Star Tribune
Antivaxxers test new round of losing election slogans
Blithely confident that Minnesota voters find chaos, cruelty and misinformation appealing, the antivaxxers assembled.
“It’s not a vaccine, it’s a death shot,” newly elected state Sen. Nathan Wesenberg,R-Little Falls, said of the COVID-19 vaccine. Dozens of people gathered with him in the Capitol Rotunda for the No Forced Vaccines rally nobody asked for this week.
Thursday’s rally leaned into the off-putting crackpottery that helped GOP candidates lose every statewide office and their majority in the Minnesota Senate in the last election.
“We should maybe start sending people to jail” for trying to save lives during a global pandemic that has already killed more than a million Americans, Wesenberg added. “Maybe we should start with [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz.”
Organized by an anti-vaccine group that isn’t getting any free ink from me, the Jan. 5 rally featured last year’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen, who likened vaccine refusal to cancer patients making their own end-of-life treatment decisions.
The focus of their fury was legislation floated in the state Senate last session — by the party now in the majority. The bill would have made it harder for parents to opt their children out of routine immunizations for polio, measles, whooping cough and other childhood killers based on personal beliefs.
“Unfortunately, there are those who want to make vaccines a condition of us living,” said newly elected state Sen. Eric Lucero, R-St. Michael.
It is true that still being alive is one of the major side effects of most vaccines. Just ask Gen. George Washington, who had the entire Continental Army inoculated against smallpox — saving lives like a true patriot.
Back at the rally, speakers called the pandemic the “scamdemic.” They speculated that maybe it was a vaccine, not an unlucky tackle, that stopped Damar Hamlin’s heart during that terrifying Buffalo Bills game.
The false claim that the COVID vaccine is killing athletes has circulated for years, ignoring all proof to the contrary. You may have heard that one from your angry cousin who won’t stop talking about the imaginary microchips in vaccines that he learned about on YouTube.
Nobody wanted to sit next to the bitter, conspiracy-spouting cousin at Thanksgiving dinner. Fewer and fewer Americans want to vote for the angry, conspiracy-spouting candidate on the ballot. The kind of candidates who would rather block their own party from taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives than admit that government actually has a job to do.
This year’s rally was much smaller and much less heavily armed than the hundreds who turned out for Minnesota’s Storm the Capitol rally on Jan. 6, 2020. No one was wearing Trump hats in the crowd this year.
What hasn’t changed is that lies won’t become truths if you repeat them.
“That isn’t to say we can prove anything,” Jensen, a doctor, told the crowd, immediately after suggesting that thousands of people probably dropped dead within hours of receiving a COVID shot.
New year. New hats. Same message the voters rejected the last time around.
Star Tribune
Mary Moriarty vows to retry Cody Fohrenkam whose conviction for murdering Deshaun Hill was overturned
The appeals court ruled that at least some of that evidence was wrongfully used to convict Fohrenkam.
Walker, the attorney representing Hill’s family, said that although it’s disappointing that the family must sit through another trial, the ruling is “what makes America, America.”
“I understand where the judge is coming from,” Walker said. “It’s one of those cases that upsets people — people getting out on this, that and the other, on ‘technicalities,’ but they’re not technicalities, it’s the law.”
Star Tribune
Eagan parents of college runner who died by suicide settles suit with her coach and school
The Eagan parents of a college runner who died by suicide has settled their lawsuit that alleged their daughter’s cross-country coach at the time tormented her with demeaning comments in emails and texts about her weight and learning challenges.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Florida in June 2023 by Ray and Lynne Pernsteiner, the parents of Julia Pernsteiner, 23, who died in her Jacksonville University dorm room on Nov. 8, 2021. Her death came two months after the coach kicked her off the team, the suit contended.
The lawsuit named as defendants the university and former cross-country coach Ronald E. Grigg Jr., who coached women’s track and cross-country at the Division I school from 1998 until his sudden resignation in July.
The family’s attorney, Robert Spohrer, said that the case went to mediation, and there was “an amicable resolution of all issues” that led to the suit’s dismissal.
Spohrer said a strict confidentiality agreement among the parties prevented him from disclosing terms of the settlement.
Attorneys for Grigg and the university did not respond to messages left by the Star Tribune.
Messages were left Thursday with the law firms representing the school and Grigg. The defendants have yet to file any response in federal court to the allegations. The university said in a statement that it does not comment on pending litigation.
The suit contended that Pernsteiner’s constitutional rights were violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act and under Title IX because of discriminatory acts based on her gender.
The state Republican Party and conservative legal groups filed a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday claiming that Hennepin County did not appoint partisan election judges in the right way.
The party and two conservative groups, the Upper Midwest Law Center and the Minnesota Voters Alliance, want to know how Hennepin County appointed election judges to its absentee ballot board this year. The board’s work includes making sure signatures on absentee ballots match signatures on voter registration cards and deciding if a ballot is spoiled or not.
The central question of the lawsuit, according to Andy Cilek, executive director of the Minnesota Voters Alliance, is whether county elections officials have to exhaust lists of potential election judges provided by the political parties before selecting others for the absentee ballot boards, which are required to have a balance of Republican and Democratic election judges.
“We want to understand how this occurred,” said Minnesota Republican Party Chair David Hann.
The suit alleges no one from a list of 1,500 Republicans supplied by the state Republican party to the Secretary of State’s office were selected by Hennepin County. Hann said he did not know if any Republicans were selected to serve.
Ryan Wilson of the Upper Midwest Law Center said the group has not scrutinized lists of election judges in other counties to make sure they included names provided by the state Republican Party. Wilson said his group is focusing on Hennepin County because it has the most voters, and the most potential to have an impact, he said.
In a statement, Daniel Rogan, Hennepin County auditor, said absentee ballot board members were appointed in compliance with state law and guidance from the Secretary of State.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings