A pet wellness clinic will be held in St. Paul on Tuesday for people to bring in pets for free exams, vaccines and additional services, such as flea, tick, and heartworm preventive care.

The Animal Humane Society will hold its clinic from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1159 University Ave. W. in St. Paul.

Seventy-five people have made appointments and organizers say there should be another 30-40 spots for walk-ins.

“These clinics are critical to keeping pets healthy and with the people who love them. AHS knows when pets do better, people do better and everyone deserves the love of a pet regardless of their income,” the organization said.

The organization holds wellness clinics each month in different Metro counties. Last month the clinic was held in Hastings in Dakota County.

Find more information at animalhumanesociety.org/resource/pop-wellness-clinics.

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By AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday justified the U.S. military’s decision to fire a second missile in a heavily scrutinized attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea by claiming that two suspected drug smugglers were trying to right the vessel after it had capsized in the initial strike.

Trump also backtracked on whether he was open to releasing the video footage of the second strike. Last week, Trump told reporters he saw “no problem” in releasing the footage, but on Monday he said he would leave the decision to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The Republican administration is facing calls from Democratic lawmakers to release footage of the Sept. 2 operation in the Caribbean Sea, which killed nine people aboard the boat in an initial strike and then two more who managed to survive.

“They were trying to return the boat back to where it could float, and we didn’t want to see that because that boat was loaded up with drugs,” Trump said on Monday.

When asked by a reporter about his comments last week suggesting he was open to releasing footage of the second strike, Trump denied that was his position and bitterly attacked the reporter as “obnoxious” and “terrible.”

“Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me,” Trump said.

Trump, however, last Wednesday in an exchange with reporters about the strike footage said: “Whatever they have we’d certainly release.”

The Sept. 2 operation was the first in what has become a monthslong series of American strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that the administration says are targeting drug smugglers working on behalf of cartels, including some controlled by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. At least 87 people have been killed in 22 known strikes.

Trump has broadly justified the campaign as necessary for his administration to stem the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the United States. He claims the U.S. is in armed conflict with narco-terrorists.

Hegseth said in a Fox News interview Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California that officials were reviewing the video, but he did not commit to releasing it. “Whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible” about it,” Hegseth said.

The Pentagon on Monday did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of Hegseth’s review or confirm Trump’s assertion that the suspects appeared to be trying to turn over the vessel before the second strike was fired.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are demanding that the Pentagon hand over “unedited video of strikes” against drug cartels to Congress, threatening to withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget if it doesn’t. The provision is included in the $900 billion defense bill the House is expected to vote on later this week.

Over the weekend, Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he would not oppose public release of the footage.

But Cotton, among the top lawmakers on national security committees who were briefed by the Navy admiral commanding those strikes, is splitting with Democrats over whether military personnel acted lawfully in carrying out the second strike to kill the two survivors.

“It’s not gruesome. I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing,” he said, explaining why he does not have a problem with releasing all the footage. “It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years.”

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the video “was profoundly shaking.” And Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said it “did not appear that these two survivors were in any position to continue the fight.” Both Himes and Smith, who spoke separately on Sunday talk shows, have viewed the video.

The classified sessions on Capitol Hill came after a report that Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley had ordered the follow-on attack to comply with Hegseth’s demands.

Bradley told lawmakers there was no “kill them all” order from Hegseth, but a video of the entire series of attacks left some lawmakers with serious questions. Legal experts have said killing survivors of a strike at sea could be a violation of the laws of military warfare.

AP writers Konstantin Toropin, Ben Finley and Bill Barrow contributed reporting.

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A federal judge investigating whether Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should face a contempt charge over flights carrying migrants to El Salvador said Monday he wants to hear from a whistleblower and top Justice Department official.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington ordered the government to make Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign available for testimony on Dec. 16. Boasberg wants to hear a day earlier from fired Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni.

The order for testimony ratchets up the extraordinary clash between the judicial and executive branches.

In March, Boasberg ordered the Republican administration to turn around two planes carrying Venezuelan migrants.

Instead, the planes landed in El Salvador hours later, touching off the contempt probe. Boasberg is trying to determine whether the administration willfully ignored his order and should be referred for prosecution on a contempt charge.

Reuveni has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging a Justice Department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members. The administration has said the allegations are untrue.

The Justice Department has said Ensign conveyed Boasberg’s oral order and a subsequent written order to the Department of Homeland Security.

In a written declaration submitted to the court Friday, Noem said she made the decision not to return the planes to the U.S. after receiving “privileged legal advice” from the Homeland Security Department’s acting general counsel and “through him from the senior leadership of the Department of Justice.”

Boasberg, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, called Noem’s declaration “cursory.”

“As this declaration does not provide enough information for the Court to determine whether her decision was a willful violation of the Court’s Order, the Court cannot at this juncture find probable cause that her actions constituted criminal contempt,” the judge wrote in Monday’s order.

The administration has said it did not violate Boasberg’s order. The judge’s directive to return the planes was made verbally in court but not included in his written order, government attorneys said in a court filing in November.

That order blocked the administration from removing “any of the individual Plaintiffs from the United States for 14 days,” but said nothing about the flights already airborne, they said.

The two planes had already departed U.S. territory and airspace, so the migrants aboard them had already been “removed” and therefore fell outside of the court’s order, Justice Department lawyers said in the court filing.

Justice Department attorneys in a court filing Friday objected to any “live testimony,” urging Boasberg instead to “proceed promptly” with a criminal contempt referral if he believed his order was “sufficiently clear in imposing an obligation to halt the transfer of custody for detainees who had already been removed from the United States.”

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The first Farm Aid held in Minnesota raised more than $1.3 million that will support family farmers, organizers announced Monday.

Farm Aid’s end-of-year grant program advances the on-the-ground work of farm and food organizations across the country. This year’s grantmaking focuses on four issue areas: racial equity, farmer-led solutions to climate change, stopping the growth of industrial agriculture and providing support for farmers experiencing crisis and farm stress.

“These organizations are the heart of the farm movement, with family farmers at the center of their work and leadership. We are so proud and grateful to stand with them,” said Farm Aid president, founder and performer Willie Nelson in a news release. “Like Farm Aid, many of these folks have been working since the 1980s to be crucial sources of strength for farmers and rural communities. This is especially important as farmers once again face trying times reminiscent of the crisis that gave rise to Farm Aid and the movement of which we’re a part.”

The all-day event, which took place in September at Huntington Bank Stadium, featured Nelson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds and Margo Price, among others.

Grant programs include $60,000 in emergency and disaster grants to individual farmers, $66,500 in disaster grants related to extreme weather events and climate disasters, $40,000 in farmer leadership grants and $20,000 in scholarship funds to support students majoring in agriculture and related fields.

For further details, see farmaid.org.

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