Good morning. Welcome to Monday.

The way Amy Klobuchar campaigns for Minnesota governor will be worth watching as the year unfolds and the senator splits her time between here and Washington.In her first full week as a DFL candidate for the state’s top office , Klobuchar was mostly in the U.S. Capitol and didn’t do much by way of Minnesota events and interviews. The main exception was an appearance Friday in Duluth. Dan Kraker caught up with Klobuchar, who was there to highlight the impact of federal immigration enforcement on the state's schools. While there has been little ICE enforcement in or around Duluth schools yet, officials say school absences are up out of fear and performance is down among students still attending class. Klobuchar says she wants schools and hospitals off limits from immigration enforcement. “It’s also one of the asks that we are making in the Senate, one of the requests with this budget looming ahead of us, that schools and other places like schools be safe places from ICE,” she said. Klobuchar equated ICE to “schoolyard bullies.”

The Republican frontrunner for governor had her first notable break with President Donald Trump since starting her campaign. Lisa Demuth, the state House speaker, added herself to the criticism of Trump’s social media post widely panned as racist for depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. Demuth was on WCCO-TV Sunday to talk about her straw poll victory. Of the Trump post, which has been retracted but for which he has not apologized for, Demuth called it “horrific” and said she was “incredibly frustrated” by it. “Part of the reason that my family moved from one community when I was seven years old to another community, a larger area, was that I was called the 'N-word' every day. So that posting of something like that was unacceptable.” She said she was pleased that it was pulled down. Another governor’s race tie-in is that the cartoonish video in question was “originally aired during a 2021 event hosted by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow” and a current candidate for Minnesota governor, according to the New York Times. Lindell showed up at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club this weekend for a fundraiser.

We spoke to a couple candidates for governor on the first “Politics Friday” show of the 2026 season.  It wasn’t Klobuchar or Demuth, who weren’t made available for short interviews. Kendall Qualls, the second-place finisher in the GOP straw poll, came on. He noted his improvement over 2022, when he was fourth in the straw poll and runner up at the convention. For what it’s worth, two of the last four straw poll winners went on to the party nomination for Republicans (Scott Jensen in 2022 and Jeff Johnson in 2018). Mike Newcome, a Forward Independence Party candidate, said he still believes there is a middle lane in this year’s election that voters will gravitate to. Catch those interviews and a lot of analysis here.

Democrats posted final results from their gubernatorial straw poll last week, with U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar winning more than two-thirds of the vote. Klobuchar got into the race just weeks earlier after Gov. Tim Walz announced he wouldn’t run again. Final poll results showed Klobuchar won almost 72 percent of the vote of more than 31,000 people who voted in DFL caucuses. Meanwhile, 21 percent were uncommitted and the remainder abstained or chose another candidate. The party said that ballot counting took days due to higher-than-expected turnout. The Secretary of State’s Office has the precinct results from both parties posted on its site, although you have to dig a bit to find it.

U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison raised concerns about the lack of measles mitigation measures at a pair of immigration detention centers in Texas and Minnesota.  Morrison, who is also a physician, toured the Whipple Building on Thursday evening and said the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t have steps in place to prevent infection spread, even though people detained there have been transferred to the Dilley Building in Texas and, in some cases, returned. The Dilley Building has experienced a measles outbreak among detainees. “The Trump Administration’s policies are putting people’s lives, health and security at risk with their incompetence, cruelty, and lawlessness. This poses a threat to all Minnesotans. I am especially concerned to learn that there is no protocol to prevent the spread of measles between Texas and Minnesota facilities,” Morrison said. “The lack of humanity and adherence to the rule of law is beneath what we should expect from our country.”

A Republican-led U.S. House committee is seeking access to financial information of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband. The move is described as unusual and is part of an intense focus on Minnesota and its leading Democrats by U.S. Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee and a Kentucky Republican. Comer’s request echoes common remarks by President Donald Trump that Omar and her husband, Timothy Mynett, have seen suspiciously rapid growth in their net worth. Through a spokesperson, Omar said the request was a political stunt and far afield from the oversight charge of the committee.

On the fraud front, the much anticipated progress report from a state consultant reviewing at-risk Medicaid programs is out. The Minnesota Department of Human Services released the Optum analysis on Friday. It said that millions could be saved by trying to recoup erroneous payments and billions by changing policies to close vulnerability gaps. Anti-fraud measures are certain to be high on the to-do list of Minnesota lawmakers this session. Meanwhile, federal prosecutions have been set back by mass resignations of key people in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota over pressure to pursue certain cases over others. The New York Times said the Justice Department is struggling to fill openings in Minnesota and beyond because of hesitation by top-caliber lawyers to get sucked into a presidentially driven prosecution agenda.

Immigration enforcement action was front and center in Minnesotans’ submissions for the latest round of state snowplow name submissions but officials passed them over to avoid politics. The Minnesota Department of Transportation reports that in its latest naming contest 6,750 people submitted name ideas for the fleet and of those 400 were related to ICE. But those submissions got passed over in favor of 30 finalists, including Life of a Snowgirl, O Brother Where Art Plow? And Six-Sleddin’ Six-Sleddin’. None of the finalists includes mentions of immigration enforcement (ICE) or ice of the frozen water variety. Department spokesman Devin Henry said the department aims to avoid politically charged names. “For six years, MnDOT’s Name a Snowplow contest has been designed to be fun, light-hearted and apolitical. This year is no exception,” Henry said. “As always, we have rejected submissions with political messages and instead selected puns, memes and Taylor Swift jokes. Most of this year’s submissions were funny celebrations of Minnesota’s snowplowing prowess, and that’s what we prioritized when choosing finalists.” Votes continue through the end of the week to pick monikers for eight plows.