Good evening,
You can't fire her — she quits. Now-former Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Commissioner Laura Bishop resigned Tuesday rather than be rejected by the Republican-controlled Minnesota Senate in a confirmation hearing. Deputy Commissioner Peter Tester is leading the department on an interim basis. [Read more from Brian Bakst]
The bigger picture: Bishop would have been the third of Gov. Tim Walz's commissioners to be denied confirmation by the Senate, all three after having served for years until being suddenly rejected. Previously removed were Commissioner of Commerce Steve Kelley and Commissioner of the Labor and Industry Nancy Leppink. It's not certain that the Senate would have rejected Bishop, but Gazelka apparently told Walz she didn't have the votes to get confirmed.
Behind Bishop's ouster: Bishop's department had led the development of Walz's controversial "Clean Cars" plan, which will gradually raise emissions standards for cars in Minnesota and require more zero-emission vehicles to be sold in the state. Senate Republicans tried strenuously to get Walz to drop or delay "Clean Cars" as part of budget negotiations this year — at one point threatening to hold up the entire environment budget over the issue. Walz won that showdown, but after a budget was finally passed, the Senate took aim at the commissioner who had been implementing "Clean Cars."
What's next: It doesn't seem like any other Walz cabinet officials are in danger of Senate rejection before the Senate adjourns later this week, though it's possible this could change.
The really big picture: The showdowns between Walz and the Senate over his cabinet may be relatively novel for Minnesota politics, but they're part of a centuries-old tension: Are government ministers primarily responsible to the executive or legislative branch? In one extreme, the leader simply appoints whoever they wish to lead executive departments, with little or no input from legislators. In another extreme, ministers are responsible to (and often must come from) the legislature. Losing the support of the legislature can bring down an entire administration. To over-simplify, back in the Early Modern period, kings tended to appoint their own advisers with few formal constraints, and over the 18th and 19th centuries parliamentary forms of government saw a slow but decisive expansion of the power of the legislature over ministers and a concomitant reduction of the power of the head of state (often to purely symbolic levels). Presidential systems of government, such as the United States (and, in microcosm, individual states) have an elected head of state who generally has primary authority over ministers.
So you can imagine a situation where, without any changes to the text of the constitution, a custom emerged whereby the Senate stopped giving leeway to the executive to appoint advisers of their choosing, but instead refused to confirm anyone whose views didn't conform to those of the Senate majority. This is sort of the case in France's current Fifth Republic, where the elected president has broad powers, including to appoint ministers, but in practice ministers must have support from a parliamentary majority. When the French president and parliamentary majority have been of different parties, the result has been a situation called cohabitation, effectively a compromise where the two sides divide up control (often with the president controlling foreign policy and the prime minister domestic policy). This sort of situation is especially likely to occur when executives and legislatures are elected at different times (as is the case in Minnesota, where Walz was elected in 2018 and the Senate in 2020). France hasn't seen any cohabitation since it shortened the presidential term to align the two elections.
But while you can imagine a state shifting to such a semi-presidential-style form of government, any attempt by the legislature (or especially one chamber thereof) to force such a system would likely produce a constitutional crisis , a showdown paralyzing government until one side blinked or a compromise was struck. Firing occasional commissioners doesn't rise to the level of a governmental crisis. While losing her job stinks for Bishop, Walz is likely to appoint a replacement to pursue essentially identical policies.
In other news:
Attorney Lynne Torgerson is running for Minnesota Attorney General as a Republican. She is the third Republican to enter the race, after 2018 nominee Doug Wardlow and former state lawmaker Dennis Smith. [Read more from the Associated Press]
President Joe Biden is preparing new regulations targeting industries where a few big companies wield outsized influence, including agriculture and aviation. On the table: rules making it easier for airline passengers to get their money back if they pay for a service that the airline doesn't deliver and a "right to repair" rule letting farmers use independent repair shops for farm equipment instead of being forced to use authorized dealers. [Read more from NPR's Asma Khalid]
As the House prepares to launch a committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attacks, the Republican minority has a choice: boycott the committee to try to deny it legitimacy, or participate in an attempt to influence its proceedings. It's the same dilemma that then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi faced in 2014 with Republicans' select committee investigating the Benghazi attacks. [Read more from the Washington Post's Aaron Blake]
An interesting study looked at a voter turnout campaign that seems to have actually lowered turnout among targeted voters. One possible explanation: the efforts to inform voters about down-ballot races distracted them from top-of-the-ticket races that drive turnout. [Read more from Levi Bankston and Barry C. Burden]
Something completely different: Over the long weekend, I spent hours playing a newly released computer game, "Wildermyth." It's a turn-based roleplaying game, but one with a fascinating system for generating immersive stories about your randomly generated characters. The prior sentence probably means absolutely nothing to most of you, but the handful of you for whom it was intriguing should check it out. [Learn more]
Listen: Keeping with the fantasy theme of "Wildermyth," let's go with Led Zeppelin's Tolkienesque "Battle of Evermore." [Listen] | |
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