PARK RAPIDS, Minn. — A north-central Minnesota man is accused of threatening to kill a state senator and commit acts of terror at the state Capitol.

John D. Tobias, 58, was arrested Tuesday in Hubbard County, according to a news release from the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office.

John D. Tobias / Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office

Tobias is accused of making a threatening post on Facebook, according to the news release, and tagging District 17 state Sen. Glenn Gruenhagen, a Republican from Glencoe in southern Minnesota. The post demanded money lost during the COVID-19 shutdown and Tobias threatened to kill the senator, according to the sheriff’s office.

According to the statement of probable cause in the criminal complaint, Tobias also called the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and said he wanted something done about DFL Gov. Tim Walz “unconstitutionally” shutting down the state due to COVID-19. The call was recorded.

“Tobias claimed that there was never any COVID, that he lost $1.4 million and said that if he didn’t get his money back he would ‘come down’ and ‘execute’” everyone at the Capitol, according to the criminal complaint.

A Hubbard County sheriff’s investigator obtained a search warrant for Tobias’ property, just outside of Park Rapids. According to the news release, deputies and the Lakes Area SWAT Team executed the warrant on Tuesday, taking Tobias into custody.

A search of the home turned up nine firearms, 45 boxes of ammunition of various calibers and two handgun magazines, according to the criminal complaint.

Tobias admitted to investigators that he sent the email and made the threatening phone call, according to the criminal complaint.

On Wednesday, Tobias was arraigned on two felony counts of making terroristic threats. Bail was set at $300,000 without conditions or $150,000 with conditions.

A review of Tobias’ criminal history reveals convictions for gross misdemeanor driving while intoxicated in 2013 and a misdemeanor domestic assault in 2010.

An initial court appearance is scheduled for Monday.

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A rural hospital executive, a mom of a child on Medicaid and other advocates spoke Thursday at the Minnesota State Capitol in response to the federal government’s recent threat to withhold some Medicaid funding.

“Every dollar that doesn’t come in is going to have to be balanced on the budget, and that may mean cuts to services, cuts to access, individual lives being impacted,” said Josh Berg, director of services and strategic growth at Accessible Space Inc., a housing provider for people with disabilities.

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance announced the federal government would withhold $259 million in Medicaid funding from Minnesota “until the state government takes its obligations seriously,” Reuters reports.

That amount is roughly 8% of the federal government’s quarterly share of Minnesota Medicaid funding, said Matthew Anderson, a Twin Cities health policy professor who spoke at the press conference in a personal capacity.

“That’s no small amount, especially for a state that’s already facing at least, in the next biennium, significant budget challenges,” he said.

The withholding is the Trump administration’s latest action in response to cases of alleged fraud within some of Minnesota’s social safety net programs, including Medicaid.

While speakers at Thursday’s press conference — organized by the This is Medicaid coalition — said it’s unclear what the short-term impact will be on Medicaid patients and their service providers, the withheld funding adds to ongoing concerns about changes imposed by the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which was signed into law in July.

“Whether it’s a loss of services, a loss of coverage or the ultimate loss of a hospital, the magnitude of change that’s coming under HR 1 puts my hospital, all rural hospitals and effectively all Minnesota hospitals into a precarious position,” said Rachelle Schultz, president and CEO of Winona Health, whose rural southeast Minnesota health system gets 20% of its revenues from Medicaid.

Medicaid, known in Minnesota as Medical Assistance, is the state-federal public health insurance program that covers roughly 1.2 million low-income and/or disabled Minnesotans.

In recent months, the Minnesota Department of Human Services has taken several actions to address fraud, including ending the state’s housing stabilization services program, auditing some Medicaid service claims for providers in the 13 categories deemed “high-risk” for fraud and, later this year, visiting and revalidating all of those providers.

In a written statement, Minnesota Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi said that the withheld funding “is part of a broad and sustained attack by the federal government on Medicaid in Minnesota.”

“Deferring $259 million will significantly harm the state’s health care infrastructure and the 1.2 million Minnesotans who depend on Medicaid,” she continued. “The federal government chose to ignore more than a year of serious and intensive work to fight fraud in our state.”

The state’s efforts have put many service providers in tight financial positions, said Jen Diederich, chief compliance officer at MAC Midwest, as the pre-payment audits meant delayed reimbursements for her nonprofit’s 18 autism services centers. Further fraud-prevention steps also come with price tags.

“It’s a $700 per center revalidation fee,” Diederich said. “We need to apply for provisional licensing … which is about $1,200 per location, which means that between February and (the) May 31 deadline, we’ll have to pay almost $35,000 in fees alone.”

Financial strain, Diederich said, is likely why only six of the state’s 500 autism treatment centers, so far, have applied for the newly required licenses.

“Minnesota’s children with autism deserve access to their medically necessary treatment, delivered by accountable providers,” she said. “We ask that we continue to stay focused on making this about people and not politics.”

Some of Thursday’s speakers voiced concerns that, if the federal government reduces its share of Medicaid funding, state lawmakers will have to cut back on what — or who — the program covers.

“Medicaid funding is interconnected, and when cuts are made to one area, it potentially affects all of them,” said Sarah Lindbo, family and patient engagement specialist at Gillette Children’s Hospital. She spoke about her teenage daughter, Greta, who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and epilepsy.

Lindbo said Greta’s supplemental Medicaid covers some services that private insurance itself does not, including her augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC, device.

“Private insurance does not deem communication medically necessary,” Lindbo said. “Without that device, Greta simply would not have her voice.”

By LARRY NEUMEISTER and JOSHUA GOODMAN

NEW YORK (AP) — The lawyer for deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro asked a judge on Thursday to toss out the indictment against his client on the grounds that the United States has unconstitutionally violated his rights to defend himself by blocking Venezuelan funds to pay his legal costs.

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Attorney Barry Pollack filed papers in Manhattan federal court, saying the U.S. government has violated his client’s due process rights by blocking funds to defend him that should come from the Venezuelan government.

“Mr. Maduro, as Venezuela’s head of state, has both a right and an expectation to have legal fees associated with these charges funded by the government of Venezuela,” Pollack wrote.

The court submission included a declaration from Maduro in which he said he understood that under the laws and practices of Venezuela, “I am entitled to have the government of Venezuela pay for my legal defense.”

“I have relied on this expectation and cannot afford to pay for my own legal defense,” he said.

Maduro added that he has “been working” with Pollack on his legal defense and that he “is my counsel of choice.” The declaration was signed “President Nicolas Maduro Moros.”

Maduro and his wife have been in custody in New York since they were seized from their Venezuelan home in early January in a stealth nighttime U.S. military operation. They’ve pleaded not guilty.

A 25-page indictment against Maduro accused him and others of working with drug cartels and members of the military to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. If convicted, both he and his wife face life in prison.

As part of the purported conspiracy, Maduro and his wife allegedly ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money, according to the indictment. It said that included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas.

Pollack told a Manhattan judge in an email last week that the U.S. Treasury Department had blocked the authorization of legal fees that the government of Venezuela is required to pay for Maduro, though it has allowed fees to be paid for the defense of first lady Cilia Flores.

Pollack said that the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers sanctions against Venezuela, had granted permission on Jan. 9 approving the payment of legal fees by the Venezuelan government. He said the department rescinded the authorization “without explanation” less than three hours later.

“The conduct of the United States government not only undermines Mr. Maduro’s rights but also this Court’s mandate to provide a fair trial to all defendants who come before it in accordance with the protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution,” Pollack wrote in court papers submitted Thursday.

“The United States government, even while authorizing myriad commercial transactions with Venezuela, is prohibiting counsel from receiving untainted funds from the government of Venezuela, despite Venezuela’s obligation to fund Mr. Maduro’s defense. Any trial that proceeds under these circumstances will be constitutionally defective and cannot result in a verdict that will withstand later challenge,” he added.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a message left by The Associated Press seeking comment.

If the judge leaves the charges against Maduro in place, Pollack said he wants to resign so the court can appoint other counsel to represent Maduro.

The dispute over Maduro’s legal fees is intimately linked to U.S. foreign policy. The first Trump administration cut ties with Maduro in 2019, recognizing the then- opposition head of the National Assembly as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. The Biden administration hewed closely to the same policy.

Goodman reported from Miami.

By BRIAN WITTE

Novartis has settled a lawsuit by the estate of Henrietta Lacks that alleged the pharmaceutical giant unjustly profited off her cells, which were taken from her tumor without her knowledge in 1951 and reproduced in labs to enable major medical advancements, including the polio vaccine.

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Details of the agreement, which was finalized in federal court in Maryland this month, aren’t public.

The Lacks family and Swiss-based Novartis said in a joint statement that they are “pleased they were able to find a way to resolve this matter filed by Henrietta Lacks’ Estate outside of court” but aren’t commenting further.

It’s the second settlement in lawsuits filed by the estate that accused biomedical businesses of reaping rewards from a racist medical system that took advantage of Black patients like Lacks. The settlement ends litigation between Novartis, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, and the estate of Lacks, a mother who died of cervical cancer at age 31 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

The 2024 lawsuit had sought from Novartis “the full amount of its net profits obtained by commercializing the HeLa cell line,” which the complaint said had been cultivated from “stolen cells.”

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Lacks’ cervical cells in 1951 without her knowledge, and the tissue taken from her tumor before she died became the first human cells to continuously grow and reproduce in lab dishes. HeLa cells became a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines, but the Lacks family wasn’t compensated along the way despite that incalculable impact on science and medicine.

Johns Hopkins said it never sold or profited from the cell lines, but many companies have patented ways of using them.

In 2023, Lacks’ estate reached an undisclosed settlement with the biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Lawyers for the family argued in that case that the company continued to commercialize the results long after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known and unjustly enriched itself off Lacks’ cells.

There are other pending lawsuits by the Lacks estate. Just over a week after the estate settled the case with Thermo Fisher Scientific, attorneys for the estate filed a lawsuit against Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical in Baltimore federal court, the same venue as the previously settled case. Litigation with Ultragenyx as well as Viatris, a pharmaceutical company, remain active.

Attorneys for the family have indicated there could be additional complaints filed.

Lacks was a poor tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who married and moved with her husband to Turner Station, a historically Black community outside Baltimore. They were raising five children when doctors discovered a tumor in Lacks’ cervix and saved a sample of her cancer cells collected during a biopsy.

While most cell samples died shortly after being removed from the body, her cells survived and thrived in laboratories. They became known as the first immortalized human cell line because scientists could cultivate them indefinitely, meaning researchers anywhere could reproduce studies using identical cells.

The remarkable science involved — and the impact on the Lacks family, some of whom had chronic illnesses and no health insurance — were documented in a bestselling book by Rebecca Skloot, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” which was published in 2010. Oprah Winfrey portrayed her daughter in an HBO movie about the story.