The Minnesota Senate on Wednesday voted 35-32 to send one-time money out to counties and tribal governments to help Minnesotans cover their rent. As Dana reported , the bill would tap unspend funds from a tax-forfeiture court settlement. “The funds in this bill are available thanks to Ms. Geraldine Tyler, a 94-year-old Black woman from north Minneapolis who successfully sued Hennepin County after it wrongfully seized and sold her home,” Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, said Wednesday. “Using this money to keep families housed honors her fight for justice, just as she stood up to a government in the wrong, so too today we have the chance to rewrite history for thousands of Minnesota families across this state,” she continued. Republicans pushed back, raising concerns about people receiving the funding who aren’t authorized to live in the United States. They also raised concerns about fraud. Sen. Rich Draheim, R-Madison Lake, and several others in his caucus said they’d not heard from local governments about the need for emergency rent assistance. “We are not in a crisis, according to the data,” Draheim said. “I appreciate the debate. I always appreciate the topic of housing, everybody knows that, but this $40 million could be spent in better ways.” The legislation faces an uphill battle in the tied Minnesota House, where Democrats will have to convince at least one Republican to vote with them if they hope to pass it. Their effort came up short in a House housing committee yesterday.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed a proposal to extend the city’s eviction notice policy, instead putting up money for rental assistance. In a letter to the Minneapolis City Council, Frey said he viewed the move as the “best path forward.” “Rental assistance is working and getting to renters quickly,” he said. The proposed extension would’ve required that landlords give tenants 60 days’ notice before filing for eviction, instead of 30 days. The city council approved a resolution extending the notice requirement through July 31. Our colleague Estelle Timar-Wilcox reports on the development and has more here.

Minnesotans could soon participate in a state-run psilocybin therapy program. Jessica Nielson, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Neuroscience program, and Stefan Egan, a veteran who has used psychedelic mushrooms to treat PTSD, are members of the state’s Psychedelic Medicine Task Force and spoke yesterday with Minnesota Now’s Nina Moini. Read the task force’s full report and recommendations to the state here. Bipartisan bills in the Minnesota House and Senate would establish a therapeutic psilocybin program for people 21 or older with qualifying medical conditions. The House bill passed the Health Finance and Policy Committee on Monday.

Minnesota could become the first state to require cameras in child care centers this year. A proposal is being workshopped in the Legislature after reports of children being mistreated — or, in one case, killed at the hands of a child care employee. A similar effort last year was constrained to require cameras in centers that are the subject of maltreatment investigations, with 28 days of footage retention. West joined Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition yesterday to explain the need for more surveillance and the discussion about balancing transparency, accountability and privacy.

The U.S. Attorney’s office is pointing to staffing issues in a request to push back proceedings in a case linked to the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. Federal prosecutors filed a motion earlier this week to delay the start of an upcoming trial of defendant Abdirahman Mohamud Ahmed. Ahmed is set to stand trial on June 8 at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Monday’s filing seeking to push the trial date back, prosecutors raised concerns about another Feeding Our Future trial set to begin in late April. “Given the April trial, which involves seven defendants and is expected to be lengthy, counsel for the government will not be able to adequately prepare for the trial in this matter,” the prosecutors wrote in the filing in Ahmed’s case. They added that because Ahmed is not being detained, “his liberty interests are not at issue.” But the filing indicated that Ahmed’s attorney objects to the delay. Judge Nancy Brasel has not yet ruled on the motion. Several experienced prosecutors left the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office in January after top Justice Department officials pushed for an investigation into the widow of Renee Macklin Good, who was shot and killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis.

Non-disclosure agreements between local governments and companies looking to build big projects would be banned under a bill headed for a vote in the Minnesota House. The bill comes on the heels of several data center projects across the state in which city governments have signed non-disclosure agreements about development projects with major tech companies. In Hermantown, for instance , city and county leaders were in discussions about a proposal called “Project Loon” for more than a year, which was just revealed to be a $650 million, 300,000 square foot data center for Google just last week. The bill would restrict non-disclosure agreements, except when required by state or federal law. Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis, and Rep. Drew Roach, GOP-Farmington, have both sponsored bills pushing to ban NDAs for such projects. “There's not many bills in the Legislature that are Greenman/Roach bills,” Greenman said. “We're hearing from our constituents and folks across the state about the need to protect the public's right to know, and so we have been working on this together.” The bill was greenlit by a House committee to go to the general register.

A Twin Cities immigrant rights group is pushing Minnesota to adopt sanctuary status, which they say would more strongly support immigrant communities in the state. The Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, or MIRAC, on Wednesday called for Gov. Tim Walz to declare Minnesota a sanctuary state through executive order. The group is calling for a ban on any cooperation between immigration enforcement agencies and state and local law enforcement, for charges to be dropped against all anti-ICE protesters, for prosecutions of immigration officers involved in the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and a statewide eviction moratorium. Myrka Zambrano with MIRAC said: “The people of Minnesota have tirelessly fought for our immigrant neighbors. It is time for our leadership to fight for them too. It is time for them to do what is right. Stand by Minnesotans. Stand by our immigrant neighbors.” The group is planning to hold a rally this weekend to call for the state to adopt sanctuary status.