The city is preparing for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial.
Minneapolis prepares for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial. Scott Olson/Getty Images

The jury deliberates: As Matt Baume wrote in Slog AM today, the arguments in the Derek Chauvin trial are over. The jury started deliberating this afternoon. Meanwhile, in anticipation of a verdict, Minneapolis has turned the downtown Hennepin County courthouse into "a fortress," according to NPR. It's "surrounded by tall fences topped with barbed wire." Did they take notes from the Seattle Police Department's East Precinct? Buildings are boarded up, military vehicles are stationed nearby the courthouse, and the National Guard is doing armed patrols.

And there's a security perimeter outside the other killer cop's home: The city of Champlin, Minnesota spent $9,000 to defend the home of Kim Potter, the officer who shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright.

A censure for Maxine Waters: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy introduced a resolution to censor Congresswoman Maxine Waters because of comments she made at a protest over the weekend. Waters encouraged Minnesota protesters to "stay on the street" and "get more confrontational" if the jury doesn't find Chauvin guilty for the murder of George Floyd. "I hope we get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty," she told reporters, according to CBS News.

A judge ordered detention for a Proud Boy leader: Auburn-area Ethan Nordean is a leader of the far-right Proud Boys group. Nordean is awaiting trial for allegedly orchestrating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Two federal judges previously ruled Nordean could stay out of jail in the lead up to his trial, but earlier this month a third judge ruled that Nordean should be detained. The judge believed Nordean could potentially carry out a similar attack again before his trial or that he would try to flee. Notably, Nordean said he lost his passport and that someone stole one of his guns.

Capitol Police officer died of "natural causes:" Brian Sicknick, the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died one day after the insurrection, suffered "strokes and died of natural causes," according to a medical examiner's report. While the examiner said that the events of the insurrection contributed to Sicknick's condition, the Justice Department can no longer pursue homicide charges against the two men who were arrested for assaulting Sicknick.

A brief interlude: Sorry, this is a lot of heavy news at the top here. I cannot change that. But here's a small distraction.

Okay, back to hell.

Public health officials are worried about post-COVID: Local and state public health entities were drastically underfunded before COVID-19. Now, after billions of dollars in investments, these critical workers are chugging along. However, many public officials are worried that funding will dry up in the wake of COVID-19, leaving public health entities vulnerable and underfunded yet again. Washington Senator Patty Murray is working on a bill to set aside a guaranteed $4.5 billion annually for public health. That will be crucial in the post-COVID world, especially since public health workers left their departments in droves during the pandemic.

Case closed on Pennsylvania's 2020 election: The U.S. Supreme Court just rejected the last Republican appeal challenging the mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania's 2020 election.

Union says Amazon interfered with vote: The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union filed objections to the National Labor Relations Board over the unsuccessful union vote in Bessemer, Alabama. The union claimed that Amazon "threatened workers with layoffs and even the closing of the warehouse if they unionized," the Associated Press reported. Additionally, the union is concerned about a mailbox Amazon installed in the warehouse parking lot because "it created the false appearance that Amazon was conducting the election."

Peloton's treadmill woes: The company best known for its expensive stationary exercise bike faces controversy over its $4,295 treadmill, Tread+. The Consumer Product Safety Commission advised consumers to stop using the product after customers reported 39 accidents involving the treadmill. Several children have reportedly been trapped under the treadmill. One child died in March.

It's Boba-geddon: There's a boba shortage. Tapioca balls popular in milk tea and other drinks are hard to find worldwide due to COVID-caused supply chain disruptions and a drought in Taiwan, where around 90% of the world's boba is sourced. Your favorite tea shops could run out of boba any day now, depending on their stock.

Here's a sort of fun fact:

Read the Yelp reviews before jumping out of a plane: Another person died while skydiving at Skydive Lodi Parachute Center in California. The site "has recorded 22 recorded deaths since it opened 1981 and nine of those deaths have occurred since 2016," SF Gate reports. The woman who died this past Saturday was allegedly an experienced skydiver and she died when her parachute became tangled. This death comes just a month after the site settled a $40 million suit for a death that occurred five years ago, where an 18-year-old boy and his instructor died after their parachute didn't open. The instructor wasn't properly licensed.

Big day for a little copter: Today, NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter successfully hovered and landed on an alien world. This is a huge deal. NASA has now flown and landed an aircraft on another planet.

A rosier budget forecast for Seattle: Hey, good-ish news! A new city budget forecast reports that Seattle will see something around a $20 million bump in general fund revenue. "The increase is driven by substantial upward revisions in expected funds from utility taxes (an additional $9 million), B&O taxes ($5.7 million), sales taxes ($4.7) million, and property taxes ($3.8 million)," according to a press release from the Seattle City Council this afternoon. That's not a lot, given our nearly $7 billion general fund, but it's something. The forecast—which the council will discuss tomorrow—includes some other interesting findings: The COVID-19 recession was severe but will likely be short, tech is helping Seattle recover on the jobs front, and Seattle is spending less than the rest of the U.S.

Yeah, okay, sure: "China denies tearing down mosques, claims it's 'reconstructing' them for Muslims' safety"

The U.S. isn't close to hitting 2030 climate goals: Some California scientists are trying to take the carbon out of the atmosphere with giant carbon-sucking vacuums and sequester it underground. This, the scientists tell the Los Angeles Times, is a logistics nightmare. Limiting emissions, however, won't be enough to stop the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change spells out. The carbon vacuums would be the largest infrastructure project in California history, and scientists would basically be starting from scratch to build them.