Country superstar Morgan Wallen will kick off his 2026 Still the Problem tour with two nights at U.S. Bank Stadium on April 10 and 11.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Nov. 7 through Axs. Fans who register at stilltheproblem.com by 10 p.m. Nov. 6 have access to a presale. Thomas Rhett, Gavin Adcock and Vincent Mason open the first night, with Hardy stepping in for Rhett on the second.

Wallen, 32, emerged in 2014 as a contestant on the sixth season of “The Voice,” but was eliminated during the playoffs. He released his debut EP the following year and scored his first major hit with 2017’s “Up Down.” After releasing his debut album “If I Know Me” in 2018, Wallen hit the road and opened for Luke Bryan at Target Field that July. His sophomore effort, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” earned glowing reviews and was the biggest hit of any genre in 2021.

Nearly every single he’s released has landed at either No. 1 or 2 on the country charts. And that’s a lot of singles, as he issued eight from 2023’s “One Thing at a Time” and seven (so far) from his fourth and most recent album “I’m the Problem.” Wallen’s biggest hits include “Whiskey Glasses,” “Chasin’ You,” “More Than My Hometown,” “Wasted on You” and “Last Night.”

Wallen’s success has come with some controversy. In early 2021, the gossip website TMZ released a video showing Wallen using a racial epithet, just weeks after the release of “Dangerous.”

He was arrested in 2020 after getting kicked out of Kid Rock’s Nashville bar, although the case was later dismissed. Last year, he was arrested again, this time for throwing a chair off the roof of Eric Church’s Nashville bar. In December, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment and was sentenced to serve seven days in a DUI education center and two years of supervised probation.

The upcoming shows will be Wallen’s fourth and fifth at the Vikings stadium. He opened for Church there in June 2022 and returned two years later as a headliner for two nights. Wallen will also tie Taylor Swift’s record of playing two consecutive USBS shows on two different tours. Garth Brooks and Metallica are the only other acts to headline two nights in a row.

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By LISA MASCARO, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Certain senators know it. House Speaker Mike Johnson knows it. And with President Donald Trump back in Washington from his overseas trip, perhaps the White House knows it, too.

For many, it’s time for the government shutdown to come to an end.

From coast to coast, fallout from the dysfunction of a shuttered federal government is hitting home: Alaskans are stockpiling moose, caribou and fish for winter, even before SNAP food aid is scheduled to shut off. Mainers are filling up their home-heating oil tanks, but waiting on the federal subsidies that are nowhere in sight.

Flights are being delayed with holiday travel around the corner. Workers are going without paychecks. And Americans are getting a first glimpse of the skyrocketing health care insurance costs that are at the center of the stalemate on Capitol Hill.

“People are stressing,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as food options in her state grow scarce.

“We are well past time to have this behind us.”

While quiet talks are underway, particularly among bipartisan senators, the shutdown is not expected to end before Saturday’s deadline when Americans’ deep food insecurity — one in eight people depend on the government to have enough to eat — could become starkly apparent if federal SNAP funds run dry.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Money for military, but not food aid

The White House has moved money around to ensure the military is paid, but refuses to tap funds for food aid. In fact, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” signed into law this summer, delivered the most substantial cut ever to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, projected to result in some 2.4 million people off the program.

At the same time, many Americans who purchase their own health insurance through the federal and state marketplaces, with open enrollment also beginning Saturday, are experiencing sticker shock as premium prices jump.

“We are holding food over the heads of poor people so that we can take away their health care,” said Rev. Ryan Stoess, during a prayer with religious leaders at the U.S. Capitol.

“God help us,” he said, “when the cruelty is the point.”

Vice President JD Vance speaks to the media alongside Sean O’Brien, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, from left, Chris Sununu, president & CEO of Airlines for America, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and aviation industry representatives, about the impact of the government shutdown on the aviation industry, outside of the West Wing of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Deadlines shift to next week

The House remains closed down under Johnson for the past month. Senators are preparing to depart Thursday for the long weekend. Trump returns late Thursday after a whirlwind tour of Asia.

That means the shutdown, in its 30th day, appears all but certain to stretch into another week, putting it on track to become the longest in history, surpassing the 35-day lapse that ended in 2019, during Trump’s first term over his demands to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The next inflection point comes after Tuesday’s off-year elections — the New York City mayor’s race, as well as elections in Virginia and New Jersey that will determine those states’ governors. Many expect that once those winners and losers are declared, and the Democrats and Republicans assess their political standing with the voters, they might be ready to hunker down for a deal.

“I hope that it frees people up to move forward with opening the government,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticizes Republicans for their healthcare policies, at a news conference on day 29 of the government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

GOP cut SNAP in Trump’s big bill

The Republicans, who have majority control of Congress, find themselves in an unusual position, defending the furloughed federal workers and shuttered programs they have long sought to cut — including most recently with nearly $1 trillion in reductions in Trump’s big tax breaks and spending bill.

Medicaid, the health care program, and SNAP food aid, suffered sizable blows this summer, in part by imposing new work requirements. For SNAP recipients, many of whom were already required to work, the new requirements extend to older Americans up to age 64 and parents of older school-age children.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans now “have the nerve” to suggest it’s a political strategy to withhold food aid.

“We are trying to lift up the quality of life for the American people,” Jeffries of New York said about his party.

“The American people understand that there’s a Republican health care crisis,” he said. “The American people understand Republicans enacted the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history when they cut $186 billion from their one, big, ugly bill.”

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During the summer debate over Trump’s big bill, Johnson and other Republicans railed against what they characterized as lazy Americans, riding what the House speaker calls the “gravy train” of government benefits.

The speaker spoke about able-bodied young men playing video games while receiving Medicaid health care benefits and insisted the new work requirements for the aid programs would weed out what they called “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“What we’re talking about, again, is able-bodied workers, many of whom are refusing to work because they’re gaming the system,” Johnson said in spring on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“And when we make them work, it’ll be better for everybody, a win-win-win for all,” he said.

What remains out of reach, for now, is any fix for the high health care prices that Democrats have been holding out for. Republicans say they can address the issue later, once the government reopens.

But experts warn the new rates, posted this week, will leave insurance out of reach for many Americans, particularly as federal subsidies that help people pay for the policies expire at the end of the year.

Associated Press writer Matt Brown contributed to this report.

Residents of Lakeland are invited to an open house next week to learn more about plans for a possible new city hall and weigh in on two different options for council chambers.

The open house will be 5-7 p.m. Monday at Lakeland City Hall, 690 Quinnell Ave. N.

City officials are considering a plan to purchase the Telus commercial building at 84 St. Croix Trail S. A non-binding letter of intent was sent on Oct. 1, said City Clerk Michelle Elsner. The appraised price of the building, which is 1,860 square feet, is $525,000.

Telus, a real-estate management company, is moving to Hudson, Wis., Elsner said.

Residents will be asked to provide input on two different options for council chambers that were put together by the architect, Elsner said.

The parking lot also could be reconfigured to add additional parking spaces, she said.

City officials have spent years trying to determine what should be done with the current city hall, which was built as a Baptist church in 1868. Structural problems include bowing exterior walls, a sagging roof frame and cracks in the basement walls.

There are also signs of mold and water infiltration in the basement, Elsner said, which is a problem. Plus there are serious accessibility issues and high levels of radon have been detected.

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City staff had to move out of the building and into the city’s water department building because of all the issues, Elsner said.

Lakeland officials have struggled with making plans for a new city hall ever since the city hall that was under construction was destroyed by an apparent act of arson in 2016. No one has been charged or convicted in the case.

The building burned on Nov. 13, 2016, just five days after then-Mayor Amy Williams, who supported building a new Lakeland City Hall, was defeated by then-council member Richard Glasgow, who opposed it.

By MARY CLARE JALONICK and JOEY CAPPELLETTI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s increasing efforts to exclude Democrats from national security briefings could endanger troops and keep important information from the public, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee warned Thursday.

“I don’t know how you even begin to rebuild trust,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said after Democrats were not invited to a briefing this week on U.S. military strikes against boats alleged to be carrying drugs. “This is against every norm of how national security policy has worked.”

Every senator should be read in, Warner said, and “when you politicize decision making about putting service members in harm’s way, you make them less safe.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, speaks about the Trump administration following reports that only Republican lawmakers received security briefings on the Trump-ordered military strikes against boats in the Caribbean, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Lawmakers in both parties have had questions about the American strikes on boats in the waters off South America — 14 strikes so far, killing 61 people — and the legal justification for them, given that Congress has not authorized military action. President Donald Trump’s administration also has been building up an unusually large force of warships in the region, fueling speculation that the moves are aimed at ousting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Senate to vote on war powers

The Senate could have a say next week with an expected vote on a war powers resolution forced by Democrats that would prohibit strikes in or near Venezuela, unless Congress approves. Several Republicans who are considered potential swing votes in favor of that resolution were part of the briefing this week.

One of those Republican senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said he had requested the briefing along with others. He said it helped ease some of his concerns, but that he’s going to “continue to look at” the resolution.

Tillis said that he saw nothing wrong with Republicans having their own briefing since the issue has become “politicized.” But Democrats “should be entitled to a briefing” as well, Tillis said.

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Democrats shut out

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham also said Democrats should hear from the administration. Asked if he’s worried about the precedent being set by excluding them, Graham responded that “they’ll get briefed.”

Warner said that is “bull—–.”

“Somebody needs to be held accountable for this,” he said. “Some ‘oops’ makeup session doesn’t cut it.”

Warner has criticized the Trump administration for months as military and intelligence officials have increasingly moved away from the long tradition of bipartisan briefings in the Capitol and cracked down on access to national security information.

Trump officials only called Republicans in Congress, not Democrats, before launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year. They also canceled a routine classified meeting that Warner had scheduled with career intelligence staffers at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency after it was criticized by Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist.

Erosion of bipartisanship

National security committees in Congress have long been among the most bipartisan, and lawmakers in both parties have fiercely guarded their access to information since power can switch quickly in Washington. But Warner directly criticized his Republican colleagues for their “blind loyalty” to Trump and not speaking up.

“Somebody should have walked out of the meeting,” Warner said.

South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, another Republican who attended the briefing, said he did not know until he arrived that it would be partisan. He said he received a phone call from the White House on Thursday morning inquiring about whether he had concerns.

“I said, ‘Yup.’ Because Intel and Armed Services, we do things on a bipartisan basis when it comes to this, we want to keep it that way,” Rounds said.

The administration held a separate classified briefing for the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that did include Democrats. But Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who attended the meeting, said that the Pentagon pulled its lawyers with no notice. The lawyers were “the exact people who would supply a legal justification for these strikes,” Moulton posted on X.

Lawmakers question attacks

Trump has justified the attacks on the boats as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and asserted the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.

The administration says it is relying on the same legal authority used by the Bush administration when it declared a war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But lawmakers have said they want more detail about that rationale as the pace of the attacks has increased.

Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Democrats being excluded from the briefing was “very poor judgment.”

“It goes to the mindset of this administration that they don’t have to deal with Congress unless there’s an emergency and that’s usually trying to rally the Republicans,” Reed said.

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.