Two people are hospitalized after suffering injuries when a house exploded and caught fire in River Falls Monday night.
Neighbors helped the victims escape the fire following the explosion Monday night, according to city officials.
Utility crews checked to make sure other homes in the neighborhood were safe. The cause of the explosion is under investigation. City Administrator Scot Simpson said there’s no indication it was a criminal act.
Democrats are using the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump as a political “weapon” to bar the former president from seeking office again and are pursuing a case that is “undemocratic” and unconstitutional, one of Trump’s lawyers says.
Trump faces trial next week on accusations that he incited a deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The House passed a single article of impeachment against Trump one week before he left office. If Trump is convicted, Congress could bar him from holding public office again.
A president has never faced an impeachment trial after leaving office, but Democrats say there is precedent, pointing to an 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who resigned his office in a last-ditch attempt to avoid an impeachment trial. The Senate held it anyway. Trump is also the first president in American history to be impeached twice.
One of Trump’s lawyers said the legal team does not plan to argue that Trump lost the election because of fraud, as Trump has repeatedly insisted. Instead, they will argue that the trial itself is unconstitutional, and that Trump’s words were protected by the First Amendment and did not incite a riot.
House Democrats are expected to play videos and verbally recount the violence of the day in hopes of stirring the Republicans.
The nine House impeachment managers who will argue the case also are expected to lay out how they believe Trump’s actions over the previous several months led up to it and eventually incited the insurrectionists to act.
The St. Thomas women’s and men’s basketball teams play their first games since before the pandemic at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night.
The women, who ended last season without an NCAA tournament berth, play Bethel at home, who ended the 2019-2020 season with a 26-2 record and swept the MIAC regular season and playoff titles before losing to Bethany Lutheran in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
The men, whose season ended due to COVID-19 before they could face St. John’s in the NCAA Sweet 16, play at Hamline, who finished in the bottom half of the MIAC last year.
Spectators are not allowed, but the contests will be live streamed, according to Tommie Sports. Watch TommieMedia for the post-game stories.
Mia Laube can be reached at mia.laube@stthomas.edu.