Good afternoon. According to two people briefed on an Oval Office meeting Thursday, Trump questioned why the U.S. would want to admit more people from "shithole countries." Asked about the remarks, White House spokesman Raj Shad defended the president but did not directly deny his remarks. The remarkable exchange also forced news editors to have an uncomfortable conversation. | Forecast | NewsCut
An administrative law judge has rejected an attempt to change Minnesota's water quality standard for protecting wild rice, saying it violates federal and state law and puts an unfair burden on Native Americans who harvest wild rice for food.
Schools flagged multiple times as low-performing will be required to direct some of their federal funding toward improvement plans. Those schools will also undergo yearly state audits and get access to increased staff training and regional specialists.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will begin drafting a rule to revoke the lynx's threatened species status. But some scientists warn climate change could reduce the animals' habitat.
The cost of storms fueled by climate change exceeded $300 million last year. We discuss what that means for the insurance industry, plus the implications of too much winter salt and how the media fails to attribute climate change to extreme weather.
Thomas Joseph Incantalupo, 47, of St. Louis Park faces criminal sexual conduct counts for having sex with one of his students, who was 14 when the abuse began, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office said Thursday.
Three Republican and three Democratic senators have been working for months on a plan to protect people who arrived in the U.S. as children, many illegally. But the White House and several GOP lawmakers said they'd not accepted the proposal, plunging the issue back into uncertainty.
State health officials describe this flu season as potentially severe and warn cases may not yet have peaked. Rumors that this year's vaccine is ineffective are misleading, the state's infectious disease director says.
