Sometime this week, Gov. Tim Walz is going to loosen more of Minnesota's COVID-19 restrictions. The move comes as around 46 percent of Minnesotans (and 58 percent of eligible adults) have at least one dose of the vaccine. It's also tied up in the must-pass budget negotiations at the end of Minnesota's legislative session, just a few weeks away now. Republican lawmakers say any budget deal has to involve an end to the emergency powers through which Walz has imposed mask mandates, restaurant closures and other restrictions aimed at the pandemic. [ Read more from Brian Bakst]
We've seen this story before. The COVID-19 fight is new, but passing a budget with divided government is practically the norm in Minnesota. Expect both sides to remain miles apart until right before the deadline at the end of the legislative session — if everything goes well. If things don't go well, then we're into special session territory, and possibly a government shutdown.
Meanwhile, the 2022 GOP field for governor is starting to take shape. Brian Bakst reports:
There could be some friction in the Senate GOP caucus in the weeks and months ahead as several make moves toward gubernatorial campaigns.
Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka is seen as a potential candidate and Senate Tax Chair Carla Nelson says she’s taking a look. Now Health and Human Services Committee Chair Michelle Benson, who until this year was part of Gazelka’s leadership team, is putting together a campaign. Former Sen. Scott Jensen is already months into his campaign, without a legislative session to occupy his time.
A Benson campaign internet domain was recently scooped up. People close to Benson say she’s been holding regular weekly calls with people who would form a campaign team or be listed as notable supporters.
Benson, of Ham Lake, has presided over a Republican convention and ran for lieutenant governor in 2014 on then-Sen. Dave Thompson’s ticket, which ran a competitive endorsement race against eventual nominee Jeff Johnson.
That’s the thing with the Minnesota GOP: The endorsement is paramount given that no statewide Republican candidate has overtaken the convention-chosen candidate since Arne Carlson in 1994.
One other thing of note: Senators won’t have a free shot if they stick a race out past the endorsement. Their seats are on the 2022 ballot after the once-a-decade redistricting, which means it will be up-or-out for primary contenders.
Minneapolis voters could have one or more ballot questions this fall related to rent control. MinnPost's Solomon Gustavo looks at the details and implications. [Read more]
Minnesota's poorest areas are also where residents are most likely to have suspended driver's licenses due to unpaid court fees, which is spurring some proposals to rein in courts' reliance on fees and surcharges. [Read more from the Star Tribune's Jessie Van Berkel]
FiveThirtyEight's Perry Bacon Jr. advances an intriguing suggestion: that America's famous racial political divide is increasingly not about racial identity but rather racial attitudes. Nonwhite Americans who hold "conservative" views on racial issues — things like opposing the Black Lives Matter movement, or rejecting the idea that Black Americans are particularly disadvantaged because of a legacy of slavery and discrimination — often voted more like white Americans who held the same views in 2020 than they did like white or nonwhite Americans who held "liberal" views on racial issues. Of course, these nonwhite Americans are more likely to hold these progressive racial views, creating the familiar scenario where white voters lean Republican and nonwhite voters are strongly Democratic (and also raising interesting questions about causality). [Read more]
Democrats claim Joe Biden's plan to boost the IRS' budget by $80 billion over the next decade will actually turn a profit by raising revenues by more than $300 billion — catching lots of people paying less in taxes than they owe. Is that correct? The Tax Policy Center concluded that increasing the IRS's budget will definitely turn a profit, but how big a profit is less certain. [Read more from the Tax Policy Center's Janet Holtzblatt]
It's long, but this oral history of the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden is absolutely worth your time, from the spycraft and top-level debates (then-Vice President Joe Biden was a skeptic of the plan) to the lower-level aides consumed by drafting President Barack Obama's White House Correspondents' Dinner speech in which he mocked real estate tycoon Donald Trump. [Read more from Politico's Garrett M. Graff]
Context: That 2011 dinner, in which Obama and comedian Seth Meyers both mocked Trump mercilessly for his fixation with rumors that Obama had been born in Kenya, as well as for his taste and his reality TV shows, has been pegged by some as the moment that spurred Trump's eventual 2016 presidential campaign. [Read more from the New York Times' Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns]
Somalia's president has backed down from his attempt to extend his term by two years, after mass dissatisfaction with the move led to shootouts in the streets of Mogadishu. [Read more from The Associated Press]
As an anti-COVID-19 measure, Washington, D.C. has temporarily banned dancing at weddings. Speaking personally as someone who can't dance, this is a long-overdue measure that should be made universal and permanent. [Read more from WUSA's Bruce Leshan]
Something completely different: This story about a man getting trapped inside a portable toilet is inherently amusing (since everything turned out all right), but what takes it over the top is the fact that the incident happened at Gettysburg National Military Park, which spurred a genius Associated Press editor to write an all-time great headline: "Water-loo? Tree takes battlefield prisoner in portable lav."
Listen: One of the reasons the now-ancient 2005 computer game Civilization IV became such a cult favorite was its soundtrack, extracts from which I've already featured at least once in this newsletter. And that all began with its theme song, a stunning rendition of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili called "Baba Yetu," which eventually became the first-ever piece of music written for a video game to win a Grammy. [Watch]
