Good morning, and happy Tuesday.
A new report details the University of Minnesota’s long history of mistreating the state’s Native people and lays out recommendations, including “perpetual reparations,” to improve relations between the university and Minnesota’s 11 tribal nations. As MPR’s Dan Kraker reports , the report by the TRUTH (Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing) Project concludes among other things that the university’s founding board of regents “committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples for financial gain, using the institution as a shell corporation through which to launder lands and resources,” the university’s permanent trust fund controls roughly $600 million in royalties from iron ore mining, timber sales and other revenues derived from land taken from the Ojibwe and the Dakota, and the university has contributed to the “erasure” of Native people by failing to teach a full history of the land on which it was founded. Researchers didn’t put a dollar figure to their call for reparations but urged the university to do more to help tribal nations, including providing full tuition waivers to “all Indigenous people and descendants” and hiring more Native staff and faculty.
People seeking an abortion in Minnesota will still be able to get the drug mifepristone — at least for now — after a pair of judges issued conflicting rulings last week on the medication. MPR’s Dana Ferguson reports: Dueling rulings from Texas and Washington put the future of the drug in question and are expected to tee up an intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court. In Minnesota, abortion access advocates on Monday said the ruling striking the FDA approval of the medication after more than 20 years on the market set a dangerous precedent. And they said it could impact Minnesota providers’ ability to prescribe mifepristone moving forward. “It is no exaggeration to say that the effect of this, if allowed to stand, would be to turn back the clock on reproductive rights and law by more than a century. It should be thoroughly unacceptable to anyone and everyone who values the personal freedom and individual rights that are supposed to be the bedrock of American society,” said Gender Justice Executive Director Megan Peterson. “They are coming for it all: abortion, contraception and many other rights and health services that are essential to everyone's individual ability to determine their own reproductive destiny,” she continued. “And we must make clear that Minnesotans will not stand for it.” Meanwhile, the anti-abortion group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life on Monday applauded the Texas judge’s ruling. “The ruling in Texas is great news for women and babies,” the group’s Co-executive Director Cathy Blaeser said in a news release.
As lawmakers return to the Capitol for the session's remaining six weeks, MPR’s Brian Bakst reports the marijuana bill is nearing final votes. Votes on the House and Senate floor could happen yet this month, although differences in the bills before each body seem certain to push the plan into another round of negotiations. “The Capitol has given this bill a full vetting,” said Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, whose now 291-page bill has been through 14 committees and has at least one to go. “And that's I think one of the reasons why we're poised to get the job done this year.” Whether his prediction holds up will be known soon enough. It would take at least 68 votes to pass the bill in the House and 34 in the Senate. Unified DFL support is unlikely and some crossover votes by Republicans are expected despite broader opposition in that party. As the bill drives toward those pivotal votes, critics of the bill’s latest versions are stepping up their efforts. A coalition whose members range from the state trucking association to the Minnesota Catholic Conference to parents sounding alarm over addiction planned a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday. Groups that worry about getting left out of new business opportunities around cannabis are making waves as well.
A federal judge says she will decide quickly whether to freeze issuance of gun carry permits for 18 to 20-year-olds. Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Menendez overturned a Minnesota restriction that confined permits to carry a gun in public to adults 21 and older. The Minnesota attorney general’s office said Monday county sheriffs shouldn’t issue permits to younger adults while a planned appeal is pending. A lawyer for that office said there would be confusion if those permits ultimately become invalid. A lawyer for the affected plaintiffs and gun rights groups that sued said withholding permits would continue a Second Amendment constitutional violation. They say there is already a process for physically revoking permits. Only one of the named plaintiffs remains under 21. The Minnesota case is similar to others working through the federal court system.
Mike Murphy, the former mayor of Lexington who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2022, said in a fundraising email Monday he’s running for Congress in the 2nd District next year. The seat is currently held by DFLer Angie Craig, who defeated Republican Tyler Kistner 51 percent to 46 percent last year. Republicans have put the district on their list of seats they hope to flip next year.
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