On one recent cold morning, visitors to the Rondo Community Library in St. Paul were greeted with a sign on the front door that said: “Rondo Library will be closed Dec. 15.”

News that the troubled library is closing temporarily for renovations has some patrons and city officials worried about the loss of an important community center at University Avenue and Dale Street.

The St. Paul Public Library is using $793,000 to renovate the facility by moving restrooms farther into the entrance while moving the front desk farther up. Library Director Maureen Hartman said the renovations will help the library feel more welcoming.

“Right now, there’s a bit of a gap before you get to the library space itself. And so the area doesn’t always feel like a library,” Hartman said. “So we want to make sure that when folks come into the library, that they’re immediately understanding that it’s the library and that they can get connected to resources.”

Library system spokesperson Stacy Opitz said the renovation is currently in the design phase and there will be a timeline for construction when a general contractor is selected.

Library officials said staff from Rondo will move to the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, at 270 N. Kent St., on Jan. 3.  There, patrons can get books, DVDs and computer services.

While the renovations are meant to improve the library, City Council Member Anika Bowie didn’t agree with the closing.

At a recent budget hearing, Bowie, whose district includes the library, said the renovations weren’t worth shutting down the building.

“I do want to make it very clear about this library renovation process. I’ve been disappointed with the lack of collaboration from the start. It’s been really challenging to convey the impacts of the closing of Rondo Library,” Bowie said.​

Union leader Isaac Mielke, who heads the AFSCME unit that represents library staff, said Rondo workers and the community have felt left out of the conversation.

“Library staff’s main concern with the renovation is that the staff who actually work at Rondo and know the building and the community have not been involved in the process, and they’re not being listened to. And, frankly, neither is the community,” Mielke said.

Nehemiah Dacres, a St. Paul resident who lives near the library, said he’s not sure how the renovations will help.

“I’m not sure exactly how changing that will make it more approachable. Unless you literally make it so it’s a walk-in restroom with no door, then you can make it,” Dacres said. “I guess that’s really part of the other issue is that I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Dacres uses the library to rent DVDs and enjoys volunteering at the Rondo Library Black History Month events. He said the library is also conveniently close for biking.

The Rondo Library has had a series of challenges after disruptions associated with the 2020 pandemic and the unrest that followed the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd.  From 2021 to 2022, it received one-fourth of the St. Paul library system’s internal incident calls to police.

Later in 2023, the library staff implemented library safety specialists, who offer security and outreach. This summer, the building dropped Saturday and Sunday hours due to public safety concerns and low staffing.

Dr. Artika Tyner, an author who uses the building for book reading events, said the safety issues go back further than 2025.

“Librarians should be able to assist me with research. They shouldn’t be knocking on the bathroom doors and trying to stop drug use. That’s not a library,” Tyner said.

Bowie and Tyner said they want more communication from the library staff about the renovations and how the design will improve safety.

Lynn Overvoorde, a Minneapolis resident, said she didn’t know the library was shutting down. She sometimes comes to the library with her 11-month-old daughter.

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Overvoorde doesn’t feel unwelcome with the current entrance, but she hopes it doesn’t shut down for long.

“I like the space as it is. I mean, I don’t feel unwelcome, I like that there is someone at the door greeting us, the staff are really friendly,” Overvoorde said.

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER and MIKE BALSAMO

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles police are set to present a case to prosecutors Tuesday following Nick Reiner’s arrest in the killings of his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, which stunned their communities in Hollywood and Democratic politics, where both were widely beloved.

Prosecutors are set to decide whether and how to charge 32-year-old Nick Reiner, who is being held in jail without bail. He was arrested several hours after his parents were found dead in their home in the upscale Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on Sunday, police said.

Rob Reiner was the Emmy-winning star of the sitcom “All in the Family” who went on to direct films including “When Harry Met Sally…” and “The Princess Bride” He was an outspoken liberal activist for decades. Michele Singer Reiner was a photographer, movie producer and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. They had been married for 36 years.

Representatives for the Reiner family did not respond to requests for comment, and it wasn’t clear if Nick Reiner had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. Police haven’t said anything about a motive for the killings.

Investigators believe Rob and Michele Singer Reiner died from stab wounds, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official, who was briefed on the investigation, could not publicly discuss the details and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The killings were especially shocking given the warm comic legacy of the family. Rob Reiner was the son of comedy legend Carl Reiner, who died in 2020 at age 98.

Kathy Bates, who won an Oscar as the star of Rob Reiner’s 1990 film “Misery,” was among those paying tribute to the couple.

“I loved Rob,” Bates said in a statement. “He was brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist. He also fought courageously for his political beliefs. He changed the course of my life. Michele was a gifted photographer.”

Bill Clinton called the couple “good, generous people who made everyone who knew them better.”

“Hillary and I are heartbroken by the tragic deaths of our friends Rob and Michele Reiner,” he said in a statement. “They inspired and uplifted millions through their work in film and television.”

Three months ago, Nick Reiner was photographed with his parents and siblings at the premiere of his father’s film “Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues.”

He had spoken publicly of his struggles with addiction, cycling in and out of treatment facilities with bouts of homelessness in between through his teen years. Rob and Nick Reiner explored — and seemed to improve — their relationship through the making of the 2016 film, “Being Charlie.”

Nick Reiner co-wrote and Rob Reiner directed the film about the struggles of an addicted son and a famous father. It was not autobiographical but included several elements of their lives.

“It forced us to understand ourselves better than we had,” Rob Reiner told the AP in 2016. “I told Nick while we were making it, I said, ‘You know it doesn’t matter, whatever happens to this thing, we won already.’”

Rob Reiner was long one of the most prolific directors in Hollywood, and his work included some of the most memorable and endlessly watchable movies of the 1980s and ’90s, including “This is Spinal Tap” and “A Few Good Men.”

He met Michele Singer Reiner on the set of “When Harry Met Sally…,” and their meeting would inspire the film’s shift to a happy ending, with stars Billy Crystal — one of Reiner’s closest friends for decades — and Meg Ryan ending up together on New Year’s Eve.

The Reiners were outspoken advocates for liberal causes and major Democratic donors.

President Donald Trump on Monday blamed Rob Reiner’s outspoken opposition to the president for the actor-director’s killing, delivering the unsubstantiated claim in a social media post that seemed intent on decrying his opponents even in the face of a tragedy.

___

Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed.

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St. Paul’s police chief said Monday that claims of police officers starting at an “instantly escalated” response to protesters at a federal immigration operation last month are not true.

Officers who wore gas masks and were armed with batons weren’t “our second, third or fourth step of being there,” Axel Henry said.

The St. Paul City Council last week unanimously approved a resolution, in which they said they’ll work with the Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training “to conduct a thorough investigation into SPPD’s use of force during the Nov. 25, 2025 incident,” which Henry said he welcomes.

Henry said he’s already initiated internal affairs investigations. The department’s review of body camera footage is ongoing. They’ve gone through 60 to 70 percent of what Henry estimates to be a couple hundred hours of videos.

Criticism of police comes from all sides: There are people who say St. Paul police shouldn’t have been present in Payne-Phalen at all and some people who ask “why aren’t you being more aggressive” in immigrant enforcement, Henry said.

St. Paul adopted an ordinance in 2004 “that establishes a clear line of separation between the actions of local law enforcement and those of federal immigration authorities.” The council plans to review the ordinance, and act “to strengthen it, if and where necessary,” Council Member Molly Coleman said at last week’s meeting.

After an ICE raid at Bro-Tex Inc. in St. Paul on Nov. 18 and the federal operation in Payne-Phalen one week later, Henry met with federal law enforcement leaders, other local law enforcement and community groups who’ve been organizing protests.

“We need to be solution driven,” Henry said. “Part of my strategy has been to try to talk to all of the groups to figure out how we can round off some of these sharp edges so (federal officers) are less likely to need to be bailed out of anything … and people who want to protest and monitor it can do so in a way that won’t create a situation that’s unsafe for themselves or anybody else.”

What happened in the 600 block of Rose Avenue on Nov. 25 was unusual, Henry said. Last year, St. Paul police responded to or handled 210 marches, protests or big demonstrations and there have been 185 this year.

“We’re all talking about the one of Rose because that one didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” Henry said.

Other cities and suburbs are “feeling the same pinch and pressure,” he added. “… We’re kind of like the rope in the tug of war between the folks that don’t like this approach and the federal agents that are doing it.”

‘At a boiling point’

On the morning of Nov. 25, federal deportation officers were conducting an operation in the 600 block of East Rose Avenue to arrest an undocumented person who’d previously been removed from the U.S. and who had re-entered unlawfully, according to a probable cause statement signed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer and filed with a criminal complaint in federal court. It started about 7:45 a.m.

ICE arrested that man, but the incident continued until around 12:25 p.m. when they arrested another man.

The second man is charged in federal court with assaulting and impeding a federal officer, by allegedly striking the officer’s vehicle with his own, and improper entry to the U.S. He has entered a plea of not guilty.

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St. Paul police were called to the scene to take an accident report regarding the man who allegedly struck the federal officer’s car. While the officer was writing the report, a crowd of people observing and protesting was growing, Henry said.

The officer called a supervisor, reporting essentially that people were “coming here, already at a boiling point,” Henry said. The supervisor arrived and saw people were in the street. Henry went there and made a decision to bring in two officers, each in squad cars at opposite ends of the block on Rose Avenue to keep vehicles off the street because he said he wanted to be sure no one was struck.

Federal officials were holding the address for a warrant, and had surrounded it, because the suspect had run back into the home. “They weren’t asking us for help with that,” Henry said. “But they told us, ‘We’re going to be here for a bit because we’re drafting a warrant.”

Call for help

Henry has heard estimates that the crowd grew to 250 to 300 people

“It finally got to the point where … people tried to push in on the federal agents and their crime scene, and they were calling for help, saying that people were arming themselves with sticks and rocks,” Henry said.

The group was comprised of people who were hostile and people who were not, Henry said.

“I think that mixture was more heavily weighted toward not hostile, but it only takes a small percentage” to cause problems, he added.

Police leadership on the scene were directing officers and making decisions in conjunction with department leaders. They decided to bring in Mobile Field Force officers, who are trained to respond to protests, and SWAT officers who had just finished an unrelated detail.

But St. Paul City Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim, who came to the neighborhood as the situation unfolded, said at last week’s council meeting that “there are times where their posturing is the escalation.”

Force escalated

St. Paul officers’ “uses of force happened when we were trying to leave,” Henry said. Federal agents departed after the man surrendered to them, St. Paul officers were backing away on foot and some people blocked police vehicles from leaving by standing in front of or behind them, Henry said.

Some instances have drawn outrage, such as video of a woman with a cane who was standing still in front of a vehicle when a St. Paul officer blasted her in the face with a chemical irritant “at point-blank range,” Mayor Melvin Carter has said. The video showed that another officer then shoved her.

Protestors run from tear gas canisters fired by St. Paul Police officers after a demonstration against a federal law enforcement action on the 600 block of Rose Avenue in St. Paul turned violent on Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

In another situation, a St. Paul police vehicle was driving away on Payne Avenue and people walked after it. An officer or officers exited and began spraying a chemical irritant. Someone threw an object at the vehicle’s back window, breaking it. Police launched 40-mm projectiles and chemical munitions — spent canisters marked Triple-Chaser OC were visible on Payne Avenue afterward.

Henry said those cases and everything that happened is being reviewed by the department through body camera footage. The department is also investigating who thew objects at the police vehicle.

Badge numbers

Some people in the crowd asked officers for their badge numbers. Mobile Field Force personnel are supposed to have their badge numbers on their helmets.

While St. Paul police officers are required to hand out their business card — which has their name and badge number — when they respond to a call or are asked, officers acting as a Mobile Field Force are exempted under department policy, which says they are trained “not to individually interact with the public” during such a detail.

Another issue that arose: The department called officers in to work and some grabbed a jacket that didn’t have their name on it.

“We should be looking people up and down and making sure they’re in configuration,” Henry said. “Not because anybody was trying to conceal their identity, but because we don’t want to give any air to the argument that that’s what we would do.”

Public hearing Wednesday

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What: The St. Paul City Council is hosting a public hearing “on federal immigration operations and St. Paul Police Department conduct.” People can speak for up to 2 minutes. Council Member Nelsie Yang said she’s sponsoring the hearing “because of the overwhelming number of people who have been asking us to share with us their grievances especially,” which will help them shape policy and make budget decisions.

When: City Council meeting starts at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. There are several matters on the agenda before this public hearing and it’s not known what time it will be up.

Where: St. Paul City Hall, 15 W. Kellogg Blvd., council chambers on third floor.

Which laxatives are best?

The well-being of your digestive system can have a direct impact on your overall health. When a poor diet, new medication or lack of exercise leads to constipation, it can create uncomfortable symptoms. At some point in their life, most people will need the help of a laxative when their digestive system cannot relieve itself.

Laxatives are not long-term solutions for constipation, but they are an excellent short-term remedy to soften hard stools that quickly prompt relief. There are many laxative choices in the market, but for gentle relief without negative side effects, the top choice is MiraLAX Laxative Powder.

What to know before you buy a laxative

What is the likely cause of your constipation?

Constipation has many causes. Knowing what is likely causing your constipation can help you choose the best laxative. Common causes of constipation are a low-fiber diet, a lack of exercise during the day and some medications and supplements. Some illnesses and chronic conditions also cause constipation and will warrant a consultation with your health care professional to make sure the laxative side effects are not detrimental to your condition.

What else have you tried to relieve your constipation?

If your constipation is a recent occurrence, you may want to try natural remedies, such as increasing your fiber and water intake. Walking and exercising also stimulate your body to keep the digestive system actively pushing waste through it. If these steps do not work, then a laxative may be a viable option.

What type of laxative should you use?

There are several types of laxatives available. Stool softeners and osmotics work with the body’s water to increase the moisture content in the stool, which softens stool and makes bowel movements easier. Increasing your water consumption while taking these types of laxatives is important to prevent dehydration.

Stimulants are taken orally and jump-start the digestive system by stimulating the bowel muscles. These laxatives often work quickly, but they can cause uncomfortable side effects, like gas and cramping.

Bulk-forming laxatives, also known as fiber supplements, typically are mixed in a large glass of water or juice. This type of laxative prompts the intestinal muscles to contract, normalizing your digestive system. Be sure to drink a lot of fluids before starting fiber supplements. Although they are usually safe, if you have not been drinking enough liquid, your constipation could actually worsen.

Suppositories are inserted directly into the rectum and cause the bowel muscles to contract while softening the stool at the same time. They work the fastest of all laxative types. Suppositories should be used on a limited basis and according to your health care professional’s advice, since they can cause laxative dependency if used too often.

What to look for in a quality laxative

Fewest active ingredients

Look for laxatives with fewer active ingredients to reduce the potential for uncomfortable side effects. Some laxatives use natural plant-based sources, while others incorporate synthetic chemicals. Also, be aware that some laxatives include lactose, which could be problematic for someone who is lactose-intolerant.

Delivery method

The three main forms of laxatives are pills, powder and suppositories. Capsules are excellent for traveling. Powders are the best way to stay hydrated, since they are mixed with liquid. Suppositories work faster than other forms.

Side effects

Read the label and instructions to be aware of any potential side effects. Common side effects of laxatives include diarrhea, bloating, gas, cramping, nausea and dehydration. Talk to your health care professional about how your current medications may interact with laxatives.

How much you can expect to spend on a laxative

Most laxatives can be purchased over the counter for under $10. Children’s laxatives cost a bit more but are still less than $20.

Laxative FAQ

How is constipation defined?

A. Constipation is typically considered less than three bowel movements in a week. Each person has different bowel regularity, so you should base the definition on what is normal for you. If the normal pattern has changed, you could be constipated.

Can children use laxatives?

A. Laxatives are generally not recommended for children. If your child is experiencing constipation, talk to their health care professional first before trying a laxative.

What if the laxative doesn’t work?

A. If you have been constipated for a while and a laxative is unsuccessful, talk to your health care professional before taking more laxatives. They can help you determine if another condition may be causing your constipation.

What’s the best laxative to buy?

Top laxative

MiraLAX Laxative Powder

What you need to know: A gentle laxative that works with your body’s water to naturally unblock your system.

What you’ll love: There are no harsh side effects, such as bloating, gas or cramping. Free of gluten and preservatives, the powder is tasteless and can be mixed into any liquid. Dosing is done with a premeasured bottle cap.

What you should consider: This laxative costs a bit more than other over the counter products and can take up to 24 hours to work.

Top laxative for the money

Dulcolax

What you need to know: A trusted laxative that provides quick results in 6 to 12 hours.

What you’ll love: Using the time-tested ingredient bisacodyl, this product stimulates the bowel muscles for a fast effect. Coated tablets are easy to swallow. This is the laxative of choice when other methods have been unsuccessful.

What you should consider: Cramping and strong bowel movements are potential side effects.

Worth checking out

Prunelax

What you need to know: An all-natural laxative that works in 8 to 12 hours and doesn’t cause negative side effects.

What you’ll love: Made from Senna leaves and dried plums, this laxative does not absorb into your bloodstream, so there is no risk of dependence. It can be used for up to seven days. Bedtime dosing generally leads to morning relief.

What you should consider: The manufacturer does not recommend using the product for children under 15 years old.

Prices listed reflect time and date of publication and are subject to change.

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