Minnesota’s Legislature wrapped up the 2025 regular session late Monday night without passing the state’s next two-year budget.

There will be a government shutdown if they don’t pass a budget by June 30, so what is next?

They’ll have to return to the Capitol for a special session sometime before then to pass the remaining pieces of a more than $66 billion budget deal reached by Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders.

Major areas of the budget, like the K-12 education and health bills that account for about two-thirds of state spending, are still incomplete. There isn’t a final bill on taxes either.

Negotiations continued Tuesday on those incomplete budget areas with “working groups” made up of members of both parties from the Senate and House.

Compromise will be key as the House is tied between DFL and GOP 67-67 and the DFL has a one-seat majority in the Senate. Top legislators said those groups will have to finalize bills and make compromises before a special session can start.

Lisa Demuth (Courtesy photo)

“Hard decisions still have to be made and then we will come back when the governor calls us to finish up the work for Minnesotans,” Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth told reporters after adjournment late Monday night.

When will it happen?

Top lawmakers and the governor said they hope to get a budget passed before June 1, when the state will have to send layoff notices to state employees to prepare for a possible shutdown.

House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman told reporters before the midnight deadline to pass bills Monday that the earliest possible date for a special session was Thursday. Though she also said lawmakers might return to the Capitol on May 27, the day after Memorial Day weekend.

DFL House Leader Melissa Hortman.

If the budget deal makes it through in its current form, the state will have a two-year budget of more than $66 billion. It aims to control spending growth in social services and education to address a projected $6 billion budget shortfall looming later this decade. It’s down from the last budget, which topped $70 billion. There are also some tweaks to state taxes that result in cuts of more than $300 million in the next four years.

The deal holds so far

The deal seems to be holding together so far, though as the session wrapped up, Republicans and DFLers started blaming one another for delays and signaled they might press for changes. DFLers in particular pushed against Republican-backed rollbacks to a paid family medical leave that were outside the leaders’ agreement.

Many DFLers say they won’t vote for a part of the deal that would end state-funded health insurance coverage for adults in the U.S. illegally through MinnesotaCare, something Republicans strongly pushed for in negotiations.

“There are a lot of parts of this budget deal that aren’t what either party would want if they have they had total control,” said House Floor Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey. “We’re all giving up something. We expect Democrats to pull their part of the deal.”

Hortman told reporters she planned to honor the deal and hoped the Legislature would avoid distractions and stay focused on getting the basic budget agreement passed.

“We’ve got to get on the train of working together, getting things done, and save … the partisan potshots for when we’re in campaign season again,” she said.

Tax discussion

The tax working group met on Tuesday to discuss a proposal to cut overall taxes by around $308 million in the next four years, but raise the tax on cannabis sales from 10% to 15% to bring in $147 million in the same period.

Already, there are disagreements on exactly what the deal does and does not allow. Lawmakers couldn’t reach a consensus on tax exemptions for data centers, which may lose their exemption on an electricity tax as part of the deal.

“It would make it easier for everybody if we were all on the same page, and it’s clear to me that we’re not,” said Senate Taxes Chair Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope. “We just need clarification from people who signed the agreement.”

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A United States Air Force veteran, who the U.S. government had determined to be wrongfully detained in Venezuela, was released from custody Tuesday.

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Joseph St. Clair was handed over to U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, according to a statement from the veteran’s family and a post on X from the official. The family said St. Clair, who had served four tours in Afghanistan, was detained in November.

“This news came suddenly, and we are still processing it, but we are overwhelmed with joy and gratitude,” St. Clair’s parents, Scott and Patti, said in a statement.

Scott St. Clair told The Associated Press earlier this month that his son, a language specialist, had traveled to South America to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Joe St. Clair is back in America,” Grenell posted on X along with four photos, including one showing him and the veteran on a runway and another of both sitting inside an airplane. Grenell added, without providing details, that he met Venezuelan officials “in a neutral country” on Tuesday “to negotiate an America First strategy.”

Six other Americans detained in Venezuela in the months after the country’s July presidential election were freed by the government of President Nicolás Maduro after he met Grenell in February.

Grenell, during the meeting in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, urged Maduro to take back deported migrants who have committed crimes in the U.S. Hundreds of Venezuelans have since been deported to their home country.

Last week, Maduro thanked Trump and Grenell for allowing a 2-year-old girl to reunite with her mother, who had been deported to Venezuela in April. Maduro described the U.S. government’s decision to send the girl to Venezuela as a “profoundly humane” act.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered another review of the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and of the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed American troops and Afghans.

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President Donald Trump and Hegseth have repeatedly blasted the Biden administration for the withdrawal, which Hegseth said Tuesday was “disastrous and embarrassing.” He said the new review will interview witnesses, analyze the decision-making and “get the truth.”

There have already been multiple reviews of the withdrawal by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the State Department and Congress, which have involved hundreds of interviews and studies of videos, photographs and other footage and data. It’s unclear what specific new information the new review is seeking.

The Abbey Gate bombing during the final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans, and wounded scores more. It triggered widespread debate and congressional criticism, fueled by searing photographs of desperate Afghans trying to crowd into the airport to get out of Kabul, with some clinging to U.S. military aircraft as they were taking off.

A detailed U.S. military review was ordered in 2023 to expand the number of people interviewed, after a Marine injured in the blast said snipers believed they saw the possible bomber but couldn’t get approval to take him out.

The findings, released in 2024, refuted those assertions and concluded that the bombing was not preventable. A congressional review was highly critical of the withdrawal, saying the Biden administration did not adequately prepare for it or for all the contingencies and put personnel in danger.

Others, however, have faulted the State Department for not moving quickly enough to decide on an evacuation, resulting in a rush to get out as the Taliban took control of the country. Critics have also blamed Trump for making a deal with the Taliban in 2020 when he was president to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which decreased the number of forces on the ground as the pullout went on.

Both Trump and then-President Joe Biden wanted an end to the war and U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

The new review will be led by Sean Parnell, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs. He will convene a panel that will provide updates “at appropriate times,” but there is no time frame or deadline for any report, which is very unusual.

PHOENIX (AP) — Twenty people, a mental health business and a church were charged in an indictment that alleged Arizona’s Medicaid program was defrauded $60 million in a scheme involving billing for mental health treatment and addiction rehabilitation, the latest indictment in a series of crackdowns in the state focusing on sober living homes.

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The indictment announced Tuesday alleged Happy House Behavioral Health LLC was paid the money for services that were either never provided or only partially completed and that there was billing for clients who were deceased and incarcerated.

Authorities say sober living homes referred clients to the behavioral health business, which received money from the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System and then paid the homes for the clients in violation of state law.

Money laundering charges alleged Happy House Behavioral Health paid $5 million in July 2023 to a Hope of Life International Church, which later wired $2 million to an entity in Rwanda.

The charges against Happy House Behavioral Health include conspiracy, fraud, forgery, theft and money laundering.

The Associated Press left an email with a lawyer representing Happy House Behavioral Health.

In a statement, Hope of Life International Church said it was unjustly charged with money laundering for accepting a donation from a licensed sober living facility that was a tenant of the church and was later accused of defrauding the state’s Medicaid program. The church said it didn’t have access to the sober living facility’s internal operations, financial practices or management decisions.

“The church’s only relationship was that of a landlord and, later, as a recipient of a donation — a donation accepted in good faith, consistent with its mission and longstanding practice,” the statement said.

In all, more than 100 people and several companies have been charged in cases brought by Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office in the state’s crackdown on Medicaid fraud and unlicensed sober living homes, many of which targeted tribal community members. The state had suspended payments to more than 100 providers as part of the crackdown.

The scam had left an unknown number of Native Americans homeless on the streets of metro Phoenix as fraudulent sober living homes lost their funding and turned former residents out onto the streets.

Navajos account for most Native Americans grappling with addictions who have been affected by the scam. Navajo officials say that in some cases, people who ended up in the homes were picked up in unmarked vans and driven to the Phoenix area from faraway places on the sprawling Navajo Nation that stretches across northern Arizona, and parts of New Mexico and Utah.