I was told not to tweet this until the houses adjourned for fear of jinxing it, but the Minnesota legislature just completed what is probably the most productive session anywhere in the country since probably the New Deal. Sweeping bills and reforms across every area of life.
Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor part accompanied this monumental session with a six-vote margin in the House and a bare one-vote majority in the Senate. The scale of their achievement cannot be overstated.
With no votes to spare, Minnesota Democrats have implemented vast new social programs, enacted protections for groups threatened by far-right states and the Supreme Court, strengthened unions, poured money into schools, replaced infrastructure, and fed every Minnesota child.
I want to do this justice so tomorrow I’m going to add all the high points to this thread, but with the session ending a few minutes ago I wanted to emphasize that something really incredible has happened here. I hope all the DFL legislators sleep well tonight.
Before I start tweeting about individual policy accomplishments (which frankly seems a bit daunting, given the sheer number of them), a couple of broader points about the Minnesota Dems this year:
First, in addition to having a one-vote margin, this was not a radical left-wing legislature! There are plenty of moderate Dems here.
But the moderates, unlike Dems elsewhere, still wanted to get stuff done and saw progressives as partners in making that happen.
Rather than looking at the November numbers result and imposing some kind of self-limiting narrative about the scope of their mandate, MN Dems looked at their priorities and said “How much of the list can we get done?”
Turns out the answer was “Almost everything.”
It probably also helped that this was a younger legislature, with many first-time committee chairs and newer members who were eager to start governing after years of relative deadlock in a divided statehouse.
But the key here is that the DFL clearly figured, no matter how small their majorities were, it was better, politically and morally, to choose doing good things over doing nothing. And it did, again and again.
As for the GOP, there was just nothing it could do about it. It complained a lot, but the Republicans just didn’t have the votes, and undoing this session is a vast project that requires flipping three branches. Even in a purplish state, that’s a high bar.
Okay, so what did Minnesota Dems actually do? In no particular order (and likely updated throughout the day, since I literally don't have time go through it all in one sitting):
They created a huge new statewide paid family and medical leave program, raising the number of workers receiving paid leave from 25% to 100%. cbsnews.com/minnesota/news…
@SydneyJordanMN They created new protections for Uber and Lyft drivers, leading to State Senator Omar Fateh being adorably mobbed by Uber and Lyft drivers.
@SydneyJordanMN They codified Roe v. Wade, ensuring that Republicans can't endanger abortion rights in Minnesota simply by controlling the courts. apnews.com/article/aborti…
@SydneyJordanMN Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can't be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. mprnews.org/story/2023/03/…
@SydneyJordanMN Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. minnpost.com/state-governme…
@SydneyJordanMN Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state's perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. startribune.com/public-safety-…
@SydneyJordanMN Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. cbsnews.com/minnesota/news…
Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one's interesting because it's the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/20/min…
Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. apnews.com/article/gun-co…
Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state's medical system. minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/21/bil…
Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. apnews.com/article/politi…
I'm not even close to being done, by the way. More to come. Even listing what got done is an all-day project.
Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. finance-commerce.com/2023/05/new-wa…
Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. minnpost.com/state-governme…
Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. minnpost.com/greater-minnes…
I can't even find a news story about it but there's tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/S…
A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. startribune.com/minnesota-dfl-…
They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state's education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn't decline over time. startribune.com/minnesota-demo…
Okay we're wrapping up, I'm out of things to talk abou...
oh wait no, there's still so much more.
Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they're not working or getting paid. minnesotareformer.com/briefs/house-a…
Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here.) startribune.com/educators-lawm…
@SydneyJordanMN Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. fox9.com/news/digital-f…
As far as I can tell there isn't a single news story written about it, but Minnesota Dems made huge improvements to the state's Public Employee Labor Relations Act, making it far more labor-friendly (e.g., by making staffing ratios a mandatory subject of bargaining).
They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. startribune.com/minnesota-legi…
Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/S…
Minnesota Dems banned "captive audience meetings," where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/17/lab…
No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.
Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/S…
They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. kstp.com/kstp-news/top-…
Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/22/min…
Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/12/dem…
There's billions of dollars of stuff I'm leaving off - truly, it is overwhelming - but I wanted Sydney to have the final word on this thread. Good session, guys.
I think one of the worst pathologies of our time is the conviction among so many powerful people that "being reasonable" and "acting powerless" are the same thing - that reacting to events in any way, or attempt to effect change on the world, is inherently unserious.
It's a huge part of what has left our politics so paralyzed in response to things like Trump. "Wow, Trump's bad," some of the most powerful people on earth say. "It's crazy that he's running for reelection after attempting to overthrow the government. Hope he doesn't win!"
Something about the endless bubble of screens and news we live in has trained our society's leaders to believe they're not really part of the world, just observers of it. They've absorbed the passivity of the cable TV watcher or Twitter commenter.
Reorienting the legal system to protect white people, regardless of whether it’s done under the guise of anti-anti-racism or whatever, is effectively the restoration of formal white supremacy. It was always inevitable that Trump’s far right would end up here.
This is the beating heart of Trump’s politics: taking the inchoate resentment of reactionary white people terrified that they are losing their racial privileges and using it to create a regime where those people can endlessly exact revenge on groups they believe subordinate.
“White reactionaries incorrectly believe they have been discriminated against and simply want to compete on level ground” - given that they ALREADY are competing with an advantage, what would a legal regime privileging this group look like?
Biden has been the most progressive policy president in 50 years or more. He's enacted massive stimulus and climate bills, he's governed with a full-employment mindset that has created a booming economy for workers, he's appointed progressives across the federal government.
He's made great court appointments, stood up for labor unions like no president in history, and stood by an anti-monopoly FTC chair that has big business howling in anger. He's cancelled tons of student and tried to cancel more. He's done SO MUCH.
It is ALSO true that his opponent is undisguised fascist and rapist who previously tried to overthrow the government, campaigning on a platform of, quite literally, dictatorship, bloody revenge, and concentration camps for immigrants and other perceived undesirables.
Again, this is not complicated: the fringe of people who are going to sit out this election to punish Biden from the left is quite small. But those people are noisy and contribute to a larger sense of apathy, that both parties are the same. And there are a LOT of apathetic voters
"Both parties are the same, this election doesn't matter, I won't vote or will just vote third party" is a very stupid idea that nonetheless seems to have some intrinsic appeal to a lot of people, and has repeatedly caused catastrophic election results (Bush 2000, Trump 2016)
We were able to beat Trump in 2020 in large part because there was widespread recognition of the stakes of the election (that's why turnout was the highest in history). But right now the public discourse is full of very loud voices playing DOWN the stakes
It’s forgotten now but Dems spent the first 2.5 years of the Biden presidency intentionally slow-walking or closing down investigations of Trump while sternly declaring that they were “looking forward, not back”
The problem here was incredibly obvious at the time: if no one actually did the work of targeting Trump for his many outrageous acts, none of them would stick to him.
Remember that Mueller handed Garland an open-and-shut case against Trump, and instead of taking action, he simply let it expire. Dems didn’t investigate Trump and Russia. Only Jack Smith finally moved forward on an ACTUAL COUP ATTEMPT.