The Minnesota women’s basketball team improved to 15-6 on the season with a 21-point victory at Penn State Wednesday evening.

Tori McKinney led the Gophers with 23 points, while Mara Braun recorded 22 points in an 87-66 defeat of the Nittany Lions. Four of five Minnesota starters recorded double digits in scoring, with Sophie Hart and Amaya Battle logging 12 points apiece. Battle also led all rebounders with 10 boards.

The Gophers improved to 6-4 in Big Ten play with the victory. Minnesota returns home to face Purdue on Sunday, with a tip-off scheduled for 2 p.m. The game will be televised on BTN+.

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A downtown St. Paul bar and comedy club has canceled six sold-out performances from a comic who went viral after posting jokes about Renee Good, who was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.

Bill Collins, who owns Camp Bar and Laugh Camp comedy club, said it’s a safety issue, both for the performer and the audience. Soon after comic Ben Bankas posted the jokes, Collins started to hear threats of a boycott and picketing outside the venue in protest. “I’ve never had anything happen like this before,” he said.

Collins said Bankas’ management company, CAA, told him that if he doesn’t pay Bankas, CAA won’t book any comics at the venue in the future.

“They keep saying that there’s a contract and that they don’t see any evidence that there’s a force majeure situation and their position is that the comedian is ready and willing to perform and that they need to be paid in full,” Collins said.

Representatives for Bankas did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Collins said the bar stands to lose “somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000.” The six shows scheduled Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the 150-capacity club were completely sold out.

The clip comes from a Bankas show in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., just days after Good’s death.

“Now for a moment of silence for Renee Good. Really hope that dog’s OK … and her pet,” Bankas said in reference to Good’s wife. “Her last name was Good. That’s what I said after they shot her in the face.”

Bankas goes on to call Good a “dumb, retarded lesbian” who “should have been shot 10 minutes before.”

Patrick Strait, author of the book “Funny Thing About Minnesota…: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Twin Cities Comedy Scene,” said Bankas is the type of comedian who is shocking, crude and wants to push buttons. “It seems to me he likes the argument. He likes the confrontation. He likes making people uncomfortable. In my opinion, it’s offensive and it’s extremely unnecessarily vulgar. But I guess there are people who like it, because that is super popular right now.”

Last year, several venues in Canada canceled performances from Toronto native Bankas after he made “crude and offensive” jokes about Indigenous people.

Collins questioned Bankas and his management for not backing down. “Maybe (Bankas) doesn’t know. He’s on the road, maybe he’s not paying close attention to what’s happening. I don’t understand how they think it’s a good idea to send this guy into this city right now. I don’t know how getting in and out of the venue would work for him and if the people coming to see him are going to have to go through crowds of protesters. The risk of something happening is just way, way too great. And it’s just mind boggling to me that they don’t see that.”

Collins compared the possible situation to conservative influencer Jake Lang, who was beaten by several counter-protesters at his “March Against Minnesota Fraud” protest he staged earlier this month at Minneapolis City Hall.

“He had the National Guard and Minneapolis police all around him and it didn’t work out real well for him,” Collins said. “I don’t know how you could look at that and think this is safe for him.

“It’s just upsetting, but we’re doing the right thing and we’ve got to make sure that everybody is safe. We’ll just have to deal with the consequences.”

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Federal immigration agents detained a volunteer food shelf delivery driver on Wednesday in the parking lot of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center on St. Paul’s Kent Street, city-owned property that adjoins a city rec center and is temporarily hosting public library services.

Over the objections of community center staffers and legal observers, federal agents approached, handcuffed and detained Thao Xiong around 7:30 a.m. in the center parking lot, where they can be seen on video forcing him into one of three black sport utility vehicles they had driven onto the property.

“I showed them my documents already,” Xiong can be heard on video explaining to a center staffer who recorded him being led away. “He volunteers here,” the staffer tells the agents, pleadingly.

It was unclear on Wednesday evening where Thao was being held.

Volunteered at center

St. Paul City Council Member Anika Bowie and others later shared news of Thao’s detainment on Facebook.

Officials with St. Paul Parks and Recreation and the St. Paul Public Library system directed a reporter’s questions on Wednesday to Benny Roberts, director of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, who issued a brief written statement.

Roberts, who did not identify Xiong by name, confirmed a volunteer had been detained and said “we are in contact with his family and community partners and are working to ensure the family receives all possible supports and resources from HQB.”

Roberts added later, “A lot of info is spreading but we’re still working on getting accurate info.”

City-owned property

While the nonprofit Hallie Q. Brown community organization operates the building, the structure itself is city-owned, and adjoins the city’s Martin Luther King Recreation Center. In addition to a food shelf, it hosts a childcare operation, and has housed the books and staff of the city library system’s Rondo Community Library since December, when the Dale Street location closed for a year-long renovation.

Xiong’s detainment flies in the face of recent city-driven efforts to keep ICE out of city properties, including Parks and Rec lots, during Operation Metro Surge, which has drawn some 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota.

The mayor’s office issued a formal cease and desist letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 19, with the goal of preventing ICE agents from using city-owned parking lots for immigration enforcement.

On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council held a public hearing on a proposed ordinance amendment that would codify the ban against ICE staging in city-owned lots, enshrining it in city law.

Neither effort has apparently stopped ICE agents from doing exactly that.

Community organizer

Jennifer Nguyen Moore, a 2018 candidate for the Ramsey County Board, said Xiong is the father of a young girl and has lent his voice and support to various campaigns for public office, including her own.

“He’s extremely passionate, and is very serious about justice and human rights,” said Nguyen Moore, recalling how he rode around on an adult tricycle-style bike carrying her campaign banner and spoke to neighbors on her behalf. “He just really loves the community, and he likes to amplify people.”

In interviews and presentations to the city council, Xiong, who is Hmong, has spoken openly about his experiences as a teen drug dealer, gang member and petty criminal and his subsequent incarceration, which ended a decade ago. He’s described himself as a community organizer in Frogtown and the North End and a voice for change.

“I got released from prison in November 2016 and I literally woke up one morning and I remember thinking ‘I’m gonna become somebody that will champion my community,’” said Xiong, in a written testimonial on the website of In Progress, a St. Paul-based arts nonprofit he became active with around 2018.

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“Every morning I wake up I have to challenge — challenge the police, challenge the district council, challenge our local government officials…. all these people,” he wrote. “But every morning I wake up and the only person I have to challenge is the person I’m staring at in the mirror. Every day I challenge that person to be better than the person yesterday.”

By REBECCA BOONE

Shirley Raines, a social media creator and nonprofit founder who dedicated her life to caring for people experiencing homelessness, has died, her organization Beauty 2 The Streetz said Wednesday. She was 58.

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Raines was known as “Ms. Shirley,” to her more than 5 million TikTok followers and to the people who regularly lined up for the food, beauty treatments and hygiene supplies she brought to Los Angeles’ Skid Row and other homeless communities in California and Nevada.

Raines’ life made an “immeasurable impact,” Beauty 2 The Streetz wrote on social media.

“Through her tireless advocacy, deep compassion, and unwavering commitment, she used her powerful media platform to amplify the voices of those in need and to bring dignity, resources, and hope to some of the most underserved populations,” the organization said.

Raines’ cause of death was not released, but the organization said it would share additional information when it is available.

Raines had six children. One son died as a toddler — an experience that left her a “very broken woman,” Raines said in 2021 when she was named CNN’s Hero of the Year.

“It’s important you know that broken people are still very much useful,” she said during the CNN award ceremony.

That deep grief led her to begin helping the homeless.

“I would rather have him back than anything in the world, but I am a mother without a son, and there are a lot of people in the street that are without a mother,” she said. “And I feel like it’s a fair exchange — I’m here for them.”

Raines began working with homeless communities in 2017. On Monday, Raines posted a video shot from inside her car as she handed out lunches to a line of people standing outside her passenger window. She greeted her clients with warm enthusiasm and respect, calling them “King,” or “Queen.”

One man told her he was able to get into an apartment.

“God is good! Look at you!” Raines replied, her usual cheerfulness stepping up a notch. In a video posted two weeks earlier, she handed her shoes to a barefoot child who was waiting for a meal, protecting the girl’s feet from the chilly asphalt.

California’s homelessness crisis is especially visible in downtown Los Angeles, where hundreds of people live in makeshift shanties that line entire blocks in the notorious neighborhood known as Skid Row. Tents regularly pop up on the pavement outside City Hall. Encampments are increasingly found in suburban areas under freeway overpasses. A 2025 survey found that about 72,000 people were homeless on any given night across Los Angeles County.

Crushow Herring, the art director of the Sidewalk Project, said Raines was both sentimental and protective of the homeless community. The Sidewalk Project uses art and peer empowerment programs to help people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles.

“I’ve been getting calls all morning from people, not just who live in Skid Row but Angelenos who are shocked” by Raines’ death, Herring said. “To see the work she did, and how people couldn’t wait to see her come out? It was a great mission. What most people need is just feeling dignity about themselves, because if they look better, they feel better.”

Raines would often give people on the street a position working with her as she provided haircuts or handed out goods, Herring said.

“By the time a year or two goes by, they’re part of the organization — they have responsibility, they have something to look forward to,” he said. “She always had people around her that were motivational, and generous and polite to community members.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 21: Shirley Raines poses in the press room during the 56th NAACP Image Awards Creative Honors on February 21, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images for NAACP)

In 2025, Raines was named the NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Social Media Personality. Other social media creators lauded her work and shared their own grief online Wednesday.

“Ms. Shirley was truly the best of us, love incarnate,” wrote Alexis Nikole Nelson, a foraging educator and social media creator known as “blackforager.”

“In shock,” wrote Upworthy. “Thank you for lifting so many up. May you rest in peace and power.”