It's the end of a truly wild week in Minnesota politics, between the Derek Chauvin verdict, the death of Walter Mondale, ongoing votes for Minnesota's must-pass state budget, and all sorts of other little stories that in any other week might have passed for big news! Here's where things stand this afternoon.
The Legislature continues to pass new budget bills, setting up intense negotiations between the DFL-controlled House, GOP-led Senate, and Gov. Tim Walz. One of the stickier issues so far: the DFL proposals for tax increases on high-earning individuals, which Republicans say is a nonstarter. [Read more from Brian Bakst]
Minnesota's Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training voted yesterday to develop a model policy for law enforcement response to public protests. The vote — a first step that will take months or years to come to fruition — came after criticism of police response to protests in Minnesota last summer and this month, and at the urging of Gov. Tim Walz and others. [Read more from Dan Gunderson]
Also: The police standards board also voted to develop a policy barring law enforcement from supporting white supremacist groups.
Yesterday the Minneapolis Park Board voted to bar the Minnesota State Patrol from using its headquarters, under a longstanding space-sharing agreement. But today Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed the move, which had cited the State Patrol's role in responding to recent protests. [Read more from KARE 11's Jeremiah Jacobsen]
Could Rep. Maxine Waters' weekend comments urging protesters to "get more confrontational" form the basis of a Derek Chauvin appeal? The trial judge called it out, but legal experts say other issues may prove more fruitful for Chauvin's hopes of overturning his sentence. [Read more from MinnPost's Ashley Hackett]
In Congress, the House passed a bill to make Washington, D.C. the 51st state. Its prospects in the evenly divided Senate remain uncertain. [Read more from Barbara Sprunt of NPR News]
Senate Republicans countered Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure proposal with their own $568 billion plan, which is more narrowly focused on physical infrastructure. [Read more from NPR's Kelsey Snell]
A new study tested how various framings impacted support for Democratic policy priorities, and found that framing a policy in terms of class ("this is why [policy] will help reduce economic inequality") led to much stronger support than framing it in terms of race ("this is why [policy] will also promote racial justice"). [Read more from Micah English and Joshua Kalla]
Something completely different: An interesting recap of what I think we can all agree was the greatest television show of the 1990s: "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" [Watch]
Listen: It's been an extremely long week, so let's wrap it up with the Beatles: "Eight Days a Week." [Listen]
