Today is Tuesday, March 4, the 63rd day of 2025. There are 302 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term of office. With the end of the Civil War in sight, and just six weeks before his assassination, Lincoln declared:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the fight as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Also on this date:

In 1789, the Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York.

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In 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for his first term as president; he was the last U.S. president to be inaugurated on this date. In his inaugural speech, Roosevelt stated, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

In 1966, John Lennon of The Beatles was quoted in the London Evening Standard as saying, “We’re more popular than Jesus now,” a comment that caused an angry backlash in the United States.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that his overtures to Iran had “deteriorated” into an arms-for-hostages deal.

In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workplace sexual harassment laws are applicable when the offender and victim are of the same sex.

In 2015, the Justice Department cleared Darren Wilson, a white former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices, which it called discriminatory and unconstitutional.

In 2017, President Donald Trump wrote a series of Twitter posts accusing former President Barack Obama of tapping his telephones during the 2016 election; an Obama spokesman declared that the assertion was “simply false.”

Today’s birthdays:

Film director Adrian Lyne is 84.
Author James Ellroy is 77.
Musician-producer Emilio Estefan is 72.
Actor Catherine O’Hara is 71.
Actor Mykelti (MY’-kul-tee) Williamson is 68.
Actor Patricia Heaton is 67.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., is 67.
Actor Steven Weber is 64.
Rock musician Jason Newsted is 62.
Author Khaled Hosseini is 60.
Author Dav Pilkey is 59.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., is 57.
NBA forward Draymond Green is 35.

Minnesota lawmakers are beginning to come to grips with how proposed Republican spending cuts included in a U.S. House budget plan could affect the state’s finances.

On Thursday, Minnesota Management and Budget representatives advised Senate Finance Committee members of potential hurdles. State lawmakers must pass a budget this session, and with a federal budget proposal that seeks $2 trillion in spending cuts to help finance $4.5 trillion in tax cuts sought by President Donald Trump, they are unsure what that means for the state’s budget.

Under the proposed federal budget, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees the Medicaid program, would need to make $880 billion in cutbacks to the health care program for the poor and disabled, many of them children and seniors.

“I want to be clear about what we’re talking about — the numbers of $880 billion in potential cuts to Medicaid — I have severe concerns about that, as do many Minnesotans,” Sen. Liz Boldon, DFL-Rochester, said at the hearing. “That’s not just numbers on a spreadsheet. That is care for people, that is seniors, that is children, that is people with disabilities, that is care that people need and deserve.”

Minnesota’s budget forecast in November showed a looming $5 billion deficit by 2028, after coming off an $18 billion surplus in 2023. A new budget forecast is expected this week, but Ahna Minge, MMB state budget director, clarified that the new forecast does not include pending cuts from President Donald Trump’s administration or the federal budget, which has only passed the House.

Under the current operating budget for 2024-25, the state has a total of $119 billion in revenue, with 34% coming from federal funds. In 2025 alone, the state has budgeted $23 billion in federal funds — including $11 billion for Medicaid — according to MMB’s presentation last week.

Dave Greeman, chief financial officer of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, said the impact on Medicaid is still unclear, but if that reduction is distributed proportionally across all states, Minnesota could see a loss of $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion in federal Medicaid funds in 2027.

“I think it’s safe to say that the loss of billions of dollars in federal Medicaid funding would significantly impact the state’s financial position,” Minge said. “So the example that Mr. Greeman provided … that’s about $1.2 to $1.3 billion a year, so about two and a half billion dollars a biennium, which is not something that the general fund is able to absorb.”

Medicaid currently covers about 1.4 million Minnesotans — almost a quarter of the population — including nearly 600,000 children, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

The state has also budgeted $1.6 billion in SNAP — food stamps — funding in 2025. The federal Republican budget proposal called for $230 billion in cuts from the Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP.

In Minnesota, SNAP provides food assistance for 456,000 low-income Minnesota families with children, seniors, adults with disabilities and other adults, with an average benefit amount of $6.16 per day.

After the presentation by MMB, Sen. Rich Draheim, R-Madison Lake, said that while some “what if” discussions are good to have, he wants more focus on the state budget rather than proposed federal budgets.

“We’re looking for a headline here and a distraction,” he said. “We should be looking in our own mirror. … We have our own problems here that we have to work through together. It has to be a bipartisan solution.”

Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, said the presentation was warranted given the scope of the proposals being made at the federal level.

“Those are huge numbers,” he said. “We just needed to have a presentation on this so we have better preparations to put our budget together with that. … This is unprecedented. I think people want change at times, but planned, thoughtful change that makes sense.”

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A South Dakota man died Sunday morning after his pickup truck fell through the ice on Big Stone Lake on the Minnesota-South Dakota border.

According to the Big Stone County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota, the victim was identified as Rodney Gustafson, 62, of Big Stone City, S.D. He was pronounced dead at Sanford Medical Center in Fargo, N.D., where he had been airlifted, according to the sheriff’s office.

A caller reported that a white pickup truck had fallen through the ice near Lagoona Beach on Sunday morning.

Divers from the Big Stone City Fire Department Dive Team located a single individual inside the vehicle in the water. Lifesaving measures were initiated before the man, later identified as Gustafson, was airlifted to the Fargo hospital.

The Big Stone Sheriff’s Office said that ice conditions on area lakes have deteriorated with the warmer weather.

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Storm packing 3-6 inches of snow, blizzard conditions expected midweek

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A messy early March snowstorm is poised to bring 3 to 6 inches of snow and even blizzard conditions to southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

According to the National Weather Service, the height of the storm is expected to be from Tuesday evening through Wednesday morning.

Visibilities could drop below a quarter-mile as winds gust as high as 55 mph. The strong winds and weight of snow on tree limbs could bring down power lines and cause sporadic outages.

Whiteout conditions are possible and could make travel conditions treacherous and potentially life-threatening.

A transition from rain to snow is expected Tuesday night through the overnight.

The NWS posted a winter storm watch for southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, but including only Dakota and Washington counties in the Twin Cities metro area. Blizzard conditions are expected to be confined to Minnesota, west of the Mississippi River.

For road conditions in Minnesota, go to 511mn.org. In Wisconsin, go to 511wi.org.

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Cold weather: St. Paul, other districts cancel classes, activities Tuesday