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Walz: Legal Weed Likely by May

Plus 3M to halt poisonings, Wells Fargo ordered to pay up, and a councilmember regrets his offensive posts in today's Flyover.

Facebook (weed leaf art courtesy of Racket)

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.

Legal Weed? Itโ€™s Gonna Be May, Says Guv.

In an interview with the annoyingly formatted, designed, and spelled Semafor, Gov. Tim Walz laid out some of his agenda for the upcoming legislative session. Among his priorities: โ€œto codify access to abortion services and reproductive rights,โ€ โ€œto show that government can functionโ€ (meaning no more down-to-the-wire special sessions), increased school funding, and, oh yes, to send out those checks to individual Minnesotans heโ€™s been so keen on for so long. But the big takeaway is that Walz seems more bullish on legal weed than some DFL legislators. โ€œIโ€™d say that by May, Minnesota will have gotten this done,โ€ Walz said confidently. Also notably, he brought up the question of expunging the records of those previously convicted of marijuana-related crimesโ€”a moral necessity if businesses and government are about to make bank on a product that got so many (especially people of color) locked up not so long ago.

3M to Stop Poisoning Us In Two Years

With a notable nudge from regulators in the U.S. and abroad, our good neighbors at 3M have stated they will stop producing their nasty-ass โ€œforever chemicals,โ€ aka PFAS, which never break down and contaminate the environment in perpetuity. Not tomorrow, of courseโ€”what kind of fantasyland do you live in where corporations have to stop doing bad things immediately? But by 2025, and, by the end of the year, 3M will stop using PFAS as well. Beginning with an unsupported assertion and ending with gibberish, 3M CEO Mike Roman said โ€œWhile PFAS can be safely made and used, we also see an opportunity to lead in a rapidly evolving external regulatory and business landscape to make the greatest impact for those we serve.โ€ Donโ€™t credit this decision to a change of heart on the part of the corporationโ€”proposed changes to EPA rules and a settlement with Belgian regulators made it practically a necessity. โ€œNo one should trust 3Mโ€™s commitment to the do the right thing,โ€ said Scott Faber, of the Environmental Working Group, which has campaigned against PFAS. โ€œThey never have before.โ€

Wells Fargo Ordered to Shell Out $3.7 Billion, Thinks This Rehabs Its Image

Wells Fargo sucks so hard that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is openly trash talking them. Yesterday, the bureau told the behemoth bank to pay $2 billion to consumers, tacking on an additional $1.7 billion penalty fee for all their fuckery, which includes improperly applying overdraft fees on checking accounts, illegal fees and interest on loans, and wrongly denying refinance applications. โ€œWells Fargo is a corporate recidivist that puts one out of three Americans at risk for potential harm,โ€ CFPB Director Rohit Chopra told reporters. Thatโ€™s a lot of people! Meanwhile, Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf views this payout as good PR that will โ€œtransform operating practices at Wells Fargo and to put these issues behind us.โ€ Forgive us for not taking that very seriously; several cited violations are from as recent as 2022. Wells Fargoโ€”which is headquartered in San Francisco but owns the naming rights to the third-tallest skyscraper in Minnesotaโ€”was sanctioned multiple times for consumer violations in 2018, eventually paying out over $1 billion.

Minneapolis Councilman Jamal Osman Said Some Really Bad Stuff

Itโ€™s so easy to never say โ€œWhereโ€™s Hitler when you need him?โ€ย Or โ€œJews will never be pleased unless you follow their ways.โ€ย Or โ€œYES YES YES MARRIAGE IS BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN!!!!!โ€ Or, really, any of the weird, terrible things Minneapolis City Councilmember Jamal Osman once posted to Facebook. Minnesota Reformerโ€™s Deena Winter brought the since-deleted posts to the surface today, and quoted Osman as saying โ€œthe heat of social mediaโ€ is to blame. (He also says he doesnโ€™t remember writing the decade-old posts.) Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who is Jewish, tells the Reformer that Osman โ€œapologized unequivocally and expressed deep remorseโ€ for language that was โ€œdivisive and dangerous for Jewish and LGBTQ people.โ€ The mayor forgives Osman, who swears heโ€™s a friend to all the earthโ€™s people these days. The Ward 6 councilmember could face an uphill reelection effort next year, especially considering the Reformer exposed fishy numbers around a nonprofit run by his wife, Ilo Amba.