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By Allison Kite

The Minnesota Star Tribune

Good morning! It's going to be unseasonably warm today, so get out and enjoy it. But first, buckle up. We've got a lot to discuss.

The Minnesota Senate debated and then tabled a resolution Thursday to condemn President Donald Trump’s blanket pardon of 1,500-plus people who were charged or convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, my colleague Ryan Faircloth reports.

Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, brought the resolution forward. On the Senate floor, Latz described how the rioters swarmed the Capitol and assaulted police officers in plain sight, using everything from flag poles and batons to chemical irritants as weapons.

“The evidence of such widespread criminal destruction is indisputable,” Latz said.

Senate Republicans called the resolution a “waste of time” and said Democrats should be focusing on issues here in Minnesota, such as how to address a looming projected budget deficit. Republicans tried to add amendments to the resolution that would have also condemned former President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, and Gov. Tim Walz’s response to the 2020 riots, among other topics. DFL senators rejected the GOP amendments, aside from one that broadly condemned violence against law enforcement.

The Senate tabled the measure. It could be taken up Tuesday. For more from the debate, read here. 

At a news conference on the Capitol steps Thursday, union leaders and sympathetic lawmakers once again expressed their anger and disappointment with Gov. Tim Walz, who announced a policy change Tuesday calling for state workers to start reporting to the office at least 50% of their scheduled workdays. The new policy begins June 1.

My colleague Janet Moore attended the news conference where union leaders said they had no advance warning, but suspect it was in the works for several weeks.

“This action is eerily similar to the playbook we’re seeing in Washington, D.C.,” said Rep. Luke Frederick, DFL-Mankato.

Current contracts for the unions affected by the decision, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), will expire June 30. If workers wanted to strike over the decision, the earliest that could happen is mid-August, said Megan Dayton, president of MAPE.

“We will settle for nothing less than a full rescind of this executive order,” she said.

When asked how workers in the private sector would feel about the union’s stance, since many were ordered back to the office long ago, Bart Andersen, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, said, “I would say feel free to contact a representative of our organization and assert your right to be organized."

A state council that sets top officials' salaries recommended raises for all of Minnesota's statewide constitutional officers, including the governor and attorney general, my colleague Briana Bierschbach reports, but Walz says he won't accept the pay bump. 

The council recommended a salary increase for the governor from $149,550 to $174,775 and then $200,000. Walz is currently paid $127,629, the amount the governor's office pay was raised to in 2016. Walz has rejected pay increases recommended by the council since taking office in 2019.

“I think I work hard,” Walz said. “But ... this is about the state workforce. I don’t want this to be an issue about the governor trying to pay himself. I think I’m compensated fairly by the state of Minnesota for the work I do at this point.”

Minnesota Republican Party Chair Alex Plechash criticized the proposed increases for governor and lieutenant governor, though Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan also announced she wouldn't accept the pay raise. He noted the weekslong boycott from Democrats in the Minnesota House earlier this session.

“We’ve already paid House Democrats over $300,000 this session to not show up for work," Plechash said.

Check here for more about the recommendations and Republican response. 

Attorney General Keith Ellison responded to a report by CNN that he and close to a dozen other state attorneys general took a free trip to South Africa in 2023 paid for by the Attorney General Alliance. In turn, CNN reports, the AGA accepts large donations from major corporations whose representatives also attend the events. The 2023 trip — which was also attended by representatives from Uber, Amazon and Pfizer — included a safari, stay at a luxury hotel, wine tours and gourmet dinners, CNN reports.

A former White House ethics lawyer during President George W. Bush's administration said such trips allow lobbyists to meet with public officials and get what they want. It erodes public trust, the lawyer Richard Painter told CNN.

Ellison's spokesperson John Stiles said in a statement to the Star Tribune that the trip was a "working seminar" and allowed the attorneys general to discuss gender-based violence and human trafficking, public health, intellectual property rights and data privacy among other topics. He said another human trafficking summit put on by the AGA brought attorneys general to Minneapolis in January 2024.

"I doubt any of them considered a trip to Minneapolis in January a luxury," Stiles said.

Stiles said Ellison "makes a practice of meeting with nearly anyone who wants to meet with him." He said Ellison has met with lobbyists and executives for corporations and "that he has later gone on to investigate or sue or is actively investigating or suing." 

"He will always do what’s right by the law and the people of Minnesota," Stiles said, "and no one is able to persuade him to do otherwise."

Stiles noted Ellison has also hosted forums with fellow attorneys general to hear attendees' concerns about Trump's administration. 

"So I can assure you that the number of corporate representatives he’s heard from is vastly dwarfed by the number of regular folks he hears from," Stiles said.

Last year, state GOP activists and some reporters, including my colleague Ryan Faircloth, asked the Minnesota Republican Party about payments it made to an unknown “1972-10 Company LLC.” Party leaders refused to say who was behind this company they paid tens of thousands of dollars to. At the Minnesota GOP’s state central committee meeting in December, delegates passed a motion to compel then-GOP Chair David Hann to explain the contract and who was behind it. Hann again refused to say. He was ousted at that meeting and delegates picked Alex Plechash as the party’s new chair.

Now under new leadership, the Minnesota GOP announced Thursday night that Michael Brodkorb was behind the 1972-10 Company LLC.

“Based on multiple endorsed checks and a recently obtained copy of the contract, we can confirm that Michael Brodkorb executed the contract and signed the checks. While our review is ongoing, it appears he was paid for services including podcast creation, communication strategy, and public relations work,” Plechash said in a statement.

Brodkorb is a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP. He irked some Republicans last year when he publicly criticized GOP U.S. Senate candidate Royce White, and later endorsed Kamala Harris and Walz over Trump.

“I appreciate the transparency of our current @mngop chair for exposing the actions of the previous administration for using Republican donor money to pay an Anti-Trumper to publicly trash our Party's endorsed Republican candidates,” former GOP state Rep. Jeremy Munson posted on X Thursday night.

When Brodkorb heard my colleague Ryan was asking about this last year, he called and berated him, adamantly insisting he wasn’t behind the company. Reached for comment about Plechash’s statement Thursday night, Brodkorb said, “I have no comment.”

Walz will meet with tribal leaders at 11 a.m. and legislative leaders at 1:15 p.m., according to his public schedule.

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U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is privately pushing for the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe over a journalist's inclusion in a group chat discussing a planned military strike in Yemen, Axios reports. 

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, reported Monday that he had been inadvertently added to a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal and learned that the U.S. was about to bomb targets in Yemen two hours before the bombs were dropped. The magazine released the message chain on Wednesday. 

Sen. Roger Wicker and Sen. Jack Reed, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Thursday requested an investigation into the administration's use of Signal. 

Minnesota's two U.S. senators, Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar, criticized the breach. Klobuchar called for a full investigation, and Smith called for Hegseth to be fired. 

It's Black Youth Mental Health Day at the Minnesota Capitol. The Legislature has a light day today, but a few committees are meeting. Check the schedule here.