District 196 high schools are closed Tuesday because the district was notified “of potential online threats toward” high schools in Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools, the school district announced.

Eastview, Eagan, Rosemount and Apple Valley high schools are all closed, said the district’s message sent shortly after 7:15 a.m. as students were at school or on the way.

“We are working with local law enforcement,” the message said. “Out of an abundance of caution, schools will be closed today. We are acting with safety as our first priority to cancel schools today to allow law enforcement to fully investigate this situation.”

Students who were at school were dismissed and buses returned students home.

The school district said they would provide more information later Tuesday morning.

Elementary and middle schools remain in session, including Dakota Hills Middle School, which shares a building with Eagan High School.

“At this time, there is no indication of a threat to elementary or middle school campuses,” the district said in another message to parents. “… The threat was directed at high schools only.”

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By KIMBERLEE KRUESI and LEAH WILLINGHAM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Authorities knocked on doors in search of video and sifted through snow and dumpsters for other evidence that might lead them to the Brown University gunman, whose face was covered or not visible in footage captured before and after the weekend attack that killed two students and wounded nine others.

Officials on Monday released three new videos of the man they believe carried out Saturday’s attack that show him wearing a mask and a dark two-tone jacket. Although his face wasn’t visible, the footage from about two hours before the shooting provided the clearest images yet of the suspect.

The FBI said the man is about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 centimeters) tall, with a stocky build. The agency offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person responsible.

“We’re asking for the public’s assistance,” Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez, said at a news conference, urging people who might recognize the suspect to call a tip line.

Police renewed their search after releasing a person of interest Sunday once they determined the evidence pointed elsewhere. Meanwhile, details began to emerge about the students who were shot.

The lockdown order for the Ivy League school was lifted Sunday after authorities said they had detained the person of interest. But hopes for a quick resolution were dashed when they announced hours later that they had released him.

The abrupt change of direction marked a setback in the investigation as questions swirl about campus security, the apparent lack of school video evidence and whether the focus on the person of interest gave the attacker more time to escape.

Gov. Dan McKee requested additional local police at schools to provide reassurance for students, families and educators.

A church on the university campus planned to host a “Community Service of Lament, Healing and Hope” on Tuesday night.

New video emerges

Before Monday’s news conference, police released a second video showing someone dressed in black walking along a city street minutes after the shooting. The video — like one released the day of the shooting — didn’t show the suspect’s face.

In a neighborhood near the university, a line of officers scraped their feet through a snow-covered yard looking for evidence. Meanwhile, agents identifying themselves as U.S. marshals asked locals if they had security cameras.

The shooting occurred as final exams were underway at Brown, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious schools. Investigators were not immediately sure how the shooter got inside the first-floor classroom and the attack set off hours of chaos.

Attorney General Peter Neronha, who said Sunday that there weren’t many cameras where the attack happened, said Monday that investigators were “making steady progress.”

One of the dead was active in church. The other overcame health concerns

The shooting happened in an auditorium-style classroom where students in a study group were preparing for an upcoming exam.

Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore who was vice president of the Brown College Republicans and beloved in her church in Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the students killed, according to her pastor at home.

In announcing her death Sunday, the Rev. R. Craig Smalley described Cook as “an incredible grounded, faithful, bright light” who encouraged and “lifted up those around her.”

“Ella was known for her bold, brave, and kind heart as she served her chapter and her fellow classmates,” Martin Bertao, the president of the club, said in a message posted on X.

The other student who was killed was MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old freshman majoring in biochemistry and neuroscience. He was helping a friend at a review session for an economics final when he was shot, his sister said.

As a child, Umurzokov suffered a neurological condition that required surgery, and he later wore a back brace because of scoliosis, said Samira Umurzokova, noting that the family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when she, her brother and sister were young. He knew from an early age he wanted to be a neurosurgeon to help others like himself.

“He had so many hardships in his life, and he got into this amazing school and tried so hard to follow through with the promise he made when was 7 years old,” she told the AP by phone Monday.

Only one of the nine people wounded had been released as of Sunday, Brown President Christina Paxson said. One was in critical condition and the other seven were in critical but stable condition. Mayor Brett Smiley said Monday evening that none of their conditions had worsened, but that he didn’t have further information.

Durham Academy, a private K-12 school in Durham, North Carolina, confirmed that a recent graduate, Kendall Turner, was critically wounded and that her parents were with her. “Our school community is rallying around Kendall, her classmates, and her loved ones,” the school said in a statement.

Another wounded student, 18-year-old freshman Spencer Yang of New York City, told the New York Times and the Brown Daily Herald from a hospital bed that there was a mad scramble after the gunman entered the room where he and the other students were studying for finals. Many students ran toward the front of the room, but Yang said he wound up on the ground between some seats and was shot in the leg.

Yang, who expects to be discharged in the coming days, said he tried to keep some of the more seriously wounded students conscious until police arrived.

___

Contributing were Associated Press journalists Jennifer McDermott and Matt O’Brien in Providence; Brian Slodysko in Washington; Michael Casey in Boston; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas.

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A nonprofit group is paying off the mortgage for the home belonging to the family of fallen Burnsville Fire Department firefighter and paramedic Adam Finseth.

The Tunnel to Towers Foundation will pay off the mortgage on the Finseth family through the Fallen First Responder Home Program as part of the 2025 Season of Hope.

On its website, the New York foundation, which was inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, spoke about Finseth’s bravery, saying he “acted without hesitation in his last moments.”

Finseth, along with Burnsville police officers Matt Ruge and Paul Elmstrand, both 27, were ambushed in a shooting while responding to a domestic violence call in February 2024.

Feb. 18 was supposed to be a day off for Finseth, 40. But as one of his department’s two SWAT medics, he didn’t hesitate when he was called to respond to a standoff at a home in Burnsville.

“He showed his commitment and unwavering dedication when he responded … in the middle of the night because seven children were at risk,” Burnsville Fire Chief BJ Jungmann said when he named Finseth the department’s Firefighter of the Year.

The man in the standoff started shooting at officers without warning as they negotiated with him to surrender because there were children in the house along with the man’s girlfriend. When Finseth tried to provide an officer with medical aid, the gunman also shot him. The assailant fatally shot himself. His girlfriend and the children were not injured.

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On most days, the words “Donald Trump” and “strategy” don’t fit in the same sentence. Combined, they’re an oxymoron in the truest sense. After all, strategy denotes a well-thought-out plan with concrete goals, realistic ways of achieving those goals and a set of principles that serve as an anchor as the president goes about the job. Trump, however, is the personification of an anti-strategy president whose version of a well-crafted policymaking process is writing a long screed on his Truth Social media platform.

Even so, every president needs to publish a national security strategy during their term. Trump did so in his first term, and that document stressed great power competition at every opportunity. President Joe Biden committed his own strategy to paper, citing China as an aspiring global hegemon that the United States needed to cooperate with when possible and contain when needed. Trump’s second-term strategy, published last week, goes beyond that relatively uncontroversial theme by stressing U.S. sovereignty and power above all other considerations.

There are some items in Trump’s national security strategy that are positive and frankly refreshing.

It ditches the rules-based order pablum we often hear from U.S. politicians ad nauseam, a construct that elevates universal values and suggests that international politics are governed by a set of hard-and-fast laws, rules and conventions.

But the world doesn’t work like that; power and interests, not the United Nations charter, govern how states behave. And the United States, a country that wrote the rules after World War II, isn’t exactly shy about abandoning those rules when it suits our agenda. If you don’t believe me, just look at the 2003 war in Iraq, which wasn’t authorized by the U.N. Security Council, or Washington’s support for some nasty autocrats who are deemed strategically important (rightly or wrongly). At least we’re no longer pretending a rules-based order exists.

Moreover, Trump’s overall goals in the strategy are quite conventional.

In the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration seeks to make the lives of cartels, drug traffickers and human smugglers miserable; preserve its superior position in the region relative to other non-hemispheric powers such as China and Russia; and ensure strategic locations such as the Panama Canal are secure. In Europe, U.S. officials are pressing the issue of burden sharing and incentivizing Washington’s European allies to take more responsibility for their own security. In East Asia, the United States hopes to maintain a stable balance of power with China, whose own military capability is exceedingly more impressive than it was a decade earlier. And in the Middle East, striking peace agreements is the primary objective. It’s hard to see why anyone would have an issue with any of this.

Yet to describe the White House strategy document as all roses would be a gross oversimplification as well.

The White House and the president himself preach the value of noninterventionism in other states’ domestic politics, but this is hard to square with Trump’s incessant meddling in foreign elections. Before Argentines went to the polls in October, Trump endorsed Argentine President Javier Milei’s party and threatened to revoke a $20 billion bailout package if the results weren’t to his liking (they were). In November, days before Hondurans were set to vote for a new president, Trump waded in and endorsed Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a right-wing politician. And again, Trump used his favorite tool: coercion. “If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras … we will be very supportive,” Trump wrote Nov. 28. “If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is.” The votes in this tight race are still being counted.

Trump’s policy in Latin America is also working at cross purposes with his lofty objectives. As the national security strategy stresses, the United States aims to get more Latin American countries to buy into the U.S. sphere of influence. That’s all well and good.

But U.S. activities in the hemisphere are complicating precisely what the Trump administration wants to achieve.

Trump’s decision over the summer to institute arbitrary tariffs on Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, in an attempt to coerce Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva into dropping the prosecution of his political adversary, Jair Bolsonaro, has been incredibly counterproductive. First, the economic pressure failed to push the Brazilian government into dropping Bolsonaro’s case. Second, with the U.S. market more expensive, the tariffs accelerated trade activity between Brazil and China, which while not a bad thing in its own right is still indicative of the Trump administration’s often-unsophisticated, ham-fisted approach. And third, the U.S. economic penalties have provided Brazilian foreign policy officials with even more reason to pursue a multivector foreign policy that doesn’t fully align with Washington.

The ongoing U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean aren’t doing the U.S. any favors either. Sure, there are some countries in the region, such as Trinidad and Tobago as well as the Dominican Republic, that are supportive of the Trump administration’s militarized war on drugs. But the vast majority are firmly opposed due to the moral aspects involved as well as the actions’ ineffectiveness on a more practical level. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has feuded with Trump over what he calls state-sanctioned murder, and Colombian intelligence officials have reportedly limited counternarcotics cooperation with Washington in response. Brazil is aghast at the tactics. And Mexico, one of the most important U.S. counternarcotics partners in the world, has no intention of lending a hand in these strikes.

The good news: Trump’s second national security document could have been much, much worse. It also could have been better.

Whether it matters at all will be determined by Trump’s capacity to see it through.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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