By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and REBECCA BOONE

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Tuesday to block the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America, the 83-year-old international news service created by Congress.

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U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the administration illegally required Voice of America to cease operations for the first time since its World War II-era inception.

Attorneys for Voice of America employees and contractors asked the judge to restore its ability to broadcast at the same level before President Donald Trump moved to slash its funding. Lamberth mostly agreed, ordering the administration to restore Voice of America and two of the independent broadcast networks operated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media — Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks — until the lawsuits are settled.

The judge denied the request for two other independent networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Open Technology Fund.

In a March 26 court filing, plaintiffs’ attorneys said nearly all 1,300 of Voice of America’s employees were placed on administrative leave, while 500 contractors were told that their contracts would be terminated at the end of last month.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America, has operated other broadcast outlets, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Afghanistan. Congress has appropriated nearly $860 million for the Agency for Global Media for the current fiscal year.

Voice of America went dark soon after Trump issued an executive order on March 14 that pared funding to the Agency for Global Media and six other unrelated federal entities. It also moved to terminate VOA contracts with news agencies, including The Associated Press.

Voice of America has operated since World War II, beaming news into authoritarian countries that don’t have a free press. It began as a counterpoint to Nazi propaganda and played a prominent role in the U.S. government’s Cold War efforts to curb the spread of communism.

Trump and his Republican allies have accused Voice of America of having a “leftist bias” and failing to project “pro-American” values to its audience.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys say it reports and broadcasts the news “truthfully, impartially, and objectively.”

“That simple mission is a powerful one for those living across the globe without access to a free press and without the ability to otherwise discern what is truly happening,” they wrote.

Government attorneys argued that the plaintiffs failed to show how they have been irreparably harmed.

“Rather, Plaintiffs take aim at what is best described as a temporary pause on its activities while Global Media determines how to bring Voice of America into compliance with the President’s directive,” they wrote.

The Agency for Global Media’s leadership includes special adviser Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor and political candidate.

In his written ruling, Lamberth noted that the U.S. Agency for Global Media never finalized its grant agreement with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for the current fiscal year, and the Open Technology Fund withdrew its legal request for a temporary restraining order earlier this year.

Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks do have current grant agreements in place, and like Voice of America, are funded by Congressional appropriations.

Lamberth said the funding cuts “reflect a hasty, indiscriminate approach” — particularly since they were made the same day that President Trump signed the congressional appropriation that funded Voice of America and the networks through September of this year.

Not only is there an absence of “reasoned analysis” from the defendants; there is an absence of any analysis whatsoever,” Lamberth said.

The labor union that represents workers at the U.S. Agency for Global Media called the ruling a “powerful affirmation of the role that independent journalism plays in advancing democracy and countering disinformation.”

“These networks are essential tools of American soft power — trusted sources of truth in places where it is often scarce,” said Tom Yazdgerdi, president of the American Foreign Service Association, in a press release Tuesday. “By upholding editorial independence, the court has protected the credibility of USAGM journalists and the global mission they serve.”

3M Co. stood by its full-year financial guidance while acknowledging new risks from the unfolding trade war, compounding the challenges for Chief Executive Officer William Brown as he tries to turn around the sprawling Maplewood-based manufacturer.

Tariffs will have a negative impact of as much as 40 cents a share on full-year earnings, the company said Tuesday in a statement as it reported first-quarter results. Still, 3M reaffirmed guidance for 2025 adjusted profit of $7.60 to $7.90 a share.

Shares rose 8.1% Tuesday and contributed to Tuesday’s broad market rally.

The caveat on its outlook highlights how President Donald Trump’s trade war is rippling across the economy and cutting into growth expectations. 3M as recently as March reiterated its full-year guidance that called for a bigger profit and organic sales growth of 2% to 3%.

3M is considered an economic bellwether because its portfolio of thousands of consumer and industrial products give it broad exposure to a wide swath of the economy. The company derives about 11% of its sales in China, according to RBC Capital Markets, putting it at risk from the growing trade conflict between Washington and Beijing, which have imposed blanket tariffs of 100% or more on each country’s goods.

3M is looking at measures to mitigate tariffs, including shifting production to optimize its network and possible surcharges on certain customers.

The company’s expected tariff impact, “suggests a bigger hit especially at the high end than our analysis,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Karen Ubelhart.

3M’s above-consensus adjusted operating margin signals “improving operations, but that might not last if demand declines,” she added.

Sales for the first-quarter fell 1% to $6 billion and adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations were $1.88, both ahead of analyst expectations. Adjusted operating margin of 23.5% also beat estimates.

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Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is suing the administration of President Donald Trump to challenge recent executive orders he says violate the civil rights of transgender children.

Two Trump orders — one banning transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sports and another aimed at removing recognition of transgender people in federal policy — are aimed at “bullying” transgender youth, Ellison said at a Tuesday news conference announcing the lawsuit.

Ellison took action this week amid ongoing legal threats from the federal government against Minnesota and other states for defying Trump’s order on transgender athletes.

Ellison has maintained that following the order violates Minnesota’s human rights law and the U.S. Constitution, and he decided to preemptively sue as the Department of Justice continued threats to take legal action and cut off federal funding to the state.

“I’m not going to sit around waiting for the Trump administration to sue Minnesota,” Ellison told reporters at his office in the Minnesota Capitol on Tuesday. “One, they’re wrong about the law — both federal and state law. Two, we will not let a small group of vulnerable children who are only trying to be healthy and to live their lives be demonized.”

Title IX

The Trump Administration asserts that allowing those born male who identify as female to participate in women’s school sports violates Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in education.

The president’s Feb. 5 executive order on transgender athletes allows federal agencies to enforce the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, though some states and high school sports groups have said they would not comply.

The Trump Administration sued Maine last week after the state refused to comply with the transgender athletics order.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to sue Minnesota in February after Ellison issued an official opinion that complying with Trump’s order would violate state law. He issued the opinion after the Minnesota State High School League, the governing body for state school athletics, had sought his advice on the matter.

Earlier that month, the U.S. Department of Education started investigating Minnesota and California high school sports organizations because they planned to go against the federal government’s new policy.

Minnesota State High School League

Athletic associations had 60 days from the executive order to take action on transgender athletes, according to the Minnesota State High School League, which has said its rules allowing transgender student participation currently remain in place.

The Justice Department continued to push on Minnesota after the initial threats. In an April 8 letter to Ellison, Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon demanded that Ellison clarify his legal opinion or face legal action. Dhillon also threatened to withhold federal funding from the state.

In his lawsuit filed in Minnesota U.S. District Court, Ellison argues Trump’s executive orders violate the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution by effectively legislating from the executive branch — a right reserved for Congress — and by violating the 10th Amendment limits to federal power over the states.

Further, the lawsuit disputes the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, arguing it instead preserves protections for gender identity.

Legislative action

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said Ellison should drop the issue and called his lawsuit a waste of state resources.

“It’s extremely disappointing that Attorney General Ellison would rather risk federal funding and file yet another taxpayer funded lawsuit against the Trump administration than simply do the right thing and keep boys out of girls sports,” Demuth said. “It’s a waste of taxpayer money to further a political agenda that makes girls less safe and makes sports less fair.”

The Minnesota Legislature earlier this year considered a bill to ban transgender athletes in school sports, though it failed on a party-line vote in a closely divided House of Representatives.

The measure sponsored by Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, called for restricting participation in girls sports at the elementary and secondary school levels to biological females as determined by genetics and reproductive organs.

Republicans called the bill the “Preserving Girls’ Sports Act” and say it will keep a level playing field in school athletics.

Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers and LGBT activists called the bill a “hateful” attack on the rights of transgender people and a distraction from issues that affect significantly broader swaths of the public.

The MSHSL has allowed students to decide whether to participate in boys or girls sports based on their gender identity since 2014.

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WASHINGTON — U.S. health officials on Tuesday said they would phase out petroleum-based artificial colors in the nation’s food supply, potentially triggering an ingredients overhaul for scores of brightly hued products on American store shelves.

The federal Food and Drug Administration will take steps to eliminate the synthetic dyes by the end of 2026, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said at a news conference. The agency will establish a standard and timeline for industry to switch to natural alternatives, revoke authorization for dyes not in production within coming weeks and take steps to remove remaining dyes on the market.

Makary said that removing artificial dyes would boost children’s health.

“For the last 50 years we have been running one of the largest uncontrolled scientific experiments in the world on our nation’s children without their consent,” Makary said.

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Health advocates have long called for the removal of artificial dyes from foods, citing mixed studies indicating they can cause neurobehavioral problems, including hyperactivity and attention issues, in some children. The FDA has maintained that the approved dyes are safe and that “the totality of scientific evidence shows that most children have no adverse effects when consuming foods containing color additives.”

The FDA currently allows 36 food color additives, including eight synthetic dyes. In January, the agency announced that the dye known as Red 3 — used in candies, cakes and some medications — would be banned in food by 2027 because it caused cancer in laboratory rats.

Artificial dyes are used widely in U.S. foods. In Canada and in Europe — where artificial colors are required to carry warning labels — manufacturers mostly use natural substitutes. Several states, including California and West Virginia, have passed laws restricting the use of artificial colors in foods.

The announcement drew praise from advocates who say the dyes carry health risks and serve no purpose beyond the cosmetic.

“Their only purpose is to make food companies money,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a former FDA official. “Food dyes help make ultraprocessed foods more attractive, especially to children, often by masking the absence of a colorful ingredient, like fruit.”

Removing artificial dyes from foods has long been a goal of so-called MAHA moms, key supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” initiatives. They were among protesters who signed petitions and rallied outside the Michigan headquarters of WK Kellogg Co. last year, demanding that the company remove artificial dyes from its breakfast cereals in the U.S.

The group included Vani Hari, a popular food activist known as the Food Babe, who previously pressured the Kraft Heinz company to remove artificial dyes from its macaroni and cheese. Hari spoke at Tuesday’s event.

She said the action marks “a new era” in safe food for children.

However, food manufacturers said the action would unfairly target highly regulated color additives long confirmed to be safe.

“There are not enough alternatives available to replace these products,” the International Association of Color Manufacturers said in a statement. “Supply chains will take an estimated five to 10 years to catch up and require importing more expensive ingredients grown in China, India and Mexico.”

A spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association, a trade group for makers of candy, gum and mints, said the industry “needs time to find safe and viable alternatives.”

Removing dyes from the food supply will not address the chief health problems that plague Americans, said Susan Mayne, a Yale University chronic disease expert and former director of the FDA’s food center.

“With every one of their announcements, they’re focusing in on something that’s not going to accomplish what they say it is,” Mayne said of Kennedy’s initiatives. “Most of these food dyes have been in our food supply for 100 years. … So why aren’t they driving toward reductions in things that do drive chronic disease rates?”

In the past, FDA officials said the threat of legal action from the food industry required the government to have significant scientific evidence before banning additives. Red 3 was banned from cosmetics more than three decades before it was stripped from food and medicine. It took five decades for the FDA to ban brominated vegetable oil because of health concerns.

But Lurie said industry officials might not challenge the Trump administration.

“They don’t want to get on the wrong side of a vindictive president,” he said.

Hours before the announcement, the International Dairy Foods Association said its members would voluntarily eliminate artificial colors in milk, cheese and yogurt products sold to U.S. school meal programs by July 2026. Most dairy products for schools don’t contain artificial colors, as most dairy processors have chosen not to use them or have already removed or replaced them, officials at the dairy trade group noted.

Some of the state laws banning synthetic dyes in school meals have aggressive timelines. West Virginia’s ban, for example, prohibits red, yellow, blue and green artificial dyes in school meals starting Aug. 1. A broader ban will extend the restrictions to all foods sold in the state on Jan. 1, 2028.

Many U.S. food companies are already reformulating their foods, according to Sensient Colors, one of the world’s largest producers of food dyes and flavorings. In place of synthetic dyes, food makers can use natural hues made from beets, algae and crushed insects and pigments from purple sweet potatoes, radishes and red cabbage.

Aleccia reported from California.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.