Good morning and welcome to another Monday.
MPR’s Brian Bakst reports that almost twice as many people applied for pandemic hero bonuses as Minnesota officials once expected would qualify. As the deadline ran out Friday afternoon nearly 1.2 million applications were submitted— 1,199,512 to be exact— according to the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. The state set aside $500 million in frontline worker pay available to people in more than a dozen job fields – from health care workers to custodians. That means if everyone who applied ended up getting a bonus they'd get about $400 each. But officials say it's likely that not everyone who applied will be eligible after verification steps are completed. The bonus checks will be equal in size once the pool of recipients is ultimately determined. Before the application window opened in June, state officials predicted about 667,000 people would get a check.
With primary voting already underway, MPR’s Mark Zdechlik checks in on the two DFL members of Congress in the heart of the metro area who are facing well-funded challengers from within their own party. Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, faces former city council members Don Samuels, who says, “We don't need someone to make a point in Washington. We need someone to make a difference in Washington. That is what this campaign is about.” And Rep. Betty McCollum, who represents St. Paul, is being challenged by Amane Badhasso, a political organizer who first came to the United States with her family as a refugee from Ethiopia. “I am running for Congress because we need a new generation of progressive Democrats,'' said Badhasso.”
And the Star Tribune has a profile of DFL 1st District candidate Jeff Ettinger, who is running against Republican Brad Finstad in the Aug. 9 special election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn’s term. From the story: The 63-year-old multimillionaire former CEO of Hormel Foods, a Fortune 500 company, had donated to both Democrats and Republicans. Ettinger said he is "not pro-abortion," but he supports the right to have the procedure. He thinks federal government spending during the COVID-19 pandemic went too far and contributed slightly to rising inflation, and he believes any possible student loan forgiveness should be limited to certain incomes.
The Bureau of Land Management heard from nearly 200,000 people about mining in the Rainy Lake watershed. Most sent form letters. MinnPost reports: The contents of the letters both favored the implementation of a 20-year mining moratorium on 225,378 acres of Superior National Forest, which is located in a watershed that feeds the Boundary Waters Wilderness area. Other letters supported efforts to establish a huge new underground mine in the area. All comments must be considered by the Biden administration when it makes a final decision on whether to put the forest area off limits to mining, a decision that’s expected by the end of the year.
About 2 in 3 Americans say they favor term limits or a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices, according to a new poll that finds a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans saying they have “hardly any” confidence in the court. The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 67 percent of Americans support a proposal to set a specific number of years that justices serve instead of life terms, including 82 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans. Views are similar about a requirement that justices retire by a specific age. | 