Bill Salisbury, who in almost 50 years as a political reporter with the Pioneer Press covered 40 sessions of the Minnesota Legislature, eight governors as well as presidential visits and state and national political conventions and campaigns, died Monday at Lyngblomsten Care Center in St. Paul after a period of declining health. He was 80.

A self-described “newspaperman,” Salisbury noted that during his career “assignments took me to Bosnia, the White House, conventions in New York, San Francisco and other major U.S. cities, a presidential limousine ride with Bill Clinton, factories and farms, prisons and jails, parks and sewers. I got to ask tough questions of high-ranking politicians and tell extraordinary stories of ordinary Minnesotans.”

Armed with an affable nature, an objective approach — he called himself a “political agnostic” — and quick mind, he worked the House and Senate chambers at the Minnesota Capitol as well as the halls where lobbyists and staff passed bits of news and rumor, as he made sense of policy and politics affecting the daily lives of readers.

“No one defined the Pioneer Press better than Bill,” said former executive editor Walker Lundy. “No one knew his beat better. Most importantly, no one was a more decent human being. An editor looks for reporters he can always count on. Bill was one.”

During a reception marking his retirement in 2015, Salisbury said some of the more memorable stories he covered included former Vice President Walter Mondale announcing Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984 at the Minnesota Capitol, the first time a woman was part of a national ticket. He also mentioned passage of the gay marriage bill in 2013.

And, there was the death of U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone in a plane crash in 2002. Salisbury had known Wellstone since the college professor first ran for state auditor in the early 1980s.

“That was maybe the best campaign I covered and it was definitely the worst campaign I covered,” Salisbury recalled.

‘Tough but fair, hard charging but respectful’

Salisbury, who often specialized in covering tax and spending bills, was “infinitely fair” and didn’t believe in “gotcha” journalism, said longtime friend and colleague Steven Thomma, who now serves as the executive director of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

“I knew him for nearly 40 years, and to this day, I have no idea who he voted for ever in an election. No idea,” Thomma said. “We didn’t talk about that stuff, and it didn’t show in his journalism.”

Thomma and Salisbury worked together at the state Capitol in the 1980s and in Washington, D.C. Salisbury ended every interview with a politician with the same question, Thomma said.

“He’d ask whoever he was interviewing — the governor, usually, ‘Is there anything you want to add or emphasize?’” Thomma said. “I remember that quote. I’m not sure it would make it into his story, but he gave them the chance of feeling that it was a conversation as much as it was anything else. It certainly wasn’t a gotcha interview. Not from Bill Salisbury. He wanted to get information and find out what that person was doing and thinking, and that helped draw them out.”

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger, who worked with Salisbury at the state Capitol for the Pioneer Press from 2001 to 2009 and from 2015 to 2017, said he drew respect from colleagues — those who worked with him and those he competed against on new stories.

“Bill was a consummate Capitol reporter, showing generations of journalists under the domed building how to be tough but fair, hard charging but respectful in our interactions,” said Stassen-Berger, who is now the executive editor of the Des Moines Register. “In recent days, colleagues who worked with him and competed with him visited Bill to show their respect and admiration. Working beside him in the Capitol basement helped make the journalist I am.”

St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Bill Salisbury in St. Paul on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2014. (Ginger Pinson / Pioneer Press)

The Belgrade Tribune

Salisbury was born in Belgrade, Minn., on June 22, 1945. His father, the late E.R. Salisbury, was the editor and publisher of the weekly Belgrade Tribune. His mother, the late Marie Salisbury, was a homemaker and community activist who proofread his father’s newspaper articles and called every home in town weekly to ask: “Do you have any news for the Tribune?”

He liked to say he launched his newspaper career as a preschooler with a “typo.”

“Somehow I got behind my dad’s newspaper printing press, pulled the letter “B” from Tribune at the top of the front page and put it back in upside down. That week subscribers received the “Belgrade Triqune.” My dad found it amusing but made sure it never happened again.”

Upon graduating from Belgrade High School in 1963, Salisbury attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., for one year, transferred to the University of Minnesota journalism school for two quarters, and then dropped out of school and landed a job as a copy boy at U.S. News & World Report magazine in Washington, D.C. Soon after he recalled that his draft board threatened to revoke his student deferment, so he enrolled at the University of Minnesota Morris, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1969.

While attending school in Morris he met Janet Holt, the love of his life. They were married in Alexandria, Minn., in 1968. Janet died in 2016. The couple had one daughter, Rachael, who was born in 1969 and became a talented musician. She died in 2020.

Reporting career

Salisbury landed his first daily newspaper reporting job at the Fairmont, Minn., Sentinel in 1971. He moved to the Rochester Post Bulletin in 1972 and was appointed their state Capitol correspondent in 1975. The Pioneer Press hired him as a general assignment reporter in 1977 and he was assigned to their Capitol bureau the following year.

St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Bill Salisbury in the Minnesota House chambers at the State Capitol in St. Paul, circa 2015. (Ben Garvin / Pioneer Press)

He served as the paper’s Washington, D.C., correspondent from 1994 through 1999, before returning to the state Capitol. Salisbury retired from that beat in 2015 but continued to cover politics and government for the paper part time.

Ethics mattered to Salisbury. He would tell a story of declining the offer of an ice cream cone from then-President Barack Obama during a visit in St. Paul on the grounds that he couldn’t take gifts of any sort from politicians.

He is survived by a sister, Wilma Salisbury of Euclid, Ohio, and son-in-law Pierre Dimba of Shoreview. He also is survived by sisters-in-law Margaret Lichty and Judy Holt, and brothers-in-law Alan Lichty, Robert Holt and Dale Logan.

Salisbury’s last piece for the Pioneer Press was on Aug. 11, 2024, on Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and past Minnesotans on the national ticket.

He continued reporting part time after retirement “because I enjoyed meeting people and learning new things,” he said. Journalism provided him with a “sense of purpose” and allowed him to serve others.

“But most meaningful to me, I got to meet and occasionally befriend a lot of smart, good-hearted folks who brought much joy to my life,” Salisbury said.

This story will update later today.

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By CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wanted the brief and explosive American intervention in the Middle East to end with the satisfying tidiness of a prime-time season finale.

After days of stoking suspense over whether he would help Israel’s attacks on Iran, followed by a spectacular bombing mission against nuclear facilities, he announced a surprise ceasefire deal to bring the war to a close.

Trump even gave the conflict a definitive name — “THE 12 DAY WAR” — leaving no doubt that he viewed the storyline as complete.

Now the question is whether the rest of the world will follow the script that Trump has laid out.

An unsteady ceasefire adds uncertainty

The ceasefire has already proven shaky, with Israel and Iran bombarding each other after the truce took effect. Trump upbraided at both countries on Tuesday morning, saying “I’m not happy with them,” using the f-word in derision and demanding that they stop fighting.

Thus far, they’ve obliged. However, it could be years before the world knows whether this latest round of warfare will mark a turn toward greater peace or be the harbinger of more bloodshed.

In this image provided by the White House, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, sit in the Situation Room, Saturday, June 21, 2025, at the White House in Washington. (The White House via AP)

The terms of the ceasefire remain unclear, and there are lingering questions about how much of Iran’s nuclear program survived the strikes over the weekend, despite Trump’s claims that it was “totally obliterated.” In addition, the country’s theocratic leadership could retrench, jeopardizing the potential for durable diplomatic solutions to conflicts that have percolated in the region for decades.

“In the moment, he looks like a tough guy who produces results,” said Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “But when the dust settles and the blowback comes, you’re left thinking, wait a second, are we any better off?”

For now, those issues appeared far from Trump’s mind as the Republican president reveled in emerging unscathed from a foreign policy gamble that his predecessors never attempted. On social media, he posted a picture of himself kissing the American flag with the phrase “Trump was right about everything.”

How it unfolded

The fighting began nearly two weeks ago when Israeli attacked on Iran, targeting military leaders, scientists, missile launchers and anti-air defenses.

However, only the United States has the bombers and the weapons needed to penetrate Iranian nuclear facilities that are buried deep underground. Although Tehran has maintained that its atomic ambitions are only for peaceful purposes, U.S. and Israeli leaders have long feared that it would build a nuclear weapon.

American spy agencies did not believe the Iranian government had decided to take that step, despite enriching uranium to levels beyond what’s needed for civilian use. However, Trump seized an opportunity to strike with war already underway, brushing aside fears that he could become mired in exactly the kind of open-ended conflict in the Middle East that he had pledged to avoid.

In this image provided by the White House, President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance sit in the Situation Room, Saturday, June 21, 2025, at the White House in Washington. (The White House via AP)

He ordered U.S. bombers to fly halfway around the world to attack three nuclear facilities, then threatened more strikes if American troops faced retaliation.

It was the kind of dramatic action that has always appealed to Trump, who has cultivated an air of unpredictability and aggression on the global stage.

Iran was a top target of his brinksmanship during his first term. He called off U.S. strikes after Iran shot down an American drone, fearing that his response would be disproportionate, but he also assassinated one of the country’s top generals.

Two days after the U.S. strike on nuclear facilities, he announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire.

“CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE!” Trump wrote on social media, where he had been narrating every twist and turn of the conflict. “This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will!”

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Approval is coming from unusual corners

Praise came from some unlikely corners of the American foreign policy establishment.

For example, Brett McGurk, who coordinated Middle East policy under President Joe Biden, said “this is about the best place we can be” and “I give extremely high marks to this national security team and President Trump for managing this crisis.”

Katulis isn’t so sure. He said the Trump administration “seems to be operating without a cogent diplomatic playbook” and “fixated on military tactics and operations in absence of an overall strategy.”

Before the war, Trump had been pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program as part of a negotiated settlement. There’s no guarantee that Tehran will return to the bargaining table, although the president insisted that “IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES!”

“It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!” Trump wrote on Tuesday as he flew to the annual summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Netherlands.

Leon Panetta, who held top national security roles under President Barack Obama, chuckled at Trump’s stream of consciousness on social media.

“We always know what he’s thinking,” Panetta said, “but we don’t know whether what he’s thinking is really happening.”

By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertainment Writer

Bobby Sherman, whose winsome smile and fashionable shaggy mop top helped make him into a teen idol in the 1960s and ’70s with bubblegum pop hits like “Little Woman” and “Julie, Do Ya Love Me,” has died. He was 81.

His wife, Brigitte Poublon, announced the death Tuesday and family friend John Stamos posted her message on Instagram: “Bobby left this world holding my hand — just as he held up our life with love, courage, and unwavering grace.” Sherman revealed he had Stage 4 cancer earlier this year.

Sherman was a squeaky-clean regular on the covers of Tiger Beat and Sixteen magazines, often with hair over his eyes and a choker on his neck. His face was printed on lunchboxes, cereal boxes and posters that hung on the bedroom walls of his adoring fans. He landed at No. 8 in TV Guide’s list of “TV’s 25 Greatest Teen Idols.”

He was part of a lineage of teen heartthrobs who emerged as mass-market, youth-oriented magazines and TV took off, connecting fresh-scrubbed Ricky Nelson in the 1950s to David Cassidy in the ’60s, all the way to Justin Bieber in the 2000s.

Sherman had four Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — “Little Woman,” “Julie, Do Ya Love Me,” “Easy Come, Easy Go,” and “La La La (If I Had You).” He had six albums on the Billboard 200 chart, including “Here Comes Bobby,” which spent 48 weeks on the album chart, peaking at No. 10. His career got its jump start when he was cast in the ABC rock ’n’ roll show “Shindig!” in the mid-’60s. Later, he starred in two television series — “Here Come the Brides” (1968-70) and “Getting Together” (1971).

FILE – Singer Bobby Sherman, his wife Patricia, and their newborn son Christopher Noel, appear in Los Angeles on Dec. 21, 1972. (AP Photo/George Brich, File)

After the limelight moved on, Sherman became a certified medical emergency technician and instructor for the Los Angeles Police Department, teaching police recruits first aid and CPR. He donated his salary.

“A lot of times, people say, ‘Well, if you could go back and change things, what would you do?’” he told The Tulsa World in 1997. “And I don’t think I’d change a thing — except to maybe be a little bit more aware of it, because I probably could’ve relished the fun of it a little more. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But it was the best of times.”

A life-changing Hollywood party

Sherman, with sky blue eyes and dimples, grew up in the San Fernando Valley, singing Ricky Nelson songs and performing with a high-school rock band.

“I was brought up in a fairly strict family,” he told the Sunday News newspaper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1998. “Law and order were important. Respect your fellow neighbor, remember other people’s feelings. I was the kind of boy who didn’t do things just to be mischievous.”

He was studying child psychology at a community college in 1964 when his girlfriend took him to a Hollywood party, which would change his life. He stepped onstage and sang with the band. Afterward, guests Jane Fonda, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo asked him who his agent was. They took his number and, a few days later, an agent called him and set him up with “Shindig!”

Sherman hit true teen idol status in 1968, when he appeared in “Here Come the Brides,” a comedy-adventure set in boom town Seattle in the 1870s. He sang the show’s theme song, “Seattle,” and starred as young logger Jeremy Bolt, often at loggerheads with brother, played by David Soul. It lasted two seasons.

Following the series, Sherman starred in “Getting Together,” a spinoff of “The Partridge Family,” about a songwriter struggling to make it in the music business. He became the first performer to star in three TV series before the age of 30. That television exposure soon translated into a fruitful recording career: His first single, “Little Woman,” earned a gold record in 1969.

“While the rest of the world seemed jumbled up and threatening, Sherman’s smiling visage beamed from the bedroom walls of hundreds of thousands of teen-age girls, a reassuring totem against the riots, drugs, war protests and free love that raged outside,” The Tulsa World said in 1997.

His movies included “Wild In Streets,” “He is My Brother” and “Get Crazy.”

From music to medicine

Sherman pulled back from his celebrity career after several years of a frantic schedule, telling The Washington Post: “I’d film five days a week, get on a plane on a Friday night and go someplace for matinee and evening shows Saturday and Sunday, then get on a plane and go back to the studio to start filming again. It was so hectic for three years that I didn’t know what home was.”

Sherman’s pivot to becoming an emergency medical technician in 1988 was born out of a longtime fascination with medicine. Sherman said that affinity blossomed when he raised his sons with his first wife, Patti Carnel. They would get scrapes and bloody noses and he became the family’s first-aid provider. So he started learning basic first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation from the Red Cross.

“If I see an accident, I feel compelled to stop and give aid even if I’m in my own car,” he told the St. Petersburg Times. “I carry equipment with me. And there’s not a better feeling than the one you get from helping somebody out. I would recommend it to everybody.”

In addition to his work with the Los Angeles Police Department, he was a reserve deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, working security at the courthouse. Sherman estimated that, as a paramedic, he helped five women deliver babies in the backseats of cars or other impromptu locations.

In one case, he helped deliver a baby on the sidewalk and, after the birth, the new mother asked Sherman’s partner what his name was. “When he told her Bobby, she named the baby Roberta. I was glad he didn’t tell her my name was Sherman,” he told the St. Petersburg Times in 1997.

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The teen idols grow up

He was named LAPD’s Reserve Officer of the Year for 1999 and received the FBI’s Exceptional Service Award and the “Twice a Citizen” Award by the Los Angeles County Reserve Foundation.

In a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004, then-Rep. Howard McKeon wrote: “Bobby is a stellar example of the statement ‘to protect and serve.’ We can only say a simple and heartfelt thank you to Bobby Sherman and to all the men and women who courageously protect and serve the citizens of America.”

Later, Sherman would join the 1990s-era “Teen Idols Tour” with former 1960s heartthrobs Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones of the Monkees and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits.

The Chicago Sun-Times in 1998 described one of Sherman’s performances: “Dressed to kill in black leather pants and white shirt, he was showered with roses and teddy bears as he started things off with ‘Easy Come, Easy Go.’ As he signed scores of autographs at the foot of the stage, it was quickly draped by female fans of every conceivable age group.”

Sherman also co-founded the Brigitte and Bobby Sherman Children’s Foundation in Ghana, which provides education, health, and welfare programs to children in need.

He is survived by two sons, Christopher and Tyler, and his wife.

“Even in his final days, he stayed strong for me. That’s who Bobby was — brave, gentle, and full of light,” Poublon wrote.

By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A plan to sell more than 2 million acres of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.

The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, voiced qualified support.

“On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense … we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a news conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the Western Governors’ Association was meeting.

Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying.

“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,” he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale. Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold.

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Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, but cautioned that Lee’s proposal was far from dead.

“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. “Our public lands are not for sale.”

Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land called the procedural ruling in the Senate “an important victory in the fight to protect America’s public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.”

“But make no mistake: this threat is far from over,” Hauser added. “Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration,” including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said.

MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, also ruled out a host of other Republican-led provisions Monday night, including construction of a mining road in Alaska and changes to speed permitting of oil and gas leases on federal lands.

While the parliamentarian’s rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. Lawmakers are using a budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass President Donald Trump’s tax-cut package by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

Lee’s plan revealed sharp disagreement among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers who are staunchly opposed.

Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after lawmakers there objected. In states such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said in announcing the plan.

Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under a House proposal were far from developed areas.

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, said Lee’s plan would exclude Americans from places where they fish, hunt and camp.

“I don’t think it’s clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,” Heinrich said earlier this month. “What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.”