Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday.

Erin DuPree, who resigned as director of the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management one day after being appointed, said Gov. Tim Walz’s office wouldn’t let her tell her side of the story. Her resignation came Friday after MPR News and the Star Tribune reported she sold THC products that didn’t comply with state law. DuPree talked to WCCO Radio Monday: DuPree talked to WCCO Radio Monday: "Had I been allowed to speak to the people that were writing the articles, they would have looked a lot differently, because they would have been able to hear what was actually going on in those situations," she said, calling the reports one-sided. I can’t speak for the Star Tribune, but MPR News asked DuPree to talk on Friday and over the weekend, and she declined. She repeated what she said in a statement Friday that she had never knowingly sold illegal products. "Any small business owners who sells hemp-derived products understands how confusing and convoluted our laws were." Dupree said. "To be quite honest, that was one of the reasons that I wanted to serve our state and community." 

Attorney General Keith Ellison won’t take over a case from Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office despite pleas to Ellison and the governor from a victim’s family. The Star Tribune reports: The family of Stephen Markey say Moriarty is wrong to offer Husayn Braveheart less than a year of workhouse incarceration and probation for the deadly 2019 carjacking of Stephen Markey in Minneapolis. Braveheart was 15 at the time. The other defendant, Jered Ohsman, was 17 and is serving 22 years in prison. Earlier this year, Walz and Ellison removed a murder case from Moriarty over similar objections to a similar plea deal offered to a juvenile offender in a murder case, but Ellison said then that he didn't anticipate making a rare decision like that again. He reiterated that stance in a statement to the Star Tribune. "County attorneys are elected to exercise their judgment about how to secure safety and justice in their communities. The Attorney General's defined role in criminal prosecution is primarily to step in and assist when county attorneys request our assistance, and in extremely rare occasions, when the Governor assigns a case, "Ellison said. "I said earlier this year that I did not expect to ask the Governor to assign any future criminal cases from county attorneys to me. While I am reluctant to say more now because I have not yet had the opportunity to meet in person with the Markey family, that remains my intention today. Ultimately, all elected officials, including county attorneys, are accountable to voters for their decisions."

The prime minister of Somalia was in the Twin Cities over the weekend.Sahan Journal reports: Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre addressed a packed hall in Bloomington Sunday evening, updating them on the Somali government’s efforts to uproot al-Shabab. He also asked the local Somali community to support their home country’s efforts from afar.  More than 3,000 people, mostly from Minnesota, welcomed Barre, who appeared on stage at the DoubleTree Hotel just after 11 p.m. Attendees waved the Somalia and the American flags. Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota legislators welcomed the prime minister to the Capitol earlier in the day. Walz and Barre discussed trade relations, agriculture, and investing in clean energy. 

More businesses are telling the state they’re selling hemp-derived THC products and sending along the taxes they’ve collected.MinnPost reports:  Perhaps a result of a social media campaign noting the requirement contained in House File 100, the number of registered businesses increased from around 500 in mid-August to 1,250 last week, the Minnesota Department of Health said. And reports from the Department of Revenue show that 842 businesses paid $771,514 in cannabis taxes in August. Since the new law created a 10 percent tax on sales of cannabis products, those tax collections numbers convert to $7.72 million in sales in August. That might not include all sales, because the number of cannabis taxpayers is increasing with each collections report — from 571 in preliminary July reports to 682 in revised July numbers and 842 last month. Those 682 businesses collected $699,630 in cannabis taxes in July.

The Pioneer Press reports:Frustrated by St. Paul’s rent control policy and rhetoric they’ve described as anti-policing, a coalition of labor unions and businesses with ties to the real estate community say they’re on track to raise more than $300,000 in advance of the city’s Nov. 7 elections. The funding is being used in a variety of ways — from backing particular candidates for St. Paul City Council to focus-group style surveys and polling, as well as general issue-oriented advertising around the need for more affordable housing and public safety. The “Service St. Paul” political coalition held its first public speak-out Monday at the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters offices on Olive Street in St. Paul, where they issued their first endorsement for city council — Isaac Russell in Ward 3. They said they expect to be active in additional races. The coalition was represented Monday by Jason George, business manager for the mechanics, heavy equipment operators and other members of Operating Engineers Local 49, and former Metropolitan Council Chair Adam Duininck, director of Government Affairs for the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters, as well as Kim Nelson, assistant political director for the carpenters union.

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers have filed briefs in the Colorado case trying to keep him off next year’s ballot. The Associated Press reports:   Attorneys for former President Donald Trump argue that an attempt to bar him from the 2024 ballot under a rarely used ''insurrection'' clause of the Constitution should be dismissed as a violation of his freedom of speech. The lawyers made the argument in a filing posted Monday by a Colorado court in the most significant of a series of challenges to Trump's candidacy under the Civil War-era clause in the 14th Amendment. The challenges rest on Trump's attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his role leading up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. ''At no time do Petitioners argue that President Trump did anything other than engage in either speaking or refusing to speak for their argument that he engaged in the purported insurrection,'' wrote attorney Geoffrey Blue. Trump also will argue that the clause doesn't apply to him because ''the Fourteenth Amendment applies to one who 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion,' not one who only 'instigated' any action,'' Blue wrote. The former president's lawyers also said the challenge should be dismissed because he is not yet a candidate under the meaning of Colorado election law, which they contend isn't intended to settle constitutional disputes.