By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a Justice Department official says.

Ed Martin, the government’s pardon attorney, posted on social media a signed proclamation of the “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon, which also names Sidney Powell, an attorney who promoted baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election, and John Eastman, another lawyer who pushed a plan to keep Trump in power. The proclamation, posted online late Sunday, explicitly says the pardon does not apply to Trump.

Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, and none of the Trump allies named were charged in federal cases over the 2020 election. But the move underscores President Donald Trump’s continued efforts to promote the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from him even though courts around the country and U.S. officials found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome. It follows the sweeping pardons of the hundreds of Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, including those convicted of attacking law enforcement.

The proclamation described efforts to prosecute those accused of aiding Trump’s efforts to cling to power as “a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday.

Also pardoned were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump in 2020 and were charged in state cases of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in those states. Another key figure on the list is Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who championed Trump’s efforts to challenge his election loss.

Trump himself was indicted on felony charges accusing him of working overturn his 2020 election defeat, but the case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was abandoned in November after Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris because of the department’s policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

Giuliani, Meadows and others who were named in the proclamation had been charged by state prosecutors over the 2020 election, but the cases have hit a dead end or are just limping along. A judge in September dismissed the Michigan case against 15 Republicans accused of attempting to falsely certify Trump as the winner of the election in that battleground state.

Giuliani, Powell, Eastman and Clark were alleged co-conspirators in the federal case brought against Trump but were never charged with federal crimes.

Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the most vocal supporters of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of large-scale voter fraud after the 2020 election. He has since been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York over his advocacy of Trump’s bogus election claims and lost a $148 million defamation case brought by two former Georgia election workers whose lives were upended by conspiracy theories he pushed.

Eastman, a former dean of Chapman University Law School in Southern California, was a close adviser to Trump in the wake of the 2020 election and wrote a memo laying out steps Vice President Mike Pence could take to stop the counting of electoral votes while presiding over Congress’ joint session on Jan. 6 to keep Trump in office.

Today is Monday, Nov. 10, the 314th day of 2025. There are 51 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 10,1975, the Great Lakes freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a severe storm on Lake Superior, claiming the lives of all 29 crew members.

Also on this date:

In 1775, the U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress.

Related Articles

Senate moves toward compromise legislation to end government shutdown

Donald Trump booed as the 1st sitting US president at a regular-season NFL game since Carter in 1978

Top BBC bosses resign after criticism of the broadcaster’s editing of a Trump speech

Trump administration demands states ‘undo’ full SNAP payouts as states warn of ‘catastrophic impact’

US airlines’ daily cancellations exceed 2,700 as shutdown impact extends

In 1898, a mob of up to 2,000 white supremacists killed dozens of African Americans in Wilmington, North Carolina, burned Black-owned businesses and forced the mayor, police chief and aldermen to resign at gunpoint before installing their own mayor and city council in what became known as the “Wilmington Coup.”

In 1954, the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Arlington, Virginia.

In 1969, the children’s educational program “Sesame Street” made its debut on National Educational Television (now PBS).

In 2019, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, resigned after weeks of public protests in response to alleged fraud in a general election that year.

In 2021, Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand in his murder trial, testifying that he was under attack and acting in self-defense when he shot and killed two men and wounded a third during a turbulent night of street protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (He would be acquitted of all charges.)

In 2024, a shooting during homecoming weekend at Tuskegee University in Alabama left one person dead and 16 others wounded, a dozen of them by gunfire.

Today’s Birthdays:

Lyricist Tim Rice is 81.
Country singer Donna Fargo is 80.
Film director Roland Emmerich is 70.
Actor-comedian Sinbad is 69.
Actor Mackenzie Phillips is 66.
Author Neil Gaiman (GAY’-mihn) is 65.
Actor Hugh Bonneville is 62.
Actor-comedian Tommy Davidson is 62.
Long jump world record holder Mike Powell is 62.
Country singer Chris Cagle is 57.
Actor-comedian Tracy Morgan is 57.
Actor Ellen Pompeo is 56.
Rapper-producer Warren G is 55.
Actor Walton Goggins is 54.
Football Hall of Famer Isaac Bruce is 53.
Rapper-actor Eve is 47.
Country singer Miranda Lambert is 42.
Actor Josh Peck is 39.
Actor Taron Egerton is 36.
Golfer Jon Rahm is 31.
Actor Kiernan Shipka is 26.
Olympic gold medal pole vaulter Armand Duplantis is 26.
Actor Mackenzie Foy is 25.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — On a recent Thursday morning at Rochester Public Schools’ CTECH building, high school senior Mazin Bakhit was working on a program he’s been developing for a class project. He’s calling it SharkFin, and it’s supposed to help people improve their financial literacy.

Like students and industry workers, he has been using artificial intelligence to help him with this task.

Mazin Bakhit, a John Marshall High School senior, works with Matthew Frazier, an IT and computer science teacher with Rochester Public Schools, on a financial literacy app project for his Computer Science Arts and Labs class Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, at Rochester Community and Technical College’s Heintz Center in Rochester, Minn. (Joe Ahlquist / Forum News Service)

While developing a part of the program, he’ll run it through an AI platform, and ask the “bot” what it thinks of the product he’s designing. The AI bot will then critique his work, pointing out errors or suggesting improvements that could be made. In turn, Bakhit will tweak his creation and then take it back to the AI bot for further review.

The “two” of them will go back and forth like that, round after round, until Bakhit lands on a version of the program that works best. He says he thinks of AI as “a stingy, mean investor.”

“I say ‘what do you think about this idea?’” Bakhit said. “I’m using it as if I had a feedback coach.”

Bakhit is part of a generation growing up in a rapidly changing technological world. In 2023, the company OpenAI launched the first edition of ChatGPT, which was among the first commonly available AI platforms to hit the market.

And thus the AI revolution launched into full force. Since then, there’s hardly been a segment of life that hasn’t been re-examined through the lens of artificial intelligence.

In Rochester Public Schools, it’s something that everyone’s having to adjust to — from students to teachers to administrators. The goal is not to prohibit students from using it, but rather to help them learn how to use it responsibly, knowing full well that the wider world they are going to enter into after graduation is going to be saturated with it.

That, however, is a bit like building the proverbial airplane mid-flight since the world is still adjusting to what a future under artificial intelligence will look like.

District-wide approach

Earlier this year, RPS Superintendent Kent Pekel suggested the district develop an AI policy during its next strategic plan. After talking to people throughout the city’s schools, he said it became apparent that everyone was approaching the topic slightly differently.

Although it looks like developing a robust approach to AI may take a backseat to other pressing issues as part of the strategic plan, the district is still trying to get a handle on it.

One way it’s done that is by introducing an AI platform called Magic School, which is designed specifically for educators. It’s meant to help them become more efficient, such as using the platform for lesson-planning. The district is piloting the program this year at the four middle schools, with the intent of rolling it out to the wider district after that if it goes well.

And the district is trying to help teachers learn more about artificial intelligence in general. At the beginning of the school year, the district’s AI seminar for teachers was booked solid.

The district has also compiled a list of “guidelines and considerations when using ‘AI’ in RPS,” while acknowledging how fluid the world of artificial intelligence is. The guidelines provide a necessary framework for the district — for educators, support staff and students.

“One of the worst things people in education can do around AI is nothing,” said Naomi Hughes, a library media specialist who works in the district’s middle schools. “Because kids are already using it. And they need skills in order to be able to use it ethically and effectively. So, we can’t ignore it.”

Back to the basics

That doesn’t mean the process of adapting to the new reality has been seamless. Teachers have had to become strategic in order to keep their students in line.

Although part of the district’s adaptation to the AI boom has been to help students learn how to use it effectively and ethically, the wild-west nature of it has sometimes meant that teachers simply need to get back to the basics.

Peter Wruck is the director of research and evidence for Rochester Public Schools, and has been part of the district’s effort to develop a framework for the approach to AI. He noted in a recent presentation that the tools teachers can use to help detect AI in an essay aren’t always reliable.

The presentation cited a few absurd blunders by the programs that were supposed to be able to detect AI-generated work. In one, a program claimed that a section of the Bible was 98.9% AI generated. In another example, three out of four programs claimed with various levels of assurance that the preamble to the Declaration of Independence was AI-generated.

“Their framework was ‘How do I control cheating?’” Wruck said about the teachers who came to the AI training seminar. “And I’m like, ‘To some extent you can’t, unless you change your approach.’”

And that’s just what some teachers have chosen to do.

John Marshall High School English teacher Kristin Welsh uses a software program called “GoGuardian,” which allows her to monitor the screens of all her students in the class.

At any given moment, she can log onto her computer and see what every student is looking at. If they’re playing chess — a popular pastime for students — she can simply close that student’s internet window at a whim.

But despite how many tech-based programs there are for teachers to use, she said that sometimes they simply have to go back to the basics.

“We’ve gone back to a lot of pencil and paper,” she said. “We’ve gone back to timed essays with the onset of ChatGPT and AI … we’ve been going back to our old-school ways, which has really helped.”

The good and the bad

Despite perceptions about how much young people rely on technology, AI does not have a monopoly on the younger generations. According to a September 2024 study published in coordination with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, only 4% of people surveyed between the ages of 14-22 use AI “almost every day or every day.” Another 11% use AI “once or twice per week.”

John Marshall High School English teacher Kristin Welsh speaks with the Rochester (Minn.) School Board on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, about how she has moved to some older forms of schooling due to the prevalence of artificial intelligence. (Jordan Shearer / Forum News Service)

Conversely, as much as 49% of the respondents said they never use AI programs, for a number of different reasons.

That ambiguity among students can be seen playing out in Rochester Public Schools as well. Mayo High School senior Kieran Aganga said that although artificial intelligence has the potential to do a lot of good in the world, it needs to be used very sparingly in light of its environmental impact and the amount of energy needed to power it.

Matthew Frazier is a computer science teacher who worked in the field of technology and artificial intelligence for years getting into education. Although he encourages students — such as Bakhit, who is in one of his classes — to use AI for their projects he estimates that around 10% of his students don’t want to use AI.

“They’re making a moral or ethical decision,” Frazier said about the students who choose not to use AI. “They’re valuing their own learning.”

And that’s partly what underlies the tension between the benefits and problems of using AI. Is it a powerful educational tool that can help students learn when they don’t have someone immediately beside them? Can it be that tool that Dakhit referred to simultaneously as his “stingy mean investor” and his feedback coach?

Or, is there merit to the claim that artificial intelligence is impacting students’ ability to think critically? Aganga described it as a tool that can be useful for helping students understand difficult concepts, but that it’s also a tool that’s just “too easy to reach for.”

The reality is that both those things may be true to some extent.

Mayo High School computer science teacher Eric Dirks says it’s good for students to understand the benefit of the “productive struggle” of learning on their own, but that — at the same time — AI may have its place.

“So many people in the computer science world love solving puzzles. If something else is solving the puzzle for you, it takes a lot of the joy out of it,” Dirks said. “But if you’re sitting at home, and you’re struggling to figure something out, and you don’t have access to the parent or the teacher, then maybe taking it to AI is a good resource.”

The world beyond

But for today’s high school students, thinking about AI goes beyond the classroom. As a generation growing up in the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence, they’re going to be entering a job market that is changing rapidly.

El Jacobs, a junior at Century High School, works on a coding assignment during a Data Science with Python class Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, at Rochester Community and Technical College’s Heintz Center in Rochester, Minn. (Joe Ahlquist / Forum News Service)

Unlike former technological revolutions that displaced manual labor, the AI boom has the potential to displace white-collar positions as well, not least of which are the programmers who work in the field of computer science in the first place.

Aganga, the Mayo High School senior, plans on becoming an aerospace engineer one day. And although he doesn’t think artificial intelligence would ever replace the need for human minds in that space, it may take away some of the lower level jobs available, creating more competition for the higher-level positions.

The study from the Harvard Graduate School of Education reported that 41% of “young people believe that generative AI is likely to have both positive and negative impacts on their lives in the next 10 years.”

That was something that resonated with El Jacobs, who’s another one of Frazier’s students in his CTECH class. She described AI as a good learning tool but something that doesn’t belong in creative spaces.

Related Articles

$1B Rosemount aerospace complex, University of St. Thomas semiconductor hub receive state funding

Kevin Frazier: The need to discuss AI with kids

Commentary: Why academic debates about AI mislead lawmakers — and the public

Maureen Dowd: AI will turn on us, inadvertently or nonchalantly

Thomas Friedman: The one danger that should unite the U.S. and China

As for the future, she thinks that although it’s causing some “cultural dissonance” in the immediate sense, AI will have a similar impact that the industrial revolution did. In other words, although there may be some disruption to the job market, there will be other jobs created by it as well.

“I think it’s going to be a good thing in the long run,” Jacobs said.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Sunday night took the first step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history, after a group of Democrats broke their party’s blockade and voted with Republicans to advance legislation to reopen the government.

The 60-40 vote paved the way for the spending agreement to begin making its way through Congress, where it would still need to be debated and passed by the Senate, win approval in the House and be signed by President Donald Trump to bring the shutdown to a close.

Eight senators in the Democratic caucus voted to advance the measure, which would fund most federal agencies through January. That indicated there were enough votes to end weeks of gridlock that has shuttered the government for 40 days, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, millions of Americans at risk of losing food assistance and millions more facing air travel disruptions.

But the deal prompted a quick and fierce backlash among Democrats, many of whom were livid that their colleagues had backed down from the party’s central demand in the shutdown fight: the extension of health insurance subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of the year, sending premiums soaring for millions of Americans.

The compromise measure included a provision that many Democrats had sought to reverse layoffs of federal workers made during the shutdown. It also came with a commitment from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to allow a vote in December on extending the expiring health insurance tax credits for a year. Many Democrats have said for weeks that such a pledge would be insufficient to win them over, since such a bill has appeared all but certain to die in the Republican-led Congress.

The Democratic defectors’ decision allowed Republicans, who have been unable to push through a temporary spending bill over Democratic opposition, to finally cobble together the 60 votes needed to do so, though reopening the government could still take some time.

‘A lot of people are being hurt’

Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats and was one of the lead negotiators of the deal, said that the length of the shutdown and the pain it was inflicting on Americans had changed the calculus for some of his colleagues, pushing them to support a deal with Republicans that would reopen the government without the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies they had originally sought.

“I think people were saying ‘We’re not going to get what we want,’ although we still have a chance,” King said, noting Thune’s commitment to hold a vote on the matter. “But in the meantime, a lot of people are being hurt.”

One crucial Democratic convert, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, said Sunday evening that he was backing the deal after securing the provision in the temporary spending bill to reverse layoffs made during the shutdown and ensure furloughed workers would receive back pay.

“This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019,” Kaine said in a statement. “That’s a critical step.”

Democratic rift

But the retreat reopened the Democratic rift within the party that emerged in March, when a bloc of Democratic senators voted with Republicans to keep the government open, prompting a progressive backlash.

The shift this time was particularly remarkable given that the deal did not protect the health insurance tax credits, which Democrats had spent weeks arguing was a crucial piece of any government funding agreement. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who had held his party together for more than a month making that case, opposed the deal.

Both Minnesota’s senators voted against the bill. “I will not support this bill that completely fails to help Americans afford their health care,” Sen. Tina Smith said in a statement Sunday night. “Allowing this to pass is a mistake.”

“The President and Congressional Republicans should have come to the table to work with us to lower these costs. In every other budget impasse or shutdown there were negotiations and compromise with the White House. I am committed to lowering health care costs and will do everything I can to get this done,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said in a statement.

“This health care crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home that I cannot, in good faith, support this CR that fails to address the health care crisis,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor, referring to the continuing resolution that would temporarily fund the government.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also said that House Democrats would not back any such deal.

“Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our country, and the American people know it,” he said in a statement.

Still, were the plan to pass the Senate, House Democrats would have no chance of defeating it if Republicans held together in support.

Funding through January

The core of the compromise that moved ahead Sunday is a spending package that came out of negotiations among a bipartisan group of moderates, led by the leaders of the Appropriations Committee. It includes a new stopgap measure that would fund the government through January, plus three separate spending bills to cover programs related to agriculture, military construction and legislative agencies for most of 2026.

“Under our legislation, all federal employees, including members of our military and Coast Guard, Capitol Police officers, Border Patrol agents, TSA screeners, air traffic controllers — all will receive their back wages,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Appropriations Committee.

Those three bills, released Sunday, omit most of the deep spending cuts that Trump had proposed in his budget this year.

Still, the deal was causing intense consternation across a wide swath of the Democratic caucus, from progressives to moderates.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said any retreat from the party’s demands on health care would be “a policy and political disaster.”

And in a reflection of how the deal split their party, Sen. Mark Warner broke with his fellow Virginia Democrat, Kaine, and said he could not back the agreement despite the provisions protecting federal workers. He said he had long pushed for those steps, calling them “a critical step in protecting our public servants from this administration’s campaign of retribution.”

“But I cannot support a deal that still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick,” added Warner, who is up for reelection next year.

Democrats had agonized privately for days over whether to prolong the shutdown or find a quick bipartisan compromise. Many had made the case that their party’s victories in last week’s elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia reflected that their fight was resonating with voters and suggested that they must show they were continuing to press to lower health care costs.

But centrists in the party caucus believed that the spiraling effects of the shutdown — including the threat to SNAP food assistance and the air travel chaos — meant that blocking the funding bills had grown untenable.

In the end, eight broke off Sunday night to side with Republicans and allow the measure to advance: King, Kaine and Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois; John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire; and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both of Nevada.

Package contents

The bipartisan spending package contains some provisions that run counter to Trump’s wishes. While he has moved to eliminate the Food for Peace program, which sends surplus American crops to communities around the world that are experiencing famine and starvation, the bill would provide $1.2 billion for the program, which many Republicans hailing from farm states have championed.

Negotiators in the Senate also shut down a bid by House Republicans to hobble the Government Accountability Office, a roughly century-old agency formed to help Congress keep track of federal spending. The GAO has twice determined this year that Trump’s actions violated rules that prohibit him from unilaterally canceling funding, and the agency is allowed under existing law to sue to force a president to release illegally withheld funds.

While the House had proposed to halve funding for the agency, the Senate-written measure would keep its funding flat. The measure also jettisoned a provision by House Republicans that sought to bar the agency from suing the White House in the future.

Still, the package omits any mention of the health care subsidies that Democrats made a centerpiece of the shutdown fight. They had spent weeks demanding that Republicans agree to permanently extend the tax credits in exchange for their votes to fund the government, a condition that the GOP refused to meet.

Related Articles

Donald Trump booed as the 1st sitting US president at a regular-season NFL game since Carter in 1978

Top BBC bosses resign after criticism of the broadcaster’s editing of a Trump speech

The U.S. was a leader in cultural heritage investigations. Now those agents are working immigration enforcement.

Nolan Finley: Reagan ad reminder of what we’re missing

David Brooks: The season of wolves

On Friday, Schumer had scaled back that demand, saying Democrats would vote to reopen the government if the legislation included an extension of the health tax credits for just one year.

Republicans immediately rejected that proposal as well, calling it a nonstarter.