It's been one year since the killing of George Floyd.
Today some of Floyd's family met with President Joe Biden and members of Congress, to remember Floyd and push for changes to policing laws. [Read more from The Associated Press]
Proposals to overhaul the Minneapolis Police Department are getting ready to head to the ballot box this November. There are two competing measures to replace the police with a Department of Public Safety and shift some jobs such as mental health interventions and low-level traffic enforcement away from armed police officers — though neither one actually abolishes armed police. It's possible one of the two similar initiatives will be withdrawn to avoid confusing voters. Meanwhile, Mayor Jacob Frey is backing more incremental reforms. [ Read more from Matt Sepic]
One group shaping the future of policing in Minneapolis? A task force of young people playing a key role in upcoming recommendations from the city's advisory Police Community Relations Council. [Read more from Brandt Williams]
Minnesota still has an eviction moratorium in place, with efforts to find an "off-ramp" for the moratorium moving glacially slowly. Funding assistance to help tenants behind on their rent has only just begun to trickle out, a month after it went live. And lawmakers have been unable to strike a deal on the terms to end the moratorium. Landlords say the moratorium is costing them lost rent and making it harder to evict people for things like disruptive behavior; tenants say ending the moratorium will devastate low-income families and could lead to a rise in homelessness. [ Read more from Brian Bakst]
Gov. Tim Walz today signed 13 bills, including the expansion of the state's medical cannabis program to allow participants to smoke their cannabis as well as ingest it.
A Minnesota appeals court has rejected an ACLU lawsuit challenging Minnesota's felon disenfranchisement law. The court ruled unanimously that time on probation clearly counts as part of a felon's sentence during which they forfeit their right to vote, and said the Legislature would need to change the law to let felons on probation vote. (Unless the Minnesota Supreme Court were to overturn on appeal.) Advocates have pushed bills to that effect for years, but so far they haven't come close to passing in the Minnesota Legislature. [ Read more from Brian Bakst]
When a U.S. House member resigns or dies, their state's governor usually has the responsibility to schedule a special election to fill the seat. And increasingly, governors are setting those dates up to a year in the future — usually in cases where the district leans away from the governor's party. Those delays, which temporarily shrink the other party's congressional caucus, have been trending upward over time. [Read more from FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich]
President Joe Biden purged four members of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, an unprecedented action that reflects a battle between advocates of neoclassical architecture and modernist styles. President Donald Trump had appointed all seven members of the commission, which issues advice about architectural decisions in Washington, D.C., and chose members who were advocates for neoclassical architecture. No president has ever fired a member of this commission in its 110-year history. In place of the four members whose resignations he forced this week — all of them white — Biden appointed high-profile African American and Asian American designers, who also have backed more modern styles of architecture. [ Read more from CityLab's Kriston Capps]
After four years of intense immigration debate, members of both major parties are less likely to say being born in the United States or being a Christian are vital aspects of being "truly American." The Pew Research Center asked about vital American traits in both 2016 and 2020, and found that fewer than half of Republicans now believe those traits are necessary to be American, a double-digit drop over four years. Majorities in both parties still say speaking English and sharing "U.S. customs and traditions" are vital to be an American, but both values have also declined.
Something completely different: If you're of a certain age, you probably grew up with blackboards in your classrooms at school. If you're younger, you probably had whiteboards. The reason for the changeover? Concern in the 1990s that chalkboard dust would interfere with the new computers that were being placed in classrooms. That tidbit and far more in this great history of the blackboard. [ Read more from Kim Kankiewicz in The Atlantic]
Listen: After a bit of a downer yesterday, let's turn things up with the Scottish band Wolfstone and their positively bouncy track "Sleepy Toon." (If you don't speak fluent Scots, you might want to peruse the lyrics, too!) [Listen]
