The health care journalist Jonathan Cohn compared the recent passage of President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy initiatives to then-President Barack Obama’s winning on Obamacare, and he implored Democrats to mimic the GOP opposition strategy of the signture health care law — continue fighting in every arena, for years after it passed.

“The big GOP victory this month doesn’t have to be the last word on their legislation any more than Obamacare’s enactment was. (Minority Leader Hakeem) Jeffries’s marathon speech could be a starting point akin to (then-Speaker John) Boehner’s primal scream.”

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is apparently thinking along the same lines, while also taking a presumptive strength of the bill — tax cuts — and turning the idea on its head. The DNC, desperate to make Americans more aware of the bill’s unpopular but little known provisions, launched a new website this week called TrumpTax.com, tracking the impact of Trump’s budget and trade policies on families across the country.

The site’s Minnesota section details the loss of jobs, health care and food assistance; doomed rural hospitals; and increased costs from Trump’s tariff and energy policies.

Citing the the Congressional Budget Office, KFF Health News reports that the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act — as well as Trump administration regulatory changes — will increase the number of uninsured by about 17 million by 2034. The Urban Institute estimates that 22.3 million Americans will lose access to some or all SNAP benefits. The bill also cuts renewable energy tax credits that were leading to a manufacturing upswing of $133 billion in investment — often in Republican states and counties — as of the spring of 2024, NBC News reported. With the spigot turned off, utilities will scramble to meet rising demand, leading to more expensive electricity bills.

The bill will also expand the federal deficit, which will increase interest payments on the debt, and possibly interest rates as well, hindering Americans’ ability to borrow for a home, car or business. Meanwhile, economists expect Trump’s tariffs to juice inflation, as data released Tuesday may have begun to show.

Republican backers — the bill didn’t receive a single Democratic vote in either chamber — are cheering the cuts and deficits as necessary to win sought-after tax provisions, some of whose biggest beneficiaries will be the wealthiest families. The bill extends the 2017 Trump tax cuts; expands the child tax credit to $2,200 per child and indexes it to inflation; increases the standard deduction; increases the SALT deduction; reduces taxes on tips and overtime; reduces taxes on wealthy heirs; and gives a bevy of tax breaks to various business arrangements, among many other provisions.

“Donald Trump promised to lower costs on day one, but six months into his disastrous second term, he’s robbing working Minnesotans to fund tax handouts for his billionaire backers,” said Martin in a statement accompanying the new tracker. As chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Martin never lost a statewide race in 15 years.

One problem for Democrats in the near term, however: Republicans shrewdly — politically, if not fiscally — delayed the safety net cuts until after the midterm elections, which means many Americans will see the benefits of the bill while the costs won’t be felt for some time. The bill is already among the least popular pieces of major legislation in recent history, but polling also shows many Americans are tuned out and not even aware of it.

With the bill’s passage but the narrative about it thus far unformed, Martin — who’s suffered a rough go of it as DNC chair, thus far — is finally able to return to the partisan brawling he was known for at home.

During a recent interview with Lauren Egan, Martin was frank: “My job is to throw punches. I didn’t come here to make friends. I didn’t come here to try to preserve the option to work with Republicans down the road. My job is to win — and to call them out for their bullshit.”

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

Just hours after Minnesotans learned that Democratic House leader Melissa Hortman had been assassinated, right-wing influencer Collin Rugg, who has 1.8 million followers on X, posted a “report” that hinted that she’d been killed because of a recent vote on ending undocumented adults’ ability to enroll in MinnesotaCare, a subsidized health insurance for the working poor.

Mike Cernovich, another right-wing influencer who has 1.4 million followers on X, took Rugg’s post and amped it up, but in the “just asking questions” style of many conspiracy theories:

“Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?”

They were deeply ignorant about the MinnesotaCare issue.

Walz and Hortman — who was instrumental in passing legislation allowing undocumented people to sign up for MinnesotaCare as speaker of the House in 2023 — negotiated a compromise with Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature to end eligibility for adults, but keep it for children. They did so to win necessary Republican support in the 67-67 House to pass a state budget. Without it, state government would have shut down on July 1.

Both Hortman and Walz signed the compromise agreement in mid-May. This week, Hortman spoke tearfully about how difficult the vote was for her, but she was bound to vote yes on the issue because of the prior agreement.

The “theory” of Hortman’s killing was further undercut by the vote of Democratic Sen. John Hoffman — who was also targeted by the suspect — against rolling back MinnesotaCare for undocumented Minnesotans.

Rugg and Cernovich’s posts were shared widely and just the start of the disinformation.

Once law enforcement sources began revealing a suspect, right-wing influencers ran with an insignificant detail: That Vance Luther Boelter was a “Walz appointee.”

Like many states, but even more so here, Minnesota is home to hundreds of nonpartisan and bipartisan boards and commissions, which are composed of thousands of people who typically win the appointment by simply volunteering. There are currently 342 open positions on Minnesota boards and commissions. Boelter was appointed to the Workforce Development Council by Walz’s predecessor Gov. Mark Dayton and reappointed by Walz.

It was the equivalent of calling a Sunday school volunteer an “appointee of the bishop.”

No matter, the Murdoch media machine, specifically the New York Post, had their headline: “Former appointee of Tim Walz sought….”

Cernovich had his greasy foil hot dog wrapper and began constructing a hat:

“The Vice President candidate for the Democrat party is directly connected to a domestic terrorist, that is confirmed, the only question is whether Tim Walz himself ordered the political hit against a rival who voted against Walz’s plan to give free healthcare to illegals.”

Walz had no such plan. He had signed an agreement to end eligibility for undocumented adults.

Joey Mannarino, who has more than 600,000 followers on X, was more crass:

“Rumor has it she was preparing to switch parties. The Democrats are VIOLENT SCUM.”

It was a ridiculous “rumor.” One of the last photos of Hortman alive was an image of her at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor’s big annual fundraising event, the Humphrey-Mondale dinner, which took place just hours before her assassination.

No matter, Cernovich wanted his new friends in federal law enforcement to act:

“The FBI must take Tim Walz into custody immediately.”

Finally, fresh off his humiliating defeat at the hands of President Donald Trump, world’s richest man Elon Musk quote-tweeted someone again falsely alleging Hortman was killed by “the left” and added:

“The far left is murderously violent.”

The suspect’s “hit list,” according to an official who has seen the list, comprised Minnesotans who have been outspoken in favor of abortion rights. CNN reported that it also included several abortion clinics, which doesn’t sound like the work of “the left.”

Right-wing influencers marred Hortman’s death and smeared Walz on a pile of lies.

In a different, saner world, they would be humiliated and slink away. But the smart money is that during the next moment of national crisis and mourning, they will again lie for profit.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

If you’re a fired federal worker or you quit in disgust, I have an idea for you: Run for office.

Both parties here in Minnesota and nationally are badly in need of a fresh crop of activists and candidates who understand governance and believe in it passionately.

Federal employees are often highly skilled, knowledgeable and focused on service to their country and their communities.

Despite the ceaseless anti-government rhetoric, Uncle Sam’s achievements during the past century are impressive: Federal workers stabilized the banking system; beat the fascists; split the atom; built a massive network of transcontinental highways; significantly reduced elderly poverty with Social Security and Medicare; unwound apartheid (mostly) in the old Confederacy; seeded commercial air travel and made it safe; developed life-saving vaccines and other medicines; invented GPS; put a man on the moon; significantly reduced air pollution and lead poisoning; achieved increasingly sophisticated weather forecasts; helped to liberate — without firing a shot — the Eastern Bloc.

The U.S. government has also done a bunch of foolish and evil things — sometimes while carrying out the above, like putting highways through urban neighborhoods — but that was usually the result of elected officials making foolish and/or evil decisions, not the civil service workers who were merely carrying out their policies.

Indeed, federal civil servants take an oath and are prohibited from partisan politicking, which is why they can’t heed my advice about running until they leave.

“I’ve worked under Republican and Democratic administrations, and they have their own agenda and priorities, and we perform the work they ask us to do,” said Ruark Hotopp, a vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, who organizes federal workers in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska. For two decades he has worked at U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, which investigates immigration cases.

A Minnesota data scientist who recently accepted the deferred resignation from his federal job out of frustration told the Reformer’s Chris Ingraham this week that his work could have actually contributed to DOGE’s alleged aims: “We can ask questions that are valuable to whatever outcomes you want to get. Maybe I disagree with that outcome, but as a researcher or somebody who likes to answer questions I’m happy to explore them. I’m also happy to be like ‘that program doesn’t work, we should do something better.’ But there appears to be no interest in actually asking questions or learning.”

Hotopp said he lives by the credo of an old boss, who said it’s fine to have political bumper sticker, “But when you come through these doors, that’s where it ends.”

This ethos of apolitical, selfless service is foreign to the likes of Elon Musk and President Trump, who’s alleged by American generals to have insulted the sacrifice of servicemembers.

Indeed, around 30% of the federal workforce are veterans. (Proud disclosure: This group of federal worker/veterans includes two of my siblings.)

Both the military and federal workers spend a lof time preparing the country for events that may never happen but which the federal government is singularly suited to manage: wars, famines, natural disasters, pandemics. This long view of risk management would be helpful to legislative bodies that often struggle to think beyond the next election.

Former federal workers also offer a framework of servant-leadership that we need among elected officials right now, from school boards to the Legislature to Congress and the presidency.

Politics tends to attract people who want attention, now exacerbated by social media. Federal workers, by contrast, typically labor away in obscurity; not only do they rarely receive the credit they deserve — they are often treated with scorn, and never more than now.

If there’s a silver lining to this nightmare, federal workers are finally getting some of the recognition they deserve.

The majority of the civilian federal workforce are in defense, homeland security and care for veterans. Others ensure food safety, conduct cutting-edge scientific research, safely land passenger jets, investigate and dismantle drug and gun networks. Do these sound like valuable services?

(Also, just fyi: Federal civilian employee compensation is just 4.5% of the federal budget. And the federal government’s civilian head count is roughly 2.25 million, or the same as in 1969 when the American population was just a bit over 200 million, compared to 340 million today.)

About four out of five work outside the Washington area.

“We coach your kids’ Little League teams. We go to the same churches and synagogues and we’re like everyone else,” said Hotopp, who organizes members in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska.

The “deep state” label, Hotopp said, is reminiscent of the McCarthy era, when civil servants were smeared by Wisconsin’s most famous drunk, U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy.

If they want to serve our country again and with honor in the face of creeping autocracy, I urge the people who have been fired or resigned from the federal workforce to run for office.

Ultimately, we need them in Congress, where they can bring their expertise to bear on federal issues and public administration that’s sorely lacking in either chamber, where the most common occupations are lawyer, rich guy and career elected official.

But even here in Minnesota, candidates with experience as federal workers would bring valuable insight about the interplay between the state and federal government. And they could help their colleagues understand the challenges and opportunities of implementing and administering the Legislature’s many brilliant and less brilliant ideas.

Run (former) federal workers, run!

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

State Rep. Lisa Demuth, who leads Minnesota House Republicans, strongly suggested that her caucus will refuse to seat Rep.-elect Brad Tabke, DFL-Shakopee, who won a contested election by 14 votes after 20 votes were improperly discarded.

The election case is before a judge, but Demuth told Al Travis, a conservative podcast host, that Republicans will ignore a judge’s ruling and refuse to seat Tabke, forcing Gov. Tim Walz to call a special election in district 54A.

“I am hopeful the courts will decide that way,” she said. “If they don’t, we are ready to go, until there is a new election, and it is truly decided, a fair election, and integrity there, we should not be seating that representative.”

The Minnesota Constitution grants the two legislative chambers the power to seat members and rule on election contests, so House Republicans are empowered to ignore the judiciary.

The conflict over the south metro district, where Tabke narrowly beat Republican Aaron Paul, is a significant piece of a broader fight for control of the House, where Republicans have 67 members, and Democrats 66.

The legislative session begins Jan. 14.

On Jan. 28, a special election in another district — 40B — is expected to give the Democratic caucus another member. That special election is the result of DFL Rep.-elect Curtis Johnson resigning last month when a district judge ruled he did not live in the district he intended to represent.

Republicans plan to use their temporary one-vote advantage next week to elect Demuth speaker, assign their members as committee chairs and — based on comments from Demuth and others in the caucus — refuse to seat Tabke.

“It would be outrageous not to seat a member who won an election and the first of its kind of abuse of power in Minnesota’s history,” DFL House Leader Rep. Melissa Hortman said.

Democrats say they’ll walk out of the House and deny the Republicans the necessary 68 members for a quorum, without which the House cannot conduct business. Republicans say a majority of the chamber would be 67 out of the current 133 members. The dispute will be decided on the opening day of the session by the presiding officer on day one, Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat and former House member.

A decision in the Tabke case is expected imminently. The case centers around 20 ballots that went missing, even as Tabke won by just 14 votes. During a trial last month, six of the 20 voters whose ballots are believed to have been lost testified that they voted to reelect the Shakopee representative.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is finishing off a sour year with a heavy dose of bitterness and a side of petty.

Separate reports Wednesday in Axios and the Star Tribune revealed division between Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, whose political partnership goes back to the fall of 2017, when Walz picked her as his running mate.

An administration source contacted by the Reformer didn’t deny the tension and confirmed the broad outlines of the stories.

Flanagan didn’t respond to a request for comment.

For years, Flanagan has often been at Walz’s side during his public announcements and appearances, kneeling down to talk to young school children and donning a hard hat at construction groundbreakings.

As the two media reports note, and confirmed by Walz’s public schedule, Walz and Flanagan haven’t appeared together since Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris lost the national election, which prevented Flanagan’s elevation to governor.

Citing anonymous sources, the Star Tribune reports that the “Walz team was not pleased at steps Flanagan had taken to assume the governorship, conferring with potential key hires and preparing for a possible run herself in 2026.”

In addition to differences about personnel, money was also cited as a source of distrust.

“The Walz camp was especially irked because Flanagan had tapped Walz’s gubernatorial campaign fund without authorization for some work, multiple sources said,” the Star Tribune reports.

When asked whether there’s a rift between himself and Flanagan, Walz on WCCO radio Thursday morning denied it, laughing at the question.

“Probably not the biggest concern in people’s lives. I’m thinking of all the things going on in the world and national politics. No look, the lieutenant governor and I have worked together for many years. We’re transitioning back after a national campaign,” Walz said, adding that they often have different schedules and cannot appear at events together.

Asked about Flanagan tapping into his gubernatorial campaign fund, Walz said: “I have nothing to say on that. I don’t know about that.”

These are not the first murmurings of division. Flanagan comes from the progressive, activist wing of the DFL Party, and her likeminded brothers and sisters spent months on the streets protesting police killings in 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile, Walz was committed to public order, especially after the destructive arson following the police murder of George Floyd. After the Brooklyn Center police killing of Daunte Wright in 2021, Walz sought to quickly restore order with a show of force that demonstrators and the press said were violations of the First Amendment.

Questions arose about whether Flanagan would be on the 2022 ticket.

Walz and Flanagan have known each other for two decades. Walz was a student at Camp Wellstone, a training academy for emerging progressive politicos founded after the death of U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone. Flanagan was an instructor there.

Walz represented the conservative, rural 1st District in Congress for a decade before his run for Congress, and chose Flanagan as his running mate in part to shore up support among Twin Cities progressives as he sought the DFL convention endorsement, which he ultimately didn’t win before prevailing in the primary.

Walz, who has not granted the Reformer an interview request since losing the national election, has told other media he’ll announce a decision about his future after the 2025 legislative session, including the possibility of a third term for governor.

Walz seemed to taunt potential DFL challengers in a Star Tribune interview. “We could always have a primary.”

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

The drama this week over U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy losing his speakership is another instance when we gawk at the mosh pit instead of listening to the lyrics.

I’ll grant that the spectacle of a dysfunctional political party running the U.S. House is a sight to behold, but we ought to pay attention to what they are actually proposing, because it’s quite revealing.

A scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, the D.C. right-leaning think tank, called last week’s brush with disaster the “Seinfeld shutdown,” because like Larry David’s vision of his sitcom, it was about nothing.

The far-right Republicans who are driving us into these governing crises, the argument goes, are having more of a temper tantrum than anything. As the Washington Post put it:

Typically, funding showdowns in divided government between Congress and the White House have featured pitched battles over specific policies, such as Trump’s border wall or Obamacare. But budget experts and historians say the current impasse stands out for its lack of a clear policy disagreement.

But this ignores the House GOP’s cruel budget proposals to appease their clown car subcaucus.

The Pentagon and programs like Medicare and Social Security — that the GOP’s aging electorate rely on — go untouched, while equally important domestic programs take the hit.

As the Post reported, a quarter of all the House GOP’s proposed spending cuts come from a single program, Title 1 education grants, which is the federal government’s largest education program. It’s targeted at schools where more than 40% of children are from lower income families.

Republicans would cut the program by 80%.

Smart: After all, who are the poor kids gonna complain to?

Because we have a Democratic president and Senate, this proposal will never become law, but we should take it seriously as a statement of Republican principle.

By leaving Social Security, Medicare and the Pentagon untouched, the principle here can’t be for small government. So what is the principle, then? So far as I can tell, it’s cruelty toward people they don’t like, even when they reside in GOP members’ own districts.

Consider U.S. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer — — and potential future speaker of the House — of the 6th District. St. Cloud Public Schools receives $5 million in Title 1 funds, according to the Minnesota Department of Education. How many teachers do you suppose that is?

The St. Cloud School District uses nearly all that money for instructional positions, according to Amy Skaalerud, the executive director of the district’s finance and business services. She told me in an email that an 80% reduction would result in the district having to cut about 60 teachers, using an average starting teacher salary with benefits of $65,000.

In U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber’s 8th District, Duluth Public Schools receives $2.4 million in Title 1 funds, while Rock Ridge Public Schools on the Iron Range gets $517,000.

U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach represents Moorhead in the 7th District, and they’d lose most of $1.7 million. Alexandria receives $517,000.

U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad represents the 1st District, where Rochester receives some $2.8 million. The Mankato School District takes in $1.5 million.

Democrats say the cuts would cost 224,000 teaching jobs nationwide, affecting some 26 million students.

The federal government provides a pittance of overall education funding, which is too bad because we could take pressure off regressive state and local taxes if the feds would fund schools.

Be that as it may, we’ll take whatever Title 1 funds we can. It’s not just the money that’s important, however. It’s a policy lever on educational equity and civil rights, while giving us reams of data to improve our approach.

I guess we should be pleased that none of Minnesota’s Republican representatives are in the chaos caucus. I’m referring to the House Republicans — perhaps a dozen or two — whose goal is to burn it all down. They are willing to see key federal workers go without pay and let nearly 7 million children and moms go hungry without WIC benefits, among other important federal programs imperiled over shutdown theater.

So, sure, Emmer, Stauber, Fischbach and Finstad have achieved the very low bar of not being Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Our very mainstream Minnesota Republicans are not interested in bedlam. They just want to fire a bunch of teachers.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on Facebook and Twitter.