Fresh perspectives on recent news events from Mary Liz Holberg, Javier Morillo and Mary Franson .

There will be a life-size Donald Trump cutout at the Republican Party of Minnesota’s booth.

The annual Minnesota State Fair poll is unscientific, but lawmakers always latch onto the results.

The protesters wanted an apology from Dayton for calling the group’s plans to protest outside the Minnesota State Fair “inappropriate.”

The ideal way to get the most contact with the largest amount of people is to follow the crowds.

A perennial battle over whether schools should be allowed to begin classes prior to Labor Day surfaced in the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday.

Both chambers had record numbers of participants this year, with upwards of 12,500 fair-goers stopping in to answer the House's 13 questions, and nearly 8,500 people participating in the Senate poll.

The questions on this year's House poll range from gay marriage to two-line fishing.

The centerpiece of "Reform 2.0" is a constitutional amendment to require a supermajority in both chambers to raise taxes. House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Majority Leader Matt Dean, surrounded by more than a dozen caucus companions in a Thursday news conference, gave few other specifics of what the plan would entail.

Even though the participants in this year's Senate State Fair poll were most often Democrats, they didn't indicate a strong interest in jacking up taxes.