Minnesota
Lawmakers reach deal on unemployment insurance, ‘hero pay’
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota legislative leaders announced a deal Thursday to refill the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund and to pay bonuses to frontline workers, resolving a months-long impasse.
The tentative agreement includes $2.7 billion to replenish the trust fund and pay back a debt to the federal government for jobless aid, and $500 million in bonuses for workers who took risks during the pandemic. House Democrats came down from their $1 billion proposal for bonus checks — cutting the amount per worker in half to $750 but keeping eligibility at about 667,000 workers.
A House provision making hourly school employees eligible for unemployment insurance during the summer months was cut in the compromise.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller, of Winona, and Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman, of Brooklyn Park, announced the agreement during a MinnPost panel discussion, saying they reached the compromise with Democratic Gov. Tim Walz Wednesday night.
Miller and Hortman said the bill is expected to pass off the Senate floor on Thursday before being voted on by the House later Thursday or Friday morning, The goal, the leaders said, is to get the bill to Walz’s desk for him to sign on Friday to avoid a Saturday due date for employers who saw their tax bills increase when lawmakers missed a March 15 deadline to replenish the trust fund.
Oklahoma
House sends Texas-style abortion ban to governor
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma House gave final approval on Thursday to a Texas-style abortion ban that prohibits the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
The bill approved by the GOP-led House on a 68-12 vote without discussion or debate now heads to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is expected to sign it within days. The assault on abortion rights is one of several culture-war issues conservatives in GOP-led states have embraced, like restricting LGBTQ rights, that drive the party’s base in an election year.
Dubbed the Oklahoma Heartbeat Act, the bill prohibits abortions once cardiac activity can be detected in the fetus, which experts say is roughly six weeks into a pregnancy. A similar bill approved in Texas last year led to a dramatic reduction in the number of abortions performed in that state, sending many women seeking the procedure to Oklahoma and other surrounding states.
Although Stitt already signed a bill earlier this year to make performing an abortion a felony crime in Oklahoma, that measure is not set to take effect until later in the summer and might not withstand a legal challenge.
Because the measure approved Thursday has an “emergency” provision, it takes effect immediately after the governor signs it, and abortion providers say will immediately end most abortions in Oklahoma.
“We are more concerned at this point about these Texas-style bans because they have, at least recently, been able to continue and remain in effect,” said Emily Wales, interim president and CEO at Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which operates two abortion clinics in Oklahoma. “We do intend to challenge those if they’re passed, but because of the emergency clause provisions, there would be at least some period of time when we could not offer care.”
Like Texas, the bill allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion for up to $10,000, a mechanism that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to remain in place. Texas’ new law has led to a huge increase in the number of women from Texas seeking abortions in Oklahoma.
“We’re serving as many Texans as Oklahomans right now, in some cases more Texans than Oklahomans,” Wales said.
Before the Texas ban took effect last year, about 40 women from Texas had abortions performed in Oklahoma each month, according to data from the Oklahoma State Department of Health. That number jumped to 222 Texas women in September and 243 in October, the agency reported.
California
UC Berkeley student charged for threats that led to lockdown
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — A University of California, Berkeley student has been charged with threatening to shoot university staff members in an incident last week that led to an hourslong campus-wide lockdown, court documents obtained Wednesday showed.
Lamar Bursey, 39, was charged Monday with two counts of felony criminal threats after he allegedly sent an email to several university staff members saying that two of them would be shot if he didn’t get the help he needed, according to charging documents from the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
Bursey, a resident of Hayward, was placed on academic suspension on April 14, according to UC Berkeley police.
Last Thursday, Bursey sent an email just before 6 a.m. to several university staff members telling them he had slept outside the previous night and that they were “his resources,” according to a declaration by UC Berkeley police filed in court.
“I’ll be in the office from aprox 9am to 4pm today. Stop playing with me. Depending on who I feel was helping or not, 2 people on this email will get shot,” Bursey allegedly wrote.
Two of the recipients notified their supervisors that they wouldn’t show up to work that day because they feared for their lives, police said.
Later that morning, UC Berkeley officials ordered a lockdown of the campus and canceled all classes while university police searched building by building for a person who had threatened to hurt specific people. Six public schools in the city of Berkeley closed their gates and entrances out of an abundance of caution, because of their proximity to the college campus.
University officials issued an all-clear more than four hours later, saying that the person who had made the threats was located off-campus by university police. They gave no other information out of respect for the privacy of all involved.
Bursey was arrested at a hospital in the neighboring city of Oakland, university police said in court documents.
