Minnesota legislators will meet Thursday for action on COVID-19 relief

Minnesota legislators who have been working outside the public eye to reach a deal on COVID-19 relief say they will convene Thursday at the Capitol to approve the aid.

While lawmakers have essentially recessed until mid-April because of the COVID-19 emergency, members of the state House disclosed details Tuesday of meetings they have been holding for the past week to discuss bills ranging from driver's license expiration forgiveness to child care policy proposals related to the coronavirus.

They are also reviewing Gov. Tim Walz's proposal to spend an additional $356 million on COVID-19 response.

Walz's supplemental budget proposal would include money to help child care centers, food shelves, homeless shelters and veterans weather the pandemic. It would create a $200 million COVID-19 fund in the state treasury that state agencies could use broadly to respond to the pandemic. The fund could be used to pay for increased staff and health care needs in prisons, or overtime for people working with direct care and treatment programs that serve people with developmental disabilities, mental illness and addiction.

"Legislative leaders have agreed to reconvene on Thursday. We are continuing to work closely with the Walz Administration on urgent COVID-19 matters to protect the health and well-being of Minnesotans. We will publicly release details on specific legislation on the House and Senate websites as soon as we can," Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Senate Republican Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said in a joint statement.

For lawmakers to pass the relief bills on Thursday and send them to Walz for his signature still requires the politically divided Legislature to strike a deal.

Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said in a statement that Minnesotans are facing significant medical concerns and financial hardships and the House's goal is to pass legislation to safeguard people's health and economic well-being.

She released an outline Tuesday of informal working group meetings that have taken place via conference calls that were not open to reporters and the public. She said the House is trying to create opportunities for people to engage in the process, possibly by making committee hearings available to the public online. For now, people can submit comment forms on the state's website or reach legislators to share their thoughts.

Thousands of people have contacted DFL House members and heard back in the past week, Hortman said.

As lawmakers gather this week, Hortman and Gazelka said they will follow Minnesota Department of Health guidelines to keep legislators, staff and the public safe.

Jessie Van Berkel • 651-925-5044

WASHINGTON — Rioters locked up for their roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack were released while judges began dismissing dozens of pending cases Tuesday after President Donald Trump's sweeping grant of clemency to all 1,500-plus people charged in the insurrection that shook the foundation of American democracy.

With the stroke of a pen on his first day back in the White House, Trump's order upended the largest prosecution in Justice Department history, freeing from prison people caught on camera viciously attacking police as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after his 2020 election loss.

The federal Bureau of Prisons by Tuesday morning had released all of the more than 200 people in its custody for Jan. 6 crimes, officials told The Associated Press.

The pardons and commutations cement Trump's efforts to downplay the violence that left more than 100 police officers injured as the mob fueled by his lies about the 2020 election stormed the Capitol and halted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory.

Trump's decision to grant clemency to even rioters who assaulted police — whom his own vice president recently said ''obviously'' shouldn't be pardoned — underscores how Trump has returned to power emboldened to take actions once believed politically unthinkable. And it shows how Trump plans to radically overhaul the Justice Department that also brought criminal charges against him in two cases he contends were politically motivated.

''The implications are clear,'' said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian. ''Trump will go to great lengths to protect those who act in his name. This is the culmination of his effort to rewrite Jan 6, in this case using his presidential muscle to free those who were part of a violent assault on the Capitol.''

As defendants celebrated their release outside lockups across the country, the federal prosecutor's office in Washington that spent the last four years charging rioters filed a flurry of motions to dismiss cases that have yet to go to trial. The motions were marked with the name of the man Trump has named to lead, at least temporarily, the capital's U.S. attorney's office — Ed Martin, a board member of a group called the Patriot Freedom Project, which portrays the Jan. 6 defendants as victims of political persecution.

Trump defended the pardons Tuesday, saying the defendants had ''already served years in prison'' in conditions the president described as ''disgusting'' and ''inhumane.''

The former leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy in the most serious cases brought by the Justice Department, were both released from prison hours after Trump signed the clemency order. Stewart Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, was serving an 18-year prison sentence, and Enrique Tarrio, of Miami, was serving a 22-year sentence.

After their release from federal custody, Rhodes and some other Jan. 6 defendants gathered in frigid temperatures outside the District of Columbia jail, where a handful of defendants remained behind bars as of Tuesday afternoon. Some supporters of Capitol rioters danced while songs like ''Jailbreak'' by Thin Lizzy played on a loudspeaker.

Outside the jail, Rhodes continued to push the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and he claimed Capitol riot defendants couldn't get a fair trial in Washington. Rhodes said he had ''full faith'' all along that Trump was going to offer clemency to the Jan. 6 defendants.

Another Jan. 6 defendant, Kevin Loftus, traveled to the jail in Washington after his release from another lockup. Loftus was sentenced in December to six months behind bars for violating the terms of his probation after trying to fly overseas to join the Russian military and fight against Ukraine. He said he was going to have the pardon from Trump framed.

''I'm just a working man, dude. People like us don't get presidential pardons,'' Loftus said.

John Pierce, an attorney who has represented several Jan. 6 defendants, said he was ''pleasantly surprised'' that Trump's pardons went as far as they did, considering Vance's recent comments that suggested only nonviolent offenders would receive relief. Trump's pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, also indicated that she did not believe violent rioters should be pardoned, telling lawmakers at her confirmation hearing that she condemned violence against police.

"He did not have to do this. He had a lot of opposition within his own party," Pierce said. ''I do think it showed a lot of courage by President Trump to pardon everybody, so we are obviously grateful for that.'' Pierce said clemency for all the defendants was justified because, he contends, they couldn't get a fair jury in the nation's heavily Democratic capital.

The federal courthouse in Washington, which has been jammed with Jan. 6 cases over the last four years, was quiet Tuesday as proceedings were abruptly canceled. Hallways that would have been teeming with prospective jurors were empty. Judges who would have been hearing cases were not on the bench.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly made a brief appearance in her sixth-floor courtroom to formally dismiss a Jan. 6 case against a father and son from Minnesota whose trial started last week. The court had notified jurors that they didn't need to return this week.

''The parties are excused,'' the judge said, without commenting on Trump's clemency order.

The son, 22-year-old Caleb Fuller, hugged his attorney and then his mother, Amanda, who wore a sequined jacket with an American flag on the front and the words ''Proud American'' emblazoned on the back.

Those pardoned include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the attacks were captured on surveillance or body camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.

One man was sentenced to seven years in prison for trying to smash a widow with a metal tomahawk and hurling makeshift weapons at police officers guarding the building. Another man received 20 years behind bars for swinging poles at officers defending a tunnel, striking an officer in the head with a metal crutch and attacking police with pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture.

A Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot by police while trying to climb through the broken window of a barricaded Capitol doorway. Authorities cleared the officer of any wrongdoing after an investigation. Three other people in the crowd died of medical emergencies.

At least four officers who were at the Capitol later died by suicide. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner later determined he died of natural causes.

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Associated Press journalists Chris Megerian and Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.