Daily Digest: Health care a contentious issue in CD2

Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday. Here's the Digest.

1. Craig and Lewis fight over health care. What's the biggest issue in the southern metro area this election year? Health care, said Angie Craig, the endorsed Democrat seeking to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Jason Lewis in a rematch of their 2016 contest. Craig said voters are constantly raising concerns about cost of health care. "It's what every single individual that I talk to brings up to me as the first or second concern in their family," she said. And she blamed Lewis and other Republicans who control the House, Senate and White House for not making health care more affordable. "Jason Lewis has had almost two years now to come up with any sort of fix that makes health care more affordable," Craig said. "Republicans in Congress have not done anything to make health care more affordable or more accessible in this country." Lewis pointed the finger back at Craig and Democrats who support the Affordable Care Act, which he calls Obamacare and says made health care more expensive and less accessible. "What I tried to do with reforming health care was to make certain young and healthy people could get into the insurance pools with lower premiums, a catastrophic coverage, major medical is what my parents used to buy," he said. (MPR News)

2. Lewis and Emmer still mum on Helsinki. President Donald Trump’s explosive comments this week about U.S. intelligence agencies and Russia are reverberating through Minnesota politics, with one of the state’s Republican congressmen rebuking Trump while the other two remained silent for the second day in a row. “The bottom line is this: Russia is not our ally, and they need to be confronted about their hostile actions that include interfering in our elections, undermining basic democratic values, poisoning citizens of other countries, cyberattacks,” U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen said in an interview Tuesday. “The president should clearly understand and know who we’re dealing with in Russia.” Paulsen’s fellow Republicans, Reps. Tom Emmer and Jason Lewis, continued to decline interview requests and issued no public statements in response to Trump’s remarks. In a joint appearance Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump said he had no reason to think Russia interfered with the U.S. election in 2016 — despite U.S. intelligence agencies concluding it did. On Tuesday, Trump said he wanted to “clarify” his remarks, saying he had misspoken. (Star Tribune)

3. Officers involved in fatal shooting identified. The three Carver County Sheriff's deputies involved in the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Chanhassen boy on Friday have been named. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal of Apprehension identified them as Corporal Jacob Hodge, with the department 18 years, shot his gun during the incident; Deputy Travis Larson, with Carver County Sheriff's office for two years, shot his gun and used his Taser and pepper spray; and Corporal Josh Baker, who used his Taser during the incident. He's been with the department for 11 years. The three were among the deputies called out to a home in Chanhassen on a report of a teen, later identified as Archer Amorosi, being suicidal and threatening his mother with knives and a baseball bat. (MPR News)

4. About 250 Somalis could be forced to leave if feds end program. Hundreds of Somalis who fled violence and famine in their home country could be forced to leave if the Trump administration ends a special immigration program that has allowed them to live and work here legally. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will decide by Thursday whether it will extend temporary legal protections to approximately 250 Somalis who sought refuge in the United States, including some who have been living in this country for nearly three decades. A majority of those who would be affected live in Minnesota, which is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Somali-Americans. The special designation for Somalia was first approved by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 in response to a brutal civil war, and has since been extended 22 times under multiple presidents. Known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, the designation has shielded many Somalis from deportation and enabled them to build families and businesses here. (Star Tribune)

5. Four states sue over new federal tax law. A coalition of states led by New York sued the federal government Tuesday, alleging that last year’s tax overhaul was politically motivated and designed to interfere with the rights of states to manage their finances. New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland joined New York in the federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New York. The lawsuit takes aim at a part of the new tax law limiting federal tax deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000. The plaintiffs said the new law raises the federal tax liability of millions of taxpayers in those states, making it more difficult for the states to maintain their taxation policies. The tax law also seeks to force the states to slash public spending, the plaintiffs said. “It was a political attempt to hurt Democratic states,” Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters. In 2015, the states with the highest percentage of tax filers who claimed deductions for state and local taxes above $10,000 were blue states, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. A spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The Treasury Department said it is reviewing the complaint. (Wall Street Journal)

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