The Dictatorship
How defendant in Minnesota went free because of turmoil…
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The federal prosecutor’s office in Minnesota has been gutted by a wave of career officials resigning or retiring over objections to Trump administration directives. Because of the turmoil, 12-time convicted felon Cory Allen McKay caught a break.
With a three-decade record of violent crime that includes strangling a pregnant woman and firing a shotgun under a person’s chin, McKay was scheduled to stand trial next month on methamphetamine trafficking charges that could have locked him up for 25 years. Instead, he walked free after the prosecutor on his case retired.
The Trump administration says its aggressive immigration enforcement in Minnesota has improved public safety. Left in its wake, though, is a greatly weakened U.S. attorney’s office, where many prosecutors resented the way President Donald Trump’s political appointees at the Justice Department managed them.
Offices in other states, from New York to Virginia, have also been affected by resignations as prosecutors object to what they see as the politicization of decision-making under Trump. But Minnesota has been hit especially hard.
A growing number of defendants are beginning to escape accountability, as the remaining prosecutors are forced to dismiss some cases, kill others before charges are filed and seek plea agreements and delays.
Local officials worry the office will be unable, at least temporarily, to bring charges against some of the state’s most serious offenders.
“The result will be a diminished ability to target dangerous fraudsters, sexual predators, violent gangs and drug traffickers,” said John Marti, a Minneapolis lawyer who was a longtime fraud prosecutor in the office until 2015.
After asking for a delay to find someone to take McKay’s case, the office led by Trump appointee Daniel Rosen dropped it so abruptly McKay’s lawyer didn’t learn about the move until after her client had been released.
“This was completely surprising to me,” said McKay’s lawyer, Jean Brandl. While she hasn’t been able to reach him, “I can guarantee you he’s happy about it.”
An exodus of prosecutors
Over the past year, the number of assistant U.S. attorneys in Minnesota has fallen from more than 40 prosecutors before Trump retook office to fewer than two dozen. That’s according to a former federal prosecutor who wasn’t authorized to discuss personnel matters and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The exodus began last year as several prosecutors “saw the writing on the wall” that their jobs — and the government’s definition of justice — were going to be different under the new administration, the former federal prosecutor said.
It accelerated after Trump appointees in the Justice Department intervened to block a joint state-federal investigation into the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Good by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross. While Trump officials called Good a “domestic terrorist” and argued Ross fired in self-defense, some in the office viewed the killing as a potential murder.
Career prosecutors also objected to directives that they divert much of their resources to immigration cases, and they chafed at repeated violations of court orders by ICE that angered judges.
“They could not in good conscience participate in what they have seen,” according to a letter released last week by eight former permanent or acting U.S. attorneys in Minnesota.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Minnesota took the rare step of finding a DOJ lawyer in contempt of court over the government’s failure to comply with an order to return identification documents to an immigrant who challenged his detention.
Among the many who left last month were the office’s former acting leader, Joe Thompsonand its criminal division chief Harry Jacobs. Thompson was a Justice Department veteran known for high-profile fraud investigations. He and Jacobs had helped uncover the $300 million Feeding Our Future scheme in which more than 75 defendants have been charged with defrauding a COVID-19-era child nutrition program.
Each time an experienced attorney leaves, leaders assess that prosecutor’s caseload and make decisions about how many of their cases can be reassigned to remaining staff and which will be dropped due to diminished resources.
Court records show the office has been operating in crisis mode, bringing in prosecutors from other states, asking judges to delay hearings, and trying to make some cases go away through dismissals and plea agreements. Defense lawyers are seeking to capitalize by demanding speedy trials for clients and filing other motions that require responses from prosecutors.
The Justice Department and the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment. The office’s former spokesperson, prosecutor Melinda Williams, was among those who left.
Drug trafficking cases dismissed
McKay, 47, isn’t the only drug trafficking defendant to benefit.
The office last month also dropped a case against a man who was arrested in September after investigators said they found him in possession of a stash of drugs set to be trafficked in the Twin Cities that included 7,600 fentanyl pills and 15 pounds of cocaine.
A third dismissed case involved a man who was charged with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine after police in Rochester found three pounds of the drug in a search of his vehicle in January 2025.
“With everybody leaving there, it’s presenting some challenges for everyone around the state,” said Clay County Sheriff Mark Empting, who said McKay would present “a big public safety concern” if he returns to Moorhead.
10 pounds of highly pure meth
The case against McKay dated to 2024, when FedEx employees in Fargo, North Dakota, discovered a package containing nearly 10 pounds of highly pure meth arriving from California and addressed to McKay. Police estimated the street value at $80,000.
A detective posing as a FedEx employee delivered the package to McKay, who was arrested. Investigators say they searched cellphones, and found text messages linking McKay to other suspected drug traffickers in Minnesota, California, Chicago and Mexico.
McKay was jailed for nearly a year awaiting trial on state charges, before a federal grand jury returned an indictment in May 2025 charging him with two methamphetamine distribution charges. The indictment included a sentencing enhancement because he had more than two prior violent felonies.
Those include aggravated assault in 2013, domestic assault by strangulation in 2017 and assault causing substantial bodily harm in 2021. Prosecutors said he had at least a dozen felony convictions, dating to when he was 16 and fired a short-barreled shotgun under the chin of a victim.
An offender jailed, then set free
Longtime assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hollenhorst argued last summer that McKay was too dangerous to be released before trial, even to a substance abuse program, saying his history of violence would “put countless people at risk.”
A judge agreed, noting McKay had repeatedly failed to show up for court proceedings, given police false names and had his probation revoked for violations.
But last month, the U.S. attorney’s Office noted that Hollenhorst was “retiring unexpectedly” and asked for a delay. A judge moved the trial date from Feb. 12 to March 2. The office still dropped the case days later in a filing that offered no explanation. A judge ordered McKay’s immediate release. Hollenhorst declined comment.
On Jan. 31, McKay walked out of the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, 30 miles outside Minneapolis. Attempts by AP to reach him were unsuccessful.
Brandl, McKay’s lawyer, said that while the outcome was a victory for her client, Hollenhorst’s retirement after 40 years with the Justice Department was “a huge loss.”
“He was a very good prosecutor,” she said. “He was reasonable and saw our clients as human beings, not just numbers.”
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Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa.
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration this week acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program, a glaring mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in Democratic-led states.
The error, which the administration admitted first to The Associated Press, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration’s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings. One of a few mischaracterizations it made about New York’s Medicaid program, it also reflected a common criticism that’s been made of Trump’s second administration — that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.
“These numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it’s really slapdash,” said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis called attention to the Trump administration’s inaccurate claim.
The mistake appeared in comments made last month by Dr. Mehmet Ozthe administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a social media video and in a letter to New York’s Democratic governor announcing the fraud investigation.
Oz claimed that New York’s Medicaid program last year provided some 5 million people with personal care services, which assist people in need with basic activities like bathing, grooming and meal preparation. That would add up to nearly three-fourths of the state’s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees.
“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz said in the video, adding in his post that New York needs to “come clean about its Medicaid program.”
But the real number of New Yorkers who used those services last year was about 450,000, or between 6% and 7% of total enrollees, CMS spokesman Chris Krepich told the AP this week. He said the agency misidentified New York’s approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its methodology.
“CMS is committed to ensuring its analyses fully reflect state-specific billing practices and will continue to work closely with New York to validate data and strengthen program integrity oversight,” he said in an emailed statement.
Krepich said the probe was ongoing as the administration still has concerns with New York’s oversight of personal care services and the Medicaid program and is reviewing the state’s response to last month’s letter. CMS had raised other flags about New York’s program, including that it spends more per beneficiary and per resident than the average state, has high personal care spending and employs so many personal care aides that the job category is now the largest in the state.
Health analysts said the state’s high spending reflected both high costs for services in New York and a policy choice to provide robust at-home care. Cadence Acquaviva, senior public information officer for the New York Department of Health, called Oz’s initial mischaracterizations “a targeted attempt to obscure the facts.”
“New York State remains committed to protecting and preserving vital Medicaid programs that deliver high-quality services to New Yorkers who depend on them,” she said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “The initial claim by CMS was patently false, and we are glad they now admit it.”
“Governor Hochul has been clear that New York has zero tolerance for waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, or any other state programs, and will continue her efforts to root out bad actors, protect taxpayer dollars, and safeguard the critical programs that New Yorkers rely on,” spokesperson Nicolette Simmonds said.
New York probe is part of a larger crackdown
The Trump administration’s investigation into New York comes as it has similarly approached at least four other states, including California, FloridaMaine and Minnesota, with investigations into potential health care fraud. The anti-fraud effort appears to be expanding as voters in the upcoming midterm elections say they’re concerned about affordability.
Trump last month signed an executive order to create an anti-fraud task force across federal benefit programs led by Vice President JD Vance. As part of that project, Vance announced the administration would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns, a move over which the state has since sued.
Kinnucan, the analyst with expertise in New York’s Medicaid program, said he’s concerned that the Trump administration’s adversarial approach to targeting fraud in some states “politicizes” a conversation that should be a team effort.
“We want to think collaboratively among all the stakeholders in the program about how we can actually fix it,” Kinnucan said. “We don’t want to have fraud be this political football.”
Oz made other claims New York advocates say are inaccurate
In his video, Oz made at least two other claims about New York that Medicaid advocates and beneficiaries say distorted the facts.
In one instance, he said the state recently made its screening for personal care eligibility “more lenient by allowing problems like being ‘easily distracted’ to qualify for a personal care assistant.”
Rebecca Antar, director of the health law unit at the Legal Aid Society, said the opposite was true — that the state in a rule change that went into effect last September instead made its program requirements more stringent. She said being “easily distracted” doesn’t appear anywhere among them.
Krepich said the administrator was referring to whether New York’s standard for personal care services was “sufficiently rigorous.”
“When standards are overly permissive, it risks diverting resources away from individuals with the highest levels of need and placing long-term pressure on the sustainability of the Medicaid program,” he said.
Oz in the video also referred to personal care services as “something that our families would normally do for us, like carrying groceries.”
Kathleen Downes, a 33-year-old who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and uses personal care services in New York’s Nassau County, said she was offended by the notion that all Medicaid beneficiaries have family members who are willing and able to help.
Downes, who has been disabled since birth and needs personal care help for things like showering, using the toilet and eating, said she hires both her mother and outside assistants for personal care services, so her aging mother doesn’t have to take on those tasks full time. She said her mother did the labor unpaid for years, precluding her from pursuing other career opportunities.
“He’s assuming that everybody wants to and can just do it for free forever,” Downes said. “And that’s not feasible for a lot of people.”
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Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story.
Friday’s splashdown of the Artemis II crew, the first to travel to the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972, is a moment of celebration for all of us on Earth.
But it’s also an important reminder that, despite this success, the current administration’s Office of Management and Budget is proposing budget cuts that will all but dismantle much of NASA. It’s surprising, illogical and very troubling.
The proposed cuts would terminate 53 NASA Science missions, throwing away more than $13 billion in taxpayer investment.
The proposed cuts would terminate 53 NASA Science missions, throwing away more than $13 billion in taxpayer investment and halting the development of nearly every future NASA Science mission.
These cuts would be an insult to our astronauts and entire NASA workforce. Astronauts and their colleagues are civil servants who work hard, accomplish nearly impossible things and represent our country to the world.
It’s an odd choice from an administration that has pledged to put America first, to be sure. But stranger still, and quite personal to me, is the OMB’s proposal to completely end NASA’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) outreach program, which supports students and teachers nationwide. Programs like this have helped the United States be a world leader in science and technology.
We cannot allow this.
The U.S. has many great institutions, but NASA is a unique part of the American story. NASA is the best brand our nation has. When people around the world think of the U.S. at its best, they think of astronauts exploring the moon, telescopes opening new windows on the cosmos and spacecraft making profound discoveries on other worlds. NASA is who we are when we’re curious, bold and united.
There is also a growing consensus in Washington that we are in a new space race, this time, with the China National Space Administration, which, by the way, is planning to have taikonauts walk on the Moon in 2030. If the race is on, why abandon so much? Why cede the lead? The U.S. cannot be first in space if it is second in science and technology.
The administration proposed almost the same draconian cuts to NASA last year. When it did, we the people fought back. The Planetary Society, along with more than 300 advocates and 19 other partner organizations, went to Washington and organized the largest grassroots advocacy outreach for space science in history. Tens of thousands of citizens from every state and congressional district wrote, called and made their case to their elected officials. Together, we successfully saved NASA.
Now, this year, we have no choice but to fight back. On April 20, we will return to Washington, where people can join in person or join our Save NASA Science campaign online.
Science is not a luxury. It is a responsibility. Our founders knew it; you will find “Science” cited in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Only a public space agency can sustain decades-long investments in the kind of science that tells us whether life ever existed on Mars, that tracks the asteroids that could threaten every living thing on Earth and that reveals the story of our origin.
NASA’s science program is a bargain for Americans. It accounted for one-tenth of 1% of the nation’s expenditures last year, a tenth of a penny of every tax dollar.
Cutting science would not just delay discovery; it would destroy it. It would shatter our STEM talent pipeline. It would abandon our international partners. And, it would cede U.S. leadership in space science to China and other nations.
NASA’s science program is a bargain for Americans. It accounted for one-tenth of 1% of the nation’s expenditures last year, a tenth of a penny of every tax dollar. And for every dollar spent, three come back into the economy. Every year, NASA generates $75 billion of economic growth and supports over 300,000 jobs in all 50 states.
Members of Congress and the Senate agree: NASA is a remarkable investment. I’ve met with both Republicans and Democrats, all of whom support space science. And last year, an overwhelming bipartisan majority rejected these same cuts.
NASA is what makes America great. It represents our best values: curiosity, determination, tenacity, and global cooperation. It proves that we are capable of extraordinary things. When we invest in scientific exploration, we invest in ourselves — in our economy, security and future.
If we concede and retreat from the frontier of space after a half century of leadership, it would be an unworthy choice. If Artemis II has showed us anything, it’s that the public, across the political spectrum, strongly supports space exploration, scientific discovery and a deeper understanding of the universe and our place within it.
Bill Nye is the chief ambassador at The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.
After making history as the farthest journey into space humans have ever made, NASA’s Artemis II mission returned to Earth on Friday, splashing down off the coast southwest of San Diego.
The Artemis II crew splashed down successfully at 5:07:47 p.m. PT. The Orion spacecraft launched last weekfrom the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first crewed flight to the moon in more than 50 years. The entire mission from liftoff took a total of nine days, one hour, 31 minutes and 35 seconds, which NASA rounds up, to call it a 10-day mission.
In the buildup to the mission, questions about the craft’s heat shield led to concerns among some experts about whether Orion would hold up on reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere, the most perilous part of any crewed mission. A NASA-commissioned panel ultimately deemed the ship safewith the astronauts themselves endorsing it ahead of time.
The four-member crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — embarked on the 10-day mission to fly around the moon, setting the stage for future missions aimed at establishing a permanent lunar base.
After splashdown, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman praised the crew, calling them “wonderful communicators, almost poets,” during an interview Friday evening.
“These were the ambassadors from humanity to the starts that we sent out there,” Isaacman said.
He also emphasized that this mission set the stage for a future moon landing — and base.
“This is not a once in a lifetime … This is just the beginning,” he said during the interview. “We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon, until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.”
On April 6, the spacecraft reached 252,756 miles from Earth, the farthest distance traveled by humans. Artemis II broke the Apollo 13crew’s record of 248,655 miles, set in 1970.
The crew conducted a seven-hour lunar flyby, coming within about 4,000 miles of the moon’s surface and seeing areas of the moon never before seen by the naked eye. In addition to testing the spacecraft, the astronauts studied the far side of the moon during a solar eclipse and observed lunar geological features and color variations.
Now back on Earth, the astronauts will undergo medical evaluations before heading to shore and traveling to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The next such mission, Artemis IIIis expected to launch next year.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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