Red flag warning continues til 9 p.m. isolated storms possible for SE MN tonight

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

With fewer than 48 hours remaining this session, lawmakers are working on Saturday to pass several key bills before the Sunday deadline.

 late Wednesday that includes a rescue plan for HCMC, education spending, additional fraud investigators and technology upgrades for counties.

They’ve also passed high-profile bills in the past week, including 

, a housing finance deal and a bill that requires children’s social media accounts to be 

 — though that bill needs one more vote from the House.

However, lawmakers still have key votes before the 11:59 p.m. Sunday deadline.

 Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth to let the House vote on a gun violence prevention package passed by the Senate, after their sit-in, which started at 9 p.m. Thursday, came to an end late Saturday morning.

“We are getting texts and live streams and videos and stories as we have for the last 36 hours from people across the state of Minnesota telling us to stand strong and stand firm for gun violence prevention,” Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis said outside the House chamber Saturday morning.

Greenman’s district includes Annunciation Catholic Church and School, the site of the mass shooting in August that resulted in two student deaths.

“We know Minnesotans’ kids are watching what we’re going to do here, and they have been doing their job, asking us to choose them, not guns,” Greenman said. “And it is now our job to fight for them and fight to end this epidemic of gun violence that is so directly impacting them.” 

Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, helped organize the sit-in and said if the bill doesn’t pass this session, Republicans will pay at the polls in November.

“After Sunday, we take the tools of democracy out to the people, and we come back in January with a majority that is willing to pass this, and that's how this ends,” Finke said.

Advocates rallied outside the House chambers at 11:30 a.m. asking Demuth to bring the bill to the House floor when they meet Saturday.

“The people of Minnesota and across the country are asking for us to ban these weapons of war in our communities,” said Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, DFL-Minneapolis, at the 11:30 a.m. rally. He added that included Demuth’s daughter, who is a survivor of gun violence.

Two of Demuth’s children, including her daughter Shelisa, were inside the Rocori High School

 building during a mass shooting in 2003 and two were in the elementary school building nearby.

“Imagine being the first House Speaker in state history who is also the mother of two school shooting victims and conveniently deferring a gun control bill to the next legislative session,” Shelisa Demuth said in a 

Speaker Demuth has pushed back against criticism that she hasn’t allowed a vote on gun measures. Demuth said various individual gun bills have faced votes in the House. 

Those votes just happened in committee, she said.

“What you've seen is bills brought forward in committee in March, fully vetted, but they failed in committee,” Demuth 

. They failed without Republican support.

Demuth said she’s not interested in passing legislation in large, catch-all omnibus bills.

“The Senate has chosen to send packages over,” Demuth said. Those packages include the gun violence prevention bill and a bill restricting the power of federal immigration agents in Minnesota.

“We are not doing that,” Demuth said. “We're doing individual bills.”

Politics and Government News

NewsPartners

Homepage

Peter Cox

Author

Cait Kelley

With fewer than 48 hours to go in session, lawmakers are working to pass some key bills before their deadline Sunday night.

Minnesota lawmakers race to pass key bills before the end of session

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox