By WILL WEISSERT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’ll attend this year’s White House Correspondent Association dinner on April 25, marking the first time he’s done so as commander-in-chief.

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“The White House Correspondents Association has asked me, very nicely, to be the Honoree at this year’s Dinner, a long and storied tradition since it began in 1924, under then President Calvin Coolidge,” Trump posted on his social media site on Monday evening.

He noted that the latest installment comes amid celebrations marking America’s 250th birthday, adding that it “will be my Honor to accept their invitation.”

Trump was invited annually, but never attended the dinner during his first term and also skipped last year’s gathering.

“For more than 100 years, the journalists of the White House Correspondents’ Association have enjoyed an evening with the president,” the association’s president, Weijia Jiang, said in a statement. “We’re happy the president has accepted our invitation and look forward to hosting him.”

The event was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but President Joe Biden attended each of the dinners during his term’s final three years. Every president since Coolidge had attended except Trump — until now. In his post Trump wrote that, “Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me” he had “boycotted the event, and never went.”

“However, I look forward to being with everyone this year. Hopefully, it will be something very Special.”

The correspondents’ dinner debuted in 1921. Three years later, Coolidge became the first president to attend.

While all presidents but Trump went, not all did every year of their terms. Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon opted not to, and Ronald Reagan — then recovering from an assassination attempt — missed the 1981 installment, but called in from Camp David.

Trump attended the correspondents dinner before he was president, and was the subject of mocking by then-President Barack Obama in 2011. Obama joked: “Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House. Let’s see what we’ve got up there.”

The screens then flashed to a White House featuring a massive neon sign reading “Trump White House Hotel Casino Golf Course” featuring golden columns and a massive chandelier blocking the front entrance.

Made years before Trump became a politician, that joke has proved prophetic. Trump has leaned on his construction background to make over the White House in unprecedented ways during his second term.

Those remodeling efforts include paving over the lawn near the Rose Garden to install a patio reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and affixing partisan plaques to portraits of all the presidents on a Walk of Fame along the Colonnade. He’s also adorned the Oval Office in copious amounts of gold decorations and demolished the East Wing to begin work on a massive ballroom.

Arriving back from a weekend at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, Trump stopped to admire two new additions to the area around the Rose Garden, statues of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin that were erected there while he was away.

“Unbelievable statues. Come and look at them,” Trump told a pack of reporters nearby.

When a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman was arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for not wearing her head scarf in the manner required by the regime, human rights advocates were right to fear the worst. The Iranian government later claimed Mahsa (Zhina) Amini suffered a fatal heart attack, but witnesses alleged she was beaten unconscious after her detainment and later died — a state-sanctioned murder that would give rise to youth-led protests in the streets of Tehran.

The September 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising against the Iranian government was short-lived, leading to the deaths of hundreds of protesters and the arrest of thousands more, followed by executions of some 1,400 detainees, according to Iran Human Rights. Additional uprisings against Iran’s so-called “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spanned the Green Movement of 2009, the Bloody November protest of 2019 and the gruesome events of this past January, in which some human rights groups estimate more than 30,000 Iranians were killed.

“There were body bags, but the regime could not even bury them fast enough,” said Hamid Kashani, an Iranian-American architect who has lived in the Twin Cities since 1973. “It pushed Iranians over the edge with this regime and how far they can go butchering their own people. At this point, any outside help appears welcome to most of us.”

Still, even Kashani — a founding member of the Minnesota Committee in Support of a Democratic Iran — holds mixed feelings toward the Trump administration’s joint decision with Israel to bomb Iran. Khamenei was killed by a targeted Israeli missile strike in Tehran on Saturday, ending a 36-year rule that Iranian-Americans have described as a reign of terror.

Will Iran be any different?

Even those who celebrate his death recognize that elsewhere in the world, American efforts to topple autocratic regimes and hand-pick their successors have arguably set democracy backwards by creating ripe conditions for new authoritarians to assume power, notably Iranian-aligned leadership in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Will Iran be any different?

“It’s a million dollar question,” said Kashani, who lives in the western suburbs outside Minneapolis.

“We’re looking on with great hesitation and worry for the country and its people,” he said. “We all support getting rid of this barbaric leader, and hope for better days to come. The only concern is the ultimate outcome. Will we achieve the freedom and democracy that this whole thing is about, or will we replace one dictator with another?”

Regime change

Parham Alaei, a professor of medical physics at the University of Minnesota, shares the same mixed emotions.

“It is crucial to note that the people of Iran do not need, nor do they want, direct outside intervention; they are fighting against the regime on their own,” wrote Alaei, in a December 2022 opinion piece for the Pioneer Press regarding the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement.

Fast forward three years, and “direct outside intervention” has suddenly shaken Iran’s repressive government, killed its Supreme Leader and raised a host of new questions. The loss of life on the ground gives him pause.

“I didn’t want the war to start, but now that it’s started … the best outcome of the war would be to have a regime change,” said Alaei on Monday.

He doubts the U.S. will enter Iran with ground troops, given that the country of 93 million people is the size of Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Polling shows the attacks on Iran have proven unpopular so far with the American people, who are unsure about the Trump administration’s goals.

The government and the people

Do Khamenei’s death and U.S. and Israeli missile strikes open the door to new power structures that could help the Iranian people, or will they lead to fresh crackdowns under an equally oppressive successor?

“It may weaken the regime such that the next time people rise up as they did in January, the regime won’t have the full force of manpower and equipment to massacre the people,” said Alaei, who is praying for the former over the latter. “The best outcome would be when this war ends, people would be able to topple the government, we’d have a provisional government set in place, and people could choose their government.”

“The problem with Iraq and Afghanistan was the U.S. appointed their leader for them,” he added. “That was a ‘nation-building’ scheme.”

In the U.S., Kashani hopes that everyday Americans will come to understand that the war is with the Iranian government, and not with the people of Iran, many but not all of whom have longed for Khamenei’s overthrow.

“There is a clear distinction between Iranian people and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Kashani said. “The government and the people are totally different sides of the table.”

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A Wisconsin woman who admitted she broke a 9-month old baby’s leg at a Woodbury day care center was sentenced to serve 45 days in jail in a plea agreement Monday afternoon.

Chantelle Michelle Cheri Vevang, 36, of Roberts, was charged in August 2024 with one felony count of malicious punishment of a child with substantial bodily harm after authorities said she broke the child’s leg at day care and lied about it.

In December, Vevang entered a guilty plea in Washington County court to a misdemeanor charge regarding “any person who by act, word, or omission encourages, causes, or contributes to a child’s need for protection or services.”

During the sentencing on Monday, the baby’s mother, Sarah Oxley, gave a victim impact statement saying that the harm done to her family and baby was more than just physical.

Away on work trip

Stepping Stones Early Learning Center in Woodbury was a place they trusted to keep their baby safe, Oxley said. On the day of the injury, she and her husband were out of the country for work, leaving their baby for the first time.

“We were already struggling with the distance, but we reassured ourselves she was safe with her grandparents, and safe at Stepping Stones day care.”

That day, they got a call saying their baby had fallen from a toy and was favoring her leg.

“But something in my heart just sank,” Oxley said. The next day they were told that the injury was not better and that “someone had heard a pop in her leg when doing a diaper change.”

They immediately made plans to return home.

“While we were standing in an airport trying desperately to get home, we got the call that shattered us,” she said. “Our 9-month-old daughter had a severely fractured femur. She needed emergency surgery,” she said.

The baby was put in a cast that went from her ankle to her chest.

“For five weeks, our active curious baby couldn’t move,” Oxley said. “She couldn’t crawl, she couldn’t pull herself up. She couldn’t sleep the way she was used to. She cried through the night in pain and frustration, and we felt completely helpless.”

They learned how to change diapers on a baby with a full-body cast, they gave her sponge baths on kitchen counters, had to buy special clothes and special car seats, she said.

“We watched our baby struggle to do simple things that she was just learning to do. But the physical injury is only part of this. We struggle every single day with trust. Every time her day care now calls, my heart drops into my stomach, and I relive that moment over and over again. Emma is still fearful of medical appointments. She clings to us and cries as if she believes she’s about to be hurt again.”

Oxley asked the judge to consider when handing down her sentence “not just the broken bone, but also the fear, the trauma, the sleepless nights, the loss of trust and the ongoing uncertainty that’s caused our family.”

Shame and anxiety

Christa Groshek, Vevang’s attorney, said upon meeting her client, she quickly realized Vevang was “very childlike herself.”

Over the past two years, Vevang seemed to have trouble understanding basic information about the legal process and the world around her. Groshek said her client lives with her parents and has been so overwhelmed with shame and anxiety that “for a year… she could not leave her house.”

She “continues to struggle with understanding the world around her” and has Turner’s Syndrome, a chromosomal condition that can include intellectual impairment.

Groshek said that the day care should have realized this.

“She has strong remorse, as the county attorney pointed out,” Groshek said. “She feels horrible for what happened…She’s very, very sorry for the harm the baby’s sustained.”

Groshek asked that in light of Vevang’s remorse, her intellectual struggles and her anxiety that the judge allow electronic monitoring instead of jail.

“I think that would be a very, very difficult thing for her, and I think it would set her back and I would worry strongly about her mental health,” Groshek said.

“I’m sorry for hurting and what happened to the child,” Vevang said. “I’m really sorry. And I love children. I don’t even know what happened. I am sorry. I’m greatly sorry. That’s all I have to say.”

Jail time

Prosecutor Tom Frenette said that although Vevang did express remorse, he asked for the judge to follow recommendations and sentence her to 45 days in jail.

Washington County Judge Siv Mjanger sentenced her to 364 days in jail with 319 of the days stayed so jail time would equal 45 days.

Mjanger said the sentence could be served in various ways including electronic monitoring or work service.

The criminal complaint gave the following details:

On April 11, 2024, Vevang was working in one of the infant rooms at Stepping Stones Early Learning Center in Woodbury caring for a 9-month-old baby girl when the injury occurred, authorities said.

Vevang initially said the baby awoke from her nap about 3 p.m. and “was fussy because she needed a diaper change.” Vevang said during the diaper change on the changing table “she might have applied a little too much pressure” in pushing the infant’s right leg back because she heard a “crack or pop sound.”

Vevang told authorities the baby cried in pain and screamed louder.

Saying she was “scared,” she finished the diaper change and put the baby on the floor before going to another infant room and telling another staff member that the baby had fallen after trying to pull herself up to stand.

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A medical team at Children’s Hospital said the injury was a “severe totally displaced femur fracture and that the injury could not have occurred from a routine diaper being changed, or from a routine fall,” according to the complaint. The medical team also found three small bruises not consistent with a fall or routine care.

A state Department of Human Services investigator said that a femoral fracture in a 9-month-old child was “unusual” and would take “excessive force.”

Along with the jail sentence and a $300 fine, Vevang was put on probation for 10 years with a series of restrictions including cognitive skills programming, a mental health assessment and being prohibited from working at a day care with children under five.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for California schools to tell parents if their children identify as transgender without getting the student’s approval, granting an emergency appeal from a conservative legal group.

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The order blocks for now a state law that bans automatic parental notification requirements if students change their pronouns or gender expression at school.

It comes after religious parents and educators challenged California school policies aimed at preventing schools from outing students to their families. Two sets of Catholic parents represented by the Thomas More Society say it caused schools to mislead them and secretly facilitate the children’s social transition despite their objections.

California argued that students have the right to privacy about their gender expression, especially if they fear rejection from their families, and school policies are aimed at striking a balance with parents’ rights.

The high court, though, sided with the parents and reinstated a lower-court order blocking the law and school policies while the case continues to play out.

The Supreme Court has ruled for religious plaintiffs in other recent cases, including allowing parents to pull their children from public-school lessons if they object to storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters.

The California order comes months after the court upheld state bans on gender-identity-related healthcare for minors. The justices also seem to be leaning toward allowing states to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams.

School policies for transgender students, meanwhile, have also been on the court’s radar in other cases.

The court rebuffed another similar case out of Wisconsin in December, but three conservative justices indicated they would have heard the case. Justice Samuel Alito called the school policies “an issue of great and growing national importance.”

The Trump administration, meanwhile, found in January that California’s policies violated parents’ right to access their children’s education records. The Justice Department also sued after determining the states’ transgender athlete policies violate federal civil rights law.