Keith Ellison, mayors Kaohly Her, Jacob Frey file legal action against ICE

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Citing warrantless arrests, detentions of U.S. citizens based on race and accent, and the “unlawful deployment of thousands of armed, masked, and poorly trained federal agents,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison joined the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul Monday to announce s joint legal action against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and related agencies.

“This has to stop. It just has to stop. We allege the obvious targeting of Minnesota for its diversity … and our democracy … is a violation of the Constitution,” said Ellison, pointing out that the targeting of churches, schools, hospitals, funeral homes and other sensitive locations violates federal administrative procedure.

“This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota,” Ellison said. “This surge has made us less safe.”

To Ellison’s statement that federal agents have caused the state “serious harm,” the White House’s “Rapid Response” account posted on X: “What caused Minnesota tremendous harm was the theft of billions of taxpayer dollars at the hands of Somalis, Keith. If you had done your job, they wouldn’t be there.”

Temporary restraining order also sought

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, alleges violations of the First and Tenth Amendments, the Equal Sovereignty Principle, and the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

“Operation Metro Surge” has drawn federal immigration enforcement agents from multiple agencies within Homeland Security to the Twin Cities in what federal officials have described as the largest DHS operation in national history.

Speaking at Minneapolis City Hall on Monday afternoon, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her said in additional to the federal lawsuit, the two cities have asked for a temporary restraining order to curb U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities.

“These are not normal times,” said Frey, noting the city’s police are logging heavy overtime as confrontations escalate between ICE agents and observers. “What we are seeing right now is not normal immigration enforcement. … At times there are as many as 50 agents arresting one person.”

The mayors said some small businesses have lost as much as 50% to 80% of revenue and some schools have closed.

“They’re targeting us based on what we look and sound like,” Her said. “Our residents are scared, and as local officials, we have a responsibility to act.”

Weeks of heightened federal activity

The lawsuit follows weeks of heightened federal activity in and around the Twin Cities, which escalated with a planned 30-day surge of ICE and U.S. Border Patrol agents that began around Jan. 4.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem personally accompanied agents on arrests shared on the department’s social media channels, and reports estimate some 2,000 or more agents will be deployed for a combination of immigration enforcement and fraud investigation.

Many of those stopped, questioned or detained appear to have no serious criminal history, Eilison said.

The attorney general and other critics have called the surge political payback because Minnesota did not vote for Trump or certify Trump as the winner in the 2024 election, or because Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, joined the failed Kamala Harris presidential ticket as a candidate for vice president.

Fatal shooting

Protesters and constitutional observers also have demanded accountability after what they’ve described as heavy-handed or blatantly illegal tactics, including the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman, who exchanged words with an ICE agent from her car before being shot in the face while attempting to drive away last Wednesday morning.

Noem and others in the Trump administration quickly labeled Good a domestic terrorist and said she was attempting to run over the agent, but Frey and other officials called that take baseless.

Ellison on Monday said Minnesota’s non-citizen immigrant population without legal status stands at 1.5%, far below that of Republican states such as Florida, Utah and Texas, but those states have not been subject to surging immigration enforcement.

“If the goal were simply to look for people who were undocumented, Minnesota and Minneapolis is not where you would go,” Frey said.

Reaction from state legislative leadership

The Minnesota House GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, and Floor Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said the lawsuit was a waste of resources.

“Instead of working with the federal government to target and arrest criminal illegal immigrants, they are wasting state resources on a lawsuit that seeks to override the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration law,” they said in a statement. “Minnesotans deserve leaders that allow the removal of violent criminals — not ones that demand they remain in our communities.”

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Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, however, said she “strongly support(s) the action” to get federal agents out of the state.

“This surge of ICE agents has sown chaos in the streets, with countless violations of civil liberties and a dangerous disruption of daily life as Minnesotans know it,” Murphy said in a statement. “Schools and businesses have closed, and many Minnesotans have been forced to avoid unlawful detention. No one is safer because of this, and our neighbor Renee Good is dead … ICE can’t leave our state soon enough.”

To read a copy of the lawsuit go to ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2026.

Man accused of recklessly driving U-Haul into Iran protest in Los Angeles, police say

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By CHRISTOPHER WEBER

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man accused of steering a U-Haul truck toward a Los Angeles demonstration supporting Iran’s protests was released after being arrested on suspicion of reckless driving and has yet to be formally charged, authorities said Monday.

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Police first said one person was hit by truck during Sunday’s protest, but on Monday said no one was struck. Two people declined treatment after paramedics evaluated them at the scene, the fire department said.

Messages were sent to the city attorney’s office Monday asking about possible charges against the 48-year-old man. Police say he sped into the crowd of demonstrators, some waving Iran’s lion and sun flag, an emblem of its former ruler, the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The protesters gathered Sunday afternoon in Westwood, a neighborhood that’s home to the largest Iranian community outside the country.

Videos shared on social media show demonstrators scrambling out of the truck’s way while a few chase after it. The vehicle stopped several blocks away, its windshield, mirrors and a window shattered. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed police officers keeping the crowd at bay while demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver’s side window.

Investigators searched the truck, “with nothing significant being found,” the police statement said.

Signs from a Sunday protest, supporting protesters in Iran, are left on a sidewalk Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Police said the protesters tore down a banner on the truck that read “No Shah. No Regime. USA: Don’t Repeat 1953. No Mullah,” an apparent reference to a U.S.-backed coup in that year which toppled then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized the country’s oil industry. The coup cemented the shah’s power and lit the fuse for the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini usher in the theocracy that still governs the country.

Signs from a Sunday protest, supporting protesters in Iran, are left on a yard Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

From exile in the United States, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who fled Iran just before the Islamic Revolution, has called on Iranians to join the demonstrations. Some Iranians have chanted pro-shah slogans, which were once punishable by death, highlighting the anger fueling demonstrations that began over Iran’s sanctions-crippled economy.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened Iran with military action over its crackdown on protesters in nationwide demonstrations that activists said Monday had left nearly 600 dead across the country.

Associated Press journalists Julie Watson in San Diego and Michael Catalini in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this report.

St. Anthony man charged with fatally stabbing apartment maintenance worker, severely injuring teen

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A St. Anthony man fatally stabbed a maintenance worker and severely injured a 15-year-old boy in the hallway of their St. Anthony apartment building early Saturday, according to charges.

Jonathon Michael Kaupa, 31, is jailed and charged in Ramsey County District Court with second-degree murder in connection with the stabbings at Equinox Apartments located in the 2800 block of Silver Lane, just west of Silver Lake Road. Authorities have not released the identity of the man who was killed; the criminal complaint says he was 44 years old and lived across the hallway from Kaupa.

Kaupa was arrested later that morning near Duluth. His attorney contacted police and told them not to talk to him, according to the complaint, which does not offer a motive for the stabbings.

Kaupa had a first appearance on the charges Monday and remained jailed on $5 million bail. An attorney for Kaupa is not listed in the court file.

What happened

The complaint gives the following account of the incident:

St. Anthony police responded to the apartment complex and found the man dead on the floor of a third-floor hallway, with stab wounds to his neck and upper body. Blood spatter covered the walls and front doors of nearby apartment units.

Officers saw “some sort of carving” on the outside door of the man’s apartment, the complaint states. A young girl exited the apartment and said her brother was inside, where the teen was found facedown with stab wounds to his arms, chest, neck and head.

Before he was rushed to Hennepin County Medical Center, the teen told police the man who stabbed him came from the apartment across the hall. Officers learned that Kaupa lived in the unit.

The teen’s sister told police she and her brother were awakened by the sound of sawing noises at their door. The teen checked the door, saw a man and alerted the 44-year-old man, who was sleeping in the apartment. The teen and man left the apartment, and the girl heard screaming. The teen, who’d been stabbed, went back into the apartment and called 911.

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While officers were at the apartment building, a driver of a ride-booking service showed up and said she had picked up a suspicious man just north of the apartment complex about 5:30 a.m. and took him to his parents’ home in St. Paul. The driver said the man had been lying in a snowbank and was not wearing proper clothing for the cold temperatures when she picked him up.

The man, later identified from the ride-booking app as Kaupa, asked the driver to charge his phone, which he said had “fish guts” on it. The driver noticed he had on just one tan mitt-style glove and carried a bag with clothes stained with blood.

“(The driver) thought the interaction was so strange she returned to the area and sought out an officer,” the complaint states.

Mental health issues

Kaupa’s father also showed up at the apartment building looking for him. He told officers Kaupa suffers from mental health issues and had been hospitalized for mental health crises in 2022 and again in March.

Jonathon Michael Kaupa (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

He said Kaupa sent a text message to him at 6 a.m. that read “sorry” and that he then showed up at his home and asked to borrow his Mercedes-Benz. His father told police Kaupa may be headed to their cabin in Two Harbors.

Kaupa had told his parents that his neighbor who lived across the hall from him does maintenance work for the building and enters his apartment. “They were not sure if the neighbor actually entered Kaupa’s apartment or if the belief was the result of Kaupa’s paranoia,” the complaint states.

Officers executed a search warrant on Kaupa’s apartment and garage. They found a rope they believe he used to leave the building from the balcony. Inside his Volkswagen, officers recovered a metal tin that contained a powder that tested positive for the presence of amphetamines.

The mother of the teen and the girl told police she had left work before the stabbings. She said they had placed a camera in the hall because someone had placed glue on their doorframe. Someone damaged the camera a month earlier, so they put up a new camera. She also said the man killed was the maintenance worker for the apartment building.

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Man killed, boy injured in St. Anthony stabbing

The teen later told police he awoke to a “Sawzall noise” coming from the hallway during the night. He said he opened the door and saw a man, who tried to push the door. The man then emerged from the apartment across the hallway with a sharp weapon like a screwdriver. He pushed the teen and man, and a fight ensued.

The teen told police a doctor told him he had been stabbed 20 times.

Kaupa, during his booking into jail, said he had ingested prescription medication and was suffering from withdrawals from medication and alcohol. He also had a laceration on his wrist, but could not explain how it happened, the complaint says.

On Sunday, an officer found a tan mitt-style glove in the area where Kaupa was picked up for a ride.

Here’s how to register for a chance to buy tickets to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — With the 2028 Olympics Games in Los Angeles on the horizon, fans will get their first opportunity to get in line for tickets on Wednesday.

Registration will open Jan. 14 to be entered into the ticket draw for a randomly assigned time slot to purchase tickets.

Here’s what to know:

When do the games start?

The schedule for the games, which will take place July 14 to July 30, 2028, has already been released. Some events, like baseball, basketball, hockey and water polo, will begin July 12.

The 2028 Olympics will be the largest games in history, with more than 11,000 athletes across 51 sports.

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Who can get in line for tickets?

Anyone can register.

But people who live in the Los Angeles and Oklahoma City areas will have a chance to get the first time slots reserved for locals. Oklahoma City will host the canoe slalom and softball events. You must have a zip code matching a credit card’s billing address in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, or Ventura counties for the California events, and in Oklahoma, Canadian or Cleveland counties for the Oklahoma events.

Locals will be eligible for a chance to access tickets early, from April 2 to April 6 of this year, if they register for the ticket draw by March 18.

And if they don’t get a coveted early time slot, they’ll be entered along with everyone else into the lottery for a time in the ticket queue.

How many will be sold?

LA28 has said it will release 14 million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, which would set a record, surpassing the 12 million sold for the Paris Olympics.

What do they cost?

Single tickets for both the Olympics and Paralympics will start at $28.

LA28, the planning committee, also launched a fundraising effort in November 2025 to be able to give away free tickets to people who live near the venues.

“The 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games are for everyone. This program is about making sure that the people who live, work and contribute to the spirit of Los Angeles can access the Games taking place in their hometown,” LA28 chairperson and president, Casey Wasserman, said in a press release.

What the organizers haven’t said

The LA28 committee says full ticket sales will open later in 2026 but have not given a firm date.

The committee also hasn’t released other details about purchasing rules — such as how many seats, for how many events, these early ticket buyers might be able to secure.