CHICAGO — Asked last week about making his NFL debut roughly 30 minutes from where he grew up in Chicago’s inner suburbs, young quarterback J.J. McCarthy shifted the narrative with a perfect response, saying, “Hmm. I feel like home is in Minnesota.”

There’s no arguing with that statement as McCarthy steps into the spotlight as the new face of the franchise. If he’s everything the Vikings think he can be, his home will be in Minnesota for a very long time.

That didn’t stop McCarthy’s hometown of La Grange Park, Ill., from showing up in droves to watch the hometown hero in action.

A few hours before McCarthy took the field for the Vikings against the Chicago Bears, his parents Jim and Megan arrived in the tailgate lot adjacent to Soldier Field. It was something of a grand entrance for them as they pulled up with an entourage of people that also included the parents of rookie left guard Donovan Jackson.

Dozens of JJ McCarthy’s friends and family members gathered for a tailgate ahead of the Vikings quarterback’s first career NFL start in Chicago on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (Dane Mizutani / Pioneer Press)

The next 45 minutes or so featured Jim basically running for mayor of the tailgate lot while Megan served as the welcome committee for a steady stream of newcomers.

There were more than 200 people in the group at its peak, including McCarthy’s longtime quarterback coach Greg Holcomb, as well as dozens of family friends, some who had shifted their allegiance to the Vikings, some who were clearly still rooting for the Bears.

All of them were invested in McCarthy’s success. That much was clear even if he has a new home.

Darrisaw out

After working tirelessly to get himself back to full strength, left tackle Christian Darrisaw was inactive for the Vikings. He was spotted going through a workout with offensive line coach Chris Kuper before a decision was made. 

Though he looked rather spry during his simulated reps, the Vikings decided it was best to give Darrisaw extra time to recover from a surgically repaired anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament in his left knee.

In the absence of Darrisaw, veteran left tackle Justin Skule got the start, tasked with protecting McCarthy’s blind side when he dropped back to pass. 

Meanwhile, cornerback Jaylon Johnson, cornerback Kyler Gordon and linebacker T.J. Edwards were inactive for the Bears. All of them are typically starters on defense.

Poor playing surface

A video clip posted by local radio personality Chris Hawkey created quite the stir on social media. It showed the playing surface at Soldier Field looking less than ideal despite being resodded last week.

It wasn’t a good look considering the venue hosted a string of concerts over Labor Day weekend, including shows by Oasis, My Chemical Romance and The Lumineers, then a pair of shows from System of a Down.

Ultimately, the game between the Vikings and the Bears went on as scheduled, meaning the NFL deemed that the playing surface met the minimum standards required to host.

Remembering Annunciation

Members of the Vikings and the Bears wore shirts pregame honoring the victims of last month’s mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.

The shirts had the word “ANNUNCIATION” prominently displayed on the front, and the words “BE KIND, BE RESPECTFUL, BE INCLUSIVE, BE MY BEST SELF, BE BRAVE” listed on the back.

Related Articles

Justin Jefferson was smart this summer to be ready for the Vikings this fall

Frederick: Vikings’ playoff hopes rest on J.J. McCarthy performing early

The Loop Fantasy Football Report Week 1: Last-minute moves

Adam Thielen needs to be more than a fun homecoming for the Vikings

Vikings at Bears: What to know ahead of Week 1 matchup

Gov. Tim Walz issued an executive order Monday to “safeguard” vaccine access in Minnesota, joining other Democratic-led states in breaking with restrictive eligibility policies unveiled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the newly approved COVID-19 vaccines for the fall season.

The order also pushes back against what Walz said was a “misinformation campaign” led by U.S. Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “questioning the effectiveness and utility of vaccines.”

Such doubts recently led Republicans in Florida to take steps to be the first state to eliminate school vaccine mandates.

Walz’s executive order directed Minnesota’s Department of Health “to continue to identify, review, and remove barriers to vaccine access to the fullest extent permitted by law” and to issue a standing order to health care providers for the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Vaccines are one of the greatest public health achievements in modern medicine,” Walz said in the order. “While the Trump Administration attempts to limit Americans’ access to preventative care, Minnesota will be guided by science and medical expertise, prioritizing the health and safety of our people.”

Previous FDA policy recommended that COVID-19 vaccine booster shots be made available to anyone 6 months or older regardless of their health status. But in August, the federal agency announced restrictions for the new shot.

The FDA limited access to the vaccines to people who are 65 and older and to younger people with at least one underlying health condition, such as asthma or obesity, that would put them at risk of developing a severe illness without a booster shot. Children are eligible only if a medical provider is consulted. Additionally, the Pfizer vaccine, one of the three that were approved, will no longer be available for any child under 5.

Walz’s order also instructed the Minnesota Department of Commerce to work with the Health Department to ensure that insurance companies operating in the state continue to provide affordable vaccines in various health care settings, including pharmacies.

Unlike many other states, pharmacists in Minnesota can administer influenza and COVID-19 vaccines without a prescription regardless of federal guidance. But insurance coverage in such cases remains uncertain.

Updated COVID-19 vaccines are becoming available at Minnesota clinics and pharmacies, and there should be increasing availability over the next several weeks, Walz’s office said in a statement accompanying the executive order.

The debut of the updated COVID-19 vaccines has gotten off to a clunky start in many states. Limits on who can get the shots and prescription requirements are confusing customers and leaving some people worried about whether they will get protection from the virus this fall.

Kennedy has insisted that everyone who wants a shot still can get one after consulting with a doctor, but he also told a Senate committee hearing Thursday that this access “depends on the states.”

Florida’s announcement rolling back school vaccination requirements along with Kennedy’s attempts to advance anti-vaccine policies have widened the debate over vaccine mandates — long a centerpiece of fighting infectious diseases.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said roughly 4 million deaths are prevented annually worldwide by childhood vaccinations.

While most Americans say kids should be vaccinated to attend school, adults nationwide are now less likely to think those immunizations are important. At the same time, routine childhood vaccine rates are falling.

Other Democratic-led states are also taking measures to ensure more people can get access to vaccines for COVID-19 and other diseases.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey last week ordered health insurers in the state to continue covering the COVID-19 vaccine. The state also issued an order to allow pharmacies to continue providing shots.

Colorado, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington took similar steps.

The Democratic governors in Washington, Oregon and California also announced that they have created an alliance to establish their own recommendations for who should receive vaccines. They plan to coordinate their vaccine recommendations and immunization plans based on science-based evidence from respected national medical organizations, according to a joint statement.

This report includes information from the Associated Press.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals panel has issued the University of St. Thomas at least a partial legal victory in a tussle with neighbors over a new Division I basketball and hockey arena on campus.

Homeowners near the St. Paul campus calling themselves Advocates for Responsible Development have fought the 5,300-seat Lee and Penny Anderson Arena on multiple fronts, filing legal claims alleging the $183 million facility lacked proper environmental review and mitigation for traffic and parking, emissions, soil erosion, ice rink refrigerants and bumblebee habitat.

In July 2024, the appeals court forced the city to consider the cumulative impacts of other construction projects on campus, such as the new Schoenecker Center, and spell out specific traffic mitigation measures in a revised Environmental Assessment Worksheet, which was published last October.

On Monday, rebuffing a legal petition filed by Advocates for Responsible Development, a three-judge panel found that the project’s second EAW — which lays out specific measures being taken to address parking and traffic — was sufficient, and a more intense review known as an Environmental Impact Statement would not be necessary.

The judges noted, however, that questions over whether the arena’s height and bluff setbacks violate city zoning restrictions remain open in a legal action before Ramsey County District Court, and the land-use claims would not be addressed in their latest ruling.

The arena will welcome fans with two doubleheaders Oct. 24 and 25 when women’s and men’s hockey play Providence College and on Nov. 8 when women’s and men’s basketball teams play the Army.

Related Articles

Here’s a look at the University of St. Thomas’ Lee and Penny Anderson Arena as opening nears

University of St. Thomas hosts ‘upskilling’ training for machinists

St. Thomas basketball gets commitment from Cretin-Derham Hall guard Jojo Mitchell

Tommie-Johnnie rivalry renewed with Dec. 11 men’s basketball game in St. Paul

Andy Peters tries to take hold of St. Thomas starting quarterback job

By STEFANIE DAZIO and MALIN HAARALA

KIRUNA, Sweden (AP) — High atop the Luossavaara Mountain in northern Sweden, Sami reindeer herder Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen mapped out a bleak future for himself and other Indigenous people whose reindeer have roamed this land for thousands of years.

Related Articles

As world gets hotter, Americans are turning to more sugar, study finds

In LA port, bobbing blue floats are turning wave power into clean energy

Continental duck numbers hold steady, feds say in status report

St. Paul’s 10th Annual Walk for Water to support clean water in Kenya

Zebra mussels found in Washington County lake

An expanding iron-ore mine and a deposit of rare-earth minerals are fragmenting the land and altering ancient reindeer migration routes. But with the Arctic warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, herders say they need more geographic flexibility, not less, to ensure the animals’ survival.

If a mine is established at the deposit of rare-earth minerals called Per Geijer, which Sweden heralds as Europe’s largest, Kuhmunen said it could completely cut off the migration routes used by the Sami village of Gabna.

That would be the end of the Indigenous way of life for Kuhmunen, his children and their fellow Sami reindeer herders, he said, in this far-north corner of Sweden some 124 miles above the Arctic Circle.

“The reindeer is the fundamental base of the Sami culture in Sweden,” Kuhmunen said. “Everything is founded around the reindeers: The food, the language, the knowledge of mountains. Everything is founded around the reindeer herding. If that ceases to exist, the Sami culture will also cease to exist.”

Sami reindeer herders follow generations of tradition

Sami herders are descended from a once-nomadic people scattered across a region spanning the far north of Sweden, Norway, Finland and the northwestern corner of Russia. Until the 1960s, members of this Indigenous minority were discouraged from reindeer herding, and the church and state suppressed their language and culture.

Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen, a Sami reindeer herder and chairman of Sami village of Gabna, grimaces in Kiruna, Sweden, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Malin Haarala)

In Sweden alone there are at least 20,000 people with Sami heritage, though an official count does not exist because an ethnicity-based census is against the law. Today, a Sami village called a sameby is a business entity dictated by the state, which determines how many semi-domesticated reindeer each village can have and where they can roam.

“It’s getting more and more a problem to have a sort of sustainable reindeer husbandry and to be able to have the reindeers to survive the Arctic winter and into the next year,” said Stefan Mikaelsson, a member of the Sami Parliament.

In the Gabna village, Kuhmunen oversees about 2,500 to 3,000 reindeer and 15 to 20 herders. Their families, some 150 people in total, depend on the bottom line of the business.

The mining area where a proposed mine would cut off ancient reindeer migration routes in Kiruna, Sweden, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Malin Haarala)

Even before the discovery of the Per Geijer deposit, they had to contend with the expanding footprint of Kiirunavaara. The world’s largest underground, iron-ore mine has forced the village’s herders to lead their reindeer through a longer and harder migration route.

Mining could reduce dependence on China but hurt Sami herders

Swedish officials and LKAB, the state-owned mining company, say the proposed Per Geijer mine could reduce Europe’s reliance on China for rare-earth minerals. LKAB hopes to begin mining there in the 2030s.

Besides being essential to many kinds of consumer technology, including cellphones, hard drives and electric and hybrid vehicles, rare-earth minerals also are considered crucial to shifting the economy away from fossil fuels toward electricity and renewable energy.

But if work on Per Geijer goes forward, Kuhmunen said there will be no other routes for the Gabna herders to take the reindeer east from the mountains in the summer to the grazing pastures full of nutrient-rich lichen in the winter.

Darren Wilson, LKAB’s senior vice president of special products, gestures next to a model of existing mines, in Kiruna, Sweden, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Malin Haarala)

The village will contest the mine in court but Kuhmunen said he is not optimistic.

“It’s really difficult to fight a mine. They have all the resources, they have all the means. They have the money. We don’t have that,” Kuhmunen said. “We only have our will to exist. To pass these grazing lands to our children.”

Darren Wilson, LKAB’s senior vice president of special products, said the mining company is seeking solutions to assist the Sami herders, though he would not speculate on what they might be.

“There are potential things that we can do and we can explore and we have to keep engaging,” he said. “But I’m not underestimating the challenge of doing that.”

Climate change’s impact on reindeer husbandry

Climate change is wreaking havoc on traditional Sami reindeer husbandry.

Reindeer stand at a farm in Lulea, Sweden, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Malin Haarala)

Global warming has brought rain instead of snow during the winter in Swedish Lapland. The freezing rain then traps lichen under a thick layer of ice where hungry reindeer can’t reach the food, according to Anna Skarin, a reindeer husbandry expert and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences professor.

In the summer, mountain temperatures have risen to 86 Fahrenheit and left reindeer over-heated and unable to graze enough to gain the weight needed to sustain them in winter.

Some in Sweden suggest putting the reindeer onto trucks to ferry them between grazing lands if the Per Geijer mine is built. But Skarin said that isn’t feasible because the animals eat on the move and the relocation would deny them food to be grazed while walking from one area to another.

“So you’re kind of both taking away the migration route that they have used traditionally over hundreds and thousands of years,” she said, “and you would also take away that forage resource that they should have used during that time.”

For Kuhmunen, it would also mean the end of Sami traditions passed down by generations of reindeer herders on this land.

“How can you tell your people that what we’re doing now, it will cease to exist in the near future?” he said.

Pietro De Cristofaro in Kiruna, Sweden, contributed to this report.

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