Good morning and welcome to Monday. With one week to go before the Iowa Caucuses, here’s the Digest.
1. Auschwitz survivors dismayed by recent events. The number that Nazi captors tattooed on Judy Baron's left arm has faded, making it harder to read. But her memories of Auschwitz and the family she lost there are as sharp as ever. “It’s unbelievable, if I think back,” she said recently, during an interview at her home in Golden Valley. Baron was 15 when police rounded up Jews in her small Hungarian town and shipped them by train to Poland. It was the spring of 1944. She rode for three days in a cattle car with her parents and two sisters. They had no idea where they were going until the train car doors slid open outside the camp gates. “And when we arrived we could smell something really horrible. And that's when they were burning the bodies,” she said. Eva Gross had a similar experience. She was 16 when Hungarian police rounded up her family. Her father had already been sent away to work for the army and was killed there. Gross and her mother arrived at Auschwitz and watched from the train platform as her grandparents were taken away to the gas chambers. Baron returned to Auschwitz 25 years ago, a trip she quickly regretted because it brought back so many bad memories. Lately, the separation of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border has weighed on her as she reflects on the moment her own family was torn away from her. “You know, I cried every night when I went to bed and thought about those children. It was so much like what we went through. How can a beautiful country like this do that to people? I can't imagine,” she said. Baron and Gross are also alarmed by the rise in anti-Semitic violence in the U.S., including the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings in 2018, the slayings last month at a Jewish market in New Jersey and a Hanukkah attack in New York. “It started this way, in Europe,“ said Gross, referring to the hate that gave rise to Nazi concentration camps. “This is the exact pattern we are going into. And I am very concerned what's going to be happening in many, many years to come,” she said. MPR News
2. Calling attention to India's immigration policies. About 200 people — most of them Indian-Americans — gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol on Sunday to protest a citizenship law recently enacted by the government in India that they fear represents an attack on religious freedom. Similar protests were held Sunday in at least 29 other cities across the U.S. The measure applies religion-based criteria to immigrants seeking citizenship in India, fast-tracking naturalization for non-Muslim immigrants from some neighboring countries. Indian Muslims have staged protests across India for weeks, saying the law violates the country's secular constitution and marginalizes the country's Muslims. The protesters in St. Paul called for U.S. sanctions against India for its "attacks on human rights and religious freedom." "We the people of the Indian diaspora and we the people of Minnesota say 'no' to the Indian state's fascist plans and vow to protect India's constitution," said Medha Faust-Nagar, an activist who spoke Sunday. Star Tribune
3. Senate GOP to push for voter ID. Republicans in the Minnesota Senate said they will renew their push for a voter ID law during the election-year legislative session that begins next month, saying the requirement would help prevent voter fraud. But Democrats say they have no interest in taking up the issue that state voters rejected in 2012, when a proposed constitutional amendment failed by a margin of 52 percent to 46 percent. Still, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, said he thinks more Minnesotans are now open to the idea. “People want to make sure that the election process is fair, that they can trust it. And a lot of people wonder, ‘Why in the world would you not have to present an ID for that when you have to do it for everything else?’” he said. DFL Senator Jeff Hayden of Minneapolis said the proposed requirement would suppress the vote among the poor and people of color, who are often less likely to have current IDs. "It has been a consistent strategy going back to the Jim Crow South at creating barriers for people for them to be able to vote,” Hayden said. “I just think for the Senate Republicans to kind of bring this back after the voters firmly rejected it is shortsighted, it's oppressive and, dare I say, I think it's racist." MPR News
4. Local government officials say they won’t vote in presidential primary. Many local government leaders across Minnesota are planning not to vote in March’s presidential primary, saying that indicating a party preference could jeopardize their nonpartisan status and open them to political attacks. The state’s new presidential primary system requires that voters select a ballot assigned to a major party and sign a loyalty oath to that party. That information will go to the party chairs, with few if any restrictions on what they can do with it. “It’s critical that I not get pigeonholed into one party or the other in order for me to do my job,” said Edina City Manager Scott Neal, who won’t be voting in the primary. “I need to be able to work with people of all political stripes at the local level.” Minnesota’s first presidential primary in nearly 30 years is already generating concern among voters who want their party loyalties kept private. But local elected and appointed officials face a quandary that is more than just personal. City and county leaders are expected to refrain from political activities that could “undermine public confidence in professional administrators,” according to the code of ethics outlined by the International City and County Management Association. Star Tribune
5. House committee hearing outside the Capitol cost $20,000. It was described as a great honor and a historic first: a Minnesota House of Representatives committee would hold a public hearing inside the walls of a state prison. But the February 2019 hearing was so expensive for the Department of Corrections — costing $20,000 — and so disruptive to daily operations of the Minnesota Correctional Facility Stillwater that department brass discouraged a request from legislators to hold additional hearings at other state prisons. “There is a cost of doing business, but you can’t do that on any type of regular or sustainable basis,” Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said last week, though he supported the original idea. “It brings attention in a way that you don’t get otherwise. Certainly tours help, but having an actual legislative hearing there does make a difference. It prompted people to think about prison as a real place. For a lot of folks, corrections is the back room side of criminal justice.” But the cost and disruption were such that three additional hearings planned to be held at facilities in St. Cloud, Shakopee and Oak Park Heights were refused by the department. And when told about the expense, Rep. Jack Considine, DFL-Mankato, agreed that his Corrections subcommittee should not have other hearings inside state prisons. “My mouth dropped open when I heard what it was going to cost,” said Considine, who also said he doesn’t regret the initial Feb. 6 hearing. “It had never been done before and we went in a little blind.” MinnPost |
