3CD DFL

Rep. Kelly Morrison (HD33B) Update: May 27, 2021

Dear Neighbors,

I hope this email finds you and yours well. With vaccination rates increasing and COVID-19 cases trending downward, a return to a normal summer is looking more and more likely.

Our work continues in the state legislature. Minnesota’s portion of the federal American Rescue Plan dollars arrived in the state in early May, which allowed House and Senate Majorities, along with the governor, to reach a bipartisan agreement on budget ‘targets’, or our general framework on May 17. Although we have officially adjourned to meet our constitutional deadline, legislators haven’t stopped working to craft the finer details of the budget. Our current timeline has us working towards a special session in early or mid-June.

Rep. Laurie Pryor (HD48A) Update: May 25, 2021

Neighbors,

Last week, the regular legislative session adjourned. A budget framework was announced and is in place, and negotiators are working on the final two-year agreement. I will continue to advance priorities for Minnetonka and Eden Prairie and I appreciate your emails and calls.

One year ago today, we learned of the death of George Floyd. Our communities – and the world – reeled from his senseless death. This year at the Capitol, House DFLers moved a sweeping agenda for police reform and accountability, building on bipartisan legislation approved last year.

No matter where we live and how we look, everyone wants to make it home unharmed at the end of the day. Our efforts will continue to ensure every Minnesotan can feel safe in their communities and be treated with respect and fairness.

Phillips Conducts Oversight of SBA Pandemic Grant Programs

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the House Small Business Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Regulations, led by Chairman Dean Phillips (D-MN), held a hearing focused on assessing the implementation and effectiveness of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) pandemic related grant programs. The hearing gathered small business owners and stakeholders to testify on their experience obtaining relief and their recommendations for improving the programs.

“Recognizing the need for alternative relief options, Congress and this Committee have worked to provide direct economic relief to small firms that can’t afford to weigh down their balance sheets with more debt,” said Chairman Phillips. “I hope that by taking a closer look at these programs, we can gain a better understanding of the challenges that federal grant programs face, as well as the important relief that these programs are providing to struggling small businesses across the country.”

Since the COVID crisis began devastating small businesses, Congress has worked to provide small firms that couldn’t afford to take on more debt with direct economic relief through grants. The hearing focused on two SBA grant programs implemented in 2021 to reach the most impacted sectors of the economy, the Shuttered Venue Operator Grant (SVOG) program and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF). Over the course of the year these programs will deliver nearly $50 billion to struggling small businesses across the country.

Rep. Melissa Hortman (HD36B) Update: May 27, 2021

Dear Neighbors,

I hope you are staying safe and healthy. After more than a year of a pandemic, it’s looking more and more like a typical, wonderful Minnesota summer is ahead of us. COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and are bringing back a sense of normalcy that we have been missing for so long. If you haven’t gotten your vaccine yet, visit the Vaccine Connector to find a vaccine site near you. The state also has a number of community vaccination sites that are accepting walk-ins.

On another happy note, today is my birthday! I am officially past the half-century mark, and I intend to celebrate my birthday by eating chocolate cake in between negotiation meetings and phone calls.

Rep. Kristin Bahner (HD34B) Update: May 25, 2021

Dear Neighbors,

I hope this finds you and your loved ones well. With vaccination rates steadily moving toward our 70% goal (MN 16+), COVID-19 restrictions loosening in our state, and summer just around the corner, a return to normal is something we all are undoubtedly looking forward to this year.

Even with regular session concluded, our work continues at the Legislature.

What got done?

House committees heard a record number of bills this session. We buckled down to hear bills from last session that may have withered on the vine due to the pandemic and key bills laser focused on issues related to the pandemic from healthcare and mental health to jobs and homelessness. On May 17^th, our last day of session, we were able to pass a large number of bills wrapped up in policy omnibus bills by subject. Essentially these policy bills included a bundle of bills that pertain to key functions of government, same or similar and non-controversial bills that passed both the House and Senate. Often the same and similar bills contain language that is almost a match but often has minor technical differences. Those issues were resolved, agreed upon, voted on in both chambers and are headed to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. As a fun example, the Health and Human services bill was 519 pages of policy agreed upon by both parties. A testament to what can be done when we work together.

A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime

Los Angeles, like other cities across the nation, is facing a rise in gun violence. And the police budget is growing.

LOS ANGELES — Helen Jones grew up in Watts in a time of gang wars and a crack epidemic, when the police used battering rams to knock down the walls of suspected drug houses and Black people were routinely profiled or beaten by street cops.

Then and now, her life has been shaped by violence: Last spring, after the city shut down to contain the coronavirus pandemic, her nephew was shot dead in his home; the year before, her brother was shot in the back on a South Los Angeles street and lived; and in 2009, her son died in a downtown jail in what the authorities called a suicide but she believes was a murder by sheriff’s deputies.

Last year, Ms. Jones’s demands for fewer police officers and more investment in communities like hers became the demands of a movement — after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis shook the country, inspired the largest mass demonstrations for civil rights in generations and pushed police reform to the forefront of the national agenda. Continue reading.

DHS to issue first cybersecurity regulations for pipelines after Colonial hack

Two directives will seek oversight of the industry after a ransomware attack upended gas availability in the Southeast for 11 days

The Department of Homeland Security is moving to regulate cybersecurity in the pipeline industry for the first time in an effort to prevent a repeat of a major computer attack that crippled nearly half the East Coast’s fuel supply this month — an incident that highlighted the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to online attacks.

The Transportation Security Administration, a DHS unit, will issue a security directive this week requiring pipeline companies to report cyber incidents to federal authorities, senior DHS officials said. It will follow up in coming weeks with a more robust set of mandatory rules for how pipeline companies must safeguard their systems against cyberattacks and the steps they should take if they are hacked, the officials said. The agency has offered only voluntary guidelines in the past.

The ransomware attack that led Colonial Pipeline to shutter its pipeline for 11 days this month prompted gasoline shortages and panic buying in the southeastern United States, including in the nation’s capital. Had it gone on much longer, it could have affected airlines, mass transit and chemical refineries that rely on diesel fuel. Colonial’s chief executive has said the company paid $4.4 million to foreign hackers to release its systems. Continue reading.

They tried to overturn the 2020 election. Now they want to run the next one.

Trump supporters who back his claim that the 2020 vote was rigged are running to become the top election officials in key states.

Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote.

The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the conspiracy-tinged vote audit in Arizona’s largest county; Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who sued to have his 5-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election.

Now, they are running for secretary of state in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024. Their candidacies come with former President Donald Trump still fixated on spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, insisting he won and lying about widespread and systemic fraud. Each of their states has swung between the two parties over the last decade, though it is too early to tell how competitive their elections will be. Continue reading.

DOJ partially discloses memo on why Trump wasn’t charged with obstruction

Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the memo was actually meant to guide then-Attorney General William Barr on “getting a jump on public relations” in explaining why he was not pursuing obstruction charges.

A portion of a memo cited by former Attorney General William Barr as a reason not to pursue obstruction of justice charges against former President Donald Trump was released Monday night, but the Justice Department said it is appealing a judge’s order to disclose the rest of it.

Barr cited the 2019 memo by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel as a reason for not pursuing the charges after he received special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any links to the Trump campaign.

Mueller’s report said his team was unable to reach a judgment on whether the president committed obstruction of justice, but the Office of Legal Counsel’s memo said the department should reach a conclusion anyway, and recommended that the evidence would not support prosecution. Continue reading.

QAnon Crowd Convinced UFOs Are a Diversion From Voter Fraud

“They want you talking about aliens because they don’t want you talking about Maricopa,” Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson tweeted.

It’s never been a better time to believe in UFOs. Barack Obama talked last week about inexplicable footage of unidentified aerial phenomena, and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wrote about his trip to Area 51 in a recent op-ed. In June, American intelligence agencies are set to release an unclassified report on what the government knows about UFOs.

For “ufologists,” long mocked as tinfoil hat-wearers obsessed with little green men, some measure of vindication may finally be at hand. But for many UFO enthusiasts on the right, this new round of UFO disclosures is nothing to cheer about. Instead, they’re claiming the new videos of possible UFO sightings are meant to distract people from Donald Trump’s baseless voter fraud allegations and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic.

“There’s no doubt that this mainstream UFO disclosure push is offering a convenient distraction for the Deep State to turn our attention away from important issues like the Scamdemic and the election fraud getting exposed,” Jordan Sather, a UFO and QAnon conspiracy theorist, complained on social media network Telegram on May 19. Continue reading.

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