Good afternoon, There are 7 days remaining before the Legislature's scheduled adjournment on May 17. Unsurprisingly, given the total lack of public progress toward any sort of compromise on the huge, prospects of an on-time budget deal are slim.Read Brian Bakst's rundown on the state of play. As a reminder, here's how legislative budgets are usually resolved: First, the governor, Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader have to agree on "targets" — how much money to spend on various top-line areas of the budget. These top leaders might also settle disputes over particular hot-button issues. Once these "targets" are set, then lawmakers on key conference committees need to work out the details and specific legislative language for omnibus budget bills. Finally, both chambers need to debate and pass these compromise billsGiven the time involved for each step, top leaders would probably need to agree on "targets" in the next few days to make an on-time finish possible — if it's not already too late. Right now there's no sign of that happening. Some recent budgets have seen leaders set targets by the deadline, then reconvene the Legislature in a special session to actually pass the bills. And/but: "One week is a long, long time in legislative time," longtime legislative hands say about this time every year. Wild card: The federal American Rescue Plan is about to shovel nearly $3 billion in funds to Minnesota, along with billions more to local governments. This money comes with some strings attached, but it could help paper over some of the major differences separating the two parties in the Capitol. [Read more from Brian Bakst]
Gov. Tim Walz is siding with Native American tribes in a dispute with charities who run electronic pull tab machines in Minnesota bars. Tribes, who run slot-machine gambling in Minnesota, say these gambling devices increasingly resemble slot machines, violating a decade-old agreement allowing e-pull tabs so long as they did not "mimic a video slot machine." If the state limits these devices, bars and the charities that run the games could lose millions of dollars per year. [ Read more from Minnesota Reformer's Ricardo Lopez] Making explicit what's been bubbling for some time, U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly backed ousting Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House GOP over her outspoken criticism of former President Donald Trump and his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. [Read more from The Associated Press] Democrats' precious majorities in the U.S. Senate (50-50 with a tiebreaker) and House (219-212) mean party control could conceivably be determined by unpredictable deaths of members. On average, each two-year session of Congress since 1789 has seen 10 lawmakers die in office. [Read more from the New York Times' Ian Prasad Philbrick] One of the best breakdowns of the 2020 electorate available just came out today, from the Democratic-leaning data firm Catalist. Using robust data directly from state voter files, plus a range of other sources, they break down the 2020 electorate in great detail, including how both turnout and voter choice affected the results. One of most striking findings: the expected but relentless downward march of Baby Boomers as a share of the electorate. [ Read more from Yair Ghitza and Jonathan Robinson]
Something completely different: Somehow every single paragraph of this article manages to be more bananas than the one before it. To begin with, this is a fight about the right to claim a throne that doesn't actually exist. Then you get the characters: a 17-year-old princess/Instagram influencer, her reality-TV star father, her grandfather who once killed a man from his yacht, a rival prince who works for a tire company. There are fistfights at weddings, a Los Angeles food truck, a tie-in to Netflix's "The Crown," and of course ordinary people who have no idea who any of these people are. [ Read more from the New York Times' Jason Horowitz] Listen: On the topic of royal heiresses, here's The Decemberists with "The Infanta." [Listen]
