How to get a free gun lock in Ramsey County: Leaders highlight program amid concerns about suicide, domestic violence, kids and guns

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With seven cases of young people seriously injured in Ramsey County since 2021 due to unsafe or improper firearm storage in a residence, County Attorney John Choi reminded the public Monday that free gun locks are available across the county.

“A lot of … gun violence that we have in our community is preventable,” he said.

The goal is preventing accidental shootings, suicide and domestic violence, leaders in Ramsey County said at a Monday press conference about the gun locks.

One out of four women will experience domestic violence in a lifetime and, if a firearm is present, the risk of a victim experiencing serious injury or death increases by over 400 percent, said Shelley Johnson Cline, executive director of the St. Paul and Ramsey County Domestic Abuse Intervention Project.

An 8-year-old boy recently died after he was shot in Burnsville. His mother said the child’s father was aiming a gun at her and her son was trying to get the gun away when the man accidentally shot their child.

“For victims, quick access to a gun, whether it belongs to the abuse partner or not, can be a matter of life and death,” Johnson Cline said. “Stopping or suspending that access will save lives.”

For as much media attention as firearm homicides receive, suicides with firearms occur more often, pointed out Tyrone Terrill, president of the African American Leadership Council. Between 2018 and 2022, there were 1,855 Minnesotans who died from firearm suicide, which represented 46 percent of all suicide deaths, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

“We need to bring more awareness, more education,” Terrill said.

The gun lock program in Ramsey County was launched in 2016 and began as a partnership between the Ramsey County attorney’s and sheriff’s offices, and the public health department. Free cable gun locks are still available at various community centers and libraries, with a list available at bit.ly/RamseyCogunlocks.

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FACT FOCUS: Biden’s pause as he left a star-studded LA fundraiser becomes a target for opponents

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By MELISSA GOLDIN (Associated Press)

Video from a star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles for President Joe Biden on Saturday is circulating on social media with claims that he froze up onstage as he exited the event.

“Biden froze again last night and had to get escorted out by Obama,” reads one post on X that had received approximately 22,000 likes and 5,600 shares as of Monday. “Is this normal?”

Members of his campaign and administration say the president stopped to take in cheers and applause as he left a sit-down with former President Barack Obama and comedian Jimmy Kimmel that helped raise more than $30 million for his reelection campaign. A spokesperson for Kimmel echoed this view.

The video is the most recent in a series of clips taken at public events, some of them edited, that are being used to suggest Biden is mentally and physically unfit for office.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Biden froze onstage during his fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday night and had to be led away by Obama.

THE FACTS: Biden paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage with his predecessor following an interview moderated by late-night host Kimmel.

Former President Donald Trump shared a video on his social media platform Truth Social that showed a grainy version of Biden stopping and looking out into the audience as he departed. “Is this really who you want to be your president?” Trump asked in the post.

Separate footage from the event provided to The Associated Press by Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer shows the president waving, pointing, clapping and giving the thumbs-up to the audience alongside Obama while Kimmel waits off to the side. Biden then stands still for about seven seconds looking out at the crowd. He starts moving again when Obama briefly takes his arm and puts his hand on his back as the pair walks offstage.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates described the moment as “the President taking in an applauding crowd for a few seconds.” Singer attributed the negative characterizations as a distraction tactic from those who “are so scared of losing to Joe Biden, they’ll make anything up to distract from the fact that their candidate for president, Donald Trump, has been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, committed financial fraud, and only cares about himself.”

In response to a question at a press briefing on Monday about videos that have been edited to make Biden appear frail or confused, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called such footage “cheap fakes video” that are “done in bad faith.” She added that they demonstrate “everything that we need to know about how desperate, how desperate Republicans are here.”

A source who helped organize, and attended, the fundraiser told the AP that there was nothing noteworthy about this moment and that Obama wanted to be “chummy” by walking offstage with Biden.

Lewis Kay, a spokesperson for Kimmel, called the claims spreading online “nonsense.”

“Attendees in the front were shouting at him, and President Biden was trying to hear them,” he wrote in an email to the AP. “It’s as simple as that.”

The fundraiser took in a record $30 million-plus, according to Biden’s campaign. George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Barbra Streisand were among those who took the stage at the event. During their interview with Kimmel, Biden and Obama both stressed the need to defeat Trump in a race that’s expected to be exceedingly close.

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This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

Cottage Grove mom giving away free locks to keep kids with special needs safe after 4-year-old drowns in Hopkins

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As soon as Sheletta Brundidge heard the news about the drowning of a 4-year-old boy who was autistic and nonverbal, she knew had to do something to help.

Brundidge, a Cottage Grove mother of three children with autism, has long relied on keyless smart door locks as a way to keep her children safe, and she wanted other parents of children with autism to learn about the locks and have a chance to get one for free.

“I was trying to think of what I could do to lift their spirits while educating parents about how to keep their special needs kids safe in the home,” she said of last week’s tragedy in Hopkins.

A close up of an interior door lock that has been installed in Sheletta Brundidge’s house in Cottage Grove, seen June 17, 2024. As a mother of children on the autism spectrum, Brundidge said the locks provide an added layer of protection for children who are prone to wandering. (Courtesy of Sheletta Brundidge)

Brundidge, who runs ShelettaMakesMeLaugh.com, reached out to Amazon, the online retailer, which is donating locks that will be given away at a community event from 1-3 p.m. Tuesday at Hopkins City Hall. The free event also includes an ice cream truck, face painting and book giveaway.

A volunteer assisting with the search effort found Waeys Ali Mohamed, 4, who was last seen June 9, in Minnehaha Creek around 10:40 a.m. June 10, about 500 yards downstream from his family’s apartment building in Hopkins, officials said.

“My heart just breaks for any family who loses a child, especially a family who has a child with autism who wanders or elopes from the home because I know how scary it can be,” Brundidge said. “… If I had that mother sitting in front of me right now, I would hug her and tell her, ‘It is not your fault. You did not do anything wrong. Don’t judge yourself too harshly because you know, this is what these children do, and we are doing everything within our knowledge and power to protect them.’”

When Brundidge’s son Daniel was 4 or 5 years old, he wandered outside on a below-zero night in the middle of winter, she said.

“The doors were locked and they were still closed, but I couldn’t find him anywhere in the house,” she said. “He found some kind of way to get out of the house, and I couldn’t figure out how. Well, he went out the sliding glass door in the back. He was in the back and he was on a trampoline jumping on top of the ice. It was like minus-8 degrees outside. My heart was pounding because I literally had picked up the phone to call 911. It wasn’t nothing but Jesus that had me look out there.”

Brundidge started looking for additional safety measures and discovered the interior keyless door locks on Amazon. When she recently decided to have a free giveaway of the locks, she contacted officials at the Amazon facility in Shakopee. They immediately signed on to help, she said.

The keyless door locks also are a great option for people caring for people with dementia, she said.

“I had somebody tell me last week that they were getting them for her grandmother who has dementia and is always wandering outside the home,” she said. “People did not know that these were available. Fences are expensive.”

The locks can be programmed with codes that are 6 to 15 digits long. Each lock has a bypass key, so “there is a way to get in and out of the lock using a key in case of a fire,” she said.

Brundidge is an Emmy-winning comedian and activist. She runs ShelettaMakesMeLaugh.com, a podcast network which features weekly shows hosted by Black subject experts from Minnesota.

She also is the author of three children’s books about autism, including “Brandon Spots His Sign,” which was published in 2022, “Cameron Goes to School” and “Daniel Finds His Voice.”

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Judge rules that federal agency can’t enforce abortion rule in Louisiana and Mississippi

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By ALEXANDRA OLSON AND CLAIRE SAVAGE (AP Business Writers)

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Monday granted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as employers in two Southern states, temporary relief from complying with a federal rule that would have required them to provide workers with time off and other workplace accommodations for abortions.

Judge David Joseph granted the preliminary injunction in two consolidated lawsuits, one brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the other brought by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic University and two Catholic dioceses.

The lawsuits challenge rules issued in April by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which stated that abortions are among pregnancy-related conditions covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which passed in December 2022 and took effect last year.

The EEOC rules take effect Tuesday.

Joseph, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, enjoined the EEOC from enforcing the abortion provision of its rules against the Catholic plaintiffs and employers located in Louisiana and Mississippi for the duration of the lawsuit.

His ruling came just days a federal judge in Arkansas dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by 17 states led by Arkansas and Tennessee. Eastern District of Arkansas U.S. District Judge D.P. Marshall, Jr., who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, ruled that the states lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.

“The District Court applied a common sense interpretation of the plain words of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act,” said Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in an emailed statement

The Louisiana ruling was a partial victory for the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, who had asked for a much broader emergency injunction that would have stopped the entirety of the EEOC rules from taking effect nationwide.

That request had alarmed some civil rights and women’s advocacy groups, who warned that the EEOC rules are critical to the successful implementation of the law. In an amicus brief, the American Civil Liberties Union and more than 20 labor and women’s advocacy groups cited dozens of cases of pregnant workers who employers have continued to resist granting them accommodations, and said the EEOC rules provided clarity for resolving disputes.

Dina Bakst, co-founder and president of the legal advocacy group A Better Balance, which spearheaded a decade-law campaign for the law, condemned the ruling in Louisiana, saying it “disregarded decades of legal precedent” interpreting pregnancy-related medical conditions to include abortion.

However, she stressed that it was “important for pregnant and postpartum workers to understand that this ruling does not mean their rights under the PWFA have been taken away,” given the limited scope of the injunction.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act passed with widespread bipartisan support in December 2022 after a decade-long campaign by women’s right advocates, who hailed it as a victory for low-wage workers who have routinely been denied accommodations for everything from time off for medical appointments to the ability to sit or stand on the job.

But many Republican lawmakers, including Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who co-sponsored the bill, were furious when the EEOC stated that the law covered abortions. Both Republican commissioners on the five-member EEOC voted against the rules.

In its regulations, the EEOC said its inclusion of abortion is consistent with its own decades-long interpretation of pregnancy-related anti-discrimination law, along with numerous court rulings backing that interpretation.

The regulations also specified that the rules do not require any employer to provide health care coverage for abortions and the most likely accommodation request would be for time off to undergo the procedure or recover from any complications. The EEOC has said that any situations where an accommodation requests potentially conflicts with state laws would be examined on a “case-by-case” basis.

In their lawsuit, the attorneys general said the “EEOC is forcing States like Louisiana and Mississippi to go against State law and effectively facilitate an abortion.”

Mississippi bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Louisiana has a near-total ban on abortion, with exemptions when there is a substantial risk of death or impairment to the patient in continuing the pregnancy and in cases where the fetus has a fatal abnormality.

In its lawsuit, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it had publicly backed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act because lawmakers had stressed its uncontroversial nature, with some expressly stating that it would not require leave for elective abortions.

Laura Wolk Slavis, a lawyer representing the Catholic groups, said “the EEOC hijacked a bipartisan protection for expecting mothers and their babies, imposing a national abortion-accommodation mandate.” She said the ruling was a “crucial step” in restoring the law “to its purpose.”

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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.