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Minnesota Democrats advance voting rights bill
The legislation would restore the rights of citizens and groups to bring lawsuits for voting suppression.
ST PAUL, Minn. — For nearly 60 years, Americans could bring lawsuits for violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But, in Minnesota and six other states, that’s no longer a possibility.
“Over the past several decades hundreds of such lawsuits have made their way through the system, including at least two or three that made it all the way to the Supreme Court, but no court ever challenged the underlying assumption there was a private right of action until last November,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told lawmakers Monday.
In November, a panel of judges from the Eighth Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled there’s no private right of action under the federal voting rights act, asserting only the US Attorney General can bring legal challenges under the federal voting rights act.
Historically the overwhelming majority of cases filed under the Voting Rights Act were from individuals, not by the Attorney General. The November ruling was against the NAACP of Arkansas, but it applied to all seven states in the Eighth Circuit, including Minnesota.
“Minnesotans no longer have the full protection of the federal voting rights act,” Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, a Minneapolis Democrat, told colleagues during a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday.
Champion is the lead author of the Minnesota Voting Rights Act, which would restore the right of private action for efforts by governmental entities to suppress the votes of protected classes, or dilute their votes through gerrymandering of political boundaries.
“This bill would ensure that Minnesota voters once again have the challenge discrimination that they experience. We believe that voting is a part of our democracy.”
Six states have already passed their own voting rights acts. Minnesota is one of six states currently considering doing the same thing. Secretary of State Simon supports the effort.
“It’s just a day in court. It doesn’t mean they’re going to win. They might not. They’re gonna win sometimes, they’re gonna lose sometimes,” Simon said. “But everyone under the voting rights act should have a day in court and not depend on a friendly or sympathetic attorney general to do that.”
The bill would bar localities from taking actions that make it harder for persons of color to vote, such as closing a polling places or limiting early voting. Champion’s bill would allow citizens or interest groups to make a claim short of going to court, and then to pursue the court option if that doesn’t work.
“Because we want to be sure there’s engagement and talking before people go into expensive litigation and start doing other things,” Champion said.
One possible remedy to resolve a violation would be to expand early voting hours, or add polling places to ensure access for voters in areas that were traditionally excluded or disenfranchised.
That idea sparked questions from Republicans on the committee.
“If you maximize the number of polling locations you very well could maximize the vote in one precinct, at the expense of everyone else’s,” Sen. Warren Limmer, a Maple Grove Republican, asserted.
Blaine Republican Michael Kreun asked if Republicans or aligned groups could intervene in cases, to argue the voting rights laws haven’t been violated.
“It seems like in the name of civil rights you could manipulate voter turnout pretty easily based on that, you could manipulate it to favor DFL areas.”
The Judiciary Committee passed the bill on a voice vote and sent it to the full Senate for consideration at a later day.
The recall of yellow onions from Taylor Farms comes after an outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders.
COLORADO, USA — A food service supplier has issued a recall for onions from a Colorado Springs Taylor Farms facility due to possible E. coli contamination, according to a letter provided to 9NEWS by the restaurant chain Illegal Pete’s.
The move by US Foods comes after an outbreak of E. coli that has sickened dozens of people and is blamed for the death of one person in Mesa County. According to health officials, it has been linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders. The outbreak’s exact source is unknown, but the focus has been on slivered onions and the beef patties specifically used by the chain for those burgers.
McDonald’s has stopped serving the burgers.
The letter sent on Wednesday from US Food urged its customers, including Illegal Pete’s to immediately stop using the affected products.
RELATED: Food safety attorney: Lawsuits coming against McDonald’s following Colorado E. coli outbreak
It indicated that the products included were yellow onions from Taylor Farms that were either whole or diced. The recalled onions came from a Taylor Farms facility in Colorado, a U.S. Foods spokesperson said.
In a statement, Illegal Pete’s said they’re taking the issue seriously and are following all of the instructions in the letter.
They also noted that they don’t use a diced/ sliced white onion product that has been identified as a possible source of E. coli. The company said Taylor Farms issued a blanket recall from a certain lots.
The Centers for Disease Control said as of Tuesday that 49 people in 10 states have gotten sick, including 26 illnesses and one death in Colorado. Nine people have been sickened in Nebraska.
At least 10 of Colorado’s cases were reported in Mesa County in western Colorado, according to the county health department spokeswoman.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said the 26 people who have gotten sick in Colorado live in nine counties: Arapahoe, Chaffee, El Paso, Gunnison, Larimer, Mesa, Routt, Teller and Weld. They did not necessarily eat at McDonald’s locations in the counties where they live, the health department said.
The CDC said 10 people across the affected states have been hospitalized. The outbreak also includes a child hospitalized with severe kidney complications.
Everyone interviewed said they ate at McDonald’s before getting sick and specifically mentioned eating a Quarter Pounder hamburger, according to the CDC. The agency said infections were reported between Sept. 27 and Oct. 11.
The author of a popular New York Times opinion piece says parents do themselves and their kids a service by doing less. Is that true?
How do you approach parenting your child?
An article from the New York Times is stirring up a lot of debate around this loaded question. The piece is titled, “Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often” By Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.
The article discusses how in today’s society, children are at the center of our attention and parents are constantly engaging and entertaining them. Parents can feel guilty if kids get bored doing mundane chores, so parents keep them preoccupied with “fun” kid stuff.
Saxbe suggests that parents do themselves and their children a service by doing less. In the article, the professor’s lesson is to let children learn from watching and observing. If kids can learn to tolerate boredom, parents can raise patient, imaginative children.
KARE 11 Sunrise anchor and parent Alicia Lewis decided to look at the differences between “helicopter” and “free-range” parenting styles. Free-range is when parents take a hands-off approach.
Lisa Bunnage, a parenting coach who owns BratBusters Parenting, said most parents try to play the “Pleaser Parent” but there is a time and place for any parenting style.
“If we’re at an airport, I’m a helicopter parent but if it’s at school and they’re having problems with the teacher, maybe they don’t like a teacher or something and I just hands-off, you deal with it. I don’t get involved in that.”
If you’re interested in learning more about parenting styles and the affect they can have on a child, here’s an article from the Mayo Clinic that explains the four types: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive and neglectful.
A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals took up a challenge to the Biden administration’s SAVE student loan repayment program.
ST PAUL, Minn. — Supporters of President Biden’s latest student loan repayment plan gathered outside the federal courthouse as a three-judge panel from the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the most recent challenge to it.
The SAVE — or Saving on Valuable Education — program aims to reduce student debt by $170 billion, a scaled-back plan the U.S. Dept. of Education created after the courts struck down Biden’s plan to cut college loan debt by $430 billion. The program expands the scope of an existing income-based repayment program by shortening the repayment terms and erasing some of the interest.
“This isn’t just about repayment. This is an attack on everyone who had a dream and worked hard to go to college, but didn’t have rich parents who could write a check,” Melissa Byrne of the We the 45 Million organization told reporters outside.
“This debt takes away the American dream and turns it into a debt sentence that last and lasts and lasts.”
One of those who spoke at the press conference was Alyssa Barnes, a U.S. Navy Gulf War veteran from Maine, who says she won’t be able to repay the $130,000 in debt she incurred in undergraduate and graduate school, while trying to support herself and two sons as a single mom.
“I feel a lot of regret that I didn’t know what I didn’t know when I took out those loans,” Barnes told KARE. “Over a third of by debt is just from interest accruing over the years — $37,000 is just interest. During COVID I called them to try to refinance and they just hung up on me.”
Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey led the legal attack against the plan and was joined in the effort by several other Republicans attorney generals. He has challenged the legality of using the current repayment plan to cancel interest debt, and more generally asserts only Congress can craft such a program.
Bailey, speaking on the Christian Washington Watch podcast, said Missouri has legal standing to challenge the repayment program because the state’s higher education system will lose funding if the state’s student loan program known as MOHELA can’t collect fully on student loans.
“They owe money to the State in the Lewis and Clark Discovery Fund used to pay for capital improvements in higher education facilities, and they also fund scholarships. So, there’s direct, concrete harm to the State of Missouri if those student loan payments to MOHELA are canceled by President Biden’s plan.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, took his GOP counterparts to task during Thursday’s news conference outside the courthouse.
“Here come these AGs who are supposed to be the people’s lawyer of their states, and they fight tooth and nail to block opportunity,” Ellison said.
He said the SAVE program was modest, not earthshattering.
“Look, we ask people to better themselves, to pursue education, to get more education so they can make a greater contribution to themselves or their family and community, and then what we do is say? ‘Here’s a bunch of debt!’ Unless you’re rich!”
During Thursday’s oral arguments the three judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, appeared to be skeptical of the government’s argument that SAVE program can be expanded the way the Biden Administration has done.
The U.S. Supreme Court already decided the Republican AG’s lawsuit can proceed, and asked the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the merits of the challenge.
