The last day of temporary virtual learning for St. Paul Public Schools students is March 13 and students will return to in-person classes on or before March 16, according to district officials.

As of Tuesday, the majority of students who enrolled in the district’s temporary virtual learning option have since returned to in-person classes. The temporary option began in late January as an alternative for students who may have felt unsafe attending in-person classes during the federal immigration enforcement crackdown.

Around 7,900 of the district’s approximately 33,260 students signed up for temporary virtual learning at its peak. As of late February, that number had dropped to about 3,700 students. The virtual learning option as well as other support services for families has cost nearly $1 million.

Students can return to in-person classes on earlier dates, if requested. Returning students should bring their iPads and chargers with them to school. Families with any questions should contact their student’s school.

The district’s meal box delivery to students will end before March 16 and families signed up for it will be notified before their last delivery.

In announcing the end of temporary virtual learning, district officials reminded families about the district’s safety protocols. Those include keeping schools locked and having visitors identify themselves before being let into the building, new building and parking lot signage that immigration enforcement activity is not allowed without a judicial warrant and adults who are present at pickup and drop-off times to ensure student safety.

The district board also adopted an emergency policy in February reaffirming that federal immigration enforcement officers are prohibited from school property, interviews with students or staff or other enforcement activities on district property unless required by a valid judicial warrant or law.

For more details, go to spps.org/news-details/~board/virtual/post/temporary-virtual-learning-ending.

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A Minnesotan is among the service members who have been killed in the Iran war, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday.

Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, was assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, lowa.

Amor was one of four Army Reserve soldiers killed Sunday when a drone hit a command center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait. That was just a day after the U.S. and Israel launched its military campaign against Iran, which has launched retaliatory strikes.

The other Reserve soldiers killed were Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska and Spc. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa.

In total, the U.S. military has confirmed six deaths of American service members.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, in a statement, said Amor was assigned to “Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 103rd Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), United States Army Reserve, Des Moines, Iowa. Sergeant First Class Amor’s husband and children reside in White Bear Lake.”

“John and I join with people across our state and our country in mourning Sgt. First Class Nicole Amor of White Bear Lake,” Klobuchar said. “Our hearts are with her family, loved ones, and all those in our armed forces. Sgt. Amor made the ultimate sacrifice serving our nation, and we are forever indebted to her.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — The wealthy Alexander brothers used the same tactics of luring, drugging and humiliation to sexually assault numerous women and girls, bragging about their exploits in blog posts with titles that included “It’s not rape if,” a federal prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.

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In a closing argument after four weeks of testimony in the siblings’ federal sex trafficking trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Jones reviewed the often harrowing accounts of 11 women who allege they were sexually assaulted by Alon, Oren or Tal Alexander.

The allegations are corroborated by the “sheer number of victims who testified,” the prosecutor said — women who never have met each other and live different lives, but “have one horrific thing in common: they were raped by these men.”

Far from hiding their activity, the brothers bragged about it in text messages, emailed about sneaking drugs — or “party favors” — onto a cruise ship, recorded at least one assault on video and shared photos of victims, Jones said, calling it “devastating evidence” supporting the charges against them.

“You know this playbook because the defendants did this multiple times,” Jones said, chronicling alleged assaults at Hamptons mansions; New York City apartments; an Aspen, Colorado, ski trip; and a Caribbean cruise. One woman testified that Alon Alexander raped her in 2012, hours after they had met at actor Zac Efron’s Manhattan apartment. Efron was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Oren and Tal Alexander, high-end real estate brokers dubbed “The A Team,” and their brother Alon, an executive at their family’s private security firm, have pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and other charges.

In a closing argument, a lawyer for Alon Alexander said prosecutors conflated the brothers’ “obnoxious” and admittedly inappropriate banter with grave criminal allegations. Alon “should be and is embarrassed” by the language he used — but “talk doesn’t constitute a crime,” defense lawyer Howard Srebnick argued.

The defense’s closing arguments will continue on Wednesday.

FILE – Oren and Tal Alexander speak at a panel at the Rockstars of Real Estate Event in New York., on Sept. 3, 2013. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Invision for DETAILS Magazine/AP Images, File)

The brothers are accused of meeting victims at nightclubs, parties and on dating apps, and recruited others for trips to ritzy locales, paying for flights and lodging at high-end hotels or luxe vacation rentals before drugging and raping them. After witnessing an assault at a Hamptons mansion, one woman pulled out her eyeliner and wrote “RAPIST” on a bedroom door, Jones said.

“A lot of the evidence at this long trial was hard to see and hear,” Jones said. “A lot of it was brutal. That’s because the defendant’s crimes were brutal.”

Jones reminded jurors of a video, played during the trial, of Oren Alexander appearing to rape a drugged 17-year-old in 2009 at the Manhattan apartment he shared with his brothers. Oren recorded the video with his laptop computer — and could be seen adjusting the angle before the alleged assault, Jones said.

“You can see the playbook in action here,” Jones said. “When you saw him pick up her limp legs and climb on top of her lifeless body, you knew what you were seeing.”

On another occasion, Jones said, two of the brothers and two other men raped a 16-year-old boarding school student who had skipped her prom to join them in the Hamptons. A photo of the girl, sleeping topless, was found on one of the brothers’ laptop hard drives, he said.

Now in her 30s, she testified that the assault only ended when she kicked one of the men away. Afterward, she said, Tal Alexander told her: “Don’t be mad at me.”

Another woman, a United Nations intern invited to the Hamptons mansion that weekend, testified that she saw the brothers dragging someone to a hot tub and assaulting her. The victim pleaded with them to stop and they didn’t, Jones said, recounting the intern’s testimony.

“I work for the U.N. and I know what you’re doing to girls in there,” the intern screamed before scrawling the “RAPIST” message, Jones said.

FILE – This photo provided by the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department shows Alon Alexander, left, and Oren Alexander, both of whom have been charged with sex trafficking. (Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department via AP, File)

The prosecutor urged jurors to reject defense claims that prosecutors were criminalizing “hookup culture” and that accusers were motivated by shame or by money.

“Now that you’ve seen these women for yourselves, you know how wrong that is,” Jones said, noting that one witness was the daughter of a billionaire. “There’s not been an ounce of shame in this courtroom.”

“What walked into this courtroom was not shame,” Jones added. “It was courage and resolve. It was the truth.”

Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison are set to testify before a Congressional committee Wednesday morning in a hearing focused on allegations of widespread fraud in Minnesota government programs.

The state leaders are expected to answer questions from the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which ramped up its probe into fraud allegations in Minnesota in recent months after the problem gained national media attention. Fraud eventually served as a pretext for a controversial immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. The hearing can be watched at 8 a.m. central time at tinyurl.com/28fvensb.

Walz and Ellison, both Democrats, have been blamed by legislative and Congressional Republicans for failing to do enough to stop fraud in federally funded programs. Alleged theft in a pandemic-era children’s meal program and state services funded by Medicaid has run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to federal prosecutors.

A former federal prosecutor estimated that Minnesota government fraud could run into the billions since 2018, though Walz and his administration have dismissed that figure as speculative. While there is no hard evidence of fraud topping $9 billion, as former assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson estimated in December, the number still figures into GOP messaging on the issue.

“As fraudsters looted billions of taxpayer dollars from Minnesota’s social programs, state lawmakers recently testified that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison ignored repeated warnings and retaliated against state employees who raised concerns,” Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said in a news release on the hearing. “The American people deserve clear answers about how such widespread fraud was allowed to flourish under their watch.”

Walz’s office previously said it was happy to work with Congress but described the Oversight Committee as having a “track record of holding circus hearings.”

“The governor takes Congress seriously, and his hope is that Congress will take Congress seriously,” a spokesperson said Tuesday.

The governor has responded to allegations of mismanagement by pointing to his efforts to audit programs, the appointment of a top anti-fraud official and the shuttering of a housing program beset by fraud after several providers were charged in federal fraud cases.

Still, Walz ended his campaign for a third term on Jan. 5 as scrutiny mounted on his record of managing fraud. The same week he suspended his campaign, three GOP state lawmakers testified before the Oversight Committee in the first of its hearings on Minnesota fraud.

The attorney general’s office, meanwhile, has pointed to its record of prosecuting Medicaid fraud, noting that it had tackled over 300 cases and “won over $80 million in recoveries” for the state. Ellison planned to discuss that record at Wednesday’s hearing, as well as the politicization of fraud, according to a statement from office spokesman Brian Evans.

“Ellison will make the case that turning fraud into a partisan political issue will do nothing to actually help protect Minnesotans’ tax dollars, and he will encourage members of the committee to set partisan politics aside and work across party lines to fight fraud and protect Medicaid,” he continued.

Republican members of Congress have called Walz and Ellison to testify at separate hearings in the last year. Walz in June testified before the House Oversight Committee, where he and other Democratic governors defended their state’s policies on cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Ellison, Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell and GOP lawmakers testified at a U.S. Senate hearing in February on the federal government’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.

Walz, Ellison and GOP lawmakers aren’t the only Minnesota officials the committee has summoned in recent months. House Oversight Republicans also have sought interviews with leaders at state departments with fraud problems.

Former Department of Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead, who resigned in January 2025 before new fraud prosecutions came to light, received a letter from Comer in December requesting an in-person transcribed interview.

A similar letter went to Eric Grumdahl, the former assistant commissioner of Homelessness and Housing Supports at DHS, who left his job before federal prosecutors announced fraud charges in the state’s Medicaid-funded housing stabilization services program.

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