Some posters blare slogans like “ICE out of Minneapolis” and “We love our immigrant neighbors.” Others center imagery: fists crushing ice cubes; a dog peeing on a snowman dressed as a federal immigration agent.

A collection of around 50 posters protesting the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown is on view in a pop-up exhibition at Can Can Wonderland in St. Paul through Feb. 19, organized by the art collective Art You Heart.

A public celebration of the art will take place from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14. Poster designers will showcase their work; snow sculptor Dusty Thune is projecting images of anti-ICE snow sculptures including his own; and the muralist and graffiti artist Biafra will be painting live. Can Can Wonderland plans to donate proceeds from the evening’s regular admission ticket sales to charities of the poster artists’ choice.

“Artists are angry, we’re exhausted, but we have resolve,” said Nicki McCracken, a graphic designer who co-founded Art You Heart and co-curated the Can Can show. “Everybody is rising up and everybody is joining in, and the artists are documenting this moment in time.”

A show of this scale and scope would typically take around six months to organize, she said, but this protest poster show came together within the past two weeks. Posters in the show include designs by local studios Burlesque of North America and Little Dipper Art that have since become iconic around the Twin Cities, plus other works by printmaker Sean Lim, Native visual artist Jearica Fountain, St. Paul illustrator Alxndr Jones and letterpress shop Lunalux.

“It was important for us to also find those pieces that have already become part of the public community,” said Art You Heart co-founder Eddie Hofmeister Porter. “You go around the Twin Cities and see them everywhere, which means they’ve made an impact.”

McCracken and Hofmeister Porter are creating an online companion gallery of all the posters in the show, which they plan to launch on Feb. 14 at artyouheart.com. Copies of nearly all posters in the show are able to be purchased or obtained in some manner: Many posters will be available for purchase through the Art You Heart website, with proceeds split among ACLU of Minnesota, the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and the International Institute of Minnesota. Other artists have either opted to make their designs available free to download or are handling sales and mutual aid donations directly, so links will be available online.

The current exhibition is also just the “first chapter” of what the duo has planned, McCracken said. They’re looking for a venue for a second iteration of the show in South Minneapolis, to respond more directly to the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and they’re also hoping to launch a wider public call for submissions to curate a broader body of local and national Minnesota-focused protest artwork.

“We want to make sure that there’s a place for this art to live beyond a single night,” McCracken said. “We don’t want this work to disappear into social media feeds.”

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By JENNIFER McDERMOTT and BRITTANY PETERSON

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — The pair of animals chosen as mascots of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are stoats — weasel-like creatures that are at risk because of climate change. One of them is brown and the other is white, because in cold climates, the tiny animals’ fur changes from brown to white for winter, to blend in with the landscape.

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However, stoats are increasingly turning white before there is any snow on the ground, leaving them vulnerable to predators — their snow-white coats amid dirt and rocks is like a target on their backs for sharp-eyed raptors.

Olympic organizers haven’t talked about that, at least not so far.

They say the mascots are meant to welcome people and communicate that these Games are infused with Italian spirit.

The white stoat mascot is Tina — short for Cortina, after Cortina d’Ampezzo, one of the two cities hosting the Winter Olympics. Her younger, darker-furred brother, Milo — after the city of Milan — was born without one paw and is the mascot for the Paralympics in March.

Their images are on magnets, bags and pins. But since stores sold out in the Games’ first days, it’s been nearly impossible to find a plush toy of the stoat siblings in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Still, every medalist receives a toy on the podium, though, which means they stay in the public eye. And a costumed Tina is a regular at competition venues, spreading joy, greeting giddy spectators and posing for photos.

Embodying the ‘dynamic Italian spirit’

Marco Granata, a doctoral student who researches stoats at the University of Turin in Italy, thinks the organizers are missing out on an opportunity to educate people a bit more and help this animal.

“It’s ironic because everyone now is talking about stoats, looking for stoats, but no one knows about real stoats, mostly because the Olympic committee didn’t inform the population about it,” he told The Associated Press.

When asked by the AP in Milan on Thursday why no one is talking about the stoat and climate change, Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi said: “I’m glad you raised it and we should include that in our narrative.”

If the mascot speaks to the changing environment, and that message can be conveyed to the younger generation, “let’s use it,” Dubi also said.

An Olympic mascot dances near the finish line of an alpine ski women’s downhill training, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The Olympics’ website describes stoats as naturally curious — animals that “love sports and the outdoor life but they also want to have fun. They represent the contemporary, vibrant and dynamic Italian spirit.”

Raffaella Paniè leads the branding for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games and oversaw the mascot’s creation, crowd-sourced from young Italian students.

She told the AP she doesn’t think talking about the implications of climate change is within the scope of the organizing committee. There were so many options for messaging, and the committee needed a focus, she added.

They put a lot of effort into making the mascots very friendly. “That’s how the mascot comes to life really, makes it very special, more than what it is as an animal,” she said.

“We are organizing a sport event so we need to promote the culture of the country,” she added.

Needing ‘the right wardrobe’ to avoid predators

As climate change shortens winters globally, the stoat and about 20 other color-changing species are more frequently mismatched, said L. Scott Mills, an emeritus professor at the University of Montana.

Their seasonal molting is triggered by shortening day length — a cue that the seasons are changing — so it happens around the same time each year, even when there’s no snow, Mills added.

In this photo provided by Eduoardo Pelazza, a white stoat, known as an ermine, holds prey on Dec. 10, 2011, in Ormea, Italy. (Eduoardo Pelazza via AP)

“Most of their survival depends on avoiding predation and that depends on camouflage — having the right wardrobe when it’s snowing and when it’s not,” Mills said.

While stoats are not endangered, studies have shown that predators attack mismatched decoy weasels more than matching ones, Mills said.

Owls, hawks, coyotes and foxes all hunt for stoats.

Mills connected the camouflage mismatch phenomenon to climate change while studying snowshoe hares some 13 years ago. That was a “eureka moment,” he said.

Doctoral student Marco Granata reviews footage he captured of stoats, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Turin, Italy. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)

Hope for the stoat

Granata, the doctoral student, tracks stoat populations in the Italian Alps, where they live at high altitudes. They were once hunted for their fur, for coats, but that is now prohibited in Italy.

He says the stoat faces a much more important threat, just like sports that rely on snow. Researchers say the list of places that could host Winter Games will shrink substantially in the coming years.

“I think that the Olympic committee came up with the perfect mascot for these Winter Games,” Granata said. “Both the stoat and the Winter Games share the same destiny. They look fine now, but they are increasingly impacted by climate change.”

A woman poses next to Milo, the mascot of the Paralympic Winter games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Mills said stoats, which live across the Northern Hemisphere, may eventually be able to evolve to stay brown year-round if there is no snow. Conservation efforts help, along with steps to reduce emissions and slow warming, so stoat populations don’t decrease too much, he added.

Projections show that if stoats don’t adapt, the color-changing species will decline in numbers over the next couple of decades as the snow is reduced, Mills added.

“This is an example of the challenges of climate change, but also the potential for hope,” he said. “We have a way to prevent them from being lost.”

Peterson reported from Turin, Italy.

AP Winter Olympics coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental 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 MIKE SCHNEIDER

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys for detainees at a state-run immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades said Thursday that they are still facing hurdles in getting access to their clients, despite state claims that those barriers have been removed.

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Two attorneys filed statements with a federal court in Fort Myers, Florida, saying their clients were unable to call them using staff cellphones, and the attorneys were unable to make unannounced visits to the facility.

A state contractor late last month testified that both options were available to detainees and attorneys during a hearing over whether detainees at the facility were getting adequate access to their lawyers. U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell has yet to rule on whether to grant the detainees’ request that they get the same access to their attorneys as detainees do at federally-run detention centers.

The Florida Department of Emergency Management, the state agency overseeing the detention center, didn’t respond to an e-mailed inquiry on Thursday. The Everglades facility was built last summer at a remote airstrip by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to support President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Florida also has built a second immigration detention center in north Florida.

The former Everglades detainees’ lawsuit claims that their First Amendment rights were violated. They say their attorneys have to make an appointment to visit three days in advance, unlike at other immigration detention facilities where lawyers can just show up during visiting hours; that detainees often are transferred to other facilities before their attorneys’ appointments to see them; and that scheduling delays have been so lengthy that detainees were unable to meet with attorneys before key deadlines.

State officials who are defendants in the lawsuit have denied restricting the detainees’ access to their attorneys and cited security and staffing reasons for any challenges. Federal officials who also are defendants denied that detainees’ First Amendment rights were violated.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

Groundswell cafe in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood has announced it will not reopen after a fire gutted its building in May of 2025.

The coffee shop opened in 2009 and expanded to include an in-house bakery and cafe food in 2013.

Co-owner Megan Greulich Schoonover competed on the Food Network’s “Christmas Cookie Challenge,” which helped make the cafe’s ugly Christmas sweater cookies a fixture during holiday season, according to the restaurant’s website.

Greulich Schoonover posted the following message on social media:

“Friends, we have some hard news that Groundswell will not be reopening after our fire. Financially, we just cannot make it work. We have loved being a part of your special and ordinary moments over the last 16 years. It has been an honor and a joy.

“At the same time, we know this moment is about something much more important in our community. If you’re feeling a need for some extra care and connection, we are right there with you. So in that spirit, we have one final invitation: please stop by the shop tomorrow (Friday, Feb. 13), any time between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. I will be at the front door with free vegan banana bread (while it lasts), and a hug if you’d like.

“We’re also looking forward to supporting the next locally-owned small business to bring something new to this corner, and we are anticipating some exciting news on that in late spring. We will post information about it here once we have it so you can join us in giving them a warm Hamline-Midway welcome.

“With much love and gratitude,

“Megan (on behalf of Alisha, Tim, and Jason too)”

Groundswell: 1340 Thomas Ave., St. Paul; groundswellmn.com

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