Minnesota Lynx (5-0, 4-0 Western Conference) at Phoenix Mercury (4-1, 2-1 Western Conference)

Phoenix; Friday, 10 p.m. EDT

BOTTOM LINE: Minnesota Lynx takes on the Phoenix Mercury after Courtney Williams scored 23 points in the Lynx’s 82-77 victory against the Seattle Storm.

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Phoenix went 10-10 in Western Conference games and 10-10 at home during the 2024-25 season. The Mercury allowed opponents to score 84.8 points per game and shoot 43.1% from the field last season.

Minnesota finished 14-6 in Western Conference play and 30-10 overall during the 2024-25 season. The Lynx averaged 82.0 points per game last season, 12.2 on free throws and 28.5 from deep.

INJURIES: Mercury: Kahleah Copper: out (knee), Natasha Mack: out (back).

Lynx: None listed.

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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.

The International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota, will soon show off its two new wolf pups, and the public’s help is needed to name the duo.

The pups, both males, were born on April 22, about one year to the day the center lost its ambassador, an 8-year-old Arctic wolf named Axel, to severe kidney failure.

The pups arrived in Ely on May 3, and beginning on June 3, the center will begin offering 15-minute viewing opportunities.

“We strive to maintain a socially cohesive unit of wolves that act as ambassadors of their species,” the center said. “The 2025 pup introduction is a significant investment in our pack’s future.”  

Although the pups will make their debut next week, they won’t officially join the exhibit pack until August. The center says they wait until pups are about 3 months old and about 30-plus lbs.

You also have a chance to help name the pups online, with voting closing on June 6 and the final names revealed on June 9.

The center, located in the Superior National Forest, says pup viewing opportunities are included with the cost of admission and will take place outdoors, weather permitting, at 9:45 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 12:45 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:45 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. The center is open daily between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from late May through mid-October.

More information on tickets and the center’s pup livestream can be found on its website.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says as of 2023, there are about 2,700 wild wolves in the state. 

Minnesota’s northeast corner “once sheltered the last remaining wild wolves of the lower 48 states,” the DNR says, before the Endangered Species Preservation Act passed in 1966.

Minnesota lawmakers are considering giving some of the country’s most profitable tech companies tax breaks on their data centers up to the year 2102 — when most of the legislators and lobbyists furiously negotiating the deal will be dead.

Minnesota currently has 42 data centers, with the majority spread across the metro. Nationwide, tech companies are rapidly building data centers — large warehouses with computer servers used to power the internet — to store and process data. The massive computing power required to develop nascent artificial intelligence breakthroughs are leading companies to seek more data centers.

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Minnesota offers sales tax breaks for qualified data centers on purchases of computers, servers, software and cooling and energy equipment. This tax break, which comes in the form of a refund, is set to expire in 2042.

But lawmakers are considering extending the break, perhaps as an olive branch since they’re also going to revoke the sales tax exemption on the electricity that data centers consume. This is expected to generate around $140 million in revenue over the next four years.

Minnesota is facing a multi-billion dollar budget deficit in the next few years, and lawmakers are currently looking to cut programs and services — and a few tax subsidies — to balance the budget.

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But since the decision by legislative leaders to revoke the sales tax exemption on electricity will sour the state’s relationship with companies that own data centers, some lawmakers hope expanding current tax breaks far into the future will incentivize companies to keep building their warehouses full of servers in Minnesota.

Amazon recently announced that it’s suspending plans for a large data center in Becker “due to uncertainty” — one week after lawmakers announced they were eliminating the sales tax exemption on electricity.

Gov. Tim Walz on MPR News Friday said that Amazon’s decision to suspend its Becker data center was “pretty bad lobbying” because lawmakers are still negotiating data center provisions.

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“We also have one of the most generous tax credits as it stands, but we have to balance our budget. I think a lot of Minnesotans are saying, ‘Well, you couldn’t do a tax cut to my sales tax, but you could do a tax cut to Jeff Bezos.’ I think that was one where it’s right-sized.”

Minnesota law currently allows qualified data centers a sales tax exemption on technology equipment for 20 years, up to the year 2042. But a proposal from Senate Democrats would extend the tax break to 40 years and sunset it at 2062. This means that a data center that makes its first purchase in 2062 could continue claiming the exemption until 2102.

Members of the taxes working group — an unofficial meeting of Senate and House members who are negotiating a budget agreement before Walz calls a special legislative session — are debating the data center tax exemptions.

Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, said during a meeting Friday that Minnesota needs to remain competitive with other states.

“We are getting investments from these companies to Minnesota,” Hauschild said. “Other states … have other exemptions that will build these data centers. So we have to understand, do we want investments in Minnesota or do we not want investments?”

Proponents of sales tax exemptions for data centers tout property tax revenue and job creation. But data centers operate with few workers. Like a bridge or highway, once the project is complete, most of the jobs are gone.

And since the number of data centers is growing, the tax breaks will become even more expensive over time.

In Washington State, the tax breaks intended to create jobs have cost more than $474 million since 2018, ProPublica reported. Most of the benefits through the tax breaks went to Microsoft, not local communities.

Minnesota Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, on Friday said that when Minnesota first enacted the sales tax break for data centers in 2011, the state estimated it would forgo $5 million annually in revenue.

But a recent estimate from the Department of Revenue found that even with the elimination of the sales tax break on electricity, the software and other equipment exemption will still cost Minnesota around $100 million annually — and $219 million in fiscal year 2029.

“This is a sales tax exemption that is being asked for by the largest, most profitable corporations that have ever existed on the face of the earth,” Gomez said. “I think it’s really important that we actually look at what this really is, and we look at the powers that are lining up to try to force us to make this decision. And we think long and hard… (about) whether it’s appropriate that this kind of money should be going from the public coffers into the hands of billionaires.”

Data centers are huge consumers of both electricity, and water needed to cool down the equipment.

The Department of Revenue estimated that the 42 data centers in the state consumed 1.6 billion kWh of electricity in 2023.

Running a dishwasher for one hour uses 1 kWh of power.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.