Hello from St. Paul,
This week, House Democrats waged a full-on assault on your 2nd Amendment freedoms.
With 67 Republicans and 67 Democrats in the Minnesota House, we have co-chairs of nearly every committee, and each side alternates in leading the committee. With the Democrats holding the gavel Tuesday, they decided it was time to bring forward their unconstitutional gun proposals.
The first would ban the sale, transfer, and possession of almost all semi-automatic rifles in Minnesota. The second limits magazine capacity for firearms to 10 rounds.
If these bills were to become law, they would force law-abiding citizens to surrender their firearms to law enforcement, destroy them, move them out of state, or become felons overnight, because a law-abiding citizen could face a five-year prison sentence by not complying.
By comparison, a person convicted of domestic assault may face as little as 90 days in jail.
These people actually believe that law-abiding gun owners are more of a threat to society than a person who physically hurts their spouse or child.
As a proud advocate for the 2nd Amendment and the chief author of some of the strongest gun bills in this state, I can tell you these bills are going nowhere. But what’s scary is that the Democrats are showing their hand. If they were to get back in complete control of state government, as they were in 2023 and 2024, this is exactly what they’re going to push into law. We don’t have to guess at what they’re going to do or how they’d act, the Democrats are showing us. It’s very clear they do not care about the Constitution, and they don’t care about your right to bear arms.
DEMOCRATS BLOCK OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL BILL AGAIN
For the third time in a week, House Democrats stopped bipartisan legislation that would create an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in the State of Minnesota.
OIG legislation would establish the agency and give it real fraud investigative powers and enforcement authority. Most importantly, it would not be controlled by the Governor’s Office.
Last year, this legislation — authored in the Senate by a Democrat — passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. However, when the bill reached the evenly divided Minnesota House, House Democrats blocked it from even receiving a vote.
Twice in less than a week, Republicans attempted to once again bring the bill to the House floor for consideration. Every single House Democrat voted against allowing it to move forward both times. Earlier this week, Democrats on the Minnesota House State Government Finance Committee shot down yet another effort to advance similar legislation out of the committee.
At the heart of the disagreement is OIG independence. House Democrats have pushed to strip the “independent” authority from the OIG and give the administration some influence over its operations. House and Senate Republicans — joined by Senate Democrats — strongly oppose that change.
And yet they claim to want to end the fraud problem. It’s a joke.
BEING REWARDED FOR COVERING UP FRAUD
Only in Minnesota would someone receive a promotion for making things worse.
Such is the case with Shireen Gandhi, our new commissioner for the Department of Human Services.
Gandhi had been serving on an interim basis over the past 13 months. Since then, we’ve watched as our state has basically become a national disgrace when it comes to allowing fraud to permeate throughout the human services department, as taxpayers have lost at least $9 billion.
Worse, she was in charge when the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) audited the Behavioral Health Administration, which is part of DHS. It found that state employees not only mismanaged this money but also participated in a cover up by fabricating documents to cover their tracks. And it didn’t happen just once. Auditor Judy Randall tells us the agency’s actions were a “systemic” problem. During their audit, multiple DHS employees created new documents or backdated others in hopes of throwing up a smokescreen and evading further scrutiny of their illegal actions. Watch the KARE 11 story here.
And for overseeing this sham, labeled by the OLA auditor as “the most egregious thing I've seen,” Shireen Gandhi gets a permanent promotion.
To this day, not one employee or commissioner has been fired for allowing the theft of your tax dollars. This administration continues to show no remorse or accountability for this ongoing fraud epidemic that has thrived on its watch, and this promotion is further evidence of that fact.
Have a good weekend,
Drew