often used by law enforcement officials to explain deaths of people in police custody who have been using drugs or who have serious mental illness.”
Turns out President Donald Trump’s opposition to mail-in voting could hurt his party. Via AP : After months of hearing Trump denigrate mail-in balloting, Republicans in the critical battleground state now find themselves far behind Democrats in the perennial push to urge their voters to cast ballots remotely. While Democrats have doubled the number of their voters who have requested mail ballots compared to 2016, Republicans have increased their numbers by about 20 percent since then. The recent tally is the hard evidence confirming many Republicans' fears about Trump's tweeting about mail-in voting: GOP voters are listening and appear less likely to take advantage of what many election and health officials agree is the easiest and safest way to vote in a pandemic.”
The president shares misinformation on coronavirus treatment, again. AP reports: “Trump retweeted a series of tweets advocating for the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to be used in COVID-19 patients, including a video of a doctor claiming to have successfully used the drug on hundreds of patients. Numerous studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine is not effective and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently withdrew an order that allowed the drug’s use as a emergency treatment.”
