The state of hockey lives up to its name this week as the Twin Cities hosts the 2026 World Junior Hockey Championships at Grand Casino Arena and 3M Arena at Mariucci.

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The 10-day event features national teams of top players under the age of 20 competing for the gold medal, with semifinals and finals held Sunday and Monday in St. Paul. The undefeated U.S. team will face Sweden, another undefeated team, at 5 p.m. New Year’s Eve at Grand Casino Arena.

Follow game results at twincities.com/tag/world-juniors-hockey or sign up for our Scoreboard newsletter at twincities.com/newsletters.

For those looking to occupy their time between games or forgoing the tournament altogether, here’s a list of five activities to indulge in around Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Go ice skating

Head Coach Bob Motzko signs a banner during a Minnesota Gophers open practice at the Roseville Skating Center in Roseville on Jan. 7, 2019. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Centennial Lakes Park in Edina offers outdoor ice skating through a 10-acre lake. Skaters are able to glide through a path full of narrow, meandering canals that connect three main ponds.

The activity is free for those who bring their own skates. Those looking to rent skates can do so inside of Hughes Pavilion for $10.

Concessions such as snacks and hot cocoa are available for purchase at the site.

Indoor ice skating is also available at nearby places such as Bloomington Ice Garden and the Roseville Skating Center, which has an indoor ice arena, outdoor skate park and “North America’s largest sheet of refrigerated ice.”

Go skiing or snowboarding

The slopes at Afton Alps are almost ready for skiers and snowboarders on Nov. 28, 2023. The popular ski and snowboard resort was making snow for the opening day of its 60th season. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Go-to skiing and snowboarding spots for Twin Cities residents include Hyland Hills Ski Area in Bloomington and Buck Hill in Burnsville. Both are known for their accessibility and family friendly activities such as tubing.

Hyland Hills Ski Area is open Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Their holiday hours and rates can be found by visiting threeriversparks.org/location/hyland-hills-ski-area.

Buck Hill is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Their holiday hours and rates can be found by visiting buckhill.com.

A larger resort offering a more extensive experience in the east metro is Afton Alps, which is part of the Epic Pass network.

Afton Alps is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Their holiday hours and rates can be found by visiting aftonalps.com.

Visit the Ice Castles

People explore ice archways at the Ice Castles at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds on Jan. 3, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The Ice Castles attraction located on the State Fairgrounds has returned for its 15th year this winter season.

Complete with ice slides, caverns and archways, crawl tunnels, LED-lit ice sculptures, frozen tap, concessions and snow tubing, the immersive experience is dubbed a winter wonderland.

Ticket prices and hours of operation can be found by visiting icecastles.com/minnesota.

Watch a play or musical

Adelyn Frost and Reed Sigmund in Children’s Theatre Company’s production of “Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” which runs through Jan. 4. (Glen Stubbe / Children’s Theatre Company)

The Twin Cities has a thriving arts scene, making it easy to find a play or musical to watch. A few to catch this week include “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Dinner for One” and “White Christmas.”

“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is a stage adaptation of the beloved children’s book by Dr. Suess. The show runs until Jan. 4 at the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis. Showtimes and ticket prices can be found by visiting childrenstheatre.org.

“Dinner for One” is a comedic show full of improvisation inspired by a European physical comedy sketch from the 1960s. The show runs until Jan. 4 at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis. Showtimes and ticket prices can be found by visiting jungletheater.org.

“White Christmas” is a stage adaptation of the 1954 film inspired by the Irving Berlin Christmas song popularized by Bing Crosby. The show runs until Jan. 4 at the Chanhassen Dinner Theaters in Chanhassen. Showtimes and ticket prices can be found by visiting chanhassendt.com.

Listen to live music

Around every corner in the Twin Cities is a venue with live music leaking out from under its doors, inviting inside anyone with ears willing to listen.

The historic Bunker’s Music Bar and Grill in Minneapolis, for example, offers beer and burgers with a side of live rock, blues and reggae performances from local musicians. Their hours of operation and events calendar can be found by visiting bunkersmusic.com.

Berlin in Minneapolis, on the other hand, is a cozy space known for live jazz, electronic and experimental music performances from local musicians and DJs, accompanied by a full cocktail, wine and beer menu. Their hours of operation and events calendar can be found by visiting berlinmpls.com.

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A larger live music venue is Green Room in Minneapolis, which features a balcony, a lounge and an outdoor patio. The venue is known for throwing lively events, including hosting local bands and international touring DJs. Their hours of operation and events calendar can be found by visiting greenroommn.com.

Similarly, Minnesota Music Cafe in St. Paul attracts an energetic crowd every night with the venue’s retro interior, full bar, large dance floor and local and touring musicians alike jamming out to a diverse range of music. Their hours of operation and events calendar can be found by visiting minnesotamusiccafe.com.

For a more casual, divey setting, head to Turf Club in St. Paul. This historic bar is known for hosting local and touring musicians in genres such as indie rock, punk and country on both their main stage and their smaller basement stage called the Clown Lounge. Their hours of operation and events calendar can be found by visiting first-avenue.com/venue/turf-club.

Thank goodness for state governments. One of the most underappreciated stories in 2025 was the role states played in checking federal overreach. As the Trump administration barreled through norms, rules and laws, state officials — sometimes from both parties — supplied the friction to slow the administration’s power grab.

Trump swept into power with Republican control over both chambers of Congress, but he avoided working with Congress as much as possible. He spent the first year of his second term pushing the bounds of executive power. As his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told a Vanity Fair journalist: Trump “operates (with) a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Congress may have rolled over, but at the state level, things played out pretty much the way America’s founders intended. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Madison and his fellow visionaries settled upon a system that enshrined in the U.S. Constitution the legal authority for states to protect the freedoms of their residents and uphold the rule of law when the federal government abused its power.

President Donald Trump gave them ample opportunity to do that right out of the gate. Between Jan. 20, 2025, and Dec. 18, 2025, he signed 221 executive orders — more than he signed in the four years of his first term.

But that approach infringed on many fundamental rights held by states. Many of those executive orders intruded upon state authority over administering elections and enforcing crime. Twenty-two states sided with the District of Columbia to successfully stop the Trump administration from federalizing the National Guard to be deployed to Washington, although the decision has been paused to allow for appeal. Twenty-three states joined with Illinois and Chicago to oppose the administration’s federalizing of Illinois National Guard troops. And 12 states joined Oregon to challenge the use of the president’s emergency powers to impose import tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.

An analysis from States United, a nonpartisan organization that supports state officials and law enforcement leaders, found that at least 33 of Trump’s orders are facing federal court challenges and 10 of the most controversial dictates have either been blocked or paused while a court reviews them — from Trump ending the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, to his order to reject absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day, to the massive deployment of National Guard troops in Democrat-run cities. Many of the lower court orders are still pending rulings in the appellate courts, but they have served to slow the speed with which Trump can dismantle state protections.

State pushback is important, not only to preserve state constitutional authority, but also because the American people don’t approve of Trump’s approach on many of these issues. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in September, for example, found that 7 in 10 Democrats and half of Republicans didn’t want the president to send armed troops into American cities unless those cities face an external threat.

Remarkably, Alexander Hamilton predicted this 238 years ago this month when he wrote, in Federalist No. 17, that because states “will generally possess the confidence and good-will of the people,” they can use that popular support to “oppose all encroachments of the national government.”

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has demonstrated that it will continue to expand the president’s power despite the limits intended by the nation’s founders. Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United, thinks the ultimate test of Trump’s executive overreach won’t be in the courts. “We’re going to win or lose it in the court of public opinion,” she told me. “At the end of the day, the power here is in the hands of the American people.”

The next challenge will be for states to make sure the Trump administration doesn’t attempt to tip the scales in November 2026, when voters will decide every seat in the U.S. House and 33 seats in the U.S. Senate. Trump signed a sweeping executive order earlier this year to take critical election power away from states. That brought challenges from more Republican states than any other Trump executive order this year. (That order has also been paused.) And there is bipartisan opposition to the Department of Justice’s attempts to seek access to voter data, with the likely intent of trying to undermine trust in elections.

In the last year, the balance between state and federal power faced an historic test. But upholding the rule of law also means making sure there are consequences for those who undermine it. States also should launch investigations, file bar complaints against administration lawyers who violate ethics codes by lying to judges and advocate for Congress to tighten the legal loopholes the administration has exploited.

It’s been heartening to watch states step up and become a bulwark against federal overreach. But next year, there is much more to do.

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.

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One year ago, businesses — especially CEOs — were optimistic about the U.S. economy in 2025, expecting lower taxes and more market-friendly policies from incoming President Donald Trump.

Then came April 2, Liberation Day. The market fell, uncertainty rose, and affordability became a more acute concern. Meanwhile, the labor market continued to weaken, as immigration restrictions led to a slower-growing workforce and labor shortages in some sectors.

Nonetheless, the U.S. economy persisted. As the end of the year approaches, the market is up more than 15%, and GDP growth in the third quarter was an unexpectedly robust 4.3%. What will 2026 be like?

There are reasons to be optimistic, as many were a year ago. Here are five of them:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expects Americans to receive up to $150 billion in tax refunds early next year as a result of the budget law the president signed last summer.

Higher earners who spend a smaller share of their income will feel a bigger impact, with the notable exception of people who earn tipped income. Nonetheless, the Congressional Budget Office expects the tax cuts to boost demand and labor supply in the next year.

Trump also says he will send $2,000 checks to most households next year to assuage affordability concerns. That should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but the overall direction of tax policy is more spending and confidence for consumers.

Another provision of that budget law is that corporations can deduct 100% of equipment purchases in the year they spend the money. There is evidence that a similar rule, as well as corporate tax cuts, boosted investment by 11% and GDP by almost 1% after the passage of the 2017 tax law.

But the share of spending that corporations were allowed to deduct has been declining since the original law passed, and there was uncertainty about what it would be in the future. The new provision is expected to increase capital spending and growth next year and beyond.

Whether Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will make further cuts is uncertain, but the new Fed chair who takes over in May almost certainly will. It’s also likely that the bank will increase its purchases of Treasury debt, further easing credit concerns.

The CBO predicts the tax provisions that encourage more production of oil and gas will also have a positive impact on GDP next year. It estimates the impact will be larger in the next few years because some of the regulations are temporary, but it’s not inconceivable that a greater supply of energy will reduce the cost of energy.

Maybe this is the triumph of hope over experience. Then again, it will be hard to have less policy stability than there was this year. The high level of tariffs announced on Liberation Day not only shocked markets, but the constant uncertainty over what they’d be and what they apply to caused economic damage and probably contributed to higher inflation. Now deals are going into effect and the question of legality will be resolved one way or the other.

Add it all up, and there are reasons to be bullish about 2026. The impact of the budget law alone is expected to boost GDP next year by 0.9%.

Beyond 2026, there are reasons to be worried: All this stimulus may result in a sugar high, and America relearned during the pandemic how dangerous those can be. Rebate checks, a tax cut and lower interest rates risk bringing back high inflation, which would hit U.S. households hard and could further entrench inflation by destabilizing expectations.

It could take years for the Fed to rebuild its credibility and ability to influence the inflation rate. There is also the matter of the growing national debt, which this law will contribute to. This will increase longer-term interest rates, which could weigh down consumer spending eventually.

But those are problems for another year — and another column.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

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U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer is calling for the deportation of Somalis linked to fraud cases in Minnesota, while FBI Director Kash Patel has threatened suspects with “denaturalization and deportation proceedings where eligible.”

Emmer, a Republican representing Minnesota’s Sixth District, said in a post on the social platform X that even naturalized citizens should have their citizenship revoked and then they should be deported. He said he would be willing to pass legislation making it legal.

“I have three words regarding Somalis who have committed fraud against American taxpayers: Send them home. If they’re here illegally, deport them immediately; if they’re naturalized citizens, revoke their citizenship and deport them quickly thereafter,” Emmer’s post read.

A University of Minnesota law professor says deportation and denaturalization are matters for the courts, lengthy processes and typically draw legal challenges. He notes it isn’t the first time America has considered such measures.

“They need to have these cases go to trial,” said Richard Painter, a who previously worked as an ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. “You don’t just get deported, you should be incarcerated, that needs to be the priority.”

University of Minnesota Law School Professor Richard Painter. (Dave Orrick / Pioneer Press)

A number of those charged in various fraud cases in Minnesota — from Feeding Our Future to others involving child care and Medicaid funds — are from the state’s Somali population. That has prompted attacks from President Donald Trump including his statement “they contribute nothing.”

Among those running schemes to get funds for child nutrition, housing services and autism programs, 82 of the 92 defendants are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

An estimated 260,000 people of Somali descent were living in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The largest population is in the Twin Cities, home to about 84,000 residents, most of whom are citizens.

Almost 58% of the Somalis in Minnesota were born in the U.S. Of the foreign-born Somalis in Minnesota, an overwhelming majority –- 87% — are naturalized U.S. citizens. Of the foreign-born population, almost half entered the U.S. in 2010 or later, according to the Census Bureau.

Painter said singling out an entire community isn’t right, though it has historical precedent.

“I do not like to see this become an excuse for racist attacks on the Somali community,” he said. “The answer to finishing the mafia was not to deport all the Italians. We always have people who do fraud.”

Painter noted that during the Red Scare following World War I there were calls for deportations of suspected radicals, often foreign-born labor leaders, using laws such as the Sedition Act. The Russian Revolution of 1917, labor strife and acts such as a bombing on Wall Street that claimed dozens of lives fueled calls for deportations. Among those targeted were Italians or Eastern European Jews.

From November of 1919 to January of 1920 U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched what came to be known as “the Palmer Raids,” to apprehend those suspected of being socialists, anarchists and communists, and subject them to deportation.

“We’ve been through this before,” Painter said. “It’s an undemocratic and dangerous approach to fraud.”

Painter said blame needs to be focused on the Minnesota’s governor and his administration as well as those suspected of fraud.

“I think what needs to be discussed is the failure of the Walz administration and the DFL being too long in power,” he said. One-party control of state governments can often lead to scandals and fraud, Painter said. “It’s happened down in Texas with the Republicans, it’s happened in Illinois with (the Democrats),” he said.

Walz and his administration have maintained they have worked for years to address fraud and proposed a series of anti-fraud measures ahead of the last legislative session. Recently Walz appointed the former head of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to focus on fraud prevention.

Critics have not been silenced, though. A number of GOP state lawmakers have called on Walz to resign over the matter.

This story contains information from the Associated Press.