Good morning.  Spring will get here at some point.

Minnesota is being sued by a federal agency over a new state law banning prediction markets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued the day after Gov. Tim Walz signed the law  to make it a felony to organize or advertise a prediction market like Kalshi or Polymarket. The CFTC says Minnesota is overstepping its authority and specifically cited agricultural-based weather trades as a concern. “This flagrant and unprecedented incursion into the Commission’s exclusive regulatory sphere must be preliminarily and permanently enjoined,” lawyers for the federal government wrote in the lawsuit. A bill to revise the new law also passed. It would allow for weather-related wagers. DFL Rep. Emma Greenman sponsored both and defended the approach. “The changes are just making sure that what we are regulating here in Minnesota is protecting Minnesota from this explosion of gambling and not digging into the places that there's always been long-term sort of interest derivatives, and all the financial instruments that sophisticated actors and market actors have been using for decades,” Greenman told Dana. Lawmakers anticipated lawsuits when they passed one of the broadest prediction market regulations in the country.

Gov. Tim Walz has stuck with judges he knows for the highest court in Minnesota. A pair of Supreme Court picks he made involve jurists he previously appointed to bench roles. He named Associate Justice Theodora Gaïtas to serve as chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, upon the retirement of current Chief Justice Natalie Hudson in September. For her open seat, Walz appointed Ramsey County District Court Judge Reynaldo Aligada, Jr. Walz appointed Gaïtas to the Supreme Court in 2024. She’ll be the first former public defender to take on the role of chief justice. Aligada will fill the vacancy left by Gaïtas when she is elevated to the chief justice post. Prior to serving on the Ramsey County District Court, he worked in the Office of the Federal Defender and as an associate at the firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi. Walz said during an appointment ceremony Tuesday that the state’s Judicial Selection Committee keeps partisanship out of the judiciary. “We have to keep that separation there, because they have a job to do, and if that job is to rule against the executive branch or the legislative branch, that's exactly what they will do, and that's what's expected of them,” Walz said. “That independence in Minnesota makes us, I think, unique amongst the states.” When Gaïtas is elevated to the chief post and Aligada joins the court, five of the justices will be Walz appointees. All seven justices on the court will have been appointed by Democratic governors, as is currently the case. 

The judicial selection has a fall ballot ramification as well. Justice Theodora Gaïtas was supposed to be on November’s ballot for an election to a six-year term. Her seat will not be on the ballot now because it technically came open and was filled by appointment. Instead, she and new Justice Reynaldo Aligada, Jr. will face voters in 2028. Two associate justice seats are on the November ballot still. They are for the spot occupied by Justice Paul Thissen and the one by Justice Sarah Hennesy. Minnesota has so far avoided the expensive, partisan judicial elections of other states, including neighboring Wisconsin.

 

Several states are redrawing congressional district maps in order to gain partisan advantage in upcoming U.S. House elections. But in Minnesota, the issue has not gotten much traction. Redistricting usually follows changes in the U.S. Census, as populations grow, shrink or migrate. DFL House Caucus Leader Zack Stephenson said doing that in Minnesota is not something he's thought much about. "I think what's happening around the country is disgusting, you know, seeing Republican-led states respond to President Trump's efforts to undermine the system to preserve power, it's gross, but it hasn't been a conversation here in Minnesota,” he said in an interview yesterday. It could take a constitutional change to allow a Minnesota redistricting in an off year. Courts have drawn Minnesota's maps in recent decades because the Legislature and governor could not agree on one.

House Speaker Lisa Demuth’s daughter is going public with her disagreement over the way her mother and other Republicans treated gun legislation this session. Shelisa Demuth criticized her mother on social media last week for not allowing a Senate gun measures and school safety package to face a House floor vote. Yesterday, she went further in a Star Tribune op-ed , pointing out lawmakers approved various measures memorializing former Speaker Melissa Hortman but didn’t take action to restrict the type of weapon used to kill her and students at Annunciation Catholic Church and School. “This session sent one of the clearest signals in recent Minnesota history: We will mourn gun violence, but we will not confront it,” Shelisa Demuth wrote. She emphasized the way her mother’s life has been directly affected by gun violence. Demuth and her three siblings were all on school grounds during the Rocori school shooting in 2003, with Shelisa and her sister inside the high school building where the shooting happened. She said she sheltered in place with her mother during the manhunt for Hortman’s killer and again during an active shooter lockdown last month at a shopping center. “Remembrance matters. But remembrance is hollow when it arrives absent the courage to change,” Demuth wrote.

Vice President JD Vance says an ongoing investigation into immigration fraud in Minnesota could include scrutiny of Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar. During a White House press conference, Vance was asked if Omar might be under investigation. Vance brought up Omar's marriage history. She has, for years, denied and rejected rumors that she married a man to help him with immigration. Vance said he would not pre-judge an investigation. “Everybody's entitled to equal justice under the laws. So, we're going to investigate it. We’re going to take a look at it,” he said. “If we think that there's a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime, and that's something the Department of Justice is looking at right now.” Omar's office didn’t comment on Vance’s remarks. The Minneapolis Democrat has not been implicated in the state’s ongoing fraud cases. She is seeking a fifth term this year.

Minnesota lawmakers hit PAWS on FUR-ther expansion of the commercial puppy industry. After back and forth about the rights of small businesses versus concerns about animal welfare, a bill that awaits consideration by Gov. Tim Walz prevents future pet shops from selling cats and dogs. The bill is aimed at curbing the “puppy-mill-to-pet-shop pipeline,” according to bill sponsor Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis. High volume commercial breeding operations are often called puppy mills by critics. Critics say even if those breeders (who can have thousands of animals on site at one time) are USDA certified, those standards do not qualify as humane treatment. The USDA says dogs can be kept in cages only six inches larger than their bodies and puppies and nursing mothers don’t need exercise. Lawmakers ultimately grandfathered in the few local pet shops that currently sell cats and dogs, including Four Paws and a Tail in Blaine, but ensured puppy store chains can’t set up shop in the state.