Minnesota’s 6th Senate District will remain in the Republican column after a Tuesday special election to fill the seat vacated following the arrest and resignation of Sen. Justin Eichorn.

With all 80 precincts reporting in the north-central Minnesota district, Republican Keri Heintzeman defeated Democrat Denise Slipy 60% to 40%.

Heintzeman, a business owner and the wife of House District 6B Rep. Josh Heintzeman, R-Nisswa, easily won an eight-candidate GOP primary on April 15. Slipy, an environmental health and safety professional from Breezy Point, ran unopposed in the DFL primary.

The outcome of Tuesday’s special election won’t affect the balance of power in the Senate, where Democrats currently have a two-vote majority. District 6, which stretches from Brainerd and Baxter north to Grand Rapids, has shifted Republican but Democrats had hoped political winds might be shifting.

Eichorn resigned last month after he was charged with attempting to solicit a minor in what turned out to be an underage sex sting operation in Bloomington.

The Grand Rapids resident recently pleaded not guilty to a federal charge of attempted enticement of a minor for prostitution.

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Community members on Tuesday shared feedback on the St. Paul school district’s cash-strapped 2025-26 budget, with some objecting to proposed cuts to early childhood programming and family resources.

The school board will see a proposed budget at its May 20 meeting, and district officials have been hosting community informational meetings on the budget since late March. Board members have until June 30 to finalize the budget for the 2025-26 school year and will vote on the proposal June 10.

The district estimates $732.1 million in expenses in the coming school year, with an estimated $51.1 million budget shortfall. The board has agreed to use $34.9 million in reserve funds for the shortfall, with the remaining $16.2 million to come from budget cuts and new revenue, according to the district.

Last year’s St. Paul Public Schools budget shortfall was around $108 million.

Cuts

Initial staff reduction letters were distributed Friday for positions eliminated due to budget or non-renewal due to performance.

The district, which as of February had 6,088 full- and part-time staff, attributes the budget shortfall to increased expenses — such as increased employee wages and benefits — rising costs of goods and services and no expected increases to state, federal or local revenue to adjust for inflation, outside of the base funding formula and local operating levy.

Parents and community members at Tuesday night’s meeting spoke against cuts to Early Childhood Family Education, or ECFE — a voluntary program for parents and their children below the age for kindergarten enrollment — and Achievement Plus — a private-public partnership between SPPS and the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation that provides resources to families such as health services and food support.

ECFE is facing proposed budget cuts of $1.46 million in the upcoming budget and a reduction from six sites to four.

The Achievement Plus Initiative is set to end June 30, according to Achievement Plus director Rick Gibson in a March statement.

The end of Achievement Plus and its liaison role is a loss of a connection between schools and critical services, such as housing assistance, in-school dental care and summer programs, SPPS parent Amber Rae Bernhardt said at Tuesday meeting.

“Cutting this program is not a cost-saving measure, it’s a cost-shifting measure — shifting the burden onto the backs of struggling families and underresourced schools,” Bernhardt said.

Other parents urged the school board to consider the community and support that ECFE has provided parents. ECFE programming includes parent discussion groups, early health and developmental screenings for children and home visits, among other resources.

“I am sure you will have better students and citizens with more involved, more prepared and more sound parents. Do whatever it takes to find a budget, even if it is asking for our help,” said SPPS parent Liliana Sanchez.

Guidelines and next steps

The overall budget amount allocated to schools will increase by approximately 6%, or $26.2 million, in 2025-26. This is primarily due to increased enrollment, more students in special education and expanded middle school options, according to the district. SPPS saw an increase in enrollment for the 2024-25 school year compared with last, the first year in a decade it had higher enrollment than the year before. Nearly all district revenue — such as state aid and local property taxes — is tied to enrollment.

The board has three guidelines for the budget, which include sustaining funding for early education in order to retain and prepare students for elementary school; sustaining funding for enrollment efforts; and sustaining expenditures for increasing student engagement and decreasing absenteeism.

The board will address Tuesday’s community feedback at its May 6 meeting. The proposed budget will continue to be updated until its approval in June.

Feedback can be also shared on the district’s website at tinyurl.com/2exswt7s.

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By MORIAH BALINGIT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has begun shedding new light on a crackdown on international students, spelling out how it targeted thousands of people and laying out the grounds for terminating their legal status.

The new details emerged in lawsuits filed by some of the students who suddenly had their status canceled in recent weeks with little explanation.

In the past month, foreign students around the U.S. have been rattled to learn their records had been removed from a student database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some went into hiding for fear of being picked up by immigration authorities or abandoned their studies to return home.

On Friday, after mounting court challenges, federal officials said the government was restoring international students’ legal status while it developed a framework to guide future terminations. In a court filing Monday, it shared the new policy: a document issued over the weekend with guidance on a range of reasons students’ status can be canceled, including the revocation of the visas they used to enter the U.S.

Brad Banias, an immigration attorney representing a student whose status was terminated, said the new guidelines vastly expand ICE’s authority beyond previous policy, which did not count visa revocation as grounds for losing legal status.

“This just gave them carte blanche to have the State Department revoke a visa and then deport those students even if they’ve done nothing wrong,” Banias said.

Many of the students who had visas revoked or lost their legal status said they had only minor infractions on their record, including driving infractions. Some did not know why they were targeted at all.

Lawyers for the government provided some explanation at a hearing Tuesday in the case of Banias’ client Akshar Patel, an international student studying information systems in Texas. Patel’s status was terminated — and then reinstated — this month, and he is seeking a preliminary court ruling to keep him from being deported.

In court filings and in the hearing, Department of Homeland Security officials said they ran the names of student visa holders through the National Crime Information Center, an FBI-run database that contains reams of information related to crimes. It includes the names of suspects, missing persons and people who have been arrested, even if they have never been charged with a crime or had charges dropped.

In total, about 6,400 students were identified in the database search, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said in the hearing Tuesday. One of the students was Patel, who had been pulled over and charged with reckless driving in 2018. The charge was ultimately dropped — information that is also in NCIC.

Patel appears in a spreadsheet with 734 students whose names had come up in NCIC. That spreadsheet was forwarded to a Homeland Security official, who, within 24 hours of receiving it, replied: “Please terminate all in SEVIS.” That’s a different database listing foreigners who have legal status as students in the U.S.

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Reyes said the short time frame suggested that no one had reviewed the records individually to find out why the students’ names came up in NCIC.

“All of this could have been avoided if someone had taken a beat,” said Reyes, who was appointed by President Joe Biden. She said the government had demonstrated “an utter lack of concern for individuals who have come into this country.”

When colleges discovered the students no longer had legal status, it prompted chaos and confusion. In the past, college officials say, legal statuses typically were updated after colleges told the government the students were no longer studying at the school. In some cases, colleges told students to stop working or taking classes and warned them they could be deported.

Still, government attorneys said the change in the database did not mean the students actually lost legal status, even though some of the students were labeled “failure to maintain status.” Instead, lawyers said, it was intended to be an “investigative red flag.”

“Mr. Patel is lawfully present in the U.S.,” Andre Watson of the Department of Homeland Security said. “He is not subject to immediate detention or removal.”

Reyes declined to issue a preliminary injunction and urged lawyers from both sides to come to a settlement to ensure Patel could stay in the U.S.

The Associated Press’ education 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 MELISSA GOLDIN, Associated Press

In a visit Tuesday to Warren, Michigan, President Donald Trump celebrated his first 100 days back in office by touting his accomplishments, while embellishing some and misrepresenting others.

The speech of about 90 minutes was reminiscent of a campaign rally and covered much of the same ground as he lobbed insults at the previous administration and detractors.

In highlighting his accomplishments, he made a number of false and misleading statements on topics such as the state of the economy and the price of eggs.

Here’s a look at the facts.

Trump exaggerates drop in gas prices

TRUMP: “Gasoline was almost $4 not so long ago. And now, Mike, we just hit $1.98 in a lot of states. Think of it.”

THE FACTS: As of Tuesday, no state had an average gas price of $1.98. Mississippi had the lowest price, at $2.67 per gallon of regular gas. Trump previously made this claim about the level of gas prices on April 16, but they had not fallen as low as $1.98 that day either — or any day in the last two weeks. Mississippi and Tennessee were tied for the lowest average price on April 16, at $2.707 per gallon of regular gas.

National average prices rose under former President Joe Biden to a high of $5.01 in June 2022 before falling to $3.09 in December of that year. Prices rose again to a high of $3.88 in September 2023, but were down to $3.139 in December 2024. They were at $3.13 nationally as of Tuesday. The last time prices surpassed $4 was in August 2022.

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Cost of eggs not as low as Trump says

TRUMP: “Since I took office, the cost of eggs is down 87% now.”

THE FACTS: The retail price of a dozen large eggs decreased in price to $2.07 in September 2023, but has been on the rise since October 2024. As of March, they were up to $6.23.

Wholesale egg prices, on the other hand, fell significantly in March, but not by 87%. They were at a high of $8.17 for a dozen large eggs on March 3 and had dropped to $2.92 by March 26 — a decrease of approximately 64%.

University of Arkansas agricultural economist Jada Thompson told the AP earlier this month that because the wholesale prices did not start dropping until mid-March, there may not have been enough time for the average price for the month to decline. And grocery stores may not have immediately passed on the lower prices.

Inflation was already falling under Biden

TRUMP: “We’re ending the inflation nightmare. The worst that we’ve had, probably in the history of our country.”

THE FACTS: Inflation started falling long before Trump started his second term. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 after rising steadily in the first 17 months of Biden’s presidency from a low of 0.1% in May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of December, it had fallen to 2.9%. The most recent data shows that, as of March, it had fallen to 2.4%. Other historical periods have seen higher inflation, such as a more than 14% rate in 1980, according to the Federal Reserve.

Coal production is cleaner, but it still creates emissions

TRUMP: “We stopped their crusade on coal. Did you see what I did the other day? 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.

Planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from the coal industry have decreased over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Energy lobbyist Scott Segal told the AP earlier this month that “the relative statement that coal-fired electricity is cleaner than ever before is true, particularly when emissions are measured per unit of electricity produced.”

And yet, coal production worldwide still needs to be reduced sharply to address climate change, according to United Nations-backed research.

Along with carbon dioxide, burning coal emits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that contribute to acid rain, smog and respiratory illnesses, according to the EIA.

Trump misleads on Biden-era ‘electric vehicle mandate’

TRUMP: “I terminated Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate where you were mandated to buy an electric vehicle. You were mandated within just a few years to buy an electric vehicle.”

THE FACTS: It’s misleading to claim that the Biden administration implemented such a mandate. In April 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency announced strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles. The agency said these limits could be met if 67% of new-vehicle sales are electric by 2032.

And yet, the new rule did not include a requirement for automakers to boost electric vehicle sales directly. It set emissions limits and allowed automakers to choose how to meet them.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced on March 12 that the agency would reconsider the rule, but it has not yet been terminated.

In 2019, Kamala Harris co-sponsored a bill as a U.S. senator called the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act that would have required 100% of new passenger vehicles sold to be zero-emission by 2040. The bill, which stalled in committee, did not ban ownership of vehicles that produce emissions.