DULUTH — The Trump administration said Monday it wants to reopen logging on about 59 million acres of national forest land throughout the country, including 62,000 acres of the Superior National Forest, much of it adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the so-called “roadless rule,” which prohibits timber harvesting and the construction of roads to access timber stands, was burdensome.

“Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to common sense management of our natural resources by rescinding the overly restrictive roadless rule,” Rollins said in a news release.

The roadless rule was established in 2001 during the final days of the Clinton administration and covers just 2.2% of all national forest land in Minnesota. The Chippewa National Forest does not have any land covered by the rule.

Out west, the rule covers far more land — about 30% of the 190-acre national forest system.

The roadless rule is not the same as official federal wilderness, and, despite its name, the areas may have roads that predate the 2001 rule. Instead, it prohibits new roads and logging but allows motorized recreation, such as snowmobiles and ATVs. It also allows mining.

Rollins said reversing the rule “opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests.”

“It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land,” Rollins said.

But Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the roadless rule already included flexibility that allowed for wildfire mitigation in those areas, like the removal of small-diameter trees, as long as new roads weren’t built.

“It’s a handout to the timber industry,” Spivak told the News Tribune. “(Trump) has no regard for ecology, natural areas, or the fact that they may be critically important to our water supplies, and recreation, and even sustainable communities. No, he just sees our national forests and other public lands as places to exploit so industry can turn a profit — there’s no mystery there.”

Ray Higgins, executive vice president of Minnesota Timber Producers, said that while more wood on the market is good for the industry, “it’s not going to make a ton of difference.”

“There’s a reason these are roadless areas. … They’re hard to access. They’re not close to any forest products mill like a paper mill or a big sawmill,” Higgins told the News Tribune.

“So it’s not like we’ve been knocking on the door trying to get the timber,” Higgins said, “because it is hard to access.”

But, he said, it could “give the Forest Service another tool in the toolbox” to take wildfire mitigation steps, like removing balsam fir left dead or dying by the spruce budworm outbreak, which contributed to last month’s wildfires near Brimson.

Spivak, however, said additional roads in these areas could lead to more fires since people start most wildfires.

A timeline on when the rule could be reversed was not provided by the USDA. A potentially lengthy process must play out first.

Spivak said if the Trump administration wants to reverse the rule, it will have to justify its actions and have the change go up for public comment.

“They’re going to have a very, very steep hill to climb to overturn the roadless rule,” Spivak said. “It’s incredibly popular, justified by science, held up in the court numerous times.”

The George W. Bush administration attempted to reverse the rule, only to have a federal judge restore it in 2006.

Later, in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court did not consider an appeal challenging the rule, which kept it in place.

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By COLLEEN BARRY and LUCA BRUNO

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Multi-billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez arrived in Venice on Wednesday ahead of their star-studded weekend wedding, an event that has galvanized a wide assortment of activist groups protesting it.

Bezos waved from a water taxi as he and Sanchez arrived at the dock of the Aman Hotel, a five-star hotel on the Grand Canal, with two security boats in tow.

The event has drawn protests by groups who view it as a sign of the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, while residents complain it exemplifies the way their needs are disregarded in the era of mass tourism to the historic lagoon city.

About a dozen Venetian organizations — including housing advocates, anti-cruise ship campaigners and university groups — have united to protest the multi-day event under the banner “No Space for Bezos,” a play on words also referring to the bride’s recent space flight.

They have staged small-scale protests, unfurling anti-Bezos banners on iconic Venetian sites. They were joined Monday by Greenpeace and the British group “Everyone Hates Elon,” which has smashed Teslas to protest Elon Musk, to unfurl a giant banner in St. Mark’s Square protesting purported tax breaks for billionaires.

On Wednesday, other activists launched a float down the Grand Canal featuring a mannequin of Bezos clinging onto an Amazon box, his fists full of fake dollars. The British publicity firm that announced the stunt said it wasn’t a protest of the wedding “but against unchecked wealth, media control, and the growing privatisation of public spaces.”

There has been no comment from Bezos’ representatives on the protests.

The local activists had planned a more organized protest for Saturday, aiming to obstruct access to canals with boats to prevent guests from reaching a wedding venue. They modified the protest to a march from the train station after claiming a victory, asserting that their pressure forced organizers to change the venue to the Arsenale, a more easily secured site beyond Venice’s congested center.

“It will be a strong, decisive protest, but peaceful,’’ said Federica Toninello, an activist with the Social Housing Assembly network. “We want it to be like a party, with music, to make clear what we want our Venice to look like.”

Among the 200 guests confirmed to be attending the wedding are Mick Jagger, Ivanka Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Venice, renowned for its romantic canal vistas, hosts hundreds of weddings each year, not infrequently those of the rich and famous. Previous celebrity weddings, like that of George Clooney to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in 2014, were embraced by the public. Hundreds turned out to wish the couple well at City Hall.

Bezos has a different political and business profile, said Tommaso Cacciari, a prominent figure in the movement that successfully pushed for a ban on cruise ships over 25,000 tons traveling through the Giudecca Canal in central Venice.

“Bezos is not a Hollywood actor,’’ Cacciari said. “He is an ultra-billionaire who sat next to Donald Trump during the inauguration, who contributed to his re-election and is contributing in a direct and heavy way to this new global obscurantism.’’

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Critics cite Amazon’s labor practices, ongoing tax disputes with European governments and Bezos’ political associations as reasons for concern.

Activists also argue that the Bezos wedding exemplifies broader failures in municipal governance, particularly the prioritization of tourism over residents’ needs. They cite measures such as the day-tripper tax — which critics argue reinforces Venice’s image as a theme park — as ineffective. Chief among their concerns is the lack of investment in affordable housing and essential services.

City officials have defended the wedding. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro called the event an honor for Venice, and the city denied the wedding would cause disruptions.

“Venice once again reveals itself to be a global stage,’’ Brugnaro told The Associated Press, adding he hoped to meet Bezos while he was in town.

Meanwhile, a Venetian environmental research association, Corila, issued a statement saying Bezos’ Earth Fund was supporting its work with an “important donation.”

Corila, which unites university scholars and Italy’s main national research council in researching Venetian protection strategies, wouldn’t say how much Bezos was donating but said contact began in April, well before the protests started.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The budget bill championed by President Donald Trump could complicate next year’s tax filing season after the IRS lost one-quarter of its employees through staffing cuts, an independent watchdog reported Wednesday.

The IRS workforce has fallen from 102,113 workers to 75,702 over the past year, according to the latest National Taxpayer Advocate report to Congress. The report Wednesday offered the first official numbers on the IRS job losses associated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Most of the employees took the “fork in the road” resignation offer from DOGE rather than waiting to get laid off.

Some of the findings from the report:

Taxpayers will likely see effects of staffing reductions

The Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal bureaucracy led to a mass exodus of probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protections and were offered buyouts through a “deferred resignation program.” More than 17,500 IRS workers took that route. The biggest cuts were in taxpayer services, the small business/self-employed office and information technology.

The report noted that the Republican administration’s proposed budget includes a 20% reduction in IRS funding next year. That’s a 37% reduction when taking into account the supplemental funding in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act that Republicans previously stripped away.

“A reduction of that magnitude is likely to impact taxpayers and potentially the revenue collected,” wrote Erin M. Collins, who leads the organization assigned to protect taxpayers’ rights.

The 2026 tax season could be precarious

Collins said the 2025 filing season was “one of the most successful filing seasons in recent memory,” though she warned that the 2026 season could be rocky.

“With the IRS workforce reduced by 26% and significant tax law changes on the horizon, there are risks to next year’s filing season,” Collins wrote. “It is critical that the IRS begin to take steps now to prepare.”

She said that, halfway through the year, there were concerns that the IRS had not yet undertaken key preparation steps, including hiring and training seasonal and permanent employees.

Trump’s package could add new layer of problems

The report warned about the possibility of understaffing to manage new provisions from Trump’s legislative package if it’s enacted.

“Several provisions will retroactively affect the 2025 tax year, thus impacting millions of taxpayers and requiring the IRS to quickly update tax year 2025 tax forms and programming for the 2026 filing season,” the report said.

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Specifically, the House bill retroactively prohibits the IRS from allowing or making payment of Employee Retention Credit claims filed after Jan. 31, 2024.

The report also said the IRS historically receives more calls in years following significant changes in tax law, so it may need additional employees and improved digital tools to maintain its level of service.

Identity theft cases are still piling up

The IRS is dealing with delays in resolving self-reported identity theft victim assistance cases — taking up to 20 months to resolve, the report said.

As of the end of the 2025 filing season, the IRS was handling about 387,000 of these cases.

That is a slight improvement from the more than 22 months it took to resolve identity theft cases, as noted in last year’s report, which outlined roughly 500,000 unresolved cases in its inventory.

“The cycle time remains unacceptably long,” Collins said. “I continue to urge the agency to focus on dramatically shortening the time it takes” to resolved identity theft cases, “so it does not force victims, particularly those dependent on their tax refunds, to wait nearly two years to receive their money.”

By TRAVIS LOLLER

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from jail in Tennessee on Wednesday, only to be taken into immigration custody.

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The Salvadoran national whose mistaken deportation became a flashpoint in the fight over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies has been in jail since he was returned to the U.S. on June 7, facing two counts of human smuggling.

On Sunday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ruled that Abrego Garcia does not have to remain in jail ahead of that trial. On Wednesday afternoon, she will set his conditions of release and allow him to go, according to her order. However, both his defense attorneys and prosecutors have said they expect him to be taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as soon as he is released on the criminal charges.

In addition, federal prosecutors are appealing Holmes’ release order. Among other things, they expressed concern in a motion filed on Sunday that Abrego Garcia could be deported before he faces trial. Holmes has said previously that she won’t step between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. It is up to them to decide whether they want to deport Abrego Garcia or prosecute him.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty on June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken deportation in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Those charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. At his detention hearing, Homeland Security Special Agent Peter Joseph testified that he did not begin investigating Abrego Garcia until April of this year.

Holmes said in her Sunday ruling that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community. He has lived for more than a decade in Maryland, where he and his American wife are raising three children.

However, Holmes referred to her own ruling as “little more than an academic exercise,” noting that ICE plans to detain him. It is less clear what will happen after that. Although he can’t be deported to El Salvador — where an immigration judge found he faces a credible threat from gangs — he is still deportable to a third country as long as that country agrees to not send him to El Salvador.