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By Allison Kite

Carlos Gonzalez/The Minnesota Star Tribune

Good morning, Dishers! Happy Friday and happy almost spring. As much as I hate to lose the hour of sleep this weekend, I can't wait for the daylight to last longer into the evenings.

Minnesota Democrats rejoiced at the sudden ouster of now-former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, my colleagues Elliot Hughes and Sydney Kashiwagi report. Noem led the agency during the period of its monthslong immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota, which lead to the killing of two U.S. citizens.

“Good riddance,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement.

Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy accused her of “cruelty and corruption.”

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum called Noem “the most inept, incompetent, and dishonorable leader” in DHS history.

On Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump announced Sen. Markwayne Mullin as his replacement for Noem. Minnesota's U.S. senators were skeptical about supporting his confirmation when it comes up in the Senate. 

Sen. Tina Smith, who is retiring, said she's not sure how she'll vote but that she wasn't confident Mullin's leadership will "fundamentally change" anything at the DHS. 

“It’s going to take more than the firing of Kristi Noem for me to have any confidence that their reckless and dangerous behavior is going to stop,” she said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor, said she wasn't sure she'd support Mullin's nomination, though she said she has worked with him in the past and wants to talk to him about DHS reforms. 

“I’ve worked with him, he’s a colleague, and I think that I’ll have a good relationship with him ... at least at the beginning, regardless of whether I vote for him or not,” Klobuchar said.

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, who is running to replace Smith, urged Democrats in the Senate to reject Mullin. “I would call for my fellow Democrats to take a stand. We only get so much leverage," Craig, who’s running for U.S. Senate to replace Smith, said in an interview on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Read more. 

Minnesota DHS commissioner confirmation sparks Senate floor fight. With the Minnesota Department of Human Services under the microscope over the state's Medicaid fraud crisis, Gov. Tim Walz's appointee to lead the agency is already facing Senate scrutiny with her confirmation hearing not yet set.

Walz appointed Shireen Gandhi last month to serve as commissioner of the much-criticized department, which she has been leading on a temporary basis for a year. Senate Republicans on Thursday tried to fast-track her conformation to the floor, arguing Democrats were slow to schedule a hearing. 

Sen. Melissa Wiklund, DFL-Bloomington, who chairs the committee that will hold Gandhi's confirmation hearing, said she only received the official appointment from Walz's office a day before and would take action to schedule a hearing. 

"If Senate Democrats can't make a commitment on when they're going to have that hearing, we need to have that hearing here on the floor to make sure that Minnesotans' questions and concerns can be expressed," said Sen. Jordan Rasmusson, R-Fergus Falls. 

Rasmusson's motion to remove Gandhi's appointment from Wilklund's committee and bring it to the Senate floor failed.

Another gun bill stalls. A bill to ban guns at the State Capitol failed to clear the House State Government Finance and Policy yesterday on a party-line vote, becoming the latest DFL-sponsored gun control bill to stall this session.

Committee members had plenty of sharp words in a brief debate before the vote, my colleague Nathaniel Minor reports. Rep. Kristin Bahner, DFL-Maple Grove, a bill co-sponsor, spoke of threats she’s received and criticized testimony from a gun rights advocate who said the Capitol has been a safe place in recent years.

“It's a very different story when it is your body on the line on that House floor,” Bahner said.

Republicans, meanwhile, said the bill would strip them of their Second Amendment right to carry and protect themselves. Legislators questioned each other’s motives, accused each other of being condescending, and said the issue deserved more time for discussion than it was given.

“This is a big issue,” said Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia. “We should be giving this perhaps its own hearing day. But we're not. We're going to try to run this through. And I will tell you, we're not running this through, because we're voting no.”

Self-driving cars hit early roadblock. Nate also wrote about the effort at the Capitol to add policy guardrails around Waymo and other self-driving  

Two competing proposals have emerged. One plan is backed by labor, and the other is supported by the company. The latter already failed in one committee in the divided House. If the Legislature doesn’t pass a bill, it’s unclear how the lack of legal clarity would affect Waymo’s expansion plans in the state.

“On one hand, we can hand over the keys to a massive corporation with few to no guardrails,” Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, told reporters at a news conference earlier this week. “On the other ... we can make sure Minnesotans have a say in how companies like Waymo affect our streets and our economies.” Read more. 

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House rejects war powers resolution. A resolution that would allow Congress to block President Donald Trump from carrying out his war in Iran narrowly failed in the U.S. House on Thursday, my colleague Sydney Kashiwagi reports.

Minnesota's four Democrats all supported the resolution, and the four Republicans opposed it.

DHS funding bill passes. Meanwhile, the House also voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to end weeks of a partial shutdown at the agency. The bill now heads to the Senate, where attempts to fund the DHS have continuously failed.

Next up in the Senate. Sen. Tina Smith said in an interview Thursday that Noem's ouster isn't moving the needle for her on DHS funding until there are fundamental changes to the agency, regardless of who's in charge. "Something fundamentally has to change beyond just a new person sitting in the job doing what Donald Trump wants them to do," Smith said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Amy Klobuchar struck a more optimistic tone, indicating that Noem's ouster "could open things up." 

Klobuchar backs new plan. Minnesota's senior senator, who's running for governor, said she is working with her colleagues on separating ICE and Border Patrol, which were funded in the "One Big Beautiful Bill" over the summer, while lawmakers agree to fund "everything else." This would include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the TSA, Coast Guard and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

"And then we could negotiate on the other two," Klobuchar said, referring to ICE and Border Patrol. "That's what I believe we should do."

Finstad puts the pressure on Minnesota senators. GOP Rep. Brad Finstad urged Smith and Klobuchar to fund the DHS. "[With today’s announcement of new leadership within DHS, there is even greater opportunity to ensure our nation’s largest law enforcement agency has the resources it needs to keep our communities safe," Finstad said in a statement.