Good morning, and happy Tuesday.

When President Joe Biden came to Minnesota earlier this year, he visited the Cummins plant in Fridley where the company is producing a product that is getting lots of orders in part due to incentives in federal legislation. MPR’s Mark Zdechlik explains: A large factory north of Minneapolis in Fridley has bustled for years turning out a variety of fossil-fueled electric generators. They range from small units designed for recreational vehicles to massive installments for much larger-scale power needs, including those of the military. Now, alongside that conventional production, is an assembly line turning out the first U.S.-made, large-scale machines called electrolyzers that will produce hydrogen without using fossil fuels. “Think of it as a black box,” said Alex Savelli who is overseeing Cummins’ U.S. electrolyzer production. “It allows you to separate water using electricity.” Inside the black box are numerous plates made out of precious metals. Electricity is applied as water passes through the plates. What comes out of the box are the chemical components of water — pure hydrogen and oxygen. “If you’re using renewable electricity, whether it’s solar, wind, hydro power, then basically you are creating green hydrogen when you do that,” Savelli said. 

Why is Morris so far advanced in meeting clean energy goals? MPR’s Dan Gunderson found out: By 2030 the town aims to produce 80 percent of the energy it consumes from renewable sources and reduce energy use by 30 percent. What started with LED lights and an international sister city program in 2015 has become an all out sustainability effort unique enough to garner national accolades. Recently retired city manager Blaine Hill said a light went on for him when Morris joined the Climate-Smart Municipalities project and was paired with the German town of Saerbeck. “We had pretty cheap electricity, and we had pretty cheap fuel for our vehicles,” recalls Hill. “And we got to see a small little community in Germany that didn't have that.” Hill started thinking about the great solar and wind energy potential in Morris. He started bringing sustainability ideas like LED streetlights to the city council, but there was no grand plan at the time. “It came back down to sensible reasonable kinds of things that you could take a look at and say, ‘Yeah, we could try to do that, that makes sense,’” said Hill. 

KSTP reports: Educators and law enforcement in Minnesota are scrambling to interpret a new state law regarding school resource officers’ duties. In Redwood Falls, teachers and staff are getting ready to start the school year next week. Down the street at the police department, Monday morning started with Chief Jason Cotner trying to figure out what to do with the open school resource officer job. “The timing on this is not great. The community wants the position, the school district certainly wants the position,” Cotner said. “It’s not like a regular patrolman job. Not everybody can do it. This is very specialized, very unique personality.” Back on Friday, Cotner said the department’s SRO asked to step down citing concerns surrounding a new state law, asking instead to go back to being out on patrol. Redwood Falls Police said the way they interpret the new Minnesota law is that a school resource officer can’t restrain a student unless there is imminent bodily harm and that such contact is not allowed in other situations. “Now we’d have a police officer in this department with a different use of force rules than the other officers, so what does that look like in policy? I don’t know,” Cotner said.

Thirty immigrants from 18 countries became United States citizens Monday at the Minnesota State Fair. MPR’s Regina Medina reports: District Judge Kate M. Menendez swore them in with more than a hint of joy. “This is a wonderful day to be welcoming new citizens to the United States of America and I am honored to be here,” Menendez said. “This is hands down the best part of my job and this merges two of my all time favorite things: mini doughnuts and naturalization ceremonies.” People who took the oath were born in countries from across the globe, including Somalia, Australia, Colombia, Russia, Venezuela, Eritrea, Mexico and Vietnam. State Fair officials said Monday’s ceremony was the first since 1996 at the fair. That event saw 700 people from 83 countries take the oath. In 1995, 834 new citizens were sworn in. It was the largest naturalization ceremony ever held in Minnesota.

Officials in Brainerd could decide on Tuesday whether to continue using chlorine to treat the city's drinking water. MPR’s Kirsti Marohn reports: Residents were advised to boil their water for six days earlier this month, after coliform bacteria was detected in the city's water system. Officials think road construction may have caused the contamination. The boil advisory has been lifted, and the city's water is safe to drink. Brainerd Public Utilities is temporarily chlorinating the water supply to make sure there's no bacteria. Currently, Brainerd is the largest city in Minnesota that doesn't regularly chlorinate its water, only doing so when there's an issue. The Minnesota Department of Health leaves the decision whether to permanently chlorinate up to individual municipalities. There is no statewide requirement.

A judge on Monday set a March 4 trial date for Donald Trump in the federal case in Washington charging the former president with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting a defense request to push back the case by years. The Associated Press reports: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rebuffed claims by Trump's attorneys that an April 2026 trial date was necessary to account for the huge volume of evidence they say they are reviewing and to prepare for what they contend is a novel and unprecedented prosecution. But she agreed to postpone the trial slightly beyond the January 2024 date proposed by special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution team. “The public has a right to a prompt and efficient resolution of this matter,” Chutkan said.