Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber and his DFL challenger, Trina Swanson, made their pitch to voters in the 8th Congressional District during a televised debate on WDIO News last night.

The two debated mining in the Boundary Waters, data centers and affordability during the hour-long livestreamed event, the first and possibly only debate in the race.

Over the summer, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz issued an executive order in an attempt to prevent mining of precious metals within the Boundary Waters watershed. That was four months after Congress overturned a 20 year federal ban on mining in the area.

Stauber, who has represented the district since 2018, strongly supports mining in the watershed.

“Every time the Democrats shut down mining, the Chinese Communist Party smiles,” Stauber said. “The demands for these critical minerals is only going to rise, and so we need to allow the permitting process to move forward."

Swanson said environmental factors need to be taken into account.

“Mining within three miles of the most pristine area that we have in the United States is not OK,” Swanson said. “It is not reasonable.”

Swanson worked for the Department of Homeland Security before quitting her job in 2025, when she said the Trump administration asked her to carry out actions she found to be unethical.

“We know that we have an administration and a Congress that is prioritizing the one percent, the billionaires, the corporations,” Swanson said. “Meanwhile, the working class, the laborers, the nurses, the teachers are all struggling.”

Stauber has become a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump.

“My opponent was an immigration attorney, and when she was asked to do her job and enforce our immigration laws, she quit,” Stauber said. “She had no problem under Joe Biden's wide-open border."

Swanson challenged Stauber for called Minnesota a “failed state,” which Stauber disputed. The Duluth News Tribune fact-checked Stauber’s comments.

The district, spanning roughly 30,000 square miles in northeastern Minnesota, voted for Trump by 14 points in 2024.

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On a September evening, Adam Johnson, 40, settled on his porch chair in Morgantown, West Virginia, to go over his ballot for the upcoming midterm election.

Chatting through all the races and the different candidates, he worked to figure out who best represented his values. But rather than discussing it with a friend or family member, he held an hours-long discussion with ChatGPT — a chatbot powered by a large language model (LLM) owned by OpenAI, an AI research company.

A graphic designer studying to be an illustrator, Johnson said ChatGPT is a significant part of his life. He uses it for meal planning, assistance in job hunting and various other tasks around the house.

After prompting the AI-powered chatbot to make a list of all the races on his ballot this year, Johnson dug deeper.

Johnson
A previous time I brought up politics you didn't seem to want any part of it. You just gave a simple "I can't help you with that." So, I don't know if we want to go into what my guiding principles are.

ChatGPT
We can discuss your guiding principles. I shouldn't try to manipulate your political views or tell you how to vote, but I can help investigate candidates according to criteria you choose, compare evidence, discuss political philosophy, and reason through priorities.

Johnson is one of a growing number of voters using chatbots to research their ballots for the first midterm election since AI has taken the country by storm. About half of American adults report using AI-powered chatbots and about 42 percent of users said they use it to search for information, according to the Pew Research Center.

Several voters NPR spoke with said they rely on chatbots for down-ballot races with thinner news coverage, to make tables comparing candidates for governors' races and to verify or debunk viral claims. Some have been using it to create tools to help others look up their own ballots. Experts say the properties that make chatbots useful also make them subtly persuasive and eager to please.

"It might select some things that would reinforce and persuade you even more towards the way that you were leaning already," said Rafael Batista, a postdoctoral fellow at John Hopkins University, who studies the societal and behavioral impacts of AI. "So you leave more confident, without necessarily learning more about the world."

Since AI companies don't disclose how their commercial models are trained or how they choose which sources to draw on, it's hard to know what biases might shape their answers, Batista said.

Anthropic, the company that owns Claude, a chatbot, and Gemini, a Google-owned chatbot, did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for OpenAI directed NPR to its election information and safeguards page which notes that the company continues to "monitor bias in our models to keep ChatGPT's responses politically neutral."

Concerns about AI

Johnson in West Virginia continued his research by outlining his political beliefs for ChatGPT. He stated that he usually votes for Republicans, unless those candidates are part of the Make America Great Again movement, in which case he votes for Democrats or a third party.

While deciding between candidates for the Senate race, Johnson nudged the chatbot about other issues he found important.

Johnson
Immigrants/refugees is an interesting one because I am left on that issue. Let's touch on that

ChatGPT
We briefly separated border enforcement, illegal immigration, asylum, legal immigration, and refugee resettlement. [Senator Shelley Moore] Capito has supported stronger border enforcement, ICE/CBP [Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Customs and Border Protection] funding, the Laken Riley Act, and Trump administration border policies. [Rachel] Fetty Anderson had less detailed immigration material publicly available at the time, so I avoided assigning her generic Democratic positions without evidence.

Johnson
I just wanted to touch on it.

ChatGPT
Fair - I turned 'touch on that' into an immigration policy seminar.

Johnson recognizes that AI-powered chatbots have sycophantic qualities.

"ChatGPT is just kind of a people pleaser," he said. "Whatever you lean towards, it will speak positively about it."

Still, Batista from JHU said that knowing these models are agreeable and persuasive is not enough to "protect our minds from these influences."

About one in five voters said they consult AI chatbots for election news and voting, and Democratic and Republican voters are using bots at similar rates, according to a September survey conducted by the American Association of Political Consultants Foundation, a nonprofit focusing on political expression.

Voters use chatbots in a variety of ways

Lisa Veldran, 65, was a staffer in the City Council in Madison, Wis., for almost four decades before retiring. This summer, she used Gemini to answer very specific questions she had about the primary election for governor.

After Sara Rodriguez, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, dropped out of the race, Veldran needed to choose between two candidates: Francesca Hong and David Crowley. She prompted Gemini to make a comparative table of both candidates.

Veldran said the chatbot can be a research tool, but it's not something that determines her life.

"You also have to keep in mind what's running these chatbots and AI in general," she said. "Who's paying to build these bots and what is their ultimate goal."

Lakshmi Iyer, an author living in Exton, Penn., describes herself as a power user of chatbots and thinks "it is capable of a lot of things, but the human in the loop is absolutely essential."

Iyer, 50, is part of They See Blue, an Indian American grassroots Democratic organization to drive up voter registration.

She did not use a chatbot to research her ballot, she said, but she used Claude to create Ballot Lookup — a website that can inform Pennsylvania's voters about who is on their ballot and their stance on certain issues.

The website is described as an "independent, volunteer-built, nonpartisan lookup," and Iyer built it to help voters who may not learn more about candidates by searching across various sources.

Like other users, Iyer is aware that if chatbots "can infer your political leanings, they will push you towards what you are leaning to." To keep her own bias in check, Iyer prompted Claude to pick statements from the candidates' own speeches or from their official websites.

Some users noted that the decimation of local media has left them with fewer options for learning about down-ballot races. Tyler Black from Nashville, Tenn., said he didn't use chatbots for House or Senate but is using them to learn about local candidates.

Black, who is a vice president at a software development company, is aware that chatbots sometimes hallucinate — that's when chatbots respond to prompts with false, misleading or fabricated answers. To overcome that problem, he often checks the information one chatbot has provided him against another.

Batista from JHU said that method of fact checking is better than using the same model twice, but he hasn't seen evidence that it is effective.

If users are using chatbots to research their vote, Batista said, they should frame their prompts in a way that their personal preferences are hidden, and they could use incognito mode so the chatbot doesn't have much prior information on them.

Adam Johnson in West Virginia is still researching and chatting with ChatGPT about his ballot. The county commission races are still on his list to look into. But he feels like AI helped him learn everything else he needed to know for November.

"I wouldn't feel too bad if I had to do the election today," Johnson said.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Overshadowed by U.S. Senate races elsewhere, Minnesota’s contest for a seat now held by a Democrat attracted a big-name Republican visitor on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota ventured into southern Minnesota to campaign with Republican nominee Michele Tafoya. The two visited a farm in Le Sueur and made the case that the former sports broadcaster should succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Tina Smith.

Thune called Minnesota “a very unique race” where Republicans are taking on a “flawed candidate.” He didn’t indicate whether party money is going to start to flow in with just four weeks to go but seemed to invite it.

“There's a lot of really positive buzz around the country, and obviously translating that into into financial resources and support coming here is something we hope to see happen,” he said.

The pair held a private roundtable with some farmers and farm group leaders. They then stood in front of a giant farm implement to talk about what they want in the next farm bill.

Year-round E15 is one of them. That's an ethanol blend. Tafoya says she'd be a vote for that in the Senate if a farm bill doesn't pass before next year.

“I'm not a farmer, but I care about this farm community very, very much, and it's important to Minnesota, and therefore it's important to me,” she said.

Thune said the blend could lead to savings at the pump.

“If you want to see fuel costs go down, create more supply of fuel, and we can do that with E15,” he said.

Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Peggy Flanagan applied more pressure on Tafoya to break from President Donald Trump on the war with Iran. Flanagan, the state’s two-term lieutenant governor, appeared in Brooklyn Park after a weekend campaign trip through west-central Minnesota.

“Minnesota cannot afford to send Donald Trump another loyal soldier,” Flanagan said outside of a gas station where a gallon of unleaded gas went for $4.39 and diesel was $6.39. “We know exactly what Michele Tafoya is. She is a MAGA Republican who is lockstep with Donald Trump on literally everything.”

Flanagan is on a 30-stop-in-30-days swing she’s labeled the “Got Your Back” tour.

Despite being a rare open-seat race, Minnesota has not been very high on the national map for either party. Since the primary, relatively little outside money has flowed in. That stands in contrast to the tens of millions of dollars deployed to battleground Michigan, Ohio and Iowa in the region. Even Kansas has risen on the radar, with Republicans now spending heavily to protect an incumbent.

Thune and Tafoya insist Minnesota will break late in her direction as she drives a message that Flanagan has been weak on fighting fraud.

“She is just a high-quality, high-quality candidate,” Thune said of Tafoya. ”The voters of Minnesota are just really fortunate to have somebody like her to vote for, and I hope they'll get out in droves."

Tafoya added on that Minnesota is a race worth investing in. “We are right there and we have a message of fresh leadership,” she said, calling the Thune visit a “signal to the state and really to the country that this is a race that is national and people are watching.”

She followed the press conference with an appearance on Fox News.

State and national polls show the economy and inflation are the top motivators for voters in this midterm election, with fraud and healthcare also high on the list.

Flanagan has also worked to tap into frustration over immigration enforcement in Minnesota after the winter surge of agents that fueled tensions and resistance efforts.

She appeared Sunday outside a private prison in Appleton that is being converted to a federal detention center. Flanagan said she doesn’t want Democrats to take greater Minnesota for granted even though Republicans tend to run up the score in rural communities.

“I think folks understand that Donald Trump is really at the center of why gas prices are high and why it is becoming more and more expensive for them to simply live their lives when they are doing everything right, and that is what this election is all about,” she told MPR News on Sunday.

She said trade tariffs and escalated diesel prices due to the war are making the fall harvest more expensive and causing hits to rural communities.

Flanagan and her allies deployed many millions to land the Democratic nomination over U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, who, along with outside groups, spent even more in a losing effort.

Tafoya vaulted past the GOP-endorsed candidate, Adam Schwarze, in her party’s primary. Tafoya had support from leading Senate Republicans.

But since the nominations were decided in August, the race has been comparatively quiet. Republicans are clinging to a slim Senate majority and on defense across the country.

Minnesota last elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2002.

When it’s time for hands-on experiments in Montevideo High School senior Quinn Duellman’s science class, he and his classmates can’t light the Bunsen burners.

“We are unable to be using flames because the gas pipes are so bad that we're afraid of a gas leak,” Duellman told MPR News.

And the 17-year old says he tries to avoid using the restroom in his school because his friends “say that they’ve smelled a weird smell within the bathrooms.”

Montevideo Schools Superintendent Jamie Skjeveland acknowledges that the aging school’s restrooms smell pretty bad, and there’s a reason for that.

“The pipes that the sewage was going down, they were calcifying,” Skjeveland said. “It had calcified to the point where it was about the diameter of a straw.”

As a result, Skjeveland told MPR News that the sewage backs up.

“Whenever a toilet or urinal was flushed in our high school, we actually had the drainage from the urinal, it was kind of back flushing,” Skjeveland said. “It was coming back out. It was going [in] a direction that it was not supposed to go.”

The public schools in Montevedio are really showing their age. The elementary and middle schools were built in the mid-1950s and are approaching 75 years old. And the high school was constructed around the mid-1960s.

The science classrooms are badly out of date with some equipment that no longer is safe to use, and the outdated buildings sorely need enhanced security features for student safety in the modern age. And none of the schools had an assembly hall or auditorium space, so they’d rent the local movie theater or use the gymnasium for band concerts, school plays and other performances.

For years, school district officials, teachers, parents and the school board tried to convince the rest of the town’s voters to approve a referendum that would allow the district to raise the money needed to make the essential building repairs, improvements and upgrades.

The district went to Montevideo voters three times, and the tax hike measures failed each time.

Earlier this year, Skjeveland was only a few months into his new role as superintendent, but he said he and the school board needed to try one more time — and they needed to change their approach.

They decided to fan out into the small town of about 5,300 residents and meet with voters — their neighbors — face to face. Skjeveland said they held between 30 to 40 coffee talks to discuss the need for building improvements. And they decided to use a tried and true school activity and do a little show-and-tell to demonstrate the plumbing problems in particular.

“We were able to bring actual pipes, the calcified pipes,” he said. “We brought the actual pipes to these meetings. We had several community meetings. We met at bars. We met at churches. … wherever the people were is where our school board went.”

In February, Montevideo voters finally approved a $42 million bond referendum, with 57 percent voting yes and 43 percent voting no.

Wes Duellman, 53, who is Quinn’s dad and had two older kids who went through Montevideo’s schools, supported the referendum. He said he could understand why some voters weren’t too keen on raising their own taxes.

“Property taxes are high in a lot of small town communities and asking people to put another tax or having their property tax increase because of a school referendum didn’t sound appealing,” Duellman said. “Just for the fact that you know your people are [living] on [tight] budgets and having that go up.”

But Duellman said the more he talked with friends and neighbors, and provided them with information about the dire need for school building improvements, the more folks began to see the bigger picture. And part of what convinced them was seeing that even if they vote no now, taxes will eventually go up.

“It was really more about the investment, and long term too, that if you would rather have the cost of taxes go up because people are moving out of the area and the tax base is less?” Duellman said. “Or, do you want to invest in the community and pay more? You’re going to pay more either way, but pay more because you’re investing in students.”

Future of funding schools

Superintendent Skjeveland said a lot has changed in how school projects are funded since he first started working in education decades ago. He can understand why voters might be on the fence.

“I’ve watched in the course of my career how the expenditures in schools have outpaced the revenue coming in for decades,” he said. “The system of reliance on property tax, the way we fund schools, it’s broken, and we have created a system now where schools, just to survive, need to go out and rely on their local taxpayers.”

It’s a vicious cycle, Skjeveland said, as higher property taxes and the taxpayers’ ability to pay them become more of a burden, and that’s something he’s seeing all over Minnesota.

“People support public education,” he said. “What people don’t support is that they’re being taxed. Many times in many cases, right out of their homes.”

This is a challenge that many school districts are currently facing, and it’s a common sentiment that Kirk Schneidawind, executive director of the Minnesota School Boards Association, said he hears from all over the state.

“I just think we’re really in uncertain economic times,” Schneidawind said. “And I think the economic pressures, whether it’s building costs or the lack of state aid and equalization, is going to make it more challenging for our districts.”

There might be some changes coming. A constitutional amendment will be on the ballot this upcoming election that would increase the yearly distribution of the state’s Permanent School Fund to public schools statewide.

This fund is a trust and supports every public and charter school student in Minnesota. Lawmakers are asking taxpayers to vote to change the formula of how much money is distributed to schools and allow them to access more funding — without raising taxes. Though, there has been criticism that the increase would barely make a dent in the financial pressures facing schools.

Ultimately, Schneidawind said, taxpayers do generally support investing in their school districts.

“It’s really about the differing economic conditions,” he said. “Tax capacity, growth patterns and local community circumstances that are really going to shape how the voters in the community are going to react, or whether they want to invest in that.”

Special thanks to Danger Boat Productions and the Minnesota Humanities Center for their Sketches of Minnesota events around the state that helped inform this report.

Control of the narrowly split Minnesota Legislature and the governor’s residence is on the ballot this fall, with both parties telling voters they’re best suited to hold power in this moment.

Republicans court voters with a pitch for change, saying a reset is needed after two decades of DFL control in the governor’s office and massive fraud uncovered in state government programs. Democrats, meanwhile, argue voters should send them to St. Paul with legislative majorities to lower costs and to safeguard the state against some of the Trump administration’s policies.

The parties agree that some policies are worth another look in 2027. Among them are preventing government fraud and waste and bringing down prices for consumers seeing costs surge for gas, groceries, housing and healthcare.

But they split on some of their approaches.

MPR News spoke with the legislative leaders about their top priorities should they gain Capitol control. Here’s a look at what their parties would take on first if they start 2027 with all three levers of state government power.

Bringing down costs

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that state lawmakers have a role to play in bringing down costs. But they don’t see eye-to-eye on the way to do that.

Republicans point to state spending that has grown in recent budget cycles, particularly under the 2023-24 DFL trifecta at the Capitol. They say lawmakers should look for areas to cut and pass on potential savings to taxpayers, like cutting car registration tab fees and lowering the state’s tax rates. They want to reexamine programs and services to see whether they’re working as intended.

“Minnesota state government desperately needs a reset,” said House GOP Caucus Leader Harry Niska of Ramsey, calling the current budget trajectory “unsustainable.”

“We need economic growth. We need energy abundance. We need education that's focused on educational outcomes,” Niska continued. “And I think all those things are things that are giving Republicans a chance to course correct our state.”

Free school meals, paid family and medical leave and earned sick and safe time for workers are among the programs pushed forward by Democrats that could fall into that category. Lisa Demuth, the Republican nominee for governor, has said GOP leaders would likely look to rein in those programs, rather than abandon them altogether.

She and other Republicans have suggested cutting education requirements approved under the last DFL trifecta and loosening or removing others that aren’t working. Republicans also propose further efforts to find and prosecute fraud in state government programs to recoup some of that money.

Democrats say they hope to keep in place programs implemented in 2023 and 2024. They’re considering other ways to lower the cost of healthcare, child care, housing and groceries. They point to tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump and the war in Iran that have caused inflation and higher fuel prices. They also worry about reduced federal support for programs that provide assistance to people in need and reimburse hospitals for care.

They say they want to go after some of the practices that can hike prices.

“We want to ban surveillance pricing, go after price gouging. You know, really just do everything we can to address this affordability crisis that middle class and working people are facing in Minnesota,” said House DFL Caucus Leader Zack Stephenson of Coon Rapids, adding that affordability is Democrats’ top priority.

DFLers propose establishing universal primary healthcare access, closing what they call corporate tax loopholes and prohibiting private equity companies from buying up homes. Those are among proposals in their 2027 policy agenda.

Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato, is running the Senate DFL’s campaign. He agreed the state needs a reboot. But he said Democrats’ nominee for governor, Amy Klobuchar, is best poised to usher that in.

“I think Senator Klobuchar offers a unique opportunity for the state to reset and chart a new path forward,” Frentz said. “In particular, we need balance to appeal to the largest number of Minnesotans and to serve the needs that they have: transportation, education, health and human services.”

Fraud response and accountability

Fraud and the response by Gov. Tim Walz’s administration is the central campaign issue for Republicans. They say under a GOP trifecta, they’d hold people who were involved in the administration accountable.

Demuth and GOP leaders have said they’d fire commissioners or assistant commissioners who oversaw departments or agencies that became targets for fraud and abuse of state programs. That’s a natural changeover that could happen in any new administration, though.

“We have to make sure the processes that allowed the fraud to run unchecked are updated, and so the likelihood of that happening again is reduced to zero,” Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, said.

They also propose to make it easier to prosecute those who defraud government programs, heighten accountability measures for state officials who oversee the programs and change the culture of state government to focus on outcomes for state spending.

“What we are seeing and hearing is the fact that fraud has exploded, and it is harder to afford things here in the state of Minnesota because of state level leaders that have disrespected Minnesotans. Fraud is going to be top of mind,” Demuth said.

Lawmakers over the last two years have taken steps to make it easier for the state to stop payments to providers they suspect of fraud. A new watchdog agency over state government – the Office of the Inspector General – is set to be up and running next year.

Democrats agree that anti-fraud measures should be revisited in 2027. As part of her campaign, Klobuchar has said she’ll initiate an audit of state government on her first day. Legislative Democrats are in harmony.

“We want to take more aggressive action at it when we are returned in the majority, because every single dollar of fraud is unacceptable to us,” Stephenson said. “It’s $1 that’s a taxpayer dollar, but it’s also $1 that was supposed to be going to kids with autism, or a senior with disabilities, or a homeless person and who the hell steals from kids with autism.”

Responding to Trump administration

Democrats say that if they get a trifecta, they’d use it to buffer the state against some of the financial hits from the Trump administration. That includes moves to withhold payments for Medicaid programs. And they would seek to add new restrictions on federal law enforcement officers operating within Minnesota.

Following the federal immigration enforcement action in Minnesota, Democrats sought to ban agents from schools, churches and hospitals, among other places. They also tried to bar them from wearing face masks. They pushed unsuccessfully to make officers civilly liable if they shoot someone and fail to provide medical aid.

Stephenson said responding to the Trump administration’s policies and creating state guardrails would be a key focus for Democrats.

“We have a president who is hellbent on getting retribution against our state, and I don't think that's going to stop even after Election Day,” Stephenson said.

“Who can actually stand up and deliver to make their healthcare more affordable and protect their healthcare from the attacks of the Trump administration? Who can stand up to the Trump administration generally and their abusive policies towards Minnesota? I think the answer to that's pretty clear.”

Republicans said they’d be more willing to work with the Trump administration on fraud-prevention investigations and other efforts than the Walz administration has been.

“I'm looking forward to working with whatever administration is there. Because when we deliver for the people of Minnesota, Minnesota wins,” Demuth said. “And that is my intent.”

The new governor and Legislature assume those roles in January. The next legislative session begins Jan. 12.

In just over a month, Minnesota voters will decide who should lead the state's main public law office.

MPR News host Clay Masters and the MPR News politics team recap the first debate between incumbent Attorney General Keith Ellison and GOP candidate Ron Schutz.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation and subscribe to the Politics Friday podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS, for a deeper dive into state politics.

Guests:

• Laura McCallum is an editor for MPR News.

• Dana Ferguson is a political correspondent for MPR News.

• Peter Cox is a senior politics reporter for MPR News.

Two candidates vying to be Minnesota’s attorney general met Friday in their first debate.

DFL incumbent Keith Ellison, who is after a third term, and Republican Ron Schutz, an attorney, went head-to-head over issues defining their intense and increasingly expensive race.

Republicans last won a Minnesota attorney general’s race in 1966, although Ellison won by small margins in his past two elections.

On this special edition of Politics Friday, MPR News politics editor Brian Bakst moderated the Minnesota attorney general debate.

Guests:

• Keith Ellison is a DFLer and a two-term attorney general.

• Ron Schutz is a Twin Cities attorney who is prominent in GOP circles.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation or subscribe to the Politics Friday podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.

DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison and Republican trial attorney Ron Schutz sparred on questions about fraud, financial holdings and Minnesota’s role in multi-state lawsuits in their first head-to-head debate on Politics Friday at MPR News headquarters in St. Paul, moderated by politics editor Brian Bakst.

Ellison is seeking a third term as Minnesota’s attorney general. Schutz, a trial lawyer and Army veteran, has worked behind the scenes of Minnesota’s Republican Party for decades.

Here are the highlights:

Fraud

The Attorney General’s office oversees Minnesota’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, a 50-person division that prosecutes businesses and individuals stealing Medicaid dollars or neglecting vulnerable victims. Since 2019, Ellison’s office has convicted more than 350 people of Medicaid fraud, but Schutz cited a recent KSTP investigation that found that convicted fraudsters often end up with no felonies on their records.

“People need to go to jail, nobody’s afraid out there,” Schutz said. “If you get a conviction on three felony counts of theft above $35,000, which is relatively easy to do given the scope of the fraud here, there’s mandatory prison sentences under state sentencing guidelines.”

Ellison fired back, saying “It is courts who sentence defendants, not prosecutors. We bring the charges, we get the convictions. The courts sentence people and so he’s confusing those two roles.

Schutz says he’ll approach Medicaid fraud cases as a trial lawyer, not a politician. Ellison said Schutz and other Republicans are using fraud to “push their political agenda.”

Operation Metro Surge

The attorney general’s office could also play a role in prosecuting the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two Minnesotans killed by immigration enforcement agents in January. The attorney general’s office could help the Hennepin County attorney’s office if they bring state charges against federal agents involved.

The governor of Minnesota can also designate the attorney general to handle high-profile prosecutions. After a legal fight, Ellison’s office received evidence from the federal government related to both shootings and state officials are currently weighing a charging decision.

“When the whole world sees a Minnesotan shot down ten times, yes, we’re going to investigate,” Ellison said. “That's why I filed a lawsuit that very night to make sure that the federal agents did not somehow spoil the scene of the crime. That's what we did. That's the action that I took. That was the leadership that I would expect out of an AG.”

Both Schutz and Ellison said they would continue to investigate both killings, but Ellison said Minnesotans shouldn’t trust a Republican to stand up to the Trump administration. When Pretti was killed, Schutz said he sent out a press release calling for a joint federal and state investigation.

“I was outraged by what happened there,” Schutz said. “That probably didn’t make me popular in certain circles in Washington D.C. but that was the right thing to call for. It may be the only thing that Keith Ellison and I agree on is that there had to be a joint investigation there and wherever the facts lead out of that investigation, that’s where they lead.”

Ellison said Minnesotans can’t trust that a Republican attorney general would stand up to President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Ron is a Movement Republican,” said Ellison, referring to conservatives who haven’t embraced the MAGA movement. “I would think that a Movement Republican at a time when our state’s being persecuted by a Republican administration, he would stand up and be a little bit more vocal than just send out a presser.”

The Trump administration

During Trump’s second term, Ellison’s office has sued the administration 75 times, according to a spokesperson.

“We will defend Minnesota. Period. Full stop,” Ellison said. “I don’t let anybody get retribution against the state of Minnesota.”

In many of the lawsuits against the Trump administration, Minnesota is one of many states listed as parties to the case. Schutz said Ellison is acting as a surrogate to the California attorney general.

“The overwhelming majority of these cases are filed somewhere other than Minnesota,” Schutz said. “Minnesota is not the lead plaintiff and there’s no transparency in the sense that a Minnesota judge or a Minnesota jury hears the case.”

Schutz said regardless of who is in office, he is willing to sue the federal government.

“Whether it’s the Trump administration or any administration that comes after, if they are truly hurting Minnesotans, we’ll sue the Trump administration and we’ll sue them in Minnesota,” Schutz said.

Financial holdings

A recent Minnesota Reformer article found that Schutz owns more than $1.74 million in individual stocks, some in companies being sued by Minnesota. Ellison is pursuing cases against Amazon, Uber and Exxon Mobil, all of which Schutz currently has a financial interest in. If elected, Schutz would have to decide how to proceed with those cases.

“If you’re the attorney general of the state of Minnesota, you should be able to sue these companies unencumbered,” Ellison said. “The public should not have to wonder if Mr. Schutz is not suing because he owns that stock or he’s involved with that company.”

Schutz said if elected, he will divest from companies in litigation with Minnesota.

“My stock portfolio is managed professionally by RBC Wealth Management. I don’t pick the stocks,” Schutz said. “Our plan if I’m elected is to put those stock holdings in a separate entity that I won’t have any visibility into.”

Pardons board

The attorney general serves on the Minnesota Board of Pardons, along with the governor and Minnesota Supreme Court chief justice. Ellison has come under fire for pardoning Tou Vang, a convicted child sex offender, in June. In July, the federal government deported Vang to Laos and used the case to justify their immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota and other states.

Ellison said he voted for the pardon because Vang’s victim wrote a letter asking for one.

“I thought it’s important to listen to victims. Victims often are not listened to in our criminal justice system,” Ellison said. “There were a lot of people who had pardons up that day who didn’t get them because they didn’t have victim support.”

Schutz says pardons should be reserved for people wrongfully convicted.

“He was absolutely properly convicted,” Schutz said. “I would never ever pardon someone who was a child rapist.”

Republicans and Democrats are vying to gain majorities at the Capitol this election after two years of a closely divided Minnesota Legislature. But while all 201 seats are on the ballot, Republicans are not fielding candidates in more than a dozen races.

Of all 134 House seats up for election this year, 17 lack a Republican candidate. Some of those are in areas that might be expected, in deep blue areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul. That’s the case in four Minnesota Senate races without GOP candidates. But in other areas, one reason is a leftward shift in districts that have historically been in play.

In Woodbury, for instance, new apartment buildings, condos and houses are going up at a strong clip. The city’s growth has come with a change in political allegiance.

In both House races in the city, there are no Republicans on the ballot. In district 47A, DFL Rep. Shelley Buck is running unopposed. In district 47B, DFL Rep. Ethan Cha is running for reelection without a GOP opponent. However, Kim Wilson, a member of the Woodbury City Council since 2020, is running as an independent.

"I am a conservative. I am not only socially conservative, but I am fiscally conservative,” she said.

She’s running to cut wasteful spending, support law enforcement and protect property rights, among other issues.

But she did not want to run on a party platform. Wilson said she’s enjoyed the politics of the City Council, where candidates don’t run with political parties. Wilson says she's running because she felt someone needed to step up, but she doesn't want a political party trying to give her marching orders.

That means she doesn't have a party helping her. Instead, she's running her campaign with the help of a friend out of her home and her van.

“Here's the old van that used to haul my kids around, but now it just hauls all of my campaign stuff around,” she said, sliding open the door of her 2013 conversion van, filled with campaign signs and campaign literature.

The other House races without a GOP option on the ballot include Mankato, Plymouth, Golden Valley and North St. Paul. These areas have moved leftward over the last few elections but have supported Republicans in the not-so-distant past.

"A lot of those seats are seats that have Democrats already in place. They'd be challenging an incumbent, and you're challenging in an area where it's more expensive to run a race,” said Preya Samsundar, a GOP strategist.

Samsundar said midterms are tough for the party in power nationally. She thinks the Republican Party is being strategic with its resources.

"They're focusing on protecting their incumbents, and then target races where they have more of a likelihood of succeeding and flipping those seats,” she said.

Zack Stephenson, the DFL leader in the Minnesota House, says he's not surprised to have that many unopposed elections.

"It really shows a lack of enthusiasm on the Republican side,” he said. “Midterm elections are often decided by turnout. And you know, if you can't even find a candidate who's willing to run, are you going to be able to turn out your voters in the fall? The primary suggests no."

In Plymouth, DFL Rep. Ginny Klevorn is running unopposed. Just a decade ago, Klevorn lost her bid for a House seat in the same area.

"I was a first-time candidate, and I ran an exceptionally hard and strong campaign. And we knocked, I think, over 50,000 doors, but I still lost by 8 percentage points,” she said.

She won in the next election and has held the seat ever since. Redistricting changed the makeup of her district a bit, but Klevorn said she was surprised that she doesn't have an opponent this election.

"I've always had an opponent, some stronger than others, but I've never been unopposed,” she said. “I was stunned. I was expecting someone to file at the last minute."

The lack of competition hasn't stopped her from campaigning in her district, but it's also freed her up to door knock for other DFL candidates in more competitive districts.

Carol Anderson has been sounding the alarm for years.

As a historian at Emory University, she is intimately acquainted with America’s legacy when it comes to voting access. Her book, “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy,” was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2018.

She brought her deep knowledge of history and concern about what’s happening to voting access now to Red Wing on Sept. 23.

During a conversation at the Sheldon Theatre with MPR News host Kerri Miller, Anderson said she’s worried the Jim Crow-era is beginning anew, thanks to persistent attempts to deny communities of color their right to vote.

“I see it as the result of a long-term campaign to undermine the strength of our electoral systems,” she told Miller. “How many times can you hear ‘stolen election, stolen election, voter fraud, voter fraud, voter fraud?’ If you say a lie enough times, it becomes the truth, and there's a nasty long history of hollering ‘voter fraud.’”

But while Anderson acknowledged the country’s track record on voting access is grim, she also applauded the only thing that has ever held it at bay: voters who are active and civically engaged. She pointed to the Red Wing audience as evidence.

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“This is, what, a Wednesday evening? And you’re here listening to a talk about voter suppression and voting rights?” she laughed. “This is where our strength is. It is people getting educated about what’s happening and knowing not to listen to the lies about election integrity and voter fraud.”

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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Control of the Minnesota Legislature is at stake in November. Both parties will be hitting the pavement and spending big to move the needle from the almost evenly split setup now.

The results could decide what moves forward in St. Paul when it comes to policy, taxes and spending decisions for schools, public safety, health and social service programs and more.

While all 201 legislative seats will be on the ballot, only a small fraction are considered truly competitive. These contests will see the most spending, attention from state — and potentially national — party organizations and focus on swaying voters in districts where there’s a potential to flip party control.

It takes 68 seats for an outright House majority and 34 in the Senate. At the end of last session, the House was knotted 67-67, and Democrats had a single-seat edge in the Senate.

Republicans see some of their best opportunities to flip seats held by Democrats in greater Minnesota, while Democrats are aiming to pick up seats in the Twin Cities suburbs and larger population centers outside the metro. Lawmaker retirements could open up closer contests in a variety of legislative districts.

Historically, midterm elections turn out better for the party not in power in the White House. That means Democrats could see a boost from voters unhappy with the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington. DFLers have centered their messaging around affordability.

They also hope that their candidate for governor, Amy Klobuchar, can boost voter turnout. All but one of Klobuchar’s past U.S. Senate victories have coincided with DFL gains in the Legislature — 2024 was the lone exception.

Republicans, meanwhile, are keyed into fraud in state government programs and say the issue will drive voters out to support them. They have relied somewhat over the past decade on GOP turnout driven by having Donald Trump also on the ballot, which he won’t be this year.

Here’s a look at the races under the hottest spotlight ahead of Election Day.

Senate District: 3, 4, 14, 24, 32, 33, 35, 37, 41, 48

House District: 3B, 14A, 14B, 18A, 32A, 32B, 33A, 34A, 35A, 35B, 36A, 37A, 41A, 41B, 45A, 48B, 54A

Greater Minnesota Democrats largely on defense

Senate District 3: Hauschild vs. Zupancich

A state Senate rematch in a geographically expansive northeastern Minnesota district has drawn more campaign spending than any other race. It puts a first-term DFLer on defense. Sen. Grant Hauschild of Hermantown will again face Babbitt Mayor Andrea Zupancich, a Republican, who came up shy in their last race.

Hauschild won by just 703 votes in 2022. Spending in the race has already exceeded $1 million, according to campaign finance reports filed last week. The Republican-aligned Advance Minnesota spent $480,000 against Hauschild in the contest and national Republican-backed group Renew Minnesota put in another $300,000 in the effort to defeat the senator.

Republicans and their allies are also spending in support of Zupancich. The DFL Senate Caucus has spent $78,000 on behalf of Hauschild, according to recent campaign reports.

House District 3B: Zeleznikar vs. Schweiger

Within that district, Republican Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar is aiming to fend off a challenge from Democrat Aaron Schweiger, a business owner, in the district that covers a swath of towns that hug the Duluth metro and run far into St. Louis County.

Zeleznikar ended the career of long-serving state Rep. Mary Murphy, a Democrat, in 2022. It flipped the seat to Republicans that year by just 33 votes. She won reelection against Democrat Mark Munger in 2024 by 159 votes.

Senate District 4: Kupec vs. Peterson

In northwestern Minnesota, DFL Sen. Rob Kupec faces Republican Austin Peterson, an entrepreneur. Kupec won the seat representing the Moorhead area, along with parts of Becker and Clay counties, by 1,727 votes in 2022.

The district is split in its representation in the Minnesota House. DFL Rep. Heather Keeler represented the House district that included the Moorhead region. She isn’t running again. Republican Rep. Jim Joy represents the more rural District 4B.

Spending in the race has topped $1 million, with most of that coming from groups opposing Kupec’s reelection. Advance Minnesota, Renew Minnesota, Empower Minnesota and the Pro Jobs Majority, along with Minnesotans Concerned For Life’s political action committee and Republicans spent more than $717,000 opposing Kupec.

Meanwhile, the Senate DFL Caucus and state Democratic Party put up almost $58,000 backing his campaign as of mid-September.

Senate District 14: Putnam vs. Perryman

In the St. Cloud area, DFL Sen. Aric Putnam is in a high-profile race with Republican Rep. Bernie Perryman. The district supported President Donald Trump in his 2024 reelection bid and split with one House district within the Senate district supporting a Democrat, Rep. Dan Wolgamott, and the other electing Perryman.

Putnam first won the seat by just over 300 votes in 2020 and kept it by defeating then-Rep. Tama Theis in a 2022 contest by a broader margin. With both House seats open after Wolgamott launched an unsuccessful bid for state auditor and as Perryman vies for the Senate seat, close contests are expected down ballot, too. (More on that below.)

Spending in the race has cracked the $1 million mark with more than $700,000 of that coming from Pro Jobs Majority, Advance Minnesota and Renew Minnesota targeting Putnam.

Democrats look to swing suburban seats

Senate District 32: Kreun vs. Ford

Democrats are looking to flip a Senate seat in Anoka County that covers Blaine, Columbus, Ham Lake and Lexington. Republican Sen. Michael Kreun was first elected in 2022 and is facing Democrat Chris Ford, a Blaine City Council member.

So far, there’s been more than $426,000 spent in the race with the Senate DFL Caucus spending almost $33,000 aiming to unseat Kreun. Pro Jobs Majority spent more than $120,000 supporting him.

Half the district is represented by a Democrat in the House, Rep. Matt Norris, while the other half is represented by Rep. Nolan West, a Republican. Both parties view those House races as potentially close, too.

Norris faces Republican Leslie Larson, a Blaine City Council member, in the contest for the 32B seat and West will go up against Democrat Amanda Matchett, an attorney.

Senate District 33: Housley vs. Smith

Republican Sen. Karin Housley is aiming for a new term in a contest against Democrat Nat Smith, an attorney. Housley has represented the Stillwater-area district since 2013 with breaks when she ran unsuccessful bids for lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate. Her margins of victory have narrowed in more recent elections.

The district is split in House representation with Democratic Rep. Josiah Hill representing District 33B and Republican Rep. Patti Anderson representing House District 33A.

Anderson is not seeking another term, which opens that seat to a potentially competitive contest between Democrat Angela Thompson, a social worker and member of the White Bear Lake School Board, and Republican Stacey Stout, an attorney and Mahtomedi School Board member.

Senate District 35: Abeler vs. Nelson

Democrats see one of their best pickup opportunities by taking on GOP Sen. Jim Abeler. He holds the seat representing Anoka, Andover and Coon Rapids. The Minnesota Senate DFL Caucus has funneled more than $30,000 into the contest between Abeler and school principal Angela Nelson.

Abeler has served in the Senate since 2016 and in the Legislature since 1999. The area has trended toward DFLers in recent years with both House seats in District 35 currently occupied by Democrats. Abeler narrowly beat now Rep. Kari Rehrauer in the Senate race in 2022 by 186 votes.

House DFL Caucus Leader Zack Stephenson represents half of the district and could see a competitive repeat contest against Republican Josh Jungling, the charitable gambling manager for Anoka Ramsey Athletic Association. Rehrauer could also see a close repeat contest against Republican Steve Pape, an engineer. Rehrauer eked out a 280-vote win in 2024.

Senate District 48: Coleman vs. Kessler

Republican Sen. Julia Coleman is in a fight to hang onto her west metro suburban seat. She’s in a rematch with Democrat Dan Kessler, a psychologist. The district that encompasses Chaska, Chanhassen, Waconia and areas of Carver County.

The Senate DFL Caucus spent more than $10,000 opposing Coleman in the race, while independent expenditure group Advance Minnesota is spending almost $160,000 opposing Kessler.

Half the district is represented by a Republican, Rep. Jim Nash, while the other half is represented by Democratic Rep. Lucy Rehm. She could see another close race in a rematch with Republican Caleb Steffenhagen, a teacher, who lost that first race by 225 votes two years ago.

House District 34A: Nadeau vs. Heaser

One of Democrats’ top targets this cycle is Republican Rep. Danny Nadeau. He was first elected in 2022 and represents parts of Rogers, Dayton and Champlin. Democrat Jason Heaser, a prosecutor, hopes to flip the district to DFL control.

The broader Senate district is currently represented by a Democrat, John Hoffman. House District 34B is also represented by a Democrat, Rep. Xp Lee. The House DFL Caucus is making funding ads in the district opposing Nadeau; they’ve spent nearly $78,000 so far.

House District 45A: Myers vs. Breazeale

Democrats see another pickup opportunity in the communities near Lake Minnetonka. Republican Rep. Andrew Myers, who is serving his second term, will see a repeat race there against Democrat Tracey Breazeale, a former business executive.

Democrats hope the seat goes the way of the broader Senate District 45 and House District 45B — both are represented by DFLers.

Retirements spur competition for open seats

House Districts 14A and 14B: Conway vs. Daisane, Ek vs. Dorholt

In the St. Cloud area, both District 14 House seats will see new lawmakers because the prior occupants pursued other opportunities. Bernie Perryman is leaving the 14A seat to run for state Senate. Republican Michael Conway, a St. Cloud City Council member, and Democrat and businessman Abdi Daisane are competing to succeed Perryman.

In 14B, Dan Wolgamott’s failed bid for auditor left the seat up for grabs. Republicans see a chance to pick up the seat. Wolgamott beat Sue Ek by 191 votes in 2024.

Ek, a communications professional, is running again and faces DFLer Zach Dorholt, a former legislator. The House DFL Caucus has spent more than $70,000 in an effort to hold the seat.

Senate District 24: Pierson vs. Glaser

Republican Sen. Carla Nelson is retiring after five terms representing the Rochester area. That’s made for a potentially close race between Republican Nels Pierson, a former state representative, and Simon Glaser, a teacher.

The two House districts within the Senate district are politically split with Republican Duane Quam, representing Stewartville and various townships west of Rochester, and Democrat Tina Liebling, who represents the half that includes a swath of Rochester. The Minnesota DFL Party has spent more than $65,000 on the Senate race through mid-September.

House District 36A: Stoss vs. DeMay

In the Lino Lakes area, another House is open after the incumbent — GOP Rep. Elliott Engen — tried for state auditor.

Republican Sebastian Stoss and Democrat Jim DeMay are after the job. Democrat Heather Gustafson represents the district in the state Senate and Democrat Brion Curran represents the other half of the district in the House.

Senate District 37: Janigo vs. Hoag

Republican Sen. Warren Limmer is retiring after serving the Maple Grove area at the Capitol for almost four decades. The district backed former Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid in 2024.

His departure sets up a contest between Democrat Kirsty Janigo, a member of the Maple Grove City Council, and Republican Brady Hoag, who works in executive search. Party and outside group spending in the race is closing in on $700,000, according to campaign finance records released last week.

The bulk of that came from independent expenditure groups Advance Minnesota, Renew Minnesota and Pro Jobs Majority.

House District 37A: McKee vs. Smith

Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican who has represented half of the district including Maple Grove, Corcoran and Medina since 2019, is also leaving. In her case, it was after an unsuccessful bid for governor.

Republican Tom McKee, the mayor of Corcoran, faces Democrat Darci Smith, a realtor. The high-interest Senate race could drive turnout in the House race as well.

Swingy districts again in focus

House District 18A: Schwartz vs. Hanson

First-term Rep. Erica Schwartz is up against Democrat Leah Hanson, a social worker, in the Mankato-area district. The district has flipped back and forth in party control in recent election cycles. So far, the House DFL Caucus has spent almost $71,000 to tip the seat back into DFL hands.

Democrat Nick Frentz represents the broader region in the Minnesota Senate DFLer Luke Frederick represents the other half of the Senate district in the House of Representatives. Republicans didn’t field a candidate against Frederick.

Senate District 41: Seeberger vs. Dippel

Another rematch is staged for the eastern suburbs as DFL Sen. Judy Seeberger again faces now-Rep. Tom Dippel in the district that includes parts of Cottage Grove, Hastings and Lake Elmo.

Seeberger won the seat by 321 votes in 2022. Dippel rebounded from the loss by winning a House seat in 2024. Both halves of the district are currently represented by Republicans, Dippel and Rep. Wayne Johnson.

Almost $500,000 has been spent in the race so far with the DFL and Senate DFL Caucus putting up more than $92,000 to keep Seeberger in the seat. Republican groups see it as one that could land them in the majority if Dippel wins.

House District 41A and 41B: Johnson vs. Birkeland, Fox vs. Beck

In the House districts within that Senate district, Democrats hope to unseat Rep. Wayne Johnson and pick up the open seat that Dippel is leaving. In District 41A, Johnson is opposed by Democrat Cole Birkeland, an attorney.

Johnson, a former county commissioner, won the seat by 327 votes in 2024 but now has a legislative voting record to defend. The House DFL Caucus has spent almost $80,000 in that race. In District 41B, Democrat Jen Fox, who narrowly lost a 2024 House race, faces Republican William Beck, a lab technician.

Cable TV ads are already in heavy circulation, paid for by a DFL-aligned group known as the Minnesota Family Prosperity Project. The House DFL Caucus has already put almost $56,000 into that race.

House District 54A: Tabke vs. Paul

A titanic rematch is set between Democratic Rep. Brad Tabke and Republican Aaron Paul, a police officer. The two saw their 2024 race go deep into overtime and litigation, resulting in a 14-vote Tabke win.

Republicans hope the second time is different, with the House Republican Campaign Committee having spent more than $20,000 in the race so far. Meanwhile, the House Democratic Caucus has spent to keep the seat, funneling almost $67,000 into the race.

Republican Eric Pratt currently represents Senate District 54 and Ben Bakeberg, also a Republican, represents the other half of the district. Bakeberg is running for the district’s Senate seat against DFLer Rick Olson, a former Michigan state legislator, as Pratt is running for an open 2nd District Congressional seat.

Correction (Sept. 29, 2026): An earlier version of this story misspelled Aaron Schweiger's last name. The story has been updated.

President Donald Trump on Monday announced plans for a new $15 billion steel plant in eastern Iowa that would be one of the largest in the United States — and use iron ore mined in Minnesota.

The new mill in eastern Iowa will be built by Mesabi Metallics, a Minnesota-based company owned by India’s Essar Group, an industrial conglomerate. The White House said the plant will begin producing steel in 2030 and create more than 2,000 jobs in the United States. When it’s fully built out, it’s expected to produce 10 million tons of steel a year, more than any other in the U.S.

The steel plant will be supplied by the new $2.5 billion iron ore mine that Mesabi developed on Minnesota’s Iron Range and officially opened earlier this month. It’s the first new iron ore mine in the state in a half-century.

The resulting steel will be produced from start to finish in the United States, the White House said.

The president touted the 50 percent tariffs on steel imports that he imposed last year as the impetus for the steel plant.

“Our steel industry is roaring back to life. Everyone is building their plants here because they don’t want to pay tariffs,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “It’s really not that complicated.”

The Mesabi Metallics mine’s opening comes at a critical time in northeastern Minnesota, after closures last year at two of the region’s six taconite facilities.

Mesabi has hired more than 200 workers so far, out of a planned 350 full-time employees at the mine near Nashwauk.

But news that Mesabi plans to build a steel plant in Iowa — and not in Minnesota — was called a “gut punch” by Republican state Rep. Spencer Igo, who represents the portion of the Iron Range where the new mine is located.

Igo said the mine is a “big win” for the Range — but he said Mesabi’s next investment going to Iowa “should frustrate everyone who cares about the future of northern Minnesota.”

“We cannot keep watching billions of dollars in investment and thousands of good-paying jobs go elsewhere and pretend there is nothing we can do about it,” Igo wrote. “The people of the Iron Range want this opportunity, and we have the workers, the resources, and the communities ready to support these projects. State leaders need to start making Minnesota a place where companies want to build and create jobs, not a place they look to leave behind. The most important part of public policy is partnership, and the state of Minnesota is missing that.”

Mesabi Metallics said the new Iowa steel plant will “reshape American steelmaking with a supply chain that is 100 percent American: mined, melted and poured.”

Mesabi CEO Joe Broking said in a statement Monday that the steel plant announcement “bolsters the long-term economic strength of Mesabi Metallics’ mine and pellet plant in Nashwauk, Minnesota, by tying it to a low-cost steel facility.”

“Mesabi Metallics is looking forward to further investment in Minnesota, and we look forward to continuing our work with the state to expand the mine capacity and build an additional hot briquetted iron facility in Minnesota,” Broking said.

Hot briquetted iron is a purer form of iron is used to feed smaller steel mills known as electric arc furnaces.

Broking added: “We have greatly appreciated the support of Governor Walz and the work of the DNR and MPCA to successfully permit the first new iron mine in Minnesota in 50 years.”

Broking told Itasca County officials earlier this month that Mesabi Metallics plans to submit permits to the state of Minnesota for a new iron plant in Nashwauk by the end of the year.

But he also told commissioners that before making the investment, the company needs to see more efficient state permitting and more competitive incentives. He also said Mesabi would need to regain control of state mineral leases that were awarded to rival mining company Cleveland-Cliffs in 2023.

The White House is framing Monday’s steel plant announcement as part of Trump’s push to revitalize American steel.

It comes as Trump is trying to energize Republican voters as his party faces challenging midterm elections. Iowa has found itself with competitive races for the Senate and the governor’s mansion this year.

On your ballot in November, you will be asked to vote on a constitutional amendment, which would make changes to what’s called the Permanent School Fund.

This fund is a trust, that supports every single public and charter school student in the state. Lawmakers are now asking taxpayers to vote to change the calculation of how much money is distributed to schools. This would allow schools to get access to more funding without raising taxes.

Denise Dittrich is the director of government relations for the Minnesota School Board Association and a former Democratic state representative. She joined Minnesota Now host Nina Moini to talk about the ballot measure.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Minnesota’s attorney general race is honing in on two of the most consequential issues this election cycle — fraud and President Donald Trump.

Both candidates have a considerable punching bag when it comes to attacking their opponent. Ron Schutz has blasted DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison for not doing more to stop fraud in the state’s social service programs. Meanwhile, Ellison argues that Schutz would be a rubber stamp for the Trump administration.

“The battle here is, what is the referendum in this race?” said Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “Is it a referendum on fraud, in which case Keith Ellison is vulnerable, or is it a referendum on Donald Trump?”

A recent KSTP/Survey USA poll shows Schutz with a slight lead for the first time this election cycle. Ellison is polling higher with 18-34 year olds, women and moderates, but 21 percent of moderates say they’re still undecided. It’s common for the sitting president’s party to lose power in midterm elections, but Ellison has struggled to reach voters outside the urban core of the Twin Cities. As Gov. Tim Walz sailed to reelection in 2022, Ellison beat his Republican opponent by less than one percentage point.

“The 20 percent [of undecided moderates] is the key,” Jacobs said. “They’re not locked in on the challenger, but there’s something about the incumbent that’s keeping them from supporting the incumbent. What they’re really saying is: ‘I’m undecided if I’m going to support the incumbent.’”

Both candidates are sitting on large stockpiles of money, according to campaign finance reports released last week. Ellison is currently trailing Schutz in cash on hand, $675,000 to $1 million respectively, but Schutz loaned his campaign $450,000 days before the reports were due. More than $5.1 million has been spent on the race by outside groups.

Attorney general’s role in suing and prosecuting

Fraud and the Trump administration’s actions, like Operation Metro Surge this winter, are issues candidates are grappling with up and down the ballot, and the attorney general’s office has legal sway on both issues.

On behalf of the state of Minnesota, the attorney general can sue a presidential administration, something Ellison has done 75 times during the second Trump administration, according to a spokesperson.

The attorney general’s office could also play a role in prosecuting the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two Minnesotans killed by immigration enforcement officials last January. The attorney general’s office could help the Hennepin County attorney’s office if they bring state charges against federal agents involved. The governor of Minnesota can also designate the attorney general to handle high-profile prosecutions. After a legal fight, Ellison’s office received evidence from the federal government related to both shootings and state officials are currently weighing a charging decision.

“I am 100 percent committed to getting to the truth and getting to accountability regarding these two homicides,” Ellison said. “I’m the guy who led the prosecution regarding the murder of George Floyd, so I don’t think there’s any real doubt that I’m committed to finding justice, no matter where and no matter who it involves. I cannot say that for my opponent.”

But Schutz, a trial lawyer and Army veteran, has an advantage when it comes to fraud, an issue Minnesota Democrats have repeatedly fumbled over the past several years. Ellison has become one of the faces of Minnesota’s fraud scandal, which prompted Walz to suspend his reelection campaign. In March, Ellison and Walz testified about Minnesota’s fraud scandal at a Republican-led congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.

Ellison met with a group of business owners that included now-convicted members of the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal a month before the first search warrant was issued, according to leaked audio of the meeting. Ellison said he frequently meets with constituents and wasn’t aware of specific allegations involving fraud.

The Attorney General’s office also oversees Minnesota’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, a 50-person division that prosecutes businesses and individuals stealing Medicaid dollars or neglecting vulnerable victims. Since 2019, the office has convicted more than 350 people of Medicaid fraud, but Schutz argues Ellison isn’t doing enough to prevent fraud as attorney general.

“Every single case that’s prosecuted in that office related to Medicaid fraud is reactive,” Schutz said last Tuesday during an interview at the Minnesota Star Tribune’s North Star Summit. “There is zero evidence I’ve seen where the attorney general is taking any proactive measures.”

The bulk of the attorney general office’s work deals with civil matters, like consumer protection, and is limited in its criminal authority. The office has specific authority to prosecute Medicaid fraud. Schutz declined an interview for this story, but both he and Ellison have agreed to participate in a debate hosted by MPR News on Friday.

“We have a serious issue, which fraud is, and I see Republicans in Minnesota opportunistically trying to use it as a political weapon,” Ellison said. “We’ve been working hard to solve the problem, they’ve been working hard to pin the problem on us.”

Minnesota hasn’t had a Republican attorney general since 1971, and hasn’t had a Republican governor since Tim Pawlenty left office in 2011. Based on the outcome of Minnesota’s gubernatorial race, it’s possible that for the first time in 15 years, the governor and attorney general’s office could be held by different parties.

For the past eight years, Walz and Ellison have been in lockstep, a partnership most evident during times Minnesota has been thrust into the national spotlight — the death of George Floyd and the subsequent murder trial of police officer Derek Chauvin in which Ellison was the lead prosecutor, the assassination of Melissa and Mark Hortman and Operation Metro Surge.

The two began their freshman terms in Congress together in 2007. A win for a Republican in either race could impact that intra-party alliance.

As Election Day draws closer, new polling data suggests the president's approval numbers could affect Republicans in the midterms in Minnesota.

MPR News host Clay Masters and the MPR News politics team explore what a fresh set of polling numbers means for candidates on the November ballot.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation and subscribe to the Politics Friday podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS, for a deeper dive into state politics.

Guests:

• Brian Bakst is politics editor for MPR News and host of Politics Friday.

• Ellie Roth is a politics reporter for MPR News.

• Peter Cox is a senior politics reporter for MPR News.

Have Americans given up a sense of virtue in their political leaders? What does character mean when so-called “authenticity” is prized over moral goodness?

As publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast, Sarah Longwell has thought long and hard about these questions. When she was a young conservative growing up in the ‘90s, she applauded Republicans who held then-President Bill Clinton to task for his moral failings.

“I was very attracted to the idea that character counted,” she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “In the years post-Clinton, that idea of virtue or character really was animating for the right — at least in their rhetoric. So it was deeply shocking to me, when Donald Trump came on the scene, to see every Republican I knew, both personally and who I had admired from afar, fall in line.”

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Longwell’s new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is a call for pro-democracy groups to unite and push back against authoritarianism. Her thesis is built upon hundreds of focus groups she’s conducted since President Trump was elected — with Republicans, Democrats, Independents and the politically homeless — where she’s heard voters say that character just isn’t the deal breaker that it used to be.

“But I do think for America to have a better moral line of what we’ll tolerate,” she says. “It will require a [candidate] to come in and — not pretend to be perfect — but they should lean hard into the idea that we can be better than this.”

Guest:

• Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast. Her new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is already a New York Times bestseller.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has for now revived a federal data system the Department of Homeland Security revamped into a tool to check the citizenship of millions of Americans on voter rolls. The tool has mistakenly flagged some eligible voters as potential noncitizens.

The news comes as the Trump administration has been pouring resources into searching for noncitizens on state voter rolls ahead of the upcoming election.

Many states uploaded their voter lists to the expanded version of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements data system – known as SAVE – sharing that voter information with the federal government. Tens of millions of voter records were run through SAVE before it was blocked by a federal judge in June.

The Supreme Court's decision opens the way for the administration to again use the revamped SAVE in its hunt for noncitizens on voter rolls, as well as in its unprecedented project of compiling lists of adult citizens in each state.

Any impact on the midterm elections is unclear. Federal law bans states from "systematically" removing voters from rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

The Trump administration and Republican state officials have argued that statute should not apply to removing noncitizens who were improperly registered. And the federal government argued to the Supreme Court that at a minimum, the updated SAVE should be able to be used for individual removal decisions ahead of an election.

In siding with the Trump administration, the court's majority wrote that a lower court order that halted the expanded SAVE prevents the federal government "from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this [90-day] period. The District Court's order thus inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections."

The Supreme Court's three liberal justices dissented from the order, and would have denied the Trump administration's stay application.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored the dissent, writing about the "majority's omission of any consideration of the harms that might occur if the modified SAVE system is allowed to continue operating. The District Court highlighted such harms, noting the risk that States might cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens or force such persons to provide proof of citizenship before voting."

How the Trump administration overhauled SAVE

SAVE is a 40-year-old federal data system that was created to check the immigration status of noncitizens to determine their eligibility for public benefits.

Then, DHS overhauled SAVE last year by linking it for the first time with Social Security Administration records, which include most Americans. The overhaul also allowed bulk queries to SAVE, and DHS encouraged states to upload their entire voter rolls to SAVE to verify those registered are U.S. citizens and not listed as deceased in federal records.

In June, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, blocked use of the modified version of SAVE, finding that its aggregation and disclosure of sensitive data violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.

"The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote," she wrote.

After an appeals court panel refused to stay the lower court's decision in a 2-1 vote, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court earlier this month.

In his appeal, Sauer wrote that since May 2025, the updated version of SAVE has verified more than 65 million voters across 26 states, and has flagged 28,635 as potential noncitizens.

"The district court's order, however, makes it harder to detect ineligible voters, undermining the integrity of federal elections and public confidence in the results of those elections," he wrote.

The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which first challenged the legality of the SAVE overhaul a year ago, argued in a brief to the Supreme Court that Congress has not authorized the federal government to create a "master database of U.S. Citizens," nor does it have data that could do that accurately. The brief added that multiple statutes restrict repurposing and sharing Americans' sensitive data.

"Disregarding these laws, the government has recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans' privacy and voting rights," the groups wrote.

They wrote that even though 65 million voters had been verified by the revamped SAVE, the government had not yet released the system's error rate, or how many Americans' citizenship was misrepresented "and who consequently have been forced to reverify their citizenship to retain their voter registration or obtain government benefits."

SAVE has mistakenly flagged eligible citizens

Even though Election Day is just over a month away and voting is underway, the Trump administration could try to make use of the expanded version of SAVE right away in its quest to check registered voters' citizenship.

An executive order President Trump signed in March calls for federal agencies to consult SAVE data, along with other federal records, to create state-by-state lists of adult U.S. citizens. The same order directs the U.S. attorney general to prioritize investigating and prosecuting election officials who provide ballots to ineligible voters. Even though the executive order says such state lists are to be completed 60 days before an election and that deadline has already passed, federal officials have indicated the project is still underway – although it is facing a legal challenge.

Eligible voters have been erroneously flagged by SAVE, which has been unable to confirm the citizenship of certain categories of foreign-born people who become U.S. citizens.

After Texas ran its entire voter list of 18 million voters through SAVE, the system flagged 2,724 voters as potential noncitizens. County election officials then gave those individuals 30 days to prove their citizenship and, following state law, removed anyone who did not respond in time.

As NPR first reported in December, that effort resulted in citizens being removed from the rolls. Anthony Nel, whose story NPR highlighted in that reporting, gave a declaration in this lawsuit.

A recent press release from the Texas secretary of state revealed that of the 2,724 voters that were initially flagged by SAVE as potential noncitizens, some 20% were later found to be citizens who were reinstated. The same release said the office referred 117 cases identified by SAVE, or 4.2% of those flagged, for investigation for possible noncitizen voting.

Copyright 2026, NPR

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Congress passed $101 million in funding for teen pregnancy prevention, and President Trump signed that into law as part of his budget bill. But with less than a week to go in the 2026 fiscal year, about $100 million of that funding remains unspent.

What gives?

According to a letter from members of Congress shared exclusively with NPR, the Department of Health and Human Services has spent about $500,000 of the $101 million it is obligated to give out in grants to organizations that work with teens.

"Withholding these funds deprives teens across the U.S. of vital resources and threatens to unwind decades of progress made in reducing teen pregnancy," reads the letter from the Democratic Women's Caucus to HHS. Ninety-two lawmakers in the House and Senate signed the letter, which was sent to HHS on Friday morning.

Grants to dozens of nonprofits, universities and health departments were cut off abruptly in June. Most were in the third year of a five-year funding cycle, according to the lawmakers' letter.

Stephanie McDowell is the executive director of Bridgercare, a nonprofit in Bozeman, Mont. It's one of about 50 organizations that had their grants terminated. "We truly had no indication that our funding would be cut," she says.

This recent loss of federal funding has been challenging, McDowell says. She's been trying to find other grants to apply to, but it's not easy. "Ultimately, we can't sustain an education program at the scale that we were at, serving 21 counties across the state of Montana without funding," she says. "And so we will have to lay off staff, and there will be youth that go without sex ed."

But it is possible that the federal grant funding will come back. HHS could decide to reinstate the grants by itself, or a lawsuit in federal court challenging the terminations might force the agency to do so.

The power of the purse

Congress established the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in 2010. It's long been a target of the Trump administration and some conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation. President Trump's 2027 budget request calls for eliminating it, labeling it leftist and ineffective, and he tried to cut all these grants in his first term.

But Trump also signed a budget bill into law in February that specifically allocated $101 million to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.

"HHS is obligated to spend this money as directed by Congress," says Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., who is the lead author on the letter sent to HHS on Friday. "This is a bipartisan program created by Congress with the clear intent of supporting evidence-based education models that help reduce teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other health risks for young people."

She says that the Trump administration appeared to be trying to put those funds toward promoting abstinence. Soon after the agency canceled the grants in June, it issued a new funding opportunity for teen pregnancy prevention, which promoted abstinence-only sex ed. "This does not fulfill what Congress had appropriated and what its guidelines were," she says.

In August, Judge Christopher Cooper of the D.C. federal District Court ruled that HHS can't use those new requirements. "The TPP Program now mandates an abstinence-only approach to pregnancy prevention, promotes the nebulous concept of 'body literacy,' and prohibits the 'normalization' of sexual activity among minors. That new policy is likely arbitrary and capricious," he wrote.

The judge also flagged that the funding notice HHS sent out included citations for research papers that do not exist. The law allocating the funds specifically says programs must be evidence-based. Cooper's decision on whether to reinstate the terminated grants is expected soon.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to NPR's request for comment about the grants by publication time.

Broken trust

In Des Moines, Iowa, Kristin Fairholm is the executive director of EyesOpenIowa, another nonprofit that received the grant money. She says because of the sudden cuts, her organization had to cancel programs, "which then created some ripples in the community, reputation-wise and trust-wise."

"You work hard to recruit these families to come with their teens to do your programming, and then you're canceling them," Fairholm says. "It's been disheartening for us to have to tear everything down."

She says even if the funding is eventually restored, this sudden cancellation and the uncertainty for the organizations doing this work will lead to more teen pregnancies and more sexually transmitted infections. "I worry for our young people," she says. "I think we're doing them a huge disservice."

The teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. has been trending steadily downward in recent decades, hitting a record low in 2025.

Evidence-based sex education programs have been successful in Republican as well as Democratic-led states.

McDowell, in Montana, says she's heard from many parents who are wary of comprehensive sex ed programs.

"I always like to drive home the point that education and values are not the same thing," she says. "When we teach sex ed, we teach facts, we teach communication skills, healthy decision-making; parents and caregivers teach the values that guide those decisions.

"So we teach facts; families teach values," she says. "And those are truly complementary, not competing roles."

Copyright 2026, NPR

James Copenhaver, one of three campaign rally attendees shot in 2024 during an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump, has died in Pittsburgh, his lawyer said Thursday. He was 76.

Copenhaver was in the bleachers during the event in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop, grazing Trump's right ear with one bullet. Copenhaver was struck in the arm and in the abdomen, wounds that left him with lingering injuries and walking with a cane.

Two other attendees were also shot — David Dutch, who survived, and Corey Comperatore, who shielded his family from gunfire and was killed.

Copenhaver died Wednesday at Allegheny Health Network's West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, according to a statement from the Allegheny County medical examiner cited in local media accounts.

Copenhaver's lawyer, Joseph Feldman, said in a statement issued on behalf of the family that he died surrounded by loved ones. The statement did not specify if his death was directly related to the injuries he suffered at the rally.

Copenhaver and his wife, Marianne Copenhaver, sued the federal government in June, alleging that the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security had "utterly failed" to provide appropriate security at the rally. Copenhaver's injuries required multiple surgeries, including a transection of his colon, and he had lingering kidney and other damage, including a loss of feeling in his leg. The lawsuit described the wounds as "debilitating, grievous, permanent and life altering."

The family's statement Thursday called Copenhaver above all else a devoted husband, father and grandfather who instilled the values of hard work, integrity and the service to others in his children.

"James's dedication to this great country was a defining part of his life," it said. "As a veteran, he proudly served our nation in the armed forces, and his love of country never wavered. James was a true American patriot who believed deeply in the freedoms and ideals upon which this nation was founded, and he embodied the very best traits of our great nation."

In a statement posted to social media, Trump on Thursday called Copenhaver "a true American Patriot."

"Jim showed tremendous bravery, courageously continuing to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT, and maintaining a positive spirit despite unimaginable hardships," Trump wrote.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Lisa Demuth, the Minnesota Republican nominee for governor, joined a growing parade of GOP candidates to call for a swift end to the war in Iran in a break Thursday from the president as his approval rating slips.

Asked about the war and its effect on gas, diesel and fertilizer prices, Demuth said it’s time for President Donald Trump’s administration to wrap it up.

“When it comes to the war and the increased prices that are a result of that, it is hurting Minnesotans, and I absolutely acknowledge that,” she said. “President Trump and I are different people. I was not his pick to endorse for governor here in the state of Minnesota, but I think as we’ve watched things go forward, it is time to put an end to that war.”

She added, “I really believe that we know that it is causing more expenses, as I’ve mentioned, groceries and fertilizer in our ag community.”

A campaign spokesperson for DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Demuth’s opponent, responded to Demuth’s break with Trump.

“For seven months, Lisa Demuth has refused to oppose Donald Trump’s war in Iran, staying silent as Minnesotans face crushing gas prices and rising costs thanks to the President’s war,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Today, while Lisa Demuth for the first time uttered any concern about this war, Amy Klobuchar was in the Senate taking another vote to actually end this war, which she opposed from the start.”

Demuth has made other subtle shifts away from Trump as the midterm election nears, noting that he sided with another candidate in the primary race she won in August.

During that primary run, Demuth declined to criticize Trump or his policies.

Speaking in June to MPR News All Things Considered host Clay Masters asked if there are things Trump has done that she’s disagreed with.

“Everybody can look at something a little bit different, but I don’t have anything,” she said, before shifting her answer back to Minnesota. That comment has since appeared in ads run by Democratic nominee Amy Klobuchar and the DFL Party.

Last December, she sidestepped multiple questions on whether she agreed with Trump’s comments that Somali immigrants were “garbage,”

“We have a wonderful state with people that are actively a part of making Minnesota even better than what we know,” she said. “What I will say, though, is there is not an entire community that is bad and there’s not an entire community that is good.”

Demuth said she’d work with the federal administration if elected, adding, “where I agree, you will hear that. Where I see it different, you're going to hear that too.”

During an interview with WCCO TV At the Minnesota State Fair, Demuth called Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods “damaging.”

Demuth isn’t the only Republican looking to create a little distance from the president.

In Florida, a Republican congressional incumbent, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, is airing a direct-to-the-camera campaign ad of her criticizing the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. A Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd is touting his disagreements with Trump on the campaign trail. GOP U.S. Senate nominee Mike Rogers, in Michigan, put up a TV ad pushing for the war with Iran to end. The Iowa Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Ashley Hinson, has made a similar call this week.

We’re delving into the practical effects of Minnesota electing its first woman as governor and what issues might get new attention at the state Capitol.

Barring something unforeseen, Minnesota will join the current list of 32 states that have elected a female chief executive.

MPR News politics editor Brian Bakst talks with correspondent Dana Ferguson about the campaigns of Democratic nominee Amy Klobuchar and Republican nominee Lisa Demuth. Both have personal experience with breast cancer and both are talking about women’s health in a more-prominent way.

Then, a discussion of election polls. They’re everywhere this time of year. But the weight they carry is a source of debate.

Guests:

• Dana Ferguson is a correspondent for MPR News.

• Todd Rapp is the president and CEO at Rapp Strategies and an MPR News politics analyst.

• Peter Leatherman is chief executive officer of Morris Leatherman Company and has served in various research roles at the Minneapolis market and research firm.

• Ellie Roth is a politics reporter for MPR News.

• Peter Cox is a senior politics reporter for MPR News.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation or subscribe to the Politics Friday podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.

Reporters from three news outlets banned from the White House by President Donald Trump were back on the grounds Thursday afternoon, hours after a federal judge ordered the administration to reinstate their access.

On a chaotic day at the White House gates and in court, CNN, MS NOW and Politico journalists were allowed back in by midday, after earlier issues gaining access.

It was the latest development in an extraordinary showdown between Trump and media outlets whose coverage he dislikes. And it played out during a heavy news cycle with Chinese leader Xi Jinping visiting with Trump and world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly.

On Thursday morning, a Secret Service agent had confiscated the journalists’ credentials, the news outlets said in a court filing asking for an immediate hearing to address what seemed to be the White House ignoring the court’s order. The administration said in its own filing shortly after the reporters were allowed back in that it took the White House time to begin the process of reinstating badges.

Trump first announced he was banning the outlets Friday, assailing what he called “fake news.” He later said their reporting was a risk to national security. The outlets argued in a joint lawsuit that the ban was a blatant violation of the First Amendment because it singled them out for the content of their coverage.

In his late-night ruling to temporarily strike down the ban, Kelly said the news outlets had met the legal thresholds to obtain a temporary restraining order, in effect for 14 days. Kelly said they were likely to succeed in showing their access had been revoked without due process.

“This is a high bar, but Plaintiffs have met it,” he wrote.

Kelly — whom Trump nominated in 2017 and who ordered a CNN journalist’s access restored in a similar case in 2018 — said the government must have clear standards for conduct that would lead to revoking a press pass. He called the standard of objectionable reporting outlined in letters that the White House sent the outlets “so vague it hardly does the trick.”

The judge also made clear he did not buy the administration’s argument that the news outlets’ reporting endangered national security — and noted that Trump himself had not used that argument in the beginning, focusing solely on what he called negative coverage.

“Nothing in the record ... suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns,” he wrote.

The ruling came after Kelly heard arguments in an emergency hearing Wednesday. Temporary restraining orders are typically designed to preserve the status quo pending a closer review of the case by the court.

“This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law," Theodore Boutrous Jr., attorney for the outlets, said in an emailed statement. "We greatly appreciate the court’s swift action.”

The White House did not respond to emails from The Associated Press asking for comment on the order.

Attorneys debated access to the White House and any risk to national security

Boutrous argued in the hearing that there was an urgent need for renewed access, saying that the ban caused irreparable harm to the outlets at a time of momentous news events. “We’re at war. We have world leaders coming to Washington.”

Justice Department attorney Michael Velchik, in his argument, reiterated the administration’s point that the president has the right to choose who gets into the White House.

“Access to the White House is a privilege, not a right,” Velchik said.

In arguing that Trump was not engaging in viewpoint discrimination — the government singling out specific media outlets for the content of what they say or publish — Velchik said the president had criticized other news organizations, but not banned them. He noted, for example, that Trump had called ABC “the worst."

He added: “The president should be able to take immediate action to protect national security."

In response, Boutrous said, “Suddenly it’s a national security case,” arguing that the president brought up that point only after the lawsuit was filed.

Trump “keeps proving our point,” Boutrous said, describing how the president has consistently used negative coverage of him as justification for the ban.

Kelly seemed to agree, writing of the national security claim: “Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was ‘banning’ Plaintiffs from the White House — instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting.”

The Trump administration outlined ‘reporting incidents’ of each news outlet

In a filing Tuesday, administration lawyers detailed letters sent to each of the three news outlets that identified “a non-exhaustive list of reporting incidents, including those that have threatened national security and spread falsehoods.”

Among the incidents cited were: CNN reporting on “‘top-secret’ construction details related to the East Wing bunker”; MS NOW reporting “on an alleged leak investigation”; and Politico publishing “a document detailing funding for the White House ballroom containing intricate descriptions of how the Secret Service would invest in security improvements.”

Politico’s letter also included an incident in June of a report in which a “senior administration official … granted anonymity” predicted whether a preliminary deal would end the conflict with Iran.

That item appeared to reference a background briefing set up by the White House, where an official briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration itself. Several other outlets also reported the official’s remarks.

Major networks refrained from covering Trump for the media pool

The ban prompted other media outlets to take action in solidarity. The U.S. network press pool — consisting of the five major networks, including CNN — has suspended coverage of Trump pool events pending further notice.

The ruling did not address that rotating pool. After the hearing Wednesday, the networks continued to refuse to air footage of Trump without assurances that CNN would be permitted into the White House pool.

At Joint Base Andrews, where the president formally welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping, journalists from Fox News, CBS and NBC were present but not shooting video.

Other television outlets whose crews were present, according to signs on their tripods and cameras, were NewsNation, Newsmax, Right Side Broadcasting Network, One America News and LindellTV.

Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, an amicus brief was filed by other news groups, including The AP, urging the court to immediately restore the three outlets’ White House access.

Trump administration officials are facing new demands from Congress to explain why the Census Bureau's parent agency removed language banning political interference from its scientific integrity policy.

In letters sent Wednesday to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other officials, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, cites NPR's reporting on the change and raises concerns about how it could hurt the reliability of statistics about the country's demographics and economy.

"Amid the Trump Administration's broader assault on the integrity of the nation's statistical system, in which you and the Department have played a key role, you owe the public a clear explanation of why the Department removed this language and how it arrived at this decision," Warren wrote to Lutnick, who oversees the Census Bureau as the head of the Commerce Department.

The updated policy no longer says that "protection from inappropriate influence" is among the "hallmarks of scientific integrity." That and other unannounced revisions, dated Aug. 19, came a day after the bureau released a highly unusual document by a team with ties to the America First Policy Institute, a think tank started by officials from President Trump's first administration. NPR first reported on the team's ties to AFPI. Data and election experts have criticized the document's claims about non-U.S. citizen voting as questionable and below the standards for research by the bureau.

The Trump administration has made other controversial moves in recent months with major implications for official statistics.

In June, the administration banned a data privacy protection technique that the Census Bureau had used for decades, forcing the agency to delay the release of some survey results and potentially cut future public data about rural communities and other small populations.

And this month, it proposed that the census, for the first time in U.S. history, exclude certain non-U.S. citizen residents from a count that determines each state's share of congressional districts and Electoral College votes. The 14th Amendment says that count must include the "whole number of persons in each state." The administration is also calling for another unprecedented change: to stop using the census to produce data about people's race and ethnicity.

"That [census proposal] and other proposed changes would have sweeping implications for the quality of our economic data, the redistricting process that determines congressional representation, the Federal Reserve's monetary policy decisions that rely upon key employment statistics and [Bureau of Economic Analysis] inflation data, and our ability to enforce civil rights and other laws," Warren wrote.

Warren is probing whether the Commerce Department's decision to remove the political-interference ban involved the Office of Management and Budget, a White House agency that coordinates federal statistical agencies. The senator is also asking how the Federal Reserve is making sure that the data it relies on from the Census Bureau is accurate.

In a statement, spokesperson Eric Kollig says the Fed plans to respond to Warren's letter, which asks for detailed answers by Oct. 7.

Spokespeople for the Commerce Department and OMB did not immediately respond to NPR's requests for comment.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey

Copyright 2026, NPR

A Florida company that charges military veterans as much as $20,000 for help with disability claims is being accused by authorities in New York and Illinois of defrauding those veterans.

Attorneys general in both states say they have ongoing investigations and "intend to commence legal action" against the company, Trajector Medical, "for fraudulent, illegal and deceptive business practices."

The move comes after an NPR investigation uncovered how Trajector makes millions off of veterans despite warnings from the Department of Veterans Affairs that its business may be illegal. Federal law requires that veterans be given assistance with initial disability claims free of charge.

After NPR's report, attorneys filed civil lawsuits seeking class action status on behalf of veterans. Trajector then filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which effectively put those lawsuits on hold. Now, the attorneys general are telling the bankruptcy court that they believe Trajector has been making its money illegally.

Their ongoing investigations were revealed in a Sept. 8 letter from state officials to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Middle District of Florida.

"It is expected that the investigations will reveal that money being held by [the company in the bankruptcy process] was collected through illegality and fraud," they told the court.

The company has denied those allegations in court.

"We stand behind how we operate, and we're focused on the veterans we serve," Trajector spokesman Steve Zenofsky told NPR.

In particular, NPR's investigation showed how Trajector uses a robo-dialer system it calls "CallBot" to dial into a VA benefits phone hotline, effectively posing as the veteran by entering the vet's social security number to monitor increases in VA benefits payments.

The company then uses the financial information it obtains to send bills to thousands of vets who once signed up as clients. If CallBot finds an increase in a veteran's benefits, it sends them a bill — even if Trajector didn't help them get an increase in benefits.

That practice is one focus of the investigations in New York and Illinois, according to the letter.

"The Attorneys General are also investigating whether Trajector misuses the personal information that it gathers from veterans through its use of 'callbots,'" they wrote.

Trajector is not the only claims company to use this technology, according to collaborative reporting between NPR and The War Horse.

Trajector files for bankruptcy

Bankruptcy court records provide insight into Trajector's finances and operations. Trajector Medical and 21 affiliated companies are included in the filings. Together they employ more than 450 staff and hold approximately $405 million in assets. In 2025, their combined income was nearly $280 million. Most primarily support Trajector's VA claims work but also include a business that prepares Social Security claims.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy five days before it was poised to default on a loan balance of almost $63 million owed to Deutsche Bank, according to court filings.

Chapter 11 protection allows Trajector to continue business while reorganizing its finances, freezing lawsuits and consolidating claims from creditors.

"This restructuring is a strategic step to strengthen our financial position so we can continue carrying out our mission: helping Americans with disabilities pursue the benefits for which they qualify for," CEO Jim Hill said in a statement on the company's website.

CEO buys property before bankruptcy

Hill and his wife purchased a $5.75 million oceanfront home in September 2025, according to local property records.

In bankruptcy court filings, Trajector lists that 6 bedroom, 7.5-bathroom home in the beachside community of Saint Augustine, Fla., as its "principal offices." Trajector's corporate headquarters is located 80 miles inland in Gainesville.

Trajector does not list the home as a company asset in the filings.

Asked why the CEO bought a $5.75 million home less than a year before the company filed for bankruptcy, Zenofsky said "the two are not related in any way."

Bankruptcy stalls lawsuits, but not state investigators

The two lawsuits, filed separately in Florida earlier this year, allege the company engaged in deceptive and unfair trade practices by charging veterans for the preparation of initial VA disability claims. Federal law requires such assistance be offered for free by accredited providers. Trajector acknowledges it lacks that accreditation in the contracts it has veterans sign.

But while the bankruptcy puts those lawsuits on hold, it does not stop law enforcement from bringing charges.

"It's a huge development for these attorneys general to step in like this," said Jennifer Byrd, an attorney bringing one of the lawsuits against Trajector on behalf of veterans. "The bankruptcy court can't stop them, they can move forward and keep investigating," she said.

In their letter, the attorneys general say the fees the company charged veterans "are illegal under state and federal law." The state investigators therefore expect to show that money Trajector says it has on hand to pay back creditors was made through "illegality and fraud" and that it "should not be considered property of the estate." In other words, it's not Trajector's money.

In a bankruptcy hearing the day after the states sent their letter, a lawyer for Trajector, Edward Peterson, refused to answer questions about the investigations.

"The letter speaks for itself. We deny the allegations in the letter. [This hearing] is not a fishing expedition for these investigations," he said.

Still, it's unclear what the investigations will mean for the veterans trying to get their money back.

Even with the attorneys general alleging that veterans were victims of fraud, that does not put veterans at the front of the line of creditors to be repaid through the bankruptcy process.

"In a corporate bankruptcy, there is no exception for fraud," said Bruce Markell, a former bankruptcy judge and a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

Markell said that means veterans and their attorneys who believe they are owed money will likely end up being treated like any other creditor.

Regulation and lawsuits threaten Trajector

Trajector blames its cash-flow woes on an increasingly adversarial regulatory landscape, bankruptcy court filings show.

Since 2024, Trajector Medical has suspended services in 23 states where local laws "prevent, severely limit, or impose undue risks on continued operations," the company said. Trajector Medical's revenue in the first half of 2026 declined approximately 60 percent compared to the year prior "primarily as a result of these legal and regulatory changes," the company said.

Those state laws have been passed in part because of a contradiction created by Congress 20 years ago. In 2006, the U.S. was at war in Iraq and there was a feeling vets needed more options to navigate an increasingly complex claims system. In a half measure, Congress voted to eliminate the federal criminal penalties for breaking the law against charging veterans money for help with initial disability claims but left intact the law itself, which also requires that anyone providing help must be accredited by the VA. So the ban remains on the books, but it became more difficult to enforce it.

Congress has been deadlocked for years over whether to reinstate civil penalties on unaccredited claims companies or legitimize the industry while setting caps on fees for vets. Claims companies and accredited veteran service organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars lobby fiercely on opposing sides, and new bills on the issue have been introduced as recently as June.

In the absence of more federal oversight, a patchwork of state laws has filled in the gaps. In February, California passed a bill that will impose penalties on unaccredited claims companies starting next year. The same month, a federal judge struck down Louisiana's 2024 law that allowed such companies to operate in the state with fees capped at $12,500.

Trajector's filings also state that internal discord contributed to its decision to file for bankruptcy protection.

Trajector took out a 5-year, $75 million loan from Deutsche Bank in 2021, and court filings show disagreements over how to manage the debt drove a wedge between the company's owners – Hill, a Navy veteran, and co-founder Gina Uribe, a nurse practitioner. With the repayment deadline looming, the company took Uribe to court in May 2026 over their impasse.

Trajector's financial disclosures show Hill has been making a base salary of $600,000 annually with the possibility for performance-based bonuses of $600,000 each quarter. Uribe earns $197,000 annually and does not receive bonuses.

Trajector's made a ‘mind-blowing’ amount of money

Through the bankruptcy, veterans can see how much money the company has been making — hundreds of millions of dollars.

"It's a mind-blowing amount of money," said Dustin Ingram, a former Army Ranger. In NPR's 2025 investigation, he said the company didn't do much to help him and sent him a big bill.

"I think that they took advantage of me and… accessed the VA database to find out if I had a claim so they could make $4,500 from a guy who spent five and a half years in the Army and two tours in Afghanistan," he told NPR last year. He refused to pay.

NPR also spoke to veterans who said they were pleased with the help from Trajector in increasing their benefits. Trajector said in a statement to NPR at the time, "We encourage any client who feels their experience was less than satisfactory to contact us immediately."

Ingram called the civil lawsuits filed against Trajector and the state investigations "vindicating."

He said the scale of the profits that companies like Trajector have made should be a wake up call to the VA and policymakers.

"If we create a vacuum, they will fill it," he said. He says the military needs to do a better job of connecting vets with benefits as they transition out of active service. "It should be very simple and very easy to receive benefits," he said.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Huge sums of money are flooding races for top Minnesota statewide and legislative offices as the battle for state Capitol dominance rushes toward a crucial final month.

Minnesota’s race for the open governor’s seat is attracting many millions of outside group activity, led by a Republican-aligned group that has already spent $7 million and has the same amount ready to deploy. Democratic spending has also picked up in that race and others down the ballot.

The governor candidates themselves, DFL nominee Amy Klobuchar and Republican nominee Lisa Demuth, have a wide disparity in fundraising activity.

Klobuchar, a U.S. senator in her fifth statewide race, has raised more than $13 million this year and had $3.5 million on hand as of Sept. 15. Demuth, the Minnesota House speaker, has raised about $2.6 million this year; that includes $1.3 million from a public campaign subsidy. She had $618,000 available to spend.

Candidates have limits on contribution amounts that don’t apply to the outside groups, known as political funds, that aren’t allowed to directly coordinate with the campaigns.

Restore Sanity, a GOP group that sprang up early this year to support Demuth’s candidacy, is the biggest spending group in the race. Its report shows the group has scooped up $14 million, almost all of it from a national group that is largely funded by Wisconsin manufacturing magnate Richard Uihlein, according to the Minnesota Reformer and other outlets that have examined the group’s finances.

Restore Sanity had already devoted more than $4.3 million toward boosting Demuth and $2.7 million against Klobuchar, primarily through digital and television advertising.

Several DFL-aligned groups are also active in the governor’s race. The Alliance for a Better Minnesota had spent $1.3 million in digital ads critical of Demuth that appeared on online and streaming service platforms. The DFL Party spent about $757,000 through mid-September on ads and materials to prop up Klobuchar.

Other groups are in the fray as well.

Data crunched by MPR News found that $8.1 million in combined outside spending has come into the race already. More of the money was classified as in support of a candidate than in opposition to one.

Not just governor’s race

DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison’s bid for a third term in a race against Republican lawyer Ron Schutz is also attracting millions.

Ellison has raised about $1.3 million this year and had $634,000 in reserve for the stretch run. Schutz took in about $1.1 million and had most of it available to use for the final six weeks.

But the outside activity is a significant factor.

A GOP-funded group called Minnesotans for Justice has spent more than $2 million on ads and text messages critical of Ellison. Other Republican groups are spending in the race as well.

Democrats aren’t letting it go unanswered, with the Alliance for a Better Minnesota unloading $1.8 million against Schutz through television and digital ads.

An analysis of campaign data by MPR News shows that $5.1 million has already been spent by parties and groups in the attorney general’s race. More than half of that was against Ellison.

Control of the Legislature is also a big prize on November’s ballot. Candidates for House and Senate have several more weeks before their next campaign finance report deadline.

But party caucus and outside group spending highlights the seats seen as up for grabs.

Democrats enter the election with a 34-33 Senate edge and the election could break a 67-67 House tie between the parties.

Among DFL incumbents, Sen. Grant Hauschild of Hermantown appears to be the top target. One group, Advance Minnesota, has already spent $480,000 against the first-term senator who won by a slim margin in 2022. Another $300,000 in attacks have been lodged by Renew Minnesota, which has gotten a substantial amount of money from a national Republican group focused on state legislative campaigns.

The DFL Senate Caucus has deployed $78,000 on behalf of Hauschild.

Republicans and their allies are also spending in support of Hauschild’s opponent, Andrea Zupancich. She’s the current mayor of Babbitt and narrowly lost her bid for the seat last time.

The pricetag so far: Almost $1.1 million in that race alone.

Other DFLers feeling the barrage include Sens. Judy Seeberger of Afton, Aric Putnam of St. Cloud and Rob Kupec of Moorhead.

For Republicans, several suburban seats are at risk with hundreds of thousands of dollars already spent for or against incumbent Sens. Julia Coleman of Waconia, Jim Abeler of Anoka and Michael Kreun of Blaine.

Open seats in Maple Grove and Rochester also loom large.

A larger group of Minnesota House seats are seen as competitive, with retirements adding more uncertainty to the dynamic.

All told there has been $8 million spent by parties and political funds in legislative races as of mid-September.

Deb Robertson counted the days, hoping she’d live long enough for a new Illinois law to go into effect that allows terminally ill people like her to use a lethal prescription to end their lives.

A diagnosis of a rare, aggressive form of cancer had forced her into retirement after three decades of working with homeless youth. As the disease quickly spread through her body, she felt “like a walking time bomb.” But she found a new purpose, becoming a public face of a movement in favor of life-ending options.

She shared her story publicly and traveled from her home near Chicago to Springfield, the state capital, to convince lawmakers it was vital to legalize medically assisted death.

The day came on Sept. 12. She celebrated at home with friends and family as “Deb’s law,” named after her, took effect. Illinois became the first Midwestern state and the 13th state overall (plus the District of Columbia) to authorize the option.

“I believe that God gave me this extra time so that I could see this law through,” said Robertson, 68. “I believe that people have the right to leave this Earth with dignity and on their own terms.”

In recent years, the practice of allowing doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives with medication has been legalized in several countries, with many more considering it. In the U.S., New York and Illinois recently became the latest states to join an accelerating pace of such legislation.

The issue remains bitterly contested

Opponents, including many religious groups, lawmakers and disability advocates, have moral objections to someone ending their life. Even with safeguards in place, some argue, the decision could be made for the wrong reasons.

“It puts people like myself — people with developmental and mental disabilities, as well as physical disabilities — in danger,” said Ebony Payne, a Chicago-based disability advocate who is quadriplegic. She was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against “Deb’s law,″ contending it discriminates against people with disabilities.

Even Pope Leo XIV weighed in, urging Gov. JB Pritzker not to sign the bill. Leo later said he was “very disappointed” that his home state of Illinois approved a law condemned by the Catholic Church. Polls show that most Americans think medical aid in dying is either morally acceptable or not a moral issue, although opinions vary across different faiths and political lines.

Dr. Jessica Kaan, medical director for End of Life Washington, an advocacy group, has helped hundreds of patients in Washington and Oregon with assisted dying.

Her mother, a practicing Christian, opposes it on religious grounds: “She’s horrified that I’m involved in any way.”

Kaan says she’s an advocate for choices. Her perspective is shaped by the types of deaths she has witnessed.

Among them are patients with ALS, a progressive disease that attacks nerve cells controlling muscles throughout the body. “It’s a particularly gruesome and awful way for most people to even anticipate their dying,” she said about a disease that takes away the body’s ability to move and speak.

For many terminally ill patients, she said, having the option gives them a sense of comfort, even if they eventually might not use it.

“I respect that people don’t want to choose that as an option for themselves. What I don’t love is for people trying to police that for other people.”

How a California man prepared to die

Peter Redgrove of San Diego, a late-stage bone marrow cancer and leukemia patient, used California’s assisted-dying law on Sunday. After 19 rounds of chemotherapy, he decided to set the terms of his death following a long, pain-wracked hospital stay.

“I see no point in enduring pain and suffering emotionally, psychologically and physically, when there are means to end it,” said Redgrove, 85, days before he took the lethal prescription cocktail in a cup emblazoned with Sylvester, his favorite character from the Looney Tunes. “I don’t think you get extra points for hanging in to the bitter end.”

Redgrove grew up in Catholic orphanages in England before moving to the U.S. Although he was no longer a practicing Catholic, he remained close to his faith, often wearing a crucifix he only gave away right before his death.

“An all-loving God is not going to punish me and throw me into a fire pit because I’m doing this,” Redgrove said in his room at a residential facility, where he spent his last days listening to classical music and reminding people to be kind.

With a death doula’s help, he invited loved ones to a celebration of his life that included Champagne, a shroud to wrap his body in his favorite royal purple and a final song: “Time” by The Alan Parsons Project.

Before he took his last breath, he read a Buddhist prayer.

State by state, the movement has spread

Oregon was the first U.S. state to pass a medical aid-in-dying law; it took effect in 1997.

As other states followed suit, what remains generally consistent is that to use the laws, one must have an incurable illness and less than six months to live, said Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. To qualify, one must also be able to understand and make a voluntary decision and be able to take the prescribed medications without assistance.

The latest states to legalize medical aid in dying are among the most populous: New York, where it took effect in August, and Illinois earlier this month. Today, nearly 1/3 of Americans live in a state where that end-of-life option is legal — though the practice remains uncommon in the U.S., accounting for roughly 15,000 deaths since the Oregon law went into effect in 1997.

“We actually have a pretty significant track record now: 30 years in Oregon, 18 years in Washington, 10 years in California. … That’s a lot of experience,” Pope said.

Peg Sandeen, chief executive officer of the Death with Dignity National Center, a nonprofit advocacy group, said there’s clear evidence that the safeguards work. “Police are not chasing after cases where there’s been coercion. We don’t have physicians losing their license to practice. That’s not happening.”

Some faith traditions continue to condemn assisted dying — sometimes called assisted suicide. Illinois pastor Andy Huette, who leads a nondenominational church in Gridley, urged Christians to reject Deb’s law, calling it “legislating darkness.” He has supported congregants with ALS, cancer and other chronic illnesses, and understands the desire to reduce suffering, but he also believes in its “redemptive purposes.”

Others have changed positions. Rabbi Dvora E. Weisberg served on a Reform committee that spent more than two years interpreting Jewish texts and talking to doctors and families to draft a paper on medically assisted dying that reverses earlier guidance. The paper argued that Jewish law must respond to modern medicine’s ability to prolong dying and to new knowledge about pain.

“We take this very, very seriously even though we know that any Reform Jew can disagree with us. We’re not the Vatican, we don’t have that kind of power,” said Weisberg, a professor of Rabbinics at Hebrew Union College.

“But the response that we’ve gotten from people who have read it has been very positive in the sense that they feel that now they have something to think about that can help them.”

Opposition from religious and disability groups remains firm

Before Deb’s law went into effect, a judge denied a request for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit by Ebony Payne and disability groups that aimed to block the law, saying that they had not proved standing or imminent harm.

In her Chicago home, Payne used a mouth-operated stylus to look at the ruling on her phone while lying in a reclining medical care chair. “I’m very disappointed,” she said. “My hope is that the law will be taken off the books.”

The six Catholic dioceses in Illinois criticized the law, saying it puts the state “on a dangerous and heartbreaking path.” The pope, who grew up in Chicago, has cited Catholic teaching, which calls for the protection of life from conception until natural death, forbidding abortion and euthanasia.

Chicago’s archbishop, Cardinal Blase Cupich, and Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki challenged “Deb’s law” in separate lawsuits and won limited protections without blocking the law from being enacted.

“We live in a state now where suicide is now normalized, and yet we still have a suicide hotline. There seems to be a bit of schizophrenia here,” Cupich told The Associated Press.

In the days before the law took effect, a judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the law on Catholic groups that challenged it in a lawsuit. They had argued the law could compel Catholic healthcare providers to refer or provide help against their faith in what they believe is assisted suicide.

“They always give it a euphemistic name: This is the End of Life Options Act. But it’s really just physician-assisted suicide, which is very problematic,” Paprocki said. “We believe that God is the author of life. … We shouldn’t be the ones deciding when to end our lives.”

Assisted dying vs. assisted suicide

Advocates, doctors and academics involved with the procedure say none of the medically assisted dying laws in the U.S. define the practice as assisted suicide. They note the American Association of Suicidology has declared that “suicide and Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) are conceptually, medically, and legally different phenomena.”

Equating assisted dying with suicide is not only antiquated or misleading, but harmful, said Anita Hannig, a cultural anthropologist and author of “The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America.”

“In no way would I describe any of the deaths I attended as suicide,” said Hannig, who spent five years following patients, families and doctors while researching her book.

Terminally ill patients who have sought this type of legislation insist they’re not suicidal.

“It really bothers me because I want to live, I don’t want to die. But I’m going to. I have to accept that, my wife has to accept that, my family has to accept that,” Robertson said in Lombard, Illinois, where she lives with her wife, Kate. They’ve known each other for 45 years; framed images of their wedding and other milestones decorate their home.

They recently walked hand in hand to a park where they plan to plant a tree that will grow next to Deb’s ashes.

Enactment of the new law “really makes me feel safe and peaceful,″ Robertson said. “Each day that I go out there, I know that I’m going to have the choice at the end of my life to go out the way I want.”

“I didn’t choose to have this disease, but give me the choice — and other people who are terminally ill, the choice to have some control over their life.”

Vice President JD Vance and other Trump administration officials said Tuesday they plan to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees from public healthcare exchanges, alleging that the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program, or simply do not exist.

Vance said the discovery and canceled subsidy payments for hundreds of thousands of people from the exchanges, part of an administration-wide crackdown on fraud, would result in $2.2 billion in cost savings.

“We’re actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them,” said Vance, who leads a government task force to eliminate fraud. He was flanked by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, and other administration officials.

Vance said the cancellation of approximately 315,000 enrollments covering 760,000 people was done in part because the government was not checking whether people enrolled were eligible. Vance said another 419,000 enrollments will get additional verification to make sure they are eligible for the benefit.

The Trump administration also announced a six-month suspension on new agents or brokers who sign up enrollees for healthcare coverage, who officials say commit a disproportionate amount of the fraud they uncovered.

Roughly 19.2 million Americans are actively enrolled in ACA marketplace health plans as of early 2026, according to the Department of Health and Human Services website. The number of enrollees grew during the COVID-19 pandemic when enhanced subsidies became available through the American Rescue Plan Act and Inflation Reduction Act, both signed into law by former President Joe Biden.

Tuesday's announcement is the latest in an initiative by the Trump administration to address fraud around the country, including in federal healthcare programs, which officials say is needed to rein in runaway spending and protect taxpayers.

Some healthcare policy experts are calling for more transparency on how the Trump administration decided to cut hundreds of thousands of enrollees — and question how many people may have been wrongly cut from the program.

Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, said “I think there’s no question that somebody who was fraudulently enrolled should have their coverage canceled,” however, “I think the question is whether this was the appropriate process by which to identify fraudulent enrollees, and also whether all of them were indeed fraudulently enrolled.”

Cox said the elimination of the people from ACA programs was done outside of the normal regulatory process.

Ellen Montz, a former deputy administrator and director at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at CMS during the Biden administration said during her time in government, there was an ongoing effort to eliminate fraud from ACA programs.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, and the Trump administration has done some good things that are targeting the actual fraudsters,” she said. Adding that Tuesday's announcement lacked details on how the administration determined who to cut. “ I would imagine we’ll hear from some subset of consumers that ask: why did my enrollment get cancelled?" Montz said.

At the press conference, Tuesday, Vance referred to some enrollments lacking social security numbers or immigration documentation.

The announcement comes as stubbornly high inflation and rising healthcare costs pressure the Trump administration to come up with a plan to bring down costs for Americans as affordability remains a central issue in the fall midterm elections.

The price of ACA insurance has skyrocketed for many Americans during Trump’s second term, after Republicans opposed extending COVID-era subsidies that had helped offset the costs of health insurance for most enrollees during Biden’s term.

Premiums doubled or tripled for many enrollees, prompting millions to downgrade their plans or exit the program entirely after the Republican-led Congress allowed the subsidies to expire this year.

The Government Accountability Office suggests fraud risks in the advance premium tax credit do exist - however it's unclear at what scale. The GAO conducted covert testing using fictitious ACA applicants enrolled in 2024 and 2025. A report released in December showed that the federal marketplace approved subsidized coverage for almost all of the GAO’s 24 fake enrollees.

The White House referred The Associated Press to the Vice President’s team for additional comment on bigger plans to address healthcare affordability. The Vice President's office and CMS did not respond to Associated Press requests for comment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news of the Trump administration’s plan to remove ACA enrollees from public exchanges.

Democratic lawmakers criticized the move to remove enrollees from ACA coverage.

Richard E. Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, said “Republicans have already created the worst healthcare crisis ever, but every decision by the Trump Administration is designed to keep making it worse."

“As if making coverage harder to access through skyrocketing premiums and more red tape wasn’t painful enough, they’re doubling down to take it away entirely,” Neal said.

Lisa Demuth was shopping for some final Christmas gifts for her daughters in 2009 when she got a call that changed her life. As she prepared for a Senate vote in 2021, Amy Klobuchar fielded a similar call.

Both women said they were stunned by the news of a breast cancer diagnosis.

“At that moment, a vote was called in the Senate. I had time to call my husband, and then I went onto the Senate floor, where they were just calling the names,” Klobuchar said, her voice trailing into the droning rollcall of her colleagues during votes. “It felt like, in my head, my whole life had changed, but nothing around me had changed.”

Demuth said she had to put down the items she was holding in the department store to process what the doctor was telling her. Then she asked what would come next.

“What do I need to know right now to make the best decision for me?” she remembers asking. “I didn’t want all the information because it was really overwhelming. But what do I need to know right now in this moment?”

Barring an unforeseen twist, Minnesota will have its first female governor next year. That woman — whether it’s Klobuchar, the Democratic nominee, or Demuth, the Republican nominee — will be a breast cancer survivor. In separate interviews this month, they spoke with MPR News about confronting the diagnosis. Both said the experience fighting the disease would inform their healthcare policy platforms.

Britta Babel, senior grassroots manager with American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network in Minnesota, said it’s significant that a breast cancer survivor will soon hold the state’s highest office.

“I think they both really do recognize the lived experience that so many cancer patients in Minnesota deal with on a daily basis,” Babel said. “We’re excited to work with whoever it may be to just make sure that we’re tackling cancer and making it a policy priority.”

Difficult treatment choices

Within days of getting her diagnosis, Demuth got another bit of news: That her daughter was having a baby, Demuth’s first grandchild.

“I remember thinking, ‘Am I going to be alive to even meet this grandchild?’ And that mattered very much, but I never said it to anyone,” Demuth said.

After extensive consultation with her medical team, Demuth decided surgery was her best option. Doctors were able to remove the cancer just weeks after her diagnosis.

“I couldn’t get it off my body fast enough. Like I just needed it to be done,” Demuth said. “I chose a very extreme surgery so that there was no chance of recurrence, and that mattered to me.”

Klobuchar said she underwent surgery as well, in her case a lumpectomy followed by radiation treatment. She said it was a unique experience, not just due to the procedures.

“As I’m waiting there with kind of a drawn target on my breast, someone came up to me because they knew who I was, and spent about 15 minutes talking about Burma,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar said after her sedation wore off, her first question to her husband was about how the procedure went. “Successful,” he told her. She then asked him for her phone so she could have her office look into the concern about Burma.

The senator shared her diagnosis and experience publicly at the time. She said it was important to be forthright with Minnesotans.

“I think that’s part of your job as a leader,” Klobuchar said, citing the model of former first lady Betty Ford and her public fight with addiction and the normalization of treatment that her airing her problems helped drive. “She did a lot more for it than I could ever dream.”

Klobuchar said sharing the experience mattered and was, in an unexpected way, rewarding. She heard from several people who’d put off mammograms or check-ups but were encouraged to go in after hearing about her experience.

‘A sisterhood’

Demuth was a school board member when she was diagnosed. Her health struggle was kept to a tighter circle. Years later, she was among those who wrote to Klobuchar to pass along well wishes.

“I reached out after that and just sent a note, probably electronically,” Demuth said. “I remember the thought of at least when I was diagnosed, it was private, unless I chose to make it, you know, to tell anyone about it, and how different that is.”

Asked about the contact, Klobuchar said the note meant something to her.

“I appreciated that. And she was very kind about it, and I am again really, really happy that she is doing well as well,” Klobuchar said. “And it's kind of a sisterhood, right? No matter what differences you might have, that is a sisterhood.”

Both candidates said their experiences with cancer have reshaped who they are, physically and mentally.

“I have scars, but they’re just part of who I am. But I don’t think about it every day,” said Demuth, currently Minnesota’s House speaker. “I think more about the things, the opportunities that I have, the family that I have, the life that I’ve been gifted.”

Klobuchar said it gave her a sense of gratitude, too.

“It makes you appreciate the incredible doctors and nurses that I had,” she said. “Or just my husband getting up at four in the morning to take me to radiation, and it gives you a whole appreciation of that.”

As important to Klobuchar, she said, is “to keep looking for a cure.”

Healthcare access

Both candidates said their experiences with cancer will inform how they would govern.

Demuth has yet to unveil a health policy platform, but she said one that’s in the works will prioritize healthcare access, especially in rural parts of Minnesota, along with a pipeline for training medical professionals.

“Having the opportunity that I’ve had to experience breast cancer and need medical care, I want to make sure that's available for all Minnesotans,” Demuth said. “Our health plan is going to look at the issues of access and affordability.”

Klobuchar points to bills she’s advanced in Washington to guarantee coverage for mammograms, fund early cancer detection programs and boost research aid for cancer treatments. She said similar programs are needed on the state level. She also wants medical training pipelines and to offset the cost of insurance by replacing tax credits that Congress let expire last year.

“When you look at getting coverage for treatment and getting coverage for mammograms and all of that, I understand how important it is,” Klobuchar said.

Regardless of the race outcome, the next governor will bring a new perspective to the governor’s office, said Christina Ewig, the director of the Center on Women, Gender and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota.

“There’s pretty thorough research on women politicians and the fact that they do bring different issues to legislative agendas,” Ewig said, citing proposals addressing poverty, care for the elderly, healthcare, children and family issues among them.

“All politicians bring their personal experiences with them, and those do influence their actions while in office. But I would temper that by saying that other things also matter. Party affiliation matters a lot,” she continued. “Personal experience is brought to the table, but it's tempered by these other political constraints.”

As for Demuth and Klobuchar, being a survivor means remaining vigilant about their own health. Both routinely go in for aftercare check-ins.

Klobuchar, 66, said her most recent follow-up visit was over the summer.

“You still have that feeling of waiting and waiting and seeing if you have it again,” Klobuchar said.

Demuth, 59, said she feels the anxiety, too.

“The mental battle can be really hard. Just that worry you feel, especially as you age, you feel one little thing, and it can make you think, ‘Oh no, is that something?’” Demuth said. “Those thoughts don’t come as often as they did in that first year or two years for me. Eventually, it’s fine. I’m just getting older.”

They are both cancer-free.

The two lawyers vying to replace Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty say she is misusing a new law that allows prosecutors to request sentence reductions in special cases.

The candidates, Anders Folk, former acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, and DFL state Rep. Cedrick Frazier of New Hope, both condemned the use of the new law in this case. Frazier’s objection comes despite the fact that he co-sponsored the law while serving in the Minnesota House.

Earlier this year, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office requested to reduce Kemen Taylor II’s life sentence for his role in the murder of a 13-year-old boy and attempted murder of two other teenagers in 2011.

In its petition, the county argued Taylor was punished at trial for not accepting a plea deal and that his sentence did not accurately represent his culpability in the crime. The county also said he is no longer a danger to the public.

After the boy’s father strongly objected to the county’s move, both candidates to be the next Hennepin County attorney said the request should be denied by a judge.

New law opens door to sentence reductions

For the last two years, Hennepin County has had new tools to review convictions and decide whether justice was served.

In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature approved a new law that allows prosecutors to request sentence reductions if there are “substantial and compelling reasons” to do so.

The law does not allow prosecutors to reduce restitution to victims. Hennepin County began accepting prosecutor-initiated sentence adjustment, or PISA, applications in early 2024.

In the fall of 2024, the county’s conviction integrity unit also began accepting applications from incarcerated people to have their cases reviewed. That unit’s mission is to investigate plausible claims “that an innocent person was convicted or some other serious miscarriage of justice occurred.”

Hundreds of incarcerated people have requested Hennepin County take a second look at their case through these new systems, but only a handful have won relief.

According to the county, around 250 people have applied for the conviction integrity unit to review their case and more than 400 people have applied for sentence adjustments. The county has recommended relief in fewer than ten cases overall — two of which were exonerations.

Taylor applied to have his case reviewed by the conviction integrity unit. After his case was reevaluated, the county determined he was eligible for a sentence reduction and said under current Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty the case would have been prosecuted differently. Taylor was prosecuted during the tenure of Moriarty’s predecessor, Mike Freeman.

Andrew Markquart wrote in a petition on behalf of the county that since the time of Taylor’s trial, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has “taken a more cautious approach to indictments on first-degree premeditated murder charges because such charges carry a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of release.”

Markquart was hired by Moriarty to lead the county’s conviction integrity unit.

“The facts in this case do not satisfy the current standard,” Markquart added.

Taylor’s crime

In August 2011, Taylor, who was 25 at the time, was driving two teens around in rival gang territory in north Minneapolis after Taylor’s brother had been recently shot in the arm.

After seeing someone they thought was a rival, Derrick Catchings, 15, and Donquarius Copeland, 16, got out of Taylor’s van and shot at three boys on bikes. Ray’Jon Gomez was killed in the gunfire and another boy was injured.

After the shooting, Taylor drove the two shooters away from the scene.

Catchings and Copeland eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and each received 34 years in prison with a chance of probation. However, Catchings died in prison.

Meanwhile, Taylor rejected a plea deal that could have resulted in him gaining supervised release after 13 years. Instead, he went to court where he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The petition requests a modified sentence for Taylor of 312 months, higher than the original plea deal but significantly shorter than life.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Moriarty’s office said that if a 13-year sentence, which was offered in the deal, was appropriate to protect the public and hold Taylor accountable, then “life without parole is by definition a disparity requiring correction. Our petition seeks a 26-year sentence.”

Gomez’s father, Kevin Funchie, told the Star Tribune he felt the county’s petition was “sickening” and said his son’s murder being brought up again in court has been devastating for him and others in his family.

After the Star Tribune published Funchie’s comments, both candidates running to replace Moriarty as Hennepin County attorney condemned the county’s move. However both said they support the existence of the conviction integrity unit.

"As a former member of the Public Safety Committee in the Legislature that passed the Prosecutor-Initiated Sentence Adjustment (PISA) legislation, this is not the way this statute was intended to be used,” Frazier, the DFL-endorsee, said in a statement.

“As a survivor of gun violence myself, I believe presenting cases like this can retraumatize victims and does not serve the best interest of public safety,” Frazier said.

Anders Folk, former acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota and Frazier’s opponent, said in a statement that the county’s petition was an example of “when ideology runs roughshod over justice.”

Folk added that many factors, including Taylor’s age and Taylor’s attempts to deny his guilt, contributed to his long sentence.

“Accountability matters,” Folk said.

Judge Shereen Askalani took the case under advisement earlier this month and will make the final decision to approve or deny the county’s petition.

The White House press pool, a rotating cast of news outlets that covers the president, is now a battleground over free speech rights between President Donald Trump and the media.

On Monday, the issue headed for the courts as CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued the administration over being barred from the White House and, they contend, denied their First Amendment rights. CNN was banned from its scheduled pool duty for the day — and the pool announced that it was canceling its coverage of Trump.

“Effective today, there would be no network pool coverage of the president's events,” the television pool of five broadcasters wrote in an email to its subscribers. "This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

But the pool is a proxy for the wider fight over whether the president, or anyone, can control the content of news reports — a type of free speech, pillar of American democracy. The developments marked an extraordinary escalation in Trump's ongoing efforts — from the courts to the Pentagon to the White House — to restrict news reporters and outlets that he finds insufficiently supportive.

Again and again during Trump’s second presidential term, his irritation has focused on the rotating group of reporters who cover the president as representatives of the larger press corps. The practice ensures coverage can be disseminated broadly since not all journalists can be with the president at any given time due to space constraints.

But the pool also is an institution steeped in tradition and anchored in the Constitution's guarantee of a free press. The relationship between elected American leaders and the journalists who hold them accountable is designed to be adversarial. That's essential for knowing what the president and his administration are — or are not — doing in the United States' name, with taxpayer money.

Here's a look at various aspects of the White House pool.

There may be constitutional issues at play

CNN is one of the major news networks, including ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC, that are part of a TV pool managed by the networks' editorial leaders. The networks rotate coverage of presidential events. On Friday, Trump said he was barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House due to what he called unfavorable coverage and “fake news,” and threatened that more such media bans could be coming.

Reporters from all three were denied entrance to the White House grounds the next day. On Monday, the three outlets said they've notified the administration that they will file a lawsuit saying their First Amendment rights had been violated. The complaint also contends that the abrupt confiscation of access violated the networks' Fifth Amendment right to due process.

Also Monday, CNN was scheduled to travel with the president to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, but a scheduling email from the White House did not name the network. A responding email from the pool said there would be no replacement for CNN — pushback to any notion that the White House can decide who is in the pool and who is out.

The pool follows the president

The First Amendment to the Bill of Rights states that the government “shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The Trump administration has long insisted that nobody has the right to ask the president questions, especially in the White House — and that goes for members of the pool, whom the president routinely insults in personal terms.

The White House press pool is group of news outlets that ideally are almost everywhere the president goes: in the Oval Office, at state dinners, on Air Force One, in the motorcade, and when the president goes golfing or biking. It is also always on standby in case something happens in the world about which the president needs to speak to the nation.

Last year, the Trump White House upended a decades-long tradition of an independent association of journalists selecting members of the pool. The White House now picks and chooses which members of the media make up the pool, and they almost always select journalists who are outwardly favorable to Trump as part of the mix.

The pool distributes in-person reports and imagery to the broader corps covering the president. When a “pooled” event is over, the print, television and radio poolers share written notes, video and audio with everyone else who is interested.

Traditionally, the White House press pool represents every media format and daily includes The Associated Press and other wire-service writers, the AP and other outlets' photographers, a television crew, a radio correspondent and writers for print and online publications.

The pool was in President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas when he was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. That allowed for firsthand accounts of the event as conspiracy theories spread, an example of why independent reporting is critical to understanding what is happening around the president.

Presidents and reporters have an inherently adversarial relationship

Trump is famous for courting reporters even as he publicly criticizes them. And he’s not the first to try to go around traditional outlets.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his fireside chats over the radio as some of the nation’s biggest newspapers took issue with government expansion under the New Deal. More recently, television and social media have provided similar workarounds.

In 1798, John Adams signed the Sedition Act, which made it a crime for citizens to “print, utter, or publish ... any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government and used it to jail journalists, according to the National Archives. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson threatened to end presidential briefings with reporters, resulting in the creation of what became the White House Correspondents’ Association that exists today.