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Rebecca Villagracia/Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS

How Minnesota's political culture complicates security at the Capitol

Current News / News & Features /

Minnesotans looking to praise, protest or petition their government have gathered at the State Capitol for more than a century.

Farmers packed the rotunda during the Great Depression to demand farm aid. In 1964, Minnesotans gathered to pray as the U.S. Senate debated the Civil Rights Act. Anti-abortion activists gather every year to advocate ...Read more

Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Self-deportations. Factory layoffs. Military zones. How Trump is transforming the U.S.-Mexico border

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Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain.

Only there hadn't been many migrants of late.

When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly ...Read more

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America/TNS

$50B rural health 'slush fund' faces questions, skepticism

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A last-minute scramble to add a $50 billion rural health program to President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending law has left hospital and clinic leaders nationwide hopeful but perplexed.

The Rural Health Transformation Program calls for federal regulators to hand states $10 billion a year for five years starting in fiscal year 2026.

...Read more

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images North America/TNS

Fact check: Are 5 million nondisabled Medicaid recipients watching TV all day? That's unsupported

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“Almost 5 million able-bodied Medicaid recipients ‘simply choose not to work’ and ‘spend six hours a day socializing and watching television.’”

Scott Jennings on “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip” on July 1

____

Republicans defended the GOP megabill’s Medicaid changes as targeting a group of people they believe shouldn’t ...Read more

Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Changes to federal student loans leave aspiring medical students scrambling to cover costs

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CHICAGO — Twenty-year-old Eric Mun didn’t want to believe it: Only one kid in the family could make it to medical school — and it wasn’t going to be him.

Mun had done everything right. He graduated high school with honors, earned a scholarship at Northwestern University and breezed through his biology courses.

He immigrated to Alabama ...Read more

Sam Morris/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS

Las Vegas leaders are banking on trees for cooling. The science is complicated

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As extreme heat claims more lives during ruthless summers in the region, Southern Nevada is upping the ante in its tree planting efforts. But a new study suggests trees alone may not be enough to make a meaningful difference in the daytime.

While Las Vegas’ trees can cool surrounding air temperatures up to nearly 35 degrees at night and shade...Read more

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/TNS

Tariffs, Duterte risks loom as Philippines' Marcos charts last years in power

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Fresh from tariff talks with President Donald Trump, Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is on Monday set to unveil plans to boost growth as he starts the second half of his single six-year term beset with economic and political risks.

Marcos will use his annual speech to Congress to push welfare and infrastructure programs as he steers the ...Read more

PAUL KITAGAKI JR./The Sacramento Bee/TNS

California agency reverses on telework policy after workers raise union contract concerns

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The California Public Utilities Commission announced Friday afternoon that the agency would pause a September return-to-office order for employees until next year.

Earlier this month, the agency told employees represented by SEIU Local 1000 and other labor groups that they would be expected to work in person two days a week starting in ...Read more

Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/TNS

Witnesses, girlfriend of man killed in KC dollar store collapse describe horror

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Laurie Whisler’s cigarette trembled between her fingers as she looked at the wreckage at the Family Dollar. Dressed in a gray shirt and beanie despite the sweltering Kansas City heat, she stood right outside the doors of the Valentine Apartments, bent over her walker and weeping.

Her long-term boyfriend, Larry Banks, had just died when the ...Read more

AG deal: California cleaners wrongly said workers were independent contractors

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A nationwide janitorial company with four franchises in California has agreed to pay $1.7 million in restitution and penalties to resolve allegations that it misclassified employees as independent contractors, depriving them of protections under the state’s minimum wage and overtime laws.

Under the deal struck with the state, Virginia-based ...Read more

Li Ying/Xinhua via ZUMA Press/TNS

US, China negotiators meet in Stockholm to extend trade truce

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U.S. and Chinese officials are meeting Monday to extend their tariff detente beyond a mid-August deadline, and haggle over other ways to further defuse trade tensions.

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will lead the delegations through Tuesday in Stockholm — their third meeting in less than three months....Read more

Vladvitek/DREAMSTIME/TNS

Biologists are tracking Jamestown Canyon virus, detected in Pennsylvania mosquitoes

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While West Nile remains the greatest mosquito-borne threat in Pennsylvania, state officials are monitoring another virus that has begun popping up in mosquito populations.

Jamestown Canyon virus, discovered in a Colorado town of the same name in 1961, was added to the state Department of Environmental Protection's West Nile Virus Mosquito ...Read more

Xavier Mascareñas/The Sacramento Bee/TNS

'On a roll': Ammo decision fuels winning streak for gun rights in California

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A federal appeals court this week struck down California’s landmark law requiring background checks and in-person transactions for ammunition purchases, the latest in a string of judicial wins that have gun rights advocates celebrating.

For now, until further legal steps play out, Californians looking for ammo still face the same requirements...Read more

Yong Kim/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

Betty, Penn's new off-campus supercomputer, joins the AI arms race

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The new, glass-walled supercomputer called Betty sits on the top floor of a high-fenced brick data center on a hill 30 miles northwest — by road and two separate twin-fiber data lines — from its operators at the University of Pennsylvania.

Betty is a stack of central processing units, a “SuperPOD” of graphics processing units, plus ...Read more

Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/TNS

One killed when dollar store partially collapses in midtown KC. What we know

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A dollar store building in midtown Kansas City partially collapsed Sunday afternoon, killing one person and injuring at least three others, according to Michael Hopkins, a spokesperson for the Kansas City Fire Department.

KCFD responded to the reported building collapse in the 3700 block of Broadway Boulevard just after 2:45 p.m. Sunday. When ...Read more

DANIEL HEUER/The Sacramento Bee/TNS

Gov. Gavin Newsom presses for redistricting as he meets with Texas state Dems

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Gov. Gavin Newsom further pressured state lawmakers to redraw congressional districts, as Democrats nationwide consider redrawing more favorable districts ahead of 2026 to shore up their chances of winning back congressional power after President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans to guarantee him five more party seats in the midterm elections...Read more

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

EU reaches broad tariff deal with US to avert painful trade blow

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The U.S. and European Union agreed on a hard-fought deal that will see the bloc face 15% tariffs on most of its exports, including automobiles, staving off a trade war that could have delivered a hammer blow to the global economy.

The pact was concluded less than a week before a Friday deadline for President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs to ...Read more

Christopher Magan/St. Paul Pioneer Press/TNS

Man trespasses three times at Minnesota Capitol in 24 hours -- once naked -- arrested on Wisconsin warrant

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A man who was found naked Friday inside the Senate chamber at the State Capitol and taken to a hospital for mental health evaluations was arrested Saturday night after returning to the Capitol for a third time.

Capitol security was first alerted to the man just before midnight Friday and transported him to Regions Hospital, where he managed to ...Read more

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

EU, US reach deal to avoid Trump tariff hike before deadline

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The U.S. and European Union agreed to a deal that will see the bloc face 15% tariffs on most of its exports, including automobiles, staving off a trade war that could have delivered a hammer blow to the global economy.

The pact comes less than a week before a Friday deadline for President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs to take effect. The ...Read more

Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images North America/TNS

Tom Lehrer, Harvard's satiric, melodic mathematician, dies at 97

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Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-educated mathematician whose brief side gig as one of America’s favorite satirical composers captured in tune some of the anxieties and absurdities of the 1950s and 1960s, has died, according to the New York Times. He was 97.

Lehrer died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Times said, citing a ...Read more