Quarterback Sam Darnold arrives at OTAs in line to be Vikings’ starter

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As veteran quarterback Sam Darnold made his way to the podium on Tuesday afternoon at TCO Performance Center, he joked that it’s been a long time since he has spoken to reporters.

Though he did actually speak to reporters a couple of months ago after signing with the Vikings in free agency, it has been awhile since Darnold has had all of the responsibilities that come with being a starting quarterback in the NFL. He served as a backup with the San Francisco 49ers last season, and thus, did not have to regularly speak to reporters.

That’s about to change now that Darnold is in line to be the starter for the Vikings this season, an opportunity that isn’t lost on him as he tries to revitalize his career.

“It’s awesome to be able to come out here,” said Darnold, who signed a 1-year, $10 million contract with the Vikings. “Obviously to a new team I wasn’t really sure what the vibe was going to be like. These guys have been awesome. They’ve welcomed me with open arms, and I know a lot of the new guys feel the same exact way.”

With the Vikings in the early stages of organized team activities, Darnold has been taking the reps with the starters while he learns as much as he can from head coach Kevin O’Connell, offensive coordinator Wes Phillips and quarterbacks coach Josh McCown, among others.

“I enjoy the process of learning a new offense,” Darnold said. “Obviously a lot of hard work has to go into it, and I still am learning a ton.”

Meanwhile, rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy is learning the ropes after being selected with the No. 10 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft out of Michigan. There already seems to be a genuine connection between Darnold and McCarthy despite the fact that they will be battling each other for playing time this fall.

“He’s been asking questions and I’ve been answering,” Darnold said. “We’re just going to continue to have that bond.”

It’s funny because not too long ago Darnold was a young player himself after being selected with the No. 3 pick in the 2015 NFL Draft out of Southern California. Now he’s mentoring a young player and taking a lot of pride in it. What has been the biggest lesson he’s learned so far?

“Just being able to play consistent football, I think, is the hardest thing in this league,” Darnold said. “That’s what I’m continuing to set out to do.”

He has struggled to string good games together throughout his NFL career, whether it be as a starter for the New York Jets or the Carolina Panthers. He’s hoping to change that now that he’s in line to be the starter for the Vikings.

“That’s kind of been the biggest hurdle,” Darnold said. “Just continuing to stack good weeks on top of good weeks this season is my goal.”

Briefly

Not surprisingly, star receiver Justin Jefferson was not present at OTAs as he and his representatives continue to negotiate a contract extension.

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Democrats propose ban on officials receiving payments from foreign governments after Trump probe

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WASHINGTON — Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday that would prohibit U.S. officials from accepting money, payments or gifts from foreign governments without congressional consent, their response to a yearslong probe into former President Donald Trump’s overseas business dealings.

The proposal led by Rep. Jamie Raskin and Sen. Richard Blumenthal would enforce the Constitution’s ban on emoluments, which prohibits the president from accepting foreign gifts and money without Congress’ permission. Democrats say Trump brazenly ignored the clause as president as foreign government officials flocked to his hotels and properties.

“Although we have not needed to develop a full-blown legislative machinery to enforce the Emoluments Clause for more than two centuries, Congress must now enact a law to prevent Presidents from ever again exploiting the presidency for self-enrichment by selling out our government to foreign states,” Raskin said in a statement Tuesday.

The legislation is unlikely to advance in Congress, particularly in the House, which Republicans control. But Democrats say the reform is necessary after a lengthy investigation by their House Oversight Committee staff found that Trump’s businesses received nearly $8 million from 20 foreign governments during his presidency.

It outlined how foreign governments and their entities poured millions into various Trump properties, including the Trump International Hotels in Washington and Las Vegas as well as two Trump properties in New York. The payees ranged from China to Saudi Arabia to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The report states that the Chinese government made the largest total payment to Trump’s private business interests through their various financial institutions, some of which were under investigation by the Justice Department while Trump was in office. Saudi Arabia is also cited as spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at Trump’s properties around the time the former president signed an arms deal with the Saudi government worth more than $100 billion.

The 156-page report provided what Democrats purport is concrete evidence of improper activity by Trump. Republicans have unsuccessfully tried to accuse President Joe Biden of such activity as part of their impeachment inquiry.

GOP lawmakers have asserted that the president’s family has traded on the Biden name, by trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and his son Hunter Biden and his business associates.

However, Republicans have not been able to produce evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office.

Government ethics lawyers condemned Trump’s decision to hold onto his vast business empire after taking office, saying the decision provided ample opportunity for people who want to influence U.S. policy to curry favor with the president.

In response, Trump and his legal team asserted that critics are misinterpreting the emoluments clauses, saying that the framers of the Constitution did not intend for them to cover fair-value transactions between a business and its customers, such as offering a hotel room for the night for payment.

The legislation would specifically ban federal officeholders — the president, vice president, members of the Cabinet, members of Congress and other senior officials — from accepting future payments while in office and for two years after leaving office without first obtaining Congress’ approval. It would also expand to include money and gifts directly or indirectly from members of royal families and state-controlled enterprises.

To maintain oversight of any conflicts, the bill would require federal officials going forward to include any foreign payments they have received on their annual ethics disclosure forms.

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How gun violence spread across American cities

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — The sequence of events that led to the killing of Jason Keys was so confounding that friends and family did not quite believe it until they saw the video evidence in court.

Keys and his wife, Charae Williams Keys, were getting into their car after a Father’s Day visit in 2021 with her grandparents in a leafy neighborhood near Walnut Hill Park in Columbus, Ohio. A 72-year-old neighbor carrying a rifle accosted them in the belief, he later told police, that Keys had let the air out of his daughter’s tires and poisoned his lawn.

Charae Williams Keys, whose late husband, Jason Keys, died after being shot several times, in Columbus, Ohio, on Feb. 15, 2024. Keys held her late husband’s wedding ring on a necklace, which she said she rarely takes off. (Sylvia Jarrus/The New York Times)

Jason Keys, who was carrying a pistol in his waistband, and his father-in-law tried to disarm the man, knocking him to the ground, while another relative ran back inside to get a .22 rifle. While Charae Keys ducked behind the car to call 911, she heard multiple gunshots. She emerged to find her husband mortally wounded.

It took a moment for everyone to realize that the shots had come from a fourth gun across the street. Elias Smith, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, had stepped to his front door with a so-called ghost gun, an AR-style rifle that Smith had assembled from parts ordered online. Within seconds, he opened fire, hitting Keys five times.

“What are you shooting for?” a relative of Keys can be heard asking on surveillance video.

Smith answered, “I don’t know.”

It was an encounter emblematic of gun violence in America today, a dispute that might not have turned deadly but for firearms in increasingly easy reach. And it exemplified a striking spread in fatal shootings nationwide since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 — a period in which Americans have purchased more guns, the Supreme Court has made them harder to regulate, and many states, including Ohio, have loosened restrictions on firearms.

The block, on the far east side of Columbus, had been a haven, with little if any gun violence. That kind of peace was what had drawn Charae Keys’ grandparents to the area decades earlier.

And then, a burst of gunfire would take the life of Jason Keys and with it, the neighborhood’s sense of security.

Many are closer to violence

A New York Times analysis of fatal shootings across the country found that as the toll of gun violence rose during the pandemic, the carnage expanded its boundaries. Though gun violence remains highly concentrated, more than 47 million Americans lived within a five-minute walk of a fatal shooting between 2020 and 2023, up from 39 million over the prior four-year period. In Columbus, 41% of residents lived within a quarter mile of a fatal shooting, compared with 28% before the pandemic.

The same spread of gun violence seen in Columbus took place in other cities.

St. Paul Police investigators at the scene of a shooting on the 1900 block of Marshall Avenue Monday, April 1, 2024 that is being investigated as a homicide. A report of a suicide in St. Paul’s Merriam Park neighborhood turned into a homicide investigation as police said they learned more details. (Courtesy of the St. Paul Police Department)

In Atlanta, 58% of residents lived near a fatal shooting during the pandemic years, up from 36% in the four years before 2020. In Minneapolis, half of its residents were exposed, up from a third. In St. Paul, it was 36%, up from 28%.

In 2021, the number of killings in Columbus spiked to 207, unfathomable in a city where most years saw closer to 100. Last year, there were 149.

In Columbus, as elsewhere, the carnage has been marked by the involvement of conspicuously young people. Last June, two Columbus boys, 14 and 16, were charged in the shooting death of a girl in eighth grade. In August, a 13-year-old was arrested after a 15-year-old football player was killed at a shopping plaza.

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Columbus is far from alone in its troubles. In New Mexico last September, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a state of emergency for Albuquerque after shootings claimed the lives of an 11-year-old, a 5-year-old and a woman who confronted a group of teenagers in her stolen car. Louisville, Kentucky, calculated that gun homicides were costing the city $104 million a year in law enforcement, medical care and lost tax revenue.

Even though the tide of shootings and killings that washed across the country with the pandemic began to ebb last year, the improvement was uneven. Columbus closed out 2023 with more homicides than the year before — as did Dallas; Topeka, Kansas; Memphis, Tennessee; and Washington.

There is optimism that 2024 is going to be better in Columbus, which has seen homicide numbers fall dramatically so far this year, with 36 as of last week, compared with 70 in the same period the year before. Gun violence nationwide is still higher than it was before the pandemic: The number of fatal shootings in the first quarter of 2024 was 13% higher than it was in the same period in 2019, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

In 2022, Mayor Andrew Ginther declared gun violence a public health crisis.

Gun regulations

For more than a decade, the Ohio Legislature had been scaling back gun regulations. In 2014, they rescinded a ban on high-capacity magazines.

Then, in 2019, an assailant in Dayton used one to fire 41 rounds in under 30 seconds, killing nine people and wounding 17.

The outcry that followed prompted Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, to promise changes that included expanded background checks and a “red flag” law allowing for the temporary removal of guns from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. The proposals went nowhere.

Instead, in 2020 the state enacted a “stand your ground” law supported by gun rights organizations, expanding established limits on when a shooting can be deemed self-defense.

In 2022, Ohio lawmakers allowed school boards to arm teachers who completed 24 hours of training, eliminated permit and training requirements for concealed weapons, and banned cities from prohibiting gun sales during riots.

Proponents of expansive gun rights argue that increased regulation only makes it harder for lawful buyers to obtain guns for legitimate reasons, and that criminals will always find ways to skirt stricter laws.

Facing a mounting body count in 2021 and 2022, Columbus tried to test the state ban on local lawmaking. The city enacted legislation requiring guns to be safely stored around children and banning high-capacity magazines. But the measures were stalled by court challenges, one by the state attorney general, a Republican, and the other by private citizens. Columbus, in turn, has challenged the 2023 state law that prohibits cities from halting the sale of guns and ammunition during riots.

“I feel like at times we have one or two arms tied behind our back trying to fight gun violence,” said Ginther, a Democrat who just began his third term. “And it can be very frustrating because the people are angry. They want more to be done.”

The sharp decline in homicides this year is an encouraging sign, but officials say they are up against a tidal wave of guns.

In 2020, there were 11.3 million guns manufactured in the United States for domestic consumption, more than twice the number produced in 2010, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. There are also signs that more guns are vanishing from the legal market.

Between 2017 and 2021, the percentage of guns recovered from crimes that had been purchased within the previous year steadily increased, according to ATF data. A short “time to crime” can indicate an illegal straw purchase intended to evade background checks, minimum age laws and other safeguards.

‘Ticking time bombs’

Walnut Hill Park Drive still has its broad front lawns, backyard play forts and late-model pickups parked in circular drives. But much has changed on the block since Father’s Day in 2021.

Elias Smith, the former Marine who shot Jason Keys, no longer lives in his mother’s basement — he is serving 15 years to life for murder. His trial included evidence that he had both post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury.

Charae Williams Keys with a photo of her with her late husband, Jason Keys. (Sylvia Jarrus/The New York Times)

Robert Thomas, the neighbor who instigated the episode with his rifle, was acquitted of an involuntary manslaughter charge but convicted of aggravated menacing. He was placed on house arrest at his daughter’s home and ordered to stay away from the block.

Charae Keys, who was wounded by shrapnel in the shooting that killed her husband, is still recovering both physically and mentally. She and her husband had both known victims of gun violence. That was one reason they lived in a high-security apartment complex, went to work, went to church and tried to “stay out of the way,” she said. It was not enough.

“Now we have people walking around who are just ticking time bombs,” Keys said. “I’ve done everything in my power to keep me from violence, but it’s chasing me.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Forest Lake chooses finalists for city administrator position

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The Forest Lake City Council has selected six finalists for the position of city administrator.

The six finalists are:

Renae Fry, former city administrator in North Branch, and former administrative coordinator in Sauk County, Wis.
Joe Gaa, former city administrator in Marshalltown, Iowa, former city manager in Aberdeen, S.D., former city administrator in Dickinson, N.D., and former city manager in Chariton, Iowa
Thomas Hutka, former town manager for the Town of Newington, Conn., former city manager for the City of Port Huron, Mich., and former director of public works for Broward County, Fla.
Eric Johnson, former city administrator in Oak Park Heights, former city administrator for the Village of Winneconne, Wis., and former director of economic development for Rusk County, Wis.
Pat Oman, former county administrator for Becker County, Minn., former county administrator for Mille Lacs County, Minn., and former city administrator/executive director of the HRA of Moose Lake, Minn.
Devin Swanberg. village administrator for the Village of Osceola, Wis., former city administrator for Harmony, Minn., and former economic development director for the Pine Island Economic Development Authority

Interim City Administrator Kristina Handt, who had applied for the position, said she dropped out of the running when she realized Forest Lake “wasn’t the right fit for me at this time.”

Handt, who formerly served as city administrator in Lake Elmo and in Scandia, said she loves local government work, particularly working on basic government services like roads, water and sewer infrastructure, public safety and economic development.

In Forest Lake, the city administrator also spends a fair amount of time on the Forest Lake Airport; the Castlewood Golf Course, a 9-hole course owned by the city; boat-dock leases and other extra services — areas that are not of particular interest to her, she said.

“Forest Lake is a great community, and I hope they find the good, strong leadership they need to be successful going forward,” she said. “I’m committed to helping the city any way I can as they continue to work through this transition.”

Handt was hired as interim administrator and clerk in mid-January after the Forest Lake City Council voted unanimously to terminate former city administrator Patrick Casey’s employment contract. The vote came after a closed session to discuss Casey’s annual performance evaluation.

Final interviews for the position will be on June 20, said Bart Fischer, the management consultant at David Drown Associates who is handling the search.

A total of 45 applicants applied for the job. The advertised salary range is $151,580 to $189,475.

Fischer is overseeing the search; the city is paying DDA $24,000 for their services.

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