President Donald Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he exacerbates his trade war with Canada.

The Republican president signed an executive order that updated the lake's name for the U.S. geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.

Trump has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the U.S. announced it was imposing 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down. Trump has been needling America’s northern neighbor since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the U.S. once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.

Canada responded to Trump’s import taxes this week by imposing retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment

Trump, who signed the order as he was sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, had a large sign behind him propped on a stand with a map of the Great Lakes. Over Lake Ontario, in big red letters, the map read “Lake America.”

On the other side of the president was another map with the words, “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER.”

He told reporters that Canada is “the worst” to deal with on trade. “They feel entitled and we can’t have that,” he said.

The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the U.S. and Canada share borders along.

The move, which Trump said was “effective immediately,” is reminiscent of his move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.’”

Trump on Thursday suggested his push to rename bodies of water may not be finished.

“So, if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean,” Trump said. “So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them.”

Minnesota's Secretary of State's Office warns that it's too late to start a recount of the governor's race primary and complete it before ballots need to be prepared for the general election.

A filing Wednesday with the state Supreme Court seeks dismissal of Republican candidate Mike Lindell's bid for a hand recount.

Lindell failed to formally request and pay for a recount by a Monday deadline. He went to the high court to seek a more-expansive recount than a state-approved plan. He objected to the structure in which only votes for him and Lisa Demuth would be counted by name and all others would be combined in a third pile.

Lindell lost the GOP primary to Demuth, the Minnesota House speaker, by 45,000 votes. She faces DFL nominee Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. senator, and the Green Party’s Steven Young for the open office.

The brief on behalf of the Secretary of State’s Office and the Canvassing Board said the ballot printing process begins Sept. 3 for early voting that starts on Sept. 18.

If the court grants Lindell what he wants, the recount might not start immediately because new procedures would need to be finalized and new cost estimates would be required, the state argues.

“Lindell’s petition threatens to delay the ballot printing process to the degree that counties may not be able to begin absentee voting by the legally required deadline,” state attorneys wrote.

Lindell was informed he had to request and pay $825,000 for the recount prior to midnight Monday. He withheld payment as he sought a broader recount, alleging without much documentation that there were anomalies in the Aug. 11 primary count.

The union representing Chisago County workers who’ve been on strike for almost four months has ratified a tentative contract agreement.

Amy Perusse, with Teamsters Local 320, said all three groups of affected workers approved the three-year deal on Friday.

“Our folks are very excited to get back to work. This contract resolution gives them the wage and health insurance protections they were looking for, and so they are very excited to end this chapter and get back to serving the community,” Perusse said.

Perusse said the agreement addresses two main sticking points that led to the lengthy strike — including a wage increase of 20.5 percent over three years, and offering health insurance through the Teamsters.

Perusse said the Teamsters health insurance plan is cheaper than that of other workers.

“The county wanted to keep that savings, and we felt that we should be treated and get the same health insurance contribution — regardless of which plan it went to — as other county workers.”

The county said it agreed to an employer contribution to the Teamsters health insurance, with a cap.

The county also said the agreement calls for a wage package with a “3 percent general increase in each of the first two years and a 4 percent general increase in the third year.” Perusse said the union is describing this as a 20.5 percent increase over three years because it’s combining the general increases and step increases from each year of the contract.

About 125 union members have been on strike since May 1 — representing about 30 percent of Chisago County employees. It includes health and human services workers and government center professionals. A small third group of engineering technicians wasn’t on strike, but “we were able to get a tentative agreement and ratify that for their group with the same conditions,” Perusse said.

The strike followed negotiations that had started last fall.

“This historic strike is equaled by the historic settlement,” Erik Skoog, the union’s secretary-treasurer and principal officer, said in a statement. “This was a battle of giants, and our sisters and brothers stood strong and won an amazing settlement.”

At nearly 120 days, the strike — while long — is not the longest public-sector strike in Minnesota history.

A spokesperson for the Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services said the longest was by city workers in Park Rapids, who went on strike for 240 days. That strike ended in 1977.

Over the next 12 days, Minnesotans will walk through the state fair gates to encounter animals, art and decadent food. Politicians will have a chance to meet voters face-to-face, which could be especially important in a competitive midterm election year like 2026.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith kicked off one of the year’s the most significant statewide races when she announced in 2025 she would not seek reelection. DFL Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan and Republican sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya are running for the seat.

Smith now has a few months left in her term, with major budget and farming legislation before Congress. She joined MPR News host Nina Moini on the MPR stage.

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

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

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

The city of St. Paul says it’s removing its two Flock cameras amid concerns over who has access to the data they collect.

In a joint statement issued Wednesday night, announcing the removal of the two automated license plate readers, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and Police chief Axel Henry said they “understand and share the concerns raised by our community about other jurisdictions accessing data during Operation Metro Surge.”

Her and Henry said they met with law enforcement agencies from across Ramsey County last week to discuss the use of the cameras, and they called on Minnesota lawmakers “to create a statewide standard that creates a balance between privacy and public safety needs.”

“In the interim, the two cameras owned by the City of Saint Paul will be removed,” the mayor and police chief announced.

St. Paul joins a growing list of cities and counties across Minnesota and nationwide that have chosen to remove their Flock cameras.

The announcement came after the St. Paul City Council earlier Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution calling on the city and Ramsey County to end their respective contracts with Flock.

While the city of St. Paul is removing its two cameras, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office still operates several license-plate reader cameras in the city, in addition to its cameras elsewhere in the county.

Supporters of Flock and similar cameras say they’re a powerful tool for solving crimes.

Resident feedback

Several dozen people from St. Paul and elsewhere in the Twin Cities spoke Wednesday afternoon during a special council meeting focused on police surveillance technology and data privacy.

Chris Daniel, a Ward 1 resident and technology professional, thanked his council member, Anika Bowie, for sponsoring the hearing.

“Throughout the past couple of decades, we’ve witnessed tech companies pushing the boundaries of established law in order to extract profit,” Daniel said. Tech giants, he added, run ahead of regulators and lawmakers — who he said don’t take the time to understand tech.

Ward 1 resident Paige Crawford had a question for council members and all those in positions of power in Minnesota.

“Why are you willing to work with corporations that have used their technologies to commit horrific acts of systemic and direct violence against the people of Minnesota and across the globe?” she asked.

Crawford also asked council members “to seriously reconsider what it means to maintain a contract like this, and the message that decision sends to constituents in the broader Twin Cities metro.”

Council President Rebecca Noecker, who had proposed the nonbinding resolution last week, said after the hearing that law enforcement can keep the community safe without Flock cameras.

“This is about a particular third-party company that has shown egregious abuses of people’s data. Our own police department had shared our people’s data with 60 other agencies until just a couple days ago,” Noecker said, saying that Flock “is not a company that we can trust.”

Noecker said the city made a deal with Flock without notifying City Council.

“Flock was passed last February, and we did not see that contract. I still haven’t seen that contract as of today,” she said after Wednesday’s public hearing.

Noecker said the council has discussed which contracts it should review.

Bowie, the Ward 1 council member, said she looks forward “to having a broader conversation around our contract review and approval authority.”

Meta has agreed to pay $17 billion and add child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by 47 states, state attorneys general announced Wednesday.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were among 29 states that sued the tech giant in 2023, but the deal cuts short the trial, which was expected to see CEO Mark Zuckerberg take the stand before a jury in federal court in California.

The agreement is worth $353 million in Virginia alone and is one of the biggest in state consumer protection history, Attorney General Jay Jones said in a statement.

“For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health," Jones said. The settlement "will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm.”

Minnesota's share of the Meta settlement will be at least $214 million but could rise to $307 million if other major social media companies sign onto its terms, according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

The first installment will come within 30 days, with the rest coming each January starting in 2027. There are eleven categories of programs that states can use the money for, ranging from crisis hotlines to training for youth on better social media habits.

"The groundbreaking changes to Instagram and Facebook in this settlement are more comprehensive than any court has ordered so far," Ellison said. "When fully implemented, they will create a safer and more healthy experience for our kids to connect through social media."

Meta said in a blog post that it was “building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.”

“Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta,” the company said. “We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard."

The company urged its rivals to adopt similar safety measures.

The $17 billion settlement is a fraction of Meta's 2025 revenue of $201 billion.

The lawsuit accused Meta of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and hiding them from the public. It also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.

The trial kicked off last week in Oakland, California, with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers overseeing the proceedings. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, began his testimony late Tuesday and defended Meta’s record and progress on child safety and privacy.

The cases in other states had been expected to go to trial later. In addition, nine attorneys general filed lawsuits in their respective states.

Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to adopt a series of safety features, including a “hard cap” on daily time limits and pauses for children using Instagram and Facebook.

It will eliminate push notifications during weekday school hours and bring in “robust” age-assurance measures and “age-appropriate” content controls to prevent bullying and harmful material about eating disorders and self-harm.

There will be stronger and more user-friendly parental controls and limits on social comparison features such as “like” counts.

The federal lawsuit was the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. It followed newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in 2021, that found that the company knew about the harm Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues.

Meta has since added a host of safety features to Instagram, including separate accounts for teenagers with stronger protections around messaging and privacy, along with content restrictions.

But child safety experts, along with some former Meta employees, have long contended that the features are little more than window dressing.

Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director, said during his testimony last week that Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being.

“If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,” he said.

While the four states in the Oakland trial did not officially say how much they had been seeking, Meta said in a court filing that financial penalties in the case could amount to as much as $1.4 trillion — a figure legal experts said was unlikely, if not impossible.

The Forward Independence Party is trying a new strategy to break into Minnesota’s political mainstream and capitalize on high voter discontent with the two-party system by making alliances with candidates running under major party banners.

It's a building-block approach that recognizes the difficulty third parties face making it to a bigger stage. Recent law changes make that hill even higher to climb.

Forward Independence — which can trace its roots to Jesse Ventura’s Reform Party — launched a coalition this month to boost centrist candidates and break into the political conversation. At its Capitol launch, the coalition was made up of seven state House and Senate candidates from different parties who commit to working across the aisle if they get elected.

“Today we are working to prove something that too many people in politics seem to have forgotten: Minnesota is bigger, should be bigger, than political parties,” Forward Independence Co-Chair Phil Fuehrer said.

“We're not creating another political caucus. We are creating something that the people of Minnesota desperately need: a willingness to put the public interest ahead of the partisan interest,” Fuehrer added.

Across Minnesota, this year’s ballots have 13 candidates who are listed as unaffiliated independents or are aligned with a third-party. Six are after legislative seats, one is running for Congress, two for the U.S. Senate and the rest for one of the executive roles in state government.

Absentee voting in the general election starts Sept. 18.

Minnesota voters have traditionally been more willing to support third-party candidates than the national average. Minnesota’s version of the Democratic Party, the DFL, is the result of a merger with the state’s Farmer-Labor Party in 1944. Later, in 1992, economic populist Ross Perot got almost 24 percent of votes in Minnesota in a year when Democrat Bill Clinton won the state with 43 percent of the vote.

Most famously, in 1998, an ex-pro wrestler and Reform Party candidate named Jesse Ventura made international news by defeating well-known DFL and Republican nominees to become Minnesota governor.

However, Ventura exited after a single term and left his party, later rebranded as the Independence Party, in search of a next act.

In the next three elections, the party had candidates with solid credentials: Tim Penny, Peter Hutchinson and Tom Horner. They were viewed as factors in governor’s races decided by slim margins but none could replicate Ventura’s recipe of charging through the middle to victory.

The Independence Party held onto major party status until after a disappointing showing in the 2014 election.

The road back has been difficult.

"The major parties are starting on third base and third parties have a very very difficult path," said Chris Chapp, who teaches political science at St. Olaf College.

Chapp said voter dissatisfaction, especially among young voters, with the two major parties opens the door a crack for third parties, but not as much as people might think.

“Even though Americans want third parties, there's not agreement on what that third-party option looks like,” Chapp said.

In 2024, the DFL-controlled Legislature made things even harder for third parties after several pro-marijuana parties gained political ground. Previously, among other requirements, minor parties could gain major party status if one of their statewide candidates won at least five percent of the vote. Now the threshold is eight percent.

Candidates of major parties can tap into significantly more state campaign funds than minor parties and, most importantly, they get automatic ballot access. Today, only the DFL and Republican Parties are considered major parties in Minnesota. The minor parties are: Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party, Minnesota Legal Marijuana Now! Party, Libertarian Party of Minnesota and Forward Independence.

There are independent and third-party candidates in many statewide and downballot races this year, including the Green Party’s Steven Young in the governor’s race.

The Forward Independence strategy has been a bit mix and match. While it is fielding some candidates of its own, the party is also establishing ties with candidates associated with other parties.

Coalition member and DFLer Tara Killen is running a longshot campaign against a Republican state senator in central Minnesota. Killen said she worries about backlash from the DFL.

“Basically we all but vomited to come into this room because of what we're about to face when we leave it,” she said.

However, Killen said she committed to the coalition because she believes voters want bipartisanship.

“I think people are sick and tired, based on what they have said to me when I'm out on the campaign trail. They are sick and tired of politics,” Killen said. “I'm not going to be political. I'm going to represent the people in a political arena. There's a difference.”

This coalition could earn Forward Independence public attention. However, the party has a candidate in the state auditor’s race, Jay Reeves. His race is the only one that could earn Forward Independence major party status.

“I couldn't be more proud of these people to take this leap of faith in building a coalition,” Reeves said at his party’s press conference.

“There's a giant section of Minnesotans that are feeling disenfranchised. Right, left. What about those folks that are feeling unheard? We're tired of it,” Reeves added.

The 2022 auditor election was decided by less than one percent of the vote, with a pair of marijuana party candidates also on the ballot. Reeves could affect this year’s election outcome even if he doesn’t win as early polling shows another close race for the open office.

“In a close race, and especially a local contest where a thousand votes here or there could really make a difference, third-party voters have that potential to siphon off votes and then tilt the election,” Chapp said.

Voters wary of the so-called “spoiler effect” are less likely to vote third-party, which makes it difficult for non-major parties to gain a foothold.

“If a party isn't seen as viable, voters don't want to ‘throw their vote away’ in an election that might feel really really high stakes,” Chapp said.

This November the stakes are high. There’s a slate of statewide offices and the entire Legislature on the ballot, and increased political polarization means the consequences for a party losing power are more significant.

“We're not talking about just a little shift in policy” when another party takes power, Chapp said. “That might mean things like congressional investigations into the other party.”

None of that bodes well for the independent and third-party candidates on the ballot in November. But those candidates haven’t lost hope yet. Nor should they, Chapp suggested.

“You could just remind me of Jesse Ventura,” Chapp said, “and then I would have to admit that anything's possible.”

The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.

Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

He declined to comment on the number of visas that might be revoked, saying “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”

The revocations would not necessarily result in their immediate deportation, the officials said. Most of those with asylum cases currently pending would be recategorized but would lose their status as business or tourism travelers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the revocations are not final yet.

Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year, his administration has steadily ramped up restrictions on visa applicants — demanding more information about their social media histories, requiring the posting of expensive bonds for the processing of visas, and outright banning the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries.

In a social media post on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called out people who he said try to use tourist and business visas to get into the United States and then apply for asylum.

“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims,” Landau wrote on X. “Asylum isn't supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.” Landau cited the case of a Colombian citizen who came to the U.S. in 2015 on a tourist visa and then applied for asylum.

B1 visas are generally issued for business trips and B2 visas are generally issued for tourism, family visits or medical care. It was not immediately clear from the documents or the officials how many of these visa holders are seeking or have sought asylum in the United States and would be affected by the revocations.

Current applicants for B1 and B2 visas are asked to affirm that they will not apply for asylum in the United States and prove that they intend to return to their home countries.

In the past 18 months, the State Department has revoked about 175,000 visas for people who have been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from drunken driving to rape and robbery, as well as for people who have spoken out publicly against U.S. policies, particularly in the Middle East.

The administration has also moved to crack down on so-called birth tourism, a practice the administration claims is used by foreign pregnant women to come to the United States to give birth so that their child will benefit from birthright citizenship. Trump has tried several times to end birthright citizenship, but those challenges have been rejected by courts, including the Supreme Court.

The State Department documents obtained by the AP suggest screening of current B1 and B2 visa holders began after the State Department received information about asylum requests from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Canada will announce retaliatory tariffs against the United States on Tuesday after relations deteriorated sharply Monday, with President Donald Trump telling Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face consequences “far WORSE” than existing tariffs and Prime Minister Mark Carney accusing Washington of trying to subordinate Canada.

Trump also threatened new 50 percent tariffs on Canadian vehicles, auto parts and steel, while Carney said U.S. trade demands showed Washington wanted to “destroy our major industries,” including autos, steel and aluminum.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and three other Cabinet ministers are also expected Tuesday morning to share details of supports for workers affected by tariffs. Carney said earlier Monday that Canada may need to move away from matching U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar and instead use more targeted retaliation aimed at protecting Canadian workers and businesses.

“An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States” is “not something we’re going to accept,” Carney said.

Carney was even more blunt in French.

“We learned during the negotiations that the Americans want to destroy our major industries, including autos, steel and aluminum,” Carney said. “That was one of the main reasons we said no. It was a bad deal.”

The fiery words from both sides show how U.S.-Canada relations have deteriorated since Carney walked away from trade negotiations with the Trump administration late Friday, triggering the president’s threatened 50 percent tariffs the next day on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.

Canada and the United States share one of the world’s largest trading relationships, with deeply integrated supply chains across autos, energy, agriculture and manufacturing, making a prolonged trade fight potentially costly for businesses and workers on both sides of the border.

Carney cast doubt on the U.S.’s dependability, saying Canada was finding reliable partners “everywhere in the world, except in the United States. Except in the United States. And Russia.”

Trump unleashes personal attacks on Canadian leaders

On Monday, Trump came back with further tariffs, warning that he would impose them on Canada's auto industry beginning next year.

“Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years,” Trump wrote on social media, criticizing what he called the country’s “ridiculously high tariffs” on American farmers.

Carney said Washington’s auto-sector proposals would gradually have the effect of dismantling Canadian production.

“This is the most successful automotive partnership in history,” Carney said, referring to the deeply integrated Canada-U.S. industry.

Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford unleashed his own tirade. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said Trump had underestimated Canadians’ willingness to endure economic pain rather than give in to U.S. pressure.

“We’re all in,” Ford said. “Up here, we’re at a fever pitch; everyone’s in for an economic war. They know they’re going to have to sacrifice.”

Trump responded in a social media post by attacking Ford personally, calling him “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford,” and once again referring to Canada's prime minister as “Governor Carney.”

Ford dismissed the insults: “If you think an insult from him hurts me? Well, bring it on, buddy, I’m ready.”

Ford is a Progressive Conservative whose party differs from that of Carney, a Liberal, but the two underscore broad political unity in Canada over the trade fight with Trump.

Ford threatens critical minerals and electricity

Ford said “everything is on the table” if the dispute worsens, including cutting off electricity and critical minerals from Ontario.

Critical minerals are increasingly important to U.S. national security and manufacturing. The Pentagon has sought more secure supplies of minerals used in military aircraft, missiles, munitions and electronics as Washington tries to reduce reliance on China, which dominates the mining or processing of several strategically important minerals.

Ford said Canada should also consider increasingly severe retaliation if Trump continues targeting Canadian industries, including oil and potash, while Ontario could raise electricity prices or stop sending power south.

“We power 1.5 million homes and businesses,” Ford said. “Everything’s on the table. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Ford has used electricity as leverage before. During an earlier phase of the dispute, Ontario imposed a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exported to Michigan, Minnesota and New York. Trump responded by threatening to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum before both sides backed away.

Auto industry becomes a central battleground

Ford accused Trump of not simply seeking a better trade deal but aiming to hollow out Canadian industries and move production south.

Ford said Trump wants to make Canada a vassal state.

“He wants to bleed out every single sector and bring them down to the U.S.,” Ford said.

The auto sector is especially important to Ontario, the center of Canada’s vehicle manufacturing industry. Plants and suppliers in Ontario are tightly integrated with factories in Michigan and other U.S. states, with parts routinely crossing the border multiple times during production.

Automakers including Ford, General Motors and Stellantis operate major assembly plants in Ontario, and the wider supply chain supports tens of thousands of jobs. Trump’s new threat of a 50% tariff on Canadian vehicles and parts puts that sector directly at the center of the escalating dispute.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Monday that “the only reason Canada has auto production in the first place” was because of the 1960s Auto Pact, under which Canada used access to its market to encourage vehicle production north of the border.

Ford says he opposed preliminary deal

Ford also disclosed that he had opposed the preliminary agreement Carney was considering before Canada walked away from negotiations, and that he was unwilling to restore American liquor to Ontario store shelves as part of an agreement.

“I wasn’t going to put the booze back on the shelves,” Ford said. “I was ready to go out there and call a press conference … and say I’m not buckling over.”

Ford said he understood Washington had sought language late in the negotiations that would have restricted Canada’s ability to negotiate trade agreements with other countries without U.S. approval. Carney has called that demand unacceptable and a question of Canadian sovereignty.

Carney said the dispute also exposed a deeper divide over language and culture, saying protections for French and Canadian culture that Washington views as trade irritants are considered fundamental rights in Canada.

“Who does he think he is?” Ford said of Trump. “You gotta be kidding.”

Republican candidate Mike Lindell balked at a recount at his expense in the governor’s race primary after he objected to a state-approved plan for one and instead sought an emergency ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Lindell had until midnight Monday to formally seek and pay for one. Late in the evening, the MyPillow founder filed a petition with the state Supreme Court over the terms of the potential recount.

Lindell lost the GOP nomination for governor to House Speaker Lisa Demuth by about 45,000 votes in the Aug. 11 primary.

Because of the wide margin, he is required to pay for a recount upfront. He said he was ready to wire $825,000 and provided a photo of the planned transfer to a state account.

But he held back on giving final authorization after his team and the Secretary of State’s Office conducted a morning call about the recount plan. Lindell didn’t agree with the format that only Lindell and Demuth votes would be recorded by name in a hand recount of primary ballots.

Other votes would go into a third column, according to the discretionary recount plan adopted last week by a state board.

“It’s not just about us two,” Lindell said in a phone interview. “I’m not paying for what they’re calling a recount.”

Lindell said he is seeking a court injunction that seeks to prevent state and county elections officials “from conducting a limited recount that counts only two candidates and leaves the votes of all other candidates uncounted.”

The Secretary of State’s Office said the recount plan mirrors past ones.

“Our office provided the contingent recount plan to Mr. Lindell after it was approved by the State Canvassing Board on August 18,” said office spokesperson Cassondra Knudson. “The plan follows state law and administrative rules on recount procedures and is consistent with plans of its kind for the past two decades.”

On Tuesday, the Secretary of State’s Office said it “did not receive a formal request for a discretionary recount along with payment for the requested recount by the deadline” — and that no recounts are planned. As for Lindell’s lawsuit, the office said “next steps in this case will be decided by the court.”

Minnesota has had its share of high-profile recounts.

In 2008, Democrat Al Franken was behind Republican Sen. Norm Coleman by 215 votes after the initial election count. Due to the tight margin it qualified for an automatic hand recount. That action along with addition of improperly rejected absentee ballots put Franken slightly ahead — by 225 votes. Franken’s victory held up after an ensuing election lawsuit that netted Franken even more of a cushion.

Two years later, DFLer Mark Dayton had an edge over Republican nominee Tom Emmer of almost 9,000 votes heading into an automatic recount in their nailbiter of a governor's race. Emmer pulled the plug after it became clear he wouldn't flip the outcome.

The potential recount isn’t Lindell’s only avenue for challenging the primary. He and his running mate have also filed election contest litigation in district court and another case with the state Supreme Court.

Lindell is known for prior efforts to discredit election results, dating to the 2020 presidential race. Those actions earned him the admiration and endorsement of President Donald Trump, which wasn’t enough to put him over the top.

The canvassing board certified Demuth's win last week. That advanced her to a general election ballot with DFL nominee Amy Klobuchar and the Green Party's Steven Young.

A federal judge has struck down a Trump administration ban on issuing immigrant visas to people from 75 countries, saying the policy violated federal immigration law by discriminating on the basis of nationality.

The State Department said earlier this year that it was halting immigrant visas for citizens of Afghanistan, Brazil, Yemen and dozens of other countries because the Trump administration determined people from those nations were likely to need public assistance if they came to the United States.

The policy would have barred the U.S. government from issuing immigrant visas even in cases where consular officers individually assessed applicants and determined they were likely to be self-sufficient in the U.S., according to a ruling Friday by District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in the Southern District of New York.

"In many ways, this is not a challenging case," Vargas wrote. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality in the issuance of immigrant visas, Vargas said. However, the Trump administration's policy banned certain people from receiving immigrant visas "based solely on their nationality," the judge wrote.

Vargas cited a U.S. diplomatic cable that instructed consulates to refuse immigrant visas to applicants who had already been approved but whose printed visas hadn't left the consulate.

Vargas said the Trump administration's policy was "contrary to law" and exceeded the authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The judge's ruling vacated the visa ban and also set aside visa denials that were based only on the policy.

A State Department spokesperson told NPR the Trump administration is "protecting the American people by upholding the highest standards of screening and vetting of visa applicants," adding that the administration doesn't comment on ongoing litigation. When the State Department issued the ban, it said the policy would "remain active until the U.S. can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people."

The ban was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to limit legal and illegal immigration. In June, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, rejecting an executive order Trump signed that tried to bar citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to parents who either entered the country illegally or who are living and working here legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because lower court judges ruled it was unconstitutional.

Susan Welber, supervising attorney at The Legal Aid Society, which represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the federal government, says the 75-country visa ban was "premised on a fiction" that residents of the targeted nations are likely to use public resources if they come to the U.S.

"Any time that we can fight back against policies that are based on fictions and untruths and prejudices, I think we're making for a more just immigration system," Welber says.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit included the Catholic Immigration Legal Network and African Communities Together, which provide immigration legal services, as well as six U.S. citizens who filed family-based immigration petitions on behalf of relatives and five "intending immigrants" who filed employment-based petitions on their own behalf.

"The suspension of lawful visa processing across 75 countries separated spouses, parents, and children who were simply following the legal immigration process," Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, said in a statement.

Plaintiffs' lawyers said Friday's ruling will allow their clients to proceed through the immigration process.

"For 75 countries' worth of families, this decision means a return to fair, case-by-case review, and a chance to be reunited with their loved ones," said Antionette Dozier, senior attorney for Western Center on Law & Poverty, which represented the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. "No administration gets to override the law because it deems an applicant's nationality unacceptable."

Copyright 2026, NPR

Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday allowed the White House to continue construction on President Donald Trump’s $400 million ballroom project for now, as the Supreme Court considers the Trump administration's emergency request to intervene in lawsuits over the project.

The temporary order comes hours before lower-court rulings would have forced a halt to aboveground construction. It will remain in place until the court issues a more durable decision, though the one-page document does not detail his reasoning or indicate when another ruling will be handed down.

The order pauses the decision of a Washington-based judge who found that work must stop because Trump didn't get congressional approval. It was signed by Roberts because he oversees appeals of cases filed in the capital.

The case comes before the nation’s highest court as Trump, a Republican, exercises unparalleled assertions of presidential power and increasingly seeks to mold the capital in his own image.

The Trump administration has scored a series of victories on the high court’s emergency docket, though the justices have ruled against some of the president's signature policies after fuller review.

The administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings as he sees fit and that the ballroom project must be completed due to national security concerns.

When Trump first announced the plans for a new ballroom, he did not emphasize national security. He said the project would be funded by private donations, including from himself.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argues that Trump has no unilateral authority to undertake the work, which has included demolishing the East Wing. Lawyers for the preservation group accused the White House of trying to “outrun the courts” by accelerating construction.

A spokesperson for the trust said Friday that the order from Roberts is not a final decision and the group is awaiting further action from the court.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The Trump administration says 65% of the work has already been completed on the planned 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom, where the East Wing stood before the president ordered its demolition. Crews are working 20 hours a day, seven days a week on the project, where about $200 million in private donations has been spent or committed, according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

A district court judge ordered a stop to aboveground construction of the planned ballroom in April in a ruling that was suspended before being upheld by an appeals court panel. The order from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington allows belowground work on bunkers and military installations to continue. Leon was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican.

Two appeals-court judges appointed by Democratic presidents found the project was for Congress to decide and “not a matter for Executive self-help.” A third judge, appointed by Trump, found that the preservationist group challenging the project had no legal standing to sue.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer picked up on that argument, calling the decision halting the work “extraordinary and unlawful.” He said the completion of the project was “vitally required by national security.”

A Republican legislator who fielded questions Thursday about the reopening of a detention center in Appleton said the discussions were respectful, even though people have strong opposing views.

State Rep. Paul Anderson co-hosted a town hall forum on the Appleton Detention Facility — formerly known as the Prairie Correctional Facility — which will begin housing people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers later this year.

The federal government bought the 1,600-bed facility, which will result in a loss of local tax revenue for the area. Anderson says that was one of the most common concerns raised by residents.

"I'm really hoping and encouraging folks negotiating that there should be some kind of a hold harmless for the city of Appleton, especially to negate the negative impact of them losing that big a piece of their tax base, that was a big concern of residents," he said to Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer on Friday.

Appleton city officials have said they expect to lose about 30 percent of the city’s tax base starting in 2028.

Anderson said he and Republican State Sen. Torrey Westrom, who co-hosted the forum, were asked if there’s anything they can do to help the area.

“Well, we can't do anything on our own,” he said. “It has to take a governor signing a bill that the Legislature would pass.”

He added that one possibility is an increase in Local Government Aid for the city.

CoreCivic Senior Director of Public Affairs Ryan Gustin said the company strives to be a “good partner” with local communities.

“To that end, we continue to be in dialogue with local officials about opportunities to partner through memoranda of understanding and other means that support the successful operation of the facility in a manner that is mutually beneficial to the community, CoreCivic, and our government partners at ICE/DHS,” Gustin said in a statement.

Gustin also said the facility will create 525 jobs.

“These positions are expected to include detention and security staff, medical and mental health professionals, case management and programming staff, administrative personnel, maintenance employees, food service workers and transportation staff,” he said.

He added that the starting salary for a detention officer is $32.50 an hour.

News of the reopening of the facility has sparked weekly protests. Earlier this month, residents told MPR News that while they understand the appeal of the potential economic boost, they found the idea of housing ICE detainees in their town “morally reprehensible.”

Anderson said he understands that people have strongly held views on the facility, but “they're not going to stop the national trend of detaining people and deporting folks that are not here legally. So you know, let's work together and make this a positive thing economically for Appleton, even if you don't agree with what's happening there.”

Reporter Jon Collins contributed to this story.

The USS Abraham Lincoln — which has been participating in U.S. military operations in the war with Iran — is now on its way home. The roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard that ship have spent a grueling nine months at sea with little relief.

Reports have emerged of deteriorating conditions — and of deteriorating mental health, including apparent attempts by crewmembers to jump overboard. The Navy has not confirmed those reports and NPR has not independently verified them. "A small number of mental health cases were treated with no loss of life," Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in a statement last week.

Experts say while the physical circumstances are difficult, a lack of careful and consistent messaging from leadership at the highest levels also contributed to the crews' mental distress.

The USS Lincoln is like a small city, according to Armen Kurdian, a retired U.S. Navy captain who served aboard the aircraft carrier in 2005. The labor aboard the carrier, he says, can be uniquely physical and difficult.

" It takes a toll on your body," says Kurdian. "The plane captains are out there on the flight deck — you know, these 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds lugging these 100-pound chains on their backs in 120-degree weather."

He describes dehydration and exhaustion as pilots have to take off and land on the carriers, sometimes at night and in bad weather, and "then just being mentally prepared to go fly because lives are at stake."

In the off-hours, Kurdian says there is little to no privacy, with people sleeping in crowded quarters.

While difficult, these conditions can be bearable, he adds. But experts say once uncertainty is thrown into this equation, it can push people to their mental brink.

Jack Stuster is a retired behavioral scientist who spent decades studying human performance.

"In conditions of isolation and confinement," says Stuster, "one of the worst things that you could do to the person is to tell them they're gonna come home at a certain time, and then you say, 'No. It's gonna be delayed.'"

Return is overdue

The Abraham Lincoln's deployment was originally scheduled to end in May.

In addition to the Navy, Stuster worked with NASA and scientists operating in small groups in places like Greenland, where return flights home were often canceled at the very last moment — even after their would-be passengers had dragged their duffle bags right up to the flight line.

" People have described to me going out there for the third time … only to be told that it wasn't gonna happen," says Stuster, which caused them "to break down in tears."

Then there's the issue of duration. A three-month deployment is ideal, says Stuster, or even six. At nine months, he says, things start to become untenable.

Dr. Phillip Hunt was for years a Navy physician who deployed on several submarine missions. His background is in emergency medicine, but Hunt says in the Navy much of what he treated was mental health. " I was kind of the father confessor, psychologist, what have you," says Hunt.

With a crew of 5,000 people on a ship, Hunt says it's inevitable that some people will struggle with mental health — even in the best of deployment conditions. "You'd have guys getting anxious. You'd have guys getting depressed."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says reports of poor conditions aboard the Lincoln are overstated. President Trump recently called the deployment "not nearly long enough."

Hunt says a lack of certainty or reassurance from leadership at the highest levels can trickle down to impact everyone's mental well-being. "Denial of this unit's deteriorating operational conditions is highly detrimental to the crew's morale," says Hunt. "The result can include anger, anxiety, or eventually mental exhaustion and depression."

Hunt says he blames leadership at the highest levels for the lack of recognition of this hardship.

" I just, I feel so badly for that crew. It's just tragic," says Hunt. "Just thinking about them almost brings me to tears."

If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, please call or text the number 9-8-8 to connect with a counselor.

Copyright 2026, NPR

State Rep. Cedrick Frazier is one of two winners in the August primary for Hennepin County attorney, setting up a November matchup with former Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Anders Folk.

Minnesota Now host Nina Moini spoke with both candidates. We aired the conversation with Folk Wednesday and we heard from Rep. Frazier Thursday.

Frazier is a three-term state representative and former public defender. His campaign has focused on gun violence and youth crime. He’s also calling for more crime prevention and alternatives to incarceration.

The conversation with Frazier below is edited for clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

You rose to the top in a five-way primary, and you're going to face Anders Folk in November. What do you think voters responded to in your campaign that allowed you to finish first?

I think voters responded to my wide variety of experience. You look at my resume, I’ve been a criminal defense attorney. I’ve been a city council member, worked in a school district in their legal counsel office. I’ve also represented educators across the state as a labor attorney for our teachers union.

I think that broad perspective, also with my lived experience as well being in close proximity to the issues that many communities feel when these systems aren’t working well — I think that really resonated with the voters.

And the fact that I was willing to explicitly and openly say we’re going to make sure that we prosecute federal agents that have caused harm within our state and within our county. I think that really resonated with people and that’s the kind of leader that they want to see in this office.

Your yard signs say the words “Prosecute ICE” bigger than your name. What role do you see yourself playing in investigating federal agents?

As the leader of the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, I will continue to lead those investigations in that office.

When we have the evidence, as we’re fighting to get now from Texas and from the federal government — when we have what we need to pursue those cases, if the evidence shows us that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there’s been harms and laws violated within our county and within our state — I’m going to continue to prosecute those cases.

We’ll move forward, we’ll bring charges and we’ll prosecute.

You’ve said your office would not work with ICE. Are there any circumstances in which the Hennepin County Attorney’s office should cooperate with federal immigration authorities?

I mean, if there are issues that we can move forward, that we’re not violating people’s constitutional rights, and it is deemed necessary to ensure that we have safe communities and protecting public safety — absolutely.

But I will not participate or collaborate or coordinate with a federal agency that is showing itself to not follow the Constitution and is very open to violating constitutional rights.

When it comes to public safety, how are you seeing when someone should be prosecuted aggressively versus maybe diverted into treatment or other supportive programs? How do you make those decisions?

If you’re someone that is terrorizing and causing harm within your community, I think those cases absolutely should be prosecuted. And one of the tools to break up the loop of violence and to stop further violence, it is bringing charges. It is prosecution, holding individuals accountable, and that would lead to incarceration or jail time for those individuals. I think those are absolutely appropriate.

If it’s a situation where it is a crime that has not caused great harm or great physical harm, and that individual doesn’t have a long record, criminal record or other issues of that nature, then we can look at diversionary matters.

At the end of the day, the goal is to make sure we're taking an action that is going to keep our community safe and make our community safer. That would be the overall arching theme about how we look at every single case in determining whether or not we’re going to give someone the opportunity for diversion, or whether or not we’re going to go through with the prosecution and seek a penalty that will require an individual to be removed from the community, therefore by being incarcerated.

It’s hard for people when really young people, juveniles, commit crimes. What consequences should there be for a young person who commits a serious or violent offense? How do you approach that?

Look, I think what we really need to focus on is the fact that we’ve taken away many of the tools that we’ve had to deal with our young people, particularly when young people have made poor decisions and they need to be removed from their home or their community, where they can be harmful to themselves or harmful to others.

We closed the Hennepin County homeschool a few years ago and we really have not had an answer or resource that we can use to remove or move young people and put them in a place where they can get the resources that they need — and also at the same time be held accountable.

I will absolutely be advocating with our county commissioners, our state legislators and elected local officials to make sure that we can bring resources like that back to the table to put at our disposal so that we can make sure that we can address appropriately our young people when they make poor decisions and they can cause harm to themselves or harm to others in the community.

You’ve stated that ending gun violence is your top priority. What else specifically would you change about how Hennepin County handles gun violence?

I think what we’re going to focus on — I carried the extreme risk protection order law that’s in place now. There is currently a liaison within that office to make sure that they can connect with community. They can do trainings with law enforcement to ensure that people have the resources they need and the information they need and know how to file for those petitions. I will make sure that we continue to do that work.

Right now, I’m looking at potentially what I would be able to do as the next Hennepin County Attorney and joining the lawsuit that Attorney General Keith Ellison has initiated now, where he is pursuing action against the Glock gun manufacturer.

The way I see that, I think about it as in line with what happened with tobacco industries and when those lawsuits came, those industries knew that they were causing harms in the communities that they were selling their product to and they did nothing about it.

Right now, we know that these guns are able to be altered and turn into automatic weapons, causing great harm and mass casualties. And what we’ve seen not only in this state but around the country, I think there should be accountability for that. We should not have the harm and terror that’s been caused in our community, where these manufacturers, these billion-dollar manufacturers, are profiting off of that harm and tragedy within our community. So, that’s another way I’d be looking at going after gun violence within the communities.

You are a former public defender. Your opponent, Anders Folk, has pointed out you don’t have the same prosecutorial experience. Why are you the right person to lead a prosecutor’s office?

Well, we should we should look at the numbers. You know, 77 percent of the voters on primary night said that they did not want my opponent as the lead in this office. 77 percent of voters said that they didn’t want someone who previously worked for Donald Trump and defended corporations to be their next Hennepin County attorney. Also, 77 percent of those voters said, “Look, we don’t want someone that took a max campaign donation from the defense attorney of Jonathan Ross, the federal agent that killed Renee Good.”

I think those things are really resonating. They will continue to resonate throughout this process. We have built the broadest coalition that this race has ever seen. We are the DFL-endorsed candidate, and we’re also the labor endorsed candidate. I think that says a lot, especially that labor endorsed piece because working families and working people are saying we don’t want someone to be our next county attorney that is more interested in protecting corporations than they are protecting the working people.

I’ve committed to making sure that we use this office and all the tools and resources that it has to make sure that we protect working people so they can have the best life possible in this county.

When it comes to current Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, what from her approach to the job would you continue, if elected?

Let me let me say this, one of the things is I see myself as a change candidate. Regardless of what happened, there’s going to be change within this office because Mary Moriarty isn’t running again and what the voters have to decide on is if they want their next person that leads this office to be the change that moves us forward or the change that moves us back to the status quo.

What I’m looking forward to doing is moving forward and that means that work has to be connecting with the community, knowing that they’re going to have a leader that’s going to make sure that we’re building a system that works for them and not against them. That means that we’re going to keep some things in place.

One of the things that I think about the most is the conviction integrity unit. It is a unit that will look at cases when there’s any allegations of misconduct and make a determination on whether or not that case should have a deeper look and make sure that we can rectify any harms or any mistakes that were made in pursuing that case.

I think that’s vitally important because two individuals have been exonerated through that process. One of those individuals lost over 20 years of their life, of their freedom. We can’t give that back. But I do think, in order to build trust — and we should be clear that there’s been generations of people in this state and in this county that have not had trust within the county attorney’s office, and it’s because they feel like the system is working against them and not for them.

So, my goal would be to make sure that we are building a system that is working for people, not against people. Having those individuals engaged on a day-to-day basis and figuring out what it is that they want to make their communities feel safer. And conviction integrity is just one of the things that I would be looking at to make sure that we can continue to move that forward so that we can have a tool that when things are not working well or if there’s misconduct, we can say, “Look, as a system, we see this. We’ve looked into it. Here’s how we’re going to rectify that.” I think that will go a long way in building trust within this institution and within the community.

Then lastly, people really want to make sure that we hold the federal agents accountable. The current county attorney is moving forward on those cases and I have committed to this. I will move forward on those cases as well.

The relationship between Mary Moriarty and the previous Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara was really fraught. With O'Hara resigning, there will eventually be a new MPD chief you’ll be working with. How do you approach the relationship with public safety?

Well, whoever the new leader is, I’ll be making sure that I, as soon as possible, get a chance to connect with that individual to sit down and talk about what their vision is, what their goals are for the office. And you got to understand this individual is going to be coming into a department that is right now operating under a consent decree that is overseen by our Department of Human Rights here at the state level.

I think it is very important for that next leader to really focus in and lock in to make sure that we’re trying to meet those goals in order to build some trust within that department and within the community of Minneapolis, but also with the community at large in Hennepin County.

Minneapolis is important to this county. It is our largest city. That police department is our largest police department. It is important for people to know that when they pick the phone up to call someone, that they’re coming in to protect and serve and not to harm them.

It’s also important for people to know that these officers are going to be operating with the utmost respects of decency and humanity for those individuals. And that is a conversation I’ll be having with the next leader. That I want us all to be on the same page in ensuring that we have all of our police departments, but particularly with MPD, that we have a department that is there to serve the people and protect the people.

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

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Minnesota officials can’t enforce a state law against election disinformation, siding with a group speaking out on a law that allows felons to vote if they’re not incarcerated.

The decision by a three-judge panel is a win for the conservative Minnesota Voters Alliance. The group has opposed a relatively new state law that restored voting rights to people who are on probation or supervised release for felony convictions.

Leaders with the alliance said they risked running afoul of a separate law meant to curb known disinformation that is designed to impede voting or mislead about voter eligibility within two months of an election.

In the ruling, Appeals Judge David Stras said the “First Amendment protects speech on a matter of public concern, like these statements, whether they are correct or not.”

Stras, a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice, goes on to say the state regulation went too far and there were other options for elections officials to get correct information out there.

“It overreaches because at least one speech-promoting alternative exists: counter speech,” Stras wrote for the unified three-judge panel. “Rather than limiting what others say, it could have launched an education campaign consisting of calls, texts, or emails informing them of their rights.”

The way the case got before the federal courts is notable in itself. The group tried first to head off the restoration of voting rights in state court, but that effort was turned back.

So the alliance sued Attorney General Keith Ellison and an Anoka County official in federal court to seek an injunction barring enforcement of the law. A lower-court judge refused to issue one and the alliance appealed.

The appeals court sent the case back to a district court with instruction to put an injunction on the election misinformation law as it applies to the group.

The alliance contends the Minnesota law on felon voting is unconstitutional, an argument that fell short in state courts. It contends it should be able to keep pressing that position without running into trouble with the law restricting false information.

Upper Midwest Law Center attorney Doug Seaton, who represented the voters alliance, said the ruling is an important free speech decision.

“Minnesota did not simply disagree with our client’s position. It tried to attach criminal and civil penalties to one side of a live legal debate,” Seaton said. “The First Amendment does not allow the government to end an argument by threatening prosecution.”

A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said the decision and next steps were under review. A message left with the secretary of state was not immediately returned.

Federal agents seized electronic devices from former Rep. Eric Swalwell and searched his Washington home as part of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by the ex-Democratic congressman from California, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Swalwell’s devices were seized at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and agents executed a search warrant at his home a day later, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A message seeking comment was left Thursday with an attorney for Swalwell, who has denied allegations of sexual assault and misconduct.

Swalwell announced his resignation from Congress in April following allegations that Swalwell had sexually assaulted a woman twice, including when she worked for him. The San Francisco Chronicle, followed by CNN, first reported the allegations. CNN also reported that three other women alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct by Swalwell, including sending them unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos.

The seven-term lawmaker had been seen as one of the leading candidates in California’s gubernatorial race before dropping out after the allegations surfaced.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed in April that it was investigating Swalwell after a former staffer told CNN and the Chronicle that Swalwell raped her at a hotel while he was in New York City for a charity gala in 2024. In a statement, Bragg’s office encouraged “survivors and anyone with knowledge of these allegations to contact our Special Victims Division.”

Swalwell, an Iowa native, was elected in 2012 and represented a House district east of San Francisco. He launched a presidential run in April 2019 but ended it a few months later after failing to catch on with voters.

He was one of Republican President Donald Trump’s top Democratic antagonists in Congress. He was a prominent member of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees during Trump's first term and served as one of several Democratic prosecutors for Trump’s second impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Swalwell was removed from the Intelligence Committee by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in 2023 based on Swalwell's contact with a suspected Chinese spy, Christine Fang.

Fang was reported to have come into contact with Swalwell’s campaign as he was first running for Congress in 2012 and to have participated in fundraising for his 2014 campaign.

Federal investigators alerted Swalwell to their concerns and briefed Congress about Fang in 2015, at which point Swalwell says he cut off contact with her. He was not accused of wrongdoing and a House Ethics Committee investigation that was opened in 2021 closed two years later without any action.

There were two winners out of the August primary: Former federal prosecutor and Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Anders Folk and State Rep. Cedrick Frazier.

It sets up a November matchup for the seat being vacated by Mary Moriarty.

Minnesota Now host Nina Moini spoke with both candidates. You can hear the conversation with Frazier, from Thursday on Minnesota Now.

The conversation with Folk below is edited for clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Why did you decide this was the right time for you to pursue this position?

I was really feeling like the county attorney’s office just needed a change of direction. And that the county attorney’s office, which is our largest public law office in Minnesota and the largest office of prosecutors in Minnesota, could really use somebody with that background as a prosecutor and in criminal justice doing this work. So, it was important to me.

How do you believe your experience as a U.S. Attorney and other roles that you’ve held would help you in this role?

For starters, having done hundreds of cases, investigations, charging decisions, trying cases —that’s really the bread and butter of the criminal side of the Hennepin County Attorney’s office.

So, having that kind of lived experience, I think, is really critical in terms of driving an understanding for strategy, decision-making, and just how to run an office like this. In addition to that work, I’ve had the benefit of leading a public law office like the U.S. Attorney’s Office here in Minnesota.

These are hard jobs. They’re often very public jobs and they’re jobs that really critically impact the day-to-day experience so many people in the county will have with the public safety system.

So, I think that experience is all really critical to setting the right strategy and to understanding how to lead an office that’s as big and as important as our county attorney’s office.

One of your top priorities you’ve mentioned is seeking accountability for the actions of federal agents during this operation. How big of a priority is that for you? What steps are you planning to take?

It’s a significant priority and I think accountability is a critical thing for everybody impacted by the county attorney’s office. Whether you’re a federal agent who broke Minnesota law during Operation Metro Surge, or a fraudster, or a violent criminal — accountability to me needs to run in every direction.

But, as it relates to Operation Metro Surge and these federal agents who violated Minnesota law, I’ve talked a lot about creating a federal prosecution task force to ensure accountability.

And your readers and your listeners may be asking why would we need a federal prosecution task force for these cases charged in Hennepin County? The answer is, all of these cases are going to end up in federal court so that federal subject matter expertise I think is going to be critical here, both in terms of understanding how to do investigations but prosecutions that are going to actually have the highest likelihood of success in federal court.

These are cases we’ve never done here in Minnesota. These are going to be cases we’re doing for the first time in the history of this state. And, I think it just really speaks to how critical it is to have that deep experience doing federal criminal prosecution work because that’s where these cases are all going to end up.

Do you see circumstances under which the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office should cooperate with federal immigration authorities?

No, the Hennepin County Attorney’s office is not in the business of doing immigration enforcement. This is an office that does state criminal level offenses, and it needs to be focused like a laser on that work.

To me, the core priorities of that office all need to revolve around what is increasing our public safety. So, the violent and repeat offenders of the world, folks who are fraudsters, folks who are making our communities less safe.

That’s where the office’s priorities need to be and it’s enforcing state law to ensure that what we do makes us safer as a community.

You’ve stated you’ll focus on reform measures like expungements, diversion programs, restorative justice. How would you assess when someone should be prosecuted aggressively versus perhaps diverted to an alternative supportive program.

When we talk about the criminal justice system, it’s really a spectrum that, to me, involves both compassion and consequence. And where I think experienced prosecutors can really do the most good is by ensuring that the right cases are handled the right way, whether it’s a case that requires more compassion or more consequence.

Look, violent and repeat offenders are the folks I think that require a response that is going to ensure public safety, and that’s the type of thing that usually involves consequence and getting them off the streets.

But when we’re talking about folks who are suffering from mental health issues, from addiction issues — and those two often go hand in hand — those are often the cases that require more of a compassionate lens and more of a compassionate approach.

Oftentimes, involving really more public health rather than criminal justice responses. And I think, I’m committed to and have spent my career really working hard to make sure we get the right outcomes for the right people who are in the criminal justice system.

It can be difficult for people to see young people committing crimes, particularly violent crimes. Where do you draw the line between intervention and accountability. What consequences should there be for a young person who commits a serious or violent offense?

Well, again, I think this is one of those areas where, if we’re talking about violent and repeat offenders who are juveniles, there does need to be a consequence. And, it’s not just to protect the community, but really also oftentimes to protect the juvenile him or herself.

I mean, these are often people who are in need of intervention and the kind of intervention and consequence that can come through the court system and through an appropriately tailored sentence to that criminal act.

Nobody wants to see kids in jail. I’m a parent. I’ve got four kids. The idea of putting kids in jail, locking them up, and throwing away the key obviously doesn’t feel good to anybody. It’s not. It should never be our goal.

Our goal should always be to treat kids compassionately and get them back into their homes when it’s safe for the kid and for their families. But look, if we’re talking about violent, repeat offenses, premeditated crimes of violence — there has to be a consequence. And in those rare cases, that consequence is going to need to involve getting those kids out of the streets.

What from current Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s approach to the job will you continue, if elected?

I want to be very clear. I mean, I am running, in part, to change the direction of that office and to really be an innovative and forward-looking prosecutor who brings to bear a mindset of public safety first. So, there are going to be significant changes.

But, I think Mary deserves credit for moving to ensure accountability in the Operation Metro Surge space. I think she deserves credit for taking good care of many of her employees in terms of ensuring their pay and their benefits are consistent with the great work they do for our community.

And, I think you can expect to see me employ that same kind of approach, where I want to make sure all the employees of the Hennepin County Attorney's office are being treated in a way that really reflects their contribution and their sacrifice to the community.

What would you change to your point about Moriarty’s approach?

I think, first of all, you can expect to see from me a real focus on ensuring that violent and repeat offenders are a priority for investigation and prosecution. I think they put our public safety at risk, and that is going to be a significant change — both in terms of strategy and action.

I think you can also expect to see a very direct focus on team building across the county in terms of all of our public safety stakeholders. I’m excited at the opportunity to work with our law enforcement officials, our educators, our faith leaders and our community leaders to drive a strategy that’s really going to put public safety at the forefront of the mission of the office. I think that’s going to be a change in terms of not just tone but also results.

I think there’s also a real need to ensure that our policy and our practice as a county attorney’s office isn’t driven by rhetoric or ideology, but it’s really driven by what is going to work to make us all safer as a community.

I think the answer to that question is going to come from again working with all these great stakeholders, whether it’s our educators, whether it’s our community leaders, whether it’s our faith leaders, whether it’s law enforcement — getting all of those folks together to really help drive strategy.

The relationship between Moriarty and the previous Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara was fraught. With O’Hara resigning now, though, there will eventually be a new MPD Chief you would be working with. How will you approach that relationship or partnership?

I’ll approach the relationship the way I’ve always approached relationships with public safety professionals, whether they’re law enforcement, whether they’re judges, probation officers, defense lawyers, community leaders — and that is mutual respect and an approach that puts mutual accountability at the front of the relationship.

I want to be a good partner to anybody in law enforcement, to anybody in our public safety system, to our our community leaders, and I will be accountable to them. But I will also expect them to be accountable to me.

It’s going to be a relationship that’s going to be based on mutual respect, mutual accountability, and constant communication to ensure that we have a partnership.

What actions will you take to address this ongoing situation of overdoses and drug-related deaths, especially linked to fentanyl?

Fentanyl, drug-related overdoses and accidental deaths are just a real issue for us. It’s one of these issues that really is the intersection of a public health crisis, addiction and often mental health, but also a public safety crisis.

So, to me, there’s kind of two real issues here. One is ensuring that those folks who are preying on our addicted community members are being held accountable. That there’s a significant consequence to get them off the streets because these are folks who are selling this deadly product, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that are killing people.

But they’re often also doing it using violence. The incidents of violent crime, gun crime, with fentanyl trafficking and synthetic opioid trafficking is a real issue. So, there’s going to have to be a significant enforcement strategy for dealing with those folks.

Then, for the folks who are suffering from addiction, some of them should be handled through a public health response, but there’s going to also be a need for, in some cases, using the criminal justice system to help disrupt, oftentimes, what can be really devastating addiction and the consequences of addiction.

But it’s that combination of public health and criminal justice where I think we’re going to need to ensure that the folks who are taking advantage of our addicted community members are being held accountable is where we’re going to start.

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

Across 250 years, only three elected governors out of thousands have been Black –- all Democrats and all men, including current Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

But Moore could soon have company.

With Florida Republicans nominating U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds on Tuesday, there are seven Black major party gubernatorial nominees in addition to Moore — men and women, Democrats and Republicans — on November ballots.

“We do have a unique moment here,” said Moore, who recently became chair of the National Governors Association. He often says that his historic status is “not an applause line” but instead represents a bigger challenge that this country is still looking to overcome.

The Black nominees typically do not focus on the history at stake, instead emphasizing their experience and policy proposals.

“Florida is a great meritocracy in America,” Donalds told reporters Tuesday night after not mentioning his race at all in his victory speech. “I’ll let you guys write about that,” he added.

But many said that more reflective representation matters given the nation’s history, from slavery to Jim Crow and the lingering effects.

“It’s not a secret that some issues in the African American community get ignored and don’t have a voice,” said Aaron Ford, Nevada’s first Black attorney general and now the Democratic nominee for governor. Ford said he brings a focus to issues ranging from voting rights and civil rights to the economy.

Republican Lisa Demuth said she “has never led with any type of identity politics” as Minnesota's first Black House speaker and now her party's nominee for governor. “But I recognize the historic state we are in right now,” she said. Michigan Republicans also chose U.S. Rep. John James, who is Black, as their gubernatorial nominee.

Former New York Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat who was not elected but ascended when Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008, celebrated that the slate crosses party lines. “This is one day when maybe the Democrats and Republicans could stand in front of a statue of George Washington and let him know that we’re finally getting it right,” he said.

Democrats, meanwhile, emphasized that their Black candidates – who also include Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina and David Crowley in Wisconsin – are especially important after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to redraw legislative districts that are majority or plurality nonwhite. That was compounded by President Donald Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives and push to rewrite how the U.S. tells its history of the slave trade and Jim Crow segregation.

“Governors, in many ways, are becoming the last lines of defense against what we’re seeing in Washington,” Moore said.

A challenge for Black politicians, even more so than reaching the US Senate

Karen Finney, who helped push Democrat Joe Biden to select a Black woman as his vice presidential running mate, said Black politicians often are the first and loudest advocates on issues that acutely affect Black constituents. She and others cited health disparities such as maternal and infant mortality and sickle cell disease, and Finney noted that an inflationary economy hits harder in Black communities that, on average, have lower income and net worth than the wider population.

She said it is important for legislators to raise those matters and even more impactful when it is an executive.

“These are people who have the power to shape our lives, and they shape the agenda," Finney said.

But the governor's seat has been notoriously hard for Black politicians to reach, even more difficult than the U.S. Senate. Democrat Douglas Wilder of Virginia took office in 1990 as the nation's first elected Black governor.

“I didn’t become Maryland’s first Black governor because the Democratic Party said, ‘I think it’s time for us to put Wes Moore up in the seat’,” Moore said. “I had to run against the party.”

“I don’t think that the party is doing enough,” Moore added, specifically bemoaning a “negligence” in Southern states where Black voters anchor Democrats' base.

Stacey Abrams, who lost two Georgia governor’s races, recalled white Democratic power players raising money for her primary opponent in 2018, although she disputed that explicit racism was the issue.

“We do what we’ve done because it’s what we did,” she said. “Black women have not been executives, and the absence of that proof point becomes a self-reinforcing philosophy.”

This time, she noted, Bottoms already has been an executive as mayor of Atlanta.

Democrats and Republicans talk about ‘identity politics’ differently

In Minnesota, history will be made in November when the state elects its first female governor as Demuth competes against Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. senator. Demuth said she looks forward to a day when such distinctions seem less notable.

"One of the things that I really do look forward to is where it’s already done, where it no longer makes history,” she said. “So I think of young women, little girls that are looking at you, could I ever be governor of Minnesota? I hope when I win, they’re able to look at, point to that and say she’s already done it.”

In Georgia, Bottoms told the National Association of Black Journalists last week that she does not “give a lot of talk … about the historical nature” of her campaign. Yet she notes her family's Georgia ties go “back at least five generations through a plantation in Crawfordville” and that her grandfather had to “walk through these back doors” when he moved to Atlanta. She never mentioned slavery or segregation but said her ancestry “is always present with me.”

Abrams, who has campaigned for Bottoms and other Democrats this year, was more direct, arguing that all politics is identity politics of some kind — and that Republicans’ version is simply more coded.

“When your Constitution specifically strips a race of its humanity, you cannot then later on say identity doesn’t matter and has no effect, and we've spent 250 years trying to reckon with that identity” with social, political and legal fights, she continued. “So, it’s deeply disingenuous, if not woefully naive, to say that identity does not matter.”

Race shapes many decisions, but not all of them

Deval Patrick, whose tenure in Massachusetts overlapped with Paterson's in New York, said his race mattered especially to his Black constituents and what they wanted from him. It was “just different than the expectations of my predecessors,” he said, recalling criticism after he did not visit a Boston neighborhood where a teenager had been killed by gun violence.

“His mother was on the news grieving, and at some point she said while the cameras were rolling, where is Gov. Patrick?” he said. “Nobody had ever asked one of my predecessors to come to a crime scene in a neighborhood. Never.”

In Nevada, Ford said being governor still means recognizing how many core issues – jobs, housing and healthcare – cross demographic lines.

“It could be a white man, a Latino woman. It could be a person urban, suburban or rural Nevada. It could be someone from northern Nevada, southern Nevada. These are the issues that are important to them,” he said.

Patrick, who talks regularly with Ford and Moore, agreed, saying that is not just how a governor does the job, but how a candidate wins it in the first place.

“The successful candidates are the ones who present themselves as candidates for everyone,” he said, “and not candidates for just some.”

Now-certified election results in Minnesota’s Republican governor primary face a set of challenges from the ticket of Mike Lindell.

Lindell said Wednesday he would pay for a “hand recount and audit” of primary ballots and his running mate has filed a Minnesota Supreme Court petition alleging problems with voting and tabulation systems.

In a written statement announcing the recount bid, Lindell said “Even if this recount and audit does not overturn my election for governor of Minnesota, I believe this is the gateway to getting rid of these electronic voting machines.”

It’s unclear if Lindell will actually force a recount.

Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office said while it fielded a preliminary inquiry had not yet received an official request for the discretionary recount. In correspondence with Lindell’s campaign on Tuesday, Simon’s office shared a cost estimate: $825,000.

“In order to proceed with a discretionary recount, an official request for the recount, along with a bond, cash, or surety for the full estimated cost of the recount noted above, must be received by the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State no later than Monday, August 24,” the letter from Simon’s general counsel Lauren Bethke said.

The state Canvassing Board — made up of judges and the top election official — certified tallies on Tuesday that officially made Lisa Demuth the GOP nominee for governor in a race against DFL nominee Amy Klobuchar. Lindell fell well short of Demuth in the race, trailing her by more than 45,000 votes.

"The result of last Tuesday's primary speaks for itself,” a spokesperson for Demuth’s campaign said in a statement. “Lisa Demuth is laser focused on connecting with voters across Minnesota over the next 11 weeks to share her vision and plans for: ending fraud, lowering taxes, undoing Democrat hikes on car tab fees, improving the quality of education, making our streets safer and making our business economy competitive again."

Lindell said he wants a recount that includes designated observers and that reconciles vote totals with the number of voters who participated in the primary. Without many details, he suggested irregularities.

Lindell, the MyPillow founder, gained political prominence as an unflinching ally of President Donald Trump. He was a vocal advocate for Trump’s 2020 stolen election theories that many courts and experts rejected. Lindell was sued by voting machine companies over his suggestions of irregularities; some of that litigation is still pending.

On Monday, Lindell’s lieutenant governor pick Phillip Parrish filed an “errors, omissions and wrongful acts” petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court.

The filing alleges that some counties used voting systems that weren’t properly certified and that paper ballots should have been counted instead of the electronically tabulated figures. It attributes some of the concerns to an Anoka County commissioner who spoke out ahead of the primary about equipment in that county.

The Parrish petition attempted to head off final certification until state elections officials supplied more materials about the voting systems used in the primary, including “modems and other components” as well as “results-file transmission logs.”

The canvassing board met as scheduled and certified the results. The high court’s case schedule allows for briefs and other materials in the case to be filed through Thursday.

Chief Justice Natalie Hudson’s scheduling order says that Parrish did “not include any affidavits or supporting documentation” for the claims of errors.

On Wednesday, former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz was appointed as an acting justice to hear the case. Two other justices who sit on the Canvassing Board this cycle have been recused. So has another justice.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he was delaying the 50 percent U.S. tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports after the two countries reached a last-minute deal less than two hours before the sanctions were to go into effect.

The announcement, which Trump made on his social media platform, buys time for more negotiations and avoids, for now, another strain in already tense relations between the historic allies.

"I have paused the 50 percent Tariffs against Canada, that were scheduled to kick in tomorrow morning for a three day period, based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!" Trump posted on Truth Social.

If they had gone into effect as scheduled at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, Trump's import taxes would have hit Canadian products ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors.

But the political impact would likely have been bigger than the economic one. Canada had threatened to retaliate against any new tariffs with levies of its own, aggravating a trade fight between countries that sold each other $880 billion worth of goods and services last year.

A White House proclamation said Canada had expressed a commitment to remove measures the Trump administration considers discriminatory against U.S. alcohol, dairy and motor vehicle exports. Canada did not immediately confirm those commitments.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement "substantial progress" had been made but that important work remained, confirming Canada had agreed to the three-day delay while negotiations continued.

Carney and Trump had spoken twice by phone in the past two days about the ongoing negotiations, including a call Tuesday afternoon, Carney's office said, underscoring the last-minute push for a deal.

Both countries had reason to step back from the brink. Nearly 72 percent of Canada's goods exports last year went to the United States. And the Trump administration would be taking a risk by imposing a hefty new tariff — paid by U.S. importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices — ahead of November's midterm elections. U.S. voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.

"I don't think either side really wants these tariffs to come into effect,'' Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official, said before the delay was announced. "There's a pretty strong push on both sides to find an off-ramp here.''

Canadian Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Candace Laing said in a statement that the three-day tariff delay offered businesses some relief but fell short of the certainty a signed interim agreement would provide.

"This limbo state is not anyone's preferred outcome," she said, urging negotiators to reach a deal quickly.

Trump's approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has hit Canadian goods with tariffs — in a push to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. — and has repeatedly made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America's 51st state.

Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. Last year, he imposed double-digit import taxes on almost every country, justifying them by declaring the longstanding U.S. trade deficit a national emergency. The Supreme Court in February ruled that he'd overstepped his authority, striking down those tariffs and setting the stage for the federal government to pay refunds to importers.

So Trump has looked for other legal authority to impose tariffs.

To hit Canada, he reached back to the Great Depression, invoking Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to threaten 50 percent tariffs on products that account for about 5 percent of Canadian exports to the United States.

Nearly a century ago, with the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress passed the 1930 tariff law, imposing taxes on imports from around the world. Known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, named for their congressional sponsors, they are notorious among economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse.

Section 338 tariffs have never been used before.

Section 338 authorizes the president to impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses. No investigation is required to justify the levies. Nor is there any limit on how long the tariffs can stay in place.

The U.S. is renegotiating a North American trade pact — the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — that Trump strong-armed America's neighbors into accepting in his first term. The threat of Section 338 tariffs gives the United States leverage to seek fresh concessions from Ottawa.

Copyright 2026, NPR

In January 2025, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar stood between President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the head table, as part of a ceremonial luncheon where congressional leaders welcomed the new president into office.

Her role as chair of the congressional committee tasked with hosting the inaugural events put her front and center as Trump kicked off his second term in office.

And it could put her on a more-collegial footing with the Trump administration than Gov. Tim Walz, the former vice presidential candidate, has experienced during the closing months of his term.

Klobuchar is running to succeed Walz, the second-term DFLer, and become Minnesota’s 42nd governor. Walz hung up a reelection bid early this year after extensive reports of fraud in state government programs.

The state’s still-unfolding fraud scandal has made Minnesota a frequent punching bag for the president. His administration has held up Medicaid dollars and used the fraud problem as a pretext to surge thousands of immigration agents here over the winter.

More than a year and a half removed from the 2024 election, Trump frequently targets Walz with his verbal jabs. Walz isn’t shy about lobbing some back.

Klobuchar said while she and Walz share a political party, she would offer a reboot.

“You expect leaders to deliver results, not excuses, and you are rightfully tired of this partisan theater and the punchlines,” Klobuchar told supporters at a primary night event in Minnetonka last week. “I will deliver those results. I've done it as senator, and I will do it as your governor.”

A pitch to ‘transform this state’

Onstage at Farmfest alongside three Republicans vying for governor, Klobuchar told the crowd about the slate of policy changes she had teed up for Minnesota:

• A plan to tackle fraud.

• A promise to launch an audit of the state government on her first day.

• A money-back guarantee on tardy permit decisions.

• Ideas to reshape healthcare, housing and economic development — borrowing from bills pushed by both Democrats and Republicans in Minnesota and beyond.

“Because as governor, I don't like the status quo,” Klobuchar said. “I want to transform this state.”

Former state House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, who has supported Klobuchar’s campaign, said Klobuchar would bring a shift in style to the governor’s office.

“She's very focused on measurable results and outcomes and feels responsibility for delivering them,” Winkler said. “Gov. Walz helped pass a lot of great legislation. He dealt with a lot of crises when he was governor, but Minnesota has been slipping in a number of areas, and I don't think Gov. Klobuchar is going to let that go.”

Klobuchar has touted her accomplishments in working across the aisle in Congress, including funding to rebuild after the I-35W bridge collapse, leading antitrust tech legislation that set up new guardrails for digital markets and rewriting maritime rules to bring down supply costs.

“The fact that I have been No. 1 for bipartisan bills in the U.S. Senate, No. 3 for getting bills signed into law means something,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar said her approach to navigating a relationship with the Trump administration — if it continued to threaten federal funds to Minnesota or otherwise put the state at risk — would look different from Walz’s approach.

She pointed to a recent instance when federal energy grants were on hold.

“I thought, ‘How do we get this done?’ The energy is also going to North Dakota and South Dakota, so I called Sen. (John) Hoeven and (Kevin) Cramer, let them take the lead, and we got the grants back,” Klobuchar said. “I think that there are ways you can do this. And this is not just about Walz. This is about just my own skills in trying to get this done. That I think is going to be helpful.”

When it comes to issues where she fundamentally disagrees with the Trump administration — like the war in Iran, restricting safety net programs or levying tariffs — Klobuchar pointed to her record voting against the policy changes. She said she’d work with the attorney general here to fight federal changes that adversely affect Minnesotans.

Broadly, Klobuchar said her approach is “standing up to Donald Trump when necessary and working with their administration when there's common ground.”

Several Democratic voters said that’s part of why they were backing Klobuchar in last week’s primary election. For others frustrated with the Democratic Party overall, that approach wasn’t forceful enough in pushing back on the Trump administration.

Klobuchar won the party’s nomination with resounding support.

Republicans: Change can only come by ending DFL hold on office

Republicans argue that because of the letters behind her name — DFL — the change she’s offering isn’t enough. Democrats, they point out, have held the office for 16 years.

“She would be no different than the administration that has currently led our state into the dysfunction that it is now,” said Lisa Demuth, Minnesota House speaker and Klobuchar’s opponent in the race.

Upon her Republican primary victory last week, Demuth declared herself as the fresh start.

“It is time for a change that's going to go very, very deep within the agencies, and it starts with responsibility and accountability from the very top,” she told supporters in St. Paul.

The difficulty Klobuchar could have separating herself from the controversial aspects of the Walz administration is central to Demuth’s messaging.

Just this week, Demuth blamed “Tim Walz, Amy Klobuchar and Democrats in the Legislature” for hostility toward mining projects in northeastern Minnesota, which was once a reliable DFL stronghold that has become more-fertile ground for Republicans.

That came as Walz issued an executive order banning a new type of mining on the periphery of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, creating a new hurdle and likely inviting more legal jousting over a proposed copper-nickel mine there.

Demuth vowed to “work each day to ensure mining is part of Minnesota’s future.”

Klobuchar, speaking to MPR News’ Morning Edition, reacted cautiously to the Walz action announced less than an hour before the interview. She said she would review the order but noted her past opposition to mining just outside the BWCA.

Klobuchar said she doesn’t want to impede other mining projects on the Iron Range that “don’t endanger the Boundary Waters that I think is important to allow pending environmental reviews to go forward.”

More front and center for Demuth is her message of cleaning up fraud in state government programs. She touts her work leading a tied state House of Representatives, as well as holding firm for conservative priorities in state budget negotiations like reducing total state spending, blocking tax hikes and ending a program that provided health insurance to people in the country without proper authorization.

She could face some blowback on the campaign trail for prior legislation aiming to limit access to abortions in Minnesota and not letting a proposal to add new gun restrictions come to the floor for a vote in the wake of the Annunciation Catholic Church and School shooting.

Demuth has won over at least one prior Klobuchar backer.

Margie Hendriksen said she helped Klobuchar in a winning campaign for Hennepin County Attorney, Klobuchar’s first political office. Hendriksen's sentiment changed.

“As the party went to the left, so did she on policy positions, and I was just not in sync anymore,” Hendriksen said.

She’s backing Demuth now.

To win in November, Demuth must shift many more of the people like Hendriksen into her column to topple Klobuchar, who has won her four statewide campaigns by comfortable margins.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz issued a sweeping executive order Tuesday that aims to prevent the mining of copper, nickel and other precious metals within the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeast Minnesota.

The order directs the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency not to issue any mining permits or leases in the area, which spans about 350 square miles of the Superior National Forest within the Rainy River headwaters surrounding the wilderness.

Any proposed mining project in the state — even on federal lands — requires permits and environmental approvals from state agencies before it can move forward.

The order also would halt any new environmental review of nonferrous (non-iron ore) mining proposals within the watershed, and would not allow state agencies to cooperate with the federal government on the review of any proposals.

The executive order, if it stands, would likely end the prospects of Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta. Twin Metals has worked for over a decade to build an underground copper-nickel mine about nine miles southeast of Ely and just three miles from the southern edge of the wilderness.

Twin Metals’ project along Birch Lake consists of both federal and state mineral leases.

“I am using my full executive authority to protect the waters and wildlife of the Boundary Waters and to ensure the outfitters, small businesses, and communities that depend on it continue to thrive for generations to come,” Walz said in a statement accompanying the executive order. “It’s our duty as Minnesotans to ensure the sacred place remains wild, pristine, and unharmed.”

Reaction from mining opponents, supporters

The action is being celebrated by conservation groups that have long argued that this kind of mining is too risky for the water rich environment of northern Minnesota. Copper-nickel mining carries with it much more serious risks for serious water pollution than iron ore mining, which has a 140-year-long history in the state.

“We don’t believe that this fragile, deeply interconnected freshwater ecosystem is the right place for an industry with a terrible environmental track record. This type of mining has not been done without some form of pollution to surface or groundwater,” said Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters.

Mining is not allowed inside the Boundary Waters, nor in a small buffer zone around it. Environmental groups have argued it is also important to protect the broader watershed, because any mining pollution in those 225,000 acres outside of the BWCA could flow directly into the protected wilderness area.

But advocates for what would be a new kind of mining in Minnesota, including labor and business groups, argue it could provide an enormous boost to the region’s economy.

They also emphasize that mining companies should be allowed to go through the established review and permitting process — and if they can’t demonstrate that their projects can be operated safely, then they shouldn’t be allowed to open.

Julie Lucas, executive director of the industry group Mining Minnesota, called the order “a political decision dressed up as an economic one.” She said the Minnesota DNR under Walz has already reviewed the state’s rules that govern copper-nickel mining and found them largely protective of the Boundary Waters, although that decision is being reviewed in state court.

“With this action today, the governor is bowing to the demands of special interests, ignoring the findings of his own government and causing even greater delays for workers who need jobs,” Lucas said.

Mining advocates, including Minnesota Republican Rep. Pete Stauber, have argued that modern mines could both protect the environment and provide high-paying jobs, while producing important minerals needed for clean energy and other technologies.

In a statement Tuesday, Stauber called Walz’s order “a spiteful and harmful attack against the hardworking people of the Iron Range.”

“Years of rigorous review, environmental study, and massive private investment have been erased in seconds by a deeply unpopular governor, who has once again shown that he places far-left ideology above Minnesotans’ jobs and economic future,” Stauber said.

Latest move in yearslong debate

Walz issued the executive order four months after Congress voted to overturn a 20-year federal ban on mining in the area that had been instituted under the Biden administration.

It’s just the latest move in a long political tug of war over the potential for copper-nickel mining in northeastern Minnesota. It limits the mining of a significant portion of the Duluth Complex, one of the largest undeveloped deposits of copper, nickel, cobalt and other platinum-group metals in the world.

The Obama administration first proposed a possible 20-year mining moratorium just before he left office in 2017. President Trump quickly halted that process during his first term. Then Biden restarted it, and ultimately approved the so-called mineral withdrawal in 2023, saying that any mining pollution could cause irreparable harm to the Boundary Waters.

Trump then reversed that ban earlier this year. And now Walz is acting at the state level to prevent mining from occurring in the area.

“At a time when the federal government is stepping back on its commitment to protecting the environment and the people who live here, the state of Minnesota under Gov Walz’s leadership is stepping up,” Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Commissioner Katrina Kessler said in a statement Tuesday morning.

But as an executive order, the action could be overturned by a subsequent administration without going through the state legislature.

The order calls on the Minnesota DNR to draft legislative language to permanently prohibit mining in the Rainy River headwaters. The prospects of such a bill are unclear in a closely divided state legislature. Similar legislation introduced in recent sessions has stalled.

Walz has deep personal connections to the Boundary Waters, something he’s discussed when addressing the major wildfires still burning in the wilderness.

He’s taken many family trips into the wilderness. About a decade ago, his brother Craig was killed when several trees blew down over his campsite in the BWCA. Walz’s nephew, Jake, survived with several broken bones.

Walz is placing the mining executive order in the context of what he says has been broader action to protect the environment for the nearly eight years he’s been in office, ranging from efforts to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ban so-called “forever chemicals,” speed up permitting for clean energy projects and planting millions of trees.

Walz is not running for re-election this year. Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican State House Speaker Lisa Demuth are the two major-party candidates on the November ballot to replace him.

Demuth issued a statement Tuesday morning saying that Democrats “continue their hostility toward Minnesota mining, taking job growth opportunities off the table before they can even go through the regulatory review process.”

“As Governor, I will work each day to ensure mining is part of Minnesota’s future. We can do it safely here better than anywhere in the world, protecting our beloved outdoors while benefiting from the job creation and tax revenue these projects bring to northern Minnesota,” Demuth said.

In an interview with MPR News shortly after Walz announced his executive order, Klobuchar said she hadn’t yet had a chance to look at the wording of that measure.

Klobuchar said she has serious concerns about mining next to the BWCA, but also noted that “there is other mining going on across the Range, including Mesabi Metallics iron ore mine about to open up, and some other proposed mining projects that don’t endanger the Boundary Waters, that I think it is important to continue to allow pending environmental reviews to go forward.”

Other politicians are also weighing in.

“Today’s decision by a lame-duck governor with one foot out the door is a devastating blow to the Iron Range and the entire Northland,” said Republican state Rep. Roger Skraba, whose district includes Ely.

DFL state Sen. Grant Hauschild, who also represents the region, said he also disagreed with the order.

“A decision this significant to the people of the Northland should not be made through executive order by a governor who leaves office in a matter of months,” Hauschild said.

But the move was praised by DFL state Rep. Alex Falconer of Eden Prairie, who has sponsored legislation to ban copper-nickel mining within the headwaters of the Boundary Waters.

“I hope the momentum of today’s actions by Governor Walz will carry into the next legislature and we can pass my bill to permanently protect the Boundary Waters from sulfide-ore copper mining,” Falconer said.

Correction (Aug. 20, 2026): A previous version of this story misstated the date of Rep. Pete Stauber's statement.

A federal judge has ruled after a months-long legal challenge that the Trump administration can end temporary protected status for people from Somalia.

The White House moved to end temporary protected status — or TPS — for several hundred people from Somalia earlier this year, arguing they no longer qualify. TPS is granted to citizens of certain countries facing conflict or disaster.

Most of Minnesota's tens of thousands of Somali residents have U.S. citizenship or other legal status and are not on TPS.

A lawsuit delayed the Trump administration’s action. But a federal judge on Friday allowed it to move forward, citing a Supreme Court ruling earlier this summer that allowed the White House to end TPS for people from Haiti and Syria.

Among other issues, the plaintiffs seeking to stop the White House from ending TPS for people from Somalia alleged the move was racial discrimination. They pointed to comments made by President Donald Trump and others in his administration.

But in an order last Friday, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs wrote that in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, “which included a constitutional race-discrimination claim, the Court cannot discern a path to concluding that plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of this claim.”

That ruling means that people who came to the U.S. from Somalia on TPS — estimated at about 700 as of last year — could now have their permission to work and live here revoked.

An appeal of Burroughs’ order has been filed.

“This is a deeply disappointing ruling, but it is not the end of the legal challenge,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said in a news release. “At a time when Somali Americans have faced sustained targeting and attacks from the Trump administration, this decision only deepens the fear and uncertainty facing our community.”

Hussein said that Somalia “represents precisely the kind of extraordinary conditions TPS was created to address.”

“Ending these protections sets a dangerous precedent that reaches far beyond Somali TPS holders and threatens the future and integrity of the entire TPS program,” he said.

Families of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are condemning President Trump's comments on the ship's record deployment.

A U.S. defense official not authorized to speak publicly told NPR the USS George Washington is en route to relieve the USS Lincoln, which has been at sea for nearly nine months

Trump was asked by reporters Friday whether the USS Lincoln's deployment had gone on too long.

"No, not nearly long enough," Trump said.

His comments come amid reports of food shortages, plumbing problems and declining mental health among crew members. There have even been some reports — which NPR has not been able to independently confirm — that sailors have attempted to jump overboard.

Karen Bramlett's grandson is on the ship. She asked NPR not to use his name for fears he could face repercussions or harassment from the military.

Bramlett said she is able to communicate with her grandson via Instagram about once a week.

"He's saying he's good mentally and physically, thank God," Bramlett said. "But he's just depressed. With the conditions over there you really can't blame him."

Bramlett said her grandson enlisted in the Navy about two years ago. She said it was a dream for him.

"But now he's like, he just can't wait to be done," Bramlett said. "Those dreams have been shattered."

"Donald Trump needs to be ashamed of himself to let them suffer the way that they're doing," she continued. "They're over there fighting for our country. And this is the thanks they get? They can't even get help from him or his administration."

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in a statement Friday that the USS Lincoln's mission was extended because the conflict with Iran demanded it.

"It is also true— a small number of mental health cases were treated with no loss of life," Cao said. "Meal plans were adjusted when fresh resupply was unavailable, without a single meal being missed. Calls home were limited when the operational threat was too high."

Cao said those aboard the USS Lincoln are the "epitome of American strength and resilience."

"There is no question our young men and women have been pushed to their limits—but they have never broken," Cao said. "They are rightly tired—but have never been out of the fight."

Democrats demand investigation

Democrats are calling for the Pentagon to investigate and take accountability over the conditions.

Speaking to NPR's Morning Edition Friday, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) accused the Trump administration of not having a plan.

"They're just kind of winging it right now," he said, adding he felt that the Pentagon's handling of the deployment itself was "not proper leadership."

Gallego also said he had spoken to some of the crew aboard the ship.

"We are able to talk to a lot of these sailors," Gallego said. "We are able to talk to their spouses. And this is why I think it's important they allow us a bipartisan group of members of the House and the Senate to go and visit these sailors - something that has happened before - to make sure that we know that they're doing well and that the secretary of defense is not lying to us."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said media reports about the conditions on the ship are "misrepresented" and said the U.S. can indefinitely maintain a naval blockade on Iran.

Speaking to NPR's All Things Considered, Julie Roland, a former Navy helicopter pilot, said there needs to be care given to the roughly 5,000 sailors returning to the U.S. from the USS Lincoln.

"I don't think anybody wants to be stuck in their office for 200 days without being able to see their friends or family no matter how good your job is," Roland said. "Some people do really struggle with the mental health of just transitioning from life on board to coming back home. When they return, we have to embrace them and take care of whatever might be the residual effects of having gone through this."

Copyright 2026, NPR

Meta will head into federal court on Tuesday to fend off accusations from a group of state attorneys general that it designed its social media platforms to hook children, lied to the public about the risks those platforms posed and gathered data on kids in violation of the law.

The case is the latest in a wave of suits against social media companies, meant to hold them accountable for the way they design their products. Legal experts compare it to landmark litigation against tobacco and opioid manufacturers that changed those companies' behaviors as well as the public discussion about the risks of cigarettes and prescription painkillers.

Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties and product changes under consumer protection laws that they allege were broken by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. They say Meta also violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by hoovering up data about children.

"We allege in our complaint, and what we're prepared to prove at trial, is that they're deceiving consumers about Facebook and Instagram's dangers," said New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport in an interview with NPR. "They're putting the profits … over the health of a generation of young people."

The suit is a bellwether in what's known as multidistrict litigation. It consolidates thousands of similar lawsuits to create consistency and avoid duplication of tasks like evidence gathering.

One of the suit's central arguments is that Meta designed and deployed features to capture young users' attention and prolong their time on social media, including the "like" button, the infinite-scroll function and recommendation algorithms that "encourage compulsive use." The company financially benefited from this, the suit claims, because Meta makes money from advertising. The longer kids stay on Meta's sites — and the more effectively that advertising can be targeted to them — the more money Meta stands to make.

The lawsuit alleges that Meta prioritized engagement over young users' safety, creating products that disrupted their education and sleep and, in the case of visual filters, were known to promote eating disorders and body dysmorphia. This happened, the states argue, despite public statements by Meta that its platforms were designed to support the well-being of young users.

The lawsuit also alleges that Meta knew children under 13 were on Instagram and Facebook — a violation of its own policies — and that it collected personal information about them without parental consent, in violation of COPPA.

In a statement emailed to NPR, a spokesperson for Meta said that the states' claims are limited and unsubstantiated and that the financial demands are "vastly disproportionate."

"The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification," the spokesperson wrote. "We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court."

Social media companies have enjoyed some immunity from lawsuits brought against them because they are protected by the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which largely shields platforms from prosecution based on content posted by users.

But Meta has already lost two cases in state courts this year over claims similar to those made in the federal suit. In March, a Los Angeles jury found that Meta and Google were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a young woman who compulsively used social media as a small child and awarded her $6 million in damages. Separately, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million and implement new safety measures after a jury found that the company failed to protect young users from child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

In the federal case that begins trial this week, as in the larger wave of lawsuits brought against social media companies in recent years, the plaintiffs are taking issue with the design features of the platforms, which they say led to addiction by minors, and not with the user-generated content minors viewed.

Stuart Benjamin, a professor at the Duke University School of Law, said that this legal approach could get messy. It could be hard for the court to separate allegations of addictive product design from claims of addictive content.

"Can the claims you're letting go forward be disentangled from the claims you're saying can't go forward? Or is it all really one unified theory of harm, that you failed to have parental controls and you had an infinite feed of addicting content?" he said.

What did Meta know about the risks of its products?

Experts expect the case to cast a spotlight on discrepancies between what Meta leaders said in public versus in private about their products and those products' effects on minors. In the lawsuit, the states note more than 100 statements by people at Meta that were potentially deceptive.

And in a June pretrial ruling, for instance, the judge cited Meta's own documents as supporting the plaintiffs' theory that time-restriction tools were merely a "public relations stunt," because they show that Meta employees knew spending more time on social media was bad for teens.

"This litigation is shining a light on not just what Meta did, but also what Meta knew," said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor of law at Stanford University.

"The significance of this litigation isn't limited to who wins or how much Meta pays. The litigation itself can substantially change what the public knows," she said, adding that this could move public opinion, catalyze regulatory action or spur legislation.

Legal experts think Meta, which said in late July that an average of 3.6 billion people use its platforms each day, is likely to appeal any ruling against it, in part because the stakes are so high. An appeal could potentially reach the Supreme Court.

"It's not as easy as it might seem for Meta to write a check" and settle, said Benjamin Zipursky, a professor at Fordham University's School of Law. The plaintiffs are "claiming humongous amounts of money, and there's a huge number of plaintiffs — and it's a potentially endless list of people going forward."

The trial is being held in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in Oakland, in the court of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who presided this spring over the high-profile lawsuit that Tesla CEO Elon Musk brought against OpenAI.

It's expected to last about six weeks.

Copyright 2026, NPR

The Trump administration finalized a new health care policy that has been in the works for months: No federal dollars can be used to pay for gender-affirming care for children covered by Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Plan.

The news hit one California mom hard.

"Every time you wake up, it feels like — what's going to happen next?" says the mother who asked NPR to identify her by her initials, A.W. "What else are they going to take away from us and our kids, to keep them thriving?"

A.W., who is the parent of a transgender teenager, asked not to use her full name because she fears her family could be targeted or her children could be taken away by the federal administration.

The population affected by the rule the administration finalized on Tuesday is quite small. Health research organization KFF estimates there are 130,000 transgender people under age 18 who live in states where gender-affirming care is still available — many states have banned the care after a flurry of state laws in the last few years.

A.W.'s family is in that small group. After her husband's company went out of business, they lost their health benefits, and are now enrolled in Medicaid. They also rely on food assistance, and A.W. says those cuts have been hard on them too.

A longtime Republican herself, A.W. says she never would have believed her family would need this help. "But we do need it," she says. "We need it really badly right now because my husband is still unemployed."

She says she knew the rule restricting access to transgender care through Medicaid was coming, since it was proposed in December. Still, when it was published, she felt panicked. "The initial just — what are we going to do?"

‘Untested’

The rule is significant, says Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at Georgetown. "I'm not aware of any other times that the federal government has prohibited federal funds in this way for a specific patient population with a particular diagnosis," she says. She calls it "unprecedented" and "untested."

Youth enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP could still receive care if the states they live in decide to backfill the money the federal government will be withholding. Exactly how states will respond is unclear, says Lindsey Dawson, director of LGBTQ Health Policy at the nonpartisan health research organization KFF. "We'll have a better understanding of who will be impacted by this when we understand which states are going to continue to offer these services," she says.

In a social media video about the final rule, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), explained the agency's reasoning. "When the harms of sex-rejecting procedures are so serious and the evidence is weak, the government cannot keep signing these checks," he said.

CMS did not make Oz available for an interview or answer NPR's questions about the rule.

‘Wolves in White Coats’

Days after the rule was published, the Trump administration released a report called "Wolves in White Coats," which features the stories of young people who have de-transitioned, meaning they once identified as transgender but don't anymore. The report accuses doctors and hospitals of being driven by greed and of using fraudulent billing practices.

None of the named authors and contributors to the report are government employees, and many have ties to anti-trans advocacy work. CMS did not answer NPR's questions about the role HHS played in developing the report.

Trump administration officials cited that report when referring for investigation dozens of health care providers to the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department alleging potentially fraudulent billing practices.

That same day, HHS released a 12-minute documentary, also called "Wolves in White Coats," narrated by HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Brian Christine.

"I think we have to see the administration actions operating on two levels," says Dawson. "One is formal policymaking like we see with the Medicaid final rule, and the other is this whole suite of actions — the language being used and the social media posts — to stoke fear in the [health care] provider community."

She says that fear has been effective in getting hospitals to end their gender programs. "When providers have rolled back care, every time I've seen a public statement, those provider groups have explicitly said that they're rolling back care, not because there's been a change in what's recommended in terms of care delivery or in best practices, but instead as a result of administration policymaking and fear," she says.

For her part, A.W. says the Trump administration is spending way too much time thinking about families like hers and the decisions they make. "The obsession is so weird to me," she says.

A thoughtful, family-driven journey

A.W. says she and her husband didn't have any education about trans identity when her youngest started giving them "clues" from the age of three or four years old. "We thought, 'Oh, he's a tomboy,'" she says. Then he started at a new school and other students assumed he was a boy. The teacher told them he wasn't correcting anyone.

"We were like, 'Oh, that's interesting,'" she says. "So that's when we started really having serious talks with him about what he was feeling."

She remembers the first time she took him to the boy's section at Nordstrom's when he was about seven years old. "I've never seen a kid so excited in my whole life," she says. "The sales associate calling him 'little buddy' — it was so apparent to me who he was."

For many years, he worked with a therapist, and then eventually they went to a gender clinic. "These doctors are so knowledgeable and so experienced and so thoughtful about their care," she says. "No decision is flippant. There is a lot of thought and a lot of time that goes into every health care decision. Nothing is being pushed." She says Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, has been "amazing," and has covered everything they've needed.

She says the narrative advanced by the Trump administration — that families are being tricked into gender-affirming care by doctors and hospitals driven by greed — is completely off base.

"This whole notion that it's woke Democrats that are turning our kids into being trans is idiotic," she says. So is the argument that doctors are driven by profit. "It's kind of laughable because the population is so small," she says. "So why? Why? Why are they doing this?"

She thinks one reason is to score political points, noting that all of this activity is happening in August, when Congress is out of session and there's not much news in Washington.

President Trump made the politics of the Medicaid rule explicit in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday. He wrote that the rule was being issued at his direction. "Please remember this when you are casting your vote in the Midterm Elections in November," he posted.

"It's heartbreaking and devastating to have your child used as basically a political football," A.W. says. "At the beginning of all of this, I was terrified. And now I'm just really f***ing angry."

Legal challenges are likely

The new rule is likely to be challenged in court, says Jennifer Levi, senior attorney at GLAD Law, an LGBTQ+ legal advocacy organization. "This has to be seen in the broader context of this long, ongoing attack on the transgender community," she says, mentioning the trans military ban, changing travel documents and holding back funding from supportive schools, among other actions.

So far, Levi says, the Trump administration has had some key losses on this issue in court, and she senses that the Justice Department is stretched thin.

"I am involved probably in nine or ten cases against the administration and they have the same two to four lawyers regularly showing up in court, and they're oftentimes trying to get delays in filings," she says.

That may be why in addition to making policy this week, the administration is also making videos. "The documentary probably turns out to be a more effective tool for them than anything else, because you don't have to legally defend a documentary," she says.

Many Democratic-led states have vowed to fight the rule in court. Some have also announced plans to backfill the federal funding for these patients, but that could be difficult, says Keith at Georgetown. "I think it's going to mean a lot of disruption for states who have to scramble to find money to do this when they didn't have to before," she says.

‘Kids who want to thrive’

A.W. is relieved that California has budgeted millions of dollars to keep gender-affirming care available for families like hers after the rule takes effect. She's hoping that means there won't be interruptions. But even though she's not worried about access to care in the short term, there are other things to worry about as the parent of a trans teenager.

"If we send our son to travel to visit family across the country, we have to consider where his layover is," she says. "If he's going to be in a state where it restricts his access to bathrooms, we can't fly him through that state." On roadtrips, they have to worry about where they make stops. "Can we go to Europe? Will we be able to come back into the country?" she wonders.

"It's not normal to live like this," she says. "These are just kids who want to thrive."

Copyright 2026, NPR

Democratic voters are showing up for this year’s primaries in numbers not seen in decades, a pattern emerging across several states that has the party optimistic about its prospects in November when control of Congress will be at stake.

In Tuesday's primary, Wisconsin Democrats cast nearly 800,000 ballots, their highest total for a midterm in more than 20 years. That followed 1.5 million Democratic voters in Michigan the week before, a midterm record for the state.

The enthusiasm extends beyond the Midwest. Democratic turnout also surged earlier this year in Texas and Georgia, states that will have competitive Senate races in the fall. It is giving Democrats a string of strong showings heading into the midterms, when the president’s party is normally at a disadvantage. That is compounded this year by President Donald Trump’s weak approval ratings, persistent inflation and an unpopular war with Iran.

“The big news is that Democrats are getting huge turnouts,” said David Axelrod, who was a top adviser to Democratic President Barack Obama. “That’s been a steady story throughout this period.”

Competitive Democratic primaries have helped drive the surge, giving the party’s voters more reason to participate. Republican primary turnout remained closer to historic norms in Michigan, even with a competitive statewide contest.

Voter turnout in primary elections is an imperfect predictor of general election results, especially when one party has the more compelling early contests. Republicans say they are responding with a major effort to turn out their voters in the fall.

GOP leaders say they can energize voters by tapping into a major fundraising advantage over Democrats and sending Trump back out campaigning, including during a midterm convention in Texas next month.

“Primary turnout doesn’t win general elections,” said Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “House Republicans are entering November with the money, momentum, stronger candidates and a battle-tested operation built to turn out voters when it actually counts.”

Democratic turnout in some states is the highest in two decades

The scale of the Democratic turnout advantage varied across states, but the pattern extended across much of this year's competitive landscape for House, Senate or governor's races.

In Wisconsin, more than 790,000 people voted in the Democratic primary for governor, putting turnout at about 22 percent of registered voters. More than 1.5 million people voted in Michigan's recent Democratic Senate primary, which accounted for a little more than 18 percent of registered voters. It was the state's highest midterm turnout rate in a Democratic primary since at least 2002 — the same as in Wisconsin, according to an analysis of Associated Press election data.

In Minnesota, Democratic primary turnout was on par with the 2018 midterm election, with both years marking the state’s highest Democratic primary turnout in a midterm year so far this century.

For Republicans in Wisconsin and Michigan, turnout in last week’s primary was in line with previous GOP midterm primaries in each state. In Michigan, turnout for the Republican governor’s race was about 11 percent. In Wisconsin’s Republican primary for governor, it is expected to be about 14 percent.

“Republicans in Michigan will close the enthusiasm gap by highlighting the massive differences between our nominees and the extreme, out-of-touch politicians the Democrats have nominated,” said Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for the Michigan GOP. “It's one thing to lead in enthusiasm before we know who is running. Now, the differences are clear.”

Other states that held elections earlier this year also saw significant Democratic primary turnout. In Georgia and Texas, the midterm turnout rate in the Democratic primaries was higher than it’s been since at least 2002. In Georgia, just over 1 million people voted in May in the Democratic governor’s race, a little more than 13 percent of registered voters. In Texas, about 2.3 million people voted in March in the Democratic Senate primary, a little more than 12 percent.

Competitive primaries fueled turnout. They may complicate Democratic unity

The robust primary turnout has been a “good sign for Democrats,” said Corwin Smidt, a political science professor at Michigan State University. But he cautioned that it is “not a very solid predictor” of how voters will break in November.

Smidt pointed to several factors behind the numbers, including high turnout in recent elections, which has created a larger pool of regular voters.

“Voting is a lot of habit-forming,” he said.

He also noted that many of the states with high turnout had what he described as “media spotlight candidacies.”

Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota all held marquee progressive versus moderate races in August that likely helped drive Democratic participation.

In Michigan, spending in the Democratic Senate primary topped $80 million, making it one of the most expensive races of the year so far, according to AdImpact. Progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens after a campaign that drew national attention and energized younger voters and university communities.

But Stevens carried Wayne County, the state’s largest source of Democratic votes, and some of the congresswoman's supporters said before the primary that they would not back El-Sayed if he became the nominee.

In Wisconsin, the governor’s primary was repeatedly reshaped as moderate Democrats left and reentered the race while democratic socialist Francesca Hong consolidated progressive support. Hong lost narrowly to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a more moderate candidate.

The races highlight how competitive primaries helped drive attention and also how the winning candidates have work to do to bring their party together for November. Both Wisconsin and Michigan Democrats held unity breakfasts in the days after the primaries.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who backed El-Sayed and Minnesota Senate nominee Peggy Flanagan but did not endorse Hong, said in an interview this week that he expects Democratic voters to bridge their differences for the general election.

“At the end of the day, when it comes to taking on Trump and creating a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, there is going to be unity, because I think everybody knows how important that is,” he said.

A favorable environment, but a difficult map

Democrats have reason to believe the primary enthusiasm could last. The president’s party has historically lost ground in midterm elections, and Trump enters the fall deeply unpopular amid economic unease and an unpopular war.

Some 33 percent of American adults approve of his job performance, according to the most recent polling by The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs.

But a favorable national environment may not be enough. Democrats will need unusually strong turnout to overcome a congressional map that has become more favorable to Republicans.

The number of competitive House races has shrunk considerably this year after Republican-controlled states redrew congressional districts in their favor at Trump’s urging. Some Democratic-controlled states responded, but the new lines are expected to produce a net benefit for Republicans, who hold a slim House majority.

Republicans control the Senate 53-47, with Democrats needing to pick up four seats to win the majority. Democrats will have to generate energy similar to Republicans two years ago, Smidt said.

“If we have a national tide like we had in 2024, suddenly that opens the map a little more,” he said.

Wisconsin is experiencing its first outbreak of measles cases of the year, as part of a resurgence of the preventable disease across the country.

Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services confirmed 15 cases as of Thursday, and said there are another six probable cases that have not yet been confirmed through testing. All but one of the measles cases are in Iowa County in the southwestern part of the state, and the other case is in neighboring Lafayette County.

Dr. Peter Bornstein, director of infection prevention for Fairview Health Services’ system, said that Minnesotans don’t need to fear traveling to Wisconsin, but he stressed the importance of vaccination against the serious, highly contagious, and possibly deadly disease.

“The best thing for people to do is to be up to date on their measles vaccination,” Bornstein said. “And it's the first line of protection for newborns. They can't get the vaccine, so the only way to protect newborns from getting measles, which can be fatal, is for the older children and adults around them to be vaccinated.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 96 percent of the cases this year occurred in people who were unvaccinated or had only had one of the vaccine’s two doses, and nearly 20 percent of the cases were in children under the age of five years old.

To ensure people are protected through community immunity, also known as herd immunity, more than 95 percent of people have to be vaccinated. According to CDC data, only 87 percent of Minnesota kindergartners were vaccinated in the 2024-2025 school year.

“The vaccine reluctance is unfortunately due to a lot of disinformation about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines,” Dr. Bornstein said. “The MMR vaccine has been around for decades. It's probably the most heavily studied vaccine. There have not been any robust studies that indicate it's especially dangerous. I can't emphasize enough how safe and effective the MMR vaccine is, and how important it is for people to get it.”

Measles cases seem to be spiking across the country in recent years, as the anti-vaccine movement has grown. The CDC has reported 2,566 cases so far this year, already surpassing last year’s total count of 2,289. It’s the highest number of reported cases of measles in the U.S. since 1991.

“Unfortunately, measles is one of the most contagious viruses around,” Bornstein said. “ It's way more contagious than COVID, for example, or influenza. If someone has measles and they're coughing. It can linger in the air for hours, even after the person's left.”

The symptoms of measles can include a high fever, cough, runny nose, red and watery eyes, and a rash three to five days after other symptoms begin. The illness can be especially dangerous for babies and young children. Serious cases can lead to pneumonia, meningitis, brain swelling and even death.

“While the majority of people who do get measles will recover, some of them may not recover,” Bornstein said. “They may be permanently disabled or die from the measles.”