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.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.
But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.
A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.
Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’
Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.
But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.
“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.
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Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.
Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”
Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”
Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.
Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?
“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”
Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.
But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Wednesday marks four years since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Dobbs decisionwhich effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the constitutional right to an abortion. On “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski explained how the ruling set off a domino effect across the United States, affecting not just abortion-related care, but also altering “the state of women’s healthcare as a whole.”
As Brzezinski noted, states across the country have enacted harsher abortion restrictions since the 2022 ruling, with 13 outright banning the procedure with very limited exceptions. This has created a climate of fear among those who treat pregnant patients, with many healthcare providers worrying that any care involving an abortion could violate the law, even when the mother’s health is at risk.
“We are talking about people dying when they’re miscarrying because doctors are too afraid to intervene and save their lives,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, told MS NOW.
Brzezinski said the laws have effectively limited women’s “access to lifesaving healthcare.”
The MS NOW host reflected on some high-profile stories of pregnant women who faced delayed care in states with near-total abortion bans, noting “the numbers of cases that we’ve covered here on the show of women who have had their lives threatened, have been forced to give birth to dying or dead babies, and then, by the way, denied the access to ever create life again, because they became sterilized in the process.”
“There’s an image I can’t get out of my head,” Brzezinski added, before sharing reporting from ProPublica about Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother who died in Texas in 2023 after not receiving timely care for a miscarriage.
“For months afterward, Porsha’s 3-year-old son would chase after women who looked like her on the street, shouting, ‘That’s Mommy!’” Brzezinski said. “That’s the detail I can’t forget. I can’t stop imagining that little boy chasing after strangers on the street. And that story repeats itself.”
You can watch Brzezinski’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
One of the biggest upsets in Tuesday night’s primaries came in New York’s 13th Congressional District, where Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old democratic socialist, managed to beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, 71, who was backed by establishment Democrats.
Chevalier, a doctoral student in sociology at the City University of New York, secured 49.4% of votes in the district — which encompasses upper Manhattan, Harlem and parts of the Bronx — defeating Espaillat, who received about 46% of the votes after representing the district for nearly a decade, according to The Associated Press. She now advances to the November general election, which she is presumed to win in the solidly Democratic district.
Chevalier’s primary win marks a major win for the Democrats’ left-wing flank that backed her, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdaniwho endorsed Chevalier last month during a joint interview on MS NOW’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
Here is what to know about Chevalier and the platform she campaigned on.
She has never held elected office
Prior to her congressional campaign, Chevalier had never run or held elected office. But she has been involved with advocating for issues that became political flashpoints, including helping organize the pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University, according to her biography on the website of the Justice Democratsthe progressive group that recruited her to run.
The daughter of Dominican immigrants, Chevalier also worked as an organizer for Families for Freedom, a New York City group that assists immigrants facing deportation.
Chevalier earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from Columbia University in 2016 and later worked as a paralegal, according to her LinkedIn.
Chevalier faced scrutiny during her campaign over previously articulated stances and incendiary comments, including her appearance at a Times Square rally the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where attendees reportedly suggested the attack was justified.
At a March candidates’ forum, Chevalier declined to condemn Hamas, saying that a request to do so “ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that that folks were living under before this genocide began,” the local outlet City & State reported. Later, on local radio station WNYC, Chevalier said she did condemn Hamas when asked, adding, “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”
In a series of since-deleted social media posts between 2018 and 2022Chevalier also used expletives to refer to former Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee, calling for abolishing borders and stopping all deportations, according to BLN. Other reports noted that she called former President Joe Biden a “rapist” and disparaged white people in some of her posts.
Chevalier has said she has “grown considerably” since writing those posts and that she regrets them. Mamdani defended her after the social media posts surfaced but said he was unaware of them before endorsing Chevalier.
She’s the left’s preferred candidate
Chevalier’s focus on affordability, expanding housing access and opposing war and deportations made her the preferred candidate of many progressive groups. In addition to the endorsements from Mamdani and the Justice Democrats, she was also backed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and several progressive members of the New York City Council.
After her primary win, the Democratic establishment also seems to have rallied behind her, despite her previous expletive-laden critiques of them.
In a statement Tuesday, DNC Chair Ken Martin called Chevalier “a tireless advocate for the hard-working people of New York City” who “will fight for healthcare, affordable housing, public education, civil rights, and an economy that works for everyone.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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