By MICHELLE L. PRICE and JULIE CARR SMYTH

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Vice President JD Vance, speaking in his home state of Ohio before visiting Minnesota on Thursday, blamed the “far left” for turmoil surrounding the White House’s deportation campaign.

“If you want to turn down the chaos in Minneapolis, stop fighting immigration enforcement and accept that we have to have a border in this country,” Vance said in Toledo. “It’s not that hard.”

Vance plans to meet with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis, which has been a focal point for protests since an agent fatally shot Renee Good, a mother of three, during a confrontation this month. The Republican vice president has played a leading role in defending that agent and said Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making.”

He also praised the arrest of protesters who disrupted a church service in Minnesota on Sunday and said he expects more prosecutions to come. The protesters entered the church chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”

“They’re scaring little kids who are there to worship God on a Sunday morning,” Vance said. “Those people are going to be sent to prison so long as we have the power to do so.”

He added: “Just as you have the right to protest, they have a right to worship God as they choose. And when you interrupt that, that is a violation of the law.”

Vance’s appearance was primarily focused on bolstering the Trump administration’s positive economic message on the heels of Trump’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The vice president also took the opportunity to boost some of Republicans’ important statewide candidates in this fall’s midterm elections, including gubernatorial contender Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Sen. Jon Husted.

Convincing voters that the nation is in rosy financial shape has been a persistent challenge for Trump during the first year of his second term. Polling has shown that the public is unconvinced that the economy is in good condition and majorities disapprove of how Trump’s handling of foreign policy.

Vance urged voters to be patient on the economy, saying Trump had inherited a bad situation from Democratic President Joe Biden.

“You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight,” Vance said. “It takes time to fix what is broken.”

___

Carr Smyth reported from Columbus.

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By MIKE SCHNEIDER

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Texas supplied the most new residents of any U.S. state for nine other states, despite having the biggest population growth this decade, according to figures released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Texas was the top source of new residents for Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma, according to the 2024 state-to-state migration flows, which track where someone lived in the previous year and where they currently live.

With 31 million residents, Texas ranks second in population among U.S. states. Between 2020 and 2024, Texas gained 2.1 million people.

“The obvious and primary answer is size,” said Dudley Poston, professor emeritus of sociology at Texas A&M University. “There’s got to be more people leaving Texas than leaving other states because of the population size of Texas.”

Other large producers of residents who moved to other states included the nation’s other most populous states: California, Florida and New York.

California, the most populous U.S. state with 39 million residents, supplied the most new residents to the western states of Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Washington. But it also was the top supplier of domestic residents to Tennessee, home to Nashville, which has established a pipeline to Southern California’s entertainment industry.

Florida, the third most populous U.S. state with 23 million residents, dominated the number of new residents in the southeast states of Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina but also Ohio. Florida has gained 1.8 million residents this decade, the second most of any state.

Although the Sunshine State’s size played a primary role, other factors may be involved too, such as Florida’s escalating real estate and homeowners’ insurance prices and the more plentiful job opportunities for recent college graduates in cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, according to Richard Doty, a research demographer at the University of Florida.

“It is no longer as affordable a relocation/ retirement option as it once was,” Doty said in an email.

New York was the top source of new residents in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts and New Jersey, while Illinois provided the most new residents for Midwestern neighbors Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin.

“The states with the largest out-migration numbers — California, Florida, Texas, and New York — are also the states with the largest populations. That’s not a coincidence,” said Helen You, interim director of the Texas Demographic Center. “Large populations naturally generate large volumes of both in-and-out migrants.”

Some migration patterns were no real surprises, such as former Massachusetts residents being the biggest source of new Mainers, New Hampshirites, Rhode Islanders and Vermonters. Former Wisconsinites made up the largest number of new Minnesotans, and former North Carolinians were the biggest source of new South Carolina residents.

In most states in 2024, before the immigration crackdown of the second Trump administration, people arriving from a foreign country were the top source of new residents. Among the exceptions, where international migration wasn’t large compared to people moving from individual U.S. states, were Idaho, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The Census Bureau is releasing new population estimates next week that will show how the U.S. changed in 2025.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

By MIKE CORDER, Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — For days it seemed there was no way out of the latest standoff between Europe and the United States: U.S. President Donald Trump insisted he must have Greenland — and would settle for nothing short of total ownership.

Even after he dropped the threat of force in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the impasse remained. Enter: Mark Rutte.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during a meeting with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The NATO secretary-general may have been instrumental in persuading Trump to scrap the threat of slapping punitive tariffs on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland — a stunning reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island “including right, title and ownership.”

In a post on his social media site, Trump said he had agreed with Rutte on a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security at the World Economic Forum in Davos, potentially defusing tensions that had far-reaching geopolitical implications.

Little is known about what the agreement entails or how crucial Rutte’s intervention was, and Trump could change course again. But for now, Rutte has earned his reputation as a “Trump whisperer.”

That’s only the latest nickname for the man long known as “Teflon Mark” during his domination of Dutch politics for a dozen years.

‘Trump whisperer’

Rutte’s reputation for successfully charming the U.S. president took flight last year when he referred to Donald Trump as “daddy” during an alliance summit in The Hague and sent him a flattering text message.

Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte speaks during an Ukrainian Breakfast alongside the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the dramatic scenes in Davos underscored Rutte’s ability to keep NATO’s most powerful leader on board.

“I think Secretary-General Rutte has emerged as one of Europe’s most effective diplomats and Trump whisperers,” Kroenig said. “He does seem to have a way of speaking to Trump that keeps the United States and the Trump administration engaged in NATO in a constructive way.”

Rutte’s success in dealing with Trump appears to revolve around his willingness to use charm and flattery while revealing little of what the two leaders discuss. It’s a tactic that Rutte used to marshal coalition partners in nearly 13 years as Dutch prime minister.

Trump himself highlighted Rutte’s effusive friendliness before he set off for Davos this week, publishing a text message from the NATO chief on his Truth Social platform. In it, Rutte addresses “Mr. President, dear Donald” and praises Trump for his diplomacy in Syria, Gaza and Ukraine.

“I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can’t wait to see you. Yours, Mark,” the message ended.

Teflon Mark

Rutte became a poster boy for Dutch consensus politics while leading four often fractious ruling coalitions on his way to becoming the Netherlands’ longest-serving leader, surviving a number of domestic political scandals over the years and earning the nickname “Teflon Mark” because the fallout never seemed to stick to him for long.

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The back cover of a 2016 book about Rutte by Dutch journalist Sheila Sitalsing, who followed him when he was prime minister, calls him “a phenomenon.”

“With indestructible cheerfulness he navigates the fragmented political landscape, recklessly forges the most extraordinary alliances and steadily works towards a new Netherlands,” it adds.

Rutte and his government resigned in 2021 to take responsibility for a child care allowance scandal in which thousands of parents were wrongly accused of fraud. But he bounced back to win national elections two months later with a slightly larger share of the vote and began his fourth and last term in office.

In another scandal that he survived, Rutte said in an interview that he couldn’t recall being informed about the Dutch bombing of Hawija that killed dozens of Iraqi civilians in 2015. In 2022, he survived a no-confidence motion in parliament in a debate about deleting messages from his old-school Nokia cellphone. Critics accused him of concealing state activity — but he insisted the messages just took up too much space in his phone.

Opposition lawmaker Attje Kuiken quipped: “It appears that the prime minister’s phone memory is used just as selectively as the prime minister’s own memory.”

His winning smile and enduring optimism, along with his habit of riding his bicycle to work while chomping on an apple seemed to help cement his popularity in the Netherlands, where such down-to-earth behavior is prized. When his last coalition collapsed in 2023 in a dispute over reining in migration, Rutte again leaned on that image, driving an old Saab station wagon to a royal palace to hand his resignation to King Willem-Alexander.

From The Hague to Brussels

Just landing the NATO chief’s job showed how adept Rutte is at navigating turbulent geopolitical waters. He managed to convince entrenched doubters, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to back his candidacy.

“It took a very long time. It’s a complicated process, but it’s an honor that it appears to have happened,” Rutte told reporters after securing all the support he needed to become secretary-general.

Rutte’s soft diplomatic skills were seen as a key asset for the leader of the 32-nation alliance as it faced Trump’s repeated criticism while navigating how to support Ukraine in the war against Russia.

Several hours before Trump made his dramatic reversal on Greenland, Finnish President Alexander Stubb — another European leader credited with having a way with Trump — was asked during a panel discussion on European security in Davos “who or what can diffuse the tensions” over Greenland?

“Oh, Mark Rutte,” Stubb said, to laughter in the audience and among the panel that included the Dutchman himself.

Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Ali Swenson in Washington contributed.

Minnesota United is interested in signing 20-year-old Dutch right back Cherrion Valerius from club NAC Breda, a source confirmed to the Pioneer Press on Thursday.

MNUFC’s preseason pursuit of a right back could be filled by Valerius, a 6-foot-4 prospect with 34 games experience in the Dutch top flight, the Eredivsie.  The Loons have been targeting a new player for that defensive position, which, in turn, would allow last year’s primary right back, Bongi Hlongwane, to return to more-natural attacking positions.

The potential transfer fee from MNUFC to NAC Breda for Valerius, and whether the Rotterdam native will occupy an Under-22 Initiative roster spot, are not yet known.

Dutch reporter Joost Blaauwhof first reported the Valerius news on Thursday. He said Valerius has drawn interest from Scotland and Spain’s La Liga, but the Loons came first with a “substantial amount.”

The outlet BN DeStem said NAC Breda coach Carl Hoefkens did not deny the interest in Valerius, which it said also included clubs in Italy. Hoefkens assumed Valerius would be able to play against PSV Eindhoven on Saturday; a player being taken out of an upcoming lineup can be seen as a sign of an imminent move elsewhere.

The Loons have signed one player from outside MLS this winter, 21-year-old Colombian winger Mauricio Gonzalez. His addition through the 2029-30 season was made official on Tuesday.