By J. Patrick Coolican | Editor-in-chief
Good morning, Reformers,
I was off for a couple days: What’d I miss?
More bad inflation news, following yesterday’s jump in the CPI, this time wholesale inflation’s increase is biggest since 2022, per Bloomberg free gift link.
Inflation was a major factor in 2024 election results, and now the shoe is on the other foot. Republicans’ best shot at heading off the usual presidential midterm doldrums was a growing economy and tamed inflation.
President Trump is in China.
The Minnesota legislative session has just a few days remaining.
A ban on prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi and stricter regulation of social media use by kids is coming, per MPR. Both will likely face litigation.
Gov. Tim Walz continues to shape the Minnesota Supreme Court. With Chief Justice Natalie Hudson stepping down, he’s named finalists for chief justice: Justice Anne McKeig, Justice Paul Thissen, Justice Theodora Gaïtas.
Finalists for the new associate justice: Judge Reynaldo Aligada, Judge Elizabeth Bentley, Judge Keala Ede, Judge Juanita Freeman.
To the Reformer:
Students learn American Sign Language Tuesday, April 7, 2026 at ThinkSelf in St. Paul. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Sarah Gelbard
An estimated 2,300 to 4,500 deaf adult immigrants live in Minnesota. A handful of local organizations across the Twin Cities build community with them in different ways. The Metro Deaf School serves children from immigrant families. The Minnesota Deaf Muslim Community works with interpreters to translate for people during doctors’ appointments or meetings with landlords, helping them with job applications, housing and tax forms. ThinkSelf provides comprehensive support and crime victim services, and regular classroom instruction in ASL and English language.
Kelsey Allen, a lawyer for a deaf person detained by ICE, said she still thinks about how high the stakes are. “When somebody is arrested by ICE, and they’re deaf, and the arresting officers do not know sign language, and they put the person’s hands behind their back and cuff them, that has taken away that person’s ability to communicate at all,” she said.
By Matt Beckman
A neurobiologist writes that he wished Sen. Amy Klobuchar recent policy rollout included something about scientific research, which is under attack:
“Notably absent from her list of priorities: science. Leaders in Washington have gutted our crown jewel — the U.S. research enterprise. Many will argue that state government isn’t responsible for fixing the crisis in science funding in the U.S. And, we have big and pressing issues that have resulted from Operation Metro Surge that are more important. I get all of that, but to ignore the assault on funding scientific research at this moment in our country’s history is simply malfeasant.”
IN OTHER NEWS
‘Are they going to roll over?’: Gerrymandering fights reach state high courts | Reformer via States Newsroom
Cost of Iran war rises to $29B as US gas prices spike | Reformer, via States Newsroom
OH BY THE WAY
A Walz tweet that pointed out that the mid-decade redistricting game can go both ways drew some fake outrage from the very people celebrating the old confederate states elimination of Black representation for the benefit of Republicans’ House majority.
I can’t overstate how influential — and destructive — the U.S. Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling will be for American democracy.
Walz was quote tweeting a piece by Henry Olson (gift link), a conservative columnist who rightly points out that Democrats are sure to follow suit with their own mid-decade gerrymandering, turning Congress into a farce:
“By unleashing partisan gerrymandering without installing any practical limiting principle, then eliminating mandated racial protections, (the court) would have set in motion the forces that carved up America to suit entrenched interests in both camps. That surely is not the republican government that America’s founders wanted to establish.”
Jonathan V. Last, a former Republican turned anti-Trump moderate, writing in The Bulwark:
“After Democrats got the House redistricting back to par, Republicans escalated again. Ron DeSantis is doing an end run around the law in Florida to get more Republican seats. The Supreme Court rushed to insert itself into the fight by pushing out the Callais decision in time for Southern states to get rid of a bunch of Black congressional districts.
The net-net of this has been to recreate the Electoral College bias for the House of Representatives. Democrats will now have to win the national popular vote by more than 4 percentage points to get even a bare majority in the House….
If it is allowed to stand, then we will get regional political uniformity.
And after that? That’s when the real trouble starts. In a system where the lines are drawn to lock one party out of representation, the regions themselves will come to fight over scarce resources.”
Jamelle Bouie, writing in the New York Times (gift link), with an ominous headline: “This is getting dangerous.”
“A system in which political parties can rewrite the rules to keep themselves in power indefinitely — a system in which, barring a tsunami of opposition, they cannot lose — is not a democracy in any meaningful sense. But that is where the United States is headed, if it’s not already there, thanks in large part to John Roberts and his majority, which has enabled the worst tendencies of their co-partisans in the Republican Party.
In a post-Callais world, who will stand up for Americans living in the Black Belt — named so for the soil, by the way — of Alabama or the Gulf Coast of states like Mississippi and Louisiana? What about the cities of Nashville and Memphis in Tennessee? Or on the other side of the partisan divide, the rural communities of New York and California or of Maryland and Virginia?
It is also important to consider the way this state of affairs might heighten the sense that red states and blue states are fundamentally different — separate countries, really — forced together in a crumbling marriage.”
To sum up: The court overturned a law passed by Congress that was intended to usher in and then protect multi-racial democracy, and in doing so has pushed the country into a cold civil war, with strongly racial underpinnings.
Be sure to look for the work of Jonathan Shorman, our D.C. bureau’s reporter on voting and democracy issues.
Song of the day is Credence’s “Bad Moon Rising.”
Have a great day all! JPC
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