St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter faces four challengers as he runs for his third term in office: A state lawmaker, an engineer, a scientist and a local business owner.

Candidates had until Aug. 12 to file paperwork to run, and there won’t be a primary. Election Day is Nov. 4.

Mayoral elections are nonpartisan, though they often draw strong party interest. This year will be a little different, however: the St. Paul Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is not making any endorsements in the race as it works to rebuild itself.

This will be the last year a mayoral election happens in an odd-numbered year in St. Paul. In 2024, voters approved a measure to shift the election to even-numbered years when other major contests are on the ballot.

The mayor is typically elected to a four-year term. But because of the change, the next election will be in 2028. The winner of this year’s election will only serve a three-year term.

Under St. Paul’s ranked-choice voting system, voters can rank candidates in order of preference.

Here’s who is officially running:

Melvin Carter

Carter was first elected mayor in 2017 and won reelection to another four-year term in 2021. He announced he’d run for a third term in January.

During his tenure, Cater has pursued a progressive agenda that has included medical debt forgiveness, college savings accounts for newborns, and a new sales tax to fund roads and parks.

Carter has faced growing challenges in recent years. While homicides and carjackings have fallen since peaking during the pandemic, public safety challenges remain, especially along the Green Line light rail corridor on University Avenue.

Carter also has faced pushback from other local leaders. He clashed with the city council over the 2025 budget, and a difficult year could be ahead amid declining downtown property values and federal funding cuts.

Yan Chen

Yan Chen (Courtesy of the candidate)

Yan Chen is a biophysicist at the University of Minnesota who ran for St. Paul City Council Ward 1 in 2023.

On her campaign website, Chen argues that the city is not doing enough to manage growing operational costs and instead raises property taxes at an unsustainable rate.

“If this continues, residents and businesses will leave, our tax base will shrink, and our city will lose its vibrancy,” she said.

Chen is also a critic of Carter’s endorsement of the 2021 rent control referendum and handling of the city’s garbage contract.

In a 2023 questionnaire with the St. Paul Pioneer Press, when she ran for City Council, Chen said she wanted to strengthen city services and stabilize the budget, and then move to address affordable housing.

In addition to being a scientist, Chen is a landlord. She owns five single-family rental homes in St. Paul.

Adam Dullinger

Adam Dullinger (Courtesy of the Candidate)

North End resident and mechanical engineer Adam Dullinger is the most recent candidate to enter the race.

Dullinger appeared at an April St. Paul City Council meeting to speak against exemptions in the city’s rent control ordinance, but said that issue isn’t the reason he decided to run.

Instead, Dullinger said he wants the city to focus on managing everyday problems like infrastructure maintenance — an area where he says his engineering background would give him an edge.

The political newcomer also said the city should do more to improve the affordability of housing, transportation and food. One way to improve affordability and food access could be municipal grocery stores, he said.

Dullinger also wants the city to continue developing its bicycle infrastructure to reduce road congestion, improve air quality and combat climate change.

Kaohly Her

State Rep. Kaohly Her entered the race earlier this month. The fourth-term St. Paul DFL legislator is the mayor’s most politically prominent challenger.

Rep. Kaohly Her (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Her said she decided to enter the race because she felt there hadn’t been enough debate on issues facing the city — whether it be rising property taxes, public safety and development challenges in districts like downtown.

“I hadn’t seen any engagement with voters in this mayoral race,” she said in an Aug. 4 interview. “It is important for us to vigorously debate the issues and the solutions in front of us, so that voters have a choice.”

Her, who used to work for the mayor, said she supports Carter’s progressive polices like medical debt forgiveness, but doesn’t think it’s a city’s job to provide them. Instead, St. Paul should focus on fundamental services, she said.

Mike Hilborn

Mike Hilborn (Courtesy of Excalibur Portraits / minnesotaheadshots.com)

Mike Hilborn runs a power washing, snowplowing and Christmas tree lighting business and ran as a Republican for downtown St. Paul’s state House district in 2024.

In a biography on his campaign website, he describes himself as “a father, an entrepreneur, a second-chance employer.” The company he started 30 years ago is headquartered on West Seventh Street.

Hilborn’s stated priorities include lowering taxes and promoting law and order. Earlier this year, his website said he would double the size of the St. Paul Police Department while cutting property taxes by 50%

Hilborn, who works with nonprofits that provide work opportunities for the disabled and people getting out of prison, wants to combat homelessness by expanding access to shelter and addressing root causes like addiction and mental health challenges, according to his website.

By SEJAL GOVINDARAO and MEAD GRUVER

Health officials are working to alert hundreds of people in dozens of states and several countries who may have been exposed to rabies in bat-infested cabins in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park over the past few months.

Related Articles

Target and Ulta mutually agree not to renew partnership launched in 2021

Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will again get less Colorado River water in 2026

FACT FOCUS: No, taxpayers will not receive new stimulus checks this summer

President Trump ramps up takeover of Washington’s police department. Here’s what to know

Solar panels that fit on your balcony or deck are gaining traction in the US

As of Friday, none of the bats found in some of the eight linked cabins at Jackson Lake Lodge had tested positive for rabies.

But the handful of dead bats found and sent to the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie for testing were probably only a small sample of the likely dozens that colonized the attic above the row of cabins, Wyoming State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist said.

Other bats weren’t killed but got shooed out through cabin doors and windows. Meanwhile, the vast majority never flapped down from the attic into living spaces.

Health officials thus deemed it better safe than sorry to alert everybody who has stayed in the cabins recently that they might have been exposed by being bitten or scratched. Especially when people are sleeping, a bat bite or scratch can go unseen and unnoticed.

“What we’re really concerned about is people who saw bats in their rooms and people who might have had direct contact with a bat,” Harrist said Friday.

The cabins have been unoccupied, with no plans to reopen, since concessionaire Grand Teton Lodge Company discovered the bat problem July 27.

Bats are a frequent vector of the rabies virus. Once symptoms occur — muscle aches, vomiting, itching, to name a few — rabies is almost always fatal in humans.

The good news is a five-shot prophylactic regimen over a two-week period soon after exposure is highly effective in preventing illness, Harrist noted.

The cabins opened for the summer season in May after being vacant over the winter. Based on the roughly 250 reservations through late July, health officials estimated that up to 500 people had stayed in the cabins.

They were trying to reach people in 38 states and seven countries through those states’ health agencies and, in the case of foreign visitors, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Others who have not been alerted yet but stayed in cabins 516, 518, 520, 522, 524, 526, 528 and 530 this year should tell health officials or a doctor immediately, Harrist said.

Health officials were recommending prophylactic shots for people who fit certain criteria, such as deep sleepers who found a bat in their room, and children too young to say that they had seen a bat.

The Wyoming Department of Health had no ongoing concern about visitor safety at the Jackson Lake Lodge area. That includes a Federal Reserve economic policy symposium Aug. 21-23 that takes place at Jackson Lake Lodge every summer.

“The lodge company has done a fantastic job of doing their due diligence of making sure everyone that is coming in for that, and for all other visits this year, are going to be as safe as possible,” said Emily Curren, Wyoming’s public health veterinarian.

“Three or four” dead bats from the cabins tested negative and one that was mangled did not have enough brain tissue to be testable, Curren said.

All were brown bats, which come in two species: “little” and “big,” with the larger ones more than twice as big. Officials were unsure which species these were, but both are common in Wyoming.

They typically live in colonies of 30 to 100 individuals, Curren said.

“That’s a lot of bats that we cannot rule out a risk of rabies being in,” Curren said. “There’s no way for us to know for certain about every single bat that got into these rooms.”

There are no plans to exterminate the bats, Grand Teton National Park spokesperson Emily Davis said. Devices fitted to the building were keeping the bats from getting back in after flying out in pursuit of insects to eat, they said.

By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force says in a new memo that transgender airmen ousted under a recent Trump administration directive will no longer have the chance to argue before a board of their peers for the right to continue serving their country.

Related Articles

Trump tax law could cause Medicare cuts if Congress doesn’t act, CBO says

Some workers would be excluded from student loan forgiveness program for ‘illegal’ activity

Man struck and killed on freeway after fleeing immigration agents, California official says

Bad diets, too many meds, no exercise: A look inside the latest ‘Make America Healthy Again’ report

New Orleans mayor indicted over allegations of trying to hide relationship with bodyguard

The memo dated Tuesday says military separation boards cannot independently decide whether to keep or discharge transgender airmen and instead “must recommend separation of the member” if the airman has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.

Military legal experts who have been advising transgender troops told The Associated Press that the new policy is unlawful, and while they were not aware of the other services releasing similar memos, they fear it could serve as a blueprint across the military. Advocacy groups say the change threatens to weaken trust in the military’s leadership.

It is the second policy change the Air Force has taken in recent weeks to crack down on transgender service members. The Associated Press reported last week that the Air Force would deny transgender troops early retirement benefits and was moving to revoke requests already approved.

The Air Force declined to answer questions about the policy and its legal implications.

The service provided a statement saying the new guidance “is consistent with and responsive to Department of Defense policy regarding Service members with a diagnosis of, or history of, or exhibiting symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.”

How the boards usually work

The boards traditionally offer a quasi-legal hearing to determine if a service member set to depart is still of value to the military and should stay on. Fellow service members hear evidence of whatever wrongdoing occurred and about the person’s character, fitness and performance.

The hearings are not a formal court, but they have much the same structure. Service members are often represented by lawyers, they can present evidence in their defense and they can appeal the board’s findings to federal court.

The Pentagon’s policy on separating officers notes that they are entitled to “fair and impartial” hearings that should be “a forum for the officer concerned to present reasons the contemplated action should not be taken.”

This impartial nature means that the boards can sometimes reach surprising conclusions.

For example, the three active-duty Marines who were part of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were retained.

The commanding officer of the USS McCain, a destroyer that collided with an oil tanker in the Pacific in 2017, killing 10, was not recommended for separation in 2019.

Military lawyers decry the Air Force change

Priya Rashid, a military lawyer who has represented service members before hundreds of separation boards, said she “has never seen an order like this.”

“I’ve seen people with three DUIs retained, I’ve seen people that beat their wives retained, I’ve seen all kinds of people retained because the board is empowered to retain anyone for any reason if they feel it’s in the best interest of the service,” she said.

Rashid said she and other lawyers working with transgender troops view the guidance as telling the boards to automatically order separation based solely on a diagnosis or symptoms of gender dysphoria.

She said that constitutes an unlawful command by the Air Force and upends impartiality.

“This instruction is essentially saying you will not make a determination of whether somebody has future potential in the service,” Rashid said.

The new Air Force guidance also prohibits recording the proceedings.

Rashid said the lack of an independent transcript would not only prevent Air Force leaders from reviewing the hearings to ensure they were conducted appropriately but would undercut any meaningful chance to appeal.

Stepped-up efforts to oust transgender troops

Pentagon officials say 4,240 troops have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which the military is using as an identifier of being transgender.

The Pentagon got the green light from Supreme Court in May to move forward with a ban on all transgender troops. It offered two options: volunteer to leave and take a one-time separation payout or be discharged at a later date without pay.

Some transgender troops decided to fight to stay by turning to the boards.

Senior Master Sgt. Jamie Hash, who has served in the Air Force since 2011, said she “wanted to face an objective board to be evaluated on my years of proven capability.”

“I wanted the board to see the assignments overseas and at the Pentagon, the deployments to different Combatant Commands, the service medals and the sustained operational and mission effectiveness,” she said in an interview.

But now, she said, that “the path ahead feels more uncertain than it ever has.”

Logan Ireland, a master sergeant in the Air Force with 15 years of service that includes a deployment to Afghanistan, was planning to retire early until his request was denied last week.

After that, he decided he would take a stand at the separation board.

“I chose the involuntary route because I believed in the promise of a fair hearing — judged on my service, my record and the facts,” he said.

“Now that promise is being ripped away, replaced with a process designed to decide my fate before I even walk in the room,” he said, adding that “all I’m asking for is the same fairness and justice every service member deserves.”

Both Ireland and Hash said they have yet to hear from their immediate superiors on what the new policy will mean for them.

Lawyers are worried it will set a precedent that will spread throughout the military.

Rashid said both the Army and Navy are “going to look at what the Air Force is doing as a standard of law … is this the minimum standard of law that we will afford our service members.”

Transgender troops warn the policy could have wider implications

Col. Bree Fram, a transgender officer in the Space Force who has long been seen as a leader among transgender troops, argued that the policy is a threat to other service members.

In an online post, Fram said it “swaps judgment for automation.”

”Today it’s gender dysphoria; tomorrow it can be any condition or class the politics of the moment calls for,” she argued.

If the new policy is allowed to sideline “evidence of fitness, deployment history, awards, and commander input — the very material boards were built to evaluate,” Fram said, it sends a message that performance is no longer relevant to staying in the military.

Cathy Marcello, interim director for Modern Military Association of America, said the change adds to a “growing loss of trust” because outcomes are determined by politics, not performance. The organization advocates for LGBTQ+ service members, military spouses, veterans, their families and allies.

“It’s a signal that identity, not ability or achievement, determines who stays in uniform and who gets a fair shot,” she said.

After his personnel staff unloaded 10 regulars in a series of trade deadline moves from July 28-31, Twins president Derek Falvey flew to Cleveland, where the remaining players — and a few new ones — were ready to start a three-game series against the Guardians on Aug. 1.

The task for Falvey was to meet with players and coaches and explain why he and general manager Jeremy Zoll did an about-face on the roster they built to contend for a division title this season.

Because he has been rehabbing a shoulder injury in Minnesota, Pablo Lopez was not at that meeting. So, it was several days later that the veteran right-hander heard the gist of that talk one-on-one with Falvey in Minneapolis.

Lopez acknowledged that he was a little confused when Falvey told him that trading away players such as Carlos Correa, Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Willi Castro and Ty France was a step toward building around “younger talent that’s ready to display their set of tools and abilities, and we’re still gonna be a really good, competitive team.”

“Obviously,” Lopez added, “when you hear that after what transpired, you’re kind of like, ‘OK, 2 and 2 doesn’t, like, add up.’ ”

But Lopez, who had a successful, two-inning simulated start against live batters before Friday night’s game against Detroit at Target Field, said he quickly came to a separate peace with the moves.

Lopez might not understand the business decisions behind the sell-off, nor does he necessarily want to. But he and remaining veterans such as Byron Buxton, Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan and Ryan Jeffers decided they could use the change to stimulate winning within the clubhouse.

“I don’t understand the business side, so it’s hard to buy into that fully until you really understand it,” Lopez said. “But what we can buy into right now is what we really have in this clubhouse, which is the talent, which is the opportunity to really reshape and do our own rebuilding of the culture.”

“Culture,” he added, “is one thing we’ve been lacking the last couple of years.”

Despite fielding what was largely the same team that advanced to the American League Division Series in 2023, the Twins missed the playoffs last season and are on a pace this year that will likely see them eliminated from contention before the season actually ends.

Before Friday’s game against the division-lead Tigers, Minnesota was fourth in the Central, 13 games out of first place and seven games out of the third wild card spot. That’s roughly where they were at the July 21 trade deadline, when they still had all-stars Correa and Castro, closer Duran, set-up man Jax, lights-out lefty Danny Coulombe and starting first baseman Ty France.

What’s left is in-house young talent such as infielders Luke Keaschall, Brooks Lee and Royce Lewis, power-hitting outfielders Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnach, a former first-round draft pick, and starting pitchers Simeon Woods Richardso, Zebby Matthews and David Festa.

Now management has added prospects from other organizations such as pitchers Mick Abel (acquired from Philadelphia for Duran) and Taj Bradley (acquired from Tampa Bay for Jax), as well as outfielder James Outman and Alan Roden, who started immediately with the big-league club.

“We have an opportunity here to take this clubhouse and say, ‘Hey, let’s take this opportunity to create the culture that we’ve been lacking the last couple years,’ the culture that prevents good teams from losing a lot of games, a good culture where instead of losing five games, you lose two and the guys pick themselves up so fast that it’s like, ‘Hey, we lost two; let’s back in the winning column.’

“That is something we’ve discussed as a group, like, ‘Hey, let’s reshape the philosophy and culture of who the Twins are: We hold each other accountable, we play hard, we compete and we don’t take anything for granted. We’re happy to be here. You’re fortunate and blessed enough to wear this (uniform), but you also have to play hard. Just being up here doesn’t fully cut it.”

Lopez, 29, has two years left on an extension signed in April 2023. He acknowledged wondering about whether he still might be moved ahead of next season but added that it doesn’t occupy him.
“The front office, the business side, has their vision and their thing to figure out,” he said. “And we also have things to figure out and we’re on it. We’re on it and on the way to creating that (winning) culture.”

Related Articles

Twins get to Detroit ace Skubal, but only briefly, in 4-3 loss to Tigers

Twins’ Rocco Baldelli managing to win: ‘We’re trying to contend’

Joe Ryan dominant in Twins’ win over Yankees

Shipley: No sale, no change for stuck-in-time Twins

Pohlads end search for Twins buyer, will add limited partners