Good afternoon, There are 13 days remaining before the Legislature's scheduled adjournment on May 17. Minnesota Republicans advanced one of their top priorities yesterday: a bill to require photo IDs for voting. Republicans in other states have advanced similar bills this year in the wake of President Donald Trump's baseless allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. It's also a longtime priority for Minnesota Republicans who placed a constitutional amendment establishing voter ID on the 2012 ballot. But voters rejected it 53-47, along with the higher-profile gay marriage ban on the same ballot. Supporters say it's a common-sense measure to secure the ballot; critics say Minnesota's elections are already secure and that the photo ID requirement would make it needlessly harder to vote. [ Read more from Tim Pugmire] That 2012 voter ID vote was an interesting one. By and large support for voter ID correlated with support for other Republicans on the ballot, such as presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But there were exceptions, such as wide swathe of southern Minnesota (especially the Minnesota River valley) that voted for Romney but rejected voter ID. Check out the maps:
Another Senate Republican priority: an amnesty proposal for businesses who were fined for violating Gov. Tim Walz's executive orders. [Read more] President Joe Biden raised the country's cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 for the current fiscal year, up from the 15,000 limit set by former President Donald Trump. Biden's administration had originally said it would keep Trump's cap, but faced a furious backlash from progressives who saw this as breaking Biden's promise to let in more refugees. [Read more from NPR's Dana Farrington] Never give up, never surrender — good advice for lawmakers trying to force a provision into a bill, but that's not quite what lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee had in mind Monday. Due to a technical issue, audio from the 1999 comedy "Galaxy Quest" and the 1996 comedy "Down Periscope" played over the committee's livestream. The committee had to recess while the issue was fixed. [Read more from Roll Call's Jim Saksa] The fate of some Minnesota lawmakers' hopes for a big infrastructure bill may rest in the hands of Sen. Tom Bakk, the former DFL leader who's now an independent caucusing with Republicans. Bakk is a longtime champion of so-called "bonding bills" but the divided legislature, and Republican skepticism of the need for more debt, is putting Bakk's new alliance to the test. [Read more from MinnPost's Walker Orenstein] U.S. House Republicans may soon oust Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, from her caucus leadership position in the wake of her vocal criticism of former president Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is said to be trying to push Cheney out, and other Republicans are are jockeying over who might succeed Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney. [ Read more from Politico's Melanie Zanona, Olivia Beavers and Quint Forgey] Something completely different: Last night I finally finished watching "Ted Lasso," the Jason Sudeikis comedy series about an American football coach who's hired to lead a Premier League soccer team. I liked it a lot! It's not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as great sitcoms like "30 Rock," but its jokes are grounded in something rarer in modern comedy: an irrepressible spirit of good cheer pervading the entire show. It's like a cross between "Major League" and "Paddington." Speaking of Paddington, if you want to understand what makes "Ted Lasso" so distinct, you need to watch this video essay about the writing technique of the "flat character arc." Unlike a standard character arc, where the protagonist develops over the course of the story, in a flat arc, the protagonist doesn't change — but they change everyone else around them. [Watch] Listen: Today is, of course, May the Fourth — Star Wars Day. So let's cue up the band Nerf Herder — perhaps most famous for the "Buffy" theme song — with "I'm the Droid (You're Looking For)," laden with more references than you can shake a gaderffii stick at. [Watch]
