WASHINGTON — Chaos prevailed this week in the U.S. House as Speaker Mike Johnson tried to tee up bills to help Israel and Ukraine in their war efforts amid plenty of GOP pushback and a continued threat to oust him from his leadership position. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., this week in vowing to force a vote on Johnson’s leadership if the speaker brought the Ukraine aid bill to the House floor for a vote. Several of the most conservative members of the U.S. House oppose sending Kiev any more U.S. military help, saying the money could be better sp ..read more

The Minnesota Timberwolves finished the 2023-24 season with the fourth-best record in the NBA, just a game behind the top two teams in a brutally competitive Western Conference. It earned them the third seed, and home court advantage in their first-round playoff series against the sixth-seeded Phoenix Suns. Yet on the brink of Saturday’s opening game, the Suns are slight favorites to win the series. Unfortunately there are logical reasons why the Wolves are being disrespected. The Suns are laden with star power. Kevin Durant is a 14-time All Star whose teams have won 22 of the 32 playoff seri ..read more

The second of two major attempts to increase housing density in Minnesota has been declared dead by the measure’s sponsors in the Legislature. After a Senate committee adopted amendments Tuesday that weakened a measure to make it easier to build multi-family housing in commercially zoned areas, the prime sponsor said the issue is “on pause” for the remainder of the 2023 session. It comes two weeks after legislative leadership killed another bill that would have increased housing density in single family zones. The so-called “missing middle” bill would have required larger cities to allow dupl ..read more

MinnPost is excited to relaunch the weekly MinnPost News Quiz! We first launched our weekly quiz in 2015 before bringing it to Instagram a few years later. Now, we’re bringing it back to our site with a few updates. Every Sunday morning, our quiz will test your knowledge of what happened during the week in Minnesota politics and culture with eight to ten multiple-choice questions. The questions will come from MinnPost’s reporting the previous week as well as our twice-daily Glean. Never miss a quiz. Receive weekly email alerts. The quiz will publish every Sunday at 6 a.m. to this page so be ..read more

Fox9’s Kilat Fitzgerald writes a proposed ordinance in Minneapolis would raise the price of a pack of cigarettes to $15. Deena Winter at the Minnesota Reformer reports Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter has been suspended from Barnard College for her participation in a pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University in New York City. “Dozens of tents are set up on the college campus to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza, creating a standoff between administrators and students, according to the New York Times.” Kare11’s Dave Peterlinz has a story on a Minneapolis resident seeking to create m ..read more

Stephen Swanson at WCCO News reports Thomas Lane, one of the former Minneapolis police officers convicted in the murder of George Floyd, has completed his federal prison sentence, but still remains in federal custody. Emma Nelson at the Star Tribune reports Minnesota added about 11,000 jobs and more than 3,000 workers in March, an uptick that marks continued recovery from the losses of the pandemic. Michelle Griffith at the Minnesota Reformer is reporting DFL lawmakers have added $500,000 to a budget bill to help keep the public cafeterias open in the Minnesota State Capitol and the nearby Mi ..read more

The family of Ricky Cobb II, the 33-year-old Black man who was fatally shot by a Minnesota state trooper last summer, announced on Wednesday a federal lawsuit against the troopers involved in the incident. The civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages names troopers Ryan Londregan and Brett Seide and alleges they violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments via unreasonable seizure and use of excessive force when the troopers tried to forcibly remove Cobb from the vehicle and fired shots into the car. Cobb was killed in July during a traffic stop on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for drivin ..read more

In the coming days, Minnesota is expected to enact a first-of-its-kind law promoting teacher training on ableism and the history of the disability justice movement. The goal is to encourage the same kind of cultural competence that educators are asked to learn to make their classrooms welcoming to students of color.  Recommended but not mandatory at first, the professional development will be created and provided by people with disabilities. Backers believe the law will be the first in the country to empower people who experience ableism to educate teachers about it. The bill was the bra ..read more

With the looming prospect that Uber and Lyft will leave the Minneapolis market, riders and drivers alike will soon need alternative transportation. Thankfully, several individuals and companies have announced plans to fill the void both rideshare giants will leave, but these replacement services will need help getting their operations up and running. The very first step that these companies must take is to think of a name and the right branding. After all, this will define their very identities, and advertise to potential customers the nature of the services they will be providing. This bran ..read more

Katrina Bailey at the Minnesota Daily writes the National Park Service gave the Minneapolis Department of Community Planning Economic Development $75,000 in grant money to address the underrepresentation of African American history among local and national listings on the national registry. Tommy Wiita at Bring Me the News reports the City of Minneapolis has re-issued its appeal for organizations to run the two remaining Open Streets events that do not yet have operators. The events scheduled for this summer that still don’t have operators are ones planned for Central Avenue in Northeast and ..read more