Authorities evacuated an apartment building and closed streets in the area of West 28th Street and Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis on Tuesday after sheriff’s deputies were fired on while attempting to serve an arrest warrant.

In an update around 1:30 p.m., the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office said a suspect was barricaded inside the apartment building.

“Several agencies and multiple resources, including crisis negotiators, are on scene,” the sheriff’s office reported.

At 3:52 p.m., the sheriff’s office said the person was still barricaded inside the apartment and not communicating.

“A drone was used to locate the suspect inside and the suspect shot down the drone. The suspect has fired more rounds,” the Facebook post said.

Authorities said there are no injuries.

“Roads have been closed in the area and we are asking the public to avoid the area to ensure the safety of both residents and first responders,” the sheriff’s office said.

There was no immediate information on the suspect, or the nature of the arrest warrant.

This is a developing story; check back for updates.

The University of Minnesota, Fairview Health Services and M Physicians have finalized a 10-year deal to fund the U’s medical school and support physician training and research, following a tumultuous negotiation process.

This agreement formalizes the mediated resolution reached by the three parties in January and will take effect on Jan. 1, 2027.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Tuesday that, under the terms of the agreement, M Physicians will serve as the sole faculty practice group at the U’s medical school. Additionally, Fairview and the U have agreed to allow medical school faculty, students, residents, and fellows to conduct research and teach at Fairview healthcare facilities.

Other key elements of the agreement include a $1 billion investment from Fairview in its medical facilities on the University of Minnesota campus, along with $50 million in annual funding for the medical school. As part of the deal, the parties will explore a new program to support physicians practicing in greater Minnesota.

The U’s Board of Regents, along with the boards of directors for Fairview and M Physicians, will meet Friday to vote on the agreement. If approved, the strategic facilitation and mediation process between the three parties, which was initiated by Ellison’s office in the spring of 2025, will conclude.

Ellison released a statement noting that the three organizations, which have partnered for 30 years, recognized that failing to reach an agreement would lead to significant repercussions for patients, physicians, researchers, medical education and Minnesota’s economy.

Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, the U’s president, and Dr. Greg Beilman, CEO of M Physicians, expressed their appreciation in a statement for the Attorney General’s office and the mediation team for achieving a successful outcome.

“By resolving these foundational issues, we can turn our full attention to serving patients, supporting healthcare professionals, and addressing the significant issues that face health care delivery in Minnesota,” Fairview’s CEO James Hereford said in a statement.

Fairview runs the Clinical and Surgery Center on the U’s campus. Fairview and the U, which owns the building, have agreed on a lease and will soon finalize the terms through binding arbitration. In November 2025, Fairview and M Physicians updated their agreement with some changes made by both parties.

Together, the U, Fairview and M Physicians provide care for 1.2 million people each year and train 70 percent of Minnesota's physicians.

Federal agencies responsible for immigration enforcement are set to receive tens of billions more dollars after Congress voted to fund them not just for the year, but through the rest of President Donald Trump's term.

The House narrowly voted on Tuesday to direct roughly $70 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the second multi-billion dollar infusion of money to the agencies in the last year muscled through by Republicans alone.

The measure passed by a vote of 214 to 212.

The vote marks the end of a 115 day standoff over immigration policy. After federal officers shot and killed two protesters in Minneapolis earlier this year, Democrats refused to back more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, with the goal of forcing changes to immigration enforcement tactics.

But as negotiations fell apart, Republicans moved to circumvent Democrats using a special procedure known as reconciliation to fund the agencies without acquiescing to any of the reforms they were demanding.

In the Senate last week, one Republican joined all Democrats in an unsuccessful attempt to block the measure. The lopsided votes highlighted a Republican caucus continuing to endorse Trump's immigration agenda as Democrats warn that Congress has ceded its ability to provide oversight by funneling these agencies billions of dollars with few strings attached.

ICE gets more than three times its annual funding

Through this legislation, Congress is giving ICE more than three times its last annual budget. Though technically this funding is meant to cover three years, unlike a traditional annual funding bill, the money comes with few stipulations on how and when it should be spent.

While most annual spending measures provide funds for just that fiscal year, this measure includes lump sums that need to be spent only by the end of fiscal year 2029, including:

• $38 billion for ICE to hire, pay, train and equip its officers and agents. That includes $7 billion for Homeland Security Investigations and $31 billion for immigration enforcement work like hiring more attorneys, supporting local law enforcement who coordinate with ICE and technology like body cameras;

• $22 billion for Border Patrol to pay, train, recruit and equip agents and personnel. That includes $13 billion specifically for immigration enforcement work;

• $5 billion for border security technology and screening, including artificial intelligence;

• $350 million for enforcement in localities that do not coordinate directly with ICE.

Legislation passed in April to fund most of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol did include provisions that would provide funding for the agency to purchase body cameras, stipulate congressional oversight of detention centers and deescalation training for officers and agents.

Lawmakers agreed to separate funding for ICE and Border Patrol as Republicans and Democrats struggled to reach a compromise on reforms even as a record-long DHS shutdown dragged on.

But now ICE and Border Patrol will be funded without the changes Democrats were demanding, including requiring judicial warrants to enter homes and prohibiting officers from wearing masks. The package also lacks reforms with bipartisan support, such as requiring officers to wear body cameras.

Neither measure included funding for internal oversight offices that conduct investigations into detention center conditions; however, the April measure to fund all of the agency included $20 million for the DHS inspector general to specifically conduct oversight of detention facilities.

Not only is this standoff ending without Democrats achieving the reforms they pressed for, the agencies will be insulated from additional pressure through the appropriations process for three years.

More dollars after an unprecedented boost

Both ICE and CBP received a massive influx of funding last year, also passed by Republicans through the budget reconciliation process, that has allowed both agencies to largely continue operating even as Democrats refused to provide them annual funding for the last several months.

ICE's usual annual budget is about $10 billion. The $75 billion boost last summer made ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement agency and enabled a hiring surge that doubled its ranks in a matter of months.

Former agency leaders, Democrats and even some Republicans have warned that the surge of money limits the ability of Congress to provide oversight when it comes to how that money is spent and how the agency operates.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was the only Republican to vote against this latest funding measure in the Senate last week. She wrote in a statement that by appropriating funding for three fiscal years instead of the usual one, the measure "weakens the normal budgeting process and sets another precedent for avoiding it when we find ourselves in disagreement."

"In doing so, it reduces Congress' ability to apply reasonable checks on immigration policy for the remainder of this administration and into the next," she wrote.

Other Republicans say they were left with no choice once Democrats decided to withhold funding for these agencies as leverage to extract reforms.

"We're attempting here to fund ICE and CBP at last year's operating budget plus inflation, that's all we're talking about here," House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said shortly before the vote. "This is not a slush fund, it's regular, normal funding. And we're going to do it not for one year, but for three years so we don't end up here again."

ICE "got a shopping list"

ICE officials have been gearing up for the potential new cash for months.

"Apparently we're going to get more reconciliation money, so I got a shopping list," said Matt Elliston, ICE assistant director for law enforcement systems and analysis, speaking on a panel at the Border Security Expo in Arizona last month.

Among the items on his list are wearable headset displays so that officers do not need to be on their phones during an operation and data to help identify where someone targeted for arrest lives.

While the agencies welcome the funds, immigration advocates are concerned that funding the agency outside the normal appropriations process means provisions that tell the agency how to do its work are not included.

Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Coalition, said in the past DHS annual funding bills included specific guardrails on the spending including requirements for the agency to report data on who it is detaining and specific treatment of pregnant women in custody.

"It's very dangerous," Altman said. "And it means that the agency will move forward with even fewer accountability mechanisms than we've seen in the past."

Altman also raised concerns about the $350 million dedicated to immigration enforcement in areas that are not "qualified cooperating jurisdictions," meaning a locality that is not a part of programs that allow local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law.

"The DHS secretary has wide discretion to just say these are not sufficiently cooperating with the White House's mass deportation agenda," she said. "So it's concerning in terms of where the money will go."

Politics of immigration enforcement

After the two killings in Minneapolis, Democrats and a contingent of Republicans in Congress said they wanted to take action to reign in the tactics of federal immigration officers.

For weeks this winter, debate over President Trump's immigration policy consumed Capitol Hill. But despite the protracted fight over immigration enforcement funding, that discussion has largely subsided.

Republicans criticized Democrats for pushing an unserious list of demands. Democrats criticized Republicans for dismissing attempts at meaningful reform.

A new DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, has dialed back some of the aggressive enforcement operations that drew the national spotlight. And other controversies, like the war in Iran, have overtaken the immigration policy debate.

So much so that when Senate Republicans finally moved to approve the $70 billion for ICE and Border Patrol, much of the debate focused on an unrelated fund proposed by the Trump administration to compensate people who claim to have been wrongfully targeted by the government.

Reflecting on what followed after the two deaths in her home state, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., says it has been hard for her personally to come to terms with the reality that Democrats were unable to extract the policy changes they demanded.

And meanwhile, Smith says Minnesotans are still dealing with the fallout from the crackdown — like kids who did not return to school or businesses that never reopened — even as public attention shifted away.

"This is the way it goes, Americans have really busy complicated lives, they're trying to figure out how to pay rent and buy groceries, but what they saw, I don't think they're going to forget it," Smith says. "And that's what I mean when I say we've lost these votes but that doesn't mean we've lost the fight."

Even if public opinion on Trump's immigration agenda does help Democrats' take control of Congress next year, Democrats' ability to extract changes through the appropriations process will be limited now that the agencies have resources to last until 2029.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Federal prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty for the man accused of killing former DFL Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.

Investigators say that Vance Boelter also shot and wounded DFL State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette and tried to shoot their daughter Hope during an early morning rampage on June 14, 2025 in which he disguised himself as a police officer.

A federal grand jury returned a six count indictment in July that charges Boelter, 58, with stalking, murder with a firearm, and two other gun crimes. He also faces state charges of first-degree premeditated murder that carry an automatic sentence of life without parole.

Minnesota eliminated capital punishment in 1911, but the same grand jury gave federal prosecutors the go-ahead to determine if the death penalty is appropriate for the murder charges.

DOJ officials say now that they will not pursue a death sentence for Boelter.

“Bringing justice to the families and loved ones of victims of violence is the number one priority of the Department of Justice,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement. “Prosecutors worked hard on this case to make sure he was held accountable to the fullest extent possible.”

The statement doesn’t detail the legal reasoning behind the decision, but attorney Robin Maher, who leads the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said in an interview with MPR News that the murder charges alone are not death-eligible unless prosecutors can prove another underlying crime of violence.

Maher said that prosecutors tried to argue that stalking is a valid predicate offense but ran into roadblocks.

“Stalking has been held not to qualify as a crime of violence,” Maher said. “This all may seem like semantics, but what we’re doing is reflecting the will of Congress and many many decades of jurisprudence.”

Maher also noted that getting a jury to approve a death sentence could be challenging in Minnesota, where no state court has litigated a capital case in more than a century and no federal prosecutor has sought the death penalty in the modern era.

She also said that the Justice Department’s failed bid to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who’s charged in the 2024 killing of Twin Cities-based UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was a likely factor in DOJ’s decision in the Boelter case.

A grand jury indicted Mangione, on the same stalking and murder charges that Boelter would later face for allegedly shooting Thompson outside of a Manhattan hotel in December 2024. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that DOJ would seek the death penalty for Mangione. But in January – a federal judge in New York dismissed two of the counts, including the murder charge that the feds had argued was a capital offense.

Maher said that the Justice Department in the second Trump Administration is overreaching in its efforts to pursue capital cases.

“It’s charging cases that would not qualify for a federal death sentence under the law,” Maher said. “They’re pushing to see how far they can get. In Mr. Mangione’s case and now Mr. Boelter’s case, they’ve had to take a step back.”

Surrounded by farmland, a quarry and miles of southwestern Minnesota’s windswept prairie, Jeffers Petroglyphs can be easy to miss. Thousands of years ago, though, this place was a destination.

Ancient people traveling here carved their stories into the pinkish-red quartzite that rose 50 feet above the grasslands and stretched for miles. Some images cut into the rock date back 7,000 years, long before the Druids raised Stonehenge or the pharaohs built the pyramids.

In that respect, the Minnesota Historical Society is a relatively short-timer to the site, managing the Jeffers Petroglyphs for 60 years. Today, though, with a newly updated visitor center and contemporary Native exhibits, the society hopes to draw a new generation to the sacred site.

“This was calling people,” David Briese, the Minnesota Historical Society’s director of historical sites, said as he showed a reporter around the petroglyphs during a recent visit.

The thousand of petroglyphs include images of corn, bison, thunderbirds and turtles.

Some of the carvings align with the solstices. Others repeat images found at sites as far away in areas now known as Ontario, Georgia and Washington state.

“You don't find this kind of diversity of rock carving styles anywhere else in North America,” Briese added. “There was a concerted effort here to build a vault of knowledge, an encyclopedia. This was all done very purposefully.”

‘High point of the world’

The geology at Jeffers is crucial to its story. After the bare rockface was scraped smooth by glaciers, it became a site of major geographical and cultural significance that drew people from across the continent to the ridge of rose-colored quartzite jutting from the grass-covered plain.

The earliest carvings at Jeffers Petroglyphs were made somewhere close to 7,000 years ago and the most recent were made some 250 years ago. It’s considered one of the world’s oldest continuously used sacred sites.

Weeks ago, the historical society unveiled its new exhibit at the visitor center. It features a mural created by Dakota artist Holly Young, a giant buffalo hide artwork by Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate artist Fern Cloud as well as dozens of artifacts retrieved from the Minnesota historical society’s archives.

The decision to highlight the work of more than 20 contemporary artists was intentional, said Rita Walaszek Arndt, the historical society’s curator of Native American collections.

“(It’s) so that people have a better understanding of the through-line of some of these traditional arts,” said Walaszek Arndt, who helped design the exhibit. “The symbols, the stories, the teachings are still relevant today.”

The new exhibit also includes a seven-minute video featuring interviews from Native American community members including Lance M. Foster, historic preservation officer for the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, which helps interpret some of the thousands of rock carvings at the Minnesota site.

“It was a sacred place. It was like the high point of the world that you could see the wheel of the earth around you all the way to the horizon,” Foster shared in an interview excerpt that now plays in the visitor center.

Walaszek Arndt hopes the exhibit updates will encourage people to visit the site.

“To have those different understandings of the teachings — how it reflects what people were thinking and how they were functioning — is just so fascinating,” Walaszek Arndt said.

Jeffers Petroglyphs is open Thursday through Sunday during the summer. It also will have a summer solstice event and several sunrise tours.

It’s worth visiting the site at different times of day and in different seasons, said Briese.

“You’re going to pick up something new every time you come,” he added. “It is very subtle and that subtlety is a part of it that draws you in and has you returning because you’re looking for those small details in the prairie, in the rock, in your conversations with people.”

Air quality in the Twin Cities and much of central Minnesota may reach unhealthy levels Tuesday afternoon and evening.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has issued an air quality alert from noon to 9 p.m. Tuesday for the Twin Cities metro area, extending northwest to St. Cloud, Sauk Centre, Long Prairie and Little Falls. The alert also includes the Tribal Nations of Prairie Island and Mille Lacs.

The alert is due to ground-level ozone created by a combination of weather conditions.

“Mostly sunny skies, warm temperatures and low humidity will provide a favorable environment for two types of pollutants (volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides) to react with sunlight in the air to produce ground-level ozone,” the MPCA reported. “Ozone is expected to increase during the late morning, reach alert levels during the afternoon, and then subside in the early evening.”

Forecasters say air quality in the alert area may reach the orange category — meaning unhealthy for sensitive groups. That includes people with chronic breathing conditions, as well as children and the elderly.

“Unhealthy ozone can aggravate lung diseases like asthma, emphysema and COPD. When the air quality is unhealthy, people with these conditions may experience symptoms like difficulty breathing deeply, shortness of breath, throat soreness, wheezing, coughing or unusual fatigue,” the MPCA reported.

People in the Twin Cities — especially those in sensitive groups — may want to limit or postpone outdoor activities while the alert is in effect.

Experts also say that while wearing a mask can help with air pollution due to wildfire smoke — masks do not help filter out ozone, and actually could make it worse. That’s because wildfire smoke is particulates, while ozone is a gas.

What can help limit ozone exposure is staying away from local sources of air pollution, like busy roads.

The MPCA offered tips on how people can help reduce the amount of pollutants in the air:

• Reduce driving and carpool or use public transit when possible.

• If you need to fill your vehicle with gas or diesel, avoid filling up during the middle of the day.

• Avoid using gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment until the alert has ended, or use battery or manual-powered equipment instead.

• Avoid backyard campfires.

Vice President JD Vance is pressing federal prosecutors to investigate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison over allegations they failed to stop widespread social services fraud, amplifying concerns the White House will use a new Justice Department division to target political rivals.

Vance, who has been tapped to lead the Trump administration's anti-fraud efforts as he seeks to raise his political profile as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, cited in a letter to the Justice Department a report from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee that alleges Walz and Ellison were aware of pervasive abuse of government programs for years and let it flourish.

The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to questions Tuesday about whether it would open an investigation. It was unclear what, if any, potential violations of federal law could support a probe into the Democratic Minnesota officials, who have defended their efforts to combat fraud and have characterized a separate Justice Department investigation involving state leaders as politically motivated.

Minnesota has long been under a microscope for staggering amounts of fraud in programs for children and other social services, with dozens of defendants charged under the administrations of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and President Donald Trump, a Republican. Vance’s referral for an investigation into state leaders, however, marks an escalation in the Trump administration’s stated “war on fraud” that officials have said would not be political or partisan.

Vance is seeking an investigation by a new Justice Department division that has drawn intense scrutiny over the potential for political influence given its close relationship with Trump’s White House. The White House announced the division's formation in January and initially said its leader would answer directly to the president instead of the typical Justice Department command.

Walz spokesperson Teddy Tschann derided the House committee as “nothing more than a joke” that continues to “re-hash COVID-era fraud.”

“Governor Walz is glad to see fraudsters are going to prison,” Tschann said in an email. “If the committee is concerned about corruption, they should investigate why President Trump continues to let fraudsters out of prison.” Trump has granted clemency to numerous defendants convicted of financial crimes, including a man sentenced to 50 years in prison for orchestrating a more than $200 million Medicare fraud scheme.

Ellison called the allegations unfounded and dismissed Vance’s referral as “a political stunt from an administration that uses the machinery of government to target its perceived opponents while extending leniency to those aligned with its interests.”

“It is deeply troubling to see official powers and public resources diverted away from serving the people and instead aimed at pursuing political adversaries,” Ellison said in a statement. “That is not what government is for, and it diminishes public trust in our institutions.”

The House committee alleges that “fraud warnings were elevated to the most senior levels of the Minnesota state government" and payments continued “long after credible signs of fraud emerged.” In his referral, Vance wrote that officials in Minnesota or anywhere else in the country “must be held accountable” if they facilitated fraud, prevented officials from stopping it or retaliated against whistleblowers who tried to report it.

“Minnesota state officials are not above the law,” Vance wrote in a post on X.

The Trump administration has clashed repeatedly with Minnesota officials not only about fraud but also the massive federal immigration crackdown that swept across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and other communities and led to widespread protests.

The Justice Department in January served grand jury subpoenas to Minnesota officials as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed or impeded federal law enforcement through public statements they made. The status of that investigation is unclear.

The Trump administration has touted the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division as a crucial step in its efforts to prevent the misuse of taxpayer dollars. The division's leader, Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, is a veteran prosecutor who has vowed to pursue cases “without fear or favor."

Critics, however, have questioned the administration's motives behind the new division given that fraud was already prosecuted by the agency's Criminal Division, which last year announced the largest coordinated takedown of healthcare fraud schemes in Justice Department history.

Fargo will select a new mayor and two other city commissioners Tuesday. Five candidates are vying to replace Mayor Tim Mahoney, who is term-limited, and eight candidates are running for the two open commission spots.

But voters will have fewer votes to dole out this time around.

It’s Fargo’s first election since the North Dakota Legislature forced it to stop using a new voting system called “approval voting” and go back to the old, traditional voting method. The last time it was used in Fargo was 2018, the same year Fargo voters overwhelmingly supported overhauling their voting system.

But what is approval voting?

“Approval voting is dead simple,” said Jed Limke, founder of Reform Fargo, the group that led the effort to switch to the voting system. “It's almost the same, but it's cleverly different just where it needs to be.”

The main difference is that under approval voting, voters can select multiple candidates.

“It's thumbs up or thumbs down to every candidate instead of just one,” Limke said. “Most votes wins.”

Supporters say that approval voting helps solve multiple issues that arise out of traditional voting, also called “first-past-the-post voting” or “plurality voting.”

For instance, when multiple like-minded candidates run in the same race, they run the risk of splitting their voters and handing the election to the other party.

That traditional method can also lead to candidates winning races while also getting only a small plurality of votes. In 2016, two Fargo City Commissioners were elected with 15 and 16 percent of the vote.

Results like that were the impetus for putting approval voting on the ballot, where more than 63 percent of Fargo voters approved it.

“We had a successful election using it in 2020, another one in 2022, another one in 2024; but already the pushback against us was starting to build,” Limke said.

That pushback came from the North Dakota Legislature.

In 2023, Representative Ben Koppelman sponsored a bill to ban approval voting statewide. He said it hurts principled candidates.

“It ends up electing candidates that pander to the middle, that kind of couch or hide what their real beliefs are,” he said.

His bill passed the Republican-led legislature but was vetoed by then-governor and fellow Republican Doug Bergum, who now heads the Department of Interior.

In his veto, Bergum called the legislature’s attempt to ban approval voting as “an egregious example of state overreach” that “infringes on local control.”

Koppelman said he’s sympathetic to that argument. But last year, he introduced another bill to kill approval voting, which ultimately passed. Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed it into law.

Koppelman said the legislature needed to step in because constitutional rights were at stake.

“If you allow [Fargo voters] to vote any way they want, then … not everybody's equally protected under the law across the state. Not everybody has the same constitutional rights to pick their one candidate,” he said.

What’s next?

As Fargo gears up for Tuesday’s election results and future elections using a more traditional method, experts said voters and parties need to do more political strategizing if they want to avoid splitting their votes.

“They need to make sure that there aren't three of one party against one another in the first place,” said Andrew Eggers, an expert on electoral systems and a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

This year’s election is pretty crowded, he said. Among the five candidates for mayor, a non-partisan role, two candidates are conservative, two are liberal and one is a moderate, broadly speaking.

Eggers said with that many candidates, there’s a real risk of someone with little support being elected.

“In a way, the system has already failed, because they should have winnowed the candidates down to fewer choices,” he said. “If you're going to have a [traditional] election, then it's really better to have it be among a smaller set of candidates.”

The Justice Department is seeking to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Somali-American man who was convicted in the Feeding Our Future case. Documents in the denaturalization proceedings against Abdikadir Kadiye do not mention the sprawling fraud scheme, but allege that he used two separate identities when applying for residency in the late 1990s and lied on his citizenship application.

Kadiye, 54, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in 2023 to wire fraud for his role in the scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs during COVID.

He is among the latest people the Justice Department is seeking to denaturalize, according to a Monday news release.

Kadiye is at least the second Minnesotan targeted for denaturalization. In May, the Justice Department began proceedings against Salah Osman Ahmed, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing material support to the Somali militant group al-Shabab, which the U.S. government has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Neither the news release nor court documents in Kadiye’s denaturalization proceeding mention his conviction in the Feeding Our Future scheme, but filings in both cases list the same age and home address.

Authorities say that Kadiye initially applied for U.S. residency under the name Liban Mohamud Degel, but an immigration judge rejected his bid in 1999 and ordered him to leave the country. The Board of Immigration Appeals later rejected Kadiye’s appeal and issued a warrant of removal in 2001.

He allegedly stayed, applied for citizenship as Abdikadir Kadiye and was naturalized in 2012. According to the complaint, fingerprints from both applications confirm that Degel and Kadiye are the same person.

The Justice Department alleges that Kadiye’s “conduct to conceal his actions statutorily barred him from becoming a U.S. citizen,” and that he illegally procured his naturalization.

The complaint also alleges that in 2014, Kadiye admitted to a Customs and Border Patrol agent at O’Hare Airport “that he had unsuccessfully used the identity of Liban M. Degel unsuccessfully to attempt to enter the United States. CBP, however, subsequently closed the deferred inspection since he was a U.S. citizen.”

Denaturalization proceedings are rare. Federal immigration law requires that the Justice Department show “clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence” that a person was ineligible for citizenship or lied during the process of naturalization.

No attorney is listed for Kadiye in the denaturalization case. C. Connor Cremens, who represents Kadiye in the Feeding Our Future case, declined comment.

According to his 2023 indictment, Kadiye used his business, Hoybo Health Care Foundation, to submit false claims worth $1.1 million for 445,000 meals that he claimed to have served to children at sites in Minneapolis, Eden Prairie, and Minnetonka.

Prosecutors said that Kadiye used the stolen money to pay his mortgage and credit card bills and also purchased real estate in south Minneapolis. Investigators uncovered wire transfers that Kadiye made to purchase vehicles, including a Toyota Tundra pickup truck and a BMW SUV.

Kadiye’s plea agreement calls for him to serve 27 to 33 months in prison, but U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel has not yet scheduled a sentencing hearing.

The Minnesota Wild signed center Michael McCarron to a six-year, $20 million contract on Tuesday, taking one of their impending free agents off the market after his productive arrival following a midseason trade.

The 31-year-old McCarron played in 20 regular-season games for the Wild after he was acquired from the Nashville Predators for a 2028 second-round draft pick on March 3. The 6-foot-6 McCarron had his best NHL season between Nashville and Minnesota in 2025-26, setting career highs with 109 shots on goal, 205 hits and 77 blocked shots. He had two goals, two assists, 27 hits and a team-leading 14 blocked shots over 11 games for the Wild in the playoffs. He also won 54.5% of his faceoffs.

Drafted in the first round by the Montreal Canadiens in 2013, the late-blooming McCarron made $900,000 this season on his expiring contract. The new deal through the 2031-32 season will carry an annual average value against the salary cap of $3.33 million.

The sound of bulldozers, hammers and saws will fill the air where church bells once rang out and nuns sang hymns as construction work begins this week on new, affordable single-family homes on the grounds of the Our Lady of Good Counsel campus in Mankato.

The Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership is about to break ground on Good Counsel Meadows as part of a redevelopment project at the former convent site, according to Jen Theneman, campus director of Good Counsel and the director of real estate and community initiatives at the affordable housing nonprofit.

Construction crews will start clearing land and evening out the ground, dividing the pasture land area adjacent to the Tourtellotte Park neighborhood into 11 single family home lots. Construction on eight of those homes is expected to be completed and the houses will be available to new homeowners by fall. Three additional single family homes will be built in 2027.

The homes will be sold below market prices through a community land trust, in which low-income buyers purchase the house while the nonprofit retains ownership of the land beneath it. Theneman said the unique setup helps lower purchase costs and limits future resale prices to preserve affordability.

“The land lease is good for 99 years and renewable for another 99, so it has longevity and sustainability,” she said. “[The buyers] can live there as long as they want, and they own the home, they pay taxes and they have the deed. They can pass it onto their children when they’re ready to or when they pass on. So it’s also a way for low-income families to build wealth.”

The historic campus was established in 1912 on a bluff overlooking the Minnesota River Valley as the home of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Included in the purchase were buildings that were used as senior and assisted living housing for the nuns, the last of whom left the property in 2022 when they moved to an assisted living center in Shakopee.

SWMHP plans to renovate the main complex of the sisters’ residential buildings on the hilltop portion of the property into about 50 apartments.

Due to the historic significance and connections the site has to the Mankato community, Theneman said the rollout of the redevelopment project needs to be done slowly.

“There’s so many people that have a connection to this campus,” Theneman said, “whether they went to school here, or they knew the sisters, or just appreciated the beauty of the landscape, or attended the gardens that are up here. So, there’s a lot of people that are connected and want to be a part of its future, and so we’re happy to continue to make that possible for people.”

The housing nonprofit closed on the nearly 100-acre property at the end of last December in order to redevelop the site as affordable housing.

A Mankato housing study published in April 2025 found that the overall rental vacancy rate in Mankato is just 1.7 percent. A healthy rental vacancy rate is considered to be closer to 5 percent. And Mankato has virtually no vacancy for people with disabilities or those seeking senior housing.

This isn’t an isolated problem. All of Minnesota’s 87 counties have a limited supply of affordable homes that are available to renters with extremely low income, according to the Minnesota Housing Partnership’s 2026 County Profiles. In almost 80 percent of counties, the shortage exceeds 100 homes; and in nearly one-third of counties, it exceeds 500 homes.

Statewide, home values rose faster than homeowner incomes from 2023 to 2024, and home values have increased in every county in the state.

At least one in four renters are paying more than they can afford for housing statewide. In 20 Minnesota counties, more than half of renters are cost-burdened, which means they spend more than 30 percent of their gross household income on housing and utilities.

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Rachel Ostrom of Acorn Bookshop in St. Paul says TJ Klune’s new novel “We Burned So Bright” might make you cry. Klune is author of charming and hopeful New York Bestselling fantasies “The House in the Cerulean Sea” and “Under the Whispering Door,” among several others.

This new stand-alone novel has a starker premise than some of Klune’s other works: the end of the world.

A black hole has been gobbling up the solar system, and in a month’s time, life on Earth will end. Faced with a clear deadline, husbands Don and Rodney take a road trip across the U.S. to reach an important destination before time runs out.

On the way, Ostrom says, they encounter memorable characters with their own varied responses to the end of life on earth. She describes one memorable conversation Rodney and Don have around a campfire with a younger couple, where they recall a previous catastrophic experience:

“When they were first together, it was in the 80s, in the midst of the AIDS crisis. They're talking about their friends who died during the AIDS epidemic, and how, like, the government did nothing to help them, and it's just really devastating to hear about that. The conversations they have around that were really incredible and even sparked me to want to learn more about that time.”

Acorn Bookshop is the most recent addition to the Twin Cities’ rich indie bookstore scene. It opened in late March in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul.

Ostrom says it’s a feminist bookstore, with 75 percent of titles written by women. The store has a sizeable children’s, middle grade and young adult section.

Ostrom says the store also has a strong nature focus; Acorn Bookshop gives a percentage of sales every month to Voyageurs Conservancy and Friends of the Mississippi River.

A new congressional report released Monday dissects internal problems in state government that could have allowed fraud to fester in Minnesota-run programs.

The 205-page report by Republicans who lead the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform retraces fraud in nutrition and Medicaid programs and what was done about it. The report is based on documents and interviews with current and former officials in Gov. Tim Walz's administration as well as other levels of government.

The fraud cases the report revolves around have received public attention and investigative scrutiny for years. But the committee’s assertions are buttressed by interviews with high-level state officials whose agencies were confronting allegations or had to navigate a bureaucratic thicket when entities accused of fraud pushed back.

The report concludes warning signs were missed, authority to cut off payments wasn’t adequately used and employees who sought to act were silenced. The congressional panel examined Minnesota’s fraud cases because it involved federal money managed by state agencies.

“The failure to act decisively in the face of known fraud allowed criminal schemes to flourish and diverted resources away from eligible recipients: the vulnerable populations these programs were intended to serve,” the staff for the Republican-led U.S. House committee wrote.

Vice President JD Vance said on social media that he’s referred the report to a Department of Justice fraud division for possible prosecution. He wrote that if Minnesota officials “facilitated fraud or looked the other way while this theft was happening” or if they mistreated whistleblowers “they must be held accountable.”

The report includes recommendations that states and the federal government implement tighter controls to prevent fraud — some of which Minnesota legislators adopted in recent years.

Walz isn’t seeking a new term. But the report could be ammunition in other Minnesota political races, including for attorney general, U.S. Senate and the Legislature.

“This committee has proven time and time again to be nothing more than a joke. They continue to rehash COVID-era fraud to distract from endless wars, gas prices, ICE, and the president’s insider trading,” said Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for Walz. “Governor Walz is glad to see fraudsters are going to prison. If the committee is concerned about corruption, they should investigate why President Trump continues to let fraudsters out of prison.”

Walz’s office noted that several changes have been made over the last few years to address fraud, including new legislation creating an Office of the Inspector General, which will have independent power to investigate fraud.

Brian Evans, a spokesperson for Attorney General Keith Ellison, said, “Republicans in Congress issued a report riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations in an effort to politicize the issue of fraud, instead of actually helping Minnesota protect tax dollars and go after fraudsters.”

The attorney general’s office statement notes that 340 people have been criminally charged by that office over Medicaid fraud and that Ellison successfully petitioned the Legislature this year for reinforcements to the unit bringing those cases. Other types of fraud cases fall outside his jurisdiction, the statement said.

The report isn't focused on a specific program or fraud scheme: It covers documented problems in various health and social service programs, some dating to before Walz and Ellison took office in 2019 and some flagged as problematic as recently as 2025.

The House committee’s report goes into extensive detail about Minnesota government’s awareness of and action in response to the Feeding Our Future nutrition aid scheme, in which more than $250 million was stolen by people purporting to serve meals to needy children during COVID-19. Dozens of people have pleaded guilty or been convicted in the fraud with some serving lengthy prison sentences.

The committee also documented how fast-growing Medicaid programs susceptible to fraud, which is another avenue for ongoing state and federal prosecution against bad actors. In October of last year, Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Services announced an additional level of review for 14 Medicaid programs that have been designated as high risk for potential fraud.

Several Walz administration officials sat for recorded interviews, including prior commissioners at DHS and the Department of Education. So did former Walz Chief of Staff Chris Schmitter, who the report’s authors note responded more than 260 times that he didn’t know, remember or recall aspects of the Walz administration response to fraud claims.

The report also describes contradictions between various officials on timelines for delving into allegations and steps taken to identify and combat fraud.

Republicans in Congress and in the Minnesota Legislature issued statements faulting Walz and Ellison, both DFLers, for failing to take fraud seriously at the outset and for acting aggressively only after it became a political problem.

The Trump administration has seized on fraud as an issue it intends to push in the midterm elections. It has also frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid money to Minnesota until a corrective action plan and new program integrity safeguards are carried out.

The World Cup referee from Somalia who was denied entry to the United States after arriving in Miami and subsequently cut from the tournament by FIFA was set to make history for his country.

Omar Artan was going to be the first referee from Somalia to officiate at a World Cup after making FIFA’s final list for the tournament, which was announced two months ago. He is one of Africa’s top referees and was named the continent’s best male referee in 2025.

He was denied entry at Miami International Airport on Saturday over “vetting concerns,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement without giving details of those concerns. Artan was issued a visa to travel to the U.S. last week, according to the Somalia Embassy in Kenya that processed it.

The move to deny a FIFA-appointed match official permission to enter a World Cup host country is highly unusual. Artan was due to meet up with other World Cup referees at their training base in Miami.

The Somalia Youth and Sports Ministry said on Tuesday that it had not been told why Artan was denied entry and its embassy in the U.S. was making diplomatic efforts to resolve the problem and still allow Artan to referee at the World Cup, which opens on Thursday.

Somalia was one of the countries subjected to new travel restrictions last year under the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration. That raised concerns that fans, players and officials from those countries — most of which are African — might be denied entry for the World Cup due to the larger crackdown despite having valid visas.

"When Customs and Border Protection said Omar Artan was found inadmissible because of vetting concerns without specifying the reason, it may be related to those broader screening measures rather than any specific allegation against him,” Isse Aden Abshir, a senior adviser at the Somalia sports ministry and a former national team captain, told The Associated Press.

Artan subjected to ‘additional inspection’

“During processing, the traveler underwent additional inspection, a routine part of CBP’s inspection process when officers need to verify information or determine admissibility,” CBP said in its statement on Monday. “Following inspection, the traveler, a referee for the FIFA World Cup, was determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns and was denied entry.”

It didn't name Artan and referred only to a Somali national who is a World Cup referee. Artan is the only Somali referee selected for the tournament.

CBP said all travelers seeking entry into the U.S. — including World Cup players, coaches and staff — were subject to CBP inspection and vetting.

“Admissibility determinations are made on a case-by-case basis using law enforcement, national security, and immigration information available at the time of inspection,” the CBP statement said. “CBP officers have the authority to question travelers, conduct inspections, and determine admissibility consistent with U.S. law.”

FIFA drops ref from World Cup

FIFA said it was not involved in the immigration processes and was informed by U.S. authorities that Artan’s “status will not be changed at present.” It said Artan wouldn’t be able to train and officiate at the World Cup.

“In line with previous FIFA events, a host government ultimately determines who receives a visa and who is admitted into their country,” FIFA said.

Still, FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino built close ties to U.S. President Donald Trump’s government as the U.S. prepared to co-host with Mexico and Canada, and had publicly stressed how that would help the World Cup run smoothly.

Infantino did not immediately comment on the issue, while FIFA released a statement on behalf of Artan.

“Despite the circumstances, I am in a positive mood and I am focused on the next challenges in my refereeing career,” Artan said in the statement. “I would like to thank FIFA and (the African soccer confederation) for all their support and I promise to keep my refereeing levels up as I concentrate on the future.

"I want to thank the football family for their messages and wish my colleagues all the best success during the World Cup and I look forward to joining them again in future competitions.”

He was to make history for Somalia

Artan was praised as one of Africa's best referees and was the ref for the decisive leg of the African Champions League final last month — Africa's biggest club soccer game.

He spoke in a recent interview with the Al Jazeera TV network about how he was honored to be selected to be the first Somali to referee at the World Cup and how he faced challenges in his conflict-torn country in East Africa, including sometimes having to change his route to training because of explosions in the streets of the capital, Mogadishu.

"You cannot give up as a referee," Artan said in the interview. This (going to the World Cup) was my big, big target and I'm really excited."

A U.S. Army helicopter crashed near the Strait of Hormuz, but President Donald Trump said the two crew members aboard were not injured in the incident near the strategic waterway that Iran has effectively closed during the war.

What caused the crash remained unclear Tuesday morning in the Middle East, which was still reeling after Iran and Israel exchanged fire the previous day in the biggest blow yet to the straining ceasefire in the Iran war. Iranian state television reported Tuesday the Israeli attacks killed at least two members of the country's air defense units.

Since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran on Feb. 28, the war has shaken the global economy, driven up energy prices around the world and made many basics, including food, more expensive. Officials have been unable to turn the April ceasefire into a deal to permanently end the conflict, particularly as Israel intensifies and expands its military campaign in Lebanon against the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah.

Trump, speaking to journalists at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York after watching the NBA Finals on Monday night, acknowledged the crash.

“The pilots are fine. Yeah,” Trump said. “Nobody injured. We are going to issue a report tomorrow. But the pilots are fine.”

The New York Times first reported that a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter went down near the strait in unclear circumstances. The U.S. military's Central Command and the Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Apache helicopters have been a key asset for the American military as it enforces a blockade on Iranian crude oil shipments and tankers, seeking to pressure Tehran into reaching a deal. The helicopters also have been used by the United Arab Emirates to shoot down Iranian drones during the Iran war.

Trump insists an Iran deal is coming

Trump also expressed renewed optimism over negotiations with Iran.

“We have a good chance” of signing a deal in “two or three days," Trump said. But he didn’t provide any details on why there was reason for new optimism. Trump has repeatedly predicted that a deal is near over the two months since the U.S. and Iran agreed to an initial ceasefire.

“We’re very close to having a very, very good, strong, powerful deal,” the president said. “If we go and bomb — which we could do very easily if we want, and we spend another two or three weeks bombing — they’ll have nothing left whatsoever. But you won’t have the strait open for months.”

He added: “If we do the bombing, you know, a lot of people are going to be killed. Who wants to do that? I don’t.”

Mediators, led predominantly by Pakistan, have been trying for weeks to get a deal across the line. However, both Iran and the U.S. have taken hard-line positions.

The U.S. wants to see Iran give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is believed still to be entombed in the country after American airstrikes in the 12-day war in 2025. But Iran is refusing that and demanding relief from sanctions. It also wants the release of frozen assets even before a final agreement is in place, something rejected by Trump.

Before Trump’s comments on negotiations, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Monday that Trump’s remarks so far on a possible deal “contradicted the agreed-upon sections, showing that (the U.S. is) neither seeking a ceasefire nor dialogue.”

The continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah remains a major Iranian priority as well. Lebanon’s army chief, Gen. Rodolphe Haykal, traveled to Pakistan on Tuesday. There, he met Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, who has been a key figure in the Iran-U.S. talks.

Haykal's visit comes as Lebanon's government takes an increasingly hard line on Hezbollah, but remains unable to disarm the powerful militia. Hezbollah thanked Iran on Tuesday for attacking Israel “in defense of our Lebanese people,” suggesting that the Lebanese government should take this opportunity to improve relations with Tehran.

Israel issues warning for Tyre, Lebanon

Meanwhile Tuesday, the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for Lebanon’s southern port city of Tyre, including the Christian quarter, which has so far been spared in the destructive airstrikes on the port city.

Last week, Israel warned the Christian neighborhoods in Tyre that it believed Hezbollah members were among them. Many Lebanese Shiite Muslims fled to those areas as Israeli strikes hammered the Mediterranean coastal area over the past two weeks.

After last week’s warning, the Lebanese army deployed to the Christian district of Tyre in an effort to prevent Israeli attacks there and to show that Hezbollah has no armed presence in the area. But Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, posted on X on Monday that the Israeli military “will have to act against their terrorist activities in the neighborhood soon.”

The Supreme Court is heading into its crunch time, the part of the year when the justices are racing to finish decisions and dissents in the cases that remain undecided.

There are 23 cases left, out of the 58 that have been argued. Two major cases have already been decided: One essentially gutted what remained of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, prompting Republicans in a number of Southern states to redraw congressional maps to diminish or eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Black members of Congress.

The second major case that has been decided struck down President Trump's tariff program because the court said Congress had not authorized it, and Trump exceeded his authority in doing it on his own.

Many of the most difficult and controversial cases, however, remain to be decided in the coming weeks, with the justices aiming to conclude their work by the end of June or early July. The Supreme Court is next expected to release decisions on Thursday, June 11.

So what's left?

Birthright citizenship

Trump v. Barbara

Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil, and on the first day of his second term in office, he signed an executive order barring citizenship for children born in the U.S. if parents entered the country illegally or if the parents are living and working in the U.S. legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge to review it concluded, in the words of one, that the order was "blatantly unconstitutional." Specifically, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, enacted after the Civil War, says that, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

While almost all scholars interpret that language broadly, and as applying to all babies born in the U.S., Trump himself maintains that it applies only to the children of former slaves, and definitely not to the children of those in the U.S. illegally or the children of noncitizens living here legally.

Read more about the case:

• A once-fringe theory on birthright citizenship comes to the Supreme Court

• Supreme Court majority seems inclined to rule against Trump on birthright citizenship

• As birthright citizenship goes to Supreme Court, here's how Americans feel about it

• Trump attends Supreme Court arguments over his executive order, a presidential first

Trans bans in sports

Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.

At issue are laws recently enacted in about half the states that ban trans girls and women from participating in women's sports at publicly funded schools. Before the court are two cases – one involving varsity competition at colleges and universities, and the other involving sports in high schools. Supporters of the bans say the laws are needed to prevent athletes whose assigned sex at birth was male from having an unfair advantage in women's sports. Opponents of the bans say they discriminate based on sex, in violation of both federal law and the Constitution's guarantee to equal protection of the law. And for athletes at every level, the issue is deeply personal, with tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova on opposing sides, along with hundreds of other athletes.

Read more about the cases:

• A conservative Supreme Court tackles the question of trans women in school sports

• Supreme Court appears likely to uphold state bans on transgender athletes

• Trump's ban on gender-affirming care for young people puts hospitals in a bind

Will independent government agencies remain independent?

Trump v. Slaughter

Donald Trump is not the first president to try to fire the heads of independent agencies. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to fire one of the five Federal Trade Commissioners then serving in office. But In 1935 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the president; the court declared that under the federal law, commissioners could only be fired "for cause," meaning "inefficiency in office, neglect of duty, or malfeasance."

Every Supreme Court since then has reaffirmed that decision. If the conservative supermajority sides with Trump, he, as well as future presidents, will be able to fire, at will, agency leaders in all or almost all previously independent agencies.

Ironically, the commissioner in the crosshairs this time was also a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Trump appointed Rebecca Slaughter to the FTC in his first term and fired her in his second. The Supreme Court allowed the firing to go through on a temporary basis, over staunch dissents from the court's three liberal justices.

But the odds are that the court's six conservative justices will rule definitively in Trump's favor, the result being that independent agencies will no longer be independent.

Read more about the cases:

• Supreme Court appears poised to vastly expand presidential powers

• How Trump's firings could upend a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling limiting his power

So does that mean he can fire members of the Federal Reserve Board?

Trump v. Cook

Trump threatened to fire the head of the Fed, Jerome Powell, and tried to fire Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board. But the Supreme Court so far has refused to allow her removal. Cook's case, now awaiting decision by the court, has prompted considerable anxiety among economists, business leaders and others. When the Slaughter case was argued in December, some of the conservative justices seemed to suggest that the Fed had more protections than other agencies. Just how the court will thread that needle remains to be seen.

Read more about the case:

• Supreme Court doubtful of Trump claim he can fire Fed governors by fiat

• It's showdown time for the Fed's independence at the Supreme Court

Mail-in ballots

Watson v. Republican National Committee

By law, 29 states count at least some ballots that arrive after Election Day, including ballots from overseas and from members of the military, as long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day.

In the case before the court, Mississippi defends late-arriving ballots, noting that the Constitution gives states the right to run their own elections. That said, the Trump administration and the Republican party take the opposite position. They maintain that under federal law the election has to happen on Election Day, and anything that happens after that is not part of the election.

Read more about the case:

• Supreme Court appears skeptical of laws counting mail-in ballots after Election Day

• The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to grace periods for mail ballot returns

Temporary Protected Status for eligible migrants

Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status law in 1990 to allow fully vetted and eligible migrants to live and work legally in the U.S. if they cannot return safely to their countries because of natural disasters, armed conflicts and other extraordinary conditions. Since the law was enacted 36 years ago, every president, Republican and Democrat, has embraced it. Except Trump. In his first term, he tried and failed to kill off TPS. But in the 16 months since he returned to office, he may well be more successful. Currently, there are 17 countries whose migrants have been designated with TPS status, and so far Trump is seeking to eliminate 13 of those countries from the TPS list.

The two test cases before the Supreme Court involve migrants from Haiti and Syria. The Haitians – more than 300,000 of them – have been living legally in the U.S. since a devastating earthquake in 2010, followed by a deadly cholera epidemic, domestic terrorism, including widespread kidnappings and killings by marauding gangs, and political assassinations that have continued to this day. The Syrians are a much smaller group of roughly 3,800.

The Trump administration argues that decisions about TPS are entirely up to the president, and that the courts have no power to review those decisions. If the court agrees, that could well lead to mass deportations.

Read more about the cases:

• Supreme Court appears to lean toward ending TPS for some migrants

• Supreme Court weighs Trump's effort to end temporary protected status for Haitians, Syrians

Geofencing – a new tool for law enforcement

Chatrie v. US

Geofencing entails drawing a virtual geographical fence around an area where a crime was committed. In this case, the area within the geofence line included not just a bank where a robbery took place but also a church and a senior citizens home. The government sought a warrant that required Google to search its data and turnover any of the names of users who were within the geofence line at the time of the crime.

Essentially the question for the justices is whether this new technique is ingenious, Orwellian, or both? The government contends that because people are free NOT to give their location data to their tech provider, the data that the tech company does have, must be turned over to police pursuant to a warrant. Countering that argument, opponents of geofencing contend that because the warrant directs the tech company to search millions of users' location history, millions of people were subjected to a search despite never having done anything suspicious.

Read more about the case:

• Supreme Court considers constitutionality of 'geofence' warrants

• Privacy and law enforcement clash as the Supreme Court wrestles with 'geofence' warrants

• WATCH: The Supreme Court case that could redefine digital privacy

Guns

Wolford v. Lopez and US v. Hemani

In most states gun owners can bring firearms onto private property, unless the property owner tells them otherwise. But five states – Hawaii, California, Maryland, New York and New Jersey – have passed laws that require gun owners to get permission in advance. The question facing the justices is whether that requirement for advance permission violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

In a second case, the question is whether a federal law that makes it a felony for drug users to possess a gun violates the Second Amendment.. The law is akin to one that resulted in the prosecution and conviction of Hunter Biden. Biden was convicted of the gun law in this case, along with two other charges, in connection with his purchasing a firearm in 2018.

In 2022 , the court issued a broad ruling declaring that gun regulations henceforth would be deemed unconstitutional if they had no analog to a similar gun regulation that existed at the founding. Lower courts have found the decision confusing and difficult to administer, and they have unsubtly complained about the lack of guidance on gun issues from the Supreme Court. The two gun cases this term may answer at least some of those questions.

Read more about the cases:

• Supreme Court wrestles with gun rights, marijuana, and the right to own a gun

Copyright 2026, NPR

If you've been thinking it seems like there are more wars raging in the world these days, it turns out you're right and the data proves it.

A new study by researchers at a university in Sweden recorded the highest number of conflicts between states in 2025 since World War II, and the highest number of fatalities recorded since the Rwandan genocide.

There were 65 active conflicts in 2025, according to researchers at the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University, regarded as a leading source of information on violence worldwide.

Out of that total, the number of direct conflicts between individual states doubled from the previous year to eight in 2025 — the highest number of such conflicts since UCDP began collecting data in 1946.

They included the wars between Russia and Ukraine and between Iran and Israel, as well as conflicts between India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia, and Israel's conflicts in Syria and Yemen. The final two are: the border conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the conflict in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden between the U.S. and U.K. against Yemen's Houthis.

"We are seeing a clear increase in conflicts between states. For a long time, interstate wars were relatively rare, but developments in recent years point to growing international tensions and a changing global security order," said Shawn Davies, a senior analyst at UCDP.

The rest of the 65 were all intrastate conflicts — government forces fighting rebel groups within the country.

Most conflict deaths since Rwanda

Fatalities were the highest on record since 1994, with approximately 244,600 people killed in conflict in 2025, the data shows. That's up from 187,000 deaths in 2024.

"It is not only a story of more conflicts, but also of extremely high levels of lethal violence. Most notably, we see a dramatic increase in violence directed against civilians, particularly in Sudan," said Therése Pettersson, senior analyst and project manager at UCDP.

The researchers break down the data into several categories. One is "state-based violence," which includes both internal, civil wars and "interstate wars," meaning wars between nations. Either way this grouping means one or both parties to a conflict are a government: for example Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza.

Then there is "non-state violence," which encompasses clashes between two groups, neither of which is a state: for example sectarian fighting in Pakistan or cartel violence in Mexico.

A third category is "one-sided violence," which targets civilians, for example last year's government crackdowns on protests in Tanzania or rebel group attacks on civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Of last year's 65 conflicts, 13 of them rose to the level of war — as defined by over 1,000 battlefield deaths a year.

Russia-Ukraine was deadliest war of 2025

The Russia-Ukraine war was the deadliest interstate conflict, accounting for 62% of all battle-related deaths, with 77,700 from the Russian side killed in 2025 and 14,000 from the Ukrainian side. While the warring sides do not regularly release casualty figures, the Uppsala researchers use a variety of open sources, including social media to come up with the tallies.

"Russian battlefield losses have increased and Ukraine losses have remained relatively stable," the researchers noted.

The Israel-Hamas war was the second-deadliest conflict, with 14,400 fatalities, though that was still a decrease compared to the previous year due to ceasefire agreements.

And, the third deadliest state-based conflict was Sudan with 12,200 deaths. But those figures only account for fighting between government forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Sudan dominates in terms of violence against civilians. Tens of thousands of Sudanese civilians were killed by the RSF in massacres after the capture of the Sudanese city of El Fasher alone last year.

Part of the reason the researchers gave for the rise in conflicts globally over the past decade was a shift in the international order as led by the U.S. since World War II.

"Now the United States is is turning against the world order it built, as expressed in its 2025 National Security Strategy," the study said. "The extremely high number of conflicts and wars recorded in 2025, particularly the record number of interstate conflicts lends credence to the growing number of voices arguing that we are witnessing the end of Pax Americana and the liberal world order."

Asked if that meant wars had become worse under the Trump administration, co-author Petterssen said: "Our data does not allow us to establish a direct causal link between specific U.S. policy changes and the increase in conflicts recorded in 2025."

"What the data shows is that interstate conflicts have increased sharply over the past decade and reached their highest level since World War II. This trend predates the current U.S. administration and cannot be explained by any single policy decision or political leader," she added.

"The discussion in the article concerns a broader debate in international relations about whether we are witnessing changes in the post-Cold War international order."

Whatever the causes, 2026 doesn't look like it will be any more peaceful than last year, the researchers warn. Data this year so far shows the rise in conflicts globally is a trend that's likely to continue.

Copyright 2026, NPR

A group of employees with a national airport catering company say a new operating protocol is putting worker safety at risk at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Catering truck drivers and other employees at LSG Sky Chefs, which provides food and beverages for airlines like Delta and United, say they were told last year by management that trucks would only be manned by one driver, known as single operator catering or SOC. Previously, two drivers were assigned to one truck. Employees say the decision has made them feel less safe at work.

Workers and members of their union leadership, UNITE HERE Local 17, said one person has already been injured following the switch to single operator catering, when the worker was crushed by his truck after it rolled over him. He underwent multiple surgeries on his leg.

“I know that his accident would not have happened if it was not for SOC,” said Habtom Weldegiorgis, a driver with LSG Sky Chefs. “They all talk about safety, but they care about the safety of the aircraft, and then delays — not about the safety of us.”

On Monday, workers gathered with Attorney General Keith Ellison and other officials outside the airport to call attention to the safety concerns.

“The safety of the worker is critically important and must not be sacrificed to the needs of profitability,” Ellison said.

Airline catering workers load delivery trucks, navigate across airport tarmacs and work on lifts high off the ground to cater flights. UNITE HERE, which represents 500 LSG Sky Chefs workers at MSP and 10,000 nationwide, said a driver fell to his death in 2024 in Sacramento.

In a statement shared with MPR News, LSG Sky Chefs said they are committed to “fostering an environment where employees feel empowered to speak up about any concerns.”

“Following the safety-related concerns raised earlier this year regarding single operator catering, Sky Chefs conducted a thorough investigation and found no evidence to support the allegations,” a spokesperson for the company said.

Members of the Metropolitan Aviation Commission will conduct an inspection of the Sky Chef facilities at the airport later this week.

City crews placed barricades and started tearing up asphalt Monday morning as street construction started at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, after years of planning and debate.

The initial road work started on one block of 38th Street and one block of Chicago Avenue, east and south of the corner where a Minneapolis police officer murdered Floyd six years ago.

Crews worked around the memorial that stands on the corner, and large fist statues that adorn the ends of each block and the center of the intersection.

The project will rebuild streets to be open to traffic in both directions, with space set aside for memorials and gardens.

Several community members gathered in the square to watch the work start. Many opposed the project, speaking out at city planning sessions over the past several years to ask for an alternate plan that allowed for more pedestrian space — or to halt construction altogether.

Julia Johnson lives down the street from the square. She said she has struggled to get answers from the city about logistics, like how to access her son’s school bus stop during construction, and how neighbors would get to a food shelf in the church on the corner. She was surprised to see no-parking signs posted outside her house, since she lives just outside the area under construction.

“They are not transparent, they’re not considerate and they’re not trustworthy,” Johnson said of city staff.

A team of city employees was on-site Monday morning — not just construction crews, but also staff designated to do outreach to community members.

Adam Hayow is the city’s project manager. He said the team is doing their best to keep residents up-to-date, and will be on site and reachable during weekly virtual stakeholder meetings throughout the summer.

“The big idea is just provide them information about what’s happening, what’s being proposed, construction impacts, schedule, all that good stuff,” Hayow said.

He said construction started relatively smoothly, despite on-and-off drizzle throughout the morning but there was a brief standoff with a group of neighbors, who stepped into the street early in the day to confront construction workers and insist that they not move the large fist statues. They stepped aside after crews said they are leaving the sculptures in place for now, and working around them.

That’s one of the unresolved details of the construction plan — what will happen to those fist sculptures. Hayow said city staff and the artists are still negotiating over who will move them, where they’ll go and who will be responsible for the cost of any damage during construction.

“We want to be respectful of artists in the community and the caretakers with the two sculptures,” Hayow said. “At the same time we need to have construction continue on.”

Community members are also protesting a property tax assessment, which is charging property owners in the square thousands of dollars to help pay for construction.

It’s a standard cost levied to property owners adjacent to any city construction project, but several property owners in the square said it’s unfair to ask them to pay for improvements, after a city police officer murdered Floyd on their block.

Bridgette Stewart lives and works in the area, and spoke at a Minneapolis City Council committee meeting last week.

“We are exhausted. We are emotionally exhausted, we’re mentally exhausted, we’re physically exhausted, and now you’re asking us to continue to be financially exhausted,” Stewart said of the assessments.

PJ Hill owns a business at George Floyd Square, and said neighbors already face challenges to living there, after the murder of Floyd.

“We did not create these challenges, but we have lived through the consequences every single day. But yet, and still, we’ve stayed, we’ve paid our taxes — and we believe that this community deserves more than this, to have the financial burden placed on us,” Hill told council members.

The Minneapolis City Council is scheduled to discuss the issue later this week. At last week’s committee meeting, council member Soren Stevenson — who represents the neighborhood — agreed with his constituents.

“The construction itself is going to be hard enough on residents and on businesses,” he said. “Having the murder of George Floyd, the uprising, the years that followed was hard enough already on the businesses and residents and community members — so this special assessment is just salt in the wound.”

Back at George Floyd Square on Monday morning, Julia Johnson said the surprises and uncertainties she experienced are particularly frustrating after attending many city meetings and listening sessions over several years.

“We shouldn’t have to demand it after you’ve done a million surveys and community engagement meetings,” Johnson said.

Street reconstruction is slated to continue through the end of this year, and restart next year on the two remaining blocks of the square, finishing by the end of 2027. It’s one of several projects aimed at redesigning the area — including a redesign of the People’s Way site and the installation of a permanent memorial to George Floyd.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has ruled that the city of Faribault didn’t have enough information about a proposed hyperscale data center when it decided the project didn’t require a more thorough environmental review.

Archer Datacenters owns property in Faribault and plans to develop it with up to 500,000 square feet of data center buildings on an 84 acre site.

Last August, the Faribault City Council approved an environmental assessment worksheet for the project. City officials decided that a more exhaustive environmental impact statement, or EIS, wasn't needed.

The nonprofit Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy filed an appeal challenging that decision. MCEA argued the city didn't have enough information about potential noise pollution, air pollution from backup generators and greenhouse gas emissions from electricity use.

And it argued the city didn't consider the cumulative effects of other projects that draw on water and energy resources in the area, including other data centers and industries.

The appeals court agreed, saying the city failed to take a “hard look” at the environmental impacts before making its decision.

One example the court cited: The final environmental review lowered the project’s estimated greenhouse gas emissions by 98 percent from the draft version without explaining why.

The court ordered the city to either order an environmental impact statement, or postpone the decision for up to 30 days to get the needed information it lacks.

The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy called the decision “a win for Faribault and all Minnesotans concerned about the impacts of hyperscale developments in our state.”

“I think it's a big day for residents across Minnesota who have had so many questions about data centers that have been popping up really rapidly and with really huge development proposals across the state,” said Luke Norquist, a legal fellow at the center.

The process for reviewing proposed data centers hasn’t answered big questions people have about their impact on Minnesota residents or the state’s climate goals, Norquist said.

“This decision today confirms that these studies have not been looking closely at those questions at all, and more work needs to be done,” he said

Andrew Wolf, an attorney for the Iverson Reuvers law firm who represented Faribault in the appeal, said the city is “disappointed” with the decision.

“The city takes its environmental review obligations seriously and believes it acted appropriately and in good faith based on the information available at the time,” he said.

Wolf said the city is reviewing the opinion and “evaluating options for obtaining any additional information needed for a decision.”

In a statement, the city said it is “dedicated to ensuring that all development within our community is undertaken responsibly and with careful consideration of potential environmental impacts.”

Jordan Milman, a spokesperson for Archer Datacenters, said in an email that undertaking an environmental review in the Faribault project’s early stages was “part of our ongoing effort to be as transparent as possible.”

Given that the design was preliminary, the review included some estimates and ranges, Milman said.

“While we do not believe an EIS will be warranted, we respect the Minnesota Court of Appeals’ decision that more definitive information is necessary for the city to ultimately make a decision on the matter,” Milman wrote. The final design will include more specific calculations, he said.

The Faribault appeal was one of several lawsuits the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy filed to challenge environmental reviews of proposed data centers.

Last month, a judge in Goodhue County ordered the developer of a hyperscale data center in Pine Island to temporarily halt construction until MCEA’s lawsuit over the project’s environmental review can be heard.

Flying vampires. A musical spoof of the megahit movie “Titanic.” Another spoof, this time of golden-age Broadway musicals. And a new “Death of Salesman,” one of America's most decorated and mournful plays. It's Tony Awards time.

Twenty-four Broadway shows will hope to nab at least one win Sunday across the 26 Tony categories, which can mean the difference between keeping the doors open and pulling down the curtain.

Grammy Award-winner Pink is the host of the show, which will be broadcast live on CBS and streaming for Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. to both coasts on Sunday from 8-11 p.m. Eastern/5-8 p.m. Pacific.

Three generations of Pink's family

Pink promises a big, honking opening number — written by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Mark Sonnenblick that ends with some 170 people on stage — with lots of costume changes and some wire work, which she is familiar with from her acrobatic concerts. She has tapped Amber Ruffin, a writer and performer for “Late Night with Seth Meyers” for help with jokes.

In the audience will be Pink's mother — who took her to shows growing up in Philadelphia, instilling a love of musicals — and Pink's two children, a passing of the musical theater baton. Pink's 15-year-old daughter, Willow, is an aspiring theater actor and urged her to host the Tonys.

“The biggest reason she wanted me to say ‘yes’ was so that she could have a seat at the show because she loves the show so much,” says Pink. “I was like, ‘I can probably get you a seat anyway.’”

Plenty of performances

There will be performances from the seven best new musical and best musical revival nominees: “The Lost Boys,” “Schmigadoon!,” “Titanique,” “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” “Ragtime” and “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Other performances include the original lead cast members of “The Book of Mormon” — Josh Gad, Andrew Rannells, Rory O’Malley and Nikki M. James — this year celebrating its 15th anniversary. Leslie Odom, Jr. will sing “Without You” from “Rent” during the In Memoriam section, in honor of that show’s 30th anniversary.

Another show celebrating a milestone, “Chicago” now at 30, will have a performance slot featuring Pink, as well as Queen Latifah, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Alex Newell, Adrienne Warren, Julianne Hough, Whitney Leavitt and Dylan Mulvaney. Plus, “A Chorus Line,” which last year celebrated its 50th anniversary, will get a special tribute by Rachel Zegler.

The musical and play races

The competition for best new musical is between four very different shows: “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” an opposites-attract rom-com; “The Lost Boys,” a stage adaptation of a 1987 teen movie vampire thriller; “Schmigadoon!,” which gently mocks golden-age Broadway shows; and “Titanique,” a camp musical comedy that reimagines the 1997 movie “Titanic.”

The two top best play nominees are “Giant,” exploring accusations of antisemitism against children's author Roald Dahl, and “Liberation,” about a consciousness-raising women’s group in the 1970s that explores inequality, gender roles and racism.

There are intriguing races in both the revival categories: A “Death of a Salesman” led by Nathan Lane is competing for best play revival with a modern-set “Oedipus” led by Marc Strong and a sweet “Every Brilliant Thing” starring Daniel Radcliffe.

The best musical revival pits a new “Cats” reimagined as a “Pose”-like competition show, the sweeping American history show “Ragtime” and a rollicking, frisky “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Bill Rauch, who secured his first Tony nomination for co-directing the reimagined “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” was a nominator for three seasons until this one and is impressed by the range now on Broadway.

“I look at everything as an artist within the season, but also as somebody who has seen the wealth of work on Broadway for three years running,” he said. “I just think there’s so much variety on Broadway and so many artistic risks that people take. I left my three years as a nominator really impressed by the landscape, I have to say. And I feel that this year as well.”

June Squibb became the oldest Tony-nominated actor in history at 96 and could become the oldest Tony winner if she hears her name called, surpassing Lois Smith who was 90 when she won in 2021. And Lane is hoping for his fourth Tony for “Death of a Salesman,” which would make him tied as the most-awarded male performer in Tony history, alongside Boyd Gaines and Frank Langella.

Over a century ago, the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler conducted what became a classic experiment. He suspended a banana to keep it just out of reach of a chimpanzee, placing a pile of boxes and crates nearby. The chimp soon stacked up the boxes, climbed them and grabbed the treat.

This was evidence, Köhler believed, of spontaneous problem solving by the chimpanzee; no training was required. It was the kind of thing that humans do all the time.

Since Köhler's early work, researchers have conducted similar experiments involving an out-of-reach reward and an object to stand upon in birds and elephants. And both have solved the problem successfully.

Olli Loukola, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Turku in Finland wondered whether bumblebees — short-lived creatures with miniscule brains — might be capable of the same task. And in a paper recently published in the journal Science, he and his colleagues present evidence that they are.

Untrained bumblebees consistently managed to roll a small Styrofoam ball into a position that allowed them to climb atop it to reach a rewarding stimulus overhead.

"I wasn't expecting that high success rate," Loukola says. He concludes that "very tiny brains can solve super complex problems."

Expecting greatness in the smallest of packages

After studying bumblebees for about a decade, Loukola has come to expect the unexpected. If you don't have limitations on what's possible for them, he says, "you can go wild and crazy and find completely novel stuff."

His early work proved him right. He showed that bumblebees appeared able to "learn to use tools," he says. "They learn socially from each other; they even understand the role of their partner in cooperative tasks."

Loukola has been drawn to studying tasks long considered the domain of animals with backbones. So he decided to see whether his bumblebees might be capable of a variation on Köhler's classic experiment of the banana and the box.

But he had to replicate the experiment for an organism that could easily fly to reach its reward.

Loukola, who was at the University of Oulu in Finland at the time, first trained the bees to associate a small blue circle with a sweet treat. "Bees are super fast in associating things together," he says. "They will learn immediately that blue means reward. Then they start searching for blue stuff."

He then placed just the blue circle without any sugar water on the ceiling of a hollow puck-shaped container that was about an inch high.

"We designed the arena so that it's just annoyingly [a] little bit too high for them to stand and reach the ceiling," he says, "but too tiny for them to fly."

Loukola video recorded his experiments. "With the videos, you can clearly see what is going on," he says.

In a recording of the first experiment, a bumblebee is inside the puck alongside a small Styrofoam ball. Remarkably, bee after bee in the video grabs on to the little ball and starts moving it around.

"Bumblebees, they love rolling balls," says Loukola. "Some of them needed more time and made more errors. But then they continued."

Eventually, almost three-quarters of the bees moved the ball beneath the blue dot. They then climbed atop the ball, using it like a stepstool to touch the ceiling and reach the otherwise unreachable reward.

"I planned the experiment so that it's challenging for the bees," he says. "They really need to understand the task in order to solve it."

Cognitive flexibility

There's an alternative explanation to what motivated success in that first experiment, however. Maybe the bee wasn't purposely directing the ball towards the reward.

"It's possible that the bees don't need to understand anything," Loukola allows. "Is this really goal-directed behavior or is this just playing with the balls and solving these tasks by chance?"

So in a subsequent experiment, Loukola and his colleagues introduced barriers within the arena to block the blue dot from view. The bee could no longer see the dot unless it maneuvered around the barrier. The ball was then introduced in a different part of the enclosure.

This time, some 80 percent of a new batch of bees rolled the ball under the blue circle, convincing Loukola that the bees had solved the problem spontaneously. It's a first, he says, for an insect with a brain the size of a sesame seed.

"We had this underlying assumption that somehow bigger brains means more powerful computations," says Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St. Andrews who wasn't involved in the research. "And so demonstrating this in the bumblebees is really wonderful."

Hobaiter says that this study does a good job replicating similar experiments conducted on animals across the animal kingdom. "Intelligent brains come in really diverse shapes and sizes," she concludes.

The cognitive flexibility that Loukola's individual bees demonstrated may pay off in the wild when environmental conditions change suddenly and the insects must collect pollen and nectar no matter what.

"Today they might find flowers from here, but tomorrow those flowers are not blooming anymore," says Loukola. "If the workers can flexibly find new ways to get food for the colony, that's the skill that they need to have."

And, Loukola says he has all sorts of future research ideas with bumblebees. He wants to examine their body movements, microgestures and grooming behaviors to see if the insects have a tell preceding their moment of insight. One day, it may even be possible to image the bumblebee brain while it's solving a problem like the one it was presented with here.

Loukola knows that more surprises await. The bumblebee continues to impress him.

"When I started, the [cognitive] limit was somewhere here," he says, indicating a low point with his hand. "And now it's much higher."

"We have to be smarter to develop or design experimental setups where we can test their real limits," he adds.

He's not sure what those limits are, but he knows that he hasn't reached them yet.

Copyright 2026, NPR

The 79th Annual Tony Awards celebrated the best of Broadway performances on Sunday in New York City, but the night was stolen by a performer who's never starred in a Broadway show at all: the singer-songwriter P!nk.

P!nk, who hosted the evening, started the show dressed like Peter Pan, swinging from the ceiling, but soon donned a pink bustier to sing a raucous version of "Lady Marmalade" that celebrated women in theater. She was joined by Megan Thee Stallion, Broadway stars, and a cast of about 170 others stretching across the huge stage at Radio City Music Hall. That opening number was written by Dear Evan Hansen's Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, plus Mark Sonnenblick, who wrote songs for KPOP Demon Hunters.

There was no big winner this year. Instead, awards were spread among several shows — best new musical went to Schmigadoon!, which won four awards; best play revival and direction went to Death of a Salesman (it won six Tonys in all.)

Plenty of celebrities showed up to share the stage, including cameos from former hosts Neil Patrick Harris and Ariana DeBose, plus presenters Sting, Paul Rudd, Billy Crystal, Bernadette Peters and Adrien Brody.

Later, P!nk sang "All That Jazz" from the long-running musical Chicago, along with the current Broadway cast. Other performances that received rapturous receptions from the crowd included The Rocky Horror Show cast singing "Time Warp" and a number from CATS: The Jellicle Ball — a musical that brings Andrew Lloyd Webber's show into the world of drag ballroom. Members of the audience were given branded fans from the production, and they snapped them happily.

The ceremony also offered a few surprises, like best new play going to Bess Wohl's Pulitzer-winning Liberation, beating out Giant, about Roald Dahl. Wohl's win was the first by an American woman playwright in 37 years.

The design awards were given out in the pre-show on Pluto TV, which made room for the CBS broadcast to focus primarily on performances of new and longer-running shows. In the pre-show, Qween Jean, who won for best costume design for CATS: The Jellicle Ball, became the first openly transgender woman to win a Tony. In 2023, J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell were the first nonbinary actors to win Tonys.

The full list of winners is below.

Best New Musical

WINNER: Schmigadoon!
The Lost Boys
Titaníque
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

Best New Play

WINNER: Liberation
The Balusters
Giant
Little Bear Ridge Road

Best Revival of a Musical

WINNER: Ragtime
CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show

Best Revival of a Play

WINNER: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Becky Shaw
Every Brilliant Thing
Fallen Angels
Oedipus

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

WINNER: Joshua Henry, Ragtime
Nicholas Christopher, Chess
Luke Evans, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show
Sam Tutty, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Brandon Uranowitz, Ragtime

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

WINNER: Caissie Levy, Ragtime
Sara Chase, Schmigadoon!
Stephanie Hsu, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show
Marla Mindelle, Titaníque
Christiani Pitts, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

WINNER: Alden Ehrenreich, Becky Shaw
Christopher Abbott, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Danny Burstein, Marjorie Prime
Brandon J. Dirden, Waiting for Godot
Ruben Santiago-Hudson, August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Richard Thomas, The Balusters

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

WINNER: Lesley Manville, Oedipus
Rose Byrne, Fallen Angels
Carrie Coon, Bug
Susannah Flood, Liberation
Kelli O'Hara, Fallen Angels

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

WINNER: Ali Louis Bourzgui, The Lost Boys
André De Shields, CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Bryce Pinkham, Chess
Ben Levi Ross, Ragtime
Layton Williams, Titaníque

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

WINNER: Shoshana Bean, The Lost Boys
Hannah Cruz, Chess
Rachel Dratch, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show
Ana Gasteyer, Schmigadoon!
Nichelle Lewis, Ragtime

Best Direction of a Play

WINNER: Joe Mantello, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Nicholas Hytner, Giant
Robert Icke, Oedipus
Kenny Leon, The Balusters
Whitney White, Liberation

Best Direction of a Musical

WINNER: Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Michael Arden, The Lost Boys
Lear deBessonet, Ragtime
Christopher Gattelli, Schmigadoon!
Tim Jackson, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play

WINNER: Laurie Metcalf, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Betsy Aidem, Liberation
Marylouise Burke, The Balusters
Aya Cash, Giant
June Squibb, Marjorie Prime

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play

WINNER: John Lithgow, Giant
Will Harrison, Punch
Nathan Lane, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Daniel Radcliffe, Every Brilliant Thing
Mark Strong, Oedipus

Best Book of a Musical

WINNER: Schmigadoon!, Cinco Paul
The Lost Boys, David Hornsby and Chris Hoch
Titaníque, Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), Jim Barne and Kit Buchan

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

WINNER: Schmigadoon!, Music & Lyrics: Cinco Paul
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Music: Caroline Shaw
August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Music: Steve Bargonetti
The Lost Boys, Music & Lyrics: The Rescues
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), Music & Lyrics: Jim Barne and Kit Buchan

Best Scenic Design of a Play

WINNER: Chloe Lamford, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Hildegard Bechtler, Oedipus
Takeshi Kata, Bug
David Korins, Dog Day Afternoon
David Rockwell, Fallen Angels

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

WINNER: Dane Laffrey, The Lost Boys
dots, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show
Soutra Gilmour, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Rachel Hauck, Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Scott Pask, Schmigadoon!

Best Costume Design of a Play

WINNER: Jeff Mahshie, Fallen Angels
Brenda Abbandandolo, Dog Day Afternoon
Qween Jean, Liberation
Emilio Sosa, The Balusters
Paul Tazewell, August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Best Costume Design of a Musical

WINNER: Qween Jean, CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Linda Cho, Ragtime
Linda Cho, Schmigadoon!
Ryan Park, The Lost Boys
David I. Reynoso, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show

Best Lighting Design of a Play

WINNER: Jack Knowles, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Isabella Byrd, Dog Day Afternoon
Natasha Chivers, Oedipus
Stacey Derosier, August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Heather Gilbert, Bug
Heather Gilbert, The Fear of 13

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

WINNER: Jen Schriever and Michael Arden, The Lost Boys
Kevin Adams, Chess
Jane Cox, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show
Donald Holder, Schmigadoon!
Adam Honoré, CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Adam Honoré and Donald Holder (Lighting Design) and 59 Studio (Projection Design), Ragtime

Best Sound Design of a Play

WINNER: Mikaal Sulaiman, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Justin Ellington, August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Tom Gibbons, Oedipus
Lee Kinney, The Fear of 13
Josh Schmidt, Bug

Best Sound Design of a Musical

WINNER: Kai Harada, Ragtime
Kai Harada, CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Adam Fisher, The Lost Boys
Brian Ronan, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show
Walter Trarbach, Schmigadoon!

Best Choreography

WINNER: Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons, CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Christopher Gattelli, Schmigadoon!
Ellenore Scott, Ragtime
Ani Taj, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show
Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, The Lost Boys

Best Orchestrations

WINNER: Doug Besterman and Mike Morris, Schmigadoon!
Ethan Popp, Kyler England, Adrianne "AG" Gonzalez and Gabriel Mann, The Lost Boys
Lux Pyramid, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Brian Usifer, Chess
Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Wilson, Trevor Holder and Doug Schadt, CATS: The Jellicle Ball

Copyright 2026, NPR

A wildfire in northern Minnesota near Ely that has burned an estimated 33 acres likely originated from chainsaw work done by U.S. Forest Service crews.

The Birch Bay Fire started on June 1 eight miles northwest of Ely and was 100 percent contained as of Saturday.

A Minnesota Department of Natural Resources fire investigator determined the fire was likely caused by “chainsaw operations” during prescribed burn preparation work, which are designed to burn off brush and other fuel to help prevent bigger wildfires, according to a U.S. Agriculture Department news release.

Chainsaws can easily ignite dry grass, needles or woody debris via contact with their hot engines, scorching exhaust or sparks.

“We are committed to transparency regarding the findings of this investigation and to reviewing the incident to identify lessons learned that can help inform future operations,” said Superior National Forest acting forest supervisor Drew Stroberg.

Superior National Forest spokesperson Tim Engrav said there’s a boundary established around a prescribed fire unit and crews typically must do preparation work with chainsaws before a prescribed burn.

“Typical preparation work would be to cut those trees, make sure that those lines are clear not only for holding the fire, but also for safety for firefighters to allow them to be able to get in and out during the prescribed fire operations,” he said.

The crews were working within the Geraldine Prescribed Fire project area as part of a larger Superior National Forest effort to reduce hazardous wildfire fuels and improve forest resilience.

No other prescribed burns were underway at the time the Birch Bay Fire began. Engrav said in the coming weeks, crews are expected to clean up the area, remove water hoses and pumps and see what can be rehabilitated.

“There is work that's done to kind of rehabilitate those areas if any dirt was dug up, to kind of pull that all back over,” he said. “If there's any slopes involved, to get what we call water bars in there, so when rain comes it doesn't wash all the soil away.”

Superior National Forest officials have temporarily banned campfires, including stoves and grills fueled by wood or charcoal, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness until June 30 as a precautionary measure to prevent more fires erupting during the current dry conditions. Gas and propane cook stoves are still permitted.

The Forest Service on Saturday afternoon reported two new wildfires within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

One of them is a one-acre fire about 20 miles east of Crane Lake between Tiger Bay and Boulder Bay. The other is a five-acre fire east of East Loon Bay on Loon Lake.

Both were near two to four campsites. Engrav said firefighters were able to reduce both and will continue to work on them through Sunday and the rest of the week.

“They'll be out there as long as needed to work on containment for each of those fires,” he said.

Engrav added the public is advised to steer clear of the fire areas and cannot fly drones over wildfires or in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. There are no area closures, but some of the campsites nearby may be temporarily closed.

Minneapolis has received national attention for its 2040 housing plan.

But St. Paul is also a laboratory for housing policy. The capital city has experimented with rent control and loosening zoning rules.

And a new data dashboard from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis helps track how those policies are playing out in St. Paul. It illuminates how housing supply and costs are changing rents, production, affordability and stability.

The story that emerges from the data is mixed and doesn’t cohere into a simple narrative.

Here are three key takeaways.

1) Zoning reform is starting to increase housing supply

St. Paul’s 2023 zoning changes (allowing duplexes, triplexes, etc.) are already showing early signs of boosting development, especially near universities.

While still modest, this reform is seen as a step toward easing the housing shortage by allowing denser housing

“It’s a smaller process to add four units here, and five units here, and six units there, relative to adding a 60- to 70- to 100-unit apartment building,” said Libby Starling, senior community development advisor at the Minneapolis Fed. “At the same time, allowing the gentle density in more places does increase the overall housing supply of the city.”

2) Rent control reduced development

The 2021 rent stabilization policy stipulated that property owners could not increase rents more than 3 percent year over year unless they went through a process of justifying the need.

It discouraged developers and investors, leading to a sharp drop in large apartment construction permits.

“At the same time the rent stabilization occurred, there has been a drop off in new construction,” said Starling. “We had a lot of conversations with developers and owners of property who felt like there had been an overall chill in the willingness of capital to invest in the city.”

Despite that shrinking supply of housing, which ordinarily might lead to an increase in rents, rents in St. Paul have fallen about 10 percent (inflation-adjusted) since 2020.

Starling did not have a simple explanation for why that’s the case.

But it is possible that rents might have fallen yet farther if rent control weren’t in play, given the totality of factors.

3) Property tax burden shifting from landlords to homeowners

Falling apartment values have led to landlords paying about 27 percent less in property taxes since 2022.

Meanwhile, homeowners are paying more, with median annual property taxes rising sharply from about $3,400 to more than $4,200.

This suggests a redistribution of the tax burden tied to housing market changes.

In February, Annunciation Catholic Church and School students and parents started the Minnesota legislative session with hope.

Dozens in dark blue uniforms and hoodies bearing the Annunciation logo, shaped into a heart, circled in the State Capitol rotunda for a sing-along event. They drew smiles and tears with uplifting songs like Andra Day’s “Rise Up.”

Throughout, volunteers read off lawmaker names, working through a list of representatives from every Minnesota district. Each section ended with: “We hold them in hope.”

The community was just months out from the Aug. 27 mass shooting at Annunciation that still shadows their days. This session was their chance to ensure no other tragedy like that strikes again in Minnesota.

Mike Moyski hosted the event with his wife, Jackie Flavin. The couple’s 10-year-old daughter Harper Moyski was one of two children killed in the shooting.

“The main point of this is just to wish all the legislators that are making really, really important decisions, goodwill as they go in and do so,” Moyski said at the time.

A group of Annunciation parents began organizing last fall and hastened to form the nonprofit Annunciation Light Alliance, solidify a mission and launch a coordinated effort before the start of the Minnesota Legislature’s session.

They took a nonpartisan stance and sought a layered approach to preventing gun violence with hopes of gaining support from both sides of the aisle. Parents backed a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as more mental health support funding, funding for school safety programs, safeguards for children online — whatever may help.

If there was ever a time that gun control bills could bridge political divides in Minnesota, it should have been this one. This session was also the first since the assassination of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and the shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette in June 2025.

Yet the issue remained polarized through session end in May. While lawmakers agreed additional school safety measures are needed, they split along party lines on the best approach.

DFL legislators proposed a range of firearm restrictions that included requiring safe storage of firearms and banning assault-style weapons, large-capacity magazines and ghost guns, which don’t have a serial number. State Republicans favored increased funding for mental health and school safety programs at all schools, in addition to increased penalties for firearm-related crimes.

The Minnesota Senate, with its slight DFL majority, passed a comprehensive package with firearm restrictions and school safety provisions in early May.

However, the state House — split 67-67 between parties — did not bring the bill to the floor for a vote. Companion bills also failed to make it out of committee.

Despite the standstill, Annunciation parent leaders told MPR News they are proud — and determined to press forward.

“We didn't get everything that we were looking for, so that's disappointing but doesn't slow us down,” Moyski said. “We're happy with some of what was accomplished this year.”

Celebrating the wins

State lawmakers passed two laws that advocates say will save lives. One adds guardrails around social media accounts for Minnesota minors. Another requires schools to set up anonymous threat reporting systems, which allow people to report tips about potential threats and help with interventions before at-risk individuals harm themselves or others.

“That’s a really big deal,” said Brittany Haeg, parent of three Annunciation students and co-chair of the Annunciation Light Alliance.

A database of U.S. mass shootings since 1966 revealed most school shooters tell someone about their plans, typically a classmate, according to the Violence Prevention Project. Helping bystanders report concerns is critical, said Haeg. Online spaces like social media are also where shooters find inspiration.

“Having parental controls is not a perfect solution, but it's a start,” she said.

The social media restrictions are effective July 1, 2027. Schools must implement anonymous threat reporting systems by July 1, 2028.

Annunciation parents started their work with realistic expectations, learning from the experiences of other impacted families across the country. Politicians had also warned them not to expect anything, according to Haeg.

“We didn’t walk into this thinking this was a one-session project. We walked into this thinking this is the first of many legislative sessions,” she said.

Annunciation parents and students were among the many voices that testified both in and outside the Capitol at press conferences, community gatherings, committee hearings and private meetings with lawmakers to advance conversations on gun violence prevention.

Annunciation Light Alliance co-chair Kristen Neville, who has five children at Annunciation, said it’s huge that the state Senate passed the package they did and said many credit the school community for having an impact at the State Capitol, driving forward a more layered approach to solutions.

“I really want our community, and I want people across Minnesota, to see that what happened over the course of this session are things that — we should be really proud,” Neville said.

“Now people are really thinking about what it means to keep their kids safe and what gun violence means a little bit more comprehensively than just the guns themselves,” she added.

Annunciation Light Alliance leaders said they will continue holding community conversations on gun violence prevention to get people involved with shared solutions. They will also reevaluate what policies they want to support in the future.

“We got thrown into this, and now we have a summer and a fall to continue learning, to continue building relationships,” Haeg said. “And going into the next legislative session, we aren't starting from zero. We’re starting from a foundation that exists now.”

Key supporters

Annunciation parents found support — and built their nonprofit strategy —with lessons from other families impacted by gun violence. Sandy Hook parents, in particular, were key allies.

They formed the Sandy Hook Promise after the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 children and six adults dead. In the 13 years since, those parents have lobbied U.S. Congress and state governments across the country to protect children from gun violence.

Co-founder and CEO Nicole Hockley deemed Minnesota’s recent legislative session “a major victory” for the Annunciation Light Alliance.

“This is significant that they achieved that win, especially in the first session,” Hockley said. “That has not been my experience with Sandy Hook Promise and in other states. Sometimes it can take multiple sessions to get there, so they should be very, very proud of themselves and their impact.”

Hockley said Sandy Hook Promise started lobbying four months after the 2012 shooting and found legislators in Washington, D.C. had little interest in expanded background checks at the time. Public will and political influence for gun violence prevention has grown over time, she said, and Minnesota benefitted from evidence of measures in other states, as well as the collective voices of Annunciation families.

Sandy Hook Promise already had a presence in Minnesota before the Annunciation shooting. They helped pass a bill regulating active shooter drills in 2023 and have relationships with schools statewide, according to Hockley. After last summer, Sandy Hook leaders became a critical resource for both Annunciation families and lawmakers navigating what to do next.

Sandy Hook Promise leaders testified at the Minnesota State Capitol this year — and remain available to chat with Annunciation parents whenever needed. Their advice and best practices helped shape the Annunciation Light Alliance’s strategy. One key lesson they shared: Stay nonpartisan, even when it’s challenging.

“Keeping kids safe is not a partisan issue, but it has become politicized in so many ways,” Hockley said.

For Hockley, who lost her 6-year-old son Dylan in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook, each mass shooting hurts. More so knowing her organization has a proven model for preventing gun violence.

“It rips the scab off my heart all over again, and it dumps me back to December 14, 2012,” she said. “That ongoing trauma is not something that you ever really get past, but you just have to build the tools to figure out how to deal with that for yourself.”

She finds resilience in sharing success stories and working to prevent other shootings.

Asked what changes she thought would be most helpful for keeping children safe nationwide, Hockley said mandatory secure firearm storage and anonymous reporting systems — as Minnesota lawmakers approved — would be “game changers.”

“That is something, like, if I could snap my fingers and have that happen overnight, I would do that in a moment. And there’s a lot of bipartisan support for those conversations, so there's a lot of room to work with there,” she said.

The long haul

Amid the grueling work of lobbying for change, Annunciation parents help their children heal from the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual damage of the Aug. 27 tragedy.

“For a lot of us, we’re still really in the thick of what recovery is,” Haeg said.

Haeg’s youngest son David, then 6 years old, was shot multiple times during the Annunciation shooting and has bullet remnants embedded across his body. She said he is the youngest child to be wounded in a U.S. school shooting and survive.

In February, Haeg told lawmakers about all the providers he has to see, six months after the shooting. She listed appointments for therapy, sleep therapy, physical therapy, medication management, feeding management and neurology, among others.

“Hours in waiting rooms, hours in therapy, hours spent talking about nightmares and panic and lead mitigation, instead of spelling words and riding bikes,” she testified.

In May, Haeg told MPR News her family’s baseline is seven appointments a week between her three children, on top of after-school activities like basketball and cheer team. This posed a challenge with lobbying at the State Capitol, which often entailed short notice about hearings to rally testifiers for. High burnout work, she called it.

“It is hard to balance and make decisions about, ‘Can I drop what I’m doing? Is there someone who can be back up at home so that I can be there? Where is the balance of those priorities?’” she said. “And I think one of the things that has gotten me through it, and I hope others, is that we've been good at supporting each other when we need to tap in and out.”

Neville said Sandy Hook Promise leaders advised prioritizing self-care in advocacy work. “Because this is a long game,” she recalled being told. “Because this is not something that’s going to happen overnight, and you're going to have times where it feels like you've been punched in the stomach.”

She felt that way at the Capitol when lawmakers read from the shooter’s manifesto — research shows platforming mass shooter inspires others — and another argued that the bill would ban specific types of semi-automatic rifles used for squirrel hunting.

Those were times when Neville had to step back, noting an “emotional and physical drain.”

“We've been criticized as being used for political theater, and this is not political theater. This is our life. This is our every single day,” she said.

With the school year end comes new challenges for Annunciation families. For hers, Haeg said recovery has been reliant on routine. She said typical summer activities like camp are not an option because she can’t expect every camp leader or attendee to know how to handle trauma.

“It's been a very emotional transition,” she said.

Despite this, Annunciation Light Alliance leaders said they’re determined to hold frank, difficult conversations in Minnesota about protecting children.

“There is a narrative that the whole conversation is just about guns … My kid lives with the remnants of what an AR-15 can do in his body and so a piece of that conversation is always going to be about guns,” Haeg said. “But I hope that doesn't come at the expense of everything that leads up to it.”

Amid the sometimes-wild temperature swings in Minnesota, from hot summer days to frigid winter nights, conditions are a lot more stable just beneath our feet.

Anywhere in southern Minnesota, it’s long been understood that groundwater temperatures will be a consistent 45 or 46 degrees.

But a Minnesota geologist says he’s found an anomaly underneath Minneapolis. Greg Brick has measured water in caves and flowing from springs that’s more than 10 degrees higher than he expected. He’s concerned that it could cause problems for aquatic ecosystems and drinking water systems above ground — and he’s also concerned that there isn’t enough research to know exactly what those problems could be.

Brick previously worked as a geologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. During a project mapping springs, he started taking the temperature of groundwater beneath Minneapolis.

On a cool day late last year, he double-checked the numbers during a visit to Coldwater Spring, a creek flowing out of the rock near Minnehaha Regional Park.

It wasn’t 45 degrees. Instead, Brick found the water was flowing at 57 degrees Fahrenheit.

“In my years in private environmental consulting, in teaching geology and then in government work, that is certainly the most unusual groundwater-related phenomenon that I’ve encountered in Minnesota,” Brick said.

He first published those findings in his book “Subterranean Twin Cities” in 2009, and later in further peer-reviewed research. Since then, he’s confirmed the numbers over and over at various caves and springs. In May, a student of his checked the water in a cave underneath downtown Minneapolis — it came in at 62 degrees.

Researchers have reported similarly warm groundwater in big cities around the world — though Brick said he didn’t find much research on the issue in the U.S.

Those researchers say climate change is partially behind the high temperatures. But the rise in Minneapolis groundwater temperatures is much greater than that of its air temperatures.

Brick said the warming is amplified in cities because of the urban heat island effect — the process of concrete or pavement transferring heat from the sun to the ground below.

“Downtown Minneapolis in the middle of summer — that street surface is heating up tremendously,” Brick said. “And then basements, you’ve got a boiler going down there, that’s warming up the groundwater that bathes the building.”

Warmer groundwater could have a wide range of ripple effects. Because groundwater supplies lakes and streams around the state, it could alter their temperatures, too.

John Nieber is a professor and groundwater researcher at the University of Minnesota.

“If the temperatures of groundwater are increasing, then what we expect to see is the temperatures of surface water are also going to be increasing. And this can be detrimental to different aquatic organisms,” Nieber said.

Trout, for example, rely on cold streams. And warmer water is also more susceptible to algae blooms, which can release toxins.

People rely on groundwater, too. Ground aquifers supply about 75 percent of Minnesota’s drinking water, according to the DNR.

As water warms up, it can sustain more bacteria and other organisms. Researchers who have studied groundwater warming in other cities say this could pose a problem for drinking water quality.

In Minneapolis, drinking water comes from the Mississippi River — not from groundwater. City water quality manager George Kraynick said the city keeps a close eye on the supply.

“We have a pretty robust network in place to account for any type of contamination that's on the river,” Kraynick said.

That includes hundreds of quality tests per day, and around-the-clock monitoring of water from the river. The city has the ability to shut off intake pipes coming from the river as soon as any contamination is detected, and to shut off pipes if there’s ever a water main break that could lead to contamination.

Several state agencies also have a role in managing the state’s groundwater. The Department of Health monitors drinking water sources. A spokesperson for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said that agency also has staff dedicated to monitoring groundwater and any contaminants.

“MPCA hydrologists are familiar with urban heat island effects on groundwater and the actual phenomenon of warming groundwaters, but scientists have not observed anything in relation to this issue,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Brick hasn’t observed the same temperature phenomenon under other cities, but he said he believes it could be happening in St. Paul — which has similar urban infrastructure, but no accessible springs to measure groundwater temperatures in the downtown area.

He’s concerned about any potential for increased contamination. Even with a carefully-monitored drinking water system, he said, accidents happen. Some people drink straight out of springs, even though health professionals caution against it. And underground pipes can break, potentially drawing in surrounding groundwater.

“It’s not to create an alarm, but to raise awareness of this issue," he said. "It’s like a completely unconsidered factor in public health.”

Brick said he hopes to see more research on the issue — especially when it comes to drinking water quality and safety.

It's here, folks: The FIFA World Cup kicks off this week, and the U.S. men's national soccer team is ready for its Friday opener in Los Angeles, the players say.

A pair of international friendlies over the past two weekends has given the Americans and their fans plenty of reasons to dream big. Star forward Christian Pulisic broke his monthslong goal drought against Senegal, and defender Antonee Robinson wowed with his offensive playmaking. And above all, the U.S. showed they are unwilling to be intimidated by quality opponents with their own serious aspirations for the World Cup.

“We're really starting to hit our stride,” said midfielder Tyler Adams after Saturday's game against Germany.

Gone are the anxieties about scoring chances

In the 2022 World Cup, the Americans only managed to score three goals in their four games. That was enough for a win and two draws in the group stage, but their road ended in the Round of 16 when the Netherlands easily outscored them 3-1.

Now, any anxiety over the U.S. scoring capability feels like a distant memory. The team is flush with options on the attack, and not only Pulisic, who has scored 33 goals for the U.S. in his career. Forwards Folarin Balogun, who found the net against Senegal, and Ricardo Pepi, who was instrumental in two goals against Senegal, have looked excellent these past two weeks.

In other words, the team is consistently creating chances and converting enough to compete. “It's definitely encouraging,” said Pulisic Saturday. “We have a lot of talent on the team, a lot of guys that can create and be dangerous to score goals.”

But defense is still a liability…

Both Germany and Senegal picked up easy goals on defensive lapses. Great World Cup teams, like the kind the U.S. hopes to face in the Round of 16 and beyond, will do that.

Compared to a relatively deep bench of forwards and midfielders, the U.S. have fewer full-package defenders. On one hand, there's Tim Ream, whose soccer IQ and positioning are excellent, but who is 38 and can no longer win a footrace. Next to him is the promising 21-year-old Alex Freeman, the son of a former NFL wide receiver whose athleticism is off the charts but feel for the game is still a work in progress. Backups Miles Robinson, Mark McKenzie and Auston Trusty have their moments but are prone to mistakes.

“There's been a lot of combinations worked on in training and, there were moments when we can be better connected as a group on the defensive side,” Ream said after the game.

… so getting defender Chris Richards back from injury will be key

The U.S. badly needs the return of defender Chris Richards, who hurt his ankle in a game with his club Crystal Palace in May. He sat out both friendlies. His status for Friday's game against Paraguay is still in limbo.

“If this was the final of the World Cup, maybe he can play. But the advice of the medical [team] is not to play,” coach Mauricio Pochettino said the day before the Germany game. He added that they would assess Richards' health in the days that followed.

“He's an important piece of the group [with] his energy, his leadership on and off the field. So obviously we're just all behind him and can't wait to have him back,” midfielder Weston McKennie said Friday.

These guys aren't afraid of adversity

A meeker U.S. team might have folded when Germany scored in the second minute of Saturday's game. But this version of the USMNT righted the ship within minutes and began pressing Germany hard, producing chance after chance before finally connecting on Robinson's extraordinary goal before the halftime break.

After the game, Pochettino told reporters he came to see Germany's early goal as “lucky” for his squad. “[It was] an amazing challenge for us to see how we react, how is your character, how we show togetherness, how we start to play under pressure,” he said.

And the toughness showed up in the physicality, too. Players didn't back down from challenges. When Germany fouled hard, an American delivered a hard foul right back. The message, Adams said, was “have each other's backs.”

“We can tune up passing, final plays, finishing, all those kinds of things. But to see that mentality, I think from everyone, and it's not just the guys that started, everyone that came off the bench as well — that's what you need,” he said.

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