​What was the Great Depression like In Minnesota? By SOFIA BARNETT and ERICA PEARSON The Minnesota Star Tribune​

When Minneapolis' landmark Foshay Tower opened over Labor Day weekend in 1929, the celebration was truly over the top. Businessman Wilbur Foshay spent just as lavishly on the party as he had on his 447-foottall luxury building, commissioning John Philip Sousa to write a march for the occasion.

Less than two months later, the stock market crashed. Foshay went bankrupt and would soon be convicted of fraud for misleading investors. Even the check he wrote to Sousa bounced (leading the composer to ban the Foshay Tower Washington Memorial March from ever being played again).

While it was designed to resemble the Washington Memorial obelisk, the downtown Art Deco tower instead became a marker of the moment when everything changed, said Bill Convery, director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society.

"The Foshay building is kind of a memorial to the last high-water mark of the boom times, before the Great Depression hit," Convery said.
In the late 1930s, Nick Piazza's grandfather opened a restaurant a few blocks away from the Foshay Tower. Called Cafe di Napoli, it was a Hennepin Avenue mainstay for more than 60 years.

Piazza, who lives in Burnsville, has been wondering about what life was like during those tough years "when my grandparents were young and the Depression was reality," he said.

He wrote to Curious Minnesota, the Strib's audience-powered reporting project, to ask: "What was Minnesota like during the Great Depression?"

During the 1929-1939 era, a giant Dust Bowl formed in the Great Plains, and homeless people gathered in "Hooverville" colonies ruefully named for President Herbert Hoover, with the biggest shantytowns growing in St. Louis and Seattle.

Minnesota wasn't at the center of these defining national environmental and economic disasters — but its residents did face a significant share of the decade's many hardships, according to historians. "Minnesota's unemployment by 1932 was at 29%, which was higher than the national average at the time," said Convery. "And another maybe 30 to 40% of Minnesotans were underemployed.
That meant they were making money, but not enough, really, to support their family. In the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, unemployment was at 70% by the mid-1930s because the iron industry had just collapsed."

To put this in perspective, today the state's unemployment rate is 4.4%.

"There was a real loss of pride and a real loss of hope," Convery said. "By 1932, 1933, there was a lot of chaos in Minnesota."

Minnesotans responded to the crisis in unique ways. In 1932, one Minneapolis pastor started a movement — complete with its own "scrip" currency in a time where real cash was nowhere to be found — to provide jobs for unemployed residents. In those years, the state also became a national epicenter of labor activism, most significantly during the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters' strikes.

Trouble in the fields
For Minnesota's farmers, economic struggles actually began long before the stock market crash, according to Convery.

"During World War I, prices were very high. And so farmers had been producing very heavily," he said. "And then when the war ended, crop prices dropped, and farmers were left with the surplus and a lot of debt, because they'd expanded, they'd bought a lot of land, they invested in tractors and other kinds of machinery."

Drought and swarms of grasshoppers also threatened parts of Minnesota during the Depression years. In Clay County near the North Dakota border, farmworkers tried to stop the bugs by spreading a toxic mix of sawdust, sodium arsenate, molasses, and wheat bran onto fields, according to newspaper accounts.

Farmers were "really suffering," Convery said. By 1933, about 60 out of every 1,000 Minnesota farmers either went bankrupt or lost their farm.

Big Stone County, where wheat farmers dealt with too little water and too many grasshoppers, was the hardest hit, with 60% of residents receiving relief checks from the federal government during 1934 and 1935, D. Jerome Tweton wrote in his book "Depression: Minnesota in the Thirties."

Some areas of the state, with smaller, more diversified farms and better weather, had an easier time. Still, most Minnesota farmers were in "serious trouble," Tweton wrote. "In a state where one-third of the population lived either on farms or in villages dependent on the farm dollar, the well-being of farmers was a critical factor in the health of the economy."

In 1932, a group of farmers gathered in St. Cloud and formed the Minnesota Farmers' Holiday Association, organizing to protect one another from foreclosure and to drive prices up.

In Iowa, the Holiday Association blocked milk shipments, aiming to drastically reduce supply and push prices up. The Minnesota group wasn't quite so radical, according to Tweton's account. Still, they marched on the State Capitol in 1933 and successfully pressured lawmakers to pass a moratorium on farm mortgages.

The 'Organized Unemployed'
In Minneapolis in the early 1930s, tens of thousands of people were out of work. "There was kind of a desperation in the cities, because people who couldn't find a job really couldn't feed themselves or shelter themselves," Convery said.

About 100 people a day started showing up at Wesley United Methodist Church downtown asking for help.

"The need became appalling," the church's pastor, Rev. George Mecklenburg, told the Minneapolis Star. In response, he created a movement called the "Organized Unemployed," which established a barter system to provide people with work. They printed their own "scrip" currency and opened a commissary general store.

They turned the old Central High School into a hub of activity, with a cafeteria, sewing center, and even a canning factory in the basement where they turned donated cabbage into more than 30,000 pounds of sauerkraut.

"Minneapolis is convinced, after a five months' trial, that it has hit upon an effective system of self-aid for its jobless," the New York Times wrote about the program in Jan., 1933. "Throughout this city is functioning the Organized Unemployed, Inc., with 18,000 families which perform services for their corporation in return for scrip with which they can buy food, shoes, and clothing at its store."

Minneapolis' Organized Unemployed operated well into 1935, according to Tweton, wrapping up as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal federal relief efforts and work projects gave cash and jobs to Minnesotans across the state.

Labor unrest
During the Great Depression, Minnesota was also home to a series of significant labor strikes, as Gov. Floyd Olson and his Farmer-Labor Party came into power and pushed for radical change.

In Nov. 1933, in Austin, meatpackers took over the Hormel plant and refused to leave, eventually securing a better hourly wage. The next year, Minneapolis truck drivers in the Teamsters' union went on strike. Calling for union recognition, better wages, and conditions, they blocked downtown streets. On July 20, 1934, police fired on picket lines and killed two unarmed strikers.

Then, in 1937, came a factory worker strike in Albert Lea and a lumberjack strike in northern Minnesota.

"Workers were banding together to protect their jobs and protect their wages," Convery said. "You know, there was a very different feel in the era, kind of a feeling that maybe capitalism had failed and that we needed a more radical idea. And that kind of manifested itself in Minnesota in a really unique way."

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One Angry Man And the existential threat he poses Dan Rather and Team Steady Jun 22

All the ink spilled, and lies spewed about the corrupt refurbishing of the Reflecting Pool, the court-ordered removal of Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center, the taxpayer bill of $307 million for the “privately funded” ballroom are distractions. Each is a worthy cause for outrage among citizens who continue to watch the bar on this presidency fall to new lows. But for those who closely monitor Trump, including some members of Congress, these distractions may be part of a much bigger, perhaps more menacing, plot.

Regular readers of this Substack know that Steady has long been reluctant to write about the many stories regarding plots that swirl around the internet and various podcasts. But there is a current one that may be worth attention.

Jamie Raskin, a high-ranking Democratic congressman from Maryland, knows Trump well. He was one of the House managers who led Trump’s second impeachment for inciting a violent insurrection against the Constitution. That impeachment failed in the Republican-dominated Senate. Raskin is currently the ranking minority member on the House Judiciary Committee. He also served on the January 6 Select Committee.

Though Democrats are in the minority and have had negligible power to stop Trump, Raskin has remained a vocal critic. And as cracks in the MAGA coalition widen, more people are listening to him and taking him seriously.

Last month, Raskin introduced legislation to block the $1.8 billion slush fund created to pay Trump’s allies and to nix the immunity deal shielding the president and his family from any past or future criminal, civil, or tax prosecution.

The fund was the eyebrow-raising “settlement” in the frivolous $10 billion suit Trump brought against the IRS. You’ll recall the stories about the president suing himself, and, no surprise, he won! $1.8 billion.

In a recent, wide-ranging interview with Puck, Raskin explained the need for the legislation, even though acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a congressional hearing that the fund was “not going forward, period.”

Here’s the most important part. The congressman believes Trump “wants a political slush fund for his movement to turn that January 6 army into a permanent private militia for future political entanglements.” Once the former insurrectionists are paid, they will be beholden to Trump. He could call them up to “monitor” midterm voting or intimidate his perceived rivals.

We’ve already heard Trump talk about using ICE or other federal law enforcement to ensure election integrity for the midterms. Many of the now-pardoned insurrectionists would be ready to go again for their guy.

On the pro-democracy website Fulcrum, ethics lawyer James Kobak writes, “Controlling sources of compensation, whether through the slush fund settlement or some other means, gives Trump a new tool from the autocrat’s playbook: rewards for the insurrectionists and encouragement for them to do it again. This time, they would be primed in advance and would have other administration-appointed allies. This time, compensation from the slush fund would allow them to be well-resourced and well-armed. This time, they might succeed.”

“Everybody can see what’s going on here,” Raskin told Puck. He clarified that the fund is not only sinister but illegal. “The vast majority of Americans and members of Congress say no, the president cannot act as the legislature and appropriate $1.776 billion to give away to his political foot soldiers in MAGA, and the Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters, to pay them for their service working for insurrection against the government.”

When the slush fund was announced last month, Republicans got to Trump and convinced him that it was a terrible idea, especially so close to the midterms. He uncharacteristically heeded their advice and dropped it.

Or did he? Is funding for the slush fund just on pause? Last week, a federal judge requested that the Department of Justice provide the court with a written declaration confirming that “they will not take any action to create or operate the Anti-Weaponization Fund, and that the Anti-Weaponization Fund will not proceed in any manner, or under any name.”

Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney, refused to put anything in writing, citing his congressional testimony and promising the fund was dead.

That may not be enough for senators who must vote on Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general next month. He is making the rounds on Capitol Hill to assuage any concerns lawmakers might have.

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who is up for reelection, described her meeting with Blanche as “very good.” “We had an extensive discussion on the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which he has assured me with no equivocation at all that he is not for it, will not pursue it, that it will not exist,” she told Politico. Collins was famously assured by Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was “settled law,” and he would not touch it. As we know, Justice Kavanaugh did, in fact, join five other justices in overturning Roe.

Earlier this month, Collins said she did not regret her vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

Trump’s corruption-laden vanity projects, including the slush fund, are diverting our attention from Trump’s bigger failures and grifts: losing his war against Iran, his multifaceted criminal enterprise operating with impunity, and the president’s most recent executive order about voter identification that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of Americans. The throughline for all of these things is Trump’s mounting rage as he is backed further into corners. Anyone who has been following his presidency knows Trump is an angry man. Angry men often become violent men.

Trump goaded an angry mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol when he lost the 2020 election. He ordered the destruction of unarmed boats in the Caribbean Sea, killing dozens. He promised to end all foreign wars and then started an unnecessary and unprovoked one.

He seems to relish the role of an angry, dangerous man. Just look at his increasingly vitriolic and sometimes downright unhinged rhetoric toward Iran.

Five weeks into the war, he posted on social media, “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” A few weeks later, he threatened to send Iran “back to the stone age where they belong,” and posted an AI-generated image of himself carrying an assault rifle with the caption, “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”

On Sunday, effectively derailing the negotiations, he said, “We may take over the Strait if we have to. I’ll blow the s--t out of them,” he told Fox (News).

When not blowing up at the Iranians, Trump turned his ire on Raskin. “Jamie Raskin, a Loser in Life, who worked endlessly during my First Term to impeach me, will, guaranteed, be [SIC] trying to do it again despite one of the most successful Presidencies in history,”

​Raskin says that if the Democrats reclaim the majority, nothing is off the table, including impeachment. But this time, it is about so much more than that. It is about accountability. It is about corruption and graft. As Raskin added, “We have a number of different mechanisms for checking the corruption and lawlessness that have overtaken our country.”

The Club PUBlication 

​Is Minnesota ready for the age of drone warfare?
THE FUTURE OF WAR
AARON BROWN Columnist

Imagine a quiet cabin in the woods.  Wind rustles through early summer leaves. Birds call from tall branches while squirrels dash beneath the understory.

Suddenly, the roof of the cabin flings open. With an electric hum, drones armed with munitions burst upward like wasps from a fallen hive.

This nimble fleet of quadcopters swarms toward an air base a few miles away, exploding sophisticated military aircraft on the ground like dandelion fluff. Similar attacks launch across thousands of miles of countryside.

Each time, inexpensive drones accomplish what expensive planes and missiles could not: delivering a critical blow to a military superpower.

Perhaps this sounds like a modern-day spy novel set in northern Minnesota, but I'm describing Operation Spiderweb, which Ukraine launched against Russia on June 1, 2025.

Eighteen months earlier, Ukraine's Security Service sneaked these armed drones into Russia. Drivers thought they were delivering manufactured cabins to remote locations.

Ukraine claimed the attack destroyed $7 billion in Russian military targets, mostly aircraft. The first of its kind, this operation reordered the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Today, Russia's monthly war losses in personnel and equipment — mostly due to Ukraine's superior drone tactics — exceed its ability to replace them. It's a plucky underdog story that also signifies a potentially terrifying new world order. These drones narrow the odds in any conflict between a large power and a smaller one.

"The No. 1 change is the proliferation of precision strike capabilities, the ability to use small, guided munitions to directly hit targets," said Ryan Brobst, deputy director of the Center on Military and Political Power in Washington, D.C.

If these sneak attacks can happen in the forests of Russia, even as far away as Siberia, we should note that our geography here in Minnesota is similar.

Last year, I asked representatives of the 148th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard in Duluth what prevented such an attack in rural parts of our state.

The base declined to comment, and I must admit that it would be hard to answer the question without scaring people. Bob Brobst, who specializes in military drone research, says we must prepare for this immense shift in how wars will be conducted.

"The threat to individual Americans from these drones is quite low," said Brobst.

"But it is important that the U.S. military has the ability to invest in defense against them to protect the lives of U.S. service members as well as advance American interests in the event of a conflict."

In December 2021, shortly before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Brobst published an article about the ways that small loitering munitions, or kamikaze drones, were going to change warfare. Since then, he's watched Ukraine prove his point faster than he thought possible.

"War rapidly drives the pace of innovation out of necessity," said Brobst.

Ukraine overcame Russia's initial advantage in drone technology by wisely choosing to funnel foreign aid toward coordinated drone systems and aggressive tactics.

For the price of a $1,000 drone with a bomb, Ukraine can take out individual soldiers, valuable equipment, or crucial surveillance technology.

Drones wage a flexible war of attrition, like mosquitoes that can kill a bear with time and persistence.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus said that drones have "frozen the battlefield" in Ukraine, making it difficult to move large groups of soldiers or equipment.

Armored vehicles are basically useless, he said. The U.S., he told CBS News, needs "a whole new concept of warfare."

This is not a theoretical claim. By traditional measures, the current conflict in Iran was an American and Israeli rout. And yet, mostly due to the success of Iranian drones, the U.S. and Israel took expensive losses while failing to completely snuff out Iran's defensive capabilities.

That's how the so-called losing side somehow ended up closing the Strait of Hormuz and driving up global oil prices.

"The war with Iran also exposed, I think, capability gaps in our ability to defend against drones," said Brobst.

"Collaboration with Ukraine is probably the best way to fix this, given they have the most experience in the world of any friendly country defending against this threat."

Notably, Ukraine signed security agreements with Persian Gulf nations facing air attacks from Iran, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

It's offered the same to any nation helping it fight for survival against Russia, the U.S. included.

Minnesotans have a good reason to pay attention.

"The technology cuts both ways," said Brobst. "Drones make it easier for the United States to monitor its own border by acting as a force multiplier to allow remote monitoring of large areas. But they also pose a challenge because adversaries could potentially use them to conduct attacks or reconnaissance across the border."

Defending against future threats will take more than just better drones, said Brobst.

"The first layer [of defense] is our intelligence capabilities, which are identifying such threats before they're actually in place."

Brobst said the second layer of defense, defeating the drones in the air, is much harder.

"If the adversary can employ them at the time of their choosing, it's difficult to defend against," he said. "The United States is a continent-sized country with numerous military installations. It's difficult enough to defend even small areas from these types of threats."

That only underscores the importance of our diplomatic ties to neighboring Canada, a key ally that the Trump administration has treated with needless contempt.

"Two things that stand out to me [are] maintaining a good relationship with Canada and working with Ukraine to improve both of our capabilities," said Brobst.

According to Brobst, these are obvious ways to keep drone warfare out of Minnesota.

I might add that the best kind of drone war is no war at all. This might be the only way to truly avoid turning our nation, or even the whole world, into a dark forest of collateral damage.

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Lawyers puzzled by new green card rules The Trump directive says seekers must apply from outside the U.S. By SUSAN DU and SOFIA BARNETT The Minnesota Star Tribune

​Minnesota immigration policy groups and attorneys are scrambling to understand how to manage a new Trump administration rule affecting green card applications.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced last week it was tightening legal pathways to immigration, suggesting in a news release that many green card applicants must leave the United States while applying for lawful permanent residency.

"When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency," said USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler in the release.

The sweeping new policy could upend Minnesota institutions and disrupt immigrants looking to build families in the U.S.

Local attorneys are now trying to determine how the rules, which were expanded on in a policy memo, will affect their clients' chances of obtaining citizenship.

Gloria Contreras Edin, a longtime immigration lawyer based in St. Paul, said she's been flooded with hundreds of emails from attorneys across the country trying to interpret the change.

"The memo has just left us with many more questions," she said. "This is a really good example of another policy that muddies the waters and muddies the understanding of immigration law."

For decades, many immigrants who came to the U.S. legally could apply for lawful permanent residency, also known as "green cards," without leaving the country. Under the new policy, most applicants will be expected to complete the process through U.S. consulates and embassies abroad, according to Kahler. For example, a foreign student who travels to the U.S. to study and is later hired by a U.S. company would theoretically have to leave the country before applying for a green card.

Minnesota's business leaders have been quiet about the announcement, but immigration experts nationally say it will be harmful to employees and employers who rely on hiring skilled workers from overseas.

"It will drive talented people to other countries and make America a less competitive place for business," David J. Bier, the Cato Institute's director of immigration studies, wrote in a blog post about the new policy.

Other experts who have combed through the Trump administration memo say its language doesn't line up with the administration's rhetoric. While the memo said immigration officers should change an immigrant's temporary status to permanent only in "extraordinary" circumstances, it doesn't specify that green card seekers must apply from their country of origin.

Sarah Ramia, a Washington, D.C.-based immigration attorney who helps immigrants in Minnesota apply for green cards, characterized USCIS's statements on the policy change as "intimidation."  She said the memo didn't specify when changes would occur and whether it applies to new or pending applications. It also doesn't address the administration's January announcement that it was suspending immigrant visa processing at U.S. consulates and embassies in 75 countries worldwide.

"The administration can't change legislation because they're not going to Congress, so they're sort of going the lazy way about it where they just do a policy memo," Ramia said.

The ambiguity of the announcement means immigration advocates will wait to see whether the administration denies a green card under the new rules, Ramia said. She predicts a court challenge will likely follow.

The new policy also reminds immigration officers to consider an immigrant's full record when reviewing green card applications, including immigration or criminal violations.

"Adjudicators must weigh all positive and negative factors, including family ties, immigration status and history, the applicant's moral character, and any other relevant factor that bears on determining whether the alien warrants a favorable exercise of discretion," according to the memo.

Who does this impact? Federal officials have said the change is intended to discourage people from remaining in the country after unsuccessful applications. Kahler also said it will allow the immigration system to "function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes."

Contreras Edin said the new policy may target those who overstayed a tourist visa or humanitarian parole. But she also expects the government to continue granting green cards to many applicants currently living in the U.S., including refugees, asylees, special juvenile immigrants, those with crime victim visas, and other discretionary humanitarian visas.

The memo could harm some immigrants applying for permanent residency through marriage or other family connections, as well as those seeking to work.

More than 7,000 immigrants living in Minnesota gained lawful permanent resident status in 2023, according to the latest Department of Homeland Security statistics. Most were immediate relatives of a U.S. citizen through marriage.

Last week's announcement generated harsh blowback from World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that provides legal services to immigrants in the U.S.

"This policy, impacting individuals who meet the legal requirements for a green card, will force apart husbands from wives and children from their parents," said World Relief President Myal Greene in a news release. "There's simply no compelling reason for this cruel, anti-family policy change."

About 1.4 million people across the country obtained lawful permanent residency in fiscal year 2024, according to Department of Homeland Security data.

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Deportation push brings 100K family separations Roughly 75% of kids are citizens, analysis finds. By MIRIAM JORDAN and JEFF ADELSON The New York Times

​Ledy Ordonez was on the job at a San Antonio seafood wholesaler last July when immigration agents entered the facility, taking her and about a dozen others into custody. The single mother remains in detention, separated from her only child, Alonzo, a U.S.-born 2-year-old now in the care of a friend.

"He can walk and talk now," Ordonez said from a detention center in Texas. "I've missed so much."

A new analysis suggests that more than 100,000 children have been separated from their parents during the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. And roughly three-quarters of those children, like Alonzo, are likely U.S. citizens, according to estimates from the Brookings Institution that were shared with the New York Times.

The Brookings estimate of the number of children who are U.S. citizens is more than double what would be expected over the same time period based on official Department of Homeland Security data.
The researchers, whose report is based on a statistical analysis of the detainee population, argue that the official statistics are an undercount because the government collects that information in a way that undercounts certain groups.

The findings point to a scale of family separations that far eclipses that of the first Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy in 2018, when about 5,500 children were removed from their parents immediately after crossing the southern border.

The DHS did not directly respond to questions about the number of parents who had been detained or the analysis suggesting that the official statistics did not reflect the full number of U.S.-born children whose parents had been arrested.

The DHS said in a statement that parents are given a choice of being removed with their children or placing their U.S.-born children with a designee.

"Any way you cut it, there are tens of thousands of children who have experienced parental detention since this president entered office," said Tara Watson, a senior fellow at Brookings.

"The majority are U.S. citizens," she said.
The researchers estimated that about 205,000 children have had a parent detained — typically a precursor to deportation — including about 145,000 who are citizens. They used data from the Census Bureau and Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests to determine the likely number of child detainees based on their immigration status, sex, age, nationality, and whether they were married.

The United States is home to more than 13 million immigrants who are vulnerable to deportation because they either are in the country illegally or have temporary statuses. Some 5 million children under age 18 live with at least one immigrant parent without permanent legal status, according to estimates by several think tanks, and more than 4 million of them are U.S. citizens.

The Trump administration has arrested about 400,000 immigrants during enforcement operations in the interior of the country. There is no reliable information about how many children the detainees have, or what happened to those children once their parents were taken into custody.

Watson, an economist, and her co-author, Maria Cancian, a public policy professor at Georgetown University, sought to answer those questions, they said.

The estimates assume immigration enforcement is essentially random — that immigrant parents are just as likely to be detained as immigrants without children. But the researchers also created an interactive tool that estimates the likely number of children affected by parental detention under different enforcement scenarios and assumptions. Their most conservative estimate for the number of U.S.-born children with a parent detained is about 117,400.

Their highest estimate is about 175,000.
The researchers said they considered 145,000 to be their most accurate estimate, and they predicted that it will grow, given that Congress allocated $45 billion in the tax and spending measure known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" to expand detention capacity.

Their estimate contrasts with figures released by the DHS, which say the parents of about 60,000 U.S.-born children were arrested over the same time period. In their report, the researchers theorized the discrepancy was because the DHS was not consistently asking about children, or detainees were fearful of revealing they had children, worried about putting them or their caregivers at risk.

Based on interviews with child welfare agencies, the researchers estimated only a small fraction of the children end up in foster care or similar arrangements.

"We found that remarkably few end up in foster care — most children stay with friends and family who don't have a legal obligation to care for these children," said Cancian, who studies child welfare and immigration.

Many schools and legal aid organizations have helped immigrants appoint a caregiver for their children in the event they are separated.
However, the children are often left in the care of older siblings or working-class families already grappling with financial hardship and precarious immigration statuses, making these arrangements ultimately unsustainable, experts say.

Public Counsel, a nonprofit legal aid organization in Los Angeles, has educated more than 4,000 immigrants on custody plans since last year, ensuring that someone is empowered to make medical and schoolrelated decisions.

Still, the nonprofit regularly receives calls from schools, churches and others seeking assistance for children whose parents were just detained.

"We are seeing kids in tenuous situations, left with neighbors who don't have the proper paperwork they need; older siblings who have children of their own; and cases where a father cannot handle young children," said Sharon Cartagena, a family law lawyer at the nonprofit.
Casey Revkin, executive director of Each Step Home, which began by assisting immigrant families during the 2018 border separations, now focuses almost exclusively on helping parents in detention who have lived in the United States for many years and were separated from their children.

"Almost every day we are contacted by a mom in detention who was arrested and taken from her kids," said Revkin, whose group raises funds to help parents in detention pay for phone calls to their children. "This time the cruelty is often being inflicted on U.S.-citizen children."
The mother of Samantha Lopez, a 3-year-old U.S. citizen, was turned over to ICE last month by a sheriff's deputy after a traffic stop while she was driving to her restaurant job, according to her husband.

Samantha's father, who asked that his full name not be disclosed out of concern that he could be targeted by ICE, said that his wife had told agents she had a young child, to no avail.

"I am feeling such a void and such anguish," he said. "When our daughter talks to her mom, she listens attentively and then starts to cry."

"This is my American child being harmed," he said.

​CDC ‘not even a player’ in response to outbreak It has left handling of hantavirus to WHO. By MIKE STOBBE The Associated Press​

NEW YORK - No quick dispatching of disease investigators.
No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID- 19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily.

It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.
"The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University.

"I've never seen that before."
Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard.

They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is "a sentinel event" that speaks to "how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I'm very sorry to say that we are not prepared," said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive offi cer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Early last month, a 70-yearold Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2.

The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery and communicate to the public.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

"I don't think this is a giant threat to the United States," said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University's Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out "just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now."

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO and has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own p ublic health network with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is "extremely low," and described the U.S. government as "the world's leader in global health security."
​
Said Nuzzo: "Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility."

Push for raw milk intensifies across the U.S., despite illnesses Backers claim health benefits while scientists warn of risky germs. By LAURA UNGAR and JONEL ALECCIA The Associated Press

Backers of raw milk are pushing to make the potentially dangerous product more widely available and easier to obtain, even as a new disease outbreak — one of at least five in the past year — sickens U.S. children.

More than three dozen bills supporting raw milk have been introduced in statehouses across the nation, including in Minnesota, the Associated Press found. A growing number of states are making it legal to sell.

Top government officials and internet influencers are helping drive this momentum. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downed shots of raw milk at the White House last May and previously promised to halt "aggressive suppression" of the product. On social media, posts about raw milk have surged in recent months, often touting unproven claims about its health benefits.

All of this alarms public health officials, who have long warned that unpasteurized milk can harbor risky germs. The current outbreak — tied to raw milk cheddar cheese from California-based Raw Farm — has sickened 9 people with E. coli, half of them children under 5. One victim developed a serious complication that can impair kidney function for life.

Petra Anne Levin, a biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said she doesn't understand the appeal of the products.

"If you wouldn't lick a cow's udder, why would you drink raw milk?" she said. "There's a reason pasteurization is around."

Pasteurization kills germs by heating the milk, commonly to at least 161 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 15 seconds. Experts say it has no significant impact on milk's nutritional quality and has saved millions of people from foodborne illness.

But some consumers would rather drink their milk raw despite the risk. Recognizing this trend, advocates and critics alike are increasingly calling for federal regulation of the product.

Scientists and public health experts warn against drinking raw milk. Websites run by the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention point to the well-documented risks of serious illness from a host of germs, including Campylobacter, Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli.
A CDC review counted more than 200 outbreaks tied to raw milk that sickened more than 2,600 people and sent 225 to hospitals between 1998 and 2018.

Children are especially vulnerable because their immune systems are immature and they frequently drink milk, noted Alex O'Brien, food safety and quality coordinator for the Center for Dairy Research in Madison, Wis.

Before milk standards were adopted more than a century ago, about 25% of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. were related to dairy consumption, O'Brien said. Now, dairy products account for about 1% of such illnesses.

In European and American societies of the early and mid-19th century, infant mortality rates were 30-60 times greater than today. In one example, thousands of infants died every year from a condition known as "summer diarrhea," which was primarily caused by bacterial contamination in milk that worsened in the heat.

​In Foristell, Mo., Tony Huffstutter said his family tests their milk daily for bacteria in an on-site lab at their Twisted Ash Farm & Dairy, where they keep 15 cows and sell raw milk for $29 a gallon.

"You can't just go out there, throw a bucket under the cow and start milking it," he said. "There are so many steps in doing it right."

Donald Schaffner, a Rutgers University food science professor, has serious reservations about giving raw milk to kids but he calls himself "a raw milk libertarian" when it comes to adults.

"It's kind of like legalization of weed, right?" he said. "If people want it, we should find a way to regulate it and do it safely."

Then again, he said, there's already a dependable way of making raw milk safe. "It's called pasteurization," he said. "And it works really well."

Rights org says it’s under DOJ fire
SPLC says probe centers on paid informants.
By COLLIN BINKLEY and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER The Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The Southern Poverty Law Center says it’s the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department and faces possible charges over its past use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

The civil rights group made the announcement on Tuesday, saying President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be preparing legal action against it or some of its employees.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

The Southern Poverty Law Center previously paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities, often sharing it with local and federal law enforcement, Fair said. It was used to monitor threats of violence, he said, adding that the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

He said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.

The probe could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints.

The center regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.

The center came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The center included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the center, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the center had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups in the United States.
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House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the Southern Poverty Law Center in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”

​DOJ moves to erase Jan. 6 cases
Convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders could be tossed.
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER The Associated Press

​​WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is asking a federal appeals court to throw out the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders who were sentenced to prison terms for leading members of the far-right extremist groups in attacking the U.S. Capitol to keep President Donald Trump in office over five years ago.

Trump commuted the prison sentences of several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders last January in a sweeping act of clemency for all 1,500-plus defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

Tuesday's request by the Justice Department would go a step further and erase all the convictions for extremist group leaders, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who didn't receive pardons last January.

The move to abandon the convictions represented a stunning reversal from the Biden administration, which hailed the guilty verdicts as a crucial victory in its bid to hold accountable those responsible for what prosecutors described as an attack on the heart of American democracy. It's part of the Trump administration's continued efforts to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack and downplay the violence carried out by the mob of Trump supporters that left more than 100 police officers injured.

In court filings, prosecutors asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate the convictions so that the government can permanently dismiss the indictments.

Juries in Washington, D.C., convicted the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Trump's 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.

The department's dismissal request also includes the convictions of Oath Keepers members Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, and Jessica Watkins, and Proud Boys members Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola.

Other extremist group members, including former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, received pardons from Trump on the first day of his second term in the White House.

Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison after he and several lieutenants were convicted in one of the most consequential cases arising from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.

Prosecutors said Rhodes and his followers stockpiled guns at a Virginia hotel, but they never deployed the weapons.

Nordean's attorney, Nicholas Smith, said they are grateful to the Justice Department for its "wise decision" in seeking dismissal of the convictions.

"We don't want a precedent that says that any physical confrontation between protesters and law enforcement means a crime akin to treason, such as seditious conspiracy," Smith said.

Former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was dragged into the mob and suffered a heart attack after a rioter shocked him with a stun gun, was disappointed but not surprised.

"I would remind Americans that these were traitors to this country," Fanone said. "They planned, incited, and carried out an insurrection."

​Blue Cross red ink a warning for seniors
Losses last year signal Medicare benefit cuts could lie ahead in 2027.
By CHRISTOPHER SNOWBECK The Minnesota Star Tribune​

December 2025, Blue Cross announced limitations on its "Silver Sneakers" health club fitness center options.

Surging medical costs drove significant financial losses last year at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and prompted the Eagan-based health insurer to set aside $150 million to address ongoing cost challenges, particularly in the Medicare program.

The results, which were released on Wednesday, April 1, suggest another turbulent open enrollment season could be coming this fall for seniors.

Health insurers across the country were already raising alarms over the prospect of diminished coverage next year, including benefit reductions and higher premiums. That's because federal officials in January proposed not raising 2027 payment rates to private Medicare Advantage health plans.

At Blue Cross, the red ink won't drive any midyear changes in rates or benefits. But the ongoing losses could foreshadow reductions in Medicare benefits for 2027, similar to when the insurer decided late last year to limit fitness center options in its popular SilverSneakers program.

That cost-cutting move, which angered seniors, came as Blue Cross braced to enroll many of the more than 150,000 seniors who were losing coverage due to the financial failure at Minneapolis-based health insurer UCare.

"This shows that the difficulties in the Medicare market were not unique to UCare," said Joshua Haberman, owner of the Alexander & Haberman insurance agency in Bloomington. "It's a sign of continued instability."

Medicare Advantage is the privatized version of the federal government's Medicare health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities.
​
About half of all beneficiaries choose Advantage plans, which typically offer extra benefits at relatively low premiums. However, patients can face limits in hospital and clinic choices.

Medical costs up 21%
In 2025, UCare was the second-largest Medicare Advantage health insurer in Minnesota, reporting a staggering $504 million in operating losses the previous year.

The insurer, which is shutting down completely, announced last September that it would exit Medicare Advantage for 2026. Other carriers left certain counties in Minnesota, as the benefits with many health plans became less generous.

Amid the disruption, the parent company of Blue Cross of Minnesota picked up more than 75,000 enrollees from December to February, according to Medicare Market Insights, a data website run by Telos Actuarial in Omaha. The increase bolstered the insurer's position as the state's largest Advantage plan provider.

That enrollment win, however, might have a "winner's curse" in financial terms. Last week, Minnesota Blue Cross disclosed that in late 2025, it established a $150 million fund to cover expected losses, particularly on Medicare premiums for 2026.

"Based on anticipated enrollment shifts, expected medical costs and pricing for certain Medicare products, management determined that future premiums were insufficient to cover projected claims and related expenses," the insurer said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Similarly, going into 2025, UCare saw significant membership increases, which one market watcher later described as "catastrophic growth."

Blue Cross, however, is a bigger and more diversified company. It sells employer-sponsored health plans in Minnesota, as well as Medicare coverage and Medicaid plans for lower-income residents.

UCare only sold health plans for people with government-funded benefits.

Last week, Blue Cross reported a $353 million operating loss on about $10.4 billion of revenue in 2025. The loss figure included the reserve fund for cost overruns.

Overall, the insurer paid $9.8 billion for members' medical and pharmacy services in 2025, an increase of $1.7 billion, or 21%, compared with claims spending in the prior year.

Blue Cross attributed the loss to "unfavorable performance" in federal and state government health programs.

Contributing factors included rising costs of hospital inpatient services and greater use of costly specialty medications, such as GLP-1s for diabetes and weight loss.

Strong investment earnings offset the operating loss, resulting in positive net income of $83 million.

"While financial resilience gives Blue Cross some flexibility to navigate volatility, long-term stability requires a path where payments coming in truly cover the actual cost of care," Blue Cross CEO Dana Erickson said in a statement.

Waste, abuse
In January, the federal government published preliminary information indicating that Medicare Advantage payment rates will be relatively flat in 2027 — an announcement that drove big stock price declines among the nation's large publicly traded insurers. Investors had hoped for something more like the government's 5% rate increase the previous year.

At Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest Medicare Advantage health insurer, executives warned of the potential for reduced choice, reduced access, and affordability challenges for seniors in 2027.

Final Medicare Advantage rates could be released as early as this week.

"If the 2027 payment rates fall short in addressing the harsh realities of skyrocketing medical prices in senior care, we will need to take a hard look at what changes to consider within our Medicare portfolio, "Blue Cross said in a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

While tighter funding for Medicare Advantage insurers can reduce benefits for seniors, some have argued that the government has overpaid private Advantage plans for many years, particularly through "risk-adjustment" formulas that are meant to reward insurers for covering people with complex health care problems.

A series of Biden administration reforms, which were extended by the Trump administration, has begun to make a dent in the alleged overpayments, according to a March analysis by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

The amount of money at stake is still large enough that Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, referenced the Medicare Advantage controversy in congressional testimony last month.

"Health care represents the single largest source of waste, fraud, and abuse among government programs, and the greatest opportunity for win-wins that can lower costs for households and taxpayers alike,"

MacGuineas said.  Insurers deny that there are overpayments.
They stress that enrollment growth in Medicare Advantage plans over the years shows that seniors like the coverage, which often includes not only fitness center benefits but also vision and dental care.

The proposed payment rates for next year "could result in benefit cuts and higher costs for 35 million seniors and people with disabilities when they renew their Medicare Advantage coverage in October 2026,"  Chris Bond, a spokesman for AHIP, the trade group for health insurers, said in a statement.

[email protected]
$353 million Blue Cross' operating loss reported in 2025
$1.7 billion Increase in Blue Cross members’ medical and pharmacy services paid in 2025