Good morning. That was a doozy of a spring storm cell!

A House workforce and economic development committee will review a bill today that would provide emergency relief grants for small businesses affected by Operation Metro Surge. The proposal is part of a broader economic development bill. It has been a priority for Democrats in the Legislature who say businesses need a boost after some saw reduced traffic or closed their doors amid the peak of the immigration enforcement operation. Local officials, school leaders and small business owners testified before the Ways and Means Committee yesterday and said the operation had a deep impact on Minnesota that requires government action to aid in recovery. Barring support from the federal government, they urged state lawmakers to step in. DFL legislators say this is a top issue for them this session. “The headlines may have moved on, but our state has not. Minnesota is still living with the devastating impacts of Operation Metro Surge,” Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, said. “And we are standing here today because silence is not an option. No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, you cannot deny what happened here in just 10 weeks under occupation.” GOP Rep. Dave Baker said if lawmakers want to help businesses, they should ease regulatory burdens from the state. "What we can't have is folks come to us and the rest of the taxpayers when we haven't given them the good tools ahead of time to succeed,” Baker said. Any proposal needs bipartisan support to advance at the Capitol. This proposal could get rolled into a broader end-of-session deal.

The state’s ability to charge and prosecute Medicaid fraud could expand under a bill that got approval by a key Minnesota Senate committee Monday. The bill expands the definition of medical assistance fraud as a crime by adding a number of statutes, linking it to the state racketeering law and lengthening the statute of limitations on medical assistance crimes. The bill would expand the Minnesota Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud unit with 11 more investigators and three more attorneys. Nick Wanka is the director of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit for the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. "This ensures the appropriate accountability for those who get obscenely rich stealing money that is supposed to be going to health care needs for the most vulnerable people in Minnesota,” he told the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. “And there are new provisions regarding restitution and continuing offenses as well that will help us ensure that those offenders are ordered to pay back all of the money that they have taken." The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously.

Minnesota lawmakers are ready to take state license plates back to the stone ages — well before, then actually. The state House gave overwhelming approval yesterday to a bill to authorize a state park license plate design featuring Lake Superior Agate as a North Shore tribute. House lawmakers were free with the rock puns, none more so than DFL Rep. David Gottfried. “You get the schist of it. We have tens of thousands of agate-head Minnesotans eager to snatch up agate-themed license plates,” he said, adding later, “I ask for your support because I do not want to take it for granite.” GOP Rep. Roger Skraba got into the act, too. “I rise in support not just for schist and giggles,” he said, cracking himself up. It passed 110-22. The bill now awaits a Senate vote. Once enacted, a design has to come from a Minnesota resident and can't be aided by artificial intelligence. The plate would be selected by Dec. 18.

Numbers nerds will have a lot of fun in the next couple of days. First-quarter campaign finance reports land in federal and state campaigns. We’ll be focusing here on the key races and try to offer some side-by-side glance when we have the main ones in hand. But many campaigns aren’t waiting until the last minute to tout their figures or try to slide lackluster numbers in more quietly. This deadline’s most closely watched reports will be from Democrat Amy Klobuchar and the leading trio of GOP candidates in the governor’s race (more on that below) as well as the first post ICE-surge reports from the U.S. Senate candidates, which drew national attention to Minnesota and the state’s political stakes.

The most prolific fundraiser in Minnesota won’t actually spend much of that in Minnesota or his own race: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said yesterday that he had pulled in $9.2 million from January through March. As a GOP leader, he’ll likely transfer most of that to party and candidate accounts as Republicans defend a very slim U.S. House majority. He’s already shared about $13.3 million of his personal haul since early 2025. Emmer has not faced competitive races in the 6th Congressional District that have required him to devote much time or effort campaigning in the area.

Republican Michele Tafoya entered the U.S. Senate race at the start of the year. That means she’s just starting in the money race with candidates from her own party and the DFL already well into their fundraising and campaign building. We haven’t yet seen Tafoya’s full report, but her campaign put out what it views as the headline figure: She raised $2.2 million in the first quarter. Royce White, the 2024 party nominee for Senate and who is making a second bid for the office, reported raising about $566,000 in the same period. But all of that and then some went out the door given that his small-dollar fundraising tends to be expensive. He had about $83,000 on hand as of April 1. Other notable candidates — including Adam Schwarze, Mark York and David Hann — have yet to file their reports.

In the governor’s race, one of the leading GOP contenders is out with some early figures. Kendall Qualls, the 2022 Republican convention runnerup for the governor’s office, said he pulled in $123,000 in the first three months of this year. That brings his total to $700,000 since launching his campaign. Again, with the end-of-May state convention nearing, cash on hand is a metric to watch. We’ll be interested in fundraising from House Speaker Lisa Demuth, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and state Rep. Kristin Robbins, who along with Qualls have emerged as the lead cluster. Several other Republican candidates are running but will need to show they’re catching on to stay relevant in the conversation.

The third time has so far not been the fundraising charm for Republican Tyler Kistner. When the Marine veteran ran twice before for the 2nd Congressional District seat, in 2020 and 2022, he raised more than $3 million in both campaigns. Now in his third try, he’s finding the funds slower to pull in. For the first three months of this year, he reports raising about $80,000; for the campaign in total, he’s up to $334,000. But, sounding like a broken record, what is left to spend is an important line on those forms. For that, Kistner lists $27,500 as of April 1. Fellow Republican candidate, Eric Pratt, has yet to report his first quarter figures. He loaned himself $105,000 last year and raised about the same amount.