Hazmat crews battled wind and rain Monday as they worked to clean up a hydrochloric acid spill near the Cargill plant, located about 6 miles north of Wahpeton.

The spill involved approximately 2,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid leaking from a storage tank, prompting multiple evacuations and shelter-in-place orders. Emergency responders from multiple fire departments and hazmat teams were called to the scene at around 5:45 a.m.

The Richland County emergency manager told WDAY News that heavy rain early in the day delayed cleanup efforts, though work was largely completed by Monday evening and roads leading to the plant were reopened.

The Cargill facility sits near the Red River, but officials have not confirmed whether the spill posed any threat to the waterway.

By the end of the day, cleanup crews had wrapped up operations, and emergency officials reported that things were back to normal.

The Fargo Fire Department confirmed they also sent a hazmat team to the site.

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MADISON, Wis. — A federal magistrate judge recommended Monday that the case proceed against a Wisconsin judge who was indicted on allegations that she helped a man who is in the country illegally evade U.S. immigration agents seeking to arrest him in her courthouse.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested in April and indicted on federal charges in May. She pleaded not guilty.

The case highlighted a clash between President Donald Trump’s administration and local authorities over the Republican’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

Democrats have accused the Trump administration of trying to make a national example of Dugan to chill judicial opposition.

Dugan filed a motion in May to dismiss the charges against her, saying she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and therefore is immune to prosecution. She argued that the federal government violated Wisconsin’s sovereignty by disrupting a state courtroom and prosecuting a state judge.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph on Monday recommended against dropping the charges. The ultimate decision is up to U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, who can accept the other judge’s recommendation or reject it.

“We are disappointed in the magistrate judge’s non-binding recommendation, and we will appeal it,” Dugan attorney Steven Biskupic, a former federal prosecutor, said in a statement. “This is only one step in what we expect will be a long journey to preserve the independence and integrity of our courts.”

Joseph wrote in her recommendation that while judges have immunity from civil lawsuits seeking monetary damages when engaging in judicial acts, that does not apply to criminal charges like those in this case.

“A judge’s actions, even when done in her official capacity, does not bar criminal prosecution if the actions were done in violation of the criminal law,” Joseph wrote.

Dugan also argued that the prosecution under federal law violated the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers because it overrides the state of Wisconsin’s ability to administer its courts.

Whether Dugan broke the law as alleged, or she was merely performing her judicial duties as Dugan contends, are questions for a jury to decide and can’t be determined in a motion to dismiss, Joseph said.

Joseph also noted that both sides disagree on facts related to the case, which also can’t be resolved in a motion to dismiss.

“It is important to note that nothing said here speaks to the merits of the allegations against Dugan,” the judge said in the recommendation. “Dugan is presumed innocent, and innocent she remains, unless and until the government proves the allegations against her beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury at trial.”

No trial date has been set.

Dugan is charged with concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, and obstruction, which is a felony. Prosecutors say she escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, 31, and his lawyer out of her courtroom through a back door on April 18 after learning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in the courthouse seeking to arrest him for being in the country without permanent legal status.

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Agents arrested Ruiz outside of the courthouse after a brief foot chase.

Dugan could face up to six years in prison and a $350,000 fine if convicted on both counts.

Her case is similar to one brought during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of helping a man sneak out a courthouse back door to evade a waiting immigration enforcement agent. That case was eventually dismissed.

A judge fined two attorneys for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell $3,000 apiece Monday for filing a motion riddled with AI-generated errors in a case that resulted in a jury finding Lindell liable for defamation over false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

Judge Nina Y. Wang, of the U.S. District Court in Denver, found attorneys Christopher I. Kachouroff and Jennifer T. DeMaster violated court rules when they filed a motion that featured numerous errors, including misquotes from caselaw and citations from nonexistent cases.

Kachouroff acknowledged using generative artificial intelligence to draft a motion during a pretrial hearing after the mistakes were found.

Kachouroff initially argued that the error-ridden motion was filed by mistake. However, the version that Kachouroff said was the correct one still contained “substantive errors,” including some that weren’t in the filed version of the motion, and it had timestamps that did not align with his claims, Wang found.

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She said “contradictory statements and the lack of corroborating evidence” failed to persuade her that the AI-assisted filing was an inadvertent error, versus sanction-worthy negligence.

The judge also found Kachouroff’s responses, in which he tried to shift responsibility and suggested that the court attempted to “blindside” him over the errors, “troubling and not well-taken.” As Wang sought to determine if the AI-assisted motion was filed out of simple human error or was sanction-worthy, she wrote that neither Kachouroff nor DeMaster provided the court with “any explanation as to how those citations appeared in any draft of the Opposition absent the use of generative artificial intelligence or gross carelessness by counsel.”

Wang wrote that “this Court derives no joy from sanctioning attorneys who appear before it.” She settled on the $3,000 fines as “the least severe sanction adequate to deter and punish defense counsel in this instance.”

Kachouroff and DeMaster did not immediately return requests for comment Monday.

Lindell is not liable for the fines. Last month, he and his media company, FrankSpeech, were ordered to pay $2.3 million to Eric Coomer, the former director of security for Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, after the jury returned its verdict. Lindell, one of the most prominent pushers of the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, had called Coomer “treasonous” and accused him of committing crimes.

BISMARCK, N.D. — A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its decision in a redistricting case that went against two Native American tribes that challenged North Dakota’s legislative redistricting map, and the dispute could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case has drawn national interest because of a 2-1 ruling issued in May by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that erased a path through the federal Voting Rights Act for people in seven states to sue under a key provision of the landmark federal civil rights law. The tribes argued that the 2021 map violated the act by diluting their voting strength and ability to elect their own candidates.

The panel said only the U.S. Department of Justice can bring such lawsuits. That followed a 2023 ruling out of Arkansas in the same circuit that also said private individuals can’t sue under Section 2 of the law.

Those rulings conflict with decades of rulings by appellate courts in other federal circuits that have affirmed the rights of private individuals to sue under Section 2, creating a split that the Supreme Court may be asked to resolve. However, several of the high court’s conservative justices recently have indicated interest in making it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

After the May decision, the Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians asked the appeals court for a rehearing before all 11 judges. Attorneys general of 19 states, numerous former U.S. Justice Department attorneys, several voting rights historians and others also asked for a rehearing.

But in a ruling Thursday, the full court denied the request, which was filed by the Native American Rights Fund and other groups representing the tribes. Three judges said they would have granted it, including Circuit Chief Judge Steven Colloton, who had dissented in the previous ruling.

The majority opinion in May said that for the tribes to sue under the Voting Rights Act, the law would have had to “unambiguously” give private persons or groups the right to do so.

Lenny Powell, a staff attorney for the fund, said in a statement that the refusal to reconsider “wrongly restricts voters disenfranchised by a gerrymandered redistricting map” from challenging that map.

Powell said Monday that the tribes are now considering their legal options.

Another group representing the tribes, the Campaign Legal Center, said the ruling is “contrary to both the intent of Congress in enacting the law and to decades of Supreme Court precedent affirming voters’ power to enforce the law in court.”

The office of North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The groups said they will continue to fight to ensure fair maps. The North Dakota and Arkansas rulings apply only in the states of the 8th Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. In the wake of the Arkansas decision, Minnesota and other states have moved to shore up voting rights with state-level protections to plug the growing gaps in the federal law.

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The North Dakota tribes filed their lawsuit in 2022. The three-judge panel heard appeal arguments last October after Republican Secretary of State Michael Howe appealed a lower court’s November 2023 decision in favor of the tribes.

In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Peter Welte ordered creation of a new district that encompassed both tribes’ reservations, which are about 60 miles (97 kilometers) apart. In 2024, voters elected members from both tribes, all Democrats, to the district’s Senate seat and two House seats.

Republicans hold supermajority control of North Dakota’s Legislature.