Good morning and welcome to Monday, the first day of what will be a short week for many of us. Hope you had a great weekend. Here’s the Digest.
1. With a new Republican majority in the state Senate ready to join the existing one in the House, the agenda will be different at the state Capitol in 2017. Health care, gun rights, transportation and workplace benefits will all likely get a new look, and Gov. Mark Dayton will probably want to keep his veto pen handy. (MPR News)
2. Because of a housing shortage, Minnesota will not increase the number of refugees it takes in. The Obama administration said it wants to increase the number of refugees coming to the country by 30 percent, but of course that will likely change in a Trump administration. Some Minnesotans are also expressing opposition to taking in more Muslim refugees. (Star Tribune)
3. Minneapolis Congressman Keith Ellison’s bid to become chair of the Democratic National Committee is running into some opposition because he wants to keep his day job. Critics say they didn’t work very well when former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was a full time member of Congress and a part-time chair. “Look, I like Keith Ellison a lot. He’s a very good guy. There’s one problem. You cannot do this job and sit in a political office at the same time. It’s not possible,” Howard Dean, a former DNC chairman who wants the job again, said during a Nov. 11 interview on MSNBC. (Politico)
4. In the midst of his meetings at Trump Tower last week President-elect Donald Trump held another meeting. It was with three business partners who are building a luxury apartment complex in India. The meeting seems to indicate that Trump will continue to conduct private business while also running the government. A spokeswoman said it wasn’t a formal meeting, butethics lawyers said regardless of what was discussed, the meeting raised conflict of interest questions. (New York Times)
5. Why was Donald Trump tweeting about the Broadway musical Hamilton over the weekend, especially when Mike Pence said Sunday that the actors’ statement to him at the end of a performance Friday night didn’t bother him? Maybe it was to distract people from talking about the $25 million settlement of the Trump University fraud case that Trump agreed to on Friday. (It seemed to work) Or maybe because Hamilton and Broadway are seen as part of the establishment that Trump and his top strategist Steve Bannon have so successfully taken on. Read this interview with Bannon and think about it. (Hollywood Reporter)
