Good morning, and welcome to the first Tuesday of spring.

MPR’s Brian Bakst reports that until now, the focus on paid family and medical leave proposals at the state Capitol had been a largely one-sided affair. Democrats have pushed unsuccessfully for years to create a government program that would guarantee paid time off to bond with a child or care for a sick family member. But on Monday legislative Republicans threw a new paid family leave plan in the mix that’s rooted in private insurance and gives incentives to businesses through tax credits. While some Democrats called the GOP plan inadequate, DFL Gov. Tim Walz welcomed the proposal as a sign that debate on family and medical leave will now get serious. The GOP proposal came from Sen. Julia Coleman of Chanhassen, one of the Legislature’s younger members with three young boys at home in Waconia to keep her busy. “When I was pregnant with my first son, I worked for a small company that was only able to offer short-term disability in order to survive the hit to my income,” Coleman said. “Instead of resting after a long day of work. I would moonlight doing odd jobs in order to support my family while I recovered.”

Walz said after a meeting with legislative leaders Monday that he's still optimistic a deal is possible to refill the state's depleted unemployment insurance fund and give frontline pandemic workers some extra pay. Democrats in the House want the bonuses and Republicans in the Senate have passed the unemployment insurance plan to avoid tax increases on businesses. Walz says he wants to link the issues and take action. "If we would take the compromise that the lt. governor and I put forward to refill the UI trust fund and do a billion dollars to frontline workers that still leaves us with roughly $7 billion to deal with these other issues which puts the other priorities clearly in play after that. "Businesses are already paying higher taxes to refill the unemployment insurance fund which was depleted by pandemic-related layoffs. Walz says it will be a headache for state agencies to try to pay the money back when the Legislature does reach a deal. 

Another issue that came up during that meeting was reinsurance. What’s reinsurance?Peter Callaghan at MinnPost has an explainer: In short, the state puts money into a fund to help insurance companies cover especially high medical bills, a move that has been credited, sometimes begrudgingly, with decreasing premiums while increasing plan availability. But because it reflects two very different responses to how to serve a relatively small niche of the health insurance market, it has also become the matter of pointed disagreement between Republicans and DFLers in the Legislature, subject to last minute deal-making that’s often been linked to other, usually unrelated issues.

From Deena Winter at the Minnesota Reformer:Police were called to the March 12 Morrison County Republican convention in Little Falls — twice — to deal with an “unruly crowd” after right-wing activists took over the convention floor.  The convention had already been postponed due to claims of irregularities with the results of the February precinct caucus, with allegations leveled at the county chair, who is also a staffer for GOP gubernatorial candidate, state Sen. Paul Gazelka. Action 4 Liberty is a right-wing group on the fringes of the GOP that has been training people to attend caucuses and run for office and get rid of so-called RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. At least eight people affiliated with the group are running for office statewide, many of them challenging Republicans and alleging fraud and cheating in the caucuses and now, convention. They have mocked elected Republican lawmakers as ‘weak and feckless’ and some have been kicked out of Action 4 Liberty events. The incident threatens to undermine the Republican case that the party is focused on vote integrity and competent election administration, after nearly two years in which the GOP has wrongly claimed the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Sahan Journal reports Wintana Melekin has served as a delegate at DFL conventions for more than 15 years. So she was puzzled when she received a recent text from a DFL volunteer asking if she had signed up as a delegate for a candidate vying to become the first Oromo woman elected to Congress. Wintana soon learned that she was just one of several delegates — mostly of East African descent — at risk of losing their ability to participate in the DFL endorsement process for Amane Badhasso. Badhasso, a progressive political organizer from St. Paul, is running for office in Minnesota’s Fourth Congressional District against incumbent Rep. Betty McCollum. While the DFL took steps early this week to address the issue, the experience left some concerned that the DFL party irreparably harmed a disenfranchised voter base.

Mark Lindquist, who was running as a Democrat for Congress in Minnesota’s 7th District, has suspended his campaign and plans to go to Ukraine and fight against the Russian invasion.From the Forum News Service: Back in 2006, fueled by 9/11-inspired patriotism, the idealistic young man enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for six years. While his work as an intelligence analyst and USO entertainer didn’t require direct combat, he believes Ukraine needs people with professional military training right now. “Now that I see they’re recruiting civilians, who were accountants and teachers and daycare providers last week, and now they have AK-47s in their hands, I think to myself that we, as American military professionals, would have some role in helping to train that civilian militia or organize civilians into a military unit with good order and discipline and a chain of command,” Lindquist said. “I can make plans to go out and help people or I could sit on my couch and tweet about it.”