By MARK SCOLFORO

An Amish woman who told authorities she was testing her faith when she threw her 4-year-old son into an Ohio lake was charged Wednesday with two counts of aggravated murder in the boy’s death.

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Authorities said Ruth R. Miller, 40, of Millersburg, Ohio, told investigators she believed she was acting at the direction of God when she allegedly killed her son Vincen at Atwood Lake early Saturday.

The lead investigator with the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office, Capt. Adam Fisher, said Wednesday that Ruth Miller repeatedly said in interviews with police that she threw the boy off the dock and into the water to give him to God.

“It did not appear that the gravity of the situation had sunk in,” Fisher said.

The woman’s husband, Marcus J. Miller, 45, had apparently drowned while attempting to swim to an offshore sandbank hours earlier in another test of faith, Sheriff Orvis Campbell told reporters at a news conference Monday. Their other children, a 15-year-old girl and twin 18-year-old boys, were also directed to perform water-based trials of their belief but survived, Campbell said.

New Philadelphia Municipal Court online records indicate Ruth Miller was also charged with domestic violence and child endangerment regarding the older children. Authorities said Ruth Miller was receiving treatment at a secure mental health facility and had not been arrested by late Wednesday afternoon. A message seeking comment was left for her attorney, Scott Fromson.

Family members and the Millers’ church said in a statement that the deaths “do not reflect our teachings or beliefs but are instead a result of a mental illness. The ministry and extended family had been walking with them through their challenges, and they had also received professional help in the past.”

Campbell said Ruth Miller told investigators she believed she could walk on water but when she tried doing so off the end of the dock, she simply fell into the water.

“She and her husband went to this dock and they jumped in the water because God was speaking to them and telling them to do things, things to prove their worthiness to God,” Campbell said.

Marcus and Vincen Miller were apparently both dead when authorities were called Saturday morning for a report of a golf cart having gone into the lake. Campbell said Ruth Miller had driven it at a high speed into a stone wall on the lake shore with the three older children on board. The cart ended up fully submerged but visible, and her three children stood on it before getting out of the water.

People stand over the site where investigators say 40-year-old Ruth Miller of Millersburg, Ohio, drove a golf cart into Atwood Lake, Ohio Aug. 23, 2025, after she allegedly killed her 4-year-old son by throwing him into the lake. (Tuscarawas County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Office via AP)

When a rescuer tried to get Ruth Miller out of the water, she told them to “just pray for her,” Campbell said.

Park rangers heard “concerning type statements” from Ruth Miller, the sheriff said: “There was a pretty immediate statement made that she had given her son to the Lord.” Authorities soon realized her husband and 4-year-old son were missing.

“She began to express more that she had thrown the child in the water to give that child to God,” Campbell said. “But we didn’t know where in the water — it’s a big lake.” He said Ruth Miller was in mental crisis.

Searchers focused near the dock where authorities said the Millers had apparently tried to walk on water the night before. Around 6 p.m. Saturday, a diver found Vincen on the lake bed not far from the end of the dock. Early Sunday morning, divers found Marcus Miller’s body 53 yards (48 meters) from the dock.

The coroner said autopsies and an investigation will determine the manner of the two deaths.

The couple’s surviving children were “extremely confused” and upset, Campbell said. “Their mindset was that whatever their mother and father says is the way it is. They don’t question anything. So when they were told to jump in the lake, they jump in the lake,” he said.

Amish are part of a Christian movement professing non-violence although they have their cases of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Advocates for abuse victims among the Amish say that although church leaders have acknowledged the problem, they need to do more to respond to abuse as a crime to be reported to civil authorities, not just as a matter of church discipline.

The family lived in Holmes County, Ohio, which has a large Amish community. They had gone to Atwood Lake, about 82 miles south of Cleveland, in a recreational vehicle as a getaway, arriving Friday, Ruth Miller’s birthday.

Associated Press reporter Peter Smith reported from Pittsburgh. Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

With family at her side, St. Paul City Council’s newest member, Molly Coleman, took the oath of office Wednesday at City Hall.

Coleman said her predecessor, Council President Mitra Jalali, had set a “high bar” for progressive leadership and that she had “very big shoes to fill.”

In a brief speech after the swearing-in, she outlined what she said were the main reasons she decided to run.

“The first: I love the city of St Paul. The second: I believe that we have a duty to build an economically just city. The third, I believe that we have an obligation to build a functional democracy,” she said.

Molly Coleman, new St. Paul City Councilmember for Ward 4, (third from right) with the six other members of the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025, after taking the oath of office. On Coleman’s right are members Saura Jost and Anika Bowie. To her left are Rebecca Noecker, HwaJeong Kim, Nelsie Yang and Cheniqua Johnson. (Alex Derosier / Pioneer Press)

Coleman, the daughter of former St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, will represent Ward 4, which includes Hamline-Midway, Merriam Park, St. Anthony Park, and parts of Macalester-Groveland and Como.

The Harvard Law School graduate and founder of the progressive court reform nonprofit People’s Parity Project won in an Aug. 12 special election with 52% of the vote. Since her share of the vote exceeded the 50% mark, St. Paul’s ranked-choice voting process didn’t kick in.

The Ward 4 seat was open after Jalali left the council in March. Mayor Melvin Carter had appointed Matt Privratsky to fill the seat until voters could choose a permanent replacement. Coleman will serve as Ward 4 councilmember through the November 2028 election.

While council races are officially nonpartisan, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party typically endorses candidates. But that wasn’t the case this year as the St. Paul DFL is in the process of reconstituting itself.

Coleman significantly outraised the other candidates and received donations from DFL figures such as Carter, former U.S. Sen. Al Franken, and former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak. She also got support from real estate developers.

Coleman joins the City Council as the city faces what likely will be a challenging budget year amid declining property values and federal cuts.

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The shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis was the fourth deadly shooting in the city in just more than 24 hours. In total, the string of violence has left at least five people dead and 25 injured, according to police.

Police officials said the first shooting happened just before 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, when a man stepped out of a vehicle near the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in the Phillips neighborhood and fired about 30 rounds from a high-velocity .223 rifle at a group of people on a sidewalk. One person was killed and six others were injured. Two people accused of “assisting” in the shooting have been arrested, but the gunman remains at large, Chief Brian O’Hara of the Minneapolis Police said.

Later on Tuesday, around 8 p.m., a man in his 20s was found shot in the city’s Whittier neighborhood and subsequently died in a hospital, police said. A second man in his 20s was brought to a different hospital with gunshot wounds roughly 20 minutes later; his injuries were believed to be related to the same shooting, police said.

Authorities said the third shooting took place around 2 a.m. Wednesday in downtown Minneapolis, when someone “opened fire at close range” at a group of people on a sidewalk, killing one person and injuring another.

Around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, a gunman began firing through the windows at Annunciation Catholic Church during a Mass that was being celebrated midway through the first week of classes at the church’s school. Two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed and 17 other people, 14 of them children, were injured. The attacker then killed himself, police said.

In a statement after the three earlier shootings, O’Hara urged the public to come forward with information, saying that “the level of gun violence across the city within the last day is deeply unsettling.”

The latest outburst of violence comes after the Twin Cities area was rattled in June when a gunman assassinated a state lawmaker and her husband and left another lawmaker and his wife hospitalized with gunshot wounds, setting off a two-day search.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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By AMANDA SEITZ

Rural hospitals are preparing to lose billions of dollars from President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending cut bill signed into law this summer.

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Dozens, already on the brink, have warned they face the prospect of closure or reduced services because of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, which is funded by federal and state governments and provides health care coverage for the poorest Americans.

At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday celebrating working Americans, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asserted that a historic “ infusion of cash ” is on the way for rural hospitals throughout the country.

“Right now we spend 7% of Medicaid dollars on rural hospitals,” he said. “They’re getting the short end of the stick.” To address that, he said a new fund — established in the legislation — will give rural hospitals an extra $10 billion every year.

Here’s a look at the facts.

THE CLAIM: Kennedy, speaking about the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”: “Under the rural transformation program, we give them an extra $10 billion a year. We’re raising an infusion of cash, rural hospitals and rural communities, by 50%. It’s going to be the biggest infusion in history and it’s going to restore and revitalize these communities.”

THE FACTS: There’s more to that nearly 900-page bill than Kennedy let on at the White House.

It’s true that Republicans established a new fund that will set aside $10 billion every year for rural hospitals, providers and clinics. But they did that to offset significant cuts that rural hospitals are expected to endure as a result of the legislation, which also slashes $1.2 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade, primarily from Medicaid.

Roughly 10 million people are expected to lose health insurance from the legislation. Most people will lose Medicaid.

That will leave many hospitals with patients who can’t afford to pay for emergency services. The changes are expected to hit rural areas, where as many as 1 in 4 Americans rely on Medicaid to pay for health insurance, particularly hard.

Estimates have suggested that rural hospitals, in particular, could lose between $58 billion and $137 billion over the next decade because of the bill’s provisions. As many as 300 rural hospitals were at risk for closure because of the GOP’s bill, according to an analysis by The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Rural Health Transformation Program established in the law is supposed to prevent those closures. It sets aside $10 billion annually from 2026 to 2030.

Hospitals and health industry experts have warned that while the fund throws a lifeline to rural hospitals, it won’t save them all.

“This certainly wouldn’t offset that entirely,” Washington University health policy analyst Timothy McBride said of the fund.

Then there’s the matter of how hospitals will actually access the funds. Half of the $50 billion will be divided equally among all states. The other half will be divided based on a formula, developed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that examines a state’s rural population and the number of low-income people it serves.

Dividing some of the funds equally among states, however, will ultimately give some states, even those that have few rural hospitals, the same amount of money as those states that have a significant number of rural hospitals.

“They all have needs, but at least half of the funds are going to be distributed equally, which doesn’t make sense,” McBride said. “Some states don’t have very many, and others have a lot.”

A spokesperson for Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.