Today is Friday, July 19, the 201st day of 2024. There are 165 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 19, 1848, the first “Convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of Woman” convened at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Also on this date:

Related Articles

Today in History: July 18, Nadia’s perfect 10

Today in History: July 17, Disneyland’s opening day

Today in History: July 16, Trinity nuclear weapon test

Today in History: July 15, discovery of the Rosetta Stone

Reagan survived an assassination attempt and his response changed the trajectory of his presidency

In 1812, during the War of 1812, the First Battle of Sackets Harbor in Lake Ontario resulted in an American victory as U.S. naval forces repelled a British attack.

In 1969, Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon.

In 1975, the Apollo and Soyuz space capsules that were linked in orbit for two days separated.

In 1979, the Nicaraguan capital of Managua fell to Sandinista guerrillas, two days after President Anastasio Somoza fled the country.

In 1980, the Moscow Summer Olympics began, minus dozens of nations that were boycotting the games because of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.

In 1989, 111 people were killed when United Air Lines Flight 232, a DC-10 which sustained the uncontained failure of its tail engine and the loss of hydraulic systems, crashed while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa; 185 other people survived.

In 1990, baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, was sentenced in Cincinnati to five months in prison for tax evasion.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced a policy allowing gays to serve in the military under a compromise dubbed “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.”

In 2006, prosecutors reported that Chicago police beat, kicked, shocked or otherwise tortured scores of Black suspects from the 1970s to the early 1990s to try to extract confessions from them.

In 2005, President George W. Bush announced his choice of federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. (Roberts ended up succeeding Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in Sept. 2005; Samuel Alito followed O’Connor.)

In 2013, in a rare and public reflection on race, President Barack Obama called on the nation to do some soul searching over the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his shooter, George Zimmerman, saying the slain black teenager “could have been me 35 years ago.”

In 2018, a duck boat packed with tourists capsized and sank in high winds on a lake in the tourist town of Branson, Missouri, killing 17 people.

In 2021, Paul Allard Hodgkins, a Florida man who breached the U.S. Senate chamber on Jan. 6 carrying a Trump campaign flag, received an eight-month prison term; it was the first resolution for a felony case in the January 6th U.S. Capitol insurrection.

In 2022, Britain shattered its record for the highest temperature ever registered amid a heat wave that seared swaths of Europe.

Today’s Birthdays:

Civil rights activist and educator Rachel Robinson, widow of baseball’s Jackie Robinson, is 102.
Singer Vikki Carr is 84.
Blues singer-musician Little Freddie King is 84.
Singer-musician Alan Gorrie (Average White Band) is 78.
International Tennis Hall of Famer Ilie Nastase is 78.
Rock musician Brian May (Queen) is 77.
Rock musician Bernie Leadon is 77.
Movie director Abel Ferrara is 73.
Movie director Atom Egoyan is 64.
Actor Campbell Scott is 63.
Actor Anthony Edwards is 62.
Ukrainian politician and former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko is 53.
Actor Benedict Cumberbatch is 48.
TV chef Marcela Valladolid is 46.
Actor Trai Byers (TV: “Empire”) is 41.
Actor Kaitlin Doubleday (TV: “Empire,” “Nashville”) is 39.

In a Thursday night debate before the August primary, the two Minnesota Republican Senate candidates seeking their party’s nomination to challenge three-term U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar contrasted their versions of conservatism.

GOP-endorsed candidate Royce White, a former NBA basketball player turned right-wing media personality, and Joe Fraser, a political newcomer favored by members of the traditional party establishment, both said their top concerns were border security and addressing soaring national debt. Both expressed support for former President Donald Trump, though White tied himself to the populist, nationalist wing of the Republican Party.

The two candidates appeared in a debate Thursday night in St. Paul hosted by the Minnesota Federation of RepublicanWomen and streamed online on conservative Minnesota news outlet Alpha News. MNFRW President Kelly Jahner Byrne was the moderator.

White won the Minnesota Republican party’s endorsement at the state party convention in a move that surprised many political observers and dismayed many traditional establishment Republicans.

Fraser had initially said he would not run against the endorsed candidate but changed his mind after the convention. At the beginning of the debate White noted that some had urged him not to participate as it could potentially undermine the endorsement process, but he ended up accepting.

“I’m such a competitor I can’t help myself,” he said.

In explaining his decision to remain in the race, Fraser said he believes the nominating process can’t get in the way of everyone having their voices heard.

“We had a small fraction of our party show up to our convention. That doesn’t represent the totality of the Republican Party in this state, it’s a fraction,” he said.

Fraser, a Navy veteran who now works in banking, said his experience qualifies him to help fight government waste.

“I fought with these bureaucrats,” he said. “I fought with them to try to make things much more efficient.”

White questioned the very legitimacy of the post-World War II liberal world order, calling it antithetical to conservative aims.

“You can’t have a country without a border. You can’t have a country $36 trillion in debt, but you also can’t have a country when you defend everybody else’s borders more than you do your own,” said White.

Both expressed favorable views of former President Donald Trump. Fraser said he endorsed Trump in February and has voted for him before. He said he believed America was rougher on Russia and China under the former President.

White described himself as “Ultra-MAGA.”

“I’m further right than Trump, I’m proud of it and I’m going to support him every step of the way,” he said, describing himself as the nationalist and populist wing of the right.

White said a big part of tackling the national debt would come from ending “forever wars” and curbing U.S. military interventionism. Fraser said he would go after “reckless spending,” like $114 million for diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the Department of Defense.

White said that proposed cut didn’t go far enough for eliminating waste and floated eliminating the FBI.

Candidates were asked how they plan to defeat Klobuchar in November. White said he would focus on courting Black and Hispanic voters in the Twin Cities metro by going door-to-door. Fraser said he would focus on winning in the Twin Cities suburbs.

For the first half of the debate, the candidates largely avoided taking direct shots at one another, but when asked about their stances on transgender issues, White criticized Fraser for including he/him pronouns on his LinkedIn profile.

“We’re going to have a United States senator that serves with peace through strength, that capitulates to the social pressure and norms of queer theory on their own social media page?” said White. “They’d have to shoot me in the head before I put he/him pronouns on my LinkedIn bio.”

Fraser said the inclusion of pronouns on his LinkedIn was not a matter of support for transgender ideas.

“I recognize that gender identity dysmorphia is a mental illness, and we need to be compassionate for people who suffer from it,” said Fraser. “But that doesn’t mean that we need to force that on society and indoctrinate our children into it.”

Whoever wins the GOP primary on Aug. 13 faces a rough road ahead in the general election. Klobuchar, who was first elected to the Senate in 2006, comfortably won reelection in 2012 and 2018. She also enjoys a significant cash advantage over her potential GOP challengers.

No Republican has won a statewide election in Minnesota since 2006.

Related Articles

Minnesota’s minimum age of 21 to carry guns unconstitutional, appeals court rules

Joe Soucheray: Should Minnesotans take some measure of pride in our governor’s blossoming national profile?

Minnesota study finds fault with state agencies over pay adjustments

Dakota County Board selects first woman to serve in county’s top role

In lawsuit, Black pastors blame state, regional housing policies for increasing racial segregation

A federal lawsuit filed Thursday alleges Dakota County jail employees left a 22-year-old Farmington man in a padded cell naked and covered in his own feces, blood, urine and vomit for nearly 20 hours while his mental and physical health deteriorated to the point he was hospitalized in critical condition.

Caleb Duffy was arrested by Hastings police on suspicion of domestic assault shortly after 6:30 p.m. July 4, 2022. Duffy, who has mental illness and diabetes, was removed from the cell two days later and taken to Region’s Hospital.

Duffy was diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis and kept intubated and sedated for five days. He spent nearly two weeks in intensive care before being transferred to the hospital’s psychiatry unit. His hospital bills totaled more than $220,000.

Brian Duffy, Caleb’s father and limited legal guardian, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court that names as defendants Dakota County and 10 of its corrections staff, as well as the jail’s medical provider, Advanced Correctional Healthcare Inc., and three of its employees. It alleges two counts of negligence and violations of the Eighth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution “either maliciously or with reckless disregard.”

“This case involves a shocking lack of care by the defendant corrections and jail medical staff,” Ryan Vettleson, an attorney at Storms Dworak, which is representing Duffy’s family, said in a statement. “No person should be subjected to such willful indifference.”

The lawsuit alleges Duffy’s “obvious and severe symptoms he displayed of a medical emergency were repeatedly ignored.”

Jail video surveillance shows Duffy in a psychotic state in a padded cell, naked and rolling around in his own feces, blood, urine and vomit, the lawsuit says. Duffy injured himself severely by repeatedly hitting his head against an unpadded area of the cell.

“Mr. Duffy’s plight was so severe that it is extremely difficult to watch any of it on video, but the video goes on for hours on end — and the individuals present at the time did nothing,” Vettleson said.

Dakota County Sheriff Joe Leko and a Dakota County spokeswoman both said they cannot comment on pending litigation.

“Know that the safety and care of our detainees have always been and continue to be top priorities in our jail,” Leko said in a statement, adding that the Dakota County Attorney’s Office is representing the county and employees named in the claim.

Father informed jail

Prior to the incident, Duffy was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, autism anxiety, major depressive disorder, ADHD and Type I diabetes, the lawsuit says. He previously had been hospitalized several times for diabetic ketoacidosis and mental health crisis intervention. He was civilly committed for mental illness in January 2021, a commitment that was continued six months later and remains in effect, court records show.

The lawsuit claims that Duffy’s father called the jail repeatedly starting around 9 p.m. July 4 to inform staff that his son was a vulnerable adult with mental illness and diabetes and in need of his medication and hospitalization. However, jail staff “took no action” to get Duffy his insulin until around 5:35 a.m. July 5, when a deputy saw him pacing in the holding cell and yelling that he was dying.

After Duffy told the deputy that he had diabetes and needed his blood sugar checked, it was found to be “dangerously high,” the lawsuit continues.

About a half-hour later, Duffy was seen by a nurse from Advanced Correctional Healthcare, a Tennessee-based private corporation licensed to do business in Minnesota. The nurse administered Duffy 14 units of fast-acting insulin.

Duffy’s father met with a different nurse around 8:10 a.m. July 5, giving her his son’s medical history information. He returned around 10:45 a.m. with Duffy’s prescribed medication: insulin and Gabapentin, an anticonvulsant medication that is used off-label to treat anxiety.

Gabapentin withdrawal symptoms can appear in 12 hours and can include anxiety, pain, agitation, disorientation, confusion, combativeness, hallucinations and paranoid delusions, the lawsuit says.

However, jail medical staff never administered Gabapentin to or initiated a withdrawal protocol for Duffy, “demonstrating deliberate indifference to Duffy’s serious medical needs and medical negligence,” the lawsuit alleges.

‘I’ll just hit my head’

Duffy refused the fast-acting insulin around noon on July 5. A nurse reported that Duffy acknowledged understanding the ramifications of refusing his insulin, and then he “sat down and started slamming the back of his head against the cement and said, ‘I’ll just hit my head until I die,’” the lawsuit says.

Duffy was put on suicide watch, meaning corrections staff were required to perform well-being checks on him at least every 15 minutes.

About three hours later, Duffy stripped off his gown and began vomiting and ramming his head into the walls of his padded cell. A deputy noted that Duffy was screaming that he “needs a doctor.”

Surveillance video shows that although Duffy had urinated and defecated in his cell and repeatedly vomited, a nurse who administered insulin noted no distress or other concerns with him, the lawsuit claims.

Duffy remained in his cell for the next 19½ hours as his psychosis and physical health worsened, according to the lawsuit. Between 6 a.m. and around 8:30 a.m. the next day, Duffy hit his head on the cell’s walls or floor 22 times. At one point, he hit his head against a metal grate so hard it caused a bleeding wound.

A nurse arrived at Duffy’s cell at about 8:45 a.m. and noted “some blood on walls, floor and drain,” the lawsuit says. She entered the cell with two deputies and took his blood sugar, which was so high the machine could not register it.

The nurse left the cell to call an ambulance, “but watched him on video surveillance and saw him repeatedly sit up and fall backwards, hitting his head on the ground, leaving a bloody mark each time,” the lawsuit continues.

At approximately 9 a.m., Duffy was carried out of the cell and loaded into an ambulance.

Related Articles

St. Paul Fire Department hosting emergency preparedness exercise

Lakeville drowning victim identified

Pedestrian killed in Blaine crash

Minnesota police watchdog group raises concerns after second deadly police shooting in Crookston in 6 weeks

Deputies search ex-boyfriend’s residence in case of missing Dakota County woman

Minnesota lost 3,200 jobs from in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, and the state’s unemployment rate ticked up one-tenth of a percentage point to 2.9%, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development said in news release Thursday. The state’s private sector lost 3,300 jobs.

It’s the second month in a row the state has seen a net job loss. In May, the state lost 8,600 jobs, but gained 3,900 jobs in April. Minnesota has added jobs eight of the last 12 months.

The state’s labor force declined by more than 3,100 people, bringing the labor force participation rate down two-tenths of a percentage point to 67.8%. This measures the number of people either working or actively seeking work, and is used to calculate the headline unemployment rate.

“We closely monitor job and labor force growth and we continue to believe that job growth, particularly in certain sectors, is constrained by a lack of available workers with necessary skills,” DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek said in the news release. “That’s why DEED and our agency partners are focused on innovative initiatives to help connect Minnesotans looking for work with in-demand employment.”

The state’s data compare with a national unemployment rate of 4.1% in June, up one-tenth of a percentage point, and a labor force participation rate of 62.6%.

Over the month, areas that gained jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis included Education & Health Services, up 4,500 jobs, and Construction, up 300 jobs.

Losing jobs were Professional & Business Services, down 3,000 jobs, Leisure & Hospitality, down 2,100 jobs, and Manufacturing, down 1,600 jobs.

Wages in Minnesota again outpaced inflation, with average hourly wages for all private sector workers increasing $2.02, or 5.7%, over the year. The Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation, rose 3% over the year, meaning wages increased almost twice as fast as inflation.

Among broader measures of unemployment, the broadest, called the U-6, was at 5.7%, up from 5.4% in May, according to DEED. This takes into account those who have voluntarily dropped out of the labor force and are no longer looking for work, along with those marginally employed and those working part-time but seeking full-time work.

Related Articles

ICU Medical plans to close Oakdale facility, lay off 83 employees

Business People: Fairview fills chief people officer role

Working Strategies: Interviewing for your career-change job

Business People: St. Paul Realtors Association names new CEO

Working Strategies: Checking in on your summer job or internship