Minnesota Democrats are saying the departure of Secretary Kristi Noem from the Department of Homeland Security is overdue, while Republicans have yet to comment.

President Donald Trump announced Noem’s departure in a Truth Social post on Thursday. He tapped Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace Noem — a move that would require Senate confirmation.

“The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland,’” Trump wrote.

The ousting comes on the heels of the months-long DHS Operation Metro Surge, which resulted in the fatal shootings in January of Alexi Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents, triggering civil unrest and pushback locally and nationally over immigration enforcement.

House Leader Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, said it is just the start of accountability and “really does show the power of ordinary Minnesotans when they stand up to the kind of heartless and unconstitutional and unlawful activity we saw.”

“This president has demonstrated time and time again that there’s nothing he likes better than a scapegoat,” Stephenson said Thursday night. “He’s not up for owning his own failures and misjudgment. He just finds someone to blame and then trucks on, so it’s not that surprising. And beyond that, as I said, I don’t have a ton of hope that her replacement is going to be a significant improvement. Having said that, I believe in accountability, and she certainly deserved to be fired.”

While several House Republicans had already left for the weekend, three who were asked by Forum News Service to comment Thursday night at the Capitol declined. A request for comment from Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, was not answered by the time of publication.

Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegation had not responded to a request for comment from Forum News Service by the time of publication.

Rep. Isaac Schultz, R-Elmdale Township, said he thinks Trump is “going to choose the people who can best execute the mission to make America great again.” He said he supports Trump’s immigration goals and that “this move likely helps achieve that mission.”

“Our job is to demand better of government, and I think that in this instance, we want to see immigration enforcement be more effective and done better and protecting people’s constitutional rights,” Schultz said. “And I believe that the best ability for the President to execute this mission, is if we do this work better, and I think that that’s what the President is committed to.”

Noem’s departure also comes after she underwent a series of hearings before Congress on the conduct of DHS under her leadership. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., at the Tuesday Senate hearing pressed Noem on the use of the term “domestic terrorists” to characterize the fatal shootings of Pretti and Good.

“Alex Pretti and Renee Good should be alive today,” Klobuchar said in a statement Thursday. “Secretary Noem’s overdue removal from the Department of Homeland Security is a step toward accountability, but it is only the beginning.”

Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn, echoed Stephenson’s concerns about Noem’s successor and urged Senate Democrats not to support Mullin’s nomination or fund ICE.

“Minnesotans know we are not out of the woods yet and we can’t afford another rubber stamp for Trump’s immigration agenda leading DHS,” Craig said. “And even though we’ve seen that loyalty is a one-way street for this president, that’s exactly what Markwayne Mullin will be.”

In reacting to Noem’s departure, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said in an X post, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in an X post, “Good riddance.”

Gov. Tim Walz said in a statement Thursday that “Kristi Noem has done a stunning amount of damage and it’s good she’s gone.

“But this doesn’t change the fact that we need a complete overhaul of DHS, impartial investigations into the killings of two American citizens, and information on children that were taken from Minnesota,” Walz said.

Trump said Noem will leave her role as homeland security chief on March 31.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lionel Messi bestowed President Donald Trump with a bejeweled pink soccer ball during a White House ceremony honoring Inter Miami for winning last year’s MLS Cup.

Miami beat the Vancouver Whitecaps in December for the Major League Soccer title, and the Argentinian superstar was named the league’s MVP for the second consecutive season.

“Leo, you came in and you won, and that’s something very hard to do, very, very unusual and frankly, there’s a lot more pressure put on you than anyone would know, because you sort of expected to win, but almost nobody wins,” Trump said.

President Donald Trump receives a soccer ball trophy from Lionel Messi during an event to honor the 2025 Major League Soccer champions Inter Miami in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, March 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Messi, who entered the ceremony alongside Trump, joined Inter Miami in mid-2023 to great fanfare. He did not speak during the event, which turned political at times with Trump addressing the war with Iran, the situation in Venezuela, a possible future announcement regarding Cuba and even tariffs.

Addressing Messi — who famously avoids speaking out on politics — the president stuck mostly to sports.

“You could have gone anywhere in the world. You could have chosen any team in the world, and you chose to go to Miami. I don’t blame you. The weather’s extremely good. Do you go to Doral? You go to Doral and play golf?” Trump said, referencing a golf course he owns. “I just want to thank you for bringing us all on this ride, because you are hot and talented and a great person.”

Among the other Inter Miami stars in attendance were Luis Suárez, Tadeo Allende and Rodrigo De Paul. MLS Commissioner Don Garber sat next to Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House’s World Cup task force. Also attending were retired baseball star Alex Rodriguez and members of Trump’s cabinet.

Inter Miami was the first MLS team to be invited to the White House during Trump’s two terms in office.

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Messi, an eight-time Ballon d’Or winner, led Argentina to the World Cup title in 2022. The 38-year-old is expected to play again for Argentina this summer when the tournament is hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Soccer’s global showcase has been clouded by recent events, including the war with Iran and turmoil in Mexico following the death of cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera in a military operation.

Iran is part of the World Cup field of 48 teams and is set to play a pair of games at SoFi Stadium in Southern California and another in Seattle during the group stage.

Trump opened the ceremony with comments about the conflict with Iran but did not mention the World Cup.

Following military action by the United States and Israel last week, Iran’s top soccer official, Mehdi Taj, said the country could not look to playing in the World Cup with “hope.”

“I really don’t care” if Iran participates, Trump told Politico this week. “I think Iran is a very badly defeated country. They’re running on fumes.”

It’s not clear what would happen if Iran pulled out of the World Cup. No team that has qualified for the tournament has withdrawn in the past 75 years.

The World Cup kicks off on June 11 when Mexico plays South Africa in Mexico City.

During the ceremony, Trump spoke about how he saw Brazilian great Pele play with the New York Cosmos. He looked to Messi: “You may be better than Pele,” then asked the crowd, “Who’s better?”

Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas said his team has “changed the culture of football in the United States of America forever.”

“We can play with the big boys, we can play with the heavyweights. Our league can be one of the top leagues in the world,” Mas said. “And it is this ability to dream, to persevere, to have no obstacles ahead of us, that we will continue to be successful. And hopefully, Mr. President, this is not our only visit here celebrating an MLS Cup championship.”

It was the first White House visit for Messi. He was invited by the Biden administration to be presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 2025 but could not attend because of a scheduling conflict.

Inter Miami will remain in the area to play D.C. United on Saturday.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

By MATT O’BRIEN and KONSTANTIN TOROPIN

The Trump administration is following through with its threat to designate artificial intelligence company Anthropic as a supply chain risk in an unprecedented move that could force other government contractors to stop using the AI chatbot Claude.

The Pentagon said in a statement Thursday that it has “officially informed Anthropic leadership the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately.”

The decision appeared to shut down the opportunity for further negotiation with Anthropic, nearly a week after President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused the company of endangering national security.

FILE – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands outside the Pentagon during a welcome ceremony for the Japanese defense minister at the Pentagon in Washington, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

Trump and Hegseth announced a series of threatened punishments last Friday, on the eve of the Iran war, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used for mass surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons.

The San Francisco-based company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. It has previously vowed to sue if the Pentagon pursued what the company described as a “legally unsound” action “never before publicly applied to an American company.”

The Pentagon didn’t reply to questions in time for publication.

Some military contractors were already cutting ties with Anthropic, a rising star in the tech industry that sells Claude to a variety of businesses and government agencies. Lockheed Martin said it will “follow the President’s and the Department of War’s direction” and look to other providers of large language models.

“We expect minimal impacts as Lockheed Martin is not dependent on any single LLM vendor for any portion of our work,” the company said. It’s not yet clear if the designation aims to block Anthropic’s use by all federal government contractors or just those that partner with the military.

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The Pentagon’s decision to apply a rule designed to address supply threats posed by foreign adversaries was quickly met with criticism from both opponents and some supporters of Trump’s Republican administration. Federal codes have defined supply chain risk as a “risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert” a system in order to disrupt, degrade or spy on it.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee, called it “a dangerous misuse of a tool meant to address adversary-controlled technology.”

“This reckless action is shortsighted, self-destructive, and a gift to our adversaries,” she said in a written statement Thursday.

Neil Chilson, a Republican former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission who now leads AI policy at the Abundance Institute, said the decision looks like “massive overreach that would hurt both the U.S. AI sector and the military’s ability to acquire the best technology for the U.S. warfighter.”

Earlier in the day, a group of former defense and national security officials sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers expressing “serious concern” about the designation.

“The use of this authority against a domestic American company is a profound departure from its intended purpose and sets a dangerous precedent,” said the letter from former officials and policy experts, including former CIA director Michael Hayden and retired Air Force, Army and Navy leaders.

They added that such a designation is meant to “protect the United States from infiltration by foreign adversaries — from companies beholden to Beijing or Moscow, not from American innovators operating transparently under the rule of law. Applying this tool to penalize a U.S. firm for declining to remove safeguards against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons is a category error with consequences that extend far beyond this dispute.”

ARCHIVO – Dario Amodei, CEO y cofundador de Anthropic, asiste a la reunión anual del Foro Económico Mundial en Davos, Suiza, el 23 de enero de 2025. (AP Foto/Markus Schreiber, Archivo)

While losing its big partnerships with defense contractors, Anthropic experienced a surge of consumer downloads over the past week due to people siding with its moral stance. Anthropic has boasted of more than a million people signing up for Claude each day this week, lifting it past OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini as the top AI app in more than 20 countries in Apple’s app store.

The dispute with the Pentagon has also further deepened Anthropic’s bitter rivalry with OpenAI, which it announced a Friday deal with the Pentagon to effectively replace Anthropic with ChatGPT in classified environments.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later said he’s saying he shouldn’t have rushed a deal that “looked opportunistic and sloppy.”

By JACK DURA

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The North Dakota Highway Patrol’s newest recruit has floppy ears, four legs and an amazing knack for finding people.

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Beau, a 12-week-old puppy, is joining a band of bloodhounds who are in demand for difficult cases across the upper Midwest.

They trail missing children, people with dementia and criminal suspects. The agency uses drones and aircraft to aid searches, but bloodhounds remain an age-old, low-tech solution.

“These dogs are just specifically bred to search for people,” said Trooper Steven Mayer, who handles Bleu, one of the dogs.

The nose knows

Bloodhounds are used from Maine to Florida to Texas to Arizona to California, said Danny Jones, executive director of the U.S. Police Canine Association. Drones and helicopters can work ahead of a dog, but the bloodhound is hard to beat.

“To actually get a direction and start moving in a direction, you’re going to need a dog on the ground to start that trail, and that’s the difference between the technology and actually having a dog such as a bloodhound on the ground,” Jones said.

Bloodhounds have about 300 million scent receptors in their nose, vastly more than humans and more than other dogs, Mayer said.

Their big, floppy ears and folds of skin help gather odor for the dog to trail people, sometimes after a week or more, he said. The dogs have scented from a wall someone touched, the dirt a person stumbled in and vomit on a car door.

North Dakota Highway Patrol Trooper Steven Mayer and Bleu, a bloodhound, stand for a photo, Feb. 11, 2026, near the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Busy schedules

Highway Patrol began using bloodhounds about 14 years ago, moving away from dual-purpose dogs to singular-purpose drug dogs and trailing dogs. The state force receives about 70 calls a year for their services, including one to Montana last year to help find a man suspected in the killing of four people at an Anaconda bar.

Two pairs of handlers and dogs drove 10 hours to help. They got fairly close to the suspect, who was in the location where the dogs were indicating on, Mayer said. Other requests have come from South Dakota and Utah.

A North Dakota Highway Patrol bloodhound named Beau sits for a photo Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, outside the Highway Patrol office in Fargo, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Beau was born in Texas but has since moved to North Dakota’s largest city of Fargo. His early training is mostly potty and kennel training and basic commands, as well as socializing him to different places, people and environments, said Trooper Dustin Pattengale, Beau’s handler. He won’t be ready for a full or certified trail until he is about 9 months old.

“The basic training is just introducing him to scent articles and then ramping up the training to where he goes further and further and encompasses different trails, different types of environment,” Pattengale said.

Bloodhounds are high-drive, loving and caring but can be stubborn, slobbery and naughty, and they’re not a dog for an apartment, Mayer said.

His partner, Bleu, is a big, friendly dog with one eye, having lost the other following an injury playing with another bloodhound. His trailing abilities are not hindered, Mayer said.

North Dakota Highway Patrol Trooper Steven Mayer watches as Bleu, a bloodhound, sniffs the air, Feb. 11, 2026, near the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Beau is a growing puppy, his long ears wet from dragging on the ground as he explored a blanket of snow, sniffing constantly. He likes his beef liver treats.

“He is a very energetic young pup. He’s pretty relaxed for the most part, most days, but he is eager. He likes to work. He likes to sniff,” Pattengale said.

New tool in Omaha

In addition to searches, North Dakota has helped agencies in other ways. Last year, Mayer went to Omaha, Nebraska, for a week to help the city police department train its first bloodhound, Willow.

Omaha used to call in the closest bloodhounds, from the Chicago area, for searches, Omaha Police Sgt. Scott Warner said. The value was clear and Willow arrived early last year.

He hopes Willow becomes an asset for the region. Omaha plans to have multiple dogs and handlers someday, he said.

Willow has trailed missing people, including an elderly man on Christmas Eve, through falling darkness, steep hills, mud and water.

Finding mentors for training is crucial, Warner said. Much of the bloodhound community is word-of-mouth, he said.

“I had no idea that North Dakota had a bloodhound program. There’s not a directory that I can look at that tells me where dogs are,” Warner said.

Handlers drop everything to go

Mayer and his wife have traveled the world to help train dogs, making trips to Hungary, Italy, South Africa and Wales, with plans later this year to go to Slovenia and Austria. They charge nothing.

Beau, a bloodhound puppy, licks the face of his handler, North Dakota Highway Patrol Trooper Dustin Pattengale, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, outside the Highway Patrol office in Fargo, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Handlers are a special breed of people, Mayer said.

“They drop everything at the drop of a hat and they’ll leave their family, their friends, they’ll leave Easter dinner to go find a stranger that they’ve never met before,” he said.

North Dakota’s dogs are something of a social media sensation for the Highway Patrol. Beau’s name was picked in a Facebook vote. Recent videos depict him chewing a toy bear and another bloodhound, Lorace, gallivanting in new boots.

“Everybody loves a dog, I mean, especially these little babies, these floppy-eared ones,” said Mayer, who hopes the dogs’ visibility yields earlier calls for their assistance.

“The more word we can get out about the program and the faster we get calls on it, the easier we can get out and be available to help people,” he said.