Ryan Kusilek wanted it noted, on the record, that he did not break into tears in the immediate aftermath of Wisconsin-River Falls’ 24-14 win over North Central in the Division III national title game Sunday night in Canton, Ohio.

But his wife did.

Kusilek, who quarterbacked the Falcons from 2012-15, earning all-WIAC Conference honors, stood with a smile pasted to his face and his eyes glued to Wisconsin-River Falls coach Matt Walker as the final minute of time ticked off the clock.

“I think it really hit me when they do the victory formation with the ‘V’ sign and whatever, and he takes the headset off and it’s like, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s happening,’ ” Kusilek recalled. “And you could tell he didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to think.”

Emotions flooded Kusilek we he watched Walker finally get the chance to embrace his wife, Jana, on the field.

“I can’t put to words someone who deserves it more than he does,” Kusilek said. “He lives it, it’s his everyday person. He cares, he gives a (darn) and he’s just like a really good dude and a great coach on top of that. If you’re in a locker room with Coach Walk — after a win, after a loss — the passion was there, whether it was the first week, the 10th week, a Tuesday practice. It’s always there, it’s always consistent, it’s always genuine.”

Asked for her favorite moment from a jubilation-filled evening in Ohio, Wisconsin-River Falls athletics director Crystal Lanning responded: “Just seeing Coach Walk be able to celebrate.”

A nation of onlookers fell in love with the Falcons’ head coach during his postgame television interview on ESPN, during which he reminisced about the program’s struggles early in his tenure, credited everyone from the program’s past and present for the success and said of River Falls: “There’s no place in the world like this town,” as his voice shook and tears streamed down his cheeks.

“He’s got the most engaging personality. Anytime he steps in front of a microphone, he’s on,” Lanning said. “But even when he’s not behind a microphone, anyone he’s talking to; it could be someone in a hallway, it could be someone in the office, it could be a student walking by. There’s just something about his personality that’s so engaging, and people are just drawn to him.”

Blake DuDonis coached the Wisconsin-River Falls women’s basketball team for three seasons before going to Fairfield in 2022 to serve as a Division I assistant under his wife, Carly Thibault-DuDonis. Together, they’ve morphed the Stags into a perennial NCAA tournament team.

Three and a half years after leaving the Division III program, DuDonis posted a photo of himself in a Falcons hat Sunday as he watched the title game from his home. He noted that coaching at Wisconsin-River Falls “was one of the great joys of my life.”

“The people are why,” DuDonis posted. “(First) day on the job, Matt Walker walks in (and says), ‘I’m taking you to lunch.’ ”

“That’s just the person he is,” Lanning said.

Palms up

Kusilek was surrounded by families of current players in the stands at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium on Sunday. He enjoyed hearing the belief they all expressed in the head football coach, and found it a little funny.

He shared their belief. It’s why he committed to the Falcons out of high school, fresh on the heel’s of Walker’s debut season, a one-win campaign. Kusilek was buying more into the person than the program.

“The culture that he had. We had to change it. There was a lot of kind of a, ‘Well, this is just how we do it’ attitude,” Kusilek recalled. “And (Walker) was like, ‘Nope, we’re going to change it. I’m here to change it. We’re going to work our tails off, and it’s going to take time, but you’ve got to believe. You’ve got to believe it’s going to happen.’ ”

Many of the sayings used by this year’s team originated early in Walker’s tenure: Win the day, Falcons fly together, palm up.

The latter, Kusilek noted, is essentially Walker’s version of P.J. Fleck’s “Row the Boat” culture at the University of Minnesota. The idea of “palm up” is you’re always giving to the program via your efforts and actions, rather than taking.

Guys bought in.

“It was fun to be on the front end of it,” Kusilek said. “Sure, obviously, would’ve loved to win a lot more games. But I just think that what his message was, his consistency and just absolute belief in it, that translated into us. It didn’t always translate into results on the field, but we believed in him, we believed in the program and we believed that, one day, this could be it.”

Lanning witnessed the buy-in and believed in the process. It’s why, while Walker has joked he should’ve been fired at multiple points in his first decade on duty, his boss never considered such a move.

“I could see everything else happening the right way,” Lanning said, “but I think maybe what’s satisfying is now other people can say, ‘Oh, it’s a good thing you stuck with it.’ ”

Because consistency, ingenuity and, yes, an upgrade in facilities, led to improvement in player ability. But while the athletes changed, the man leading them did not.

“I think that’s been really cool,” Kusilek said. “People, especially in this day and age, they want to play for someone that they can trust, that they can believe in. He’s here to develop men, to develop a team, develop a culture. He’s not here to just find his paycheck at a university, moving-up-the-ladder kind of thing.

“All the adversity, all the losing seasons, we all know what he went through. And the belief we had was the same belief these people had. And they put it together, which was great.”

Arrival

Lanning was overwhelmed, and in disbelief. The school held an alumni reception Saturday night in Canton for those who made the trip to see the title game. Upon her entrance into the restaurant, she saw countless people from all eras of the school’s history.

“There were times when we thought we had lost some of them along the way,” she said, “but they were all here, they all made the trip and it was just unbelievable.”

Later that evening, she received a request to have parents greet the team at the stadium the next day, ahead of the title game. She shot out one message, unsure of what the late-notice response would be. The next day, hundreds were on site.

During the title game, she pulled out her phone and captured videos of the packed stands filled with Falcons fans performing the team’s touchdown celebration.

Everyone was all in.

As the title game wound down, the AD found herself filled with pride. Wisconsin-River Falls has won the last two women’s hockey national titles. Now here the football team was not only representing the school in a title game, on ESPN, but winning it.

There’s no denying Wisconsin-River Falls as a bona fide, championship-caliber school.

“What we experienced here this weekend, I could never have envisioned it,” she said. “There’s something so exciting happening within this department.”

Lanning has been with the university for nearly 20 years. When she moved into the AD position a decade ago, the word “potential” was frequently tossed around.

“I always wanted to move beyond the potential to (the point where) we’re actually there,” Lanning said. “That’s the thing that keeps going through my mind: We don’t have to say, ‘We have the potential to be there’ anymore. We can say, ‘We are there.’ ”

Someone noted to Kusilek this was a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience. He felt compelled to offer a correction.

“It could be,” he said, “but it’s not going to be.”

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“Our schools are incredibly well-positioned to address hunger. They’re connected to nearly 1 million students and their families, and are one of the few resources that reach a citywide scale.”

A school lunch tray. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is entering City Hall during one of the most dire hunger crises in recent New York City history. Unprecedented cuts to federal food assistance and the lapse in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits during last year’s shutdown have brought this crisis into the spotlight.

However, the rising cost of groceries, threats to food benefits, and economic factors like inflation have been driving children and families into hunger since the pandemic. According to a March 2025 poll from No Kid Hungry, 86 percent of New Yorkers said the cost of food is rising faster than their income.

New York’s hunger crisis has been devastating for kids and families, but it also represents an opportunity for the new mayor—who made affordability his central campaign issue—to take a bold stance and ensure that every New Yorker stays fed.

Mayor Mamdani already has a solid track record on the issue. As a State Assembly member, he championed legislation to expand free meals for public school students. On the campaign trail, he also acknowledged that kids must eat to thrive. If he wants to make an immediate impact on the hunger crisis, there’s a place he can start reaching families on his first day in office: New York City Schools.

Our schools are incredibly well-positioned to address hunger. They’re connected to nearly 1 million students and their families, and are one of the few resources that reach a citywide scale. There are three things Mayor Mamdani can do at the start of his tenure to ensure kids get the food they need: maximize the reach of tried-and-true school meal programs; provide in-school resources to help families apply for SNAP and other benefits; and increase the number of school pantries. 

The Mamdani administration should work to ensure that successful school-based meal programs reach even more kids and families. Since New York City started adopting Breakfast in the Classroom programs in 2008, students have had higher attendance rates, better test scores, and fewer chronic health problems. Schools can go even further by fully implementing Breakfast After the Bell in every school to reduce the stigma of free breakfast programs and increase participation, especially as participation has tapered off. Similarly, the administration should actively promote and expand access to summer meal programs that help connect kids to meals when school isn’t in session. 

The administration can also tackle the hunger crisis by providing in-school resources to help families apply for SNAP and other benefits. With 1.8 million recipients in New York City, SNAP is the first line of defense against hunger. Yet many families don’t know they’re eligible or that enrollment in SNAP qualifies them for other programs, like Summer EBT grocery benefits. Schools are trusted messengers for kids and families and they have remarkable infrastructure in place to keep families informed. From creating resource pages on school websites to providing on-site eligibility and application assistance in schools, a little extra support can go a long way in helping eligible families make the most of these programs. 

Finally, adding more school pantries would help put healthy food back within reach for thousands of New York City children. Back in 2016, in partnership with the New York City Council, New York City Schools launched its first-in-the-nation food and hygiene pantries, which provide free food, cleaning supplies, and hygiene products in some school buildings. While many schools have taken steps to create their own pantries, the need is still there: a back-to-school poll from No Kid Hungry found that 40 percent of New York City families were worried about running out of food. Schools can collaborate with city agencies and nonprofit organizations to take inventory of existing pantries, assess school needs, and get new pantries or mobile markets up and running. 

New York City’s progress in the fight against hunger has come thanks to our schools and school nutrition staff, as well as our elected officials. In just the past few years, New York City schools have expanded access to school meal programs, rolled out even more food and hygiene pantries, and launched farm-to-school programs to bring healthy, local produce into classrooms. 

Mayor Mamdani will need to act quickly to build on that progress and address the city’s hunger crisis. If he wants to make an early impact, he should start with our schools. 

Rachel Sabella is the director of No Kid Hungry New York.

The post Opinion: To Fight Hunger in New York City, Start With Schools appeared first on City Limits.

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is nearly tripling the number of countries whose passport holders will be required to post bonds of up to $15,000 to apply to enter the United States.

Less than a week after adding seven countries to the list of nations subject to visa bonds, bringing the total to 13, the State Department on Tuesday added 25 more. The bond requirement for the latest additions will take effect Jan. 21, according to a notice posted on the travel.state.gov website.

The move means that 38 countries, most of them in Africa but some in Latin America and Asia, are now on the list, which makes the process of obtaining a U.S. visa unaffordable for many.

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It’s the latest effort by the Trump administration to tighten requirements for entry to the U.S., including requiring citizens from all countries that require visas to sit for in-person interviews and disclose years of social media histories as well as detailed accounts of their and their families’ previous travel and living arrangements.

U.S. officials have defended the bonds, which can range from $5,000 up to $15,000, maintaining they are effective in ensuring that citizens of targeted countries do not overstay their visas.

Payment of the bond does not guarantee a visa will be granted, but the amount will be refunded if the visa is denied or when a visa holder demonstrates they have complied with the terms of visa.

The new countries covered by the visa bond requirement as of Jan. 21 are Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Benin, Burundi, Cape Verde, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Fiji, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Nigeria, Senegal, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

They join Bhutan, Botswana, the Central African Republic, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mauritania, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, Tanzania, Turkmenistan and Zambia on the list.

By JESSE BEDAYN, MIKE CATALINI, MIKE HOUSEHOLDER, SOPHIE BATES, OBED LAMY and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press

It’s only been days since an audacious U.S. raid snatched Nicolás Maduro from a Venezuelan military base and sped him to a Brooklyn prison, yet Detroit-area Trump supporter Aaron Tobin can already see it all playing out on the big screen.

It’ll be the subject of movies for years to come, he predicts. “I am thrilled.” Plenty of others who voted for President Donald Trump and spoke to The Associated Press about the raid are applauding, too — at least for now.

Aaron Tobin, a supporter of President Donald Trump, listens to a question during an interview, Jan. 5, 2026, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)

The seizure of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and his wife has forced another reckoning on the “Make America Great Again” coalition, already rocked by the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and strained by rising health insurance premiums and living costs.

Trump promised his voters that “America First” would stand against more foreign entanglements. Instead, he intervened with force and without congressional approval in a new frontier, a South American capital so far from Washington that Google Maps says it “can’t seem to find a way there.”

The geopolitical action film that Tobin sees in his mind is only at its opening scene, before all the complexities of uprooting a foreign government by a U.S. president’s fiat come rushing in. U.S. forces entered and exited swiftly. But what happens next?

Trump finds early but not endless support

Early on, the pushback from congressional Republicans and Trump’s core constituencies has been guarded, in contrast to their uproar over the Epstein episode or the tensions coursing through Republican politics over the now-expired health insurance subsidies.

Against that backdrop, Trump voters interviewed by AP journalists around the country praised the operation and expressed faith in Trump’s course. But not always limitless faith. They did not all back up Trump’s claim that those who “voted for me are thrilled. They said, ‘This is what we voted for.’”

“I support him so far,” Paul Bonner, 67, told AP while browsing at a Trump merchandise store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. “Until he messes up, I support him.”

Paul Bonner, 67, talks at the Trump Store in Bensalem Pa., Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, looking for a Trump 2028 sign. Speaking about the U.S. raid that captured Venezuela’s president. Bonner said he supports Trump “so far.” (AP Photo/ Mike Catalini)

Trump’s apparent willingness to stay involved in Venezuela and his intensifying rhetoric about expanding U.S. power elsewhere in the hemisphere are making some of his die-hard supporters nervous.

Not all of them are reaching for the popcorn yet.

In Mississippi, a conflicted Trump voter

Chase Lewis, 24, of Philadelphia, Mississippi, said the move caught him off guard and he still isn’t sure whether he supports it. “It’s good that they’re finally freed from that dictatorship,” he said of Venezuelans, “but I don’t know what it’s going to cost us.”

He added: “I don’t want my friends that are serving right now to be dragged into a war because we went and stuck our nose in Venezuela’s business.” He noted that Trump had campaigned against starting new wars. “Depending on how you look at it,” he said, “this was an act of war.”

An electrician apprentice who gave up his delivery job because he needed to make more money, Lewis said he wants to see the Trump administration focus on bringing down costs for young people like himself. He also wants the president to make life better for veterans and worries about plunging the country into more conflicts.

In Colorado, cheers and caution from Trump voters

To Trump voter Travis Garcia, leaning against his red pickup truck on a chilly evening in Castle Rock, Colorado, it’s a slam-dunk. “Of course I’m going to be happy that they captured a dictator that’s constantly sending drugs our way,” he said, “If we’re not gonna do it, who’s gonna do it?”

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The 45-year-old, who works in remodeling, said the operation reinforces Trump’s stature as “a powerful man who follows through on his word and isn’t going to be shy and timid and let other countries run the rules.”

Mary Lussier, 48, a flight attendant from the town of Larkspur, was so amazed by the success of the mission in Venezuela that she would be OK with more such operations. She recalled videos of Venezuelans tearfully celebrating Maduro’s removal and said fewer bad leaders “would make the world a little bit lesser of a bad place.”

Still, Lussier wouldn’t want U.S. soldiers stuck in a prolonged conflict, and much of her admiration for the operation hinged less on the possible benefits to the U.S. than on the smooth efficiency and bravado of the raiders.

Outside a Safeway grocery store in Castle Rock, Patrick McCans, 66, said delicately that Trump’s intervention was “a little contrary to what he campaigned on.”

“I would like to see more of a diplomatic way of making change,” said the retired engineer. Still, he said, pondering for a moment, “I think in this case it might have been warranted.”

Instead of playing ball, Maduro was “playing chicken with Trump, and Trump doesn’t like chicken,” he said, chuckling from beneath a Baltimore Ravens baseball cap.

The Colorado Trump supporters interviewed by AP all applauded the military operation’s smoothness and “class,” as one described it. But that support could waver if the U.S. is drawn into a longer conflict, which none of them would support.

Few mentioned Trump’s plans for Venezuela’s oil, but thought Maduro’s removal would benefit citizens and slow the drug trade and immigration to the U.S.

From Pennsylvania: Good riddance to Maduro

At the Golden Dawn Diner in Levittown, Pennsylvania, Ron Soto, 88, expressed unreserved faith in the president’s ability to manage what comes next. The retired tractor-trailer driver regularly visits the diner to meet friends, drink coffee and catch up.

Maduro is an “awful man,” he said. But should U.S. forces go into other countries, like Cuba, as it did in Venezuela? “I don’t think they’ll have to,” he said. “Because he (Trump) put the fear in them.”

As for Trump’s comment at one point that his administration would “run” Venezuela, Soto said the president will “straighten that country out and make it into a democracy if he can. I don’t know if he can.”

President Donald Trump speaks to House Republican lawmakers during their annual policy retreat, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

At the Neshaminy Mall, in Bensalem, retired firefighter Kevin Carey, 62, pronounced himself supportive of what Trump did but aware of the risks.

“I wouldn’t say thrilled but I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. Carey recalled the seizing of U.S. hostages by Iranian revolutionaries in 1979 as an indication of what might happen if the conflict escalates. But “he’ll take all actions to avoid that, I believe,” he said of Trump.

On any further foreign intervention, Carey broke out laughing when he said: “He wants Greenland to be part of America!”

At the Trump merchandise store where Bonner shopped, banners and other items proclaiming “Trump 2028” are on display. Trump is constitutionally prohibited from running in 2028.

“I know he can’t run for president” in 2028, said Bonner, a propane company worker. Still, he wanted a lawn sign “just to irritate people” but didn’t find one.

The crisp military operation plainly left him impressed. “They got in and they got out, did what they had to do,” he said. Of Maduro, he said: “He’s an enemy of the United States so I support Trump 100%.”

Affirmation from the Midwest

Exiting a Walmart in Martinsville, Indiana, Mark Edward Miller, 75, from nearby Mooresville, said the only thing that surprised him about Trump’s intervention was that word of it did not leak in advance. The consistent Trump voter was an aircraft maintenance specialist in the Air Force before his retirement.

“I don’t feel like he’s actually taken over a country,” Miller said. “I believe that he’s doing exactly what our country should be doing — supporting, especially in our hemisphere, governments that are friendly with us” and challenging those that are hostile.

Tobin, the man in Michigan who sees a cinematic future for the raid, not only approved of the operation but wants more of them.

“Especially if they were as successful as this last one where we didn’t lose any troops, we didn’t lose any planes or ships,” Tobin said during a visit to the Oakland County Republican Party headquarters, where he was surrounded by Trump and GOP memorabilia. “I am thrilled and surprised” by what happened.

“Cuba’s very nervous right now,” he said. “And the Cuban people are suffering immensely from their horrible situation and their economy. Iran might be next.”

The three-time Trump voter is an active member of the local Republican Party, a certified firearms instructor and head of a bicycling group in his hometown of Oak Park, Michigan.

His takeaway: “President Trump does not speak idly. If he says he’s going to do something, he does something.”

Bedayn reported from Colorado, Catalini from Pennsylvania, Householder from Michigan, Bates from Mississippi, Lamy from Indiana and Woodward from Washington.