Good morning and happy Tuesday. Here's your Digest. For daily updates, subscribe to the Minnesota Today podcast. COVID-19 is "like a recession that happened overnight" in MInnesota. That's how Steve Grove, the Department of Employment and Economic Development commissioner, described the pandemic's effects to MinnPost's Walker Orenstein in a Q&A : "I think we’re thinking a lot about what the long-term effects of this are and what we can do to help businesses startup with greater speed and efficiency once this passes, because it will pass and this economy will bounce back. ... But the economy probably will look different."
One industry that's seeing a boost from the pandemic: gun sellers. First-time firearms buyers are driving the surge, as Brandt Williams reports: - Minneapolis police have seen a 35 percent increase in permits sought during the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year.
- St. Paul has seen the number of permit applications rise from an average of four or five per day to more than 30 per day.
- In Brooklyn Park, there has been a nearly 200 percent increase in purchase applications so far this month compared to all of March 2019.
Take an inside look at how Gov. Tim Walz is handling coronavirus response from quarantine. “We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re watching it carefully,” Walz said Friday. “As I said in a little video my wife and I made as we were sitting the step out back, we’re still getting along and we still like each other.” Read more from Brian Bakst.
COVID-19 is making a massive federal deficit even bigger. Via NPR : "Over the years, the federal government has spent trillions of dollars more than it brings in, wracking up big deficits even in good times, when it ought to be paring debt down. Now, as it struggles to repair the damage from the coronavirus epidemic, it's getting ready to spend trillions more, pushing up this year's deficit above $3 trillion. "It's mind-boggling. I never contemplated this," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, who headed the Congressional Budget Office under President George W. Bush.
"Challenging times are ahead for the next 30 days," says President Trump. Yes, indeed. Via NPR: "He said that at least another month of social distancing — and the consequences that it has for everyday life and the economy — would be necessary based on modeling that said the peak in fatalities might not arrive for another two weeks."
| 
