By MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned a trail runner who briefly took a prohibited trail on his way to a record time up and down the tallest peak in the Teton Range of western Wyoming.

The pardon for Michelino Sunseri, unlike recent pardons of Trump allies, appeared apolitical.

Sunseri, 33, ran up and down Grand Teton, the 13,775-foot centerpiece of the iconic Teton Range, in 2 hours, 50 minutes, 50 seconds in 2024.

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It was an epic feat: The run covered 13.3 miles, gaining 7,000 feet in elevation, then back down again in western Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.

But on the way down, Sunseri left a switchback to avoid casual hikers. Going off-trail in a national park is considered a no-no because it can cause erosion, especially when a shortcut over time becomes a popular way to go.

Sunseri, who was open about taking the two-minute detour, got a misdemeanor conviction from a judge in September.

Before the pardon, prosecutors agreed to seek dismissal if Sunseri completed 60 hours of community service and a course on wilderness stewardship, according to Sunseri’s attorneys.

The judge expressed concern about that change, however, and set another hearing in the case. The pardon now renders any deal moot.

Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed concern about “overcriminalization” of minor offenses in national parks, said Sunseri’s attorney, Ed Bushnell.

“I do believe, had Democrats been in power, we would’ve been seeing a similar result,” Bushnell said of the pardon. “It’s a good result.”

Sunseri was “very pleased” to get the pardon, Bushnell said.

The White House declined to comment on the pardon on the record.

By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the government shutdown stretches on, military advocates are warning of long-lasting effects to National Guard troops and their readiness, while the military services are grappling with an inability to fully discharge active duty service members.

“The shutdown has been uniquely hard on the 433,000 Army and Air National Guardsmen,” Francis McGinn, president of the National Guard Association, told reporters Monday.

The Trump administration has made a public effort of blunting the impact on active duty service members by moving money around to ensure they have received two paychecks since the shutdown began on Oct. 1. But McGinn said more than 30,000 technicians — full-time civilian government employees who also serve in uniform — have not been paid since the end of September.

These technicians, National Guard members who typically carry out training for their units or maintain equipment, “are critical to our day-to-day operations and generating readiness,” McGinn said.

Adding to the pressures, the Trump administration has sent National Guard troops to patrol the streets of several major U.S. cities, including more than 2,300 deployed to Washington, D.C.

The “damage” also goes beyond paychecks and into more than a month of canceled school, training and maintenance opportunities that troops will struggle to make up when the government reopens, said John Hashem, executive director of Reserve Organization of America, an advocacy group for Guard and Reserve troops.

“It’s not just, ‘We’ll pick it up next month,’ it’s that we are in turmoil now — I just can’t throw you back into school if I had to take you out of it. I just can’t get you ready for the next exercise because now, probably, the exercise has been changed entirely,” Hashem said.

McGinn added that “there’s just thousands and thousands of hours” of vehicle and aircraft maintenance that National Guard troops are going to have to catch up on.

Hashem and McGinn said they also worry about the impact the shutdown will have on morale and retention. McGinn said the technicians especially feel “completely demoralized” and “betrayed by the government.”

At the same time, the military is facing a growing number of active duty troops who need to be discharged but no one to generate the formal documents needed to certify the end of their service.

The Air Force is “legally prohibited from obligating the government for costs associated with some voluntary and administrative separations happening in November,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

A Navy official confirmed that a form with details about a person’s service, including length, job specialties and awards earned, can’t be finalized and final pay can’t be released.

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The form is crucial in the process because it signifies the formal end of service and attests to the kind of discharge a service member received — a key factor in determining eligibility for benefits like the GI Bill or Department of Veterans Affairs disability pay.

Both the Navy and Air Force said they were allowing affected service members to opt in to a temporary extension of their service to wait out the shutdown and ensure they don’t experience gaps in pay or benefits.

An Army official said “soldiers in their separation window within 45 days will be affected by the lapse in appropriations and the government shutdown” but wouldn’t confirm whether the service was offering voluntary or involuntary extensions.

The officials from the three branches spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The Marine Corps did not respond to questions on effects from the shutdown, citing the government closure.

Burt Field, head of the Air & Space Forces Association, called for legislation to prevent future shutdowns from affecting military pay. After the government reopens, Congress should “pass a bill that doesn’t allow this to happen again for our military service members, civilians and Americans,” he told reporters Monday.

The immediate response from the fan base has been the same pretty much every time the Vikings have lost with Kevin O’Connell as the man in charge. The frustration almost always seems to manifest in the form of questioning the play calling.

That’s because it’s often the easiest part to latch onto throughout a game.

It doesn’t matter if somebody is watching from their seat inside U.S. Bank Stadium or watching from their couch at home. They can easily judge whether a play call was good or bad with the benefit of hindsight. The results lead to a polarizing discussion that usually doesn’t involve a lot of nuance.

A perfect example presented itself on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium after the Vikings suffered a 27-19 loss to the Baltimore Ravens.

Though the struggles of J.J. McCarthy were a big part of why the Vikings lost to the Ravens, a large chunk of the fan base quickly absolved him of his sins, then got the pitchforks out and turned the attention to the play caller.

Some of the rhetoric on social media even petitioned for play calling to be taken away from O’Connell while choosing to ignore that McCarthy sprayed the ball all over the field for prolonged stretches.

This feels like misplaced anger among a fan base desperate for a franchise quarterback. It’s more palatable to criticize O’Connell rather than confront the fact that McCarthy is still very much a work in progress.

These growing pains don’t mean McCarthy should be considered a bust. Not even close. He has proven to be a winner at every level and deserves the benefit of the doubt as he continues to develop.

Some of the shortcomings with McCarthy were plain to see when looking at the way he performed for the Vikings against the Ravens. He wasn’t nearly accurate enough while completing 20 of 42 pass attempts for 248 yards, a touchdown and a pair of interceptions.

Were there times when O’Connell could have done more to help McCarthy stay in a rhythm? Absolutely. He admitted that less than 24 hours later when he reflected on everything that transpired.

There was specific sequence that O’Connell referenced during which the Vikings were still leading the Ravens and only had to pick up roughly a yard to move the chains and keep the drive alive.

Instead of running the ball with Aaron Jones, who looked to be in a groove, O’Connell opted to have McCarthy let it rip to Justin Jefferson in single coverage. He explained his thought process by saying that he felt good about going deep on third down, because he had decided he was going for it on fourth down.

The chance to roll the dice never materialized because McCarthy threw an interception after Jefferson fell down while running his route.

It was questionable decision in real time that proved to be disastrous in hindsight, and while O’Connell made it clear that he didn’t regret the play call, the risk probably wasn’t worth the reward on this particular occasion.

That much can be true about O’Connell while also acknowledging that he actually did give McCarthy ample opportunities to string together completions.

There were times when Jefferson was running wide open near the sideline. There were times where Jordan Addison had a step on a defender. There were times when T.J. Hockenson found a soft spot underneath.

Those should’ve been completions that helped McCarthy gain some confidence. They went down as incompletions, because he couldn’t execute. That has been a recurring theme for McCarthy as he has completed only 53.7 percent of his pass attempts.

As much as O’Connell deserves some blame, his track record with the Vikings speaks for itself. He has produced extremely successful campaigns with Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold at the helm. He even has sniffed the playoffs with a combination of Josh Dobbs and Nick Mullens under center with a little bit of Jaren Hall sprinkled in.

This is the only time the offense has looked like a shell of itself since O’Connell has taken over. It’s not a coincidence that it has come with McCarthy in the early stages of his career.

Truthfully, O’Connell can only do so much to help McCarthy succeed, especially when open receivers are consistently being missed. At a certain point, McCarthy has to help himself, and it starts with simply finding a way to be more accurate.

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By MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to throw out a jury’s finding in a civil lawsuit that he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.

Trump’s lawyers argued in a lengthy filing with the high court that allegations leading to the $5 million verdict were “propped up” by a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings” that allowed Carroll’s lawyers to present “highly inflammatory propensity evidence” against him.

Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host, testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter in spring 1996 into a violent attack in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower.

The jury also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll when he made comments in October 2022 denying her allegation.

Trump’s lawyers, led by St. Louis, Missouri-based attorney Justin D. Smith, called Carroll’s claims a “politically motivated hoax.”

They accused the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, of warping federal evidence rules to bolster Carroll’s “implausible, unsubstantiated assertions.” They said that by upholding the verdict, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was in conflict with other federal appeals courts on how such rules should be applied.

“President Trump has clearly and consistently denied that this supposed incident ever occurred,” Smith and his co-counsel wrote. “No physical or DNA evidence corroborates Carroll’s story. There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation.”

A message seeking comment was left with Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.

In September, when Trump’s lawyers first indicated they would appeal to the Supreme Court, she said, “We do not believe that President Trump will be able to present any legal issues in the Carroll cases that merit review by the United States Supreme Court.”

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement the Supreme Court appeal was part of the president’s crusade against “Liberal Lawfare.”

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“The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,” the statement said.

A three-judge appellate panel upheld the verdict in December 2024, rejecting Trump’s claims that trial Judge Kaplan’s decisions spoiled the trial, including by allowing two other Trump sexual abuse accusers to testify. The women said Trump committed similar acts against them in the 1970s and in 2005. Trump denied all three women’s allegations.

In June, 2nd Circuit judges denied Trump’s petition for the full appellate court to take up the case. That left Trump with two options: accept the result and allow Carroll to collect the judgment, which he’d previously paid into escrow, or fight on in Supreme Court, whose conservative majority — including three of his own appointees — could be more open to considering his challenge.

Trump skipped the 2023 trial but testified briefly at a follow-up defamation trial last year that ended with a jury ordering him to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million. The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019 after Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir.

Judge Kaplan presided over both trials and instructed the second jury to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll. Judge Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, are not related.

In their Supreme Court filing, Trump’s lawyers said Kaplan compounded his “significant evidentiary errors” at first trial by “improperly preventing” Trump from contesting the first jury’s finding that he had sexually abused Carroll, leading to an “unjust judgment of $83.3 million.”

The 2nd Circuit upheld that verdict on Sept. 8, with a three-judge panel calling the jury’s damages awards “fair and reasonable.” Trump has since asked the full appellate court to hear arguments and reconsider the ruling.

Trump has had recent success fending off costly civil judgments. In August, a New York appeals court threw out Trump’s staggering penalty in a state civil fraud lawsuit.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.