A child care worker caught on camera abusing children at a Blaine day care last year was sentenced to three months in jail and 10 years of probation.

Elizabeth Augusta Wiemerslage, 23, pleaded guilty in Anoka County District Court in March to aiding and abetting malicious punishment of a child and aiding and abetting felony third-degree assault after reaching an agreement with the prosecution. The plea deal included the length of her jail term and dismissal of four other charges.

Besides the 90-day jail sentence, which was handed down Friday, Wiemerslage must also complete anger management programming and letters of apology to the victims’ families.

Wiemerslage, of Coon Rapids, was one of two caretakers at the Small World Day Care Learning Center charged with felony child abuse after the parents of a 5-month-old took their child to the hospital with unexplained bruising in July 2024 in what authorities called an “exceptionally shocking” incident of child abuse that ended up affecting at least two other children.

The case against Chloe Kaye Johnson, 25, of Andover, is pending, with a pretrial hearing scheduled for Nov. 18.

“Although we have been forced to investigate other terrible acts of child abuse, this one is exceptionally shocking,” Capt. Mark Boerboom of the Blaine Police Department said at the time. “Most parents drop their children off at day care centers believing that their child will be safe, especially since there is usually more than one care provider watching their child at any one given time. In this case, we found two workers working together with infants, both aggressively abusing children.”

According to the criminal complaints, the infant’s parents reported the possible abuse July 16 after taking their baby to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis after finding bruising on her thighs, groin, buttocks and legs.

While watching daycare surveillance video, police identified two other victims and contacted their parents.

The video shows Johnson grabbing the infant by her lower body and “violently” flipping the child onto her back on a floor mat, the complaints say. The infant’s face hit the mat repeatedly during the incident, with Wiemerslage just a few feet away.

In another video, Johnson picked up a second infant and held a cloth to the baby’s mouth and nose for several seconds while the child was crying, the charges say. Johnson then allegedly gripped the child by the neck and shoved a bottle repeatedly in and out of the baby’s mouth. Later in the same video, Wiemerslage picked up the child and allegedly “violently slammed” her down on a support pillow.

At another time, Wiemerslage picked up a third infant and “aggressively” shoved the child down onto a changing table. Later, Wiemerslage “violently” picked up the infant by the arm and “aggressively” moved the child around on a mat as Johnson watches.

Wiemerslage is then seen with the 5-month old, who was lying on the mat. She “aggressively” dragged the infant toward her by her legs before she picked her up “forcefully” into a support pillow while pressing down hard on the child’s torso and abdomen.

Johnson initially told officers she was helping the infants learn how to roll over, but ultimately admitted she was “too rough, and admitted her behavior could have caused the (5-month old’s) bruising,” the complaint states. “(Wiemerslage) also admitted to her behavior and that it was wrong.”

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Medical examinations showed the 5-month-old girl had bruising in nine areas that were consistent with a “grip injury” or “squeeze‐type injury,” while another infant was found to have a healing leg fracture “suspicious for nonaccidental trauma,” the complaint says. Bruising was found on three other infants who were in the care of Wiemerslage and Johnson.

Rep. Nolan West, R-Blaine, whose daughter was one of the victims of the abuse, has introduced legislation to increase posting requirements for childcare mistreatment investigations and require childcare centers with active maltreatment violations to retain video footage for 60 days and have cameras in their infant and toddler rooms.

Nick Ferraro contributed to this report.

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is hosting the Kennedy Center’s leadership at the White House on Monday night, reinforcing how much attention he’s devoting to remaking a premier cultural center as part of a larger effort to overhaul the social and ideological dynamics of the national arts scene.

The meeting of the center’s board in the State Dining Room comes after Trump fired its previous members and announced in February that he’d serve as the board’s chair. The new board, which unanimously approved Trump as its chair, is stocked with loyalists.

Members include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles; Attorney General Pam Bondi; Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance; and Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the USA,” plays at Trump rallies as well as many official events, including during his trip to the Middle East last week.

Trump has called the center’s past programing “woke” and “terrible,” while more broadly seeking to slash federal funding for the arts — complaining that too much programing promotes leftist ideology and political correctness.

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In the view of the Republican president and top leaders in his administration, molding the Kennedy Center to his own liking can go a long way toward creating a new arts and social culture nationwide.

The center has announced it is abandoning a week’s worth of July events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights as part of this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington.

The White House has further moved to cancel millions in previously awarded federal humanities grants awarded to arts and culture groups. And Trump’s budget framework has proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities altogether.

Trump visited the Kennedy Center in March to preside over a meeting of its board, and complained then of “tremendous disrepair” to the building while adding that the center “represents a very important part of D.C., and actually our country.”

The president has also expressed displeasure with a recent expansion of the complex, known as “The Reach,” which features studios, rehearsal spaces and meeting facilities, and he suggest he would move to close up the spaces because they lack windows.

In an aesthetic touch for the Trump era, meanwhile, the center’s exterior lighting has been changed to permanently display red, white, and blue.

The president’s changes drew pushback from a variety of artists.

The musical Hamilton responded to Trump’s hands-on approach by canceling performances it had planned in March and April. Other performers — including actress and producer Issa Rae and musician Rhiannon Giddens — have similarly scrapped planned appearances.

And with Trump planning to attend a performance of Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center on June 11, the show announced that many understudies may be performing then due to boycotts by cast members.

The political tension is a departure for the Kennedy Center, which opened in 1971 and for decades was seen as an apolitical celebration of the arts.

“What had once been a nonpartisan institution dedicated to the arts is now under the direct control of a president eager to impose his ideological vision, dictating artistic priorities at one of the nation’s most esteemed cultural landmarks,” Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus wrote in a recent op-ed.

Presidents typically nominate members of the Kennedy Center’s board in consultation with members of Congress. After that, they often don’t have a lot of contact with the center’s leadership, except to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

“You’re one of America’s most renowned living playwrights, and you’re still writing strong,” Republican President Ronald Reagan said in 1984, addressing Author Miller, who was among that year’s Kennedy Center honorees. It was an example of a Cold War commander in chief praising a writer who had well-known associations with communist-aligned groups.

In 2019, the center hosted an exhibit of former Republican President George W. Bush’s paintings.

Trump, who calls “Citizen Kane” one of his favorite movie and said he once considered studying film at the University of Southern California, mostly ignored the center during his first term. He became the first president to routinely skip attending the honors ceremony. But he didn’t didn’t retaliate when one honoree, producer Norman Lear, threatened not to attend if the president did.

In his second term, Trump has been far more aggressive and proactive — as he has on many policy and political fronts. He cited some drag show performances at the center as a reason to transform it entirely.

“Come here and watch it, and you’ll see, over a period of time, it’ll improve very greatly physically,” Trump said during his Kennedy Center visit in March. “And we’re going to get some very good shows.”

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed from New York.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, alongside his wife, Melania, on Monday signed the Take It Down Act, a measure the first lady helped usher through Congress to set stricter penalties for the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery online, or “revenge porn.”

In March, Melania Trump used her first public appearance since resuming the role of first lady to travel to Capitol Hill to lobby House members to pass the bill following its approval by the Senate.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier Monday that the first lady was “instrumental in getting this important legislation passed.”

President Donald Trump, left, and first lady Melania Trump arrive to speak during a bill signing event for the “Take it Down Act” in the Rose Garden of the White House, Monday, May 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The bill makes it a federal crime to “knowingly publish” or threaten to publish intimate images without a person’s consent, including AI-created “deepfakes.” Websites and social media companies will be required to remove such material within 48 hours after a victim requests it. The platforms must also take steps to delete duplicate content.

Many states have already banned the dissemination of sexually explicit deepfakes or revenge porn, but the Take It Down Act is a rare example of federal regulators imposing on internet companies.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, passing the House in April by a 409-2 vote and clearing the Senate by unanimous consent.

But the measure isn’t without critics. Free speech advocates and digital rights groups say the bill is too broad and could lead to censorship of legitimate images, including legal pornography and LGBTQ content. Others say it could allow the government to monitor private communications and undermine due process.

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The first lady appeared at a Capitol Hill roundtable with lawmakers and young women who had explicit images of them put online, saying it was “heartbreaking” to see what teenagers and especially girls go through after this happens to them. She also included a victim among her guests for the president’s address to a joint session of Congress the day after that meeting.

After the House passed the bill, Melania Trump called the bipartisan vote a “powerful statement that we stand united in protecting the dignity, privacy and safety of our children.”

Her advocacy for the bill is a continuation of the Be Best campaign she started in the president’s first term, focusing on children’s well-being, social media use and opioid abuse.

In his speech to Congress in March, the president said the publication of such imagery online is “just terrible” and that he looked forward to signing the bill into law.

“And I’m going to use that bill for myself, too, if you don’t mind,” he said. There’s nobody who “gets treated worse than I do online. Nobody.”

By JAKE OFFENHARTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Less than three weeks after his release from an immigration jail, the Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi strode across the graduation stage at Columbia University on Monday morning, savoring a moment the Trump administration had fought to make impossible.

Draped in a keffiyeh, Mahdawi, 34, paused to listen to the swell of cheers from his fellow graduates. Then he joined a vigil just outside Columbia’s gates, raising a photograph of his classmate Mahmoud Khalil, who remains in federal custody.

“It’s very mixed emotions,” Mahdawi told The Associated Press. “The Trump administration wanted to rob me of this opportunity. They wanted me to be in a prison, in prison clothes, to not have education and to not have joy or celebration.”

Mahdawi, a 34-year-old legal resident of the U.S., was detained during an April 14 citizenship interview in Vermont, part of the widening federal crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists.

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He was released two weeks later by a judge, who likened the government’s actions to McCarthyist repression. Federal officials have not accused Mahdawi of committing a crime, but argued that he and other student activists should be deported for beliefs that may undermine U.S. foreign policy.

For Mahdawi, who earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Columbia’s School of General Studies, the graduation marked a bittersweet return to a university that he says has betrayed him and other students.

“The senior administration is selling the soul of this university to the Trump administration, participating in the destruction and the degradation of our democracy,” Mahdawi said.

He pointed to Columbia’s decision to acquiesce to the Trump administration’s demands — including placing its Middle Eastern studies department under new leadership — as well as its failure to speak out against his and Khalil’s arrest.

He said Columbia’s leadership had denied his pleas for protection prior to his arrest, then ignored his attorney’s request for a letter supporting his release from jail.

A spokesperson for Columbia University did not return an emailed inquiry.

Mahdawi was born in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and moved to the United States in 2014. At Columbia, he organized campus protests, led a Buddhist association and co-founded the Palestinian Student Union with Khalil.

Khalil would have received his diploma from a Columbia master’s program in international studies later this week. He remains jailed in Louisiana as he awaits a decision from a federal judge about his possible release.

As he prepares for a lengthy legal battle, Mahdawi faces his own uncertain future. He was previously admitted to a master’s degree program at Columbia, where he planned to study “peacekeeping and conflict resolution” in the fall. But he is reconsidering his options after learning this month that he would not receive financial aid.

For now, he said, he would continue to advocate for the Palestinian cause, buoyed by the support he says he has received from the larger Columbia community.

“When I went on the stage, the message was very clear and loud: They are cheering up for the idea of justice, for the idea of peace, for the idea of equality, for the idea of humanity, and nothing will stop us from continuing to do that. Not the Trump administration nor Columbia University,” he said.

The School of General Studies graduation comes two days before Columbia’s university-wide commencement, as colleges across the country are bracing for possible disruptions.

Last week, New York University announced it would withhold the diploma of a student speaker who criticized Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in his graduation speech.