Good morning. Take that drought!

There’s no mistaking the DFL Party’s falloff in rural Minnesota, but party leaders think there’s a chance to rebuild connections with voters once in their fold. DFL officials said they have extra organizers in rural Minnesota this year and a message they think can break through. They point to fertilizer, fuel and other input costs that they say are straining farmers. They’ve also got candidates from farm backgrounds running under their banner. But the numbers are the numbers. It would take a big swing to regain territory that the GOP has tightened its grip on for seats in the Legislature. Catharine Richert breaks down some of the ingredients, the faces and the challenges in the DFL’s rural comeback push. 

The movie Field of Dreams came out in 1989 with the famous line: “If you build it, they will come.” Maybe that’s the DFL mindset in its stated focus on gaining ground in greater Minnesota — that is outside of the districts centered in big cities, suburbs and regional centers. Consider this: That year, there were 25 DFLers who listed agriculture-related occupations (of 125 DFLers in the Legislature in all). Since then, the farmers in the DFL legislative ranks have dropped precipitously. Today, there are zero DFL lawmakers who say they have farm-rooted occupations (out of 101 lawmakers). Catharine’s story includes comments from two DFLers seeking to go from the farm to the Senate this year. To be fair, Republicans have also seen erosion of lawmakers with that profile. The GOP had 11 lawmakers with agriculture occupations in the current Legislature (out of 100 members overall). Remember, that lawmakers self identify their professions in their official bios so that’s what this is based on. Plus, we unearthed those statistics with major help from the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, which we’ve said before is a state treasure (thanks Mike and Linda!). 

In a commanding spot to gain her party’s nomination for governor, Amy Klobuchar is starting to lock in TV ad time for the general election. Klobuchar’s campaign placed its initial blast of ad reservations on Monday. Unless she accelerates her plan, the first spots won’t go up until the week of Aug. 18 — after the primary that will most likely make her the DFL nominee and sort out who will challenge her from the Republican Party. Klobuchar is sitting on the biggest pile of campaign money of any of the candidates (her available cash is more than all of the active Republican candidates combined and multiplied by almost seven). If history is any guide, expect Klobuchar to run a batch of positive or biographical spots about what she’s done as a U.S. senator and what she wants to do as governor. Unless the race gets close, she’ll probably leave the negative ads to outside groups.

The GOP-endorsed candidate for governor is proposing a multibillion dollar tax cut that he says would be paid for by slicing Minnesota's budget across the board. Kendall Qualls describes his plan as a way to compensate taxpayers for alleged fraud in public programs. He is embracing a $9 billion dollar estimate from a former federal prosecutor. Nowhere near that amount has been criminally charged and most cases so far involve federal money. Qualls called that figure “a marker.” He said his state tax cut would be made over two years, but he hasn’t settled on the mechanism for delivering it. Asked where the money would come from, Qualls said there’s room to cut in the state budget. “Doing a 10 to 12 percent budget cut is normative for any organization going through basically austere times, so we're looking at a 12 percent budget decrease across the board and you can manage that with little-to-no impact at all when you think about operating state budgets." He said employee attrition, hiring freezes and dictating no increases to spending would help reach his target. To get to the November election Qualls would have to win a competitive race for the Republican nomination in the August primary. He predicts voters will gravitate toward someone with bold plans. “They're looking for something as far as radical changes that they know something's wrong, and tinkering around the edges is not good enough,” he said. 

The judge at the center of several decisions that have hemmed in the Trump administration’s Minnesota immigration actions has a past in conservative circles. Sarah Nelson at the Star Tribune offered a profile of U.S. District Court Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz. He was appointed by former President George W. Bush and is a protege of conservative former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He hasn’t held back from blocking federal legal moves during the immigration crackdown in Minnesota. On Monday, Schiltz issued his latest blistering ruling against the Trump administration. It blocked subpoenas sought by the Justice Department against Minnesota elected officials. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” Schiltz wrote earlier this year.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has a counterintuitive take on how solar energy projects might fare under a presidential administration that has taken a dim view of renewable power sources. Pawlenty is in a new role as president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association and gave his first interview to online site Semafor . He told the outlet that the Trump administration would usher in “a golden age of solar.” That’s despite rollbacks in tax credits and other incentives for renewable energy.  Perhaps Pawlenty is following the lead of other industry groups that have found it better to stay on Trump’s good side than criticize his actions. Pawlenty is seeking changes to permitting, a matter before Congress, as well as help for solar panel manufacturing. He told Semafor that solar power is cheaper and faster to build than alternatives, which he said is a reason to be optimistic that the administration will come around.

Ramsey County has wrapped up an extensive review of cases connected to a former medical examiner who came under scrutiny. After a federal judge said in 2021 that retired Ramsey County Chief Medical Examiner Michael McGee’s testimony in a murder case was "unreliable, misleading and inaccurate,” the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office partnered with the Great North Innocence Project and the Prosecutors’ Center for Excellence to embark on a years-long, multi-phase, $380,000 review of more than 200 cases for which McGee provided testimony. Seven murder cases were determined to need additional analysis and the county hired three out-of-state medical examiners to review them. Though the examiners criticized some aspects of McGee’s work in the cases, they ultimately backed up his findings and the county is not modifying or vacating the convictions. Cait explains the findings of the review process and what happens next for the seventh and final case in review.