Good morning, and welcome to Thursday. By this time tomorrow we should know whether members of the UAW are on strike and whether the Vikings can win in Philadelphia.
A big clue as to why people are not feeling good about the economy comes from recent census information. The Star Tribune reports: Recent data from the American Community Survey show the traditional poverty rate stayed relatively flat in Minnesota, with 9.6 percent of the population living below the federal poverty threshold, a slight increase from 2021. But household income in Minnesota fell 2 percent to $82,338, after adjusting for inflation, according to a Star Tribune analysis of the data. Falling from a decade high of 11.9% in 2011, the state's poverty rate hit 9 percent in 2019. The past few years, there's been a noticeable uptick, said Susan Brower, Minnesota's state demographer who directs the state's Demographic Center. The end of federal stimulus checks, employment disruptions, declining incomes and the rise in costs for housing and goods have combined to cause Minnesota's recent rise in poverty. "It appears that inflation grew so fast, that when we're looking at the trend, the real median income declined because of increases in inflation and income not keeping pace," she said.
Officials with some of the state’s most prominent police groups, including the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association and the Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association, said Wednesday they have launched an online petition in hopes of pressuring Gov. Tim Walz to call a special legislative session to clarify the role of in-school police officers. MPR’s Mark Zdechlik reports Blaine Police Chief Brian Podany and others insist a new law prohibits school resource officers from physically intervening in student behavior unless there is an imminent threat of bodily harm or death. "At the end of last week, Gov. Walz indicated that at this time he was not interested in a special session. There's a number of items that the governor indicated in his interview with Minnesota Public Radio that do not accurately represent the problems we have in front of us,” Podany said. Walz and other DFL leaders say more discussions are needed with police departments and school officials to clarify the law change.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Melissa Hortman released a letter she sent to police chiefs in her district in which she wrote, “The legislature did not make any changes to the statute governing authorized use of force. The instances where a public officer may use force include: “(i) in effecting a lawful arrest; or (ii) in the execution of legal process; or (iii) in enforcing an order of the court; or (iv) in executing any other duty imposed upon the public officer by law.”
The two candidates for mayor of Duluth debated for the first time Wednesday, and the Duluth News Tribune reports incumbent Emily Larson and challenger Roger Reinert didn’t waste much time on pleasantries: “You have a very clear choice in this election,” Larson said. “It is a choice between moving forward or risking losing ground.” Reinert suggested there was significant room for improvement. "It's time that we expect more and do better with our core city services like streets, utilities, public safety, our neighborhood parks and community centers and engaging our residents,” he said. Larson said that under her leadership, the city has gone from reconstructing 2 miles of road annually to 17 miles this year. She said the city is on track to replace 50 miles of road over the next three years and has patched the street system throughout. Larson took a shot at Reinert’s slogan, saying, “This is where I actually find ‘Expect more. Do better,’ offensive to both city staff who work incredibly hard with the resources we have and a community who needs to know and understand: How do we do more with the resources we have?” Reinert said the state of Duluth’s streets continues to be a pressing concern nevertheless. “We felt it last winter, when we weren’t plowing the streets well. We saw it in the spring with how tough the streets in Duluth were, from one end of the city to the other,” he said.
Via news release from the Department of Public Safety’s Office of Traffic Safety: During the Labor Day DWI campaign from Aug. 18 through Sept. 4, officers, deputies and troopers arrested 1,140 drivers for driving impaired, with 267 law enforcement agencies across the state participating. The driver with the highest blood alcohol level — 0.44 percent — was stopped by the Nobles County Sheriff’s Office, followed closely by a driver stopped by St. Paul Police (0.43 percent) and Faribault Police (0.41 percent).
Rep. Heather Edelson, DFL-Edina, announced Wednesday she will not run for reelection to a fourth term next year. “My intent is to finish my third term working as hard for our community as I did when I was first elected. My term ends on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025 — with one more session to serve as your State Representative and a little over a year left in this role,” Edelson said on Twitter.
And nationally, Republican Mitt Romney said Wednesday he would not seek another term in the Senate from Utah. The Atlantic published a long profile that is an excerpt from an upcoming book, which includes this: Perhaps Romney’s most surprising discovery upon entering the Senate was that his disgust with Trump was not unique among his Republican colleagues. “Almost without exception,” he told me, “they shared my view of the president.” In public, of course, they played their parts as Trump loyalists, often contorting themselves rhetorically to defend the president’s most indefensible behavior. But in private, they ridiculed his ignorance, rolled their eyes at his antics, and made incisive observations about his warped, toddlerlike psyche. Romney recalled one senior Republican senator frankly admitting, “He has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.” This dissonance soon wore on Romney’s patience. Every time he publicly criticized Trump, it seemed, some Republican senator would smarmily sidle up to him in private and express solidarity. “I sure wish I could do what you do,” they’d say, or “Gosh, I wish I had the constituency you have,” and then they’d look at him expectantly, as if waiting for Romney to convey profound gratitude. This happened so often that he started keeping a tally; at one point, he told his staff that he’d had more than a dozen similar exchanges. He developed a go-to response for such occasions: “There are worse things than losing an election. Take it from somebody who knows.”
This seems worth some attention: Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said. The Associated Press reports: Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction, the study said. “We are in very bad shape,” said study co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “We show in this analysis that the planet is losing resilience and the patient is sick.” | 