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The post Trump at Minnesota rally: Biden will turn state into a ‘refugee camp’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>“These hardened criminals are back in their country where they can do all the complaining they want,” Trump said. “And your families are safer for it.”
The Trump administration has made stonewalling admissions for refugees a cornerstone of its immigration policy.
Seeking to draw a contrast with Biden, Trump said the Democratic nominee would open the doors for refugees from “jihadist regions” like Yemen and Somalia. He also derided Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the United States as a child refugee from Somalia, calling her an “extremist.”
Trump last year called for Omar and a number of other high-profile progressive congresswomen to “go back” to “the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Supporters also chanted “send her back” during a Trump rally last year — a line that has become a rallying cry among his base.
“Omar, how the hell did she win the election,” Trump said Friday.
Trump also directly echoed his law-and-order message in the town a couple of hours to the north of Minneapolis, which was a nexus of protests early this summer after George Floyd was killed by a white police officer. Trump has since derided the protests as violent uprisings, urging federal forces to restore order.
“They’re still trying to get rid of your police force in Minneapolis?” Trump said to a jeering crowd. “See they never learn.”
Trump has rebranded his rallies as “peaceful protests”, mocking municipalities that have allowed protesters to gather in spite of social distancing requirements and crowd-size limits due to the coronavirus pandemic. During his Friday talk, attendees were closely packed together, many not wearing masks.
Conspicuously absent from his address was any mention of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death was announced during his rally. Trump bragged during the speech that he didn’t look at the teleprompter when speaking at rallies, and no aides interrupted him on stage.
Just before boarding Air Force One after his rally, Trump said: “She just died? I didn’t know that. She led an amazing life, what else can you say?”
Recent polling has shown Biden pulling ahead in Minnesota, but Trump said Friday that what he’s read about the area made him confident he was in good standing.
“There’s no way that I’m nine points down,” Trump said. “This is not the crowd of somebody’s who’s going to finish second in this state to sleepy Joe.”
Trump’s appearance comes on the heels of Biden’s own trip to the battleground state. The former vice president toured a training center in a suburb of Duluth and uncorked a speech aimed at union members and blue-collar workers in the state.
“Like a lot of you, I spent a lot of my life with guys like Donald Trump looking down on me; looking down on people who make a living with their hands, people who take care of our kids [or] clean our streets,” Biden said. “These are the guys who always thought they were better than me, better than us, because they had a lot of money.”
Biden also picked up on the “Scranton vs. Park Avenue” theme his campaign has raised in recent days, including at a televised town hall Thursday near the former vice president’s birthplace in Pennsylvania. Biden again tore into comments Trump made earlier this week to journalist George Stephanopoulos that “stocks are owned by everybody” as part of a defense of his stewardship of the economy during the pandemic.
“What the hell’s he talking about?” Biden said. “People I grew up with in Scranton, Claymont, [Del.], they don’t have money in stocks. Every penny we made was to pay the bills and take care of the families, put clothes on the back and a roof overhead.”
Shortly before taking the lectern at his Bemidji rally, Trump mocked Biden’s “Scranton vs. Park Avenue” line, repeating his common attack as Biden an internationalist who will bend to China’s will.
“Joe Biden says this is a race between Scranton and Park Avenue,” Trump tweeted. “This is a race between Scranton and China. Joe Biden betrayed Scranton, and America, to China and foreign countries. I will always put America First!”
Nick Niedzwiadek contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Battle for Minnesota: Biden, Trump hold dueling rallies in unlikely battleground appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>It’s been nearly a half-century since a Republican won Minnesota in the race for the White House. You have to go back to President Richard Nixon in 1972.
But after narrowly losing the state four years ago to 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, President Trump is aiming to end the losing streak as he eyes Minnesota in hopes of turning it from blue to red this November.
BLOOMBERG’S BUCKS PAY QUICK DIVIDENDS FOR BIDEN
On Friday, both the president and his Democratic challenger – former Vice President Joe Biden – are set to hold dueling rallies a few hours apart in the northern part of a state that has joined the list of general election battlegrounds. And the visits come on a crucial day, as early in-person and absentee voting gets underway in Minnesota.
Both the Democratic and Republican state parties were urging supporters to take advantage of early voting.
The president will hold an evening event at the airport in Bemidji, which is closer to the Canadian border than to the metropolitan area of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Hours earlier, the Democratic presidential nominee will visit a union training center in Duluth, on the banks of Lake Superior and close to the border with Wisconsin, another crucial swing state up that’s up for grabs.
The stop by Trump is his second in the past month.
“I put tariffs on foreign steel and the Iron Range came roaring back to life,” Trump touted during a stop in Mankato, Minn., on Aug. 17, as he pushed the point that mining operations in the Iron Range in the northeastern part of the state spiked after he slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum from overseas. The area produces much of the nation’s steel.
Once a reliably blue region, Trump overperformed in the rural mining districts in the 2016 election. And the Iron Range’s congressional seat was one of the few to flip from blue to red in 2018, during a Democratic surge that helped the party reclaim the majority in the House for Representatives for the first time in eight years.
“This president has the backs of the blue collar and middle-class worker,” claimed Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents the Iron Range in Congress, told reporters on Friday.
The congressman also pointed to the president’s emphasis on law and order this summer, following the protests and unrest in the Twin Cities that spread across the country – sparked by the May 25 death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody – as a winning issue in his district.
Trump lost the state – and its 10 electoral votes – to Clinton by just under 45,000 votes, or less than 2 percentage points. For over a year, the president’s reelection team has been eying Minnesota, as well as Nevada and New Hampshire, two other states Trump narrowly last in 2016.
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE IRON RANGE – A KEY REGION IN THE FIGHT FOR BATTLEGROUND MINNESOTA
The president’s running mate, Vice President Mike Pence, will return to Minnesota next week, less than a month after he made a late August trip to Duluth to headline a “Workers for Trump” campaign event. During the stop, six local mayors from traditional Democratic strongholds backed Trump, arguing that Biden and the Democrats were out of touch with working-class voters in the Iron Range and small towns across America.
Ahead of his trip to Duluth, Biden put out a statement of support for the Iron Range and spotlighted endorsements by unions, including the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO.
The former vice president argued that “despite the economic recovery set in motion by the Obama-Biden Administration across the Iron Range, under President Trump, demand for Iron Range products has suffered. Steel shipments are down more than 25% nationwide from last year, mining operations have idled, and thousands of Rangers have lost their jobs, all while China produced the largest monthly volume of steel on record.”
While this is the first visit to Minnesota during the general election by either Biden or Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris, the Biden campaign has been carpeting the airwaves with TV commercials. The state is one of 10 battlegrounds where the Biden campaign is spending an eye-popping $65 million this week to run TV and digital ads.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota’s senior senator, has targeted the president for failing rural areas in her state and across America.
Klobuchar, a Biden rival during the Democratic presidential primaries who was briefly in consideration as his running mate, said earlier this month in a local TV interview that “there is a big story going on in rural America where they need some help and I think that why you’re going to see better and better numbers… for Joe Biden” in Minnesota.
But Republicans are optimistic that Trump may be able to flip the state this time around.
TRUMP CAMPAIGN MAKES FULL COURT PRESS FOR BATTLEGROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
“The tide has been turning and continues to turn for the Trump campaign. I have Democrats who confidently tell me they think Trump can win this state,” Minnesota based GOP strategist and former state senator Amy Koch tells Fox News.
The latest public opinions polls paint a very different picture.
An average of the latest surveys compiled by Real Clear Politics shows Biden topping the president by a large 10.2 point margin. Koch, the first and only woman elected as the state senate majority leader in Minnesota, doesn’t believe the polls.
“While these public polls may say one thing, the internal teams are telling me their polls are much closer than the public ones,” she shared.
And Koch noted that “we’ve never had so many presidential and vice presidential visits ever in a campaign season. It just hasn’t happened in Minnesota. We’ve been a solid blue state since 1972.”
Bemidji – where Trump speaks on Friday – is the birthplace of the fictional Paul Bunyon. It’s located in Beltrami County, which Trump won in 2016 – becoming the first GOP presidential nominee to carry the county since George W. Bush in 2000.
But Minnesota’s much more than just the Iron Range and other northern parts of the state.
“The president hopes that there’s no apathy on his side and he keeps his supporters motivated and that somehow the Democrats aren’t motivated and that gives him the victory,” noted Minnesota based Democratic consultant Mike Erlandson.
But Erlandson, a former chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, emphasized that “I don’t get a sense that the bluer areas of the state, the Twin Cities, are apathetic.”
If Trump does pull off the upset and becomes the first Republican to carry the state in nearly 50 years in a presidential election, it would send shockwaves across the country. And it would likely signal victories by the president in other key battlegrounds.
That’s what the president’s hoping for. He predicted during his stop last month that Minnesota voters “will deliver a historic victory.”
And Biden and Democrats are determined to prevent that from happening.
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]]>The post Minnesota becomes battleground as Trump ‘law and order’ message takes hold appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>President Trump has put Democratic challenger Joseph R. Biden on the defensive in Minnesota, an unlikely battleground that hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential election since 1972.
It’s a rare opportunity for Mr. Trump to expand the electoral map and potentially capture Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes to offset a potential loss in Michigan or Wisconsin, two states that he narrowly won in 2016.
Mr. Trump came close to winning Minnesota four years ago. He lost the state to Hillary Clinton by a little more than 1.5 percentage points. This time, his law-and-order message has been amplified by months of unrest and riots in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, in police custody.
The president’s momentum prompted Mr. Biden’s team to spend millions of dollars on advertising in the state.
“President Trump has tapped into an organic enthusiasm from Minnesotans who are tired of career politicians’ lip service with no results, and we see an opportunity to win Minnesota with voters who want four more years of the president’s ‘America First’ agenda,” said Samantha Zager, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign.
The polling in Minnesota is mixed. Several polls show Mr. Biden with a solid lead, and the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls in the state puts Mr. Biden ahead by 5.8 percentage points.
A recent Emerson poll, however, shows the president outperforming his 2016 exit polls for men and women, and among younger voters and voters without a college degree.
He also racked up endorsements from six Democratic mayors in Minnesota.
Since the death of Floyd on Memorial Day, the state has been plagued by Black Lives Matter protests that sometimes devolve into riots at night. It took the National Guard to stop the torching and looting of businesses in Minneapolis, and the president repeatedly threatened to send in troops to halt the chaos.
The riots across the state resulted in roughly $500 million in damage and the deaths of at least two people.
The Trump campaign thinks the president’s law-and-order message is resonating in Minnesota because of the unrest.
But critics argue that Mr. Trump turned a blind eye to the protests against racial injustice that have energized Black voters and the Democratic base.
Democratic Party strategist Antjuan Seawright said the law-and-order message is made up of “coded words” to rally what he called Mr. Trump’s racist supporters.
“It is definitely going to tickle the hearts and minds and ears of the Republican base that supports Donald Trump,” Mr. Seawright said.
He predicted that the president’s messaging would backfire and he would lose Minnesota as well as Rust Belt states such as Michigan and Wisconsin that put him over the top in 2016.
“From the time Donald Trump has taken office, the mood and temperature of the country have changed,” Mr. Seawright said. “Things are shifting, and voters are starting to see through the smog.”
However, former Minnesota Sen. Amy Koch, a Republican in the Twin Cities metro region, said she is hearing from voters who are frustrated with the unrest and the doom and gloom rhetoric about COVID-19 from Democratic politicians.
Minnesota voters recognize what happened to Floyd was wrong, she said, but they do not approve of the violence and rioting.
She said first lady Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, where she called for a peaceful change instead of violence and anger, was the right tone to win over Minnesota voters.
“It is that message that I think could really resonate here,” said Ms. Koch, the state’s first female Senate majority leader. “There is this need for some hope.”
In 2016, Mr. Trump was hurt at the polls in Minnesota by anti-Trump Republicans such as Ms. Koch. Many voted for Evan McMullin, who led a “Never Trump” movement and garnered about 1.8% of the vote, which was more than Mrs. Clinton’s margin of victory.
Where those votes go this year remains to be seen.
Mr. Trump barely campaigned in Minnesota in 2016. He made his only appearance on the Sunday before the election.
This time, Mr. Trump is lavishing money and attention on Minnesotans and last month visited the Twin Cities and Mankato. His family members also have been campaigning in the state, as has Vice President Mike Pence, who recently visited Duluth.
Mr. Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, also have jetted into the state.
During a cross-state tour this month, Ms. Harris said they would not take Minnesota voters for granted.
“We need to earn the vote of every Minnesotan, and we will do that based what clearly is our plan to be relevant to Minnesota families,” she said in an interview with KARE-TV in Minneapolis.
The president and Mr. Biden will both campaign in the state on Friday.
Mr. Trump will host an event in Bemidji. Mr. Biden, who would be making his first campaign visit to the state, promised to be there Friday but did not provide details.
Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill, has visited the state on his behalf.
Both campaigns have begun airing ads there this month and have reserved millions of dollars in airtime, according to reports. Mr. Trump is looking to spend $14 million on advertising in Minnesota ahead of Nov. 3, and Mr. Biden has reserved roughly one-third of that amount.
“If Democrats were not worried about losing their grip on Minnesota, then Biden wouldn’t be visiting there and they wouldn’t be going up on air there. They’d be spending those resources in Georgia and Texas,” said Donald Trump Jr., a top surrogate for his father’s campaign. “All you have to do is look at how Biden and Democrats are treating Minnesota to know that this state is in play.”
If Mr. Trump wins the state, it will be the first time Minnesota has backed a Republican since the 49-state landslide of Richard Nixon in 1972. It voted twice against Ronald Reagan and was the only state to prefer Walter Mondale in Reagan’s 1984 victory.
Javier Morillo, a Democratic Party strategist in St. Paul, said his state is purple but most of the population is concentrated in urban areas, which leans heavily Democratic.
He predicted a victory for Mr. Biden because Mrs. Clinton was able to win the state in 2016 despite lower than expected Democratic turnout, which he said will not happen this November.
“This time around, it is a different ballgame. Democrats are very energized by four years of Donald Trump, so I think our turnout goals are going to be high and are going to be met,” he told The Washington Times.
A poll completed in August by the Trafalgar Group showed the president and Mr. Biden in a tie.
More recent polls by KSTP/SurveyUSA and Public Policy Polling showed Mr. Biden with a 9-point and 8-point lead, respectively. Both leads are larger than what polls gave Mrs. Clinton in September 2016.
Still, Trump fans see an opportunity for the president’s message to break through.
“It’s law and order,” said Republican Party strategist Corey Lewandowski, one of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign managers and co-author of the 2017 book “Let Trump Be Trump.”
He thinks the message to end violence and unrest is resonating across swing states such as Minnesota and in his home state of New Hampshire, where Mr. Trump lost to Mrs. Clinton in 2016 by less than 0.5 percentage points.
“He is going to win by a larger electoral margin than he did in 2016,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “Everybody deserves a safe environment to have a home in, to have a business in, to worship in, and have your kids go to school.”
⦁ Seth McLaughlin contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Minnesota man trapped underneath a fallen tree for 4 days is rescued appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>A Minnesota man was cutting down trees behind his home when one that fell trapped him underneath for four days, authorities said.
Jonathan Ceplecha, 59, was rescued Monday after the Redwood County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call about a person stuck underneath a tree, the department said in a Facebook post. Ceplecha had been trapped since Thursday, Aug. 27.
His son, Miles Ceplecha, wrote in a GoFundMe that the 59-year-old was on a hill in the woods behind his house in Redwood Falls, about 120 miles southwest of Minneapolis, when an oak tree that he was cutting fell on him.
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“In a split second due to a freak accident, both of his legs were suddenly pinned down under an immovable log and his upper torso was now semi-twisted as he sat upright on the ground,” his son wrote. “His legs were broken instantly and he was in enormous pain but, with no phone on him and because he lives alone, there was nobody to hear or see him.”
Jonathan survived by eating plants and insects and drinking his sweat and rainwater that he collected in his clothes, according to Miles.
“He kept his sanity by breaking down every day into hours, and each hour into 5-minute segments. As someone of a heavy faith, he prayed to himself often, and tried to distract himself from panic by meditating and inventing rhythms to follow from dawn to dusk,” the GoFundMe states.
Family members had became worried when Jonathan wasn’t answering their phone calls and didn’t show up for work. Jonathan’s ex-wife found him on his property and contacted the sheriff’s office.
It took nearly two hours for authorities to extricate Jonathan from underneath the tree. He’s now recovering in a hospital.
“I’m still in shock,” Miles Ceplecha told NBC affiliate KARE in Minneapolis. “We’re all still in shock that he’s alive and that he was out there by himself.”
Sheriff’s ffice Chief Deputy Mark Farasyn said he was amazed that Jonathan, a veteran, was able to survive.
“He had the will to live, and he wasn’t ready to go,” Farasyn told the outlet. “I don’t know many people who could survive an ordeal like that.”
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]]>The post Minnesota Senate candidate says ‘crazy’ urban liberals driving people to Trump, could flip state red appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>President Trump could flip Minnesota — a state that has been blue since 1972 — because of a mishandled coronavirus response and continuing civil unrest in Democrat-run cities, GOP Senate candidate Jason Lewis said Saturday.
The former congressman is battling incumbent Democrat Tina Smith in a Senate race that Real Clear Politics recently moved from “leaning Democrat” to “toss-up.”
TRUMP SLAMS BIDEN OVER ‘RADICAL LEFT’ RIOTS IN NEW WISCONSIN, MINNESOTA ADS
“It’s sort of a microcosm of the entire country. As the urban liberals become a little bit more crazy, it drives everybody else into Trump country and red country,” Lewis said on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
Acknowledging the importance of the state, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has announced he will campaign in-person in Minnesota as the rival campaigns ramp up advertising statewide.
VETERAN RUNNING FOR CONGRESS IN MINN.: I WOULD DEFEND POLICE, BE A VOICE FOR KEEPING COMMUNITY SAFE
Trump lost Minnesota by just 44,000 votes in 2016.
With the election less than two months away, Lewis thinks momentum is building in the president’s favor.
“And especially so since Donald Trump has done the most important thing he could for the GOP, and he’s brought the working man and woman back to the party,” he said.
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Following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the riots that followed, Lewis said law and order has become the No. 1 issue for many voters, as well as the coronavirus lockdown and concerns that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz mishandled the state’s response to the pandemic.
“I think we are going to win, and I think the president is going to win,” Lewis said.
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]]>The post Minnesota man pinned under fallen tree for 4 days and survives, sheriff’s office says appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>A 59-year-old man was pinned under a fallen tree for more than 100 hours this week near Redwood Falls, Minn.
According to the Redwood County Sheriff’s Office, they received a 911 call about a tree that had fallen on a person just before 4 p.m. Monday.
“I’ve been doing this job for nearly 30 years and come across a situation when you approach it, you’re expecting the worst and when I got there I was just amazed at what I saw,” said Chief Deputy Mark Farasyn of the Redwood County Sheriff’s Office.
There, they found 59-year-old Jonathan Ceplecha pinned under the tree. They discovered Ceplecha was cutting down trees when one fell on him Thursday, Aug. 27. He was trapped for more than four days.
FISHERMAN, 13, CATCHES RARE BLUE LOBSTER
“I asked him how long have you been there, he said, ‘Oh about 100 hours,’” said Farasyn. “He knew his name and was very alert and conscious and it was just amazing how alert he was.”
Ceplecha, a teacher, lives alone, but his ex-wife found him. She had called his daughter who said she had heard he was “working on some trees.” She went to find out what was going on after he missed a Friday and a Monday of work from a nearby school district.
SEE IT: FLORIDA MAN BITTEN BY NURSE SHARK THAT WON’T LET GO
“Very lucky the people that were concerned about him checked up on him,” said Redwood Falls Fire Chief Jeff Bommersbach.
It took the Redwood Falls Fire Department several hours to remove the tree and incredibly, they even had some help from Ceplecha.
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“Jonathan was actually having a conversation with members of the department on where to make the relief cuts and where we should cut,” said Bommersbach.
He was airlifted from the scene after Redwood Falls firefighters freed him. First responders believe Ceplecha’s military background and some rain that came through on Sunday helped keep him alive.
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]]>The post Minnesota COVID-19 hospital deaths declining appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Death rates for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have decreased in Minnesota since the start of the pandemic, as doctors have gained new drugs and understanding of how to treat the infectious disease.
A COVID-Net report provided this week by the Minnesota Department of Health examined outcomes of 4,356 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 through July and found that 12% had died, compared with an earlier report in May showing that 15% had died. Among those requiring intubation or the use of heart-lung machines due to breathing problems and complications from COVID-19, the death rate declined from 53% in the May report to 37%.
Doctors said these trends reflect progress made since the start of the pandemic, when there were no proven treatments for COVID-19, to a summer in which new drugs and therapies are emerging.
“It does feel like that is helping and there are fewer patients who are progressing from needing a little bit of oxygen to going all the way to the ICU,” said Dr. Greg Siwek, an infection-prevention physician at Regions Hospital in St. Paul.
Treatments include dexamethasone, a steroid given to hospitalized patients that reduces the overreaction by the immune system that can be more lethal than the infection itself.
Supplies of the antiviral remdesivir have increased to the point that the drug is in broad use in Twin Cities hospitals, often in combination with steroids and experimental infusions of virus-fighting antibodies from the plasma of recovered patients.
Except for a spike in cases in late May — when more than 600 hospital beds were filled with COVID-19 patients — the pandemic hasn’t caused the surges in Minnesota that overwhelmed hospitals in China and Italy at the earliest stages of the pandemic and in New York this spring.
A guiding premise of Gov. Tim Walz’s pandemic response, including a 51-day statewide shutdown in the spring, was to delay and reduce COVID-19 case growth that could overwhelm hospitals.
Minnesota hospitals were able to learn from the experiences in other parts of the world that sustained these earlier COVID-19 surges, said Dr. Rob Gould, division director of critical care for M Health Fairview, which includes the COVID-only Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul. “Definitely being downstream from that initial surge helped us.”
Hospitals also pivoted away from early and aggressive use of ventilators in COVID-19 patients with breathing problems to other less-intensive forms of oxygen support first.
Part of the reason for frequent ventilator use early on had been to prevent the hands-on interaction required of other forms of oxygen support that could increase virus exposure risks for doctors and nurses, Siwek said.
“Now, we’re trying to prevent going on to the ventilators, giving the steroids and the other treatments a longer chance to work,” he said.
The state’s latest COVID-Net analysis showed that shortness of breath is the most common symptom, found among 56% of admitted patients, and that more than half reported fevers and coughs as well.
While loss of smell has been a widely discussed characteristic of COVID-19, only 5% of patients admitted to the hospitals reported that symptom.
Patients took a median time of six days after their first symptoms to seek hospitalization. The median time between symptoms and ICU admissions for patients who needed that level of care was seven days.
As of Tuesday, 304 patients were hospitalized for COVID-19 in Minnesota, and 154 required intensive care. Hospitalizations had been increasing slightly in July and August but numbers have started to level off.
State health officials see some signs that a second wave of COVID-19 cases has crested in Minnesota, where there have now been a total of 66,061 known infections and 1,721 deaths. That total included 359 newly confirmed infections and nine deaths reported on Tuesday.
The rolling 14-day average of daily confirmed cases has decreased over the past two weeks in Minnesota from roughly 700 to 600, according to the COVID Exit Strategy website.
The Health Department also reported that the positivity rate of diagnostic tests has declined from near 6% earlier this month to 4.9%. The positivity rate is an important indicator of viral activity, because it is somewhat independent of daily fluctuations in total numbers of tests performed.
The progress at least coincides with the statewide mask mandate that went into effect July 25, because it can take two to four weeks before public health strategies or other major changes in the pandemic affect the case numbers, said Jan Malcolm, state health commissioner. However, she cautioned there is no proof that the mask mandate had that impact.
“It’s often really hard if not impossible to pin down precisely which interventions had which percentage of effect,” she said, “but certainly the fact that we’ve seen a stabilization in our cases and even a trend downward certainly coincides in time with what we would expect to see from the mask mandate.”
At least some of the progress in hospital outcomes is due to an increase in the proportion of patients who are younger, Siwek said. Group gatherings have increased the spread of the virus among young adults and teenagers amid efforts to reduce infections among the elderly residents of long-term care facilities who are at greater risk of complications from infection.
Among the 4,356 COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state’s latest COVID-Net report, death rates varied dramatically by age. Only 2% of the 1,292 patients aged 18 to 49 died in hospital care, compared with 27% of the 706 patients 75 years and older.
Heart disease was a pre-existing condition in 30% of the hospitalized patients while 27% had diabetes and 35% had obesity.
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]]>The post Minnesota couple barred from Walmart after wearing Nazi swastika masks to store appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>A couple, filmed in a viral video wearing masks with Nazi swastikas emblazoned on them, will be banned from shopping at a Minnesota Walmart for at least one year, police said Monday.
The ugly incident unfolded Saturday at the store’s location in Marshall, Minnesota, which is about 150 miles west of Minneapolis and approximately 100 miles northeast of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, authorities and company officials said.
In the tweeted video, which had received 3.2 million views by late Monday morning, shoppers could be seen confronting the swastika-wearing pair as they paid for their goods.
Local governments and retailers across the nation have enforced codes and rules for people to wear masks in public to slow spread of the coronavirus. But some Americans have refused to follow those orders, saying such mandates are unjust.
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And for months, President Donald Trump had accused mask wearers of being “politically correct” or said they were donning the protective equipment as an act of defiance against him (earlier this month he called mask-wearing “patriotic”).
The shoppers were apparently protesting the mask requirements as being the equivalent of Nazi-like demands, as opposed to espousing Nazi ideology themselves. “If you vote for Biden, you are going to be in Nazi Germany,” the female Walmart shopper said in the video, in reference to Trump’s Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden.
Officers responded to that Walmart at 11:46 a.m. because the man and woman “were causing a disturbance,” according to a statement by Marshall Police Sgt. Jason Buysse.
The shoppers, who were not identified, were issued trespassing notices which will ban them returning to that southwest Minnesota location for at least the next year, Buysse said.
Earlier this month, Walmart began requiring all shoppers to wear facial coverings inside its stores, as America continues to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic.
Walmart said in statement that Saturday’s incident in Marshall, Minnesota, was “unacceptable” and pleaded with shoppers to wear masks.
“We strive to provide a safe and comfortable shopping environment for all our customers and will not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment in any aspect of our business,” according to the company statement.
“We are asking everyone to wear face coverings when they enter our stores for their safety and the safety of others and it’s unfortunate that some individuals have taken this pandemic as an opportunity to create a distressing situation for customers and associates in our store.”
Suzanne Ciechalski is a New York-based reporter for NBC News’ Social Newsgathering team specializing in verification and social discovery.
Rima Abdelkader
contributed.
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]]>The post Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz signs “long overdue” police accountability bill appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed a police accountability bill into law Thursday that includes a ban on neck restraints like the one that was used on George Floyd before his death in Minneapolis, though some activist groups say the legislation falls short. The bill, passed by the Legislature earlier this week, also bans chokeholds and fear-based or “warrior-style” training, which critics say promotes excessive force. It imposes a duty to intercede on officers who see a colleague using excessive force and changes rules on the use of force to stress the sanctity of life.
“This bipartisan piece of legislation moves us toward a critical step towards criminal justice reform,” Walz said at a Thursday news conference. “These critical reforms are long overdue — they are meant to strengthen transparency and community oversight.”
The measure also creates a new advisory council for the state board that licenses officers, makes changes in arbitration rules affecting police unions and requires more training on dealing with people with mental health issues and autism.
The bill passed after nearly two months of difficult negotiations that followed Floyd’s death on May 25 and the ensuing unrest that spread around the world over police brutality and racism. Floyd, who was Black, was killed when a white officer held his knee to Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes as he was handcuffed and restrained by three other officers holding him down.
Members of the People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Caucus led the policing reform efforts at the Capitol, speaking with community members and law enforcement before drafting the legislation they introduced last month. POCI Caucus member and House public safety committee chairman Rep. Carlos Mariani said the legislation is the first step in preventing what happened to Floyd and Philando Castile, who was killed by a police officer in a St. Paul suburb four years ago.
“The construction of this law and its passage is a powerful acknowledgment of our collective failure in the past, of our failure to (Floyd and Castile) and countless others who have been wrongfully harmed at the hands of peace officers,” Mariani said. “We have to start with that acknowledgment, otherwise we’ll continue to do what we’ve always done.”
Discussions on police accountability legislation dominated the June special session a few weeks after Floyd’s death, but lawmakers weren’t able to reach a deal on which reforms to include in the bill. Going into this month’s special session, Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman said restoration of felon voting rights and giving the Minnesota Attorney General’s office primary jurisdiction over prosecuting police officers were two issues that were taken off the table in negotiations with the GOP-controlled Senate.
Michelle Gross, president of local advocacy group Communities United Against Police Brutality, called the reforms in the bill “low hanging fruit” and said the legislation is not nearly as comprehensive as the group had hoped.
“The autism training we thought was an important thing to have … and we also like the fact that it bans fear-based training (which) is something we’ve been working on for quite a long time now,” she said. “But so much of what we wanted was not even given a second glance.”
Gross’ group, along with other local advocacy organizations, introduced eight policing reform bills during the special session — two of which were included in the package passed earlier this week. The legislation includes requiring police carry their own liability insurance, ending the statute of limitations for a wrongful death civil suit and allowing families of those killed by police to see body camera footage 48 hours after their death. POCI Caucus members at the news conference Thursday pointed to the statute of limitations issue as a disappointment when it failed to materialize in the final package.
Walz, a Democrat, is expected to call the Legislature back to the Capitol in August to extend his peacetime emergency powers as the coronavirus pandemic continues indefinitely. Gross said they will be back with more reforms to prevent lawmakers from moving on from police reform — a process that she said is far from over.
“For every special session that they might have, we will be there demanding change,” she said. “And once the regular session starts next year, we will be there again, with our bills, demanding change.”
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]]>The post Former Minnesota Police Officer Derek Chauvin Charged With Tax Evasion appeared first on Virus Reports.
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A photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff shows former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was arrested on May 29, in connection with the death of George Floyd.
AP
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AP
A photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff shows former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was arrested on May 29, in connection with the death of George Floyd.
AP
Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the murder of George Floyd, has also been charged along with his wife with nine counts of felony tax evasion.
The Washington County prosecutor’s office announced Wednesday that Chauvin and his wife, Kellie May Chauvin, underreported their joint income from 2014 through 2019 by $464,433, including more than $95,000 that Derek Chauvin earned from off-duty security work.
“Revenue investigators initiated a review into the Chauvins in June 2020 for failure to timely file Minnesota individual income tax returns from 2016 to 2019 and fraudulently filing tax returns from 2014 to 2019,” the office said in a statement.
“The complaints detail that the Chauvins, both employed and domiciled in Minnesota, failed to file income tax returns and pay state income taxes, underreported and underpaid taxes on income generated from various employments each year, and failed to pay proper sales tax on a vehicle purchased in Minnesota,” it said.
Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, according to Minnesota Lawyer.
County Attorney Pete Orput was quoted by the legal website as saying that Floyd’s death had no bearing on the decision to prosecute the tax evasion case.
“Everybody’s got to be held to account,” Orput said. “My position is that nobody is above the law.”
The prosecutor’s office said the charges only relate to state income taxes and not to federal taxes or taxes in Florida, where the couple owns a second home.
Kellie Chauvin filed for divorce less than a week after Floyd’s death on May 25.
The Associated Press says her divorce attorney did not return a call seeking comment and that Eric Nelson, Derek Chauvin’s attorney on the murder charges, had no comment Wednesday on the tax charges.
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