Star Tribune
St. Paul mayor and city council meeting to reach budget compromise
The middle ground: a 7.2% increase.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Deputy Mayor Jamie Tincher said Carter, too, would like the levy to be lower. But proposing a 5% increase would mean an additional cut of $6 million from 2025 city services — a reduction that could increase fire response times, slow the processing of license applications and reduce parks and rec and library services.
“He doesn’t have a path to do that without reducing services that will be felt by the people who are currently getting them,” Tincher said.
If the two sides cannot agree on a tax levy for 2025, state law would require the city to institute this year’s levy. That, Tincher said, would lead to drastic cuts in city personnel and services, as costs go up every year because of things like health care, insurance and previously negotiated salary increases.
The gap between revenue and costs then, she said, would be $16 million.
Tincher was asked if this year’s negotiations felt “different.”
Star Tribune
Teen in critical condition, another wounded after Robbinsdale shooting
A 17-year-old is in critical condition and another 17-year-old sustained non-life threatening injuries following a shooting in a parking lot of a Robbinsdale apartment building early Sunday, police said.
Officers responded to reports of a shooting at the 4200 block of 46th Avenue N. at 12:43 a.m. Sunday, according to a news release from the Robbinsdale Police Department.
They gave emergency aid to two victims with gunshot wounds before an ambulance brought them to Robbinsdale’s North Memorial Health Hospital.
Robbinsdale police, officers from other agencies and K9 units didn’t locate anyone during initial searches of the area. That changed a short time later, when officials located a “person of interest” who detectives subsequently interviewed, the release states.
A detective and investigators with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office processed the scene and recovered evidence. Officers have yet to arrest anyone following the shooting.
Star Tribune
Trump says he can’t guarantee tariffs won’t raise US prices and promises swift immigration action
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump said he can’t guarantee that his promised tariffs on key U.S. foreign trade partners won’t raise prices for American consumers and he suggested once more that some political rivals and federal officials who pursued legal cases against him should be imprisoned.
The president-elect, in a wide-ranging interview with NBC’s ”Meet the Press” that aired Sunday, also touched on monetary policy, immigration, abortion and health care, and U.S. involvement in Ukraine, Israel and elsewhere.
Trump often mixed declarative statements with caveats, at one point cautioning ”things do change.”
A look at some of the issues covered:
Trump hems on whether trade penalties could raise prices
Trump has threatened broad trade penalties, but said he didn’t believe economists’ predictions that added costs on those imported goods for American companies would lead to higher domestic prices for consumers. He stopped short of a pledge that U.S. an households won’t be paying more as they shop.
”I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow,” Trump said, seeming to open the door to accepting the reality of how import levies typically work as goods reach the retail market.
That’s a different approach from Trump’s typical speeches throughout the 2024 campaign, when he framed his election as a sure way to curb inflation.
Star Tribune
Who is Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of the insurgency that toppled Syria’s Assad?
BEIRUT — Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the militant leader whose stunning insurgency toppled Syria’s President Bashar Assad, has spent years working to remake his public image, renouncing longtime ties to al-Qaida and depicting himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. In recent days, the insurgency even dropped his nom de guerre and began referring to him by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
The extent of that transformation from jihadi extremist to would-be state builder is now put to the test.
Insurgents control capital Damascus, Assad has fled into hiding, and for the first time after 50 years of his family’s iron hand, it is an open question how Syria will be governed.
Syria is home to multiple ethnic and religious communities, often pitted against each other by Assad’s state and years of war. Many of them fear the possibility Sunni Islamist extremists will take over. The country is also fragmented among disparate armed factions, and foreign powers from Russia and Iran to the United States, Turkey and Israel all have their hands in the mix.
The 42-year-old al-Golani — labeled a terrorist by the United States — has not appeared publicly since Damascus fell early Sunday. But he and his insurgent force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS – many of whose fighters are jihadis — stand to be a major player.
For years, al-Golani worked to consolidate power, while bottled up in the province of Idlib in Syria’s northwest corner as Assad’s Iranian- and Russian-backed rule over much of the country appeared solid.
He maneuvered among extremist organizations while eliminating competitors and former allies. He sought to polish the image of his de-facto ”salvation government” that has been running Idlib to win over international governments and reassure Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities. And he built ties with various tribes and other groups.
Along the way, al-Golani shed his garb as a hard-line Islamist guerrilla and put on suits for press interviews, talking of building state institutions and decentralizing power to reflect Syria’s diversity.