Good afternoon, I know I sound a bit like a broken record here, but once again the lead local political news is the gulf between the GOP-controlled Senate and DFL-controlled House on a key political issue. News flash: Democrats and Republicans disagree. But there's a little over a month left in the legislative session, so laying out exactly where the differences are will be key to understanding what might get resolved in a compromise, and what will prove intractable. Today? Public safety, where Democrats are pushing a host of sweeping changes to policing in Minnesota , including limiting the use of force and giving families access to policy body camera footage soon after police shootings. Republicans like Rep. Brian Johnson, R-Cambridge, said Democrats are "pushing an anti-law enforcement agenda while reducing consequences for criminals." [Read more from Brian Bakst] Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen has been banned from TikTok for sharing alleged COVID-19 misinformation. Jensen, a Republican doctor and former state lawmaker, had amassed more than 280,000 followers on the video-based social network. He's been criticized before for "misinformation" about COVID-19, including a challenge to his medical license that was investigated and dismissed. It wasn't immediately clear which TikTok posts led to the ban. [ Read more from Axios' Torey Van Oot] A second Minnesotan has been charged with participating in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Victoria White of Rochester is the second Minnesota resident to be accused of invading the Capitol. White faces sealed charges. Last month, Jordan Stotts of Moorhead was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. [Read more from the Associated Press] President Joe Biden has dismissed at least five staffers for past marijuana use, and turned away dozens more potential employees. Though many states have legalized marijuana for either medical or recreational use, it remains illegal at the federal level. Rep. Angie Craig today released a letter to Biden calling on Bien to "reverse course on this harmful and unnecessary hurdle to hiring diverse and talented public servants." [ Read more from Celine Castronuovo of The Hill] Recent court cases have highlighted the importance of lawmakers using precise grammar and punctuation when writing laws, less courts find the law-as-written mandates something other than lawmakers intended. [Read more from Ian Lewenstein in the Minnesota Reformer] Reps. Michelle Fischbach and Pete Stauber heard from rural Minnesota businesses about extreme difficulties finding enough qualified workers at a Thursday roundtable. [Read more from Rebecca Mitchell of the Park Rapids Enterprise] You might have seen the below chart, a scatterplot that apparently shows that very few 2016 voters actually fell into the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" bracket that gets so much attention — too much attention, people sharing this graph often argue. But the pseudonymous blogger Xenocrypt took an in-depth look at the data and found the above conclusion was heavily influenced by the choice of survey responses used to build each metric. For example, one-third of the questions chosen for the "social" axis had to do with attitudes toward Black Americans; views on abortion and same-sex marriage each comprised only one-twelfth of the score. So Xenocrypt reverse-engineered the scatterplot in an interactive format that lets you weight each question freely. [Read more from Xenocypt]
Something completely different: History is full of theorists trying to reduce the complexities of human civilization to simple, iron laws. So why is former ecologist Peter Turchin's attempt getting so much attention now? Maybe because a decade ago, he predicted a spike in social unrest starting around 2020, and accelerating for another decade until it reaches a catastrophic climax. Maybe it was a lucky guess, maybe he's on to something, maybe it's somewhere in between — but people aren't ignoring Turchin any more. [ Read more from The Atlantic's Graeme Wood] Listen: Pull up your J. Alfred Prufrock for Crash Test Dummies' 90s hit "Afternoons & Coffeespoons." [Watch]
