By KOSTYA MANENKOV

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Norwegians headed to the polls Monday in the main day of voting for a new parliament, after a campaign in which the future of a wealth tax that dates to the late 19th century has been a central issue.

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About 4.3 million people in the Scandinavian nation are eligible to vote for the new 169-member parliament, or Storting. A close outcome is expected between a center-left bloc led by the Labor Party of Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and a right-wing bloc.

Official results are expected Tuesday, and they are likely to be followed by weeks of negotiations to build a coalition and agree on Cabinet positions before King Harald can swear in a new government.

The result isn’t likely to have major implications for Norway’s foreign policy. The country is a stalwart member of NATO and a strong supporter of Ukraine’s defense against Russia, with which it has a border in the Arctic north. It isn’t a member of the European Union but has close economic ties with the 27-nation bloc.

Norway is one of the richest countries in the world. It has a generous welfare state, sits on billions of barrels of oil and gas, and has one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, worth around 20 trillion kroner ($2 trillion). Gross domestic product per person is the sixth-highest in the world, one place above the U.S., according to the International Monetary Fund.

It is also one of the world’s most egalitarian countries, sharing its wealth much more evenly than many others.

Labor wants to keep the wealth tax that has been a mainstay of Norwegian policy since 1892 — a levy of up to 1.1% on assets and shares worth more than 1.76 million kroner (around $176,000), though there are various reductions and discounts. Labor says that scrapping it would cost 34 billion kroner ($3.3 billion) per year.

Of its rivals on the right, the Conservatives want it reduced and the Progress Party of Sylvi Listhaug, which calls for lower taxes and more immigration controls, wants it scrapped.

Polls have shown Listhaug’s party ahead of the Conservatives, led by former Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who were the senior partner in the last center-right government from 2013 to 2021. The Progress Party has been bolstered by an energetic social media campaign, driven by youthful influencers who have inspired younger voters against the wealth tax.

“I think it is fair that the most wealthy among us pay their contribution,” Gahr Støre said after he voted on Monday. “It’s been the parties of the right who wanted to take that entirely away, benefiting 1% of the population.”

“I think that goes against the deep sense of fairness and solidarity from Norwegians,” he said.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration operations in Los Angeles, the latest victory for President Donald Trump’s administration at the high court.

The conservative majority lifted a restraining order from a judge who found that “roving patrols” were conducting indiscriminate arrests in LA. The order had barred agents from stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.

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Trump’s Republican administration argued the order wrongly restricted agents carrying out its widespread crackdown on illegal immigration.

U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong in Los Angeles had found a “mountain of evidence” that enforcement tactics were violating the Constitution. The plaintiffs included U.S. citizens swept up in immigration stops. An appeals court had left Frimpong’s ruling in place.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents also step up enforcement in Washington amid Trump’s unprecedented federal takeover of the capital city’s law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard.

The lawsuit will now continue to unfold in California. It was filed by immigrant advocacy groups that accused Trump’s administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people during his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration in the Los Angeles area.

Department of Homeland Security attorneys have said immigration officers target people based on illegal presence in the U.S., not skin color, race or ethnicity. Even so, the Justice Department argued that the order wrongly restricted the factors that ICE agents can use when deciding who to stop.

The Los Angeles region has been a battleground for the Trump administration after its hard-line immigration strategy spurred protests and the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines. The number of immigration raids in the LA area appeared to slow shortly after Frimpong’s order came down in July, but recently they have become more frequent again, including an operation in which agents jumped out of the back of a rented box truck and made arrests at an LA Home Depot store.

The plaintiffs argued that her order only prevents federal agents from making stops without reasonable suspicion, something that aligns with the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent.

“Numerous U.S. citizens and others who are lawfully present in this country have been subjected to significant intrusions on their liberty,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “Many have been physically injured; at least two were taken to a holding facility.”

The Trump administration said the order is too restrictive, “threatening agents with sanctions if the court disbelieves that they relied on additional factors in making any particular stop.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer also argued the order can’t stand under the high court’s recent decision restricting universal injunctions, though the plaintiffs disagreed.

The order from Frimpong, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, barred authorities from using factors like apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone’s occupation as the only basis for reasonable suspicion for detention. Its covered a combined population of nearly 20 million people, nearly half of whom identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Plaintiffs included three detained immigrants and two U.S. citizens. One of the citizens was Los Angeles resident Brian Gavidia, who was shown in a June 13 video being seized by federal agents as he yelled, “I was born here in the States. East LA, bro!”

Gavidia was released about 20 minutes later after showing agents his identification, as was another citizen stopped at a car wash, according to the lawsuit.

Associated Press writer Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All-Star slugger Byron Buxton sounded like someone who wouldn’t happily accept another lengthy roster rebuild — if that’s the direction and pace the Minnesota Twins take.

All-star right-hander Joe Ryan criticized Twins leadership for positioning the team to fail the past two seasons by not re-signing free-agent right-hander Sonny Gray.

Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Joe Ryan wipes his face after issuing a second walk during the first inning of a baseball game against the Kansas City Royals in Kansas City, Mo., Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann)

Two of the Twins biggest stars, both of whom are having their best individual seasons amid a 63-80 start, expressed displeasure about the team’s recent direction, along with a lack of certainty about what comes next.

As Buxton nears age 32 with three years to go on his $100 million contract, the idea of another deep rebuild is unappealing, especially if it takes more than, say, one offseason. Questions about ownership’s long- and short-term plans, and how they relate to improving the active roster, make Buxton wonder.

If the Pohlad family directs team president Derek Falvey and general manager Jeremy Zoll to make moves that aren’t aimed at immediately improving the club’s won-loss record next season, Buxton likely won’t be happy about it.

“I ain’t treading water,” Buxton told the Pioneer Press. “I won’t do that. It’s all about winning for me. I ain’t a person who’s going to be walking on my toes or anything like that to satisfy anybody. I want to win.”

Ryan pointedly said the quiet part out loud, criticizing the team’s financially motivated decision in late 2023 to not re-sign Gray, a failure he believes reverberates to the present. After the Twins showed no obvious intention to pursue him, Gray instead signed for three years and $75 million with the St. Louis Cardinals.

“Obviously, they didn’t offer him a contract, but having [Gray] on the team would have given us another postseason back-to-back, which would have been pretty special for the city,” Ryan said.

“I think everyone knows it’s not crazy to say that,” he added.

The Twins fell out of contention a year ago after Ryan sustained a season-ending shoulder-muscle injury in August. They started floundering this season around the time right-hander Pablo López missed three months beginning in June because of a similar injury. It stands to reason that having Gray still in the rotation would have softened those blows. He remains an above-average pitcher, making 56 starts the past two seasons combined and ranking 12th in WAR at Fangraphs.

With the Twins in ’23, Gray made the American League All-Star team and finished second in AL Cy Young voting, leading a rotation that included Ryan and López. The trio helped the Twins take the AL Central, break an 18-game postseason losing streak and win a playoff series for the first time since 2002.

As much as he liked having Gray around, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli dismissed the kind of hypothetical assertion entertained by Ryan.

“I don’t think (that’s) productive,” Baldelli said. “And that’s kind of pessimistic, after-the-fact thinking. Talking about all of the transactional what-ifs that we could have done is not for me and will never be for me.”

There was nothing special about the timing of Ryan’s complaint, Ryan said, when he told the Minnesota Star Tribune in a report published Saturday that the Gray decision was “the biggest mistake we have made since I’ve been here.”

Ryan lodged his grievance coincidentally before tying the shortest outing of his career in a lopsided loss to the Royals on Saturday night. Ryan, who has been taking antibiotics to fight an unspecified infection, allowed five runs in the first inning and made it through just two innings.

Ryan didn’t waver about his feelings in a follow-up after his sickly outing.

“Hindsight is always 20/20,” Ryan said. “Everyone in the clubhouse loved (Gray). I don’t think it was like we were going into spring training and everyone was upset about it, but if you look at what happened last year and what could have happened with having him there, yeah, I do stand by that.”

Buxton didn’t come out and agree with Ryan about Gray but conceded, “We’ll never know because we didn’t make the move.”

“I don’t know if it’s the biggest mistake, but I do know that I’ve been here for long enough, so I’ve seen a lot of things,” Buxton added. “If this is what you call a rebuild, this will be my third one since I’ve been here. So, if you want to talk about mistakes, I saw a lot of mistakes leading up to now.”

Buxton didn’t shy away from assigning responsibility for the team’s collective failures the past two years to the players the Twins already had. The club had a 13-game winning streak in May but has gotten abysmal results otherwise. Hence, the big, 11-player dump at the deadline.

“We didn’t win very many games last month,” Buxton said. “How many was it? Six, seven? Eleven? It’s not enough. We had a chance to control our destiny last year, and as a team, we just didn’t play well enough.”

In most ways, the end of the 2025 season cannot come fast enough for the Twins, who started September poorly after enduring a lousy August, plus the stunning trade deadline. Ryan might have been traded along with the rest if the market for top starting pitchers had developed. Maybe it will in November.

Buxton, though, pointed to the past two offseasons for the front office — quiet in the additions column.

“That’s what it’s going to take,” Buxton said, meaning trades and free-agent additions. “Not many teams in baseball don’t do something in the offseason anymore. Every team does something.”

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By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he’s ready to change the chamber’s rules to allow quick confirmations of dozens of President Donald Trump’s executive branch nominees, moving this week to speed up votes after months of Democratic delays.

Thune says he’ll start the process of changing the rules when the Senate goes into session on Monday afternoon, with a final vote likely coming later this week. “We must return to the Senate’s traditional confirmation process that existed before this unprecedented blockade,” Thune said in an op-ed published on Breitbart.com Monday morning.

Republicans have been talking about options for changing the rules since early August, when the Senate left for a monthlong recess after a breakdown in bipartisan negotiations over the confirmation process. Democrats have blocked nearly every single one of Trump’s nominees, forcing majority Republicans to spend valuable floor time on procedural votes and leaving many positions in the executive branch unfilled.

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The changes come after both parties have escalated their obstruction of the other party’s nominees for years, and as leaders in both parties have incrementally changed the rules to make the process less bipartisan. The proposal to group nominations is loosely based on legislation introduced by Democrats two years ago as Republicans blocked many of then-President Joe Biden’s picks.

But while Senate Republicans forced similar delays during Biden’s administration, Democrats have blocked almost all of Trump’s nominations. It’s the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn’t allowed at least some quick confirmations.

“Democrats have made President Donald Trump the first president on record to not have a single nominee confirmed via voice vote or unanimous consent, and they are forcing time-consuming votes on noncontroversial nominees who go on to be confirmed by large bipartisan margins,” Thune said in the op-ed.

The delays have infuriated Trump, who told Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to “GO TO HELL!” in a social media post after negotiations broke down over the process in early August.

Thune has not yet said how they will change the rules, but Republicans said last week that the leading option was to allow votes on large groups of nominees at once if a majority of senators agree. Currently, one senator’s objection can force days of votes on a single nominee.

If Republicans act quickly, they could confirm more than 100 of Trump’s pending nominations as soon as this week. The rules change is expected to only apply to executive branch nominations, not lifetime judicial appointments, and would exclude the most high-profile positions, such as Cabinet nominees, that require a longer debate time. Some others could also be excluded, such as nominees that are particularly controversial.

The process to change the rules will likely require several floor votes and the support of a simple majority, so at least 51 out of the chamber’s 53 Republicans. But most GOP senators appear to be on board.

The change will be the latest salvo in years of intensifying standoffs over presidential nominations. In 2013, Democrats changed Senate rules for executive branch and lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s picks. In 2017, Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees as Democrats tried to block Trump’s nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Democrats have said the rules change would be a mistake, especially as Senate Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass spending bills and other legislation moving forward.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said last week that Republicans’ proposed plan “guts the Senate’s constitutional role of advice and consent, weakens our checks and balances, and guarantees that historically bad nominees will only get worse with even less oversight.”