There were some mild signs of progress toward a budget today, with lawmakers agreeing on spending in a few small areas. "There are 100 members working to wrap up 10 bills and they need to get a move on," House Speaker Melissa Hortman said. [Read more from the Forum News Service's Dana Ferguson]
But the big focus today is on Minneapolis, where city crews this morning reopened the intersection where George Floyd was killed to vehicle traffic, and later on law enforcement shot and killed a man in Uptown.
But as we've seen over the past year, there are definitely political implications here.
So far, Gov. Tim Walz has not issued a curfew or activated the National Guard. Walz said around 2 p.m. this afternoon that the state was not asked by Minneapolis for support in reopening the intersection. [Via MPR News' Tim Pugmire]
Changes to Minnesota's policing laws demanded by activists and DFL politicians remain the single biggest sticking point in budget negotiations. Will these events complicate those negotiations further? Some sort of significant change to policing law is probably a must-pass for the DFL to approve a budget, which raises a key follow-up question: what will the DFL have to give up to get a policing deal past the Republican-controlled Senate?
And then there's the local impact, with Mayor Jacob Frey up for reelection this year. He's never been popular with left-wing activists, and this morning's reopening of 38th and Chicago may only intensify that dislike. But a nonpartisan race with ranked choice voting means there are lots of different possible winning coalitions.
Historical look: All this happened before I was born, let alone moved to Minnesota, but this historical review of the career of former Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig is illuminating at another time when policing is at the center of local politics. Stenvig was the head of the Minneapolis police union when he was elected mayor in 1969 as a law-and-order independent, pledging to "take the handcuffs off the police." [Read more from Jeffrey T. Manuel and Andrew Urban]
Trivia: After two terms, Stenvig was defeated by DFL candidate Al Hofstede in 1973. Hofstede is the only Minneapolis mayor to be younger than Frey was when he took office.
Former state lawmaker Dennis Smith has launched a campaign to be the Republican candidate for Minnesota Attorney General. The 2018 GOP nominee, Doug Wardlow, is also running. Incumbent Keith Ellison is expected to seek reelection. [Read Smith's announcement]
The coalition of anti-Benjamin Netanyahu political parties are trying to vote Netanyahu out of the prime minister's office quickly, while "Bibi" is trying to slow down the process in the hopes he can peel off members of the slim and creaky coalition. [Read more from The Associated Press]
Context: The example of Israel's political drama highlights the importance of structures for shaping politics. The structure of the U.S. government (and all states) is aimed at diffusing power, creating coequal branches of government that can check each other. The goal is to prevent tyranny; the downside can be gridlock, as evidenced by Minnesota's repeated difficulties passing a budget. In contrast, parliamentary systems are designed to ensure governments have legislative support. In Israel, as in many other countries, voters don't directly elect the prime minister at all — they elect a parliament, which elects a prime minister. If a prime minister ever loses support in parliament (a "vote of no confidence"), there is either a new election, or members of parliament elect a new leader. Of course, these systems can be vulnerable to their own forms of gridlock, as evidenced by Israel, where the multitude of small parties make it very difficult to achieve a majority and have led to four elections in two years.
But you won't read about it on the former president's blog. Trump shut down "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump," where he posted tweet-like posts, after just a month. Launching a failed blog, of course, is something of a rite of passage in the 21st Century. [Read more from Vox's Sara Morrison]
The defunct blog is, however, preserved for posterity on the Internet Archive's invaluable Wayback Machine. [Read the archive]
This article from conservative scholar Richard Hanania is worth reading, whether you share his "anti-wokeness agenda" or vehemently oppose it. Hanania, responding to critiques that "anti-woke" voices lack concrete policy proposals to back up their culture-war rhetoric, offers up some proposals. His ideas: "making the law require evidence of intentional discrimination" instead of just "disparate impact," and "getting rid of the concept of 'hostile work environment.'" I suspect this will be one of those influential articles that gets swiftly adopted by friendly politicians. [ Read more from Richard Hanania]
Why has Florida remained stubbornly Republican even as other Sunbelt states like Georgia and Arizona have moved left? Data analyst David Byler crunches the numbers and finds that compared to other states, Florida has more population growth outside of major metropolitan areas, and a distinctive Hispanic population with more conservative political views than most other states. [Read more from the Washington Post's David Byler]
Something completely different: Did the ancient Greeks, Romans or Phoenicians have the technology to sail across the Atlantic? This fascinating answer from Reddit's AskHistorians forum shows that the answer was actually yes — though it would have required a huge amount of luck and perseverance, and it's not surprising that (to the best of our knowledge) they never did. [Read more]
Listen: Yesterday I asked for reader submissions for songs of the day, and a few of you responded! So today's pick comes from listener Chris Smith, "Levitating" by Dua Lipa featuring DaBaby. [Watch]
