Permits upheld. The AP reports (via WCCO): “The Minnesota Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed state regulators’ key approvals of Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project, in a dispute that drew over 1,000 protesters to northern Minnesota last week. … A three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the state’s independent Public Utilities Commission correctly granted Enbridge the certificate of need and route permit that the Canadian-based company needed to begin construction on the 337-mile Minnesota segment of a larger project to replace a 1960s-era crude oil pipeline that has been deteriorating and can run at only half capacity.”
Woman killed in Uptown identified. KARE’s Dana Thiede reports: “A woman struck and killed by an SUV in Uptown Minneapolis late Sunday is being remembered by her brother as a person who always stood up for the things she believed in, and was ‘willing to give her life for it.’ … During an interview with KARE 11 Garrett Knajdek identified the victim as his sister and ‘lifelong friend’ 31-year-old Deona Knajdek. Minneapolis police say just before 11:40 p.m. they were monitoring a demonstration via security camera near West Lake Street and Girard Avenue South when they saw a car drive east on Lake Street and into the crowd. Knajdek was fatally injured and three others were treated at hospitals for non-life threatening injuries.”
Emergency continues. WCCO reports: “As COVID-19 cases wane in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz’s peacetime emergency powers have been extended for yet another month. The Minnesota Executive Council voted Monday to extend the peacetime emergency another 30 days. … ‘It’s very clear now we are in the final phases,’ Walz said in a request to the council. ‘Today is simply re-upping the state of emergency so that the status quo, the work we’re doing continues.’”
Almost as if these politicians are behaving cynically. At the Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig explains the latest Ilhan Omar twitterversy: “By the time Republicans and centrist Democrats had united late last week to scold Representative Ilhan Omar for a tweet—one of the few pastimes that still draw the two parties together, and something those selfsame chiders would doubtlessly decry, under different circumstances, as cancel culture or censorship—it no longer mattered what, exactly, Omar had said. They had already managed to make a news cycle out of it: mission accomplished. … Now, following Democratic outrage and Republican calls for a floor vote to strip Omar of her committee assignments, let me record the following for posterity: Omar demonstrably did not say what she’s been accused of having said; what she did say was true; and every politico using this opportunity to take a swing at her likely knows those two things—they just think you don’t. ”
In other news…
Not working: “Worker shortage frustrates Minnesota businesses” [MPR]
Dry spell: “Minnesota crop farmers in desperate need of rain” [KARE]
PSA: “Minnesota needs blood donors as blood supply drops” [KARE]
Gonna make a mint: “St. Paul chutney maker Maazah eyes growth, gets spot at Keg and Case” [Star Tribune]
Many celebrations: “Juneteenth events in the Twin Cities and beyond” [Spokesman-Recorder]
Alas, the people who need to read Bruenig’s piece the most are precisely the ones most unlikely to do so.
Well, that shows what you two know. Of course this is fake news. The Atlantic is well-known to be a journal run by Communist pedophiles, and is funded entirely by the Venezuelan government as a way of foisting critical race theory on unsuspecting Americans.
I think I got everything.
Build that pipeline.
The MPR piece on a “worker shortage” was disappointing. No input from actual workers, just a Chamber and businesses that profit from workers labor. If $300/week is keeping people from applying for those open jobs, maybe those businesses need to rethink their business model and pay an attractive wage with attractive benefits. Yet another article dancing around the obvious.