After shocking the world by winning 14 games last season, the Vikings got blown out by the Los Angeles Rams in the playoffs, a humbling defeat that paved the way for some major changes on the roster.

Not only did the Vikings make the difficult decision to move on from Sam Darnold at quarterback, they reinforced the trenches on both sides of the ball while spending upwards of $300 million in free agency.

Now, the Vikings will move forward this season with rookie J.J. McCarthy leading the charge under center. He has fully recovered from his torn meniscus and is ready to step into the spotlight as the face of the franchise.

Here are five storylines to follow as the Vikings open training camp this week at TCO Performance Center:

The start of the J.J. McCarthy era

There were flashes of brilliance from McCarthy in the spring; he impressed on the field with his arm talent, and off the field with his magnetic personality at the podium. Will he be able to keep the momentum going in the summer?

That’s the biggest question that needs to be answered.

Every move that the Vikings have made over the past few months is indicative of a group fully expecting to compete for the Super Bowl. Whether they are capable of actually doing that will fall squarely on McCarthy’s shoulders.

Although the front office made a concerted effort to surround McCarthy with playmakers, the Vikings will go as he goes this season, for better or for worse.

The revamped offensive line

Maybe if head coach Kevin O’Connell had some more time to cool off after the Vikings lost to the Rams in the playoffs, he wouldn’t have been so honest. The emotions were still raw for O’Connell roughly 30 minutes after time expired, however, as he emphasized that the interior of the offensive line needed to improve.

That statement served as a compass for the Vikings in free agency as they signed Ryan Kelly to play center and Will Fries to play right guard. The remodeling continued in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft when they chose Donovan Jackson to play left guard.

There’s no doubt the interior of the offensive line will look different this season. Some early signs of how much it has actually improved will come in training camp when that trio takes the field together for the first time.

The dynamic duo at running back

The fact that the Vikings were able to run it back with Aaron Jones can’t be overstated. He was an extremely important part of the offense last season at running back, proving to be a difference maker on the ground and catching passes out of the backfield.

The only issue? Jones set a career high with 306 touches. That’s clearly not something the Vikings want to see happen again, which explains why they went out and acquired Jordan Mason in a trade. Now the Vikings boast a dynamic duo at running back.

That should help make life easier on McCarthy whenever he drops back to pass.

The competition at cornerback

The signings of Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave made headlines in free agency as the Vikings prioritized the interior of the defensive line. So did the three-year, $54 million deal that put Byron Murphy Jr. among the highest paid cornerbacks in the NFL.

That said, the Vikings also made a couple of savvy moves that flew under the radar, signing Isaiah Rodgers and Jeff Okudah to provide some depth on the corners.

The expectation is that Rodgers and Okudah will be competing against each other to see who emerges as the starter. The competition at cornerback also will include Mekhi Blackmon, Dwight McGlothern and a handful of other players hoping to make a name for themselves.

The fact that the Vikings didn’t kick the tires on Jalen Ramsey or Jaire Alexander when they were looking for a change of scenery suggests they are content to let the string play out internally before signing anybody else.

The contract extension for Josh Metellus

It will be interesting to see how much Josh Metellus participates in training camp if he doesn’t get a contract extension soon. There have been no indications that he plans to hold out.

The hardest part about the negotiations when it comes to Metellus is the fact that he plays so many different positions. Though he’s technically a safety, he lines up all over the field on defense, which makes it hard to figure out his market value.

After losing Cam Bynum in free agency, the Vikings need Metellus to pair alongside Harrison Smith and Theo Jackson.

Related Articles

Vikings’ Jordan Addison pleads no contest, awaits punishment from NFL

Rosemount ready to rep Minnesota at NFL Flag Football Championships

Vikings’ Dallas Turner scammed for $240K in alleged bank fraud scheme under police investigation

Kirk Cousins says on Netflix’s ‘Quarterback’ he played through arm injury to keep Falcons’ starting job

Everything you need to know about Vikings training camp this month

By REGINA GARCIA CANO, ERIC TUCKER and MEGAN JANETSKY, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans on Friday in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, officials said.

The arrangement represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad and lands El Salvador a swap that its president had proposed months ago.

“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement in which he thanked El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

Bukele said his country had handed over all the Venezuelan nationals in its custody. The Venezuelan government said it had paid a “steep price” by having to release the U.S. nationals but was pleased to have its own jailed citizens back.

Central to the deal are the more than 250 Venezuelan migrants being freed by El Salvador, which in March agreed to a $6 million payment from the Trump administration to house them in a notorious Salvadoran prison.

Related Articles

Trump administration seeks release of Epstein grand jury records but not Justice Department files

Trump’s birthright citizenship order remains blocked as lawsuits march on after Supreme Court ruling

Trump offers regulatory relief for coal, iron ore and chemical industries

Education Department will release some frozen grants supporting after-school and summer programs

Federal disaster aid is uncertain for states even as Texas floods underscore need

The arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly remove men his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang. The administration did not provide evidence to back those claims.

The Venezuelans have been held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which was built to hold alleged gang members in Bukele’s war on the country’s gangs. Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths and cases of torture inside its walls.

Among the Americans freed Friday was 37-year-old Lucas Hunter, whose family says he was kidnapped in January by Venezuelan border guards from inside Colombia, where he was vacationing.

“We cannot wait to see him in person and help him recover from the ordeal,” said his younger sister Sophie Hunter.

The release of the Venezuelans is an invaluable win for Maduro as he presses his efforts to assert himself as president despite credible evidence that he lost reelection last year. Long on the receiving end of accusations of human rights abuses, Maduro for months used the men’s detention in El Salvador to flip the script on the U.S. government, forcing even some of his strongest political opponents to agree with his condemnation of the migrants’ treatment.

The migrants’ return will allow Maduro to reaffirm support within his shrinking base, while it demonstrates that even if the Trump administration and other nations see him as an illegitimate president, he is still firmly in power.

The release comes just a week after the State Department reiterated its policy of shunning Maduro government officials and recognizing only the National Assembly elected in 2015 as the legitimate government of the country. Signed by Rubio, the cable said U.S. officials are free to meet and have discussions with National Assembly members “but cannot engage with Maduro regime representatives unless cleared by the Department of State.”

Venezuelan authorities detained nearly a dozen U.S. citizens in the second half of 2024 and linked them to alleged plots to destabilize the country.

“We have prayed for this day for almost a year. My brother is an innocent man who was used as a political pawn by the Maduro regime, said a statement from Christian Casteneda, whose brother Wilbert, a Navy SEAL, was arrested in his Caracas hotel room last year.

Global Reach, a nonprofit organization that had advocated for his release and that of several other Americans, said Venezuelan officials initially and falsely accused him of being involved in a coup but backed off that claim.

The Americans were among dozens of people, including activists, opposition members and union leaders, that Venezuela’s government took into custody in its brutal campaign to crack down on dissent in the 11 months since Maduro claimed to win reelection.

The U.S. government, along with several other Western nations, does not recognize Maduro’s claim to victory and instead points to tally sheets collected by the opposition coalition showing that its candidate, Edmundo González, won the July 2024 election by a more than a two-to-one margin.

The dispute over results prompted immediate protests, and the government responded by detaining more than 2,000 people, mostly poor young men. González fled into exile in Spain to avoid arrest.

Despite the U.S. not recognizing Maduro, the two governments have carried out other recent exchanges.

In May, Venezuela freed a U.S. Air Force veteran after about six months in detention. Scott St. Clair’s family has said the language specialist, who served four tours in Afghanistan, had traveled to South America to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

St. Clair was handed over to Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for special missions, during a meeting on a Caribbean island.

Three months earlier, six other Americans whom the U.S. government considered wrongfully detained in Venezuela were released after Grenell met with Maduro at the presidential palace.

Grenell, during the meeting in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, urged Maduro to take back deported migrants who have committed crimes in the U.S. Hundreds of Venezuelans have since been deported to their home country, but more than 200 deported from the U.S. have been held since mid-March at the prison in El Salvador.

Lawyers have little access to those in the prison, which is heavily guarded, and information has been locked tight, other than heavily produced state propaganda videos showing tattooed men packed behind bars.

As a result, prominent human rights groups and lawyers working with the Venezuelans on legal cases had little information of their movement until they boarded the plane.

Tucker reported from Washington and Janetsky from Mexico City. Associated Press writers Matt Lee and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

A metal foundry on St. Paul’s East Side at loggerheads with state regulators over air quality emissions has filed its second lawsuit against the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, this time alleging breaches of the state’s Data Practices Act and a count of defamation related to a December plant fire.

The Northern Iron Foundry, which was purchased by Lawton Standard in 2022, filed its latest lawsuit on Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court. It is being represented by the Minneapolis law firm of Dorsey and Whitney.

The 11-page civil complaint calls for proper enforcement of an existing stipulation agreement and alleges one count each of breach of contract, violation of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and defamation.

In March, the foundry’s residential neighbors filed a class action suit against Northern Iron —  Brittney Bruce v. Northern Iron — alleging their homes had been contaminated by soot laced with heavy metals from the foundry. MPCA testing found chromium, cobalt, lead and manganese — the same metals detected in samples taken from the Northern Iron facility.

Response from Northern Iron

On Feb. 10, in response to Northern Iron’s May 2024 lawsuit against state regulators, the Minnesota Attorney General’s office issued a letter to the court, on behalf of the MPCA, expressing concern about the metal-tainted soot landing on residences near the Forest Street plant, as well as overdue air quality monitoring data and other issues delaying permitting.

During a July 10 hearing in the class action suit, “it was confirmed that the data regarding soot is not public data and is likely classified as civil investigative data, which can only be released pursuant to a court order,” reads the company’s latest civil filing, which claims a data privacy violation.

The attorney general’s office also claimed that Northern Iron submitted a permit application with new air quality modeling data more than four months after both were due, and that both were incomplete. The company, according to the attorney general’s office, submitted “a flurry of last-minute” requests for legal evidence known as discovery in an apparent attempt to delay the case.

The attorney general’s letter went on to say that a December fire that took place at Northern Iron was due to improper installation of equipment, even though “the MPCA has no evidence that the fire was caused by improper installation,” reads the lawsuit.

“The MPCA knew at the time that it submitted the Feb. 10 letter that the statement was and is false,” reads the lawsuit, which claims the letter amounts to defamation.

The new civil complaint notes that the MPCA issued Northern Iron a notice of violation in April 2023 over outdated emissions controls and equipment installed without proper permits, leading to a stipulation agreement between the two parties in July 2023.

The company agreed to pay the MPCA $41,000, and the agreement spelled out corrective actions Northern Iron would take while regulators held off on any further penalties.

The MPCA then issued a new administrative order in April 2024, alleging further violations. Northern Iron responded by filing a petition against state regulators in Ramsey County District Court that May, claiming that the MPCA had bypassed a dispute resolution process laid out in their previous agreement.

Added penalties

Last October, the MPCA levied $219,000 in added penalties against Northern Iron through an administrative penalty order for alleged violations of the stipulation agreement. The company filed a legal appeal of the order last November.

In December, the MPCA issued an amended administrative penalty order demanding penalty payments within 30 days, and in early June, regulators issued a notice of intent to revoke the company’s air permit without likelihood of it being reissued.

The company’s latest civil filing, which maintains that the dispute had hurt its standing with vendors and workers, calls for unspecified damages above $75,000 to be paid to Northern Iron for breach of the stipulation agreement, as well as attorney’s fees, costs and whatever other relief the court may deem suitable.

The summons and complaint was served to the MPCA on Wednesday, and the case was assigned that day to Judge Leonardo Castro.

Related Articles

Man ‘randomly struck,’ wounded by gunshot fired outside his St. Paul home

Minnesota musicians enter the Yacht Club Festival with high hopes

3M raises profit outlook in defiance of tariff impact

St. Paul: Ashland Ave. tenants see 28%-50% rent hikes despite rent control

900-pound meth case investigated by St. Paul officers draws federal charges

El programa Head Start apoya la educación de los niños desde el nacimiento hasta los 5 años, e incluye servicios gratuitos de guardería, asistencia nutricional, exámenes médicos y recursos para mujeres embarazadas. El año pasado atendió a 42.997 personas en todo el estado de Nueva York, incluidas miles de familias sin hogar.

(Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Este artículo se publicó originalmente en inglés el 18 de julio. Traducido por Daniel Parra. Read the English version here.

El 10 de julio, el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos de Estados Unidos (HHS por sus siglas en inglés) anunció un cambio de política en el programa federal Head Start que excluiría a los menores indocumentados. 

La propuesta anularía una interpretación de la era Clinton de 1998 de la Ley de reconciliación de la responsabilidad personal y la oportunidad laboral (PRWORA por sus siglas en inglés). Esta permitía a ciertos niños sin estatus migratorio legal acceder a servicios que no se consideraban como “beneficios públicos federales”, y que formaban parte del programa educativo gubernamental de preparación escolar.

Se espera que las normas entren en vigor después de su publicación en el Registro Federal el 13 de agosto, tras un periodo de 30 días de comentarios públicos.

Estos cambios son parte de un conjunto de propuestas del presidente Donald Trump para dificultar el acceso de los inmigrantes a los servicios del gobierno, y se produce mientras su administración agrega requisitos más estrictos para la asistencia pública.

El HHS también enumeró otros programas financiados con fondos federales que ahora se considerarían “beneficios públicos” para excluir a los inmigrantes sin estatus legal, que según el secretario del HHS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. anteriormente “desviaban dólares de los impuestos de los estadounidenses trabajadores para incentivar la inmigración ilegal”.

Poco después del anuncio, la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles (ACLU por sus siglas en inglés) demandó a la administración, mientras que los defensores condenaron el plan.

Si la nueva norma entrara en vigor, exigiría verificar la ciudadanía o el estatus migratorio de un niño antes de poder inscribirlo en un programa Head Start, lo que excluiría a los niños indocumentados en todo el país. 

Head Start ofrece una variedad de servicios para apoyar la educación temprana de los niños desde el nacimiento hasta los 5 años de edad, incluyendo guardería gratuita, asistencia nutricional, exámenes de salud y recursos para las mujeres embarazadas. 

Atiende principalmente a niños de familias con bajos ingresos, pero también a niños sin hogar, en hogares de acogida o que reciben asistencia pública. En el pasado, el programa también estaba disponible para residentes legales permanentes, niños a los que se había concedido asilo o estatuto de refugiado.

Según el análisis del impacto de la normativa del HHS, el Congreso destinó $12.270 millones de dólares a los programas Head Start Preescolar y Early Head Start en el año fiscal 2024, para atender a 718.947 niños y mujeres embarazadas en todo el país.

Si bien el HHS supervisa el programa, en su mayor parte lo gestionan entes locales. El Departamento de Escuelas Públicas (NYCPS por sus siglas en inglés) de la ciudad de Nueva York (anteriormente conocido como el Departamento de Educación) gestiona los programas Head Start en la ciudad, así como una red de proveedores que reciben financiación directamente del gobierno federal. City Limits contactó a los proveedores que reciben fondos federales, pero se negaron a hablar públicamente sobre el asunto, preocupados de poner en peligro su financiación.

La National Head Start Association (NHSA por sus siglas en inglés), una organización sin fines de lucro que representa al personal y las familias de Head Start, dice que Head Start financió 42.997 plazas del programa en el estado de Nueva York en el año fiscal 2024. El programa atendió a 3.807 familias locales sin hogar, pero ni los funcionarios ni los defensores saben cuántos podrían quedar excluidos del programa si los niños indocumentados se hacen inelegibles.

El NYCPS y la Oficina de Servicios para Niños y Familias del Estado de Nueva York (OCFS por sus siglas en inglés) dijeron a City Limits que no saben exactamente cuántos niños pueden perder la cobertura.

“Las escuelas públicas de la ciudad de Nueva York no rastrean ni preguntan por el estado de inmigración o el país de origen de nuestros estudiantes”, dijo un portavoz de la alcaldía. “Estamos revisando este cambio y seguiremos vigilando la situación”.

Un portavoz de la OCFS dijo a través de correo electrónico que la agencia está “actualmente evaluando el impacto de la orientación emitida por el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos”. 

El análisis de impacto del HSS también reconoce que la cantidad de beneficiarios que excluiría “es inherentemente incierta, ya que esta información demográfica no se recoge actualmente”.

Según sus estimaciones, sin embargo, “aproximadamente 115.000 niños y familias de Head Start podrían verse afectados, o alrededor del 16 por ciento” de los inscritos en Head Start en todo el país durante el último año fiscal. 

El subdirector de la NHSA, Tommy Sheridan, expresó su preocupación por la posibilidad de que esta política cree obstáculos para los niños y las familias, especialmente para los que carecen de hogar. “La presentación de documentación es un reto, y tenemos que ser conscientes de ello cuando estamos pensando en la verificación de esto”, dijo. 

“También nos preocupa que exigirle a los programas Head Start que verifiquen el estatus [migratorio] cambie la relación que tenemos tanto con las familias como con la comunidad, y es algo que nos alejará de nuestro trabajo principal, que es garantizar que los niños estén preparados para la escuela y que las familias también estén preparadas para tener éxito en la vida”, añadió.

Nora Moran, directora de política y defensa de United Neighborhood Houses, que presta servicios de Head Start, dijo que los proveedores del programa y los administradores de la ciudad nunca han tenido que preguntar a los niños o a sus familias sobre su estatus migratorio como condición para la inscripción.

“Sabemos que hay familias con diversos estatus migratorios que inscriben a sus hijos en los programas Head Start, pero no podemos ofrecer un número preciso”, dijo Moran.

Agregó que el anuncio ha confundido a las organizaciones comunitarias que dirigen los programas Head Start. Anteriormente, dijeron los proveedores, su principal responsabilidad era identificar a las personas en la ciudad que cumplían con los criterios de elegibilidad del programa, y por décadas el gobierno había considerado a Head Start como un programa de educación temprana, en lugar de un beneficio público que excluiría a ciertos inmigrantes.

“United Neighborhood Houses condena el último intento de la administración federal de socavar nuestras comunidades”, declaró la directora ejecutiva de la organización, Susan Stamler. “Para ser claros: echar a los menores inmigrantes de los programas Head Start o a los adultos de los programas de educación y formación es tan insensato como cruel”.

Para ponerse en contacto con los reporteros de esta noticia, escriba a Daniel@citylimits.org. Para ponerse en contacto con la editora, escriba a Jeanmarie@citylimits.org.

The post Proveedores de programas Head Start en NYC evalúan impacto del plan para excluir a menores indocumentados appeared first on City Limits.