Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday.
Nearly three years after the first cases of COVID-19 surfaced in the United States, Minnesota and the rest of the world have mostly moved on. Masking is down, vaccinations are at a trickle and the disease that killed nearly 14,000 Minnesotans and made thousands more ill is viewed now as more nuisance than crisis. But for Gabe Pastores of Cannon Falls and thousands of others, the disease continues to take a toll. Their struggles are real yet fading out of the public consciousness. MPR’s Catharine Richert has the story of Pastores and his ongoing recovery after COVID-19 nearly killed him.
Minnesota has signed five new national settlements with opioid manufacturers and pharmacy chains that will give the state $235 million toward treatment and prevention. MPR’s Peter Cox reports that Attorney General Keith Ellison said he's signed onto settlements with manufacturers Teva Pharmaceuticals and Allergan, along with pharmacy chains Walgreens, CVS and Walmart. In total, the national settlements with these companies are worth $20.4 billion dollars, of which Minnesota gets $235 million. Minnesota had previously signed agreements of more than $300 million dollars in settlements. As with those previous settlements, three quarters of the funds will be distributed to local governments with the rest going to state programs. Funds will go toward dealing with the opioid crisis, including treatment, prevention and recovery services.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has issued a new wolf management plan to guide the state's approach to wolf conservation over the next decade. MPR’s Dan Kraker reports it's the first update to the plan in more than 20 years. It outlines six goals, including maintaining a well-connected and resilient wolf population, and minimizing and addressing human-wolf conflicts. It does not spell out a position on wolf hunting in the state, if wolves were to again be removed from the federal endangered species list. Rather the plan includes a framework for how the state would approach decisions about wolf hunting or trapping if the wolf is delisted. The new plan calls for maintaining a healthy statewide population of between 2,200 and 3,000 wolves across the majority of its existing range, mainly in northeastern Minnesota. That’s comparable to recent annual estimates of about 2,700 animals.
The St. Paul City Council may soon consider reparations for slavery.Frederick Melo at the Pioneer Press reports: In the final days of budget negotiations, the St. Paul City Council dropped an open position — that of a city council executive assistant — and put the funding toward convening a long-term commission dedicated to the subject of reparations, or redresses for historical ills foisted on Black descendants of chattel slavery. On Wednesday, the Council will host a public hearing on the ordinance language that would hire a staffer and create the 11-member commission, dubbed the Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission. The ordinance is sponsored by all seven members of the city council and expected to win approval.
A Minneapolis city council member is apologizing for anti-gay and antisemitic social media posts from a decade ago. The Minnesota Reformer reports: Minneapolis City Council Member Jamal Osman has apologized for making antisemitic and anti-gay comments on Facebook from 2011 to 2013, calling Israelis “dogs” and speaking approvingly of Hitler. The Reformer reviewed the posts before they were deleted in October. Osman, who was elected in the 6th Ward in a special election in 2020 and is up for re-election in 2023, took to Facebook in October 2012 to argue in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage.
Congress is poised to make changes to the way electoral votes are counted.The Associated Press explains: In one of the last acts of the Democratic-led Congress, the House and the Senate are set to pass an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act, the arcane election law that then-President Donald Trump tried to subvert after his 2020 election defeat. The legislation, which Democrats and Republicans have been working on since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, is the most significant policy response so far to the attack and Trump’s aggressive efforts to upend the popular vote. Led by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, along with members of the House Jan. 6 panel, the bipartisan legislation was added to a massive year-end spending bill that was unveiled early Tuesday and will be voted on this week. The bill would amend the 19th century law that governs, along with the U.S. Constitution, how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential election winners, ensuring that the popular vote from each state is protected from manipulation and that Congress does not arbitrarily decide presidential elections when it meets to count the votes every four years.
A House committee has voted along party lines to release former President Trump’s tax returns.NPR has more: The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald Trump during the first two years of his presidency, a Democrat-controlled House committee said Tuesday. The committee's probe said it found that only one audit was started while Trump was in office and no audits were completed. The findings were announced after the House Ways and Means Committee voted earlier Tuesday to release a report related to Trump's tax returns. The report covers 2015 through 2020 of the former president's tax filings. "The Committee expected that these mandatory audits were being conducted promptly and in accordance with IRS policies," Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., said in a statement. "However, our review found that under the prior administration, the program was dormant. We know now, the first mandatory audit was opened two years into his presidency. On the same day this Committee requested his returns."
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