A St. Paul man has pleaded guilty to attempted murder after shooting at a Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy during a pursuit last year on St. Paul’s East Side.

Trevion Armand Figgs, 21, was a passenger in a Honda Accord and fired at least three bullets from an assault rifle at Deputy Joe Kill, who was struck with shrapnel near his right collar bone in the March 2024 incident. He was transported to Regions Hospital for minor injuries.

A plea agreement Figgs reached with the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office last week includes a 12½-year prison term at sentencing and the dismissal of the remaining charges: first-degree assault of a peace officer and drive-by shooting.

Trevion Armand Figgs (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Figgs remains jailed in lieu of $1.3 million bail ahead of sentencing, which has yet to be scheduled.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul police officers saw someone, later identified as a 17-year-old, driving a Honda Accord recklessly at Payne Avenue and Jessamine Street around 10:45 p.m. March 1, 2024. The officers tried to pull him over, but he sped away.

A short time later, Kill saw the Accord and noticed that two people were in it. When the teen blew through a red light at Payne Avenue and Seventh Street, Kill turned on his emergency lights and siren and began pursuit.

As the Accord headed east on Euclid Street, the front-seat passenger, who wore a face mask and was later identified as Figgs, leaned out of the car, sat on the door frame and fired a tan-colored assault rifle at the deputy, who was 25 to 30 yards behind.

Kill swerved his squad to the left, stopped in the 900 block of Euclid Street and took cover under the driver compartment. Kill thought three shots were fired at him.

Two bullet fragments were recovered from the front floor of the deputy’s squad car. His ballistic vest showed a scuff mark on its upper right consistent with being struck by an object.

Surveillance video audio from the neighborhood recorded approximately “three to five gunshot-like noises,” the complaint says. Officers found two .223-caliber rifle casings in the middle of Euclid Street.

Officers searched the area and found the Accord unoccupied and parked in an alley in the 1000 block of Pacific Street. Surveillance video showed the car in the alley around 10:50 p.m., then two people running east.

A search of the car turned up two more spent .223-caliber rifle casings. Paperwork showed the teen driver was in the process of buying the car.

Further investigation showed a close relationship between the teen and Figgs, whose house is in the area where the car was found.

Investigators then received information from Figgs’ Snapchat account. It showed that an account associated with the teen sent Figgs a photo of Figgs wearing a black face mask and holding a tan assault rifle consistent with the one described by the deputy.

Officers executed a search warrant at Figgs’ home and arrested him. In an upper bedroom, officers recovered a tan AR-style rifle stock, a Polymer 80 handgun, a debit card in the teen’s name and loose .223- and 9mm-caliber ammunition.

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Three days before the case was filed against Figgs, prosecutors charged him by a sealed complaint with attempted murder stemming from a June 2023 shooting on the city’s East Side. Prosecutors say Figgs fired nearly 30 rounds at an SUV, one of which struck a 19-year-old man in the back. The case is pending.

In December, the teen driver was adjudicated delinquent — the juvenile version of being found guilty — of aiding and abetting first-degree assault of a peace officer. He was placed on extended jurisdiction juvenile prosecution under the condition that he complete a long-term treatment program at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Red Wing. An adult sentence of just over seven years was stayed pending completion of the juvenile term, which ends when he turns 21.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The height of tax season was the height of turmoil at the IRS.

The agency shuffled through three acting directors over the course of a week. It’s preparing to lose tens of thousands of workers to layoffs and voluntary retirements. And President Donald Trump is weighing in on which nonprofits should lose their tax-exempt status, an incursion into the agency’s typically apolitical stance that threatens to further erode trust in federal institutions and weaponize enforcement efforts.

Just three months into Trump’s second term, the government’s fly-under-the-radar tax collector has become the latest platform for the Republican administration’s vision to cut and control the federal bureaucracy. Tax policy experts fear that taxpayer services and collection efforts will face prolonged delays as a result of the rapid changes.

The quick turnover in leadership and other changes are likely to dampen employee morale at the IRS and hurt the agency’s ability to serve taxpayers in a timely manner, says Janet Holtzblatt, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

“Leadership sets the tone, particularly in this environment,” she said.

Already, she notes, the agency has lost decades of institutional knowledge from nonpartisan career civil servants who have left over policy disagreements and layoffs.

Chaos embroils agency amid leadership turnover

The upheaval unfolded as Americans dutifully filed their taxes ahead of the April 15 deadline and as a legion of IRS employees undertook work to process returns and dole out refunds. The latest filing season data shows the agency accepted more than 117 million returns this tax season and issued $228.7 billion in refunds.

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“We’re committed to improving the efficiency of the Internal Revenue Service,” said the agency’s newest acting commissioner, Michael Faulkender. “For the last 35 years, we’ve been five years away from the IRS being modernized. Under the direct leadership of Treasury, the modernization will be done in two years at a fraction of the cost.”

Meanwhile, the IRS, like other federal agencies, is hemorrhaging employees over cuts spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, all while the agency churns through acting leaders as it awaits the installation of a permanent leader.

Douglas O’Donnell, the Trump administration’s first acting IRS commissioner, announced his retirement in February as furor spread over DOGE gaining access to IRS taxpayer data. Melanie Krause, the second acting commissioner, resigned early this month over a deal between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gary Shapley, an IRS whistleblower who testified publicly about investigations into Hunter Biden’s taxes, was acting commissioner for a matter of days before being replaced by Faulkender, who was elevated just last week. The New York Times reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had complained to Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of Trump adviser Elon Musk.

Trump’s nominee for IRS commissioner, former U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, is still waiting for a confirmation hearing but faces controversies of his own. Most recently, Senate Democrats have called for a criminal investigation into Long’s connections to alleged tax credit loopholes. The lawmakers allege that firms connected to Long duped investors into spending millions of dollars to purchase fake tax credits. Long did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Punishing enemies and rewarding friends

Among other concerns at the agency are fears that Trump will weaponize the IRS against his enemies — and reward his friends.

Some of the Democratic Party’s core political institutions, including fundraising platform ActBlue and the protest group Indivisible, are preparing for the possibility that the federal government may soon launch criminal investigations against them.

Trump said last week at the White House that the administration is looking at the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, which has defied the government’s attempts to limit activism on campus, and environmental groups. He also mentioned the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“It’s supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said of CREW. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So we’re looking at that. We’re looking at a lot of things.”

Jonathan S. Masur, an administrative law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said it’s unlawful for the president to unilaterally take away organizations’ tax-exempt status.

“It’s illegal for starters. The Supreme Court has established that that step is not allowed,” he said, adding that he anticipates that the court system will “very quickly block” any such move from the president.

The Trump administration is also watching out for allies of the president.

Treasury official David Eisner sent an email in March to a top IRS official regarding Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and one of the chief proponents of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

“The ‘My Pillow guy’ and a high-profile friend of the President recently received an audit letter, from what I understand, his second in two years,” Eisner wrote in the email, which was viewed by the AP. The president “is concerned that he may have been inappropriately targeted,” Eisner wrote.

Bringing immigration enforcement to the IRS

Among other changes in recent weeks are concerns about the IRS’ engagement with the Department of Homeland Security over enforcing a new data-sharing agreement signed earlier this month by Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.

That agreement is being litigated in federal court.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich will soon decide whether to refuse or grant a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups. The groups argue that immigrants in the country illegally who pay taxes are entitled to the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens and immigrants who are legally in the country.

The Treasury Department says the agreement will help carry out Trump’s agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants.

Holtzblatt said the agreement is indicative of the turmoil at the IRS.

“There’s an emphasis on improving technology and sharing information,” but it’s unclear for what reason, she said.

By MATT O’BRIEN, Associated Press Technology Writer

Former employees of OpenAI are asking the top law enforcement officers in California and Delaware to stop the company from shifting control of its artificial intelligence technology from a nonprofit charity to a for-profit business.

They’re concerned about what happens if the ChatGPT maker fulfills its ambition to build AI that outperforms humans, but is no longer accountable to its public mission to safeguard that technology from causing grievous harms.

“Ultimately, I’m worried about who owns and controls this technology once it’s created,” said Page Hedley, a former policy and ethics adviser at OpenAI, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Backed by three Nobel Prize winners and other advocates and experts, Hedley and nine other ex-OpenAI workers sent a letter this week to the two state attorneys general.

The coalition is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, both Democrats, to use their authority to protect OpenAI’s charitable purpose and block its planned restructuring. OpenAI is incorporated in Delaware and operates out of San Francisco.

OpenAI said in response that “any changes to our existing structure would be in service of ensuring the broader public can benefit from AI.” It said its for-profit will be a public benefit corporation, similar to other AI labs like Anthropic and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI, except that OpenAI will still preserve a nonprofit arm.

“This structure will continue to ensure that as the for-profit succeeds and grows, so too does the nonprofit, enabling us to achieve the mission,” the company said in a statement.

The letter is the second petition to state officials this month. The last came from a group of labor leaders and nonprofits focused on protecting OpenAI’s billions of dollars of charitable assets.

Jennings said last fall she would “review any such transaction to ensure that the public’s interests are adequately protected.” Bonta’s office sought more information from OpenAI late last year but has said it can’t comment, even to confirm or deny if it is investigating.

OpenAI’s co-founders, including current CEO Sam Altman and Musk, originally started it as a nonprofit research laboratory on a mission to safely build what’s known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI, for humanity’s benefit. Nearly a decade later, OpenAI has reported its market value as $300 billion and counts 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT, its flagship product.

OpenAI already has a for-profit subsidiary but faces a number of challenges in converting its core governance structure. One is a lawsuit from Musk, who accuses the company and Altman of betraying the founding principles that led the Tesla CEO to invest in the charity.

While some of the signatories of this week’s letter support Musk’s lawsuit, Hedley said others are “understandably cynical” because Musk also runs his own rival AI company.

The signatories include two Nobel-winning economists, Oliver Hart and Joseph Stiglitz, as well as AI pioneers and computer scientists Geoffrey Hinton, who won last year’s Nobel Prize in physics, and Stuart Russell.

“I like OpenAI’s mission to ‘ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,’ and I would like them to execute that mission instead of enriching their investors,” Hinton said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m happy there is an effort to hold OpenAI to its mission that does not involve Elon Musk.”

Conflicts over OpenAI’s purpose have long simmered at the San Francisco institute, contributing to Musk quitting in 2018, Altman’s short-lived ouster in 2023 and other high-profile departures.

Hedley, a lawyer by training, worked for OpenAI in 2017 and 2018, a time when the nonprofit was still navigating the best ways to steward the technology it wanted to build. As recently as 2023, Altman said advanced AI held promise but also warned of extraordinary risks, from drastic accidents to societal disruptions.

In recent years, however, Hedley said he watched with concern as OpenAI, buoyed by the success of ChatGPT, was increasingly cutting corners on safety testing and rushing out new products to get ahead of business competitors.

“The costs of those decisions will continue to go up as the technology becomes more powerful,” he said. “I think that in the new structure that OpenAI wants, the incentives to rush to make those decisions will go up and there will no longer be anybody really who can tell them not to, tell them this is not OK.”

Software engineer Anish Tondwalkar, a former member of OpenAI’s technical team until last year, said an important assurance in OpenAI’s nonprofit charter is a “stop-and-assist clause” that directs OpenAI to stand down and help if another organization is nearing the achievement of better-than-human AI.

“If OpenAI is allowed to become a for-profit, these safeguards, and OpenAI’s duty to the public can vanish overnight,” Tondwalkar said in a statement Wednesday.

Another former worker who signed the letter puts it more bluntly.

“OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed,” said Nisan Stiennon, an AI engineer who worked at OpenAI from 2018 to 2020. “It is to OpenAI’s credit that it’s controlled by a nonprofit with a duty to humanity. This duty precludes giving up that control.”

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

Twenty-five years in, and the state of Texas has only elected two governors in the 21st Century, two lieutenant governors, and two attorney generals. The current governor was elected AG in 2002 to succeed the first GOP attorney general since Reconstruction, who himself ascended to the United States Senate and has remained in that seat ever since. Today’s attorney general, who succeeded the now-governor, is now ramping up for a likely primary campaign to oust said U.S. senator. 

Such is the age of Republican domination in Texas, largely marked by remarkable entrenchment in the statewide power structure interrupted by occasional bursts of incestuous conflict.  

There are no term limits for these offices in the Lone Star State, but that didn’t prevent a healthy level of churn among the top ranks of statewide office throughout most of Texas’ political history—even in the bygone era of Democrats’ one-party rule.   

John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell in 2018 (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

Not so much with Republicans. Under red rule, Texas has not just returned to a one-party state; it’s a one-party state controlled by just a very few politicians, who’ve used their longevity to consolidate unprecedented levels of power. Governor Greg Abbott has methodically expanded the once-limited realm of gubernatorial authority and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has reshaped the once independent-minded Senate into a body of one. 

For those top two, this is a time for cementing legacies, and they seemingly have no intent of leaving anytime soon. Abbott is singularly focused on passing school vouchers into law—a policy goal that eluded his two GOP predecessors. And if he wins a fourth term in 2026, he’ll be on the precipice of surpassing his predecessor Rick Perry as the state’s longest serving top executive. 

Patrick, who was at various times rumored to be considering a primary challenge against Abbott, appears to have grown content with mastering his green-carpeted domain in the Texas Senate. The lite guv, 75, also claims to be all in on running for a fourth term. While he’ll almost certainly be unable to surpass Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby Jr.’s record 18-year reign, Patrick surely has a few things up his sleeve to cap his career. 

The logjam at the top has also extended to the lesser statewide positions such as the comptroller, land commissioner, and agriculture commissioner. Those relatively entry-level positions have long served as a training ground for higher office. But with such entrenchment, the only way for ambitious Republicans to move up is to try to take out one of their superiors—a dicey option. Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush tried to do it with an imperiled Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2022; he failed miserably, and now his political career is all but over. (His replacement, Dawn Buckingham, seems to be using the office as a launch pad for future higher office as well.) 

Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who was long harboring aims for governor or lieutenant governor, apparently grew tired of waiting. In March, he accepted a post as chancellor of the Texas A&M University System—replacing John Sharp, another former comptroller. 

Within hours of that news, GOP candidates were already rolling out their campaigns to take the open office in the 2026 elections. The former tea-party state senator and failed guv challenger Don Huffines is promising to wield the comptroller’s office as a DOGE-like weapon. Longtime Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick, a more traditional conservative and heir to her ex-speaker father’s political fortune, has also jumped at this rare opportunity for a promotion. 

The headliner for the 2026 Republican primaries, though, will be an especially rare showdown between two heavyweights—Paxton versus U.S. Senator John Cornyn. It’s a battle that’s been simmering for years now, as the two have traded potshots back and forth.

Paxton has teased a potential challenge to Cornyn for some time, blasting him as an anti-MAGA establishment swamp creature who helped enact new gun laws and supported U.S. aid to Ukraine during the Biden presidency. In early April, Paxton made it official that he’s taking on Cornyn, who’s held the seat for over 20 years. Paxton-world has commissioned polls showing him well ahead of Cornyn in a primary, and the press-averse AG has gone on a media tour that includes not just his typical MAGA podcast circuit but also Washington insider outlets and even The New York Times. 

“I think I can win if I have $20 million,” Paxton told the Capitol Hill tabloid Punchbowl News. “I think it’s just time. … He’s had his chance. He hasn’t performed well, and the voters know it. You can go a long time without people paying attention. And they’re paying attention now.”

While Cornyn lost his bid for the long-coveted Republican Majority Leader position, he hasn’t lost his taste for politics. In late March, he officially announced his (fourth) reelection campaign with a video in which he firmly latched on to 47’s ill-fitted coat tails: “President Trump needs a partner who is battle-tested,” he intoned. 

It’s no less an awkward tact than his last reelection in 2020, when he remixed his old campaign jingle “Big John” to include a nod to “Big Don.” Much like his crestfallen mentor Mitch McConnell, the Corndog has struggled to navigate Trump’s takeover of the GOP. Soon after January 6th, 2021, the senior senator—in a move he likely regrets today—declared it was time for Trump to move on. 

That’s a weakness that Paxton, who is something of a cult hero in MAGA-world, is hoping to exploit. The timing may be perfect for the long-embattled AG, as he has shed himself of all his legal baggage—securities fraud charges settled, impeachment charges acquitted, a years-long Department of Justice investigation reportedly closed. 

And with Trump back in the White House, Paxton no longer even has a federal government to incessantly sue. Many of his top deputies have already been hired away by the new administration. What better time to go to Washington? 

And what, you may ask, about that long-suffering opposition force in this one-party state? Democrats’ hopes of pulling off statewide victory in Texas have been rather thoroughly decimated over the last three cycles.

But, as always, the party will start to convince itself that the next election will be different. And, of course, one can always find reason for a shred of optimism. The 2024 cycle was a disaster for Democrats all across the country. And the shellacking of Beto O’Rourke in 2022 came on highly unfavorable terrain for a Democrat in Texas.

The 2026 elections could play out similarly to the 2018 anti-Trump midterms that fueled Dems’ best performance in recent history. That made for rough sledding for junior U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. If Paxton, the GOP’s weakest statewide general-election candidate, does win the Senate primary, he could fare even worse than Cruz, should Dems field a compelling opponent (far from a given).

Paxton’s Senate bid also means that the attorney general’s office will be up for grabs. The winner of the GOP primary will all but certainly be someone with no statewide profile, quite possibly a far-right Paxton acolyte without the benefits of incumbency. Those odds could be the closest to even that a Texas Dem is going to get.

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