With little more than three months to go before the election, state Rep. Kaohly Vang Her, a former policy director for St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, is exploring a run for mayor and asking fellow lawmakers for their “support or neutrality,” according to political organizers with knowledge of her campaign. It’s a decision that would put her on a political collision course with her own former boss.

Undated courtesy photo from the 2025-26 legislative session of Rep. Kaohly Vang Her, DFL-St. Paul. (Courtesy of the Minnesota House of Representatives)

Her, 52, did not return calls Thursday or Friday, but others at St. Paul City Hall or with connections to state lawmakers said they were confident she was preparing to announce a mayoral run.

Given growing frustration with the many challenges facing the state’s capital city, Her isn’t the only candidate taking a run at the two-term incumbent mayor who easily won his first two elections.

The filing period runs July 29 through Aug. 12, and Carter announced in January every intention of running again, despite some criticism he appears disconnected from City Hall.

Declared mayoral candidates include Yan Chen, a University of Minnesota biophysicist, and Mike Hilborn, a Republican business owner who runs a power-washing, Christmas tree lighting and snowplowing company. The St. Paul DFL, which is in the process of reconstituting itself, has opted not to endorse in the ranked-choice election, which is non-partisan but typically draws strong party interest.

Voters will rank candidates in order of preference, and there will be no political primary to pare the field. Also appearing on the Nov. 4 ballot are questions about a St. Paul Public Schools levy and whether to empower the city council to impose administrative citations, or non-criminal fines.

Born in Laos, Her came to the United States as a 4-year-old Hmong refugee and was raised in Appleton, Wis., where her father worked in a paper plant and her mother as a teacher’s aide. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and finance, as well as a master’s degree in business administration from Northeastern University.

She was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives representing District 64A — which spans the Union Park and Summit-University neighborhoods of St. Paul — in 2018 and won a fourth term in 2024. Among her first initiatives in office, she helped launch the first Minnesota Asian Pacific Caucus at the State Capitol. She served as Carter’s policy director during his first term in office, from January 2018 through Sept. 10, 2021.

“She does great work for St. Paul up at the State House, and Mayor Carter does terrific work for our city in the mayor’s office,” said St. Paul City Council Member Saura Jost on Friday. “With that being said, I’ve already committed to supporting Mayor Carter for re-election.”

Interim Council Member Matt Privratsky, recently appointed to the council by Carter, said he was “proud to support Melvin in his re-election.”

The five other council members and representatives for Carter could not be reached for comment Friday.

Vulnerable to a challenge

The mayor once was seen as a rising star within the Democratic Party and a potential candidate for a Washington appointment. That was before a rise in homelessness, homicides and carjackings early in the coronavirus pandemic, which sent remote workers away from a downtown already short on retail and commerce.

Carter himself spends limited time each week downtown in his mayoral offices. He moved his family a few years ago to a house at the city’s eastern edges, closer to suburban Maplewood and Woodbury than the embattled Midway or the Rondo neighborhood where he grew up.

When former Vice President Kamala Harris lost her presidential bid in November, the chance of Carter being called down to D.C. fizzled, as did funding and backing for many of the city’s progressive priorities, from social spending to EV charging stations and geothermal heating.

No matter who is elected mayor, St. Paul will be left with no allies in the White House and a dwindling number at the Minnesota State Capitol, where lawmakers declined to fund a new ice arena at Grand Casino Arena (formerly the Xcel Energy Center) for the Minnesota Wild and offered the city limited other new benefits in the last legislative session.

If anything, the Carter administration has at times appeared at loggerheads with state Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega, chair of St. Paul’s House delegation, who has complained of not having calls returned.

Melvin Carter, St. Paul Mayor, waves to parade goers during the St. Anthony Park Fourth of July parade in St. Paul on Friday, July 4, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“I’m not voting for him a third time,” said Steve Subera, a product marketer from St. Paul, in response to an inquiry about the mayor on social media. “The downtown (situation) is on his watch. Grand Casino Arena is in limbo and it doesn’t appear he has any influence with (state Sen. Sandy) Pappas or Perez-Vega.”

Relations between Carter’s office and the St. Paul City Council appear equally up-and-down. The mayor’s office last year spent weeks, if not months, in a budget battle with the council, leading to a series of line-item budget vetoes by the mayor and an attempted last-minute budget override by the council.

With two 2025 city budgets on the table, it was unclear to many observers which one had legal sticking power through the first months of the year. Following that and other bruising political fights, Council President Mitra Jalali — who was mostly seen as sympathetic to the mayor — resigned in March.

City struggles

Other problems are mounting in the capital city.

Carter once spoke glowingly of getting upstream of crime through better street lighting, increased library access and free youth activities through the city’s many rec centers.

Then the price of metal went up, as did the cost of everything else, and an epidemic in stolen copper wire left sections of the city bathed in darkness as street lights went cold. In January 2023, a city rec center staffer shot a teen in the head, and the location was closed for weeks.

Run-ins between library workers and aggressive visitors, some of them homeless and on drugs, have forced security changes. The Rondo Community Library on Dale Street now closes at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and entirely on Sundays. Workers and patrons say the library’s proximity to a Green Line light rail station hasn’t helped. The train, once heralded as a potential engine for economic development, now is viewed as a liability even by some fans of public transit.

Homicide and carjacking numbers have fallen considerably since the height of the pandemic. Still, demographic projections forecast sluggish population growth in St. Paul in the years ahead, a trend reflected in lackluster apartment construction over the past few years. Entire office buildings and even some apartment buildings in downtown St. Paul sit vacant, or have fallen into foreclosure, as major tenants such as Wold Architects and TKDA have fled westward to Minneapolis and Bloomington.

Property tax increases have left many homeowners reeling. The city lost its last downtown grocery store — Lunds & Byerlys — in March, and Cub Foods is leaving Aug. 2 after 30 years in the Midway.

Social media reaction

For some voters, enough is enough. When questioned about the mayor’s prospects for re-election, users of the social media platform Bluesky offered a wide range of responses:

“I’m a lifelong Democrat. I’ll never vote for Mayor Carter again,” wrote one Bluesky user. “I’ve sent his office questions about problems in Lowertown and was met with no response. I followed up. No response. Too many Democratic leaders in St Paul feel ‘safe’ so they ignore what they don’t care about. They ignore citizens.”

Others aren’t so sure. “I have a hard time getting a read on him as a mayor because the city council is comically ineffective, so he spends a good chunk of time/effort dealing with that,” wrote another social media user. “I would like to see him at least challenged, though. Downtown is in terrible shape.”

Some praised the mayor for working with St. Paul Police to focus on non-fatal shootings, an approach that appears to have helped St. Paul temper but not eliminate shooting deaths.

Carter “worked WITH police to change tactics and clear more non-murder shootings to reduce the overall number of homicides,” wrote a Carter supporter on the Bluesky platform. The police “chief even credits the progressive Dem. Imagine that!”

Other social media users noted urban areas across the country have suffered in the era of remote work, high housing costs and online retail, and St. Paul’s challenges are not unique or attributable to one person or political party.

“The issues downtown aren’t the mayor’s fault — they’re the result of major shifts beyond the city’s ability to control,” wrote a Bluesky user. “I think he’s done good work so far, and rehabilitating downtown will take decades, not years. I like the way he’s steered policy with a practical but reliably liberal approach.”

“I don’t blame a mayor for condemned buildings and low office occupancy post-Covid,” wrote another user. “But I do like how he explains his fiscal policies and budget, and supports creative solutions to complex community issues.”

“All the problems that St. Paul has will require time, money and effort to fix and I think he’s still the best person for it,” said yet another Bluesky user. “A candidate that promises an overnight solution isn’t serious and he’s never been that guy, in my opinion. He’s got the right focus and values. Let him cook, as they say.”

Said another user, “I’m alright with the mayor, but I think a good challenger might bring good policy ideas into the foreground. I don’t want an incumbent to ever take things for granted and not try things or play it safe, and a candidate that addresses housing, or downtown, with actual policy ideas would be good.”

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CHICAGO (AP) — A judge in Illinois dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit Friday that sought to disrupt limits Chicago imposes on cooperation between federal immigration agents and local police.

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The lawsuit, filed in February, alleged that so-called sanctuary laws in the nation’s third-largest city “thwart” federal efforts to enforce immigration laws.

It argued that local laws run counter to federal laws by restricting “local governments from sharing immigration information with federal law enforcement officials” and preventing immigration agents from identifying “individuals who may be subject to removal.”

Judge Lindsay Jenkins of the Northern District of Illinois granted the defendants’ motion for dismissal.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he was pleased with the decision and the city is safer when police focus on the needs of Chicagoans.

“This ruling affirms what we have long known: that Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance is lawful and supports public safety. The City cannot be compelled to cooperate with the Trump Administration’s reckless and inhumane immigration agenda,” he said in a statement.

Gov. JB Pritzker welcomed the ruling, saying in a social media post, “Illinois just beat the Trump Administration in federal court.”

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security and did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The administration has filed a series of lawsuits targeting state or city policies seen as interfering with immigration enforcement, including those in Los Angeles, New York City, Denver and Rochester, New York. It sued four New Jersey cities in May.

Heavily Democratic Chicago has been a sanctuary city for decades and has beefed up its laws several times, including during Trump’s first term in 2017.

That same year, then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, signed more statewide sanctuary protections into law, putting him at odds with his party.

There is no official definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities. The terms generally describe limits on local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but sometimes seeks state and local help.

By DAVID BAUDER

With this week’s FCC approval, the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media is expected to be completed in the coming weeks at a value of $8 billion. The question for the new company is whether the psychic cost is much higher.

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It has been a particularly rough few months at Paramount-owned CBS, where the settlement of a lawsuit regarding “60 Minutes” and announced end of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show has led critics to suggest corporate leaders were bowing to President Donald Trump.

Following the Federal Communications Commission approval Thursday, one of the triumvirate of current Paramount leaders, Chris McCarthy, said that he would be leaving the company. McCarthy has been in charge of fading cable properties like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, expected to bear the brunt of an estimated $2 billion in cost cuts identified by Skydance leaders.

Skydance head David Ellison is expected to head the new company, and he has identified former NBC Universal executive Jeff Shell as the incoming president.

CBS News’ trajectory will be scrutinized

After the merger’s Aug. 7 closing date, the new leaders will be watched most closely for how they deal with CBS News, particularly given the $16 million paid in a settlement of Trump’s complaint that last fall’s “60 Minutes” interview was edited to make opponent Kamala Harris look good. Two news executives — News CEO Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens — resigned due to their opposition to the deal.

The appointment of respected insider Tanya Simon to replace Owens this week was seen as a positive sign by people at “60 Minutes.”

Days before the FCC’s vote, Paramount agreed to hire an ombudsman at CBS News with the mission of investigating complaints of political bias. “In all respects, Skydance will ensure that CBS’s reporting is fair, unbiased, and fact-based,” Skydance said in a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

The role of an ombudsman, or public editor, who examines a news outlet’s work is often positive — if they are given independence, said Kelly McBride, an ethics expert who has had that role at NPR for five years. “You really want the person to have loyalty only to their own judgment and the journalistic mission of the organization,” she said.

Having the sole mission of examining bias could be problematic, however. To be fair, a journalist’s work should be closely studied before making that determination, not judged on the basis of one report or passage, she said.

Carr, in an interview with CNBC on Friday, said the role “should go a long way toward restoring America’s trust in media.” Anna Gomez, an FCC commissioner who voted to reject the deal on Thursday, interpreted the arrangement as a way for the government to control journalists.

“They want the news media to report on them in a positive light or in the light that they want,” Gomez told MSNBC. “So they don’t want the media to do their job, which is to hold government to account without fear or favor.”

How the merger could ripple out across Paramount properties

According to published reports, Ellison has explored purchasing The Free Press, a flourishing news site founded by Bari Weiss perhaps best known for a former NPR editor’s study of liberal bias in public broadcasting. An Ellison spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment on Friday.

Colbert’s slow-motion firing — he’ll work until the end of his contract next May — was described by CBS as a financial decision given late-night television’s collapsing economics. Colbert’s relentless lampooning of Trump, and his criticism of the “60 Minutes” settlement, led to suspicion of those motives.

“Was this really financial?” comic Jon Stewart wondered. “Or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger was killing a show that you know rankled a fragile and vengeful president?”

Stewart’s profane criticism on his own Paramount-owned show may provide its own test for Skydance. “The Daily Show” is one of the few original programs left on Comedy Central, and his contract ends later this year.

In an odd way, Comedy Central’s “South Park” buttresses CBS’ claim that the Colbert decision was financial, not political. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone delivered an episode this week that depicted a naked Trump in bed with the devil. Paramount just signed Parker and Stone to a new $1.5 billion deal that Skydance executives surely cleared; it makes the entire “South Park” library available for streaming on Paramount+. a platform where Colbert’s show doesn’t do nearly as well.

Figuring out what to do with others at Paramount’s cable networks, or even the networks as a whole, will be an early decision for Ellison, son of multibillionaire and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.

“There is a clear opportunity to improve Paramount’s growth profile by letting those assets go,” analyst Doug Creutz of TD Securities told investors Friday. “On the other hand, we suspect the Ellisons did not purchase Paramount in order to break it up for parts.”

The merger also brings together the Paramount movie studio with one of its most regular partners. David Ellison has been one of the industry’s top investors and producers since founding Skydance in 2006.

Ellison has a challenge here, too: Years of uncertainty over its future and modest investment in its movie pipeline has shrunk Paramount’s market share to last among the major studios. The Paramount+ streaming service has been a money-loser.

To revive Paramount, Ellison will look to revamp its streaming operations, leverage its franchises and try to bolster family content.

AP Film Writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report.

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Two Southwest Airlines flight attendants are being treated for injuries after a passenger jet heading to Las Vegas from Southern California took a dramatic plunge shortly after takeoff Friday, the airline and passengers said.

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The crew of Southwest flight 1496 responded to two air alerts that required the pilot to climb then descend, the airline said in a statement. The flight departed from Hollywood Burbank Airport just before noon.

Passengers posted on social media that the plane took a dramatic drop soon after takeoff.

“Pilot said his collision warning went off & he needed to avoid plane coming at us,” comedian Jimmy Dore posted on X.

The plane was not in the immediate vicinity of the Hollywood Burbank Airport, north of Los Angeles, at the time, said Mike Christensen, an airport spokesman. Christensen said that neither the control tower or the operations department, which tracks planes departing and arriving, have any record of the Southwest flight plunging in their airspace.

Southwest said the flight continued to Las Vegas, “where it landed uneventfully.” The airline said that it is working with the Federal Aviation Administration “to further understand the circumstances” of the event.

“We are aware of an incident involving Southwest Airlines Flight 1496. The FAA is in contact with Southwest Airlines and we are investigating. Ensuring the safety of everyone in the national airspace system remains our top priority,” the FAA said in a statement.