By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are urging seven U.S. universities to cut ties with a Chinese scholarship program that lawmakers call a “nefarious mechanism” to steal technology for the Chinese government.

In letters to Dartmouth College, the University of Notre Dame and five other universities, leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party raise concerns about the schools’ partnerships with the China Scholarship Council, a study abroad program funded by China.

The program sponsors hundreds of Chinese graduate students every year at U.S. universities. After graduating, they’re required to return to China for two years. In the letters sent Tuesday, Republicans described it as a threat to national security.

“CSC purports to be a joint scholarship program between U.S. and Chinese institutions; however, in reality it is a CCP-managed technology transfer effort that exploits U.S. institutions and directly supports China’s military and scientific growth,” wrote Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the committee.

The Chinese Embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Associated Press for comment.

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Dartmouth said Wednesday it has had fewer than 10 participants in the program over the last decade and already had decided to end its participation. Notre Dame said it began the process of terminating its association with the program earlier this year. University of Tennessee said it had also received the letter and was reviewing the committee’s request.

Letters were also sent also to Temple University and the University of California campuses in Davis, Irvine and Riverside. The committee said it’s opening a review into the program’s “infiltration” of U.S. universities and demanded records related to the program from all seven institutions.

The universities’ partnerships with the council bring up to 15 graduate students a year to Dartmouth, along with up to 60 at Temple and 40 at Notre Dame, according to the letters. Some schools split the cost of attendance with China. Dartmouth, for instance, covers 50% of tuition and provides a stipend to doctoral students.

Among other records, lawmakers are demanding documents showing whether scholarship recipients worked on research funded by the U.S. government.

President Donald Trump and House Republicans have stepped up scrutiny of Chinese students coming to the U.S. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would revoke visas from some Chinese students studying in “critical fields.” During his first term, Trump restricted visas for students affiliated with China’s “military-civil fusion strategy.”

Many U.S. universities acknowledge a need to improve research security but caution against treating Chinese scholars with hostility and suspicion, saying only small numbers have been involved in espionage.

China is the second-largest country of origin for foreign students in the U.S., behind only India. In the 2023-24 academic year, more than 270,000 international students were from China, making up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the United States. For a majority of them, their college tuition is paid by their families, rather than by the Chinese government. Many stay to work in the U.S., while some return to China after graduation.

Moolenaar has made it a priority to end partnerships between U.S. universities and China. In May, he pressed Duke University to cut its ties with a Chinese university, saying it allowed Chinese students to gain access to federally funded research at Duke. Under pressure from the committee, Eastern Michigan University ended a partnership with two Chinese universities in June.

Last year, House Republicans issued a report finding that hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding had gone toward research that ultimately boosted Chinese advancements in artificial intelligence, semiconductor technology and nuclear weapons. The report argued China’s academic collaborations served as a “Trojan horses for technology transfer,” accusing China of “insidious” exploitation of academic cooperation.

Associated Press writer Cheyanne Mumphrey in Phoenix contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A new lawsuit seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional district boundary lines was filed on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the state Supreme Court declined to hear a pair of other lawsuits that asked for redistricting before the 2026 election.

The latest lawsuit brought by a bipartisan coalition of business leaders was filed in Dane County circuit court, rather than directly with the state Supreme Court as the rejected cases were. The justices did not give any reason for declining to hear those cases, but typically lawsuits start in a lower court and work their way up.

This new lawsuit’s more lengthy journey through the courts might not be resolved in time to order new maps before the 2026 midterms.

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The Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy argue in the new lawsuit that Wisconsin’s congressional maps are unconstitutional because they are an anti-competitive gerrymander. The lawsuit notes that the median margin of victory for candidates in the eight districts since the maps were enacted is close to 30 percentage points.

“Anti‐competitive gerrymanders are every bit as antithetical to democracy, and to law, as partisan gerrymanders and racial gerrymanders,” the lawsuit argues. “This is because electoral competition is as vital to democracy as partisan fairness.”

The lawsuit alleges that an anti-competitive gerrymander violates the state constitution’s guarantees of equal protection to all citizens, the promise to maintain a free government and the right to vote.

The lawsuit was filed against the state’s bipartisan elections commission, which administers elections. Commission spokesperson Emilee Miklas declined to comment.

The Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy had attempted to intervene in one of the redistricting cases brought by Democrats with the state Supreme Court, but the justices dismissed the case without considering their arguments.

Members of the business coalition include Tom Florsheim, chairman and CEO of Milwaukee-based Weyco Group, and Cory Nettles, the founder of a private equity fund and a former state commerce secretary.

Republicans hold six of the state’s eight U.S. House seats, but only two of those districts are considered competitive. In 2010, the year before Republicans redrew the congressional maps, Democrats held five seats compared with three for Republicans.

The current congressional maps, which were based on the previous ones, were approved by the state Supreme Court when it was controlled by conservative judges. The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2022 declined to block them from taking effect.

Democrats had wanted the justices to revisit congressional lines as well after the court ordered state legislative boundaries redrawn before last year’s election. Democrats then narrowed the Republican legislative majorities in November, leading to a bipartisan compromise to pass a state budget last week.

Now Democrats are pushing to have the current maps redrawn in ways that would put two of the six seats currently held by Republicans into play. One they hope to flip is the western Wisconsin seat of Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who won in 2022 after longtime Democratic Rep. Ron Kind retired. Von Orden won reelection in the 3rd District in 2024.

The other seat they are eyeing is southeastern Wisconsin’s 1st District, held by Republican Rep. Bryan Steil since 2019. The latest maps made that district more competitive while still favoring Republicans.

The two rejected lawsuits were filed by Elias Law Group, which represents Democratic groups and candidates, and the Campaign Legal Center on behalf of voters.

Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy are represented by Law Forward, a liberal Madison-based law firm, the Strafford Rosenbaum law firm in Madison and Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.

The Twins led the Cubs 8-0 Tuesday at Target Field and were two outs away from a lopsided win, when Chicago sent veteran Justin Turner to the plate as a pinch hitter to face Minnesota lefty Joey Wentz.

Turner, a fiery redhead and one of the heroes for the Dodgers during their 2020 title run, promptly ripped a pitch into the leftfield seats, spoiling the shutout.

The homer meant little, save for the fact that it was the 200th of Turner’s career, and the Cubs fan who caught the ball – amazingly, a redhead named Justin, who lives in Richfield – was brought to the Cubs clubhouse to hand over the milestone sphere to Turner.

The two Justins snapped a few pictures, and upon request, the fan got three things from Turner in return for the home run ball: a bat signed by Turner, a ball signed by Turner, and a second ball signed by Michael Busch.

“One of my co-workers is friends with Busch’s sister,” the fan explained. “She’ll be pumped.”

Busch, the Cubs’ first baseman, had gone 1-for-4 in his homecoming game that night, playing in Minneapolis for the first time as a major leaguer, and the first time since a 2015 high school all-star showcase, when the emerging power hitter was a junior at Simley High School in Inver Grove Heights.

“He’s come a long way,” Turner said, in a bit of understatement, reflecting on the time the two spent in the Dodgers’ system when Busch was a prospect, and a project.

Even in a Twins rout, Busch got a rousing ovation every time he stepped to the plate Tuesday, thanks to an impressive contingent from his hometown on hand.

A star for the Spartans

Inver Grove Heights is bisected, north to south, by three major thoroughfares – Highway 52, Cahill Avenue and Concord Boulevard.

If tables were readily available and business was slow this week at places like the patio overlooking the river at Mississippi Pub, just off Concord, or by the outdoor volleyball courts at Drkula’s, on Cahill, or at the perpetually busy Inver Grove Brewing, where Concord and 52 intersect on the south side of town, there’s an easy explanation.

Twenty miles away, much of the Inver Grove community was packed into the Twins’ ballpark on Tuesday and Wednesday, to cheer for the local boy who’s done good.

“When I think back, it’s the community. Everybody involved, from the coaches to the teachers to the parents to the kids he played with, everybody had a part, you know,” said Busch’s father, Mike, who raised eight children on a modest living, and got plenty of backing from the people of Inver Grove’s various sports communities to get to a point where one of their own is batting in a major league lineup.

At Simley, Busch was a success no matter what sport he pursued. As a quarterback, he led the Spartans to the state title game in the fall of 2014, where Simley ultimately fell to a Mankato West powerhouse at the Gophers stadium.

On the hockey rink, he was a “control the game from the blue line” defenseman and a legitimate Division I prospect.

About the only sport that didn’t try to lure him onto a roster was the powerhouse Simley wrestling team, which is an every-year contender for the Minnesota state championship. Busch gushed about the pride he takes in being a Spartan and all that Simley wrestling has meant for the community, but said he was never recruited to be a grappler.

“I’m glad they didn’t,” he said. “No disrespect for that, but I was good playing hockey.”

Still, when Michael made the Spartans’ varsity baseball team as an eighth grader, playing with his brother Logan who is three years older, the family knew a calling had been found.

“That was the first time Logan took Michael under his wing, because those guys battled in everything,” said Mike, who admitted that just the Busch family had around 150 tickets for each game of the series, not counting the dozens of other friends, classmates, teammates and neighbors from Inver Grove who made their way to the ballpark. “Logan would never let Michael beat him in anything. I just knew, when he made varsity and we started watching him play baseball, that was it.”

Mike coached Michael’s older brothers Logan and Luke, but the father left Michael’s development to other coaches in the community. The elder Busch joked that if he’d stayed out of the way and had let others coach Logan and Luke as well, they’d no doubt be in the MLB by now also.

Long road to the Show

Logan went on to play college baseball at North Dakota State, and little brother had myriad offers to do the same.

“I grew up playing baseball and hockey my whole life. Football kind of came along a little later, but I loved playing all three and whatever I was playing, that was kind of what I loved,” Michael said, surrounded by a massive scrum of Minnesota media in the Cubs clubhouse. “And then I was just kind of told by college (baseball) coaches, it just started to be a thing, letters and calls and all that.”

After taking a long look at college programs like Minnesota and Nebraska, Michael took a visit to North Carolina and found his place, committing to the Tar Heels during his junior year of high school.

During the series opener in Minneapolis, Inver Grove resident and former youth baseball coach Tim Smith watched Busch play in person for the first time in roughly a decade, and conjured up a happy memory.

“The last time I saw him play was a game at Hastings. He had just signed with North Carolina,” said Smith, who grew up in east Bloomington, playing baseball with another decent local first baseman named Kent Hrbek. “First time up, he strikes out. The next time he’s up, the whole Hastings crowd starts chanting, ‘over-rated.’ He probably hit it 500 feet to dead center. It was one of the longest home runs I’ve seen in high school.”

They had modest expectations for how Michael’s game would translate to the college level in the powerful ACC, but when Mike got a call before his son’s first college game to learn that Michael was starting in the infield and batting third, it was an eye-opener.

Routed to Wrigley

After two solid seasons with the Tar Heels and a trip to the College World Series, there was some hope among Minnesota fans that the Twins would grab the local kid in the opening round of the 2019 MLB Draft. Picking 13th, Minnesota instead selected infielder Keoni Cavaco, while Busch was still available at 31 and was selected by the Dodgers.

Six years later, Busch and Cavaco are both playing ball in Chicago. But while one of them is at first for the Cubs, Cavaco is a converted pitcher for the independent league Chicago Dogs, who play in a 6,800-seat park in the suburbs versus teams like Winnipeg, Fargo-Moorhead and Sioux Falls. He was released by the Twins last summer.

The blessing for Busch was to get drafted by a first-class organization like the Dodgers, who have won two World Series in this decade and are an every-year playoff team. The curse was coming to an organization loaded with talent, making the big league lineup a tough thing to crack.

After minor league and development stops in St. Cloud, Massachusetts, Michigan, Arizona and Oklahoma, Busch made his MLB debut for Los Angeles in April 2023, and got in 27 games with the Dodgers that season with a pair of homers. Traded to the Cubs before the start of last season, he played all but 10 of Chicago’s regular season games in 2024.

Busch’s game has skyrocketed during his second season in the Second City, and he came home to the Twin Cities with 18 home runs and the title of reigning NL Player of the Week to his credit. That honor came after Busch provided his own Independence Day fireworks show at Wrigley Field, blasting three homers in a lopsided win against the hated Cardinals. He became the first Cubs first baseman to crack three in a game since “Mr. Cub” Ernie Banks did so in 1963.

Next pitch coming in

The success stems not just from natural talent, but from a “look forward” attitude Busch has always had, where what matters is not past results, good or bad, but the next game, the next at-bat, the next pitch.

“He’s always had the mentality for baseball,” said Jason Milbrandt, a friend of the Busch family from Inver Grove, whose son, Jonah, played alongside Michael in youth and high school sports. “Failure doesn’t bother him. Always a smile on his face. Get back in there, do it again. Just a grinder.”

Asked about his Fourth of July hat trick, Busch talked about the importance of playing well versus St. Louis as the Cubs hold first place in their division, and he looked forward, not back.

“It’s just kind of flush the past, no matter if it goes well or bad. Just kind of flush it and move on to this week,” he said.

In the winter, he maintains a home not far from the old neighborhood. Busch got a signing bonus of better than $2 million when he first was inked by the Dodgers, and is currently playing in the final year of a contract worth $780,000. Many predict a tenfold payday, or better, could be the value of his next contract.

As he prepared for his first game back in Minnesota, none of that mattered to Busch as much as being home, in front of the Inver Grove friends and the family which helped him get there.

“My whole family, throughout the course of my career, has always been there for me, no matter what,” said Busch, who invited members of the Simley baseball program onto the field for Cubs batting practice prior to Wednesday’s game. “Baseball’s never been the main thing in my life or the main thing in their life. Just the support they’ve offered me through the ups and downs, them being them, and still feeling like it’s home. I think that’s been so good to me.”

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For 35 years, the University of Minnesota Extension Service has funded nutrition education in low-income areas statewide, including innovative projects like the medicine garden at the Ramsey County Fairgrounds, which connects the county’s military veterans to a Native American grower and healer.

On Monday, all 59 of Extension’s full-time nutrition educators received termination letters, permanently ending the $7.2 million education and outreach program.

Extension issued letters to 700 partners Tuesday — from clinics and daycares to parks and food banks — explaining that heavy cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, had forced the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families to slash grant funding for the dozens of health and wellness coordinators who run special projects or teach healthy eating to SNAP-eligible families across the state.

The cuts are a direct result of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” approved last week by the Republican-led Congress. The eight tribal nations in Minnesota, alongside SNAP education programs nationwide, face the same straits as a result of the wide-ranging, 800-page budget document.

“Minnesota was a pilot program when it started 35 years ago. This is not temporary. It is a permanent cut,” said Patricia Olson, director of Extension’s Department of Family, Health and Wellbeing, which is based in St. Paul. “It is a national program. How do you wind down a program that is 35 years old?”

“We’re sad about losing staff, but also about the kind of work we were doing in the community,” she added.

The sweeping budget bill, which includes both spending cuts and tax cuts expected to add $3 trillion to $4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, has already had repercussions for Minnesota and the East Metro, with deeper impacts likely as the legislation’s many varied provisions take effect over the coming months and years.

Implications for Medicaid

Nearly $1 trillion in cuts to state Medicaid allotments nationwide may not be fully implemented until 2027 or 2028, leaving big choices ahead for the state of Minnesota, which determines how federal Medicaid dollars are distributed, said Karen Kleinhans, chief executive of the Community Dental Care. The nonprofit, which maintains offices in Maplewood and four other locations across the state, charges low-income patients on a sliding scale; 88% of its clients are on Medicaid, while others are uninsured.

Kleinhans fears the state may roll back the increased Medicaid reimbursements that she and other safety-net dental care providers lobbied hard for in 2022, or make even deeper cuts. “We can’t predict what the state will do with the very limited dollars that will be coming to them,” she said. “If you are on Medicaid, you should just make sure you get some dental care before the end of this year, because you might lose those benefits.”

Minnesota is one of a handful of states where the counties conduct Medicaid screenings and connect seniors and the disabled to services. Facing screening backlogs as long as eight months or more, Ramsey County recently committed to hiring 80 new financial assistance workers, including 60 screeners. As a result of Trump’s budget, yearly screening requirements are doubling to twice-annually, moving a goal post that already was exceedingly difficult for some counties to reach.

“We’ve got to certify people twice a year. That’s a huge administrative burden,” said Rafael Ortega, who chairs the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners. “More people fall through the cracks, and that extra work requirement falls on counties in Minnesota.”

“We have no immediate plans, for the people we just hired to expedite financial assistance, to let those people go,” he added. “We budgeted for that, so we’re good for a while. The biggest impact is the people who are going to be cut off from Medicaid and are going to go through the emergency room.”

Ortega predicted a trickle-down effect for hospitals, nursing homes and other Medicaid-backed housing and care providers, who likely will see more patients lacking in medical coverage. Up to $500 million in annual reimbursements for hospitals and nursing homes could be eliminated, according to the League of Minnesota Cities.

“If we don’t verify people for Medicaid, and then they go to the hospital or nursing homes, that impacts reimbursements,” he said.

County officials still are reading through the legislation to get a grasp of it and bracing for changes that, in some cases, are well over a year into the future. “This bill pushes impacts out past the mid-term elections (in November 2026), so we have to figure out what happens when,” Ortega said.

Downtown real estate development

Real estate redevelopment also stands to be impacted, for both better and for worse, according to housing advocates.

Affordable housing developments often depend on federal low-income housing tax credits, which will be altered in “two meaningful ways,” Daniel Lightfoot, a spokesman for the League of Minnesota Cities, said by email Wednesday. The legislation creates a permanent 12% increase in certain housing tax credit allocations beginning in 2026, and it also alters the threshold for bond financing for the developments.

“It’s estimated that these changes will finance over 1 million additional affordable housing units nationwide over the next 10 years,” Lightfoot wrote.

At the same time, Minnesota cities — and St. Paul, in particular — are poised to lose redevelopment incentives aimed at renovating vacant buildings and boosting downtowns. The new legislation kills subsidies that helped developers more than meet city and state energy efficiency standards, undermining a carrot that groups like the St. Paul Port Authority have used to entice development downtown.

Ortega predicted those changes would come down disproportionately hard on affordable housing, but some developers foresee even tougher times ahead for all types of development in distressed areas like downtown St. Paul in particular, in an era where the road already was murky.

“In St. Paul and Minnesota, we have a range of energy efficiency standards and aspirations that cost more than a regular building renovation,” said St. Paul developer Jamie Stolpestad, who hopes to acquire some downtown properties through his family’s firm, Hedmark Holdings. “Based on the (Biden-era) Inflation Reduction Act, there were federal tax incentives and other subsidies that usually more than offset these costs. But with those largely stripped away under the BBB Act, property owners are left to face those costs without federal level subsidies.”

As a result of legislation Trump signed into law in 2017, profits from the sale of stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets can be invested, at significant tax savings, in real estate development projects located within distressed areas, or “Opportunity Zones,” of which St. Paul is home to 18 of the 19 zones located in Ramsey County. The new legislation makes that program permanent and expands it to rural areas, which could spell good news for some areas, Lightfoot said.

Still, of concern to some developers, Trump’s budget tightens eligibility requirements for the “O-Zones” by changing the definition of what constitutes a distressed area. Some fear downtown St. Paul may no longer qualify.

That’s because household incomes within the surrounding census tract previously were limited to 80% of “area median income,” with the statistical area spanning multiple counties, which inflates the average far beyond that of average incomes in St. Paul. Under the new legislation, that threshold drops to 70% of area median income.

“The old rules resulted in most of downtown sitting within qualified Opportunity Zones,” Stolpestad said. “Those incentives drove investors to projects like the Arlow Apartments, Marriott Courtyard Hotel and Ecolab University/Stella Apartments. But with the income standards shifting from 80% of AMI to 70% of AMI, I think all the existing downtown census tracts will lose eligibility.”

Electricity rates to rise?

Logan O’Grady, executive director of the Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, said the state’s solar industry began letting workers go even before Trump’s bill passed, in anticipation of a rocky road ahead. The legislation cuts major federal subsidies for solar power in Minnesota, from residential rooftop panels to mid-scale community projects, but the impacts will be felt far beyond industry workers and individual residential buyers.

That’s because Minnesota utilities are under state mandate to convert more of their energy supply to renewables, like wind and solar. Without federal subsidies to do that, they’ll likely pass on the cost of those projects to everyday ratepayers, or import more oil and natural gas from other states. In other words, electricity and home-heating costs are likely to go up for everyone.

“The reality is, all of us are going to see rates go up,” O’Grady said. “It’s really the worst time for us. If you look at all our of load growth projections over the next decade, they’re set to jump by a lot because of things like data centers and EV chargers.”

“I live in a community where a data center is being built in Rosemount,” he added. “When you have this massive load growth coming, and you have tools available to deploy rooftop solar and community solar and other mid-scale projects, and then you strip those away, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

Other impacts foreseen

Officials with the League of Minnesota Cities said Wednesday they’re still sifting through the details of the 800-page legislation, but it eliminates or reduces many of the programs authorized by the Biden administration through the federal Inflation Reduction Act, either by cutting them entirely or rolling back implementation dates. Environmental programs are a big target.

“The bill rescinds unobligated funding for a huge portion of IRA grant programs,” Lightfoot said by email, “including the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Environmental Justice Block Grants, Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, State-Based Home Energy Efficiency Contractor Training Grants, and the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program.”

Trump’s bill also reduces the federal income tax that a variety of employees pay on tips and overtime wages. “Overtime is very common for many city departments and some cities have operations where employees earn tips for their work in service roles,” Lightfoot wrote. “Cities may have to think about adjusting payroll systems, which may cost cities money.”

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