Capitol View for June 9

Good morning, and welcome to Thursday.

Program note –The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol holds its first public hearing at 7 tonight. You can listen to it on the radio or online at MPR News.

Will a special legislative session happen? The governor and legislative leaders are due to check in again today. MPR’s Brian Bakst takes another look: Clad in hard hats and face masks, Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Jim Abeler paused a tour this week of a psychiatric hospital floor being built at Children’s Minnesota. They applauded the political teamwork that helped the project along and had a sidebar discussion about how to break other logjams at the Capitol. In their brief exchange, the DFL governor and Republican legislator concentrated on a $1 billion package for health and human services that is hung up over how to divide the money. Abeler, R-Anoka, told Walz that nursing homes are in more dire condition than child care facilities and need to be shored up first. “Child care will get by,” Abeler said. “Nursing homes and group homes might not.” “I think you can do both. You can do both,” Walz replied. Neither endeavor will see more money if the Legislature remains deadlocked and unwilling to reach a special session agreement, the governor added. “If you guys would come back today, I’d call you back,” Walz said. Such on-the-fly discussions are occurring with some frequency these days as Walz conducts ceremonial bill signings for the smaller-reach legislation that did pass in May. The big stuff remains stuck with everything intertwined. “In my view, I think it would be optimal if we would get to a ‘go, no-go’ decision by June 15," said House Speaker Melissa Hortman. "And then get a special session wrapped up within a week or 10 days following that."

Abeler isn’t the only one talking about nursing homes and how much they need a cash infusion.Walker Orenstein at MinnPost has a story: Industry advocates say about 11 percent of nursing homes could close soon if their financial outlook doesn’t improve, and other parts of the senior care spectrum are facing closures as well. But a potentially huge infusion of cash into the system — championed largely by the Republican-led Minnesota Senate — is in limbo at the state Legislature, where top leaders failed to complete a deal to spend a historic budget surplus before the regular legislative session ended May 23. One key stumbling block has been the health and human services budget: Republicans want to use most of $1 billion for long-term care while the DFL-led House is pushing to spread the money out among several priorities, including more money to help child care businesses.

A DFL state senator defended himself in an ethics hearing Wednesday.MPR’s Tim Pugmire has that story: Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, responded to allegations Wednesday during a hearing before a Senate ethics panel. A complaint filed last month by seven Republican senators accuses the first-term lawmaker of failing to disclose a conflict of interest related to airtime he received on Somali TV of Minnesota. He later helped authorized state funding for the organization. Fateh’s lawyer Kristin Hendrick told members of the Senate Rules Subcommittee on Ethical Conduct that Fateh paid for an ad on the YouTube channel, as have other politicians. She said the allegations are largely based on questionable news coverage. “They stem primarily from news articles that are based on assumptions and rumor, not based on fact,” Hendrick said. “However, these unsworn statements are being touted as truth by the complainants. As we all know, printing information doesn’t make it fact.” Some members of the panel asked why Fateh didn’t have better documentation of the ad buy and noted that he amended a filing with the state campaign finance board just this week to note the purchase. The subcommittee is looking for probable cause and could decide to launch an investigation, but members did not vote on Wednesday.

A lot of Minnesotans are interested in those pandemic bonuses. The Department of Labor and Industry said as of 5 p.m. Wednesday, it had received 139,000 application submissions. The number rose steadily despite early problems that slowed the completion of some applications. Officials say those issues early in the day had been resolved by noon. People who think they’re in line for a payment out of a $500 million fund have until July 22nd to submit an application and documentation of their eligibility. Checks aren't expected to go out until September.

After hearing harrowing testimony from survivors of mass shootings the U.S. House passed a bill last night that raises the age to buy some weapons from 18 to 21, bans large capacity magazines and requires safe storage of weapons. The Star Tribune reportsMinnesota’s delegation was split on the bill, which faces enough opposition in the Senate to block passage there. Minnesota's four House Democrats voted for the legislation, called the Protecting Our Kids Act, while the state's three Republicans opposed the overall bill. It passed the chamber 223 to 204, with two Democrats voting no and five Republicans going against their party to support the legislation. "We've been offering prayers and thoughts," Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar said. "It's time to take action." GOP Rep. Michelle Fischbach said during a floor speech that Republicans are prepared to work on "school safety, mental health and the root causes of gun violence" but charged that Democrats are pushing an anti-gun agenda. The sprawling legislation includes bills Democrats had introduced earlier but have been unable to pass into law. "[The House bill] is a grab bag full of far-left proposals that will not effectively address gun violence but will severely limit America's Second Amendment rights," Fischbach said.

I missed this one from NPR’s Nina Totenberg on the radio yesterday, but it’s definitely worth a second look: The atmosphere behind the scenes at the Supreme Court is so ugly that, as one source put it, "the place sounds like it's imploding." To cite just one public example, Justice Clarence Thomas in a speech a few weeks ago seemed to say he no longer trusts his colleagues. "When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I'm in, it changes the institution fundamentally," he told a conservative group. "You begin to look over your shoulder. It's like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it but you can't undo it."... Indications are that some law clerks are lawyering up. And some justices may forbid cooperation with a probe they see as a witch hunt. Not to mention that if the court can dump information from a clerk's cellphone without a warrant, that directly contradicts the Supreme Court's own ruling eight years ago when it said that police could not search a suspected gang member's phone without a warrant after he was pulled over in a traffic stop.