Good morning, and happy Wednesday.
The Minneapolis City Council will vote on a new contract this week for the city's behavioral crisis response (BCR) team — that's a group of mental health workers who respond to some 911 mental health crisis calls instead of police. MPR News reports the team received a pat on the back from the U.S. Department of Justice last month in its investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department. Mental health workers have responded to 12,000 calls since December 2021. But team leaders say their success has been not because of the city, but in spite of it. At a Monday meeting in front of the city’s Public Oversight Committee, BCR interim program manager Marissa Stevenson said the team has consistently been under resourced — first officing in a storage closet, and eventually a city building without heating or cooling.
DFL U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips is pushing back against remarks about Israel by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Over the weekend Jayapal called Israel a “racist state,” and then apologized for the remark. The Star Tribune reports on some of the fallout: "To condemn an entire people, to call an entire country racist, is beyond the pale," said Phillips, who is Jewish. "It's anything but progressive." Some progressives, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., plan to skip Israeli President Isaac Herzog's speech to Congress on Wednesday. Phillips also took issue with Omar, who tweeted there was “no way in hell” she would attend the speech. "While it's a free country, and anybody can choose not to attend a speech in Congress, I thought the language that was used when asked if she would be attending was offensive to me and certainly to the probably 20,000-plus people of the Jewish faith that she represents in the Fifth District," Phillips said. On Tuesday the House passed a resolution backing Israel after Jayapal’s remarks.
And the Star Tribune reports the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus will no longer consider race or family ties to alumni in admissions. "Every year, we review our undergraduate admissions practices at the University of Minnesota to ensure that we are only asking for information necessary to make good admissions decisions," said Keri Risic, executive director of admissions. "This year was an exceptionally deep review of our context factors." The move comes after the Supreme Court ruled race cannot be used in admissions.
Former President Donald Trump says he has been told he’s the target of a grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The Justice Department’s move against Trump isn’t the only legal proceeding involving the 2020 election. Politico reports: Michigan’s attorney general filed forgery and other felony charges Tuesday against 16 Republican activists who signed papers after the 2020 election falsely indicating they were the duly appointed presidential electors for the state. The case filed by Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, represents the first criminal charges related to efforts by allies of former President Donald Trump to designate alternate slates of electors. The scheme would ultimately become the basis for Trump’s last-ditch bid to remain in power, an effort to create a contest or crisis when Congress met to tally up the Electoral College votes and certify Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump used the existence of those “competing” slates of electors to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to block Biden’s election.
Heat continues to be one of the biggest stories of this summer. The New York Times reports Phoenix broke a 49-year-old record on Tuesday with the city’s 19th consecutive day of temperatures 110 degrees or higher, part of a punishing heat wave that spanned much of the Northern Hemisphere. The record-breaking temperatures are being driven by emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels and by the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern.
Europe is having a heat wave, too. Officials warned residents and tourists packing Mediterranean destinations on Tuesday to stay indoors during the hottest hours as the second heat wave in as many weeks hits the region and Greece, Spain and Switzerland battled wildfires. The Associated Press reports in Italy, civil protection workers monitored crowds for people in distress from the heat in central Rome, while Red Cross teams in Portugal took to social media to warn people not to leave pets or children in parked cars. In Greece, volunteers handed out drinking water, and in Spain they reminded people to protect themselves from breathing in smoke from fires. “Heat waves are really an invisible killer,” Panu Saaristo, the emergency health team leader for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said during a Geneva briefing. “We are experiencing hotter and hotter temperatures for longer stretches of time every single summer here in Europe.”
Despite some welcome rain in the Twin Cities this morning, the story in Minnesota has been the dry weather. MPR’s Peter Cox reports: Across the state, the lack of rain is already taking a toll on water levels in lakes and rivers, and on the growth of crops. “It was the second-driest June on record, and that’s going back to 1871” in the Twin Cities, said Luigi Romolo, state climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “We got less than an inch of precipitation here in the metro in June; that’s only happened three times. Most of the state, since about mid-May, has been extremely dry. We’re seeing deficits of anywhere from 4 to 6 inches of precip since then.” Farmers across the state are in a precarious position. Some more rain could get them through the season, but if it doesn't come soon, this drought could take a heavy toll on crop yields. “Everybody is concerned,” said Richard Syverson, who farms corn, soybeans and alfalfa, and raises sheep, in Clontarf in west-central Minnesota. In St. Paul, the city council will vote today on whether to allow the city’s water authority to implement restrictions on water usage — such as watering lawns on odd or even days — if levels on the Mississippi River fall below a certain point. | 