Today is Tuesday, July 2, the 184th day of 2024. There are 182 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law a sweeping civil rights bill passed by Congress prohibiting discrimination and segregation based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin.

Also on this date:

In 1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution saying that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”

In 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau (gee-TOH’) at the Washington railroad station; Garfield died the following September. (Guiteau was hanged in June 1882.)

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In 1917, rioting erupted in East St. Louis, Illinois, as white mobs attacked Black residents; at least 50 and as many as 200 people, most of them Black, are believed to have died in the violence.

In 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight along the equator.

In 1962, the first Walmart store opened in Rogers, Arkansas.

In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gregg v. Georgia, ruled 7-2 that the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.

In 1979, the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin was released to the public.

In 1986, ruling in a pair of cases, the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action as a remedy for past job discrimination.

In 1990, more than 1,400 Muslim pilgrims were killed in a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel near Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

In 2002, Steve Fossett became the first person to complete a solo circumnavigation of the world nonstop in a balloon.

In 2018, rescue divers in Thailand found alive 12 boys and their soccer coach, who had been trapped by flooding as they explored a cave more than a week earlier.

In 2020, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire on charges that she had helped lure at least three girls – one as young as 14 – to be sexually abused by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. (Maxwell would be convicted on five of six counts.)

In 2022, the police chief for the Uvalde, Texas, school district stepped down from his City Council seat amid criticism of his response to the mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

Today’s Birthdays:

Former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos is 95.
Actor Polly Holliday is 87.
Racing Hall of Famer Richard Petty is 87.
Former White House chief of staff and former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu is 85.
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is 82.
Writer-director-comedian Larry David is 77.
Rock musician Roy Bittan (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band) is 75.
Actor Wendy Schaal is 70.
Actor-model Jerry Hall is 68.
Former baseball player Jose Canseco is 60.
Race car driver Sam Hornish Jr. is 45.
Former NHL center Joe Thornton is 45.
Singer Michelle Branch is 41.
Actor Vanessa Lee Chester is 40.
Figure skater Johnny Weir is 40.
Actor-singer Ashley Tisdale is 39.
Actor Lindsay Lohan (LOH’-uhn) is 38.
Soccer player Alex Morgan is 35.
Actor Margot Robbie is 34.
Singer-rapper Saweetie is 31.
U.S. Olympic swimming gold medalist Ryan Murphy is 29.

Washington, DC – The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from prosecution. This decision, with a vote of 6 to 3 that divided along partisan lines, may effectively delay the trial of the case against him on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump contended that he was entitled to absolute immunity from the charges, relying on a broad understanding of the separation of powers and a 1982 Supreme Court precedent that recognized such immunity in civil cases for actions taken by presidents within the “outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities. Lower courts rejected Mr. Trump’s claim, but the Supreme Court’s ruling, with its potential to delay the case enough that Mr. Trump could make it go away entirely if he prevails in November, could significantly impact the case’s outcome.

Here’s what to know:

The ruling: The justices said that Mr. Trump is immune from prosecution for official acts taken during his presidency but that there was a crucial distinction between official and private conduct. The case returns to the lower court, which will decide whether Mr. Trump’s actions were in an official or private capacity.

The charges: The former president faces three charges of conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding, all related to his efforts to cling to the presidency after his 2020 loss. He was indicted last August by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in one of two federal criminal cases against him; the other relates to the F.B.I. raid on his private club, Mar-a-Lago, in August 2022 that recovered missing government documents.

Lower courts ruled against Trump: The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, denied Mr. Trump’s immunity request in December. “Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed in February, saying that “any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

The timing: Even before the ruling, the court’s decision to take up the case already helped Mr. Trump’s strategy to delay his prosecution until after the November election. With this ruling, the prospects for a trial before the election seem increasingly remote. If Mr. Trump prevails at the polls, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges, significantly impacting the timing of the trial.

Other Jan. 6 cases: The court heard two other cases this term concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, both of which relate to Mr. Trump. One — an attempt to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot in Colorado under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which made people who engage in insurrection ineligible to hold office — was unanimously rejected in March. The other limited the use of a federal obstruction law to prosecute members of the mob who stormed the Capitol. Two of the four charges against Mr. Trump are based on that law.

The Hmong Cultural Center Museum in St. Paul, one of few public institutions dedicated to displaying Hmong material culture and history, is growing.

The museum, which opened its storefront exhibition space in 2021, has just finished an expansion that increases its footprint by two-thirds, to about 2,000 total square feet.

Visitors can tour the expanded museum for free during an open house, from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday. Regular hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, with a $7 admission fee per person.

Hmong Cultural Center program director Mark Pfeifer and executive director Txongpao Lee pose for a photo next to a display of story cloths and flower cloths at the museum on University and Western Avenues in St. Paul on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The Hmong Cultural Center, founded in 1992, has been headquartered for the past decade or so in second-floor offices near Western and University avenues. The center provides a variety of support services for the Hmong community as well as research and education programs aimed both at Hmong and non-Hmong people.

Even before the street-level museum opened in 2021, a few rooms in the office space were dedicated cultural exhibits. These were technically open to the public, said Hmong Cultural Center program manager Mark Pfeifer, but people didn’t necessarily realize they could go upstairs.

More exhibition space

The storefront museum has been transformative, he said. It’s open seven days a week and staffed full time for walk-in visitors, and the cultural center has designed 12 different curriculum packets for school field trips. So far in 2024 alone, Pfeifer said, about 1,400 people have come through the space, including over 60 school groups from not just the Metro but greater Minnesota and western Wisconsin, too.

Recently, the center took over another storefront next door to the museum, directly below its offices. The space had previously been storage for May’s Market, a neighboring herb and supplement shop, and adds about 800 additional square feet of exhibition space.

As part of the expansion, the center also installed track lighting throughout both levels to better illuminate displays and educational panels.

The expansion also creates space for the third and final phase of the museum project, which involves connecting the downstairs museum with the upstairs cultural center and library — not currently possible without stepping outside. Integrating the museum with the office-level exhibits upstairs — which still exist — would both grow the center’s capacity for more in-depth rotating exhibits and also allow visitors easier access to the center’s research library, Pfeifer said.

The center is also planning a comprehensive security upgrade to the whole facility.

This third expansion phase is probably the last for the foreseeable future, though, Pfeifer said.

A small admission fee helps cover some operating expenses, but this year’s expansions have really only been possible due to public and private grants, Pfeifer said. Money from the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund, part of the state’s Legacy program, has been particularly influential, as have other gifts from funders like the McKnight Foundation and the Freeman Foundation.

“With the museum, the idea was to take our work to another level and to reach a lot more people, particularly so schools can come in and learn about Hmong culture and history,” Pfeifer said. “This work is not new to the Hmong Cultural Center — we’ve been doing it a long time — but the museum allows us to reach a lot more people.”

Currently on view and coming soon:

The museum’s permanent exhibition includes a variety of paj ntaub, or storytelling tapestries, tools and artifacts brought from Laos by Hmong immigrants fleeing the Vietnam War, and traditional instruments like the qeej.

A new exhibit in the expanded space showcases photographs taken by James E. Williams, who served as a U.S. Agency for International Development financial officer in Laos from 1965 to 1968. The black-and-white photos show celebrations, landscapes and various aspects of everyday life before many Hmong people were forced into exile.

Once the downstairs museum and upstairs cultural center are connected, Pfeifer said, the museum will continue upstairs with a new exhibit on the history of the Hmong Cultural Center itself.

The Hmong Cultural Center Museum is located at 375 W. University Ave.; 651-917-9937, ext. 17; hmongculturalcentermuseum.org

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