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By Sydney Kashiwagi

The Minnesota Star Tribune

Hello and welcome back to another D.C. Dish. 

Making it official. Rep. Angie Craig put to rest weeks of speculation about a U.S. Senate run when she announced Tuesday that she’s running to replace retiring Sen. Tina Smith.  

She joints Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and former state Sen. Melisa López Franzen in the Democratic field and comes into the race with a cash advantage.  

Craig’s entry now creates another key race: the one to replace her in the U.S. House in the competitive Second Congressional District.

It’s a purple district Craig worked hard to make what could have been a safe seat for her if she chose to remain in the House. Republicans had said they would not have targeted her this cycle, but her departure is all but certain to put her seat back on the radar of Republicans, who are trying to hold their slim majority in the lower chamber. Read more.

NRCC puts CD2 on notice. “The writing is on the wall for House Democrats, and their vulnerable members like Angie Craig are racing for the exits. Republicans look forward to flipping this open seat red," NRCC spokesman Zach Bannon said in a statement following Craig's announcement to run for Senate. 

Candidates in the mix. Craig's exit from the House is likely to create a crowded field of candidates from both parties. Former state Sen. Matt Little of Lakeville; current state Sen. Matt Klein of Mendota Heights; state Sen. Erin Maye Quade of Apple Valley; and former Minneapolis DFL Chair Mike Norton are already in the mix on the Democratic side. In the GOP field, Craig’s two-time Republican opponent Tyler Kistner is likely to run. Joe Teirab, Craig’s last Republican opponent, hasn't ruled out a bid, nor has state Sen. Eric Pratt, R-Prior Lake, and Tayler Rahm, who dropped out of the Second Congressional District Republican primary last year and had strong support from the district’s conservative grassroots base.

The Associated Press

One step closer to Congressional Gold Medals. A bill that would award Congressional Gold Medals to the members of the Miracle on Ice hockey team made its way out of the U.S. House on Monday.  

The bill, introduced by Rep. Pete Stauber, a former professional hockey player, would award three Congressional Gold Medals to the members of the U.S. Olympic men's ice hockey team that beat the Soviet Union during the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Those medals would then be kept at three separate locations: the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minn.; the Lake Placid Olympic Center in Lake Placid, N.Y.; and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“Coach Herb Brooks and his team of young hockey players defied all odds, proving that miracles are possible when we need them most,” Stauber said in a statement. “At a time when our nation was in desperate need of hope, they united us in belief and patriotism. Minnesotans played a vital role in this unforgettable victory, so it fills me with immense pride to have helped pushed this legislation through the House."

A bright future in the Senate. The bill has bipartisan support in the upper chamber by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Smith and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D, which means it's all but likely to pass. 

Klobuchar's bipartisan bill heads to Trump. Klobuchar's and Sen. Ted Cruz's, R-Texas, bipartisan Take it Down Act passed out of the U.S. House and is now headed to President Donald Trump's desk to be signed into law. 

The bill would criminalize the publishing of real and AI-generated revenge porn and require social media companies and similar websites to remove the content within 48 hours of a victim contacting them. 

“We must provide victims of online abuse with the legal protections they need when intimate images are shared without their consent, especially now that deepfakes are creating horrifying new opportunities for abuse,” Klobuchar said in a statement. 

The bill was championed by First Lady Melania Trump and during his Joint Address to Congress, the president said he would sign the bill into law if it made it to his desk. 

The Minnesota Star Tribune

Special election in the works. A Tuesday special election in north-central Minnesota will determine who fills the state Senate seat left open by Justin Eichorn, who resigned last month following his arrest in an underage prostitution sting, my colleague Ryan Faircloth reports. 

Republican Keri Heintzeman and Democrat Denise Slipy are vying to replace Eichorn in Senate District 6, which covers portions of Crow Wing, Cass and Itasca counties. The district favors Republicans, with Eichorn defeating his last DFL challenger by 27 percentage points in 2022. 

Democrats will control the Minnesota Senate regardless of the special election outcome, but a GOP win would narrow their majority to just one vote. Whoever wins the special election on Tuesday will join the Legislature at a critical time, as lawmakers race to pass a two-year budget before their May 19 adjournment deadline. Read more. 

Members of the Minnesota House fraud committee on Monday grilled state Attorney General Keith Ellison over his December 2021 meeting with several people connected to the Feeding Our Future fraud.

As the Strib’s Deena Winter reported earlier this month, Ellison was recorded during a meeting with several local East African business leaders who told the AG that state agencies were discriminating against their organizations. Two of the four individuals on the recording were later charged with crimes related to the Feeding Our Future fraud – the largest pandemic-related fraud in the nation. 

My colleague Allison Kite listened in to the House hearing and reports Republican members of the committee were skeptical of Ellison’s statements that he did not know about the FBI investigation into Feeding Our Future at the time. They questioned why Ellison responded sympathetically to the group. Ellison told the committee he meets with constituents all the time and wanted to hear out the group’s concerns. Once he talked to his staff and learned more, he said, he realized the individuals he had met with were “bad actors.” 

“I did nothing for these people,” Ellison said. “I accepted nothing from these people. And they were convicted, and my office played a role.”

Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake, noted Ellison’s office claimed in a September 2022 news release that Ellison and his staff had been “deeply involved for two years in holding Feeding Our Future accountable,” meaning the office was aware of the organization for more than a year before Ellison’s meeting.

Gov. Tim Walz will meet with leaders from Minnesota’s medical technology industry at 1 p.m. At 2:15 p.m. he will meet with legislative leaders. 

In the evening, Walz will join fellow Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Maura Healey of Massachusetts and Kathy Hochul of New York for "The MidasTouch Podcast" to talk about Trump's first 100 days in office during a live virtual town hall. 

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The Minnesota Asian Pacific (MAP) House Caucus will hold a news conference at 1:30 p.m. today to discuss a major provision in the House veterans budget bill to grant “Veterans of the Secret War in Laos” status to those who served in special guerrilla units during the Secret War. The bill also creates a task force to create a verification process and determine the eligibility criteria for this new status.