Daily Digest: Trump moves left?
Good morning, and here we are at Thursday already. The week goes quickly when Monday is a holiday. Let's get on with the Digest.
1. I haven't been putting much national news in the Digest lately, but this story is something. President Trump appeared to hand Democrats a big advantage in budget negotiations Wednesday when he agreed to tie Hurricane Harvey disaster aid to just a three month extension of the debt limit. Republicans in Congress wanted a longer extension to carry them through the 2018 election. Now they will have to negotiate with Democrats again in December. "We had a very good meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, not bothering to mention House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who also were present at the meeting. "We agreed to a three-month extension on debt ceiling, which they consider to be sacred, very important." (AP via MPR News)
2. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia sued the U.S. government Wednesday to block President Trump's plan to end protection against deportation for young immigrants whom New York's attorney general labeled the "best of America." The lawsuit filed in federal court in Brooklyn asked a judge to strike down as unconstitutional the president's action involving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. It called the move "a culmination of President Trump's oft-stated commitments ... to punish and disparage people with Mexican roots." Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson said she plans to join the suit. (AP via MPR News)
3. Eliot Seide, the powerful leader of one of the state’s most important public employee unions, will retire at the end of October, he said Wednesday. Seide has been executive director of the Minnesota chapter of American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, since 2002. Its 43,000 members have long been a crucial base of support for the DFL. “He’s a tireless advocate for his members, and he has that New York edge to his style but believes fiercely in doing what’s right for his members,” said Gov. Mark Dayton. The DFL governor said securing the AFSCME endorsement in the fall of 2009 changed the trajectory of his campaign for governor, which many at the time saw as a long shot. (Star Tribune)
4. When Rick Stafford was elected chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in 1993, he made history as the first openly gay chairman of any major political party in the nation. But to DFL insiders, Stafford was best known as a passionate and tireless nuts-and-bolts political operative who devoted more than 40 years of his life to building the party he loved. Stafford, 65, died in a Minneapolis hospice on Saturday. (Pioneer Press)
5. Results are out from the annual State Fair surveys conducted by the nonpartisan information offices of the Minnesota House and Minnesota Senate. They’re an unscientific sampling but show how some folks feel about public policy issues that state lawmakers are considering. The House survey of 7,122 fairgoers found 50.6 percent support the recreational use of marijuana by people age 21 and over. Lawmakers introduced two bills related to legalized marijuana during the 2017 session, but they didn’t go anywhere. In the same survey, an overwhelming 95.8 percent favor a requirement for telecommunications companies to obtain customer permission to sell their web browsing data. Lawmakers tried unsuccessfully last session to create online privacy protections, but the issue is expected to return. (MPR News)
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