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

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

The measure passed by a vote of 214 to 212.

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

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

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

ICE gets more than three times its annual funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More dollars after an unprecedented boost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ICE "got a shopping list"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Politics of immigration enforcement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2026, NPR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The city of Columbia Heights will stop using a set of 12 cameras that read license plates, after residents raised privacy concerns.

The Columbia Heights City Council voted unanimously Monday night to cancel a contract with Flock Safety, the company behind the cameras. The vote came after a town hall meeting in May, where residents expressed strong opposition to the cameras.

Those residents said they were worried about federal immigration agents accessing the data.

Police said the cameras, which were installed in the city in 2024, were useful in solving crimes and missing-person cases. But Mayor Amáda Márquez Simula told MPR News that the system didn’t provide enough of a record of who was using the data it collected.

“Even though it’s a really great tool that’s been so valuable, we just really need to pause it for our community and see if other companies or if Flock can improve their security even more,” she said.

The city in recent months had taken steps to restrict who can access the data collected by Flock cameras — restricting out-of-state data sharing in January, and then statewide data sharing in February.

“Our police department and our IT department really has locked down that information as much as possible,” Márquez Simula said. “Yet there’s still too many unknowns.”

Columbia Heights saw heavy federal immigration enforcement over the winter, and Simula said she wants to be sure the city’s data isn’t leading to people being targeted.

The mayor noted that Columbia Heights is not alone in canceling its Flock contract, and that other cities around the country have done the same. And she reiterated that the cameras did provide a valuable service for public safety in the community.

“We still do need a tool like this,” she said, adding that she believes new technology and new options will come forward that will “reflect what the community needs and how we can prevent a federal overreach like we saw this past winter.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump insists an Iran deal is coming

Trump also expressed renewed optimism over negotiations with Iran.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israel issues warning for Tyre, Lebanon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what's left?

Birthright citizenship

Trump v. Barbara

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

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

Read more about the case:

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

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

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

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

Trans bans in sports

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

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

Read more about the cases:

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

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

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

Will independent government agencies remain independent?

Trump v. Slaughter

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

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

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

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

Read more about the cases:

• Supreme Court appears poised to vastly expand presidential powers

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

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

Trump v. Cook

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

Read more about the case:

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

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

Mail-in ballots

Watson v. Republican National Committee

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

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

Read more about the case:

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

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

Temporary Protected Status for eligible migrants

Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot

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

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

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

Read more about the cases:

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

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

Geofencing – a new tool for law enforcement

Chatrie v. US

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

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

Read more about the case:

• Supreme Court considers constitutionality of 'geofence' warrants

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

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

Guns

Wolford v. Lopez and US v. Hemani

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

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

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

Read more about the cases:

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

Copyright 2026, NPR

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

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

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

But what is approval voting?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That pushback came from the North Dakota Legislature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrating the wins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key supporters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The long haul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When dead trees fall in Baltimore, the city doesn't pay thousands of dollars to dump them in landfills like some cities do. The trees are transported to a sorting and recycling facility that turns the old wood into furniture, flooring and other products.

The facility makes money for Baltimore and has become a model for other cities. But Shaun Preston, who runs the site, called Camp Small, said it might have imploded without operational research support from U.S. Forest Service scientists based in the agency's office in Baltimore.

"When this program started, the U.S. Forest Service was right there to offer expertise to help us with research, to help develop ideas," said Preston. "And then the Forest Service was like, let's look at how we can grow Camp Small and take it to the next level."

More than 1,000 Forest Service employees work in hundreds of Research and Development facilities and structures located across the country. Staff work out of greenhouses, laboratories and cabins in urban areas like Baltimore and in more rural offices near the 193 million acres of national forest and grassland that the agency manages. The employees work on a range of projects, from restoring native trees in Hawaii after invasive species take over to learning how to prevent wildfires in Montana. Those projects often include local partners like Camp Small, Forest Service employees said, and theirs is the largest forestry research network in the world.

But on March 31, the Forest Service announced a reorganization of the agency that would close facilities used for research, including the one in Baltimore. Three days later, President Donald Trump's 2027 budget proposed allocating $0 for Forest Service research, down from $309 million in 2026. More than 100 facilities are now being evaluated for potential closure, according to an NPR analysis.

At a budget hearing on April 16, Forest Service Chief Schulz said the agency was "trying to achieve fiscal responsibility" and that the changes were meant to bring the people who work for the agency closer to the land they are meant to manage. As part of the reorganization, Schulz also proposed moving the agency's headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah, and closing all 10 of the agency's regional offices, where employees work on permitting and land management.

"We are prioritizing the fundamentals of managing our national forest for their intended purposes and ensuring maximum value to the American taxpayer," Schulz told lawmakers at the hearing. "We've got to make sure that we live within our means."

229 employees work in the facilities slated for closure, according to the Forest Service Council of the National Federation of Federal Employees, the federal labor union that advocates for Forest Service workers. The Forest Service has denied that the pending closures are intended to force workers to quit and has suggested that employees in the facilities being evaluated for shut down would be consolidated into one location in Colorado.

But documents obtained by NPR, and interviews with current and former Forest Service researchers, show that much of the agency's research is already cheap and local – and closing research facilities could make it less so, while encouraging workers to leave the agency. The government already owns most of the facilities it is proposing to shutter, internal Forest Service documents reviewed by NPR reveal. Of the remaining buildings the Forest Service leases that are being evaluated for closure, some cost the government less than $1 in rent a year, leases obtained by NPR show.

"In my laboratory, we own the land outright and we own the buildings outright, so we're a pretty good deal," said Dr. Paul Hessburg, a Senior Research Ecologist who works in a Pacific Northwest Research Station lab in Wenatchee, Wash., one of the facilities being evaluated for closure.

The government does have to pay to maintain the buildings it owns. Deferred maintenance costs for those buildings amount to almost $3 billion, agency documents show. But the Forest Service also owns a range of other assets that it has to maintain that are more expensive. The deferred maintenance costs for those assets, which include roads, trails, bridges and dams, total more than $8 billion, according to the documents. Roads alone cost the agency more than double what it has to pay to maintain its facilities.

"Just because you're taking away the deferred maintenance cost of the research [buildings], it doesn't mean that area is going to become a zero-sum," said a current Forest Service employee who helps maintain the agency's infrastructure. "Because you still have the roads there. You could have a dam there. You could have a communication system there."

Current employees of the Forest Service requested that NPR not use their names because they are not permitted to speak publicly and said they feared retribution for doing so.

One of the buildings that the Forest Service does not own is the location in Fort Collins, Colo., where the agency has proposed to move researchers from facilities that are closing. That building costs the Forest Service $1 million a year in rent, documents reviewed by NPR show. Meanwhile, buildings the agency is proposing to shutter cost the Forest Service almost nothing in rental fees.

The lease that permits Forest Service scientists to use a 30,000 acre lot in Hilo, Hawaii, for instance, was signed in 2002, between the Department of Agriculture and the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources, and is valid through 2067. For renting the land located at the University of Hawaii for 65 years, the federal government paid a one-time fee of $1, the lease obtained by NPR shows.

The government does have to pay to maintain some of the buildings that it leases there, too, but there is no additional rental fee for the remainder of the term, the Hawaii lease states.

"They're only paying a dollar in rent to the university because they have a great agreement with the university," said Rachel Riemann, a former Forest Service research scientist who was based in New York and worked with the Forestry Inventory Analysis arm of the agency. "And yet that one's on the list for closure."

The Forest Service currently leases two properties in Michigan, from Michigan Technological University, in Houghton and L'Anse. Both are being evaluated for closure.

The lease for the five acre property in Houghton was signed in 1963 for a 49-year period, then extended for another 49 years in 2014. In 1963, the federal government paid Michigan Technological University a one-time rental fee of $1, "but no rental fee thereafter," according to the lease documents obtained by NPR. In addition, Forest Service researchers have access to Michigan Technological University's "instruments and laboratories at no cost" other than maintenance, the lease states. For the second facility in Michigan, in L'Anse, the Forest Service pays $600 a month to rent two rooms.

"All this tells me is that no one bothered to look at what we owned versus what we don't," said the Forest Service maintenance employee. "They picked locations that they wanted to move people to rather than looking where we already had assets and caused huge panic amongst staff by doing so."

Scientists say they won't move

Dr. Morgan Grove was one of the Forest Service scientists who supported Camp Small, the wood recycling facility in Baltimore. He also jumpstarted the cleanup of a 10-acre forest behind an inner city church and worked with other scientists to study the regeneration of white oak trees in plots at a public arboretum in Baltimore.

Oak trees were planted there three years ago and need about thirty years to grow, Grove said. The saplings can't be transplanted to new sites without disrupting the project, Grove added, since the intention of the research was to study how the trees survive for the next few decades under the specific environmental conditions in Baltimore.

"So how easy would it be to do that from Denver? Not happening," Grove said. "Remotely, it's really hard to provide sufficient support for how to manage a forest."

Then there's the relationships that are required between federal scientists and their partners, like the Baltimore pastors and the sawmill workers at Camp Small, said Grove, who retired from the Forest Service in 2025.

"It's important to recognize that in the Forest Service, we end up being kind of the convener of different interests," said Grove. "And if you're trying to convene from Denver or Salt Lake City, they no longer see you as being part of their community."

Moving to a new location would also disrupt and stop their research, four current Forest Service scientists from research facilities across the East and West coasts interviewed by NPR agreed.

"The research being done is hyperlocal. It's unique to the landscapes that it's supporting and then also the data sets that are in each of these buildings," said a current Forest Service scientist. "Closing these offices is going to result in the loss of irreplaceable data sets, which contain just vital information that has been gathered."

Some of the science the agency does is not optional. The agency's Forestry Inventory Analysis program is mandated by Congress to collect data to assess the condition of forests in the United States. About one third of all Forestry Inventory Analysis staff work at facilities being evaluated for closure, according to Forest Service research scientists. Those employees would have to travel to continue to monitor forests, which could cost the agency more than $2,000 per person per month if standard per diem rates for federal employees are followed, said Riemann, the former Forestry Inventory Analysis employee.

"Almost any lease would cost less than being in permanent travel status," Riemann said.

All four of the researchers NPR interviewed who are currently working for the Forest Service said they would quit the agency if told to move and said many of their colleagues feel the same way.

"I'm not moving to Fort Collins," said one researcher who works in a facility slated for closure. "The whole point was to do long-term, place-based ecological research."

Officials have said that they are still evaluating information about facilities slated for closure. When NPR requested an interview with the agency about that process, the Forest Service declined, but provided a statement.

"The transition will occur in phases. Employees will receive clear information about relocation timelines, available options, and resources to support their decisions," a USDA spokesperson said. "The number of relocations beyond those already identified in the National Capital Region is unknown at this time."

The union representing Forest Service employees argues the agency's proposed reorganization violates a law that states government funds cannot be reprogrammed without advance notification and approval by House and Senate appropriations committees.

"We had this language specifically put in there on purpose so that they wouldn't do any kind of reorganization and they're absolutely going against that," said Steven Gutierrez, one of the union's representatives, who said the committees were not notified in advance and did not authorize the Forest Service's proposal to close facilities.

The union is currently negotiating with Forest Service leadership, Gutierrez said. But if the reorganization of the agency's research division is carried out as it has been proposed, it will be the end of the Forest Service's strong science legacy, current employees believe.

One scientist called the proposed reorganization a "death blow" to research. Another scientist predicted that the proposed changes and the large loss of employees that would ensue, on top of the thousands of Forest Service employees lost last year, would cause the system to "entirely collapse." The reorganization would result in the public receiving less information about how to keep national forests healthy, protect communities from wildfires, and preserve green spaces in cities for people to enjoy, agency scientists said.

Hessburg, the researcher in the Pacific Northwest, has worked in forestry for 40 years. He said the cuts to research would cause long-term damage to lands that belong to the public.

"It takes an awful lot to manage nearly 200 million acres of national forest system land," said Hessburg. "If you eliminate the largest [forestry] research organization in the world, it has impacts."

NPR would like to hear from more people with information about federal agencies and the proposed reorganization of the Forest Service. You can send an email to the reporter of this article, Chiara Eisner, at ceisner@npr.org, or contact her on the end-to-end encrypted platform Signal, here. Her username is: ceis.78.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Gov. Tim Walz said Friday he requested the extradition of a Texas ICE agent to Minnesota for assault charges during the federal immigration surge.

Christian Castro, 52, was arrested last month in Texas for the shooting of north Minneapolis man Julio Sosa-Celis in the leg, according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. Walz said his team had sent a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this week asking for Castro’s extradition.

“We do this all the time, " Walz said. “It doesn’t get in the news. This one’s a little more high profile. Our expectation is they will follow through. There’d be no reason not to.”

Castro is charged with four counts of second-degree assault for the shooting.

Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether he would honor the extradition request.

With virtually no strings attached, Congress is on the verge of providing a sizable infusion of cash to the Department of Homeland Security, powering President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the remainder of his term in the White House.

The nearly $70 billion package, which cleared the Republican-held Senate in a middle of the night vote and now heads to the House, was declared a “rotten bill” by the Democratic leader and an "ATM for ICE” by pro-immigrant advocates.

But for those aligned with Trump’s campaign promise for the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, it all but guarantees an uninterrupted flow of money to carry out the administration's immigration enforcement operations — and comes on top of some $170 billion Congress already approved for the department last summer, as part of Trump's big tax breaks bill.

“We’re going to continue to arrest people, we’re going to continue to detain people and we’re going to keep deporting people,” Trump border czar Tom Homan told CBS News on Friday.

He hinted at summer sweeps of enforcement actions coming next to New York City.

More money, fewer guardrails

The work of Congress comes at a pivotal time for the Republican president and his party as they face restless voters before the midterm elections. About one in three U.S. adults know someone who has been impacted by Trump’s immigration operations, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. And as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, most say it’s no longer a great place for immigrants.

The funding package from Congress is just a slim dozen-page bill that carries none of the usual guardrails or directives typically demanded in legislation. It turns loose $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and billions for the Border Patrol, and others, prepaying the department’s operations into 2029.

“Their options are limitless in terms of what they can do with this money,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director at America's Voice, a longtime advocacy organization for immigrants.

“That is such a hard thing to accept as a taxpaying citizen that our dollars are going to this massive, mass deportation machine, while Americans are struggling to meet health care costs, and have access to food and they’re paying so much in gas.”

The administration has sought to shift the debate over its immigration operations, installing new leadership at Homeland Security in the aftermath of violent scenes of immigration enforcement earlier this year and the shooting deaths of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Rather than the dramatic street sweeps, the administration is working behind the scenes on actions that are stripping immigrant groups of their ability to remain in the U.S., by doing away with Temporary Protected Status or making it more difficult to secure green cards.

The so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children, have reported delays in renewing their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, exposing them to potential deportation.

But protests on American streets continue, including over detention conditions at the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey.

At the same time, Homeland Security continues to hire more ICE agents — it's hosting an employment fair next month in Florida — build more detention facilities and partner with countries around the world to take people who are being deported from the U.S.

In a statement, the department said Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin are “laser focused on ensuring the hardworking men and women” of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are fully funded. It said the package from Congress “will ensure our critical national security operations continue despite any Democrat attempts to hold our great patriotic employees hostage in the future.”

Power of the purse becomes a blank check

Typically a funding package from Congress would run hundreds pages or more, with a range of specific instructions about how the money can be spent and on what timelines.

Congress, after all, holds the power of the purse, and often uses that constitutional role to put checks on the administration.

But after Democrats refused to fund Homeland Security earlier this year following the violence in Minnesota, Republicans retaliated by using the congressional budget resolution process to muscle the package through on their own, outside of the traditional appropriations channels.

It’s the same process both parties have used in the past, most recently on Trump’s 2025 tax cuts bill.

“All this important oversight doesn’t happen,” said Bobby Kogan, a former staff member of the Senate Budget Committee and now at the Center for American Progress, a think tank.

Overnight, Democrats in the Senate worked to exert that authority, offering amendments to ensure Congress had some say in the process. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, for example, sought to protect “Dreamers” from deportation as their DACA renewals are being delayed. But those efforts all failed.

Deportations not enough, for some

Meanwhile the administration is under enormous pressure to deliver on its promise to boost deportations to some 1 million a year, after the Republican president's first year numbers fell short.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, is a leader of the Mass Deportation Coalition that is pushing the Trump administration to stick to its promises.

“Everyone’s talking about it like ICE is about to get another massive cash injection, and that’s not how I see it at all," he said. "They're getting like life-support money.”

“We’re not asking them to keep going,” Howell said. “We're asking them to start.”

Howell said there's little chance the Trump administration will be able to reach the president's deportation goals unless it drops its priority to go after what they call the “worst of the worst.”

His group put out a framework earlier this year that proposes more comprehensive sweeps to arrest immigrants, particularly in the workplace. He also wants to see the Trump administration make it more difficult for immigrants who are in the U.S. to use the banking system, get social services and obtain drivers licenses. Republicans in Congress have offered bills tackling some of those issues.

The administration has been amping up its own rhetoric and recently posted a new website that characterizes immigrants as “aliens” — with outer-space themes — and suggests ways the White House is working to prevent people from staying in the U.S.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services disenrolled 60 percent of providers from high-risk Medicaid programs, but only a small fraction of those were forwarded on for further investigation.

As part of the state’s agreement with the federal government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of Human Services was required to revalidate nearly 5,600 providers of high-risk Medicaid programs by May 31. According to data released Thursday, the agency disenrolled more than 3,400 providers, the majority due to incomplete paperwork and documentation.

For providers taken off the rolls, payment is stopped. The entities have two months to appeal. Officials also created a website for Minnesotans whose care has been disrupted due to a disenrollment.

But only 59 providers were flagged for further review by the department’s Office of Inspector General, the agency’s fraud fighting office. Details about those cases have not been made available.

“The paperwork is a critical step,” Deputy Commissioner Shireen Gandhi said in a written statement. “This is not just checking the box.”

Many providers expressed concerns that they were disenrolled simply because the agency ran out of time to revalidate them before the deadline. As of May 27, the last day the state updated data before the deadline, the majority of provider statuses remained pending.

When asked how many Medicaid recipients in Minnesota would be impacted by the mass disenrollment, a DHS spokesperson said the agency didn’t have an answer “at this time,” but said more than 800 appeals are already in progress “with more coming in daily.”

Sue Schettle, CEO of the Association of Residential Resources in Minnesota, said on Monday many members of her organization submitted the required materials to the agency, but never heard back.

“These are providers that have been doing this work for decades. They’re very legitimate providers that have never had this kind of scrutiny,” Schettle said. “They’re just caught in this terrible situation between the federal government and the state government.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration froze $243 million in Medicaid funding after saying Minnesota had not adequately addressed fraud in certain programs. The state adopted a corrective action plan, which included a requirement that the state implement a revalidation program for high-risk service providers by the end of May.

“These numbers are astonishing and problematic,” Kristin Robbins, Chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, said in a press release. “I am grateful Dr. Oz and his team at CMS have come in here to restore integrity in our Medicaid programs.”

The state agency said common reasons for disenrollment notices included “failure to disclose management authority or report change in ownership, failure to report changes in or maintain proper credentials… and incomplete applications.”

Providers had been asked to supply documentation about their ownership, locations and contacts as well as licenses and insurance information. DHS was also seeking verification of workers performing duties tied to the Medicaid programs.

Eleven-year-old Ederson Galicia Alva had just stepped off the plane and into the Miami airport’s dim hallways when federal agents pulled his mother aside for questioning. Again.

Panic welled up. His excitement at soon being back at recess with his Florida classmates fell away. Would the government take her away again?

This was not his first trauma. In 2018, when he was just 3 years old, Ederson was taken from his mother’s arms at the U.S.-Mexico border under the first Trump administration’s family separation policy and kept apart from her in a government facility for months. They were finally reunited after lawyers intervened. Then, in June of last year, he and his mother were separated a second time, despite legal protections meant to keep them and families like theirs together.

He later joined his mother in Guatemala. After a destitute, torturous 11 months in the indigenous highlands, Ederson’s family was allowed to return to Florida last week, following a federal judge’s order that the government had acted illegally.

Now, eight years after President Donald Trump’s forcible border separations came to an official halt following global outrage, an Associated Press investigation has found that the government has re-separated dozens of children from their families, despite a landmark legal settlement meant to keep them together. Some of their parents have been locked in immigration detention facilities for months, others deported back to their home countries after being taken from their families once again. In some cases, immigration officials conducting interior arrests deported people despite discovering they were legally off limits for removal, according to emails obtained by AP.

“Not only has the government refused to acknowledge the horror of the initial separations during Trump I, but it is now detaining and deporting these same families,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and lead counsel in the lawsuit that ended the policy. “These children have suffered enough without re-traumatizing them.”

Trump successfully ran for reelection on an anti-immigration platform. Under his second term, the administration has vowed to deport more than 1 million people per year. Federal agents have been plucking people from their communities so swiftly that, according to the Brookings Institution, now the parents of tens of thousands of children have been detained.

This time, family separations often look different from Trump’s first term. In 2018, Ederson and other children at the border were taken from their parents, who were detained separately and overwhelmingly charged criminally with illegal entry. Then, the government was unable to reunite them for months because adults and children’s information was kept in different computer systems. A judge barred the government from separating most families at the border and ordered the government to bring the families back together after the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit. Later, a court settlement banned most family separations to deter immigration until December 2031.

Today, if parents are arrested or deported under the president’s push for mass deportations, they are being made to choose whether to leave their children behind in the United States.

“DHS complies with all court orders, even as radical NGOs shop for the most favorable forum and activist judges seek to thwart our operations,” acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in response to AP requests for comment about the government’s policies toward separated families.

Government attorneys have argued in recent court filings that there are no legal restrictions on “the government’s statutory authority to execute orders of removal.” Bis added that enforcing immigration law was “not optional,” and that “every removal of an illegal alien helps restore order and reinforce the rule of law.”

Ederson’s family recently was allowed to return, but their status is still on shaky ground.

Separated at the border, then again in Florida

After being taken from his mother, Mirsy Maricela Alva López, and confined to a government shelter in Arizona as a toddler for four and a half months, Ederson barely recognized her once they were reunited, she said. Vivid nightmares haunted him throughout his time in elementary school, where he learned to read in English in classrooms amid lush lawns and palm trees less than 10 miles from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Winter White House.

Once a federal judge approved a settlement to the class action suit under the Biden administration, Ederson’s family and those like his got legal status to stay in the U.S., with pathways for residency and asylum, and his mother got a work permit. And after months of mental health services to address his ongoing fear that his mother would never return, in early June last year — about five months after the beginning of Trump’s second administration and the president’s resumed anti-immigration push — his therapist finally said he had made so much progress he could put his weekly sessions on pause.

Two weeks later, Alva López was stopped by federal agents as she and co-workers were en route to a landscaping job near Mar-a-Lago. The agents, wearing brown uniforms, never gave a reason for the stop or identified themselves before transferring Alva López to two Florida jails, then to ICE custody in Louisiana, and finally to a plane full of shackled deportees heading to Guatemala City, she said.

“I felt the very same thing I went through the first time,” Alva López said, weeping. “I was living it all over again.”

Alva López was separated from Ederson and his older sister, Briseidy, for a week, and not given the chance to speak with an immigration official about her status or legal protections, said Kelly Kribs, an attorney with the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, which has supported Alva López’s family’s return to the U.S.

When she finally managed to call Ederson and Briseidy, they couldn’t stop sobbing. Alva López said she asked her sister to buy airplane tickets to send them to Guatemala City. She met them the next day at the airport and traveled with them nine more hours down highways and rutted roads to reach San Martín Cuchumatán, a hamlet in the highlands where the children were born.

The three of them shared a tiny bedroom with a dusty floor with Alva López’s parents and brother in an adobe brick home with a sheet metal roof, nothing like the leafy cul-de-sacs of South Florida. The school, where all lessons are in Spanish, was a mile’s walk, and none of the children in town spoke English, Ederson said.

Instead of clocking in to trim the gardens of West Palm Beach estates, each day Alva López fed the chickens and ducks in a small coop behind the house, washed the family’s laundry by hand and cooked meals on an open fire.

And Ederson was back to waking up at night fearing his future. At Northmore Elementary School, he had been doing well in fifth grade. In Guatemala, he repeated fourth grade, this time in Spanish, and was quizzed on the history and culture of a country he barely knew. His friendships weren’t as close as in West Palm Beach. Sometimes when he felt sad, he watched the school’s old online videos to see his old friends.

“We used to play and chat. Sometimes they would help me when I didn’t understand the lesson, and I would help them with math,” he said, fighting back tears. “I have very few friends here.”

Ederson still doesn’t want to talk about the separations, and he can’t stop asking his mother why she went to work that day. But he is clear on one thing: he never wants to be apart from his mother again.

‘Lasting, excruciating harm’

In late 2017, immigration officials began forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, under a policy championed by Stephen Miller, Trump’s then-senior policy advisor who is now White House deputy chief of staff. After advocates got word, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in February 2018 to halt the practice called Ms. L v. U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, on behalf of a Congolese mother the Trump administration separated from her 7-year-old daughter for four months. It later became a class action suit.

It wasn’t until thousands of families were torn apart that a judge ordered the government to end separations, saying it caused “lasting, excruciating harm.” According to the ACLU’s most recent accounting, the number of separated parents and children, and their impacted family members covered by the settlement is far greater than had been previously reported — over 11,800 — and because the government deported so many people before the practice was banned, the full scope may never be known. The ACLU also provided AP with new information surrounding Ms. L class members who have been detained and deported during the second Trump administration, including that dozens of children were re-separated. Legal filings in the Ms. L case and other immigration attorneys working with separated families also detailed the re-separations of children.

Under a 2023 settlement agreement signed by the Biden administration, Ms. L class members — including separated parents, children and other close relatives — received special legal protections, pathways toward asylum and access to attorneys, work permits and support services. And over eight years, advocates and attorneys have been trying to help the families reunite and recover, traveling to the Guatemala rainforest and remote Honduran villages to inform class members of their rights, and offering them to apply for everything from humanitarian parole to work authorization permits to psychological counseling, benefits meant “to prevent any ongoing harm caused by the initial separation,” according to the settlement.

That changed when Trump began his second term. Support for separated families was never encoded by an act of Congress, and soon it started shrinking.

First, funding for legal services temporarily ended. Instead, the Trump administration said it would charge families $1,000 each to enter or stay in the country. Then, attorneys said, some parents were told to appear for more frequent ICE check-ins, and ordered to wear ankle monitors to record their movements. Many class members lost access to counseling.

By late last year, emails show the government had deported some protected family members even after being told by the ACLU that they were off limits as protected Ms. L class members.

Seven days before Christmas, ACLU attorney Natalie Behr wrote an urgent email to Department of Justice contacts, saying her team had learned that a protected relative was once again in ICE custody.

“We ask that you tell us why we were not notified of this class member’s detention within 24 hours. … this class member should not be removed,” Behr wrote.

A Washington DOJ trial attorney emailed back, saying he would ask ICE. ACLU attorneys followed up.

By the day after Christmas, it was already too late. He had been deported.

The problem is still surfacing. While the government is required by judge’s orders to immediately tell the ACLU when Ms. L class members are detained and to return re-separated families who have been deported, the Trump administration only disclosed in April that it had deported another protected person to Guatemala back in September, court filings show.

The same thing nearly happened to one of Alva López’s neighbors, who was picked up in West Palm Beach a few months after her deportation. The father also had done landscaping near Mar-a-Lago and had been separated at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 from his daughter. Under the first Trump administration, he was swiftly returned to Guatemala. As ACLU attorneys and government lawyers hashed out what separated families were due, he came back to Florida in 2021 to reunite with his children, one of whom had been released after spending months in a government detention facility.

In October, the government locked him up, first in Alligator Alcatraz, an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, then inside Camp East Montana in Texas, Kribs said.

At Camp East Montana, he was fed moldy food with worms, berated by guards and learned that a fellow detainee died after being mistreated by ICE officials, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal. ICE said the detainee died after experiencing “on-site medical distress,” and the El Paso medical examiner’s office later ruled the detainee experienced “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” Christmas and New Year’s Eve came and went, and by January he found it hard to keep up his hopes when his children called.

The ACLU filed a motion about Ms. L parents being detained, and the father was released from government detention in April. While he’s grateful to be back home in Florida with his children, he told AP he feels like he is still being tracked through his ankle monitor and the ICE check-ins he’s required to do every two weeks. His children still worry he won’t be there when they get out of school, he said.

Bis said DHS could impose conditions on parole, including electronic monitoring, regular reporting requirements, and even detention.”

‘A place where we can all be safe’

Sinri Baltazar, a mother from Honduras who was first separated from her then-5-year-old daughter in 2018, also was allowed under a judge’s order in April to return to Louisiana with her three children, including her youngest, a U.S. citizen.

It has not been easy. Baltazar, a member of the Afro-indigenous Garifuna community that faces discrimination in Honduras, was deported with her children last year after she said immigration officials told her to sign a document they said would permit her to keep her family together — only if they all left. Back in New Orleans, she said she was grateful her children could seek a better life, but they have been struggling to get by while living with an acquaintance from church.

“The only thing my children say is that they want to be home, in their own house,” Baltazar said. “I’m just trying to get us to a place where we can all be safe, and I hope for that for all the other families.”

As deportations have risen in the last year and a half, attorneys say separated families have become increasingly fearful about filling out government paperwork and many don’t know they can apply for asylum, a key benefit of the settlement that expires in December. The administration also hasn’t said whether it will extend a current, trimmed-back legal services contract for families that ends in August. Another deadline is looming as well: thousands of separated families need to request for any pending removal orders to be cancelled by December, or lose their ability to stay in the U.S. legally.

“There was never enough funding to keep up with the need,” said Anilú Chadwick, an attorney and senior director at the legal nonprofit Together & Free, which she said has supported 15 families that have been re-separated, including Baltazar’s. “Now we have to see if the government awards a new contract, and I gotta say as someone who has been on the clock to find and locate services, that is not enough time even in the best of circumstances.”

For separated families who are waiting for loved ones to be released from detention, or for paperwork to return to the U.S., however, time has been moving at a glacial pace.

Ever since Alva López was deported back to Guatemala nearly a year ago, she checked her phone each morning for word of when she and her children could return. Money started drying up. The children began forgetting their English slang. Briseidy, now 14, worried she would drift away from her American friends. Finally, two weeks ago, there was news: the government would bring her and her children back to Florida on an American Airlines flight, under a judge’s order.

The puppies she had bought Ederson to lighten his mood had died, and there were few friends and relatives to say goodbye to. So she packed up the siblings and their few possessions, their clothes now loose on their frames after losing weight since returning to Todos Santos Cuchumatán.

And finally, in the last week of May, passports and travel documents in hand, the family flew to Miami. Ederson said it felt like a miracle. But soon after landing, immigration officials pulled Alva López in for questioning, taking her photo and fingerprints all over again and re-examining every document she held. Their stay in the U.S. may be short. An immigration official granted her just two weeks’ humanitarian parole.

The government declined to comment specifically on Alva López’s case.

“I still haven’t told the children” about the two weeks’ parole, Alva López said the first day she woke up back in the family’s old neighborhood in West Palm Beach. “They’re going to worry that the same thing will happen again,” she said.

The Republican-led Senate is moving forward with legislation to fund immigration enforcement agencies after forcing the Trump administration to say it will drop its settlement fund for political allies and stripping a separate proposal for White House security from the bill.

The Senate voted 53-46 on Wednesday to begin debate on the roughly $70 billion bill to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. The legislation was delayed for weeks as Republican senators navigated the various obstacles to passage created by President Donald Trump and the White House, but they are now moving quickly to pass it after paring it back to its original form.

“Right now, the goal is to get the base bill across the finish line,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Still, Republicans will need to find enough votes to beat back multiple amendments that Democrats — and some Republicans — say they will offer to permanently ban Trump’s $1.776 billion settlement fund.

After fierce Republican pushback, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told House lawmakers at a hearing on Tuesday that “we are not moving forward with the fund, period.” But shortly after the Senate voted to move forward with the bill on Wednesday, Trump repeatedly defended the settlement in response to reporters’ questions at the White House.

When asked directly whether the fund is dead or just on hold, Trump responded: “I’d have to ask the lawyers, I don’t know.”

“I love it,” Trump said of the settlement. “I think it's so important.”

Republicans are using a process called budget reconciliation that enables them to pass the legislation without any Democratic votes, but they must first wade through a long series of amendment votes that could pose problems for the bill. That process is expected to start on Thursday.

Democratic amendments will test GOP unity

Republicans said they felt reassured by Blanche's promises to scrap the fund, which was part of a settlement resolving Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. GOP senators had revolted and left town two weeks ago after the Justice Department announced the payouts, which could potentially go to participants in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and other Trump allies.

Democrats say they want it written into the law.

“It is only a matter of time before Blanche and Trump go back on their word,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., predicted Wednesday morning.

After Trump's comments, Schumer posted on X that “this is EXACTLY why" Democrats would be forcing votes to ban it.

Some Republicans also planned to try and put Blanche's promise in writing. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has said he will offer an amendment to block any attempt at resurrecting the fund.

“We’ve got a sufficient number of Republicans who have been very clear they’ve got concerns there,” said Tillis.

Thune said earlier on Wednesday that Blanche’s comments were “extremely helpful” and that he thought most GOP senators were satisfied. He said he was working with Tillis and others who have discussed amendments as he tries to ensure he has enough votes for a simple majority in the 53-47 Senate.

“Keep in mind, we’ve got to keep them all together, make sure we’ve got 50 votes for it,” Thune said.

Money dropped for Trump's ballroom

The legislation was also delayed by the opposition to $1 billion in security funding for the White House, including for Trump’s new ballroom, that was added to the original bill.

Democrats and some Republicans questioned using taxpayer money for the massive project in a time of economic hardship for many voters. Democrats had planned amendments to strip that language, as well.

As various side issues temporarily derailed the legislation, Republicans have said their top priority is passing the ICE and Border Patrol funding that Democrats have blocked for months in protest of the administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

But success requires GOP unity in the Senate and the House before it can reach Trump.

Republican House leaders said Wednesday they would like to pass the bill before the end of the week, if the Senate can finish it. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said that House leaders were having internal conversations about it.

“We just need to make sure everybody’s there,” Scalise said.

It was unclear how Trump’s comments on the settlement would affect Republicans’ votes on the immigration spending bill. In addition to defending the settlement, he also praised the Jan. 6 defendants who could get payouts, saying they had been subjected to “abuse.”

Friction between White House, Senate threatens other priorities

Even as Republican senators have strongly defended Trump's agenda, a growing number of them have become frustrated with the president as he ignores what they see as their political needs.

The Justice Department announced the settlement fund just as the Senate had planned to move forward on the immigration spending bill, giving Democrats an opportunity to offer amendments that could divide Republicans in an election year. That came just as Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas both lost reelection bids after Trump endorsed their primary opponents.

Trump also tapped real estate scion Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as acting director of national intelligence on Tuesday, angering both Republicans and Democrats who said Pulte has no clear national security credentials. The appointment has complicated bipartisan negotiations on revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which expires at the end of next week.

At the same time, an increasing number of Republicans are voting against Trump's war in Iran. The House voted on Wednesday to halt U.S. military action there, following a Senate vote in May to advance its own war powers resolution.

Thune said he wasn't yet sure whether Republicans would be united on the immigration bill.

“We’ll find out," he told reporters.

Set a ball down on one end of the Audubon fire station and it’ll start rolling. The sinking foundation will carry it past the firetrucks that barely squeeze into the garage doors. And it will pass the racks that are stuffed with firefighting gear because there’s nowhere else to put them.

Before long, the ball might hit the hall’s torn back walls, where insulation is poking out and officials say mold is spreading. But, most likely, the ball will be stopped in its tracks by the cracks in the garage floor.

The station was built in 1963, the same year the northwestern Minnesota town was incorporated. And the town has needed a new one for decades, said firefighter and former Chief Chris Wiedenmeyer.

“It doesn't meet any sort of standards for safety,” he said.

He’s particularly concerned about the diesel exhaust from the trucks.

Since the trucks are parked right in front of his firefighting gear, Wiedenmeyer’s worried about the carcinogens that latch onto his equipment every time the truck starts. In a modern fire station, the gear should be in a dedicated, ventilated storage area.

“It probably won't be long when cancer will pass as the number one leading cause of death for active firefighters, and a lot of these are being tied back to … what you're exposed to in your own fire hall,” he said.

Replacing the station would cost $3 million, a heavy lift for a town of less than 600 people. So the city council unanimously approved going forward with putting a 0.5 percent sales tax on the ballot. But first, they’d need approval from the Minnesota Legislature.

Unfortunately for Audubon, and more than 30 other local governments with similar plans for implementing new sales taxes, the tax bill passed by the Legislature did not approve any requests for sales taxes this year.

“I basically took it — when it failed again this time — that ‘nobody cares about you,’” Wiedenmeyer said. “‘You’re just taken for granted. You’re going to show up, you’re going to do that job, and we don’t care. We’re not going to support you.’ And that’s a real kick in the gut.”

What happened?

State Sen. Rob Kupec, DFL-Moorhead, introduced the proposal for an Audubon sales tax to the Senate’s Committee on Taxes.

“Some of these fire halls are just outdated, and there's lots of them across the state,” he said. “And instead of them coming and asking for a bonding request, they're looking for a way to fund it themselves.”

One advantage of implementing a sales tax, as opposed to increasing property taxes, is that it allows cities to earn money from people other than residents, such as visitors.

Kupec said the committee only approves requests if they have some sort of regional impact. For example, Audubon’s fire station serves multiple townships outside of city limits.

“Everything basically that came before us that met that criteria, the Senate tax committee OK’d,” he said.

The Senate committee’s version of the tax bill approved 37 local tax proposals, including Audubon’s. Other proposals included taxes to upgrade parks in Vergas, build a new judicial center in Waseca County and replace a Public Works facility in Robbinsdale.

The Minnesota House Taxes Committee also heard proposals, and co-chair Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, supported them.

“There are some very, very important ones,” he said. “The state of Minnesota wasn't able this year to give any more money to … cities. So I was of the opinion that, well, we can help these cities by allowing them a local option sales tax to build a fire hall, to build a community center, to build all the different things we looked at.”

But when it was time to finally pass a tax bill at the end of session, the House’s version hadn’t made it out of the committee. After the closed-door negotiations between the Senate and House settled, the omnibus tax bill passed without any approved sales taxes.

Davids wasn’t pleased.

“We put together a very good list of local option sales taxes,” he said. “They were vetted before the committee, and the Democrats in the Senate, the Republicans in the Senate and the Republicans in the House supported the local option sales taxes,” he said.

That leaves one group.

“At the end of the day, the Democrats in the House killed it,” Davids said. “You'd have to ask them why, because no one can figure it out.”

Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, is the other co-chair of the House Tax Committee. She did not respond to MPR’s repeated requests for comment, but at an April hearing, she noted that sales taxes are considered regressive.

That means people with lower incomes pay a higher share of their earnings on the tax because they have less money to start with.

She also said funding public services through local sales taxes reinforces inequities between communities.

“Should only people who live with malls in their community or (a) big retail sales base have community centers? Have fire stations? Have the things in the bill?” Gomez said. “Or should we actually think about how it is that we equitably fund the basic public services that people need in a more thoughtful way?”

After Gomez finished her statement, Davids asked the testifying representative from Crosby, Minn., if the 2,000-person town had a mall, playing off of Gomez’s remark that only big towns with malls can raise money through a sales tax.

The representative from Crosby said no. No mall. But they still wanted a new sales tax to renovate a library, a community center, a park and the town’s city hall.

A long-running debate

Debates over local sales taxes are not new. Minnesota overhauled its tax system in the 1970s, when a series of laws dubbed the “Minnesota Miracle” reduced local taxes by providing more state school funding. It also created the modern Local Government Aid program.

“They put a prohibition in that cities could not enact other types of taxes, and then in the ‘90s this started to switch, where cities were coming to the legislature to get one-off authorization for special projects or different needs,” said Beth Johnston, lobbyist with the League of Minnesota Cities.

She said that’s when the framework was established that cities would have to get approval from the Legislature first before putting the idea before local voters. The process has changed a few times since, but the framework has largely stayed the same.

But the number of requests has been increasing. In 2023, lawmakers approved a record high of 32 new sales taxes.

“They also placed a moratorium on cities being able to come to the Legislature until this most recent legislative session,” Johnston said. “And in that meantime, there was a work group that came together to put recommendations for general authority for cities to collect sales taxes.”

Nothing came of those recommendations, so the two-year moratorium came and went without any changes.

Today, opinion is still split on what to do next. In her statement during the April hearing, Gomez said funding for public services should come out of a “statewide pot.”

By contrast, Kupec said the current system is a good one because it allows local governments to fund projects without costing the rest of the state, and local governments still need to win approval from their voters.

The League of Minnesota Cities wants to go further and give local governments more authority to fund certain capital projects themselves.

“The current process is definitely opaque,” Johnston said, “which (makes it) harder for cities to be able to plan and budget their capital needs.”

Davids would support the projects again next session but said success will probably depend on the result of this year’s elections.

“The Legislature will have a different makeup next year,” he said. “I'd say if the DFL is in control of the House under their current legislators, good luck.”

In Audubon's case, the city also isn’t sure what to do next. City officials said it will be prohibitively difficult to pay for a new fire station without a sales tax.

But Wiedenmeyer is pretty much over it. The fight for a new station is the main reason he stepped down as chief.

“It was a lot of time and a lot of extra work, meetings, township battles, funding battles, everything else,” he said. “All that extra stuff just kind of took a toll on me.”

Today, he’s still on the force as a volunteer firefighter, where he makes $15 a call. But the ongoing unaddressed health risks posed by the old station are weighing down his morale now, too.

“You come home, and you look at your family, and wonder, ‘Why keep doing it?’” he said. “When you get that thought in your head that nobody else cares, why should we keep doing it?”

A bipartisan majority in the Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to end the war with Iran, the clearest rebuke yet of President Trump's handling of the conflict and the subsequent economic fallout.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

The resolution had originally been set for a vote two weeks ago, but Republican leaders sent House members home early for a May recess when it appeared the largely Democratic-backed measure had enough Republican votes for passage. However, the extended break didn't shift GOP support to kill the measure.

Ahead of the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., defended President Trump's decision to attack Iran.

“Remember … Iran declared war on us 47 years ago. They chant ‘death to America.’ The president is trying to keep the people safe,” Johnson told reporters.

The vote is mostly symbolic. Democrats, despite multiple attempts, have been unable to pass a war powers resolution through the Republican-led Senate. Even if the measure passed in Congress, it would almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, whose administration has questioned the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.

Still, Senate Democrats have been inching closer. Last month, they won support on a procedural measure to set up a war powers vote after a handful of Republicans broke ranks to join them. A final vote has yet to be scheduled.

House Democrats celebrated the vote, and called on the Senate to follow suit.

“Following repeated attempts to get sycophants in the Republican-controlled House to join us, House Democrats successfully passed our War Powers Resolution today to stand up for the American people and hold Donald Trump accountable. It is now time for Senate Republicans to do the right thing,” read a statement from Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and his top two deputies, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and California's Pete Aguilar.

The administration has furiously pushed against the effort in both the House and Senate. Wednesday's vote signals his support for the war may be slipping even among some members of his own party.

Now more than 90 days into the conflict, some Republicans have expressed frustration that the war does not appear to have a clear end in sight. Talks to end the war have yet to gain clear traction, casting doubt on a fragile ceasefire. Just hours before the vote, Iran and the U.S. traded strikes in the Persian Gulf.

The conflict began on Feb 28 with strikes by U.S. and Israeli forces on Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, the president has 60 days to end hostilities if there has been no congressional authorization — though he is able to seek a 30-day extension. The same law also gives Congress the ability to end hostilities by voting on a resolution to end military action, subject to presidential veto.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., told reporters after the vote he chose to support the resolution because, “we have to follow the law,” referring to the War Powers Act.

“We're past the 60 days, so you have two choices. You either follow the law or you change the law. You can't violate the law. That's not an option,” Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick was joined in supporting the resolution by three other Republicans: Tom Barrett of Michigan, Ohio's Warren Davidson and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Following the Iran vote, top Republicans were also rebuked on a measure to provide aid to Ukraine. Six Republicans joined Democrats to move the measure forward, setting it up for a vote for final passage.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said he's hoping to shore up even more GOP votes to help Ukraine.

“Three years down the road they are still fighting for their own freedom,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y. “We can't let them down.”

Copyright 2026, NPR

Advocates for people with serious illnesses, like cancer and HIV, say the strict Medicaid work rules that the Trump administration released this week are likely to put ongoing treatments in jeopardy.

States must put the work requirements into effect by January 1. That was already a tight timeline, says Adrianna McIntyre, assistant professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“It takes states literally months — usually years — to make the types of changes to their systems that they needed to make for this new rule,” she says. “They were severely constrained by the timeline having a year and a half from the time of the law being passed to implement all of this.”

At stake is health coverage for 68 million low-income Americans on Medicaid, the health insurance system jointly funded by states and the federal government.

States must “make the changes, test the changes to make sure they're not going to break the system, and then go live,” McIntyre says.

The nearly 400-page interim final rule released Monday makes that process even harder. For months, federal officials have been meeting with states informally and giving them guidance, and states understood that people with conditions where continuous health insurance coverage was really important would be exempt.

“What the rule says, as published, is that that's actually not enough,” McIntyre explains. “The condition or the disease needs to be actively interfering with your ability to work. So people with early stage cancer who are in radiation treatment but still have the capacity to work, or people who have HIV but can still technically work, are not exempted from the work requirement.”

McIntyre and others foresee situations where a person newly diagnosed with cancer, who is working, loses Medicaid because they don't fill out the paperwork correctly. That could lead to patients losing coverage when they need it most.

Pitched as ‘a path to prosperity’

Republicans have long heralded work requirements as a way to encourage personal responsibility.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presented the policy to reporters at the White House Tuesday.

“If you're sitting at home, which is true for the millions of people who are able-bodied on Medicaid, on average, you're spending 6.1 hours watching television, or just hanging around,” Oz said. “So, as a path to prosperity, Congress very wisely said, ‘Let's get you back into the workforce.’”

One conservative group closely aligned with the Trump administration, the Paragon Health Institute, wrote in a statement that the rule “strikes the appropriate balance between necessary program integrity protections and accommodations for those who genuinely need assistance.”

Republicans passed the new rules in their big budget bill that President Trump signed on July 4, 2025. That law, which passed without any Democratic support, used major cuts to Medicaid to fund Trump's policy priorities, including tax cuts and the crackdown on immigration.

The work requirements are part of a $900 billion cut to Medicaid, and they are designed to limit who can be on the government health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that about a third of that $900 billion cut comes from the work requirements. CBO also said 5 million people will lose Medicaid coverage.

Most on Medicaid already work

The new requirements apply in the more than 40 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. For years, that has meant any low-income adult who does not have access to affordable insurance at work could enroll in Medicaid.

Starting in January, adults in those states, from age 19 to 64 will have to periodically prove that they are either working, going to school or volunteering at least 80 hours a month. Alternatively, they will have to prove that they are exempt from the work requirement.

Most adults who get Medicaid are already working, according to an analysis of government data by the health policy research organization KFF. About 1 in 5 people are not meeting the 80 hours-per-month threshold, KFF found, and this population had barriers that kept them from the workforce. Some could not find jobs; others were laid off; others had retired.

Advocates warn of dire consequences

Medical groups and advocates for patients uniformly panned the rule. A coalition of 48 patient organizations wrote in a joint statement: "Our organizations are deeply concerned the interim final rule does not protect people with serious or complex health conditions and would instead dramatically and inappropriately increase the number of people who will lose their healthcare coverage."

Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute, had been lobbying for months for people living with HIV to have a blanket exemption to no avail.

“We're just going to lose people to Medicaid and then they're going to get sick and then they're going to die,” he says. “So, yeah, I'm upset.”

He says his group will file comment on the final rule, and start lobbying state by state to try and get exemptions. He thinks there will be lawsuits filed as well. (Comments are open on the interim final rule until July, and the government has the option to make changes to it or not.)

The American Academy of Pediatrics also urged the government to change the rule.

“The new burdensome requirements that many parents will face under this rule will ultimately undermine families' health and financial stability,” Dr. Andrew D. Racine, the president of the AAP, wrote in a statement. “The policies to narrowly define who qualifies for exemptions will add to the state costs to administer the program, create headaches for families trying to navigate the bureaucracy, and harm the very people that Medicaid is meant to serve.”

No help to find work

Jennifer Wagner, who analyzes Medicaid eligibility and enrollment at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, points out that there's no funding here to help people find or keep work, as there is in other public programs with work requirements, like food assistance.

“That just implies or suggests that somebody could get a job if they wanted — they just need a little shove,” Wagner says. “Which just reflects a complete lack of understanding of what people are actually going through.”

She expects that, rather than improve workforce participation, the complex rules laid out by federal health officials will cause chaos and confusion. “We know from past experience in Medicaid and other programs that it's usually the eligible people who lose coverage because of the work requirement,” she says.

“Even if there's an exemption on paper that they qualify for, even if they are compliant technically of the policy, the act of reporting it — understanding what they have to do, filling out the right paperwork, providing the right verification if necessary — there's so much that can go wrong in that process that often leads to eligible people losing coverage,” Wagner explains.

Some Republican-led states are launching the requirement early, but most are expected to launch by Jan. 1.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Candidate filing is over in Minnesota. A double-digit field of Republican hopefuls and a half-dozen DFLers have already secured primary slots for the open U.S. Senate seat; 14 are running for governor, with an even split of DFL and GOP candidates.

The sizeable number of primary challengers comes despite the work over the weekend by GOP and DFL activists to endorse candidates at their conventions. It’s led some to question whether Minnesota should scrap conventions altogether and go directly to primaries.

“I do think at this point in time that's a really serious question that the Legislature should debate,” Mike Erlandson, chair of the Minnesota DFL from 1999 to 2005, told MPR News.

“It’s OK to have caucuses kind of at the start of the political process and let people come out and gather with their neighbors and talk about issues and talk about candidates,” Erlandson said, but he questioned whether “a couple thousand people on each side of the political spectrum” should be choosing candidates for all Minnesotans.

He questioned the efforts by some DFL activists over the weekend to not back Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s bid for governor, saying alternate candidates were inexperienced and had “absolutely no business running the state of Minnesota.”

Erlandson noted that Tim Walz and Mark Dayton were not the endorsed candidates during their first runs for governor.

Given the concerns, “I think it's really time for both political parties to take a look at that,” he said of ending endorsing conventions.

“The challenge, of course, is that the people that have to make the change are now elected officials,” he added. “And they're a product of that system, and it’s not always easy to get them to change something that they’re comfortable with.”

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player above.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has appointed members to a new state council tasked with documenting the impact of the federal immigration enforcement surge in the state.

Walz appointed 13 people, including retired Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, who will chair the panel.

Cahill was appointed to the bench by former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty and presided over the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2021. Cahill served as a judge from 2007 until his retirement in 2024.

Other appointees include several professors and organizers, the head of the Minnesota Farmers Union, a police chief and a public school superintendent:

• Ana Pottratz Acosta

• Kate Beane

• Jenna Chernega

• Abdulahi Farah

• Pakou Hang

• Liliana Letran-Garcia

• Kathleen Miller

• Fionnuala Ni Aolain

• Roger New

• Jose Pablo Obregon

• Zena Stenvik

• Gary Wertish

“Documenting history requires trusted leaders who are committed to listening, preserving people’s experiences, and ensuring that Minnesota’s story is not forgotten,” Walz said in a news release. “These council members bring deep expertise, lived experience, and a shared commitment to the truth. Their work will help create a lasting public record of both the harm endured and the resilience Minnesotans demonstrated during this difficult chapter in our state’s history.”

The governor’s office said the panel will gather evidence and testimony about the effects of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and enforcement surge — “both the harm endured and the generosity and resilience demonstrated by Minnesotans.”

Members will also issue recommendations to help the state recover and prevent potential harm in the future.

A plan for a new development in George Floyd Square is facing an uncertain path forward, after a committee of the Minneapolis City Council voted to deny it.

A team of city staff had recommended a partnership with Minnesota Agape Movement to redevelop the People’s Way, a defunct Speedway gas station on the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. The committee voted 4-2 against the plan.

The proposal will now go on to a vote by the full city council. If the council denies it, city staff can make a new recommendation — or restart the process of finding a community development partner.

The proposal arose from a city search for a community organization to lead development at the site, which is currently owned by the city and used by local residents and activists as a meeting place at the center of the square. Agape was chosen from among four groups that applied.

But some council members and local residents said Agape wasn’t the right group for the job. They pointed to a city survey conducted last year, which asked residents which of the applicants they preferred; results showed higher approval for a different group’s proposal.

At a meeting of the council’s business, housing and zoning committee Tuesday, council member Soren Stevenson urged his fellow council members to deny the partnership with Agape.

“We cannot ignore what constituents are clearly asking for,” Stevenson said. “This project will not be successful without the support and input of the residents who live, work and build community and care for George Floyd Square.”

The community survey showed the most support for a group called Rise and Remember: 58 percent of survey respondents said they agreed with Rise and Remember’s proposal, compared to 36 percent who agreed with Agape’s.

Rise and Remember currently oversees memorial preservation in the square.

Stevenson and council member Jason Chavez — who each represent portions of George Floyd Square — said they did not see the results of the city’s survey until after city staff had selected Agape as the developer.

Council members also raised concerns about Agape’s development experience. The group does violence intervention work, led by several former gang members, with a goal of steering young people away from violence. But council members noted that the group has never led a development project.

At Tuesday’s council committee meeting, city planners said Agape has assembled a team with more experience to help, including local developer VY Management and architectural firm HGA.

“City staff believe that Agape has put together a team with relevant experience,” said Miles Mercer, manager of business development with the city’s Community Planning and Economic Development department.

In Agape’s proposal submitted to the city, they suggested a six-story building for the People’s Way site, with space for a local business, a museum and a gift shop. Council members opposing the plan said that was too ambitious for a group with no development experience.

City staff clarified that the group would spend at least two more years finalizing a plan, which would not necessarily match that proposal.

“They have already realized the feasibility challenges of such a building and are scaling back,” Mercer said. “Agape will need to do more analysis and community engagement to formulate a viable development concept.”

Council member Aurin Chowdhury voted to deny the plan. She said her vote wasn’t a reflection of Agape’s experience or the scale of the proposal, but of the community’s preference. She said opting for the most popular group in the community survey would be a way to build trust, after contentious years of debate over street construction in the square, which angered some community members and activists.

“We lost that trust in that community a long time ago collectively, and here's our opportunity to repair it,” Chowdhury said. “We have to go with a group that does have that trust built in, because we can't supplement it.”

Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement that he wants a plan to move ahead soon.

“Voting down the selection and returning to the drawing board is the council’s prerogative. My goal is to stop the delay and achieve forward progress at George Floyd Square,” Frey said.

Some council members blamed Frey and city staff for a slower-than-expected timeline on the People’s Way project, after the team announced last year that it would have a decision by May 2025. The decision came a year later.

Even once a community partner is approved for the project, years of work still remain. The city plans to offer the community partner a two-year pre-development period, with the option to extend it by a year. The city would then sell the site to the partner, and construction could start.

In the meantime, the city will keep up maintenance of the property, which costs about $40,000 last year. Agape would take the time to fundraise for the project.

The full council is expected to vote on the proposed partnership with Agape next Thursday.

The primary election for California governor is too close to call, with vote counting continuing Wednesday. Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican business executive Steve Hilton lead the field with Democrat Tom Steyer in third place.

In California's unusual primary system, all candidates, regardless of party, appear on a single ballot open to any registered voter. The top two candidates then move on to the general election, even if they're from the same party. This year, voters had 60 names for governor to choose from.

The winner will lead the country's most populous state, where leaders often take on national political prominence. Incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom is at his two-term limit and could be a Democratic contender for president.

Becerra, former Health and Human Services secretary under President Joe Biden, pitched himself to voters as an experienced political leader who isn't afraid of President Trump, but his lead caps one of the most surprising and dramatic comebacks in recent state political history. As recently as April, polls were showing Becerra — also a former member of Congress and California attorney general — languishing in single digits in a crowded field.

In his remarks at his watch party in Los Angeles, Becerra noted his underdog status.

"Here in Hollywood's hometown, we love a good underdog success story," he said, drawing parallels between his campaign and his immigrant parents' success story in California. "Guess what? The underdog stayed in the fight. Like my parents, I never gave up. Never stopped putting one foot in front of the other. Never stopped believing in the beacon-like goodness of California. And thankfully, neither did you."

Hilton is a former Fox News commentator who also served as a political adviser to former British Prime Minister David Cameron. He was endorsed by President Trump in April, helping him to pull ahead of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other major Republican in the race. Hilton has campaigned on the idea that California needs change after 16 years under total Democratic control.

The race is narrowing down after a tumultuous campaign

At his watch party in Huntington Beach, the British-born candidate -- who became an American citizen five years ago -- said it was the "honor of his lifetime" to receive over 1 million votes so far.

"Change is coming to California and it's long overdue," Hilton said. "We're not there yet, but it's looking good. It looks very much as if Californians really will have the chance to vote for change in November and take our state in a new direction."

Democratic billionaire activist Steyer spent more than $213 million of his own money to boost his candidacy and push a progressive, populist message. While he was trailing Becerra and Hilton on Tuesday night, he said at his watch party in San Francisco that he remains confident he can close the gap in the days ahead.

"Together, we've scared the hell out of the corporate interests used to getting their way," Steyer said. "It might take some time to figure out where this is going. We're going to wait until every ballot is counted. We're gonna give democracy a time to work. And we know we finished really strong."

The early results are not certain to hold, in part because of unusual voting patterns in this primary election: Ballot-tracking data heading into Tuesday evening showed that Republicans were more likely to vote early by mail, while Democratic voters in this deep-blue state held onto their mail-in ballots or chose to vote in person. That's the reverse of recent elections, which saw more Democrats voting by mail and Republicans tending to vote in person on Election Day.

The uncertainty on election night capped a race that remained crowded and unsettled to the end. To some extent, the race was defined by who wasn't running.

Some of the state's most high-profile Democrats — former Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and California Attorney General Rob Bonta — all passed on a potential bid to succeed Newsom.

The race was disrupted in April when then-U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell's campaign for governor imploded amid allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Swalwell resigned from Congress shortly after the accusations surfaced and has denied assault allegations.

Swalwell had been gaining in polls and racking up high-profile endorsements, and his exit seemed to primarily benefit Becerra, who had been stuck in single digits in many polls. Ultimately, it quieted fears among Democrats who worried that the messy Democratic field could result in Bianco and Hilton winning the top spots in the June primary.

Marisa Lagos covers California politics at KQED and co-hosts the Political Breakdown show and podcast.

Copyright 2026, KQED

"THEY WALK AMONG US," declares a new White House web page in large, luminous green letters against a dark starry background. Above the title is the word "DECLASSIFIED."

The website, aliens.gov, continues to talk about the threat of "aliens" with the opening credits of "The X-Files" playing in the background, spitting out one letter at a time: "they do not belong here...Countless presidents, congressmen, and senior officials knew exactly what was happening. Instead of protecting American citizens, they chose to cover it up."

But the site isn't about extraterrestrials or alien encounters, even though President Trump had released more government files about possible extraterrestrial encounters days before. "These 'Aliens' are the millions of ILLEGALS...Deport them all," it says. "THEY WEREN'T LITTLE GREEN MEN."

Researchers decry dehumanizing wordplay that targets immigrants

"Aliens" has been a term in American law since the 1700s. One of its earliest appearances was in the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. The laws gave the president power to arrest, imprison and detain "aliens", or noncitizens, during wartime, and also restricted the freedom of expression for citizens. The laws were passed out of concern that noncitizens would sympathize with the French should the country go to war with the U.S., according to the National Archives. California struck the term "aliens" from its state code in 2021, calling the language "outdated and derogatory."

The wordplay fuses people's desire for hidden knowledge and pop culture with anti-immigrant sentiment, said Ernesto Castañeda, director of Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University.

"Saying ['alien'] instills fear," said Castañeda, who said that by further comparing noncitizens to extraterrestrials is "dehumanizing."

A part of the website refers to "aliens" with the pronoun "it": "If you've witnessed an Alien abduction, do not be alarmed," the government website says. "We will take care of it… and return it safely to its place of origin."

While many may dismiss the wordplay as a joke, even one of bad taste, said Castañeda, "for a few people, it may be another license to act violently against people that they may think are aliens, undocumented. They may be another incitement to hate crimes and to profiling people."

The website is yet another example of the Trump administration making light of the toll of immigration enforcement through a "memefied communication style," said Shannon McGregor, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies the role of media and social media in political processes. The government's communication and even governing style is "wrapped up in 'everything's a joke, nothing matters,' as an excuse for pushing the envelope over and over," she said.

McGregor said the "extraterrestrial" language ties into "white supremacist ideas." The website warned of an "invasion" of "aliens" and said "President Trump was the first to call out the real danger Aliens pose to every American family, every community, and the future of our nation."

What sets this website apart from previous messages, McGregor said, is that it's clearly propaganda, posted on an official government website. She said the page has authoritarian undertones, "this idea that there's only one person who can fix it. And the one savior…is Trump himself."

Immigration numbers with nebulous sources

The website lists over three million "ENCOUNTERS" in a dramatic display, but it's unclear what the number includes.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement counts detentions and arrests as "encounters." But the agency also uses the term to reference other types of interactions when ICE merely considers whether or not to enforce the law against a person, according to the Deportation Data Project, a group of researchers and attorneys that requests and puts out immigration enforcement datasets from the U.S. government.

There were up to about one million such ICE encounters from January 2025 to March 2026, according to data the group obtained from public records requests.

It's possible that the three million number also includes encounters with Customs and Border Protection officers, who also enforce immigration laws. CBP's data shows the agency totalled about 200,000 encounters each from two periods where NPR was able to access records, from Jan 2025 to May 2025 and from Oct 2025 until Apr 2026.

That is not the only data point the site uses without a clear source. The "alien arrests" map on the website displays the number of arrests for over thousands of localities starting from Jan 21, 2025 through now, totaling 200,000 across the country, citing ICE as source. However, the Deportation Data Project tabulated over 300,000 arrests from ICE data covering a shorter time frame.

In a statement, an unnamed White House spokesperson said, "The aliens.gov website pulls data directly from DHS arrest reports to communicate just how many illegal aliens are present in our country, and highlight the Trump Administration's efforts to remove them."

Website design may have involved AI

There are also signs that at least part of the website was created using AI tools. The website's source code includes comments like "← this is your spacing between lines" and "add some breathing room" which indicate that at least part of the code might have been generated with artificial intelligence tools. When such tools are used to assist with coding, they tend to include ample commentary, partially to help users follow along with what the tool is doing.

The administration has embraced AI-generated media in social media posts and has encouraged the use of AI in government, while the details on how it has been implemented have been scant.

The website appears to be a rush job, said McGregor. "It may be just to generate attention…away from the things that are really unpopular and harming President Trump and the Republican Party's credibility right now," she said, referencing high gas prices and the war with Iran.

The White House did not respond to questions about why it created the website or about its use of AI.

NPR's Kriti Singh contributed reporting to this story.

Copyright 2026, NPR

The field for one of the more surprising midterm battlegrounds is set, as nominees for Iowa's competitive governor, Senate and House races have been decided.

Democrats and Republicans alike are paying close attention to the Hawkeye State's politics and how voters are responding to candidates' pitches – and a national political environment where President Trump, Congress and the Democratic Party all face record-low approval ratings.

Iowa is also a state where Trump administration policies like tariffs and the war in Iran disproportionately impact farmers, and is a state governed by Republicans but has voted for Democrats in recent federal and state elections.

That includes current state Auditor Rob Sand, who ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor and is currently outraising Republican competitors in a race that experts say starts off as a true tossup.

Iowa Democrats choose their U.S. Senate nominee

For Democrats, the Senate primary presented dueling visions of the party's future direction outside of blue bastions. State Rep. Josh Turek defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls, according to an Associated Press race call.

Turek represents a Trump-won district in the state House and has the backing of establishment Democratic figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former Sen. Tom Harkin, who held the seat until retiring in 2015.

Wahls represents a deep blue state senate seat and had endorsements from several labor unions, progressive organizations and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Nationally and locally, Democrats express optimism that Trump's unpopularity and Turek's background will help win the seat in a quest to flip control of the U.S. Senate. Turek faces Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, who faced a nominal challenger in Tuesday's primary and has Trump's endorsement.

Republicans settle a crowded governor primary

For Republicans, a messy five-person contest seeking to replace outgoing Gov. Kim Reynolds led to frequent urging from party officials to unify after the primary. Last week, Trump continued his role as primary kingmaker and endorsed Rep. Randy Feenstra.

But in a rare rebuke to Trump's preferences, Iowa Republicans narrowly supported businessman Zach Lahn by a few thousand votes, according to a race call by the Associated Press.

Iowa's governor's race is one of a handful of the 36 gubernatorial contests that is expected to be competitive in November.

Speaking at Iowa's Faith and Freedom Spring Kickoff last month in Clive, Iowa, Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann interviewed the gubernatorial candidates and called for "unity after the primary."

"If we don't do that, then there could be consequences," he said. "Let's let the grassroots speak, that's what the primary is."

Competitive House matchups are set

Three of Iowa's four congressional districts are competitive in the upcoming general election. In Iowa's 1st Congressional District, Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks will face off against former Democratic state Rep. Christina Bohannan in a rematch of their 2024 race. Miller-Meeks won that election by fewer than 800 votes in a much friendlier environment for Republicans.

Iowa's 3rd Congressional District will see incumbent Rep. Zach Nunn face off against Democratic state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, who has won a series of tough races in Republican-heavy districts in the Iowa State Legislature.

In the open 2nd Congressional District race, Republicans nominated former state Rep. Joe Mitchell, who will face off against Democratic state Rep. Lindsay James.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Luke Gulbranson had just gotten off the phone with his parents, was sipping his morning coffee, reciting his daily prayers and watching President Trump speak with reporters when he had a realization: he was going to run for Congress.

"In that moment I was like, 'Wait, I'm going to do this. I'm going to actually throw my hat in the ring and do this,'" Gulbranson told NPR about his decision to challenge Republican Rep. Peter Stauber in Minnesota's 8th Congressional District as a Democrat.

Gulbranson is a political newcomer. This is his first campaign for elected office. But he's no stranger to life in the public eye. Before he entered the race, millions watched Gulbranson for three seasons on Bravo's reality television series "Summer House" and two seasons of its spin-off "Winter House."

He isn't the only former reality TV star making a political debut in 2026 — at least two others are hopping into the political arena. Farrah Abraham, former star of MTV's "Teen Mom," announced she is running for Austin City Council, though she has not filed the necessary paperwork to officially run. And perhaps most well-known this election cycle, Spencer Pratt, the "villain" of MTV's early 2000s hit show "The Hills" is vying to become the next mayor of Los Angeles. While some people may consider reality shows unserious, dramatic and even trashy, the genre seems to have become a training ground for politics.

David Bresenham is an executive producer of reality TV Shows. Bresenham — who is also a lecturer at Stanford University where he teaches a class about reality shows and society — believes reality TV stars have what it takes to withstand the metaphorical bloodbath that politics can become.

These stars know how to navigate conflict, work a camera and often have experience dealing with public backlash. While traditional politicians are figuring out how to handle criticism, build name recognition and reach audiences through newer mediums, like social media, reality tv stars already have those credentials.

"Politics, certainly today, you need to be able to interact well with cameras. You need to be able to speak in soundbites. And you need to be able to present your ideas as succinctly as possible," Bresenham said. "If you've had success in reality TV, you're probably pretty good at those."

Gulbranson doesn't see his time on television as an advantage against his opponents but he does believe it prepared him for politics in a way. In his view, politics isn't for the faint of heart and neither is being cast on a reality show.

"I definitely think it helps me in having thick skin because I've noticed that politics is actually worse than reality television, " Gulbranson said.

The characters on the screen are, by nature of the genre, constantly and viciously judged by a distant audience; everyone who watches has an opinion about what is unfolding in the latest episode and it impacts how the public perceives a person. On "Summer House," Gulbranson was known as the small town, dreamy guy with a reputation of toying with the emotions of some of his female housemates and being cast in that role can be difficult. Still, Gulbranson lives beyond the edit.

"I'm confident in who I am as a man and as I continue to meet people on the campaign trail, they see that, too," he said.

After his time on TV, Gulbranson moved back to his hometown of Eveleth, Minn., where he manages his own maple syrup business and coaches hockey.

Instead of trying to connect with constituents through the parasocial relationship created by television, he's leaning into his upbringing.

Gulbranson describes himself as a "welfare kid" who grew up on powdered milk and food stamps. Now, at 42-years-old, he said he is noticing that same struggle in the community he grew up in and across Northern Minnesota. His parents, who he said should be retired by now, still work because they can't afford not to. Gulbranson's mom has leukemia and his dad is disabled with diabetes. He's not worried about his reality TV persona. He said he's worried about affordability, the shrinking middle class, the loss of union jobs and access to child care and healthcare.

"In reality television, it affects me. It affects the way I'm perceived on how I'm edited and produced and stuff. But with Congress, it affects the lives of other people. You can watch a TV show and you might care about it, but it's not affecting your health care, right? It's not affecting the cost of goods or every time you're putting gas in the car," he said.

Bresenham, the reality show executive producer and lecturer at Stanford, said for all of the genre's faults, it has placed a great amount of social currency on being reliable, authentic and shameless. Even if the person on the other side of the screen disagrees with their position, there is usually a mutual respect for the star standing in their convictions.

Enter Spencer Pratt.

Pratt, who didn't respond to NPR's interview requests, told Joe Rogan in an April interview that he never "wanted to run for political office or have anything to do with politicians." But that all changed on Jan. 7 of last year, when his house burned to the ground in a wildfire that swept through LA's affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

"I see that nobody is stepping up to run against the mayor who's responsible for this disaster and so many other disasters. So it came to the point where I got so sick of just being, as the younger people say in the comments section, a yapper," Pratt told Rogan.

Pratt is seemingly able to separate online chatter from real life. Since he participated in the LA mayoral debate against incumbent Karen Bass and city councilor Nithya Raman, he's gained notoriety online, especially among Republican commentators.

On Instagram's Threads, Pratt distanced himself from either party, even though he is a registered Republican.

"There's no R next to my name, there's no D next to my name. I'm not part of a political party, because I hate politicians," he wrote. "I'm a pissed off Angeleno who loves my city and is fed up with what corrupt politicians have done to her."

Pratt is running on a platform he considers, as he told Us Magazine, "common sense American." He said he would deal with crime and homelessness in America's second largest city, while cultivating the construction of housing with less red tape. Pratt has also embraced his public figure status. Pratt hasn't shied away from his reality TV past, writing on social media that he's been "in the public eye most of my life and there isn't any dirt you can find on me that hasn't already been aired."

Bresenham said one of the powers of reality TV is the stars being able to reinvent themselves. That's what he sees Pratt doing – taking the skills he's learned from spending his adult life in the public eye and shamelessly creating a new Pratt era.

Bresenham said people like Pratt and Gulbranson are relatable in a way. That alone is a huge benefit to voters.

"We vote for people we want to have a beer with," he said. "If you watch the shows, these people have been in your living rooms, you've spent a lot of time ... talking about them. Even if you don't like them, they're familiar to you."

Copyright 2026, NPR

Gazing out from the top floor of a building that overlooks the state Capitol, John Hoffman took in the panoramic view and the state senator reflected on yet another heavy moment.

His wife, Yvette, stood next to him. He was there to file for reelection.

“I’m grateful we’re here to see it,” she said. “We almost weren’t.”

It has been almost a year since the Hoffmans had their peace of mind shattered. A gunman disguised as a police officer came to their door. When they cracked it open, the shooter fired into their home, bullets poured in — piercing them both. In her Pooh Bear pajamas, Yvette forced the door shut and their daughter, Hope, called 911.

John lay on the floor of his home with multiple bullet wounds, unsure whether he’d make it through the night. He said his daughter’s calm under pressure helped save their lives.

After a year of surgeries, physical therapy and healing, Hoffman isn’t retreating from public life. He’s leaning further into it.

The four-term DFLer is seeking to return to the Legislature but faces a repeat race with the Republican who challenged him four years ago, Karen Attia, who filed for the ballot just before Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline.

His decision to come back was a difficult one for him and his family as they considered the potential risk they’d face remaining in public life.

“People would understand if we would have just said, ‘Time to find something else.’ Right?” the senator said. “But then it would win, evil would win, and there's so much that needs to be done.”

Yvette agreed, “We are not going to let a parasite sitting in a cell dictate the important work ahead, and so here we are.”

At the Capitol and beyond, the couple has tried to highlight their story to encourage people to ratchet down the political rhetoric.

“I guess, until you're shot eight times, because I was, maybe you just need to have some empathy,” Yvette said. “We've lost that, so let's get back to it.”

Sen. Hoffman chastised a colleague in committee this spring after the lawmaker referred to people without legal status as “illegals.” And on multiple occasions he urged his colleagues to let cooler heads prevail in debates.

“There seems to be that continuation of polarization that's occurring. It’s not OK,” John Hoffman said. “I've addressed it individually to people, publicly. I tried to address it too, and we just got to keep moving forward on it.”

He’s also tried to keep the memory of his colleague and “political kid sister” — House Speaker Melissa Hortman — alive. The same shooter who targeted the Hoffmans, Vance Boelter, is alleged to have killed Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home along with their golden retriever, Gilbert.

Sen. Hoffman helped ensure that the state will name a solar garden program for Hortman, a tribute because she worked to create the program. A stretch of highway that runs through both of their districts will be named in her honor.

And to help deter attacks like those lawmakers experienced on June 14, those who impersonate a police officer will see stiffer penalties. That was another Hoffman priority this year.

There are also additional safety measures in place at the Capitol and a new unit will be established to protect elected officials against threats.

“I still get threatening voicemails. I still get threatening emails, and to the point where my staff have, we've turned some of those voicemails in,” he said. “That's the polarization that's happening in politics. We have no room for that, we need to stop it.”

The senator is still a gregarious personality at the Capitol. He cracks jokes with colleagues and welcomes all staff members or legislative assistants that want to drop by his office for a snack or a quick “Hello.”

But his “fight or flight” sense kicks in at times when he doesn’t expect it. An unexpected sound or unfamiliar voice can provoke a stress response.

“I'm more observant of where I'm at and who's around me,” he said. "If I heard a voice in the hallway that I didn't understand, I would stop, you know, because that you're that's a, that's a reaction just to the fact that when somebody has trauma.”

He also quips that his doctor wouldn’t be happy to hear about his calendar packed with committee hearings, constituent meetings and long floor sessions in the Senate.

Yvette said legislative families take a risk when a spouse files to run for office. But, for now, they feel like it’s worth it.

“This is important,” she said. “So I'll just get another pair of Winnie the Pooh pajamas, and get some heavy duty locks on our doors, and all kinds of gadgets and gizmos, and we'll do it again.”

Minnesota Republicans on Saturday backed businessman Kendall Qualls as the party’s candidate for governor, but that didn’t settle the issue.

Despite losing out on the Republican endorsement, Minnesota GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth will run in an August primary election for the Republican Party nomination for governor. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is also running in the primary.

Having the candidate question stay open into August is not ideal, said Ron Carey, chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota from 2005 to 2009. He was the last state GOP chair to see his candidate, Tim Pawlenty, elected governor.

Political party endorsements were once embraced as a way to avoid intraparty battles and to sharpen the focus on winning the general election, Carey told MPR News.

“I would hope that we could have a situation where we could start having unity, because it's going to be an uphill battle to take on Amy Klobuchar in November,” he said.

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player above.

Attorneys for the family of George Floyd are calling on Minnesota Republican Party leaders to apologize for a moment of silence held at the party convention for the former police officer convicted in Floyd’s murder.

At last weekend’s GOP convention in Duluth, a delegate made a motion for a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin, who is alive and serving a lengthy prison sentence. The convention’s presiding officer on Saturday morning put it to a voice vote of those in attendance, who supported the motion — and the moment of silence was observed, lasting about 10 seconds.

The Floyd family’s attorneys, including civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, issued a statement Tuesday saying they are “sickened by this lack of respect.”

“The audacity of the Minnesota Republican Party to honor an individual who has both been convicted by a jury of his peers for the murder of a fellow human being, while at the same time violated a professional oath to protect and serve his community, is disgusting,” the statement read.

The attorneys said they “urge all who planned and participated in this tribute to deeply reflect on the rule of law.”

Among others condemning the moment of silence, Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison — whose office prosecuted Chauvin following the killing of Floyd in 2020 — issued a statement saying he was “heartbroken and frankly shocked.”

“George Floyd’s children lost their father. His siblings lost their brother. His community lost a neighbor and friend. That loss is permanent and irreparable. The jury heard all the evidence. The appeals courts reviewed every claim. Justice was rendered according to our system of law,” Ellison wrote.

“To honor the man convicted of murdering George Floyd — days after the very anniversary of that terrible day — is an act of profound cruelty to the Floyd family and to every Minnesotan who believes in accountability under law.”

In a statement to KARE 11, Minnesota Republican Party officials called what happened Saturday “a spontaneous motion brought forward from the convention floor.”

“A moment of silent prayer should not be mischaracterized as an official policy position, platform statement, or message from the Republican Party of Minnesota. It was a floor action taken by delegates, not leadership,” the statement read.

Republican-endorsed Minnesota governor candidate Kendall Qualls said he was not involved in the motion — and he said he was surprised by it.

Qualls said he would have recommended a broader moment of silence to support law enforcement officers.

“They’ve been made to be scapegoats for the last eight to 10 years, and I would have had a moment of silence for officers that have fallen on duty,” he said. “There are some concerns that people have about the Chauvin case. I don’t know if that was the best venue to do that.”

House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who is running in the Republican governor primary, said she wasn’t in the room when the Chauvin matter arose. Like Qualls, she said she would have preferred a moment of silence for fallen officers instead.

She declined to say if she would support pardoning Chauvin, an issue that could come before the three-member pardons board that a Minnesota governor chairs.

“There’s a lot that goes into any type of decision,” Demuth said.

House Speaker Lisa Demuth will run in an August primary election for the Republican Party nomination for governor, reversing course from an earlier pledge to leave the race if not endorsed.

Demuth filed her paperwork with the secretary of state’s office then held a rally on the Capitol steps, surrounded by supporters waving signs and wearing big-letter “DEMUTH” hats.

“Minnesotans are really welcoming this opportunity, though unexpected, to have a voice in the process,” she said, describing how fielded messages urging her to go forward.

“We will win that primary,” she said. “Our eyes are on November.”

Tuesday’s announcement comes days after GOP delegates endorsed businessman Kendall Qualls at the party’s convention in Duluth. On Monday, Republican Party Chair Alex Plechash released Republican candidates for governor from prior pledges after the party experienced technical issues and hourslong delays with voting in the race.

Qualls accused her of putting herself ahead of the party’s well being.

“She is putting vanity and political ambitions ahead of giving Republicans their best chance in decades to elect a conservative governor,” Qualls said in a written statement.

Demuth made her announcement on the final day of candidate filing.

Her entry into the primary creates more uncertainty for Republicans as they vie for an open governor’s office — one they haven’t held since early 2011. Qualls and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell are already on the primary ballot along with a few other lesser-known candidates.

Demuth said encouragement from donors, pleading by supporters and a permission slip from the state party chair contributed to her decision to remain in the governor's race. In the most-recent campaign finance reports, she had the most money of any GOP candidate and there’s an outside group called Restore Sanity that has been airing comic book-themed commercials on her behalf, casting her as a state government superhero.

“We are well positioned to defeat the DFL machine here in the state of Minnesota, much more well positioned financially and going forward than any other candidate,” Demuth said.

In giving unendorsed candidates a pass to carry on, Plechash said it was “because of the unusual circumstances and the confusion caused by the disruption” over voting devices that were called into question.

“Those candidates may make their own decision about whether to continue their campaign to a primary,” he said in a written statement. But, he added, “Only our endorsed candidate for governor, Kendall Qualls, will receive the full support, resources and organizational backing of the state party.”

Qualls said he feels confident about prevailing in August. But he slammed Demuth for reneging on the endorsement pledge.

“The sad part is that when we win in August, we will have wasted time and money fighting amongst ourselves to come to the same conclusion: victory for our campaign,” he said.

Former Minnesota Republican Party Chair Ron Carey told MPR News’ Morning Edition that Demuth’s entry into the race could “muddy the waters” but likely wouldn’t knock out the value of the endorsement. Republican primary voters in Minnesota have historically stood by the candidate that delegates endorsed.

“We fought very diligently to make sure that endorsement was the gold standard that candidates would fight for that, and we wouldn't have these battles dragging out into August for the primary,” Carey said of his time as chair from 2005 to 2009. “I would hope that we could have a situation where we could start having unity, because it's going to be an uphill battle to take on Amy Klobuchar in November, and we need to have all Republicans pulling in the same direction.”

Former state Sen. Dave Osmek said the endorsement couldn’t be trusted due to issues with electronic voting devices used at the convention.

“This endorsement process was absolutely, positively corrupted,” Osmek, a former campaign adviser to Qualls, said. “The fruit, which is the endorsed candidate, is coming from a poison tree. I'm not mincing words.”

Osmek said Demuth could buck the trend among GOP voters and win the party’s nomination.

“People who understand that experience and leadership, proven leadership matters, are going to go with Lisa Demuth,” he said.

Klobuchar, a U.S. senator, won the DFL Party’s endorsement at the state convention in Rochester. There is also a cluster of candidates with minor campaign operations running in the DFL primary.

Gov. Tim Walz dropped his bid for a third term in January.

DFLers have won the past four governor’s races in Minnesota. Tim Pawlenty was the last Republican to hold the office and won his second term in 2006 — marking the last time the GOP won a statewide race in Minnesota.

When Miyah Monk of Minneapolis was about 10 years old, the state removed her from the care of her mother and placed her in a foster home. The family provided for her basic needs, but Monk says they gave her little else, so during high school, she worked part time jobs so she could buy herself food and clothing. When she turned 18 and left the foster home, Monk was briefly unhoused until she could find her own place.

Monk, now 23, is trying to build a life for herself. She’s been working off and on and is planning to go back to school in the fall. She also wants to find better housing. She said something that really helped her as she transitioned out of foster care toward self sufficiency was the federal supplemental nutrition program, known as SNAP.

But she and many other young adults in Minnesota who have aged out of foster care lost their federal food assistance benefits on June 1 because of stricter work and education requirements that went into effect as part of what President Trump calls his “One Big Beautiful Bill” act. Now many young adults transitioning out of foster care may struggle to get enough to eat.

“[I’ve] got to find out how I’m gonna get food,” Monk told MPR News. “Where I’m gonna get the food? How much the food is gonna be, on top of just paying bills, still going to school, having to pay for stuff for school? I’m worried about how I’m going to eat, if SNAP is my only way of eating, I’m going to have to find resources for food. How [am I] going to get the resources for the food?”

Minnesotans between the ages of 18 and 24 who aged out of foster care face all kinds of challenges. Many are still struggling with the trauma of what led them into foster care in the first place, and now have difficulty finding safe and adequate housing, enrolling in school, or finding a good paying job. They earn an average of about $575 per month, which is only about a third of what most other people their age earn, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

SNAP was a big help, Monk said. But, she doesn’t meet the new federal work requirements and won’t meet the education requirement until school starts in the fall, so losing SNAP now is a huge setback for her.

“It will give me more challenges in life due to the fact that I’m trying to get in school, and trying to find housing,” she said. “SNAP getting taken away will cause a domino effect for me.”

Many young adults transitioning out of foster care didn’t even receive SNAP benefits. Some didn’t know they were eligible or couldn’t complete the complicated application process.

As a result, a 2024 research study found that 30 percent of these 18 to 24 year olds were already food insecure, according to the Center for the Study of Social Policy. Advocates are worried that number will likely soar now under the new, stricter eligibility rules that require recipients to work or be in school at least 20 hours a week.

Whitney Behle, community engagement manager for Foster Advocates, a Minnesota-based nonprofit seeking to improve the child welfare system, said there are not enough resources to help those who are transitioning out of foster care.

“SNAP isn’t just supporting groceries,” Behle said. “It is supporting the economic crisis that is being faced by many in our community, which is to afford every day living with the lack of supports that they even have in the first place, to engage in this transition to adulthood.”

And Behle said these new federal rules will likely set many former fosters up for failure as young adults, as the loss of SNAP food assistance perpetuates a cycle.

“You lose your grocery money, so now, am I deciding between housing stability and being unhoused?” Behle said. “Am I deciding between keeping gas in my car so I can make it to my job, so I can keep the only other income I have?”

The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families told MPR News in an email statement that the federal legislation restricting SNAP benefits quote “is making it harder for people to get and keep food assistance, as the law expanded SNAP work requirements for youth aging out of foster care.”

But the agency said it did not have data on how many Minnesotans would be affected.

Foster Advocates and some Minnesota lawmakers had pushed for several bills during the just finished legislative session specifically aimed at better supporting foster youth, including those transitioning out of foster care.

Those bills ultimately stalled in committee and weren’t called for a vote before the session adjourned.

Miyah Monk said she’s worried about how these new SNAP work requirements will impact not just her, but other former foster youth.

“This is how we eat, and so to just take everyone off is, like, a lot," Monk said. “A lot of people are going to be in need. A lot of people are going to be hungry.”

Correction (June 2, 2026): An earlier version of this story misspelled Whitney Behle's last name. It has been corrected.

As the candidate filing period comes to a close, the race to fill an open state Senate seat in Rochester is shaping up to become a critical battleground as both of Minnesota’s major political parties fight for control of a divided Legislature.

The GOP incumbent, Sen. Carla Nelson, is retiring. At least three fellow Republicans have filed to run for the seat, including Chuck Bradford, Dan Sepeda and former State House Rep. Nels Pierson.

Pierson represented the area from 2015 until 2023 and, more recently, has worked in real estate. In a statement announcing his candidacy, he said his previous service in the Minnesota House has well prepared him for the role.

“I’ve enjoyed bringing people together to find lasting solutions,” he said. “It was an honor to represent our neighbors in the Minnesota House for eight years, and I hope to continue that work in the State Senate by applying the same strong work ethic and problem-solving approach.”

Nelson announced earlier this year that she would retire at the end of this term after representing Rochester in the House and then the Senate for nearly two decades.

“Serving the people of Rochester and southeastern Minnesota has been a great privilege and responsibility,” Sen. Nelson said in a statement announcing her retirement. “For many years, the people of this district have given me their trust, and that is a gift I will carry with me. I look forward to new ways to serve.”

Nelson has been the lone Republican representing Rochester for several years. While she’s handily beat Democrats in previous elections, Rochester is increasingly blue. A big factor is Rochester’s demographic growth, particularly as more people with advanced degrees flock to Mayo Clinic and related businesses for work.

Those transplants tend to be more liberal on social issues, including abortion, racial and gender equality, and safety net programs.

DFL party chair Richard Carlbom said Rochester’s demographic shifts represent a real opportunity for Democrats to flip the seat from red to blue.

He said the party plans to put significant resources behind the campaign of DFLer Simon Glaser, who has the party endorsement and is the only DFLer who has filed to run for Nelson’s seat so far.

"Now that [Nelson] has decided to retire, Simon Glaser, a public school teacher from Rochester, is going to win that seat,” Carlbom said. “He's going to knock on 17,000 doors. He has a plan to reach out to voters, have one-on-one conversations ... and I'm really excited about our chances in that district."