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Politics Friday
Mike Mulcahy and Matt Alvarez

Politics Friday: 3 months in, Minnesota’s Attorney General and Secretary of State are busy in their new terms

side by side lawmakers
Attorney General Keith Ellison (left) and Secretary of State Steve Simon (right).
Kerem Yücel | MPR News

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Attorney General Keith Ellison and Secretary of State Steve Simon are three months into their new four-year terms and they're already busy.  

Just yesterday, Ellison asked Gov. Walz to allow him to take over the prosecution of a Hennepin County criminal case and the governor agreed. It's a decision the Hennepin County attorney called deeply troubling.

MPR News host Mike Mulcahy talks to Ellison about the Hennepin County criminal case, a proposed Sanford-Fairview health care merger, the state’s lawsuit against Juul Labs and the work of his office’s criminal division.  

And Simon has been working with the Legislature on changes to election laws, including automatic voter registration, pre-registering 16 and 17-year-olds and allowing more early voting. He joins the program to explain what the purposed election legislation would do and why he thinks it's needed.  

A man sits in a suit at a table
Former President Donald Trump sits at the defense table with his legal team in a Manhattan court, Tuesday in New York.
Seth Wenig | AP

Later in the hour, presidential historian Timothy Naftali talks about the criminal charges filed against former President Donald Trump and how the situation compares to past presidents and former presidents.  

Guests:  

  • Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison  

  • Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon  

  • Timothy Naftali is a presidential historian and founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and associate professor of history and public policy at New York University.

Subscribe to the Politics Friday podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS. 

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.