Big Supreme Court rulings due this week
Good morning. Hillary Clinton in town for a fundraiser, but no public events. GOP will respond at 11:15.
This week is all about the Supreme Court. Gay marriage and Obamacare rulings. If the court rules in favor of King in the OCare case, it sets off quite a bit of political, to say nothing of policy chaos, as suddenly at least 6 million Americans lose their health care subsidies, most in deep red states that declined to set up their own exchanges.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk survived a disorganized challenge to his leadership in the closing days of the special session period, Ricardo Lopez reported in a big Sunday piece. This included a nasty confrontation with Gov. Mark Dayton. The rift that opened after the staff salary imbroglio was never healed. We'll see if the DFL can get this fixed. Lots of good details. Read the whole thing.
A progressive type told me recently that professional liberals are laying the blame at the feet of some of those metro DFL Senators for not standing up to Bakk sooner, and that pressure will be applied going forward to do so.
Business groups happy with the session, I reported over the weekend; the other Patrick reports outstate groups not so much.
I went to St. Peter's A.M.E. Sunday. The service was joyful but purposeful. I was surprised to see a number of legislators and Gov. Mark Dayton there; to their credit, no one sent out releases or tweets etc., which would obviously have been tacky. Here's the story.
Republican presidential candidates, meanwhile, treading carefully around the Confederate flag issue, Jonathan Martin reports. A Republican can break the Obama coalition and win the White House if he or she improves numbers among black voters, and not by all that much, but I suspect any position other than "the flag must come down" won't get them there, based on what I heard in St. Peter's Sunday.
Interesting debate here: Rep. Bob Barrett, R-Lindstrom, wants the U to charge more for out-of-state students, which would be a way to hold down tuition for in-state students, Maura Lerner reports. The U currently has the lowest out-of-state tuition of any school in the Big Ten, which attracts top talent from elsewhere. In a state with our climate this seems like a good way to attract smart young people to come here, after which they might stay and reverse the brain drain. Though his concerns about in-state tuition hikes are well placed, too.
