Daily Digest: DFL leader stands by card game comment

Good morning and congratulations on making it to Wednesday. It's another busy week, isn't it? Here's the Digest.

1. The top Minnesota House Democrat, facing criticism from Republicans over a comment invoking race and gender, stood by her remark Tuesday as calling attention to what she saw as disrespectful behavior. Monday's debate about whether to ratchet up penalties for disruptive protests was heated to begin with. But when House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman rose to admonish some colleagues for checking out on the proceedings, she didn't mince words. "I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room but I think this is an important debate," she said, referring to a private room off the House floor. (MPR News)

2. Despite strong support from the governor and law enforcement groups, a bill that would prohibit drivers from using hand-held cellular phones and other electronic devices faces long odds of passing this session and likely will be deferred until next year. The measure would have made Minnesota the 15th state along with Washington D.C. to ban motorists from using a hand-held cellphones while driving. “The bill is not dead, but it has been seriously wounded,” said Senator Jim Carlson, DFL-Burnsville, one of the bill’s chief authors. (Star Tribune)

3. The Minnesota Senate passed an $18 billion education finance bill Tuesday that boosts funding for public schools and programs by $300 million over projected spending growth. The new spending includes an increase in the per pupil allocation to schools of 1.5 percent each of the next two years. That falls short of DFL Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed per pupil funding increases of 2 percent for each of the next two years. The House passed a bill last week that includes a 1.25 percent increase each year. The Senate bill keeps funding for voluntary prekindergarten flat, rather than the $175 million increase that Dayton wants. It instead increases money for early learning scholarships. The House bill eliminates pre-k funding. (MPR News)

4. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton sent a letter to Minnesota members of Congress Tuesday saying President Trump’s proposed federal budget makes “draconian cuts” that would “have a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable Minnesotans, including children, the elderly, and those living in poverty.” Dayton identified nearly two dozen federal programs facing cuts or elimination that each spend millions of dollars on Minnesota. That includes a water infrastructure program that spent $50 million in rural communities last year, student aid grants that spent $19 million on Minnesota college students in 2014-15, and the Low-Income Heating Energy Assistance Program that spent $114 million on 339,900 Minnesotans last year. (Pioneer Press)

5.  Poison gas is suspected of augmenting an aerial bombardment of a rebel-held town in Syria's Idlib province Tuesday, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying at least 11 children were among the 58 people who died. The attack was reportedly carried out in Khan Shaykhun, a town in northwest Syria that sits about halfway between Homs and Aleppo on the country's main north-south highway. After the initial strikes early Tuesday, a hospital in Khan Shaykhun was also bombarded as it treated victims, according to Agence France-Presse. The White House called the attack a “reprehensible” act against innocent people “that cannot be ignored by the civilized world,” but President Trump also blamed former President Barack Obama, saying, "these heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration's weakness and irresolution."(NPR)

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