The Daily Digest for March 12

Good morning,
Last night President Joe Biden addressed the nation about the COVID-19 pandemic, soon after signing a massive $1.9 trillion relief bill. In his speech, Biden set a goal of celebrating "independence from this virus" in small family gatherings on the Fourth of July . Perhaps I'm optimistic, but with the course of vaccination efforts, I suspect this recommendation is going to be revised as Independence Day gets closer. If new variants don't kick off a dangerous new wave, there's a good chance that July 4 becomes the biggest national party we've seen in a long time. People are ready to cut loose after more than a year of the pandemic, and the timing may end up working perfectly. [Read more from NPR News' Domenico Montanaro and Chloee Weiner ]
Back in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz is turning the COVID-19 dials, allowing much bigger public gatherings at sports games (including up to 10,000 people at Twins games), restaurants, religious services and more. Some restrictions, including the state's mask mandate, are remaining in place. [Read more from Tim Pugmire and Peter Cox]
🎧📺 Tune in at 11a.m. MPR News will have live coverage of Walz' annoucement with state health leaders on our stream and our Facebook Page.
Minnesota's House and Senate are busy passing bills that are almost certainly not going to become law. With divided government, the Republican-controlled Senate's probably not going to approve legalized marijuana; the DFL House isn't going to OK a voter ID bill. But that's not stopping either house from moving these dead-on-arrival bills forward, and legislative leaders say there's good reason to spend the effort. [Read more from Tim Pugmire]
Dive deeper: Research backs up lawmakers who say dead-on-arrival bills aren't a waste. In a study of Congress, political scientist Jeremy Gelman found these bills serve important political purposes, as messages to the public and interest groups about a party's legislative priorities. They can also serve as trial runs, to iron out intra-party disagreement on an issue, so a bill is ready to pass if the next election gives them unified control. [Read more]
Some lawmakers want to give political parties the ability to block certain candidates from using their name on the ballot. The proposal has been floating around for a few years, but it's taken on new steam — at least for Democrats — after the 2020 election saw candidates from pro-marijuana parties arguably take votes away from DFL candidates; some of these candidates had only tenuous connections to the parties under which they ran and said they were recruited to run by Republicans. Some House Republicans criticized the bill for giving party chairs too much power. [Read more from MinnPost's Peter Callaghan]
State-clicking winners: Yesterday I challenged you to beat my score in an online game requiring you to click each U.S. state on a blank map: 100 percent correct with 4:55 remaining. Congratulations to reader Matt Prom, who tied with a time of 4:55, and to reader Kyle Uphoff, who beat me with 4:59.
Something completely different: Joanne Freeman's 2018 book The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War is a must-read for fans of politics and history. Freeman chronicles how long before fighting broke out at Bull Run, it was breaking out in the halls of Congress. Congressmen brawled openly on the House floor; a senator pulled a pistol on a rival in the middle of a heated debate, and plenty of political disputes ended up on the dueling grounds — occasionally with fatal results. The violence was fueled by divisions between the county's regions over slavery, by political partisanship, and by a powerful honor culture in the South and West, where the only way to resolve insults was with violence. New Englanders, where dueling was frowned upon, sometimes found themselves torn: how to stand up for themselves without succumbing to the culture of violence. [Read more]
Listen: Let's cross the Atlantic for a bit of French rock. The band Noir Désir ("Black Desire") was a post-punk/grunge band active from the 1980s to early 2000s, but their biggest hit was a 1989 sea shanty-esque ballad called "Aux sombres héros de l'amer " — a bit of French wordplay that literally means "To the somber heroes of bitterness" but sounds like "To the somber heroes of the sea." The band grew to hate the popularity of this catchy single, which was so unlike the rest of their work, and spent years trying to make darker and more aggressive music in response to their unexpected hit.

Gun permits are way up in Minnesota — and a rising share of these gun owners are liberals. Learn about gun safety classes that teach people about "toxic masculinity," and gun rights advocates who compare the right to own a firearm with the right to have an abortion. [Read more from the Minnesota Reformer's Max Nesterak]
Something completely different: A viral tweet posits the following game: "Someone puts a blank map of the USA in front of you. Says you have a chance to win up to $50 million: $1 million for every state you can correctly identify. The catch: if you get one wrong, you get nothing, but you can leave blanks. How much money you making?" Now, I may spend more time staring at maps than most people, but to me that's an easy $50 million. Here's a more interesting challenge for you: click on each state on a blank map. I got 100% with 4:55 remaining (Wyoming as my first state made it tricky!); if you can get 100% with more time remaining, email me and I'll give you a shoutout in Friday's newsletter. [ Play the game]
Listen: "Born in the USA" is great, but I've got a soft spot for early Springsteen — the verbose, surreal urban streetscapes of "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." And it doesn't get any better than that album's longest track, the epic "Lost in the Flood" — especially a live cut.