Star Tribune
Nancy Pelosi laments Biden’s late exit and the lack of an ‘open primary’
WASHINGTON — Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, suggested this week that it would have been better for the Democratic Party if President Joe Biden had abandoned his reelection campaign sooner and the party had then held a competitive primary process to replace him.
In an interview Thursday with the New York Times, Pelosi said what was widely reported around the time Biden dropped out: that she believed it was implicitly understood that his exit would be followed by an internal party competition for a new nominee, instead of an anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said during an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” a Times podcast. She added during the interview, “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”
Pelosi went on: “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”
Biden endorsed Harris within an hour after he ended his campaign in July, a decision he made only after an intense pressure campaign from Democrats that Pelosi quietly led. His support for the vice president, along with backing from many other Democrats, choked off any avenue for a challenger to emerge. Over two weeks, Harris swiftly gathered support from delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
While some Democrats floated the idea of a quick primary, those proposals never gained traction and were not embraced by the Democratic National Committee or convention delegates.
In the interview, Pelosi went to great lengths to defend the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments, most of which took place during his first two years, when she was the House speaker. After Republicans won control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, she relinquished her leadership post but remained in the chamber as an eminence grise for the party.
The former speaker, who was elected Tuesday to her 20th term representing San Francisco, argued in the interview that the Democratic Party still stood up for working-class voters on economic issues.
Both MSA schools have foundations to support their missions, though the report found that MSA “did not obtain required financial reports from its affiliated foundations, including their annual financial statements or their annual reports about fundraising activities.”
The Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf Foundation was inactive between 2020 and 2023 because the foundation board members had moved out-of-state, according to the report. And the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind Foundation did not file as a nonprofit corporation with the Office of the Secretary of State until the auditor’s office inquired about a filing status in May.
In his letter, Wilding said that, by next month, a school administrator for each school will be assigned to act as a liaison between each school and its foundation. But, he added, “The [Minnesota State Academy for the Blind Foundation] is considering its future and may not continue their operations. If this is the case, we will obtain financial documentation of their fund disbursements for record keeping.”
Over the last several months, Wilding wrote, MSA has updated or implemented new procedures to address several concerns, including how payroll and deposits are monitored and how both petty cash expenses and travel expenditures are approved.
A quarterly review of donation acceptance forms will begin in 2025, he said. MSA’s fiscal services director will also work with the state Department of Education “on the process for returning overreported expenditures” — a process Wilding wrote should be completed by January 2025.
Star Tribune
Sentence topping 8 years for man whose ricochet gunshot struck Minneapolis girl, 11, in face
A 45-year-old man received a prison term Tuesday topping eight years for squeezing off automatic gunfire moments into New Year’s Day in Minneapolis that ricocheted and struck a girl in the face while she was looking out her second-story bedroom window.
James William Turner, of Fridley, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of ammunition in connection with the shooting of Laneria Wilson, 11, on Jan. 1 near 23rd and Bryant avenues N.
With federal sentencing guidelines recommending a sentence of anywhere from 8⅓ to nearly 10½ years in prison, Judge Ann Montgomery opted for the lowest point in that range and added three years of court supervision after his release.
Ahead of sentencing, prosecutors pointed out to Montgomery that “instead of celebrating New Year’s with her friends or family, [Laneria] spent the evening having bullet fragments removed from her face. The victim could easily have been killed. Moreover, the bullet that struck the 11-year-old appears to be one of 24 shots Turner fired that night — 24 bullets that could have injured or killed innocent people.”
Prosecutors also noted that Turner’s criminal history spans his entire adult life and includes convictions for second-degree assault in Anoka County and domestic assault in Ramsey County. Those convictions barred him from possessing guns or ammunition.
Defense attorney F. Clayton Tyler asked that Turner receive a five-year term, arguing that he has abstained from illicit drugs and alcohol since his arrest and has completed mental health therapy.
Also, Tyler added, while Turner admitted to firing the automatic rifle, “he did not do so maliciously or with intent to hurt or frighten anyone. On the contrary, he considered himself close friends with the child’s mother and had previously babysat the child.”
Laneria’s mother, Shenedra Ross, told the Star Tribune in May that since the shooting, she moved her family about two hours west of Minneapolis, where they had lived previously. In the days after being shot, just shy of her 12th birthday, Ross said, Laneria had difficulty coping and was afraid to be near windows.
A 34-year-old Dilworth man who was hit in the head by a stray bullet Saturday while deer hunting is not expected to survive.
According to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, Jace Srur was shot by someone within his hunting party in rural Moorhead on Nov. 9. Authorities had responded around 8 a.m. and provided first aid before an ambulance arrived and Srur was air lifted to Sanford Hospital.
As of Tuesday, Srur’s injuries were considered “life-threatening and non-survivable,” according to the sheriff’s office. The shooting is still under investigation.
On the same day, a 37-year-old man was injured in a hunting accident in Lee Township, Minn., however, his injuries weren’t life threatening.
Saturday was the start of Minnesota’s firearm deer hunting season.
