Good afternoon, Minnesota lawmakers are coming back from their Easter break with negotiations over the must-pass state budget moving to center stage. Republicans are focusing their fire against DFL proposals to increase taxes, calling them "dead on arrival"; DFLers say the same thing about Republican proposals for spending cuts. Other than that, good luck with the negotiations! [Read more from Tim Pugmire] The education budget highlights the big gaps remaining. The DFL-led House is proposing more than $700 million in new spending over the next two years, while the GOP-controlled Senate wants $152 million. Republicans say pandemic-related federal aid to states can meet educational needs, while Democrats say schools need ongoing funding, not one-time cash. A thorny political issue awaits Minneapolis once the Chauvin trial concludes: what to do with George Floyd Square, the area around 38th Street and Chicago Avenue that has been taken over by activists since Floyd's death last year. City officials say they want to reopen the intersection to traffic, and resume sending police in to the area currently patrolled by activists. Residents of the surrounding neighborhood are sharply divided, with some ready to reopen the square and others wanting to preserve the "autonomous zone." [ Read more from the Minnesota Reformer's Deena Winter] Justice Clarence Thomas argued in a recent concurrence that social media companies should be regulated like public utilities. "We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms," Thomas wrote . One justice's opinions don't mean there's a majority on the Supreme Court to revisit, say, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but the public concurrence could encourage lower court judges to follow Thomas' reasoning. [Read more from NPR's Bobby Allyn] The national battle about transgender girls participating in girls sports is coming to Minnesota. The GOP-led Senate's education budget includes a provision specifying that "a person whose sex is male" may not participate in "athletics that are designed for women or girls" when other equal opportunity goals are met. The DFL House's bill lacks this provision, which activist groups see as a subtle way to exclude transgender girls from girls athletics. Fifteen years ago, Democratic candidates had a three-point edge over Republicans with white voters who had college degrees and below-average incomes. In 2020, Democrats lost this group by 26 points. (Over the same time, they built up a huge advantage with upscale college-educated voters.) The upshot: income has been replaced by education as the dominant factor explaining political class. [Read more from CNN's Harry Enten] Dig deeper: Why has education become so important as a cleavage factor in American politics? Consider these statistics below. In 1960, less than 10 percent of Americans 25 years or older had a college degree. You can't build a political coalition based on a group that's 10 percent of the population, so successful politicians — being generally good at getting elected — didn't base their electoral appeals on issues that polarized along educational lines. But today around one-third of adults are college grads (and, since voter turnout rises with education, around 36 percent of the electorate). That's a big enough group that you can base a demographic coalition on it, though not so large — yet — that it can go it alone.
Something completely different: I recently finished watching the first season of "Central Park," an animated show you may not have heard of — I certainly hadn't — but that's well worth your time if "cartoon musical starring Josh Gad, Kristen Bell, Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr., Stanley Tucci, Kathryn Hahn and Tituss Burgress" stirs anything in you. [Watch on Apple TV+] Listen: My favorite musical discovery over the past few years is the niche subgenre of "historical power metal" — heavy metal songs with lyrics about historical events (usually battles). The current kings of the genre are a Swedish group called "Sabaton." Here's a good sample, a song about the "Lost Batallion," an American contingent trapped behind enemy lines for nearly a week during World War I's Meuse-Argonne offensive. [Listen]
