WASHINGTON — The Defense Department has told 1,500 active-duty troops to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, where President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act as a response to protests there against the killing of a Minneapolis woman by a federal immigration officer.

Since threatening to invoke the little-used 1807 law, Trump has already appeared to back away from actually doing so, as Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike have called for restraint.

Even so, the Pentagon last week put troops with two infantry battalions with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division on alert in case they ended up being called up, two Defense officials said.

“The Department of War is always prepared to execute the orders of the commander in chief if called upon,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, said in an emailed statement, using the Trump administration’s preferred moniker for the department.

The Pentagon last week also quietly alerted 200 Texas National Guard troops to be ready to deploy to Minnesota in the event that Trump followed through with his threat. The Texas Guard soldiers have remained on standby since returning home from Chicago late last year.

But the deployment of troops from the 11th Airborne Division, which is based in Alaska, would be a major escalation for Trump, who has already sent National Guard troops into a number of U.S. cities.

The use of military force on domestic soil in the United States is rare, and it is usually reserved only for the most extreme situations. Active-duty forces are barred from domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act, which allows for the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.

The order putting the troops on notice to deploy was reported earlier by ABC News.

On Friday, a day after issuing his Insurrection Act threat, Trump appeared to walk back his comments. “I don’t think I need it right now,” he told reporters while leaving the White House to spend the weekend in Florida.

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Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024, urged Trump on Thursday to back off the heated rhetoric. “Let’s turn the temperature down,” the governor wrote on social media. “Stop this campaign of retribution.”

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, an escalation in the state-federal battle over the conduct of immigration agents in the city.

Trump was talked out of invoking the Insurrection Act in 2020 following the protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. At the time, his defense secretary, attorney general and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all advised him against sending active-duty troops into U.S. cities to battle local citizens.

But Trump has a much more compliant Pentagon in his second term, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has worked to amplify Trump’s directives and inclinations, rather than seek to restrain him.

One defense official said Sunday that the Pentagon was aware that Trump had appeared to back away from his threat, but also said that Hegseth wanted to be prepared.

During her two days in immigration detention, a St. Paul woman who was born in Minnesota said she “put her faith in God” and prayed after suffering what appeared to be a stress-induced seizure and being taken to a hospital in arm and leg restraints.

Nasra Ahmed, 23, tilted her face to the side Sunday evening to show the broken skin and bruising she said she suffered on the side of her head when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shoved her to the ground of a parking lot outside the apartment complex where she lives with relatives.

“I gave them my I.D. since they asked,” said Ahmed, a U.S. citizen who has no documented criminal history in Minnesota. “I did everything they asked.”

On top of her treatment, residents of the predominantly Somali-American housing complex have expressed shock and outrage that a U.S. citizen would be taken into custody by armed immigration officials.

“What is going on is not right,” said her father, Mohamed Ahmed, who had no access to his daughter during her two days of incarceration.

“It’s wrong. Everyone can see,” he added. “They’re not going after the ‘worst of the worst.’ They’re terrorizing the community. They’re terrorizing mostly communities of color, but everybody is being targeted now. Nasra committed no crime, but they put her in jail. She’s got bruises.”

Growing federal presence

Nasra Ahmed’s arrest is the latest in a growing number of reported immigration detentions involving non-citizens and U.S. citizens.

Stepped-up immigration enforcement throughout the Twin Cities began late last year and escalated in early January with upwards of 2,000 ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said last week that DHS would send “hundreds more” federal officers to Minnesota.

Ahmed, who lives with an aunt in the complex off Lower Afton Road in St. Paul, said she had just left home around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday to pick up her prescription medication when two Somali-American men ran past her in the parking lot.

Nasra Ahmed, 23, photographed outside a relative’s apartment near Lower Afton Road in St. Paul on Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026, where she was forcibly detained by federal immigration agents on Wednesday, suffering cuts and bruises to her face and legs. She spent two days at the Sherburne County Jail before being released without charges on Friday night. She is a U.S. citizen, born in Minnesota, with no documented criminal history. (Frederick Melo / Pioneer Press)

She suddenly found herself in the middle of a group of ICE agents who had been chasing them, she said. The armed agents demanded to see her identification, and she complied.

The situation quickly escalated anyway, she said, with an agent calling her a racial slur and another telling her they were “making America great again.” In videos of the incident recorded by neighbors and circulating on social media, a dozen agents can be seen surrounding her, forcing her to the ground and then into a car.

A jail roster later listed her as 5’4 and 112 lbs. — an unlikely threat to a team of agents, at least in her own eyes.

“They used a lot of force to arrest me,” she said. “They pinned me. I have a bruise on my head. I’ve been having head pain since that incident. My whole body is aching. … I was crying. I was screaming.”

Two days in detention

Ahmed said her cellular phone was confiscated and has yet to be returned. She was driven by two agents — a Latina and the driver, a Caucasian man — to the Whipple Building at Fort Snelling, where she said she shared a detention cell with a woman who had suffered gashes to her legs that had bloodied her pants.

The woman, who was Native American, told Ahmed she had been forcibly removed from her car.

Ahmed was soon transferred to the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, which serves as a holding facility for ICE. A jail roster listed her as being held pending federal felony charges, but it provided no additional details.

Ahmed, a former Amazon factory worker, has been taking time away from working since suffering repeated medical episodes that include seizure-like symptoms. On Thursday, she said, she had another episode, which may have been stress-induced.

She was taken, shackled, to an Allina hospital, where she was given an MRI and held overnight under watch.

“The way they treated me during that episode while I was transported, I was cuffed from my hands to my legs. I was covered in chains,” she said. “They had a padlock on me. … While I was in the hospital, if I needed to go to the restroom or I needed to get up, they had chains on me like Hannibal Lecter, pretty much.”

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She was returned Friday to the Sherburne County Jail, and then moved back to the Whipple Building, where she was released around 7:45 p.m. Friday without charges. With her cell phone confiscated, she had no way of calling her parents, but she was driven home by a federal public defender.

Her father, Mohamed Ahmed, had worked closely with the office of state Rep. Samakab Hussein DFL-St. Paul, to get her out of federal detention.

“She’s never been arrested,” her father said. “She’s a good citizen.”

If you’re tired of visiting places trod by millions of tourists previously, perhaps you should consider looking in less likely spots this year.

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A cheat sheet for that can be found in Afar’s primer, “Where To Go in 2026: Places That Are on the Rise and off the Beaten Path.” The travel-media brand has collected two dozen destinations that serve as a “better way to travel the world: responsibly, creatively and with eyes on places long overlooked.”

Think of Buffalo, N.Y., whose Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor is getting a resurrected jazz club and a pioneering Black radio museum in 2026. Or West Cork, Ireland, a wild and enchanting side of the island that visitors don’t often patronize, or Rabat, Morocco, which is rising as a cultural hub with new museums and a rockin’ summer music festival.

Residents of Northern California might perk up their ears at the inclusion of the Columbia River Gorge, a rugged and waterfall-blessed region in Oregon and Washington that’s within striking range. Here are the first 10 on the list in alphabetical order; for more check the full guide.

Afar’s places on the rise and off the beaten path

1 Adelaide, Australia

2 Albuquerque, N.M.

3 Birmingham, Ala.

4 Bucharest, Romania

5 Buffalo, N.Y.

A view from the family beach at Disney Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point, on Saturday, June 8, 2024, of the Disney Magic docked at the bridge that leads to Disney’s newest destination on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. (Rich Pope, Orlando Sentinel)

6 Columbia River Gorge, Oregon and Washington

7 Da Nang, Vietnam

8 East Antarctica

9 Eleuthera, Bahamas

10 Far East London

Source: afar.com/magazine/the-best-places-to-travel-in-2026

Originally, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was to land on TV screens in mid-2025.

The gods had other ideas.

This third HBO series set in the world that author George R.R. Martin introduced with his “A Song of Ice and Fire” collection of fantasy novels finally arrives this week, mere months before the highly anticipated return of the second, “House of the Dragon,” in the summer.

While “Dragon” is much like “Game of Thrones,” the beloved (until it wasn’t) adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire” — an hourlong series chock full of drama, scheming, battles, magic and, of course, dragons — “Knight” is a small-scale, half-hour affair largely grounded in reality while still taking place in the realm of Westeros.

Look at it as an appetizer for the meal that will be the third season of “Dragon.”

“Knight” is based on Martin’s “Tales of Dunk and Egg” novellas, with this first six-episode season an adaptation of 1998’s “The Hedge Knight.” Dunk is the titular figure of that book and the TV series, the towering Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), while Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) is a diminutive boy who comes to squire for him.

Their adventures take place about a century after the events being chronicled in “Dragon” and about 100 years before those of “Thrones.” It is a time when the winged, fire-breathing creatures are thought to be extinct and one of relative peace in the realm’s seven kingdoms — or nine, depending on how you are counting.

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Showrunner Ira Parker — who has produced and written on “Dragon” — is the writer or co-writer of each “Knight” installment, helping to lend it an unmistakable consistency.

We are introduced to Dunk as he buries the hedge knight for whom he squired, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb), and who, Dunk will come to insist, knighted him shortly before dying. Not long after this, we watch as he relieves himself (no, sigh, the second one) behind a tree, the camera still able to catch much of the, um, glory.

Man, it’s great to be back in Westeros!

Unable to conjure a more promising plan, the near-coin-less Dunk decides to ride for Ashford Meadow, soon to be the site of a tournament where he intends to compete in the jousting event. Along the way, of course, he encounters Egg, who asks to be his squire. Dunk initially rejects this idea but soon relents, allowing the lad to be his aide and promising to keep him fed, if not much beyond that, in exchange.

To compete, Dunk must convince others he is a knight — if only a hedge knight, a class of wandering warriors who, we learn, often must sleep in the hedges because no lord will have them. In this pursuit, he meets men with important last names, such as charismatic enjoyer of life Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) and Prince Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), the heir to the all-important Iron Throne in King’s Landing. The latter is unlike some other powerful members of his family — not just because he has short, dark hair but also because he is thoughtful, measured and kind.

Dunk’s life is complicated when he runs afoul of one of Baelor’s nephews, Prince Aerion “Brightflame” Targaryen (Finn Bennett), son of Maekar Targaryen (Sam Spruell), Baelor’s younger brother. Dunk was in the right, of course, protecting a Dornish puppeteer, Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford), who was having a bit of satirical fun at the Targaryens’ expense, but that matters little considering the power wielded by Aerion.

Egg stands by Dunk, but he will need more formidable allies if he is to survive the trial to come.

“Knight,” with its basic story and Dunk’s relatable values — informed by a late-season flashback episode in which a younger version of the character is portrayed by Bamber Todd during a crucial point in his adolescence in the slums of Flea Bottom — is appealing in its simplicity. That said, even with most episodes around 30 minutes, it could use a bit more excitement and action.

Former rugby player Claffey is a nice find for everyman Dunk, and Ansell (“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”) brings some clever touches to the complicated Egg. However, there’s more crackle to this series when it involves certain supporting players, including the aforementioned Carvel (“The Crown”) and Ings (“The Gentlemen”).

As has “House of the Dragon,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” serves as a reminder of just how well Martin has fleshed out both the geography and overall mythology of Westeros. (Relatedly, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that this series is keeping a little secret, one no doubt already known to many well-steeped in Martin’s world-building.)

While “Knight” is, again, only so filling, you’ll get no objections here that it already has been renewed for a second season, which you’d expect to adapt Martin’s second novella in the series, 2003’s “The Sworn Sword.”

The gods are good.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’

What: Six-episode first season of half-hour series set in author George R.R. Martin’s Westeros.

Where: HBO and HBO Max.

When: 10 p.m. Sundays starting Jan. 18.

Rated: TV-MA.