Lynn Youngblom, right, and Dane Youngblom, second from right, both of Duluth, hold up signs in opposition of ICE while attending a rally outside of the Teamsters Local 346 building in Duluth while U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber was speaking with members on Wednesday evening, Jan. 28, 2026.

(Dan Williamson / Duluth Media Group)

A large crowd of protesters wrapped around the sidewalk on both sides of a union hall in the Lincoln Park neighborhood as U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber spoke to members inside Wednesday.

With chants like “Where’s Pete?” and “We want to talk with Pete,” protesters held signs challenging the Hermantown Republican’s support of President Donald Trump, removing the mining ban on federal land within the same watershed as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the federal government’s immigration enforcement in the state.

The gathering outside the Teamsters General Local 346, 2802 W. First St., came four days after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents shot and killed protester Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, in Minneapolis, and three weeks after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis.

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., leaves the Teamsters Local 346 building in Duluth after speaking with members on Wednesday evening, Jan. 28, 2026.

(Dan Williamson / Duluth Media Group)

When Stauber left through the back door of the Teamsters General Local 346, protesters yelled and flipped him off as he backed his truck out of the Teamsters’ parking lot.

‘You don’t get much opportunity’

Fiadh Kinsella, of Duluth, who has worked at Dinosaur National Monument and Glacier and Mount Rainer National Parks, wore a classic wide-brimmed National Park Service hat to the protest.

Fiadh Kinsella, of Duluth, speaks during an interview with FOX 21 outside of the Teamsters Local 346 building in Duluth while attending a rally to voice concerns with U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber on Wednesday evening, Jan. 28, 2026.

(Dan Williamson / Duluth Media Group)

“I think we’re kind of at a turning point where either things are going to cool off a lot or it’s going to get a lot, lot worse … if you want your voice to be heard, that now is the time to start getting out there, showing up en masse, regardless of where you’re at, to really push for what you believe in,” Kinsella said.

Standing on a pile of snow at the corner of First Street and 28th Avenue West, Beth Hall, of Duluth, said she makes regular calls to Stauber’s Hermantown and Washington, D.C., office but feels like her concerns aren’t being heard by staff. She was particularly concerned about mining near the BWCAW.

“When I heard he was going to be in town, I had to come here and be a part of this movement so he can see how many constituents don’t agree with many, many of his stands,” Hall said. “You don’t get much opportunity because he has not made himself available to any of us for a very long time.”

One topic, media limited

Stauber, who did not respond to the News Tribune’s request for comment, was there to speak about the bipartisan Faster Labor Contracts Act, a bill he introduced in September meant to speed up first contracts between a newly unionized group of workers and their employer.

According to their website, the Local 346 represents pipeline workers in Minnesota and all its surrounding states, and workers in Minnesota and northern Wisconsin in a variety of industries including delivery, driving, construction, paper mills and policing.

In an email Wednesday morning, Local 346 Secretary Treasurer Zak Radzak told the News Tribune that it was the only topic of the meeting.

“We will be running on rules to not allow other topics to be discussed at this meeting,” Radzak said.

The media was largely blocked from attending.

While WDIO was allowed inside the event, other media organizations were not. A Minnesota Star Tribune photographer was kicked out after being initially allowed into the entryway.

Northern News Now reported that its photographer and reporter were initially allowed into the event but were called “unwanted guests,” and the meeting was paused until the two left the building.

Northern News Now alleges a Teamster “shoved” the photographer out the door as the photographer was trying to leave.

A News Tribune reporter and photographer were denied entry; the man at the door, wearing Teamsters apparel, said he had been instructed by Radzak not to let the Star Tribune or News Tribune inside.

Earlier on Wednesday, Radzak told the News Tribune in an email that their staff would not be let in because “we have very limited space and we are expecting a packed house. We want to make sure every member that wants to attend is able to get in. So for that reason I have to say no.”

Radzak did not respond to the News Tribune’s requests for comment after Wednesday’s meeting on who decided which outlets were allowed inside or if the union condoned a Teamster member allegedly shoving a journalist.

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President Trump endorses MN’s congressional Republicans for 2026

President Donald Trump held his first Cabinet meeting of 2026 on Thursday, focusing on the economy, housing, energy, health initiatives and drug prices. But while he painted a rosy picture of his administration’s accomplishments, some of his boasts —- and that of other officials —- were off the mark.

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Here’s a look at the facts.

Investments

TRUMP: “$18 trillion is being invested now.”

THE FACTS: Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum.

The White House website offers a far lower number, $9.6 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published Tuesday raises doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

Housing

SCOTT TURNER, secretary of housing and urban development: “Because of your policy sir, home sales in December, they rose sharply to their strongest pace in three years.”

THE FACTS: That overstates what’s happening in the housing market, a persistent source of frustration for U.S. consumers.

The National Association of Realtors did report that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of home sales in December rose to 4.35 million units, “nearly” the highest in three years, as the trade association noted. But the sum was just a 1.4% year-over-year increase.

More importantly, it could have been a monthly blip as the association separately said that pending home sales in December had fallen 3% from a year ago.

Trump has said he wants to keep home prices high to increase people’s net worth, but doing so will likely keep construction levels low and price out possible first-time buyers.

California wildfires

TRUMP, discussing state and local permitting for rebuilding homes destroyed in the 2025 wildfires around Los Angeles: “They have been unable to give permits. There are like three houses being built out of thousands and thousands. They have no permits.”

THE FACTS: On Friday, Trump signed an executive order directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration to find a way to issue regulations that would preempt state and local rules for obtaining permits and allow builders to “self-certify” that they have complied with “substantive health, safety, and building standards.”

According to Los Angeles county and city data, about 3,100 permits have been issued within the Palisades and Eaton fire zones as of Thursday. Fewer than a dozen residences have been rebuilt, but about 900 homes are under construction.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Trump on social media, saying local officials are moving at a fast pace. Newsom called on the Trump administration to approve the state’s $33.9 billion disaster aid request.

Survivor advocates also told The Associated Press that permits are not necessarily the primary obstacle for impacted households right now, as many still struggle to secure full insurance payouts, or face gaps of hundreds of thousands of dollars between what they’ve received and actual rebuilding costs.

Typically it takes about 18 months after a major wildfire for the permitting process to gain steam, according to Andrew Rumbach, co-lead of the Climate and Communities Program at the Urban Institute.

He pointed to the recovery pattern of a December 2021 blaze that erupted south of Boulder, Colorado, destroying more than 1,000 homes. After a year, the cleanup was mostly done and most permit applications were in. Then it took about six more months for the permits to be issued, he told the AP this month.

The two California fires killed 31 people and destroyed about 13,000 residential properties.

___

TRUMP, discussing the effects of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires: “They should have allowed the water to come down from the Pacific Northwest, which was very plentiful. But they didn’t do that.”

THE FACTS: Contrary to Trump’s claim, no water supply from the Pacific Northwest connects to California’s system.

Most of California’s water comes from the northern part of the state, where it melts from mountain snow and runs into rivers that connect to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. From there, much of it is sent farther south to farmers and cities like Los Angeles through two large pumping and canal systems. One is run by the federal government and the other by the state.

Some Los Angeles fire hydrants ran dry during last year’s wildfires, but local officials said the outages occurred because the municipal system was not designed to deal with such a massive disaster.

Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the Small Business Administration, also brought up Trump’s claim about releasing water to fight the fires, claiming an executive order got “water to the scene in your earliest days of your presidency.”

But the Jan. 24, 2025, executive order resulted in water going to a dry lake basin more than 100 miles from Los Angeles.

President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump repeats other false claims

TRUMP: “There’s never been a first year like this, including the fact that we put out — extinguished — eight wars.”

THE FACTS: This statistic is highly exaggerated. Although Trump has helped mediate relations among many nations, his impact isn’t as clear-cut as he makes it seem.

___

TRUMP: “You’re not allowed to say the word coal without preceding by saying clean, beautiful coal. Clean, beautiful coal.”

THE FACTS: The production of coal is cleaner now than it has been historically, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean.

___

TRUMP, on China: “They make the windmills, but they don’t have a lot of wind farms. That’s — somebody’s oughta look at that. How many wind farms do they have? Very, very few. They make them. They sell them. They make a fortune, but they don’t use them.”

THE FACTS: China is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, producing more than half of the supply. It is also installing them at a record pace.

Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin in New York, Josh Boak in Washington, Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Gabriela Aoun in San Diego contributed to this report.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

By TODD RICHMOND

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A jury found a Wisconsin man guilty Thursday of forging threats against President Donald trump in an attempt to get the victim in a robbery case against him deported.

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Online court records show the Milwaukee County jury found 52-year-old Demetric Scott guilty of felony identity theft and witness intimidation after deliberating for most of the day. He represented himself during the three-day trial and was immediately taken into custody after the verdicts were read, leaving no way to reach him for comment on Thursday evening.

According to court documents, Mexican immigrant Ramon Morales Reyes was riding his bike in Milwaukee in September 2023 when Scott approached him and kicked him off the bike. He stabbed Morales Reyes with a box cutter before stealing the bike and riding away.

Scott was arrested hours later. While he was in jail, Scott wrote multiple letters posing as Morales Reyes to state and federal officials threatening to kill Trump at a rally. Federal immigration authorities took Morales Reyes into custody in May after he dropped his daughter off at school.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blasted his photo on social media, along with an excerpt of a letter he purportedly wrote in English promising to shoot Trump at a rally. The White House and Trump supporters played up his arrest as a major success in the administration’s crackdown on immigration.

Investigators determined that Morales Reyes couldn’t have written the letters since he doesn’t speak English well, can’t write in the language and the handwriting in the letters didn’t match his.

Meanwhile, Scott was making calls from jail in which he talked about letters that needed to be mailed and a plan to get U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to pick someone up so his trial could get dismissed. He admitted to police that he wrote the letters.

Scott was charged separately with armed robbery, battery, and reckless endangerment in connection with the bike incident. The jury on Thursday acquitted him on the robbery and battery counts but found him guilty on the endangerment charge.

Court records show prosecutors charged Scott in 2022 with being a party to burglary. He was out on bail in connection with that case when the bike incident happened and wrote the letters, prompting prosecutors to charge him with three counts of bail jumping. The jury on Thursday found him guilty on one of those counts but acquitted him on the remaining two charges.

All together, he faces up to 26 years in the state prison system when he’s sentenced on Feb. 27. The burglary charge is still pending.

The Noem news release with Morales Reyes’ photo touting his arrest is still posted on the DHS website but now includes a disclaimer stating that he’s no longer under investigation for threatening Trump but remains in ICE custody pending deportation. The release says he entered the U.S. illegally nine times between 1998 and 2005 and has a criminal record that includes arrests for felony hit and run, property damage and disorderly conduct with a domestic abuse modifier.

Morales Reyes was released on $7,500 bond in June and is currently residing with his family in Milwaukee, his deportation defense attorney, Cain Oulahan, said. He has applied for a U-visa, a document that allows crime victims and their family members to remain in the U.S., but Oulahan said it could take years to obtain one.

Wisconsin online court records do not show any criminal cases involving Morales Reyes. Oulahan, his attorney, said that all the background checks he has conducted on Morales Reyes have turned up nothing.

Morales Reyes moved to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1980s. He worked as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, is married and has three children who are U.S. citizens, according to his attorneys. He said Scott’s conviction is a huge relief for Morales Reyes and his family.

“He’s been traumatized by going through all this, all these different levels that feel like victimization,” Oulahan said. “He just wants to work and be with his family again.”

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and MEGAN JANETSKY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, a move that could further cripple an island plagued by a deepening energy crisis.

The order would primarily put pressure on Mexico, a government that has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba and has constantly voiced solidarity for the U.S. adversary even as President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought to build a strong relationship with Trump.

This week has been marked by speculation that Mexico would slash oil shipments to Cuba under mounting pressure by Trump to distance itself from the Cuban government.

In its deepening energy and economic crisis – fueled in part by strict economic sanctions by the U.S. – Cuba has relied heavily on foreign assistance and oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela, before a U.S. military operation ousted former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said that no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall.

In its most recent report, Pemex said it shipped nearly 20,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba from January through Sept. 30, 2025. That month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City. Afterward, Jorge Piñon, an expert at the University of Texas Energy Institute who tracks shipments using satellite technology, said the figure had fallen to about 7,000 barrels.

Sheinbaum has been incredibly vague about where her country stood, and this week has given roundabout and ambiguous answers to inquiries about the shipments, and dodged reporters questions in her morning press briefings.

On Tuesday, Sheinbaum said that Mexico’s state oil company, PEMEX, had at least temporarily paused some oil shipments to Cuba, but struck an ambiguous tone, saying the pause was part of general fluctuations in oil supplies and that it was a “sovereign decision” not made under pressure from the United States. Sheinbaum has said that Mexico would continue to show solidarity with Havana, but didn’t clarify what kind of support Mexico would offer.

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On Wednesday, the Latin American leader claimed she never said that Mexico has completely “suspended” shipments and that “humanitarian aid” to Cuba would continue and that decisions about shipments to Cuba were determined by PEMEX contracts.

“So the contract determines when shipments are sent and when they are not sent,” Sheinbaum said.

The lack of clarity from the leader has underscored the extreme pressure Mexico and other Latin American nations are under as Trump has grown more confrontational following the Venezuelan operation.

It remains unclear what the Thursday order by Trump will mean for Cuba, which has been roiled by crisis for years and a U.S. embargo. Anxieties were already simmering on the Caribbean island as many drivers sat in long lines this week for gasoline, many unsure of what would come next.

Janetsky reported from Mexico City.