Minnesota has thus far stayed out of the “redistricting fight” as states like Texas and California butt heads over potentially gaining more congressional seats ahead of the midterm elections.

The push was prompted by President Donald Trump encouraging Republicans in Texas to redraw their maps, and some blue states, such as California, responding with threats to do the same. Though the effort hasn’t been initiated in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz said earlier this month at Farmfest that this isn’t a situation where Democrats can “go high.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. (AP Photo/Matthew Putney,File)

“We’re not dealing with a normal situation; we can’t on this say, ‘When they go low, we gotta go high,’” Walz said. “When they violate the law and gerrymander, if we don’t do something about this, they are going to game this system, take these votes away, and potentially switch a midterm.”

Minnesota’s eight congressional seats are currently divided between parties. The state is required to redistrict every census year, and the Legislature draws up maps and attempts to pass those maps similarly to how it handles bills.

Since 1980, partisan gridlock in Minnesota’s split Legislature has prevented lawmakers from agreeing on new maps, leaving redistricting to the courts.

“The Democrats write a map that they want, Republicans write a map,” Walz said. “And then the judges say, ‘Oh, isn’t that sweet? Those are gone.’ And they create fair maps.”

Split Legislature

The Minnesota Legislature is currently effectively split. The House is currently split 67-66 with the Republicans at a one-seat advantage. If a DFLer wins a special election for Rep. Melissa Hortman’s seat, the House will return to a 67-67 tie.

David Schultz, professor of political science and legal studies at Hamline University, said Monday that “given how polarized the state is,” he doesn’t see the Legislature agreeing on a new congressional map.

“Essentially, it’s a split Legislature, and it takes 68 votes to pass anything in the House of Representatives,” he said. “I cannot see any situation here where … any Republican would agree to voting for any plans sponsored by the Democrats that would result potentially in the Republicans losing … one or more seats in the House of Representatives.”

Legislative deadlock aside, Schultz said it’s unlikely Democrats could find a new seat to pick up. If anything, it would be the 2nd Congressional District, which is considered the most competitive of Minnesota’s eight seats. U.S. Rep. Angie Craig announced her bid for the U.S. Senate on April 29 , leaving the seat up for grabs come 2026.

Alex Plechash, chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. (Courtesy of the City of Wayzata)

“Maybe you might be able to redistrict in a way that makes the 2nd Congressional District — Angie Craig’s — a little bit safer for Democrats, but I don’t know how you could draw district lines in a way to make Emmer’s or Fischbach’s or Stauber’s or the 1st District certain to be Democrats,” Schultz said. “I mean, the Democratic votes are just not there in those four congressional districts.”

Alex Plechash, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, said Thursday he thinks Minnesota has generally managed redistricting well in comparison to other states.

“My sense is that Minnesota is one of the states that actually has handled this pretty well, overall,” he said. “It can get very contentious between the parties. Gerrymandering, of course, is the thing that people fear on both sides, and there have been … extreme examples of gerrymandering in the boundaries to favor one party or the other.”

Plechash said he would support a bill sponsored by Rep. Paul Torkelson, R-Hanska, in the 2025 legislative session to create a bipartisan redistricting commission.

In 2021, after the last census, the state narrowly avoided losing one congressional seat altogether. Schultz said that by 2030, the state of Minnesota may lose a seat if population doesn’t grow faster.

California responding to Texas

Walz hasn’t initiated any plans in Minnesota to redistrict ahead of 2030, but said California is “going to have to respond” to Republican efforts in Texas.

“In this situation, if California is going to have to respond to Texas, they’re going to have to,” he said. “It is bad for democracy, it’s bad for the country, but what’s worse for the country is a totalitarian president who gerrymanders districts in his favor with no response from us.”

Andrew Karch, professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, said Wednesday that even if Minnesota isn’t expected to see its own efforts, Walz’s comments are likely to lend support to his Democratic colleagues.

“A Democratic politician, especially one who has sort of a national profile like Governor Walz, probably wants to lend support to his fellow partisans and express solidarity with what they’re doing,” Karch said. “Even if, in this state, any sort of action is unlikely.”

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By AMANDA SEITZ, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A report that U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised will improve the health of America’s children does not call on the government to make significant changes to its food or farming policies, according to a draft document obtained by The Associated Press.

The “Make America Healthy Again” strategy report is supposed to be one of Kennedy’s signature achievements as the nation’s health secretary, giving the government a roadmap to help its citizens lose weight, reduce chronic diseases and exercise more. Before coming to Washington, Kennedy had spent much of his career decrying the harms of chemicals sprayed on crops, prescription drugs, ultraprocessed foods, and vaccines.

His coalition, then, has expected him to take bold action as the nation’s top health leader. But a draft of the so-called “MAHA” report, first reported by The New York Times Thursday night, mostly calls on the government to further study chronic diseases, bad air quality, Americans’ diets and prescription drug use.

The report lays out four problem areas — poor diet, chemical exposure, lack of physical activity and overuse of medications — that are to blame for chronic diseases in the U.S.

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The White House has held off on publicly releasing the report, which was submitted to President Donald Trump on Tuesday. The latest report is the policy companion to a “MAHA” report released in May, which was found to have several errors in it.

White House spokesman Kush Desai refused to confirm whether the copy obtained by the Associated Press was a final version, though HHS officials have insisted the report has been finalized since Tuesday.

“President Trump pledged to Make America Healthy Again, and the Administration is committed to delivering on that pledge with Gold Standard Science,” Desai said. “Until officially released by the White House and MAHA Commission, however, any documents purporting to be the second MAHA Report should be considered as nothing more than speculative literature.”

Some in the agricultural industry had warily anticipated the report, fearing it would call for bans or investigations into the use of pesticides and herbicides that farmers in the U.S. regularly spray on crops to control weeds and enhance yields. Other farmers were concerned about how the report may target the use of corn syrup, a common sweetener, in American foods. Both products have been a central talking point in Kennedy’s “MAHA” movement, which has attracted a diverse coalition of suburban and rural moms, Trump supporters and liberals concerned about the nation’s food supply.

Instead, the report calls for an “awareness” campaign to raise confidence in pesticides.

Concerns from the agricultural industry waned as the report hit the president’s desk, with one of Kennedy’s closest advisers, Calley Means, calling for MAHA supporters to work with major farm companies on Tuesday.

Means also acknowledged that the “pace of political change” can be frustrating.

“We need to build bridges,” Means said, adding that: “We are not going to win if the soybean farmers and the corn growers are our enemy.”

Means did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. A spokesman for Kennedy also declined to comment.

The report urges the National Institutes of Health – which is facing a 40% cut to its budget under the Trump administration – to undertake several studies on Americans’ health, including research on vaccine injury, autism, air quality, water quality, prescription drugs, and nutrition.

The report also calls for changes to the foods served in schools and hospitals, something that will be hard to deliver with the Trump administration’s funding cuts, said Kari Hamerschlag, the deputy director of the food and agriculture at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth. Earlier this year, the Republican-led administration wiped out $1 billion set aside that helped food banks and schools procure food directly from local farmers.

“This is not going to transform our food and farming system,” Hamerschlag said. “This is not going to make people healthier. They need to put resources behind their recommendations.”

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press

TORONTO (AP) — A complete shutdown of Air Canada is looming if the union representing the flight attendants of the country’s dominant air carrier and the airline fail to reach an agreement by early Saturday.

More than 10,000 flight attendants are poised to walk off the job around 1 a.m. EST on Saturday, followed by a company-imposed lockout. It threatens to impact about 130,000 travelers a day.

The Canadian carrier said it expects to call off 500 flights by the end of Friday ahead of the deadline. It already started canceling flights on Thursday in expectation of the massive work stoppage that could impact hundreds of thousands of travelers.

A full grounding could affect some 25,000 Canadians a day abroad who may become stranded.

“We strongly urge the parties to work with federal mediators and get a deal done. Time is precious and Canadians are counting on you,” Federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu said in a statement Friday.

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By midday Friday, Air Canada had called off 87 domestic flights and 176 international flights that were scheduled to depart on Friday and Saturday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. On Thursday, when the airline said it was beginning it’s “phased wind down” of most operations, 18 domestic flights and four international flights were canceled.

Canadian Union of Public Employees, or CUPE, which represents the flight attendants, refused to voluntarily submit to arbitration. “The appropriate course of action is for Air Canada to return to the table and resume good faith bargaining,” it said in a statement.

The union, which represents about 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants, and the airline say disagreements over key issues, including pay raises, have brought contract talks to a standstill.

How long the planes will be grounded remains to be seen.

Air Canada Chief Operating Officer Mark Nasr said the decision to lock out the union members even if it meant halting flights would help facilitate an orderly restart, “which under the best circumstances will take a full week to complete.”

Air Canada and CUPE have been in contract talks for about eight months, but they have yet to reach a tentative deal.

The union put it to a vote at the end of July and 99.7% approved a strike. On Wednesday, it gave Air Canada a 72-hour strike notice. The airline responded with a so-called lockout notice, saying it would prevent the flight attendants from working on Saturday.

The union said it rejected a proposal from the airline to enter a binding arbitration process that would have prevented flight attendants from walking off the job, saying it prefers to negotiate a deal that its members can then vote on.

By BRITTANY PETERSON, Associated Press

DENVER (AP) — Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will again live with less water from the Colorado River as drought lingers in the West, federal officials announced Friday.

The Colorado River is a critical lifeline to seven U.S. states, 30 Native American tribes, and two Mexican states. The cuts are based on projections for levels at federal reservoirs — chief among them Lake Powell and Lake Mead — released every August by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Arizona will again go without 18% of its total Colorado River allocation, while Mexico loses 5%. The reduction for Nevada — which receives far less water than Arizona, California or Mexico — will stay at 7%. California won’t face any cuts because it has senior water rights and is the last to lose in times of shortage.

Decades of overuse and the effects of long-term drought worsened by climate change means there’s far more demand for water than what actually flows through the river. Low reservoir levels at Lake Mead have triggered mandatory cutbacks every year since 2022, with the deepest cuts in 2023, which hit farmers in Arizona the hardest.

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Meanwhile, the states are working to reach agreement by next year on new long-term rules to govern the river in dry years. The Trump administration gave a mid-November deadline for states to reach a preliminary agreement, or risk federal intervention. Negotiations have faced delays as states push back against how much water they should each give up.

The original 1922 Colorado River Compact was calculated based on an amount of water that doesn’t exist in today’s climate. That leaves the Upper Basin states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah to share far less water after the required amount is sent to the to the “Lower Basin” states of Nevada, Arizona and California. Lots of water is also lost to evaporation and leaky infrastructure.

Fairly splitting the river’s water in the era of climate change has been vexing for years, with all of the major users hesitant to give anything up as they anticipate a drier future. There has to be enough water in the reservoirs to reach the tunnels that usher water downstream, and key infrastructure like the Hoover Dam rely on certain water levels in Lake Mead to generate electricity.

Mandatory cuts and emergency water releases are “reactive,” said John Berggren, a regional policy manager at Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit focused on climate change.

“If we are going to be able to have a sustainable Colorado River and not just be responding to crisis after crisis, we need large amounts of flexibility built into this new set of guidelines,” he said.

States are considering a so-called natural flow approach to managing the river — where the Lower Basin would receive a certain percentage of the average natural flow from the prior few years.

The Lower Basin states have helped stave off deeper cuts by coming up with voluntary conservation plans. In the last few years, Arizona, Nevada and California have saved nearly half of what they use annually through programs largely funded during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Absent all of those measures, the river would be in a very bad place,” said J.B. Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California and a board member for the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest user of the river’s water. Still, he knows California, like others, will have to give up more in the ongoing negotiations.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment