Capitol Watch: 2025 legislature leaves town with budget out of balance
With the 2025 legislative session finally in the books, we humbly offer the final Capitol Watch of the season. They didn’t finish on time, but the legislature and Gov. Tim…
With the 2025 legislative session finally in the books, we humbly offer the final Capitol Watch of the season. They didn’t finish on time, but the legislature and Gov. Tim…
Today’s message was supposed to be about the recently completed special session of the Minnesota legislature. But the assassination of Democratic House Leader Melissa Hortman, the murder of her husband…
There will be a special session Monday to pass a two-year state budget. All four legislative leaders and Gov. Tim Walz signed off on a deal to pass 13 bills…
As you know by now, Gov. Tim Walz and three of the four legislative leaders announced at a press conference Thursday morning that an agreement was reached on the overall…
There is one week left in the regular legislative session and to no one’s surprise, the parties are stuck on the big stuff. Everyone is waiting for a breakthrough on…
All progress on the state budget came to a grinding halt this week when House Democrats broke an agreement with Republicans to move budget bills to the floor once they…
There are three full weeks left in the 2025 Minnesota legislative session. The House, Senate and Gov. Walz each put forward budget proposals that rely on surplus dollars to meet…
In the spirit of Easter, we accept this cut to non-public schools. No more bus rides. No more counseling services. No more textbooks. On one condition:
American Experiment broke the story last week of an hour-long recording of Attorney General Keith Ellison meeting with participants in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. During the meeting Ellison…
Capitol Watch is taking a break from all the negativity and polarization in state government to bring you four positive developments we’ve observed in St. Paul. Next week we will…
Last week we wrote about Gov. Walz’s budget proposal to the legislature and how it remains unbalanced. If adopted, his budget would spend $1.838 billion more than it takes in…
Governor Walz made news last week traveling around the Midwest holding tightly controlled town meetings in front of friendly audiences. It feels like he’s searching for the meaning of life…
The dust finally settled on the November 2024 election as the House DFL candidate won the special election in Roseville and Shoreview last week. That means the House is now…
There were some whopper messages at the capitol this week reacting to the new budget forecast. The state budget office announced Thursday that the deficit in the 2028-29 biennium will…
Minnesotans support cutting spending to deal with deficit We are about to move into a new phase of the 2025 Minnesota legislative session. Phase one was the chaos caused by…
Gov. Tim Walz unilaterally raised the payroll tax paid by every employer and employee in Minnesota this week from .7% of wages to .88%. The legislature gave Walz the power…
The next (and perhaps final) chapter in Minnesota’s journey to dramatically change how we teach children is about to begin. The journey began in December 2020 when the Minnesota Department…
Since Republican Rep. Lisa Demuth is Speaker of the House, she gets to control the order of bills introduced at the re-start of the 2025 session. House Republicans communicated their…
The warring parties in the Minnesota House of Representatives shutdown will be returning to the state Supreme Court next week, in an effort to break the three-week-old impasse. In this…
The state Senate is now the only remaining legislative chamber. On Friday afternoon, the all-Democrat MN Supreme Court sided with the minority House Democrats to wipe out the first two…
The Minnesota House opened Tuesday as predicted with Democrats not showing up, Secretary Simon declaring “no quorum,” and House Republicans installing their own chair to conduct business. Nothing like this…
The state could be heading for a constitutional crisis Tuesday if all 66 Democratic Representatives-elect fail to show up, get sworn in, and fulfill their duties. At this writing, the…
Two videos, both produced in 2021, show the Minneapolis mayoral candidate speaking about his advocacy work on behalf of private companies providing social services funded by state government (taxpayers). Here…