Kennedy says he has secured ballot access in enough states to win. That’s not yet true

posted in: Politics | 0

By JONATHAN J. COOPER (Associated Press)

PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claimed Friday that he’s qualified for the ballot in enough states to win the presidency as an independent candidate, but there’s a major caveat: at least 10 of the states have not certified his candidacy.

Kennedy is racing to secure a place on the ballot in states with at least 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed to become president, before a June 20 deadline to qualify for a CNN debate later this month.

Kennedy’s campaign said he submitted 3,300 signatures in Minnesota on Friday and listed the state among 19 states with 278 electoral votes where he claims ballot access. But by the campaign’s own admission, at least half of those states have not verified that his submission is valid.

CNN has signaled that it won’t count states where Kennedy has applied for ballot access but not been confirmed. Kennedy filed a Federal Election Commission complaint last month alleging the cable network is colluding with Democratic President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump to exclude him from the debate.

Kennedy also has not met the debate’s requirement to get at least 15% in four reputable polls.

Biden and Trump agreed to the CNN debate and a second on Sept. 10 hosted by ABC, bypassing the nonpartisan commission that has organized debates for nearly four decades.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and prominent anti-vaccine activist, abandoned his Democratic primary challenge to Biden last year and began campaigning as an independent. Among the major obstacles he faces is an expensive and time-consuming requirement to secure ballot access state by state, which will require him to collect millions of signatures that must be verified by election officials before his candidacy is approved.

He’s built a loyal following among people disaffected by American institutions including the government, corporations and the media, an ideologically eclectic group that will have an unpredictable impact on the election. Biden and Trump both fear that Kennedy will draw voters who might otherwise vote for them.

Displaced Columbia Heights barber given probation for setting fire at Shoreview barbershop

posted in: News | 0

A displaced Columbia Heights barber charged with setting a fire inside the Shoreview barbershop where he’d just started working has been put on probation and ordered to pay the shop’s owner for the damage.

Dennis Ambrose Manning was sentenced Friday by Ramsey County District Judge Andrew Gordon under a March plea deal that included the 55-year-old admitting to an added charge of negligent fire, a gross misdemeanor.

Dennis Ambrose Manning (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

In turn, prosecutors agreed to dismiss first- and second-degree arson felony charges in connection with the Nov. 29 fire at Pauly Ray’s Sports Barbershop, which is in a strip mall at Highway 96 and Lexington Avenue.

Manning’s plea deal also includes a stay of adjudication, meaning if he successfully completes two years probation the charge will be dismissed and he won’t have the conviction on his criminal record. He must pay $5,475 in restitution to Paul Vandeveer, owner of Pauly Ray’s.

Vandeveer told investigators he believed Manning started the blaze as a way to get him to open a new location with him elsewhere.

For 22 years, Manning had run his own shop, Sportsmen’s Barbers in Columbia Heights, before the owner of the building forced him out in November after finding another tenant.

Manning’s customers set up a GoFundMe page for him after word spread that he would be displaced. The effort, which drew local media attention, raised about $8,400 for Manning to set up shop in another location.

In the meantime, Manning called up Vandeveer, who rented a chair from Manning at Sportsmen’s for four years before he opened Pauly Ray’s in 2017. Vandeveer offered Manning a chair to rent at his shop, going so far as to let him set up a few of his arcade games and put a small Sportsmen’s sign outside.

He said he lit a string

Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies and firefighters were sent to Pauly Ray’s just before 7 p.m. Nov. 29 on a report of a fire inside the closed business. Manning had been working from the shop for just two days.

Firefighters forced their way into the barbershop, which was fully engulfed in smoke.

The shop’s floors were flooded with water from the sprinkler system, which put out the fire. Firefighters determined the fire started in the northeast part of the shop near a video game area.

According to the criminal complaint, surveillance video showed Manning inside the barbershop just before 6:30 p.m. He pulled a lighter from his pocket. He bent down and sparked the lighter, igniting a cloth on top of an arcade console, the complaint says.

Manning turned around and walked to an exit, looking behind him as he left the shop. The fire burned continuously and accelerated in intensity, with embers from the lit cloth falling onto chairs underneath the arcade console and igniting them as well.

A photo on a GoFundMe page set up in November 2023 shows Dennis Manning outside Sportsmen’s Barbers, his now-shuttered Columbia Heights business. Friends of Manning had set up the page in an effort to raise money for Manning to relocate the barbershop elsewhere. (Courtesy of GoFundMe)

Surveillance video then showed that mall patrons congregating at the barbershop doors leading into the mall. Several tried to open the doors, but they were locked.

Just before 8 p.m., a sheriff’s deputy saw Manning standing in a doorway and on his phone, either recording the scene or speaking to someone on FaceTime.

Manning was arrested, and denied starting the fire. He had a red lighter on him. While in the back of a squad car, he said he didn’t have a lighter and didn’t start anything on fire. He then said, “How would a lighter start them games on fire?” the complaint says. “Doesn’t make sense. Those are my games.”

Manning later said, “There’s no footage of me having a lighter to start anything on fire. It’s ludicrous.” He then changed his story and said, “Oh, you know what? I did take the lighter and lit a string on a cloth that was hanging on the game. That was it. I did not start the fire. And it fell on the chair. I did not start the fire.”

Wanted to move

Manning agreed to speak to an investigator. He said Vandeveer left the shop about five minutes before he did. Manning denied intentionally setting the fire, claiming he saw a string hanging down from a tablecloth by the arcade games and took out a lighter to burn it. He said he thought he patted the cloth down after burning the string to prevent a fire from starting, the complaint says.

Manning said he had no reason to burn down the barbershop and noted how he and Vandeveer had items worth thousands of dollars inside. When asked why he didn’t grab one of the several scissors available to cut the string, Manning said he was exhausted and just wanted to remove the string quickly, so he used his lighter, the complaint says.

Manning said that he and Vandeveer planned to move the barbershop to a spot in Columbia Heights off Central Avenue.

Related Articles

Crime & Public Safety |


Bag of cash doesn’t stop jurors from convicting 5 of 7 defendants in $40 million food fraud scheme

Crime & Public Safety |


Minnesota AG special unit says man’s 2001 murder conviction should be overturned

Crime & Public Safety |


‘Without Sgt. Laurie, we might still be wondering,’ says family of missing St. Paul woman found slain in storage unit

Crime & Public Safety |


Charges: Volunteer with Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office youth program sexually assaulted girl

Crime & Public Safety |


Man given 25 years for St. Paul execution-style murder of man he didn’t know

Meanwhile, Vandeveer told deputies that Manning had been repeatedly asking him about opening a shop in Columbia Heights with him. He said he had no intention of closing his shop and moving, and that he believed Manning set the fire to close the business so he would join him at the new spot, the complaint says.

Before the plea deal, Manning’s attorney filed in court a list of seven prospective witnesses for a trial and summaries of phone interviews with them by a hired investigator. The seven, which included Manning’s son, a former employee and a former customer who is also an Osseo police officer, all said Manning was a smoker and that they had seen him use his lighter to remove a strand of string at his Columbia Heights shop.

The criminal complaint notes that Vandeveer told deputies, when asked, that he’d never seen Manning burn a string in the four years he worked with him at his old shop.

Seven charged in smuggling migrants in sweltering secret compartment with little water

posted in: News | 0

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP) — Seven people in southern Texas have been charged after endangering nearly two dozen migrants smuggled in a secret trailer compartment during high temperatures and with little water, authorities said. One person remained hospitalized on Friday.

Following a tip of a smuggling operation, Bexar County Sheriff’s Office deputies Thursday morning found 26 migrants in a residence near San Antonio that Sheriff Javier Salazar called a “shack” with holes in the floor and no water.

Salazar said he did not know when the migrants crossed the border but believed they were driven to the area from the border city of Laredo, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) away.

The migrants had been in the trailer’s secret compartment for three hours, Salazar said. Temperatures in San Antonio were in the high 90s Thursday afternoon and were expected to top 100, according to the National Weather Service.

Seven men ranging from 21 to 45 years old were arrested and are facing state felony charges that include human smuggling, engaging in organized criminal activity, operating a stash house and evading arrest.

Twelve people were initially sent to the hospital for minor and heat-related injuries, but by Friday, only one migrant remained hospitalized due to dehydration and “cardiac related issues,” according to a Friday news release.

The smuggled people were originally from Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela and Guatemala and their ages ranged from 18 to 54. Six of them were women.

San Antonio was the site of the nation’s deadliest human smuggling episode in June 2022, when 53 migrants, including eight children, died after being trapped in a sweltering semi-trailer that had been driven from Laredo.

That trailer had a malfunctioning air-conditioning unit. When authorities found it on a remote San Antonio road, 48 migrants were already dead and five more later died at hospitals.

Report: Natalie Darwitz out as general manager for PWHL Minnesota

posted in: News | 0

As the architect of the team that recently brought Minnesota the first Professional Women’s Hockey League championship, Natalie Darwitz added another significant accomplishment to an already stellar hockey resume.

On Friday, she was out as the team’s general manager.

Front office personnel decisions are made by PWHL officials, and while the league has not officially released the news, Darwitz confirmed to at least one news outlet that she has been
relieved of her duties.

Darwitz did not respond to a text message from the Pioneer Press seeking comment.

A sign that all was not right within team leadership emerged during a postseason press conference when Darwitz was noncommittal when asked if Ken Klee would return next season
as head coach.

A team spokesperson said on Friday that Klee was not currently available for comment.

Thus, the inaugural season began and ended on a tumultuous note. Klee joined the team a week before the start of the regular season when Charlie Burggraf resigned for personal
reasons.

Darwitz, who had a storied playing career with the University of Minnesota and on the international stage, appeared to be moving forward with business as usual earlier this week when she talked about the teams plans for the PWHL draft, which will be held on Monday at Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul.

By all indications, she was preparing to make the team’s picks in the seven-round draft.

Following her playing days, Darwitz, an Eagan native, enjoyed a successful coaching career at both the high school and college level, including as a Gophers assistant. She left the Gophers prior to this season and was set to coach the girls’ team at Hill Murray before being named Minnesota’s GM.

Related Articles

Sports |


With inaugural title in hand, PWHL Minnesota knows Year 2 will bring more changes

Sports |


PWHL Minnesota savoring celebrations intimate and substantial in wake of Walter Cup triumph

Sports |


Mom and champion: Kendall Coyne Schofield enjoys full-circle moment in winning PWHL’s inaugural title

Sports |


With Xcel Center party planned, Carter touts a ‘sidewalk march’ to celebrate women’s Walter Cup hockey championship

Sports |


Minnesota beats Boston 3-0, wins inaugural Walter Cup as Professional Women’s Hockey League champs