The St. Paul City Council unanimously approved an ordinance Wednesday barring law enforcement from wearing masks or face coverings.

The council introduced the ordinance on Feb. 4, amid a federal immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota. Many federal officers and agents have been wearing face coverings in Minnesota and around the country.

“I think everyone wants our residents to feel safe, to feel protected and to be able to move around freely, without fear of masked secret agents in our city,” City Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim said during Wednesday’s meeting.

The ordinance, which takes effect 30 days after approval by the mayor and publication, applies to all law enforcement, said City Council Member Molly Coleman.

St. Paul police officers typically do not wear masks, except for potentially face coverings in cold weather or gas masks when needed, said Alyssa Arcand, a St. Paul police spokeswoman.

The ordinance says any officer “who willfully and knowingly violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

“St. Paul police officers will educate members of law enforcement on the ordinance if they are seen or reported to be wearing a mask,” Arcand said. “We are also having conversations with local and federal law enforcement leadership, so they are aware of this new ordinance.”

California ban blocked

A federal judge on Feb. 9 blocked a California law from going into effect that would ban federal immigration agents from covering their faces, but they will still be required to wear clear identification showing their agency and badge number.

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit in November challenging the laws, arguing that they would threaten the safety of officers who are facing harassment, doxing and violence. It also argued the law violated the constitution because the state is directly regulating the federal government.

The judge said she issued the initial ruling because the mask ban as it was enacted did not also apply to state law enforcement authorities, discriminating against the federal government. It left open the possibility to future legislation banning federal agents from wearing masks if it applied to all law enforcement agencies.

Other efforts

The Minnesota House DFL, in announcing plans this week in response to ICE, said it intends to introduce legislation banning masks for agents and requiring visible identification, along with requiring vehicles that transport detainees to be marked as law enforcement.

Last week, the St. Paul city council approved an ordinance requiring law enforcement officers to have the name of their law enforcement agency on the outermost layer of their uniform. It also requires either a name or badge number, or both, on the uniform.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, announced last week that Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota was coming to an end. He said Sunday that a “small” security force will stay for a short period to protect remaining immigration agents. He also said agents will keep investigating fraud allegations.

This report includes information from the Associated Press.

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By STEVE PEOPLES and MICHELLE L. PRICE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump hosted a White House reception for Black History Month on Wednesday, less than two weeks after he sparked a bipartisan outcry by posting a racist video on social media that depicted former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle.

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Trump on Wednesday didn’t reference the video, which he deleted after a widespread backlash but said he won’t apologize for posting. He also did not reference Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, but spoke of other history-making Black Americans.

“We celebrate Black History Month. We honor the memory of those who came before us by continuing their legacy,” he said.

Trump name-checked prominent Black Americans among his supporters, including boxer Mike Tyson, whom Trump praised for defending him against accusations of racism, and rapper Nicki Minaj, whose skin he praised as “so beautiful” while commenting on how long her fingernails were.

The Republican president brought onstage several members of his administration, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and White House pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson.

“As you look out upon this sea of Black Americans, this president hears you. This president cares for you. Don’t let anyone tell you that this president right here, Donald Trump has not — is not for Black America,” Johnson said. “Because he is.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a Black History Month event in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump listed ways he said his policies benefited Black Americans, including the law he signed last year eliminating federal income taxes on tips and his deployment of National Guard troops “to bring back safety” in cities with large populations of Black residents, such as Washington, New Orleans and Memphis, Tennessee.

The reception came the day after Trump proclaimed in another social media post that he has been “falsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left,” in a message that was meant to pay tribute to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died Tuesday.

President Donald Trump and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, right, listen as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson speaks during a Black History Month event in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In response to a question about the post, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier Wednesday: “There is a lot this president has done for all Americans, regardless of race. And he has absolutely been falsely called and smeared as a racist.”

Trump has long recognized Black History Month as president, but his policies and rhetoric while in office often contradict celebrations of diversity and the contributions of Black Americans.

Trump has targeted the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that helped many Black Americans find jobs in both the federal government and a variety of private industries over the last several decades. He has called DEI programs “discrimination,” and he has pushed to eradicate them from the government and put pressure on the private sector to do the same.

At the same time, Trump has painted himself as champion of historically Black colleges and universities. The White House on Wednesday highlighted the Trump administration’s move last year to steer $500 million to HBCUs. The one-time boost largely came from federal money taken away from colleges serving large shares of Hispanic students. The award for HBCUs came days after the Education Department pulled $350 million from other grant programs targeting colleges with certain percentages of Hispanic students and other minority groups. The Trump administration said those grant programs were unconstitutional.

Trump began his second term by claiming some African American history lessons are meant to indoctrinate people into hating the country. He issued an executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” which the administration used to scrub historical information from national parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” including Black history markers.

Shortly after beginning his second term, Trump issued a proclamation recognizing February as Black History Month as the Defense Department was declaring that official resources will no longer be used to mark cultural awareness months.

The White House’s Black History Month reception last year was also held in the wake of another executive order that ended the federal government’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Associated Press writers Collin Binkley in Washington and Graham Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma, contributed to this report.

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of days when the weather gets hot, dry and windy — ideal to spark extreme wildfires — has nearly tripled in the past 45 years across the globe, with the trend increasing even higher in the Americas, a new study shows.

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And more than half of that increase is caused by human-caused climate change, researchers calculated.

What this means is that as the world warms, more places across the globe are prone to go up in flames at the same time because of increasingly synchronous fire weather, which is when multiple places have the right conditions to go up in smoke. Countries may not have enough resources to put out all the fires popping up and help won’t be as likely to come from neighbors busy with their own flames, according to the authors of a study in Wednesday’s Science Advances.

In 1979 and for the next 15 years, the world averaged 22 synchronous fire weather days a year for flames that stayed within large global regions, the study found. In 2023 and 2024, it was up to more than 60 days a year.

“These sorts of changes that we have seen increase the likelihood in a lot of areas that there will be fires that are going to be very challenging to suppress,” said study co-author John Abatzoglou, a fire scientist at the University of California, Merced.

FILE – A person walks on the beach next to homes damaged by the Palisades Fire, Jan. 16, 2025, in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The researchers didn’t look at actual fires, but the weather conditions: warm, with strong winds and dry air and ground.

“It increases the likelihood of widespread fire outbreaks, but the weather is one dimension,” said study lead author Cong Yin, a fire researcher at University of California, Merced. The other big ingredients to fires are oxygen, fuel such as trees and brush, and ignition such as lightning or arson or human accidents.

This study is important because extreme fire weather is the primary — but not only — factor in increasing fire impacts across the globe, said fire scientist Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University in Canada, who wasn’t part of the study. And it’s also important because regions that used to have fire seasons at different times and could share resources are now overlapping, he said.

FILE – A helicopter drops water on the Pickett Fire as it burns into the Aetna Springs area of Napa County, Calif., Aug. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Abatzoglou said: “And that’s where things begin to break.”

More than 60% of the global increase in synchronous fire weather days can be attributed to climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Yin said. He and his colleagues know this because they used computer simulations to compare what’s happened in the last 45 years to a fictional world without the increased greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

FILE – Cars line the streets near wildfire-burned homes in Tome, Chile, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Javier Torres, FIle)

The continental United States, from 1979 to 1988, averaged 7.7 synchronous fire weather days a year. But in the last 10 years that average was up to 38 days a year, according to Yin.

But that is nothing compared to the southern half of South America. That region averaged 5.5 synchronous fire weather days a year from 1979 to 1988; over the last decade, that’s risen to 70.6 days a year, including 118 days in 2023.

FILE – A wildfire burns near Concepcion, Chile, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Javier Torres, File)

Of 14 global regions, only Southeast Asia saw a decrease in synchronous fire weather, probably because it is getting more humid there, Yin said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s top economist on Wednesday urged that Federal Reserve economists be punished for research last week that showed American companies and consumers paying for nearly all the new tariffs imposed by the White House last year.

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“The paper is an embarrassment,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council said in an interview on CNBC. “It’s the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system. The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined.”

Hassett’s comments represent the latest attack from the Trump administration on the Fed, which has traditionally been independent of day-to-day politics. It also suggests the White House remains sensitive to concerns about rising costs for groceries, housing, and big-ticket items such as furniture and cars, as surveys show Americans remain disgruntled about the economy.

Several other studies have reached similar conclusions as the New York Fed, including one by economists at Harvard and the University of Chicago; a separate report by the Kiel Institut, a German think tank; and a report last week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s study, published last week, found U.S. businesses and consumers are paying nearly 90% of the tariffs that Trump has imposed. Average tariffs on imports have risen from 2.6% at the beginning of last year to 13% at the end of the year, the economists found.

Since U.S. importers pay the tariffs directly to the Treasury, the main way overseas companies would bear the burden of the costs — as the Trump administration has said they do — would be if they reduced their prices to offset the tariff costs. The New York Fed research found that foreign exporters have only slightly lowered their prices, by much less than the tariff increase.

This isn’t the first time the White House has attacked economists for concluding that Americans are paying the tariffs or will soon do so. Last August, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs projected that Americans would pay an increasing share of the tariffs over time. Trump responded by calling on David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, to fire the economist.