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Initial election results are expected after polls close at 8 p.m. on Election Day, November 3. Because of a high number of absentee ballots arriving by mail, vote totals in all races may change during the week after Election Day, even after all precincts have reported. This application requires Javascript which is used to make your web browser more interactive. If this message does not go away, please consider enabling Javascript. Here are instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser . Loading... from MinnPost https://ift.tt/34WS9w1 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

In the Star Tribune, Libor Jany and Mary Jo Webster write : “ Violent crime has surged to record highs across Minneapolis this year, rising in more prosperous neighborhoods that typically experience few such incidents while continuing to exact the heaviest toll in the city’s poor, ethnically diverse areas. Through last week, the city had logged 3,674 violent crimes — defined as homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assaults — up 17% from the previous five-year average for this period, according to a Star Tribune analysis of police statistics.” In the New York Times, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman write : “ President Trump pressed Senate Republicans on Saturday to confirm his choice to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ‘without delay,’ setting up a momentous battle sure to inflame the campaign as he seeks to force through an appointment in the weeks before the election on Nov. 3. Mr. Trump said he expected to announce his nomination in the next week and told a campaign rally that...

A Ramsey County District Court judge on Thursday said Minnesota regulators wrongly deleted some public records and tried to shield federal critiques of a key permit for the PolyMet copper-nickel mine to avoid bad press — but largely did not break permitting rules or systematically try to hide evidence of their actions. “The Court finds no overarching effort by the [Minnesota Pollution Control Agency] to keep evidence out of the administrative record,” wrote Judge John H. Guthmann in a 104 page opinion . The ruling is the result of a rare trial in which a coalition of environmental nonprofits and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa accused the MPCA of trying to bend rules to suppress criticism from scientists at the federal Environmental Protection Agency and hide the evidence by deleting records. The district court proceeding was ordered by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which is overseeing a bigger legal challenge to whether the permit, which covers the release of po...

The Star Tribune’s Patrick Condon writes : “ Positioning Republicans as a force for stability in the aftermath of the protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, Trump is revving up an issue that has worked over the years to the Republicans’ benefit. GOP candidates up and down the ballot are following his example, turning Minneapolis into an electoral test case: a city run by Democrats whom Republicans charge with failing to do enough to prevent the devastation, then moving to cut police budgets and redefine policing .” Bob Shaw writes in the Pioneer Press : “ As of Aug. 21, only half of metro area (movie) theaters had reopened — two months after Gov. Tim Walz lifted the coronavirus restrictions . Fourteen theaters have not announced any plans to re-open. Two metro-area theater chains teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in July, and one 20-plex in Oakdale has closed permanently. Under these conditions, reopening a theater takes guts — but don’t co...

‘On Wednesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison added a second-degree murder charge to the counts against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, who died after Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. Ellison also charged the three other officers at the scene when Floyd died. Here is a look at what we learned from Ellison’s remarks about the case, and from Gov. Tim Walz, who also spoke to reporters after the charges against the officers became public. 1. Ellison moved quickly, but he also wants to manage expectations The decision to add charges against former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin to include second-degree murder — and to charge the three other officers who stood by as George Floyd died — came just two days after Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took over the case.  “I believe the evidence available to us now supports the stronger charge of second-degree murder,” for Chauvin,...

Gov. Tim Walz dialed back Minnesota’s stay at home order by allowing non-essential businesses and retailers to reopen with social distancing rules and letting gatherings of 10 or fewer people resume, effective May 18. In a televised speech Wednesday, the governor said he is still keeping bars, restaurants, gyms and salons closed, though his administration is developing plans for those businesses reopen at least partially by June 1. Walz also informed legislative leaders that he is extending by another 30 days his declaration of peacetime emergency . “We have continued to implement policies and exercise emergency powers to protect the health and safety of all Minnesotans,” he wrote. “ As COVID-19 cases and fatalities continue to increase, our emergency efforts must also continue. As a result, I have determined that there is a need to extend the peacetime emergency for an additional 30 days, until June 12, 2020.” Wednesday’s address is the latest iteration of the governor’s exercis...

Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday he will let his stay-at-home order expire on May 18 but extend many restrictions on public gatherings, including a ban on attending large in-person religious services and eating at restaurants. In a televised speech, Walz said Minnesota now has enough supplies of personal protective equipment, ventilators and intensive care hospital beds to handle the state’s predicted peak of COVID-19 cases this summer, but only if residents keep up much of their physical distancing efforts. The state has also expanded its testing capacity. “We must keep this virus at a simmer, not a boil,” Walz said. Once the stay-home directive ends, most retail businesses will be allowed to open at half capacity under safety guidelines. Small social gatherings with 10 or fewer people are also permitted after May 18. Walz first ordered bars and restaurants to close on March 17 and implemented a stay-at-home order on March 27. The governor twice extended that order, which has now bee...

Republicans and DFLers in the Minnesota Legislature engaged in a fair amount of back-patting last week, praising their work on a bipartisan measure to shore up elections amid COVID-19. The heart of the deal, which ended a two-year debate over how the state will spend federal Help American Vote Act money and grant funds for COVID-related election costs, revolved around what each side gave up : DFLers relented on their desire to shift the state to all vote-by-mail elections this, and Republicans stopped pushing provisional voting and voter ID.  All of which has tended to obscure a potentially important question. Even after signing the bill, could Gov. Tim Walz do what California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom did last week: namely, impose an all vote-by-mail election via executive order under his peacetime emergency powers? The answer appears to be … maybe. In fact, Walz has not dismissed the possibility of imposing universal vote-by-mail for either the August primary or the Nov...

Gov. Tim Walz used a seasonal analogy Sunday night to explain the challenge facing the state and its residents from COVID-19 — one Minnesotans are well familiar with. The best way to get through a hard winter is to prepare, Walz said in his second state of the state speech since being elected, this one given not from the Minnesota House Chambers but from his residence, where he has been in quarantine for two weeks. “Right at the time Minnesotans are usually putting away their shovels and snowblowers, opening up their windows, and emerging from their homes, we’re bracing for a storm of epic proportions,” Walz said. “We are used to long winters in Minnesota. We are resilient people with a deep reserve of courage, optimism, and grit. But this will be like a winter we’ve never seen before.” So preparations will be more intense as well, he said, and will include increasing hospital capacity and testing for the coronavirus, as well as adding ventilators and intensive care unit beds to tr...

The Minnesota Legislature convened — quickly and oddly — to pass a COVID-19 response bill Thursday. With many House members missing — and the Senate for the first time in state history allowing 15 members to vote by phone — the bill was passed and sent to the governor. House and Senate leaders had negotiated the package of appropriations with Gov. Tim Walz after holding committee meetings by conference call during the previous week. Then, with just enough House members in the Capitol to suspend normal processes and adopt the bill, they did so. The House passed the bill, House File 4531 , on a vote of 99-4 after meeting for just over an hour. “Members, we have a lot of work to be done,” said House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler after the measure was passed. Once the emergency ebbs, the job will be to help the state “recover, revive and move on.” The Senate then responded with a 67-0 vote in favor of its version of the bill, after debating for nearly three hours. Amendments were off...

Just hours after it recessed until April 14 or whenever, the Minnesota State Legislature was closed up tight Tuesday. Had the session not abruptly ended due to COVID-19, the day would have been packed with committee meetings and the rotunda and halls filled with citizen-lobbyists as well as the compensated kind. Instead, it was mostly empty. In announcing what was termed a hiatus, legislative leaders insisted that they were still working and still open to constituents. But it will be mostly by phone, by email and by text. In-person meetings are by appointment only. MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan The doors to the chambers of the Minnesota Senate were closed. The resolution adopted in the early morning Tuesday said the Legislature would reconvene April 14, the day it normally would have returned from its Easter/Passover break. What is different this year is that the break is almost four weeks instead of one. The Legislature will be on-call, meaning House and Senate leaders ...