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The suspect in the shooting of 2 Minnesota lawmakers has been captured and charged
This booking photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office shows Vance Boelter in Green Isle, Minn., early Monday morning — shortly after a two-day manhunt ended in his capture and arrest.
Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office/AP
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Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office/AP
Law enforcement in Minnesota have arrested the man wanted in the attack early Saturday morning that killed one state lawmaker and left another wounded.
Vance Boelter, 57, was apprehended on Sunday night after what Brooklyn Park police Chief Mark Bruley called “the largest manhunt in state history.”

Bruley said at a Sunday night press conference that officers had been searching the area of Boelter’s property near the town of Green Isle when one thought they saw him “running into the woods.” After about an hour and a half, with the help of multiple SWAT teams and a State Patrol helicopter, authorities closed in on him and were “able to call him out to us.”
“Where he was ultimately taken into custody was in a field,” Bruley said, adding that Boelter was armed at the time.
Boelter was the subject of a days-long man-hunt involving hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement after the shocking deaths of Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. Officials say the couple were shot and killed in their Brooklyn Park, Minn., home by a man impersonating a police officer.

Earlier that same morning, Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot at their home in nearby Champlin, Minn. In a statement shared with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Sunday night, Yvette said John “is enduring many surgeries right now and is closer every hour to being out of the woods.”
“He took 9 bullet hits,” she wrote. “I took 8 and we are both incredibly lucky to be alive.”
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension superintendent Drew Evans told reporters on Sunday that Boelter had been charged with the Hortmans’ murders as well as the shooting of the Hoffmans. He said the FBI and and U.S. Attorney’s Office are reviewing whether to bring additional federal charges.
Boelter was booked into the Hennepin County Jail just after 1 a.m. Monday, and is due to appear in court later in the afternoon, MPR News reports.
What happened on Saturday
Vance Luther Boelter, age 57, is shown here in photographs compiled by the FBI for a wanted poster.
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Police say they initially responded to the shooting at Hoffman’s house, and then went to Hortman’s home. There, they saw a car with emergency lights out front, and a man at the door dressed in all blue with black body armor. Officials say that man shot at police, but was able to get away.
Authorities have yet to announce a possible motive for the attacks, but Minn. Gov. Tim Walz called the shootings “an act of targeted political violence.”
At a news conference Saturday, state police said they found a list of individuals inside what they say is Boelter’s vehicle. Hortman and Hoffman were on that list along with other lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Tina Smith and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who are also both Democrats.
Evans said Sunday that if officers hadn’t encountered Boelter at Hortman’s house, forcing him to abandon his vehicle, “I have every confidence that this would have continued throughout the day.”
Officials also said they found “No Kings” flyers in the car, a reference to the anti-Trump protests that happened around the country Saturday. Minnesota state officials urged residents to avoid the gatherings, though many still attended and the protests remained largely peaceful.
Other protests across the U.S. also remained largely peaceful, though not without incident: Police in Virginia arrested a man for recklessly driving his car through a crowd gathered to protest, hitting one person. In Texas, another man was arrested for making threats against state lawmakers there.
And on Sunday, Salt Lake City police announced the death of an “innocent bystander” who had been shot at a downtown protest, allegedly by a member of the event’s peacekeeping team who had been aiming at a different target: a person brandishing a rifle at demonstrators.
A backdrop of political violence
The shootings in Minnesota are part of a string of high-profile political violence across the country in recent years. In April, for example, a man allegedly set fire to Penn. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home and faces charges including attempted murder, terrorism and aggravated arson.
Last year, the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy think tank, released a report saying nearly half of the state lawmakers it surveyed had experienced threats or attacks in recent years. At the federal level, the U.S. Capitol Police has documented a spike in threats against members of Congress.
And last summer, President Trump, who has often been criticized for stoking the intense emotions that can lead to political violence in the first place, survived an assassination attempt that left his ear bloodied and killed a person in the crowd.
In a post on social media, Trump condemned the shootings in Minnesota, saying that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America.”
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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show
At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.
A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.
City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”
Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.
Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.
“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.
Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.
Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.
“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.
The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.
Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.
“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.
Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”
He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.
Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.
On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.
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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote
The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.
The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”
“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.
The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.
“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.
Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”
“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”
The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.
While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.
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Reigning champion Argentina escapes with remarkable World Cup victory over Egypt
Lionel Messi #10 of Argentina celebrates scoring his team’s second goal during their World Cup match against Egypt in Atlanta on Tuesday.
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They looked beaten. And out. Argentina, the defending World Cup champion and No. 1-ranked team, was down 2-0 late against Egypt.

Then, in a span of 13 remarkable minutes, Argentina scored not once, not twice, but three times, capping a comeback for the ages and leaving Egypt stunned and shellshocked.
For much of the game in Atlanta, Egypt was in control, hobbling Argentina early. The Egyptian attack began almost immediately with a stunning header goal delivered by Yasser Ibrahim in the 15th minute. After that, Egypt’s defense closed ranks, making it practically impossible for Argentina to equalize.
It was downhill from there for the Argentines: team captain Lionel Messi failed to convert a penalty kick, and in the 67th minute, Egypt got a second goal from Mostafa Ziko (after an earlier Egyptian goal had been disallowed after a video review). It looked like Argentina was finished. On the brink of elimination.
But no one told the Argentine players that.
In the 79th minute, Lionel Messi began doing his thing. He fired a cross near the Egyptian goal, and Cristian Romero headed it in. Messi was not done. Four minutes later, he powered a shot past the Egyptian keeper. It was his eighth goal of this tournament, the most of any player. The score was 2-2.
Then, in stoppage time, yet another Argentina header and another goal, this time from Enzo Fernandez.
“This is the World Cup for you,” said Messi after the game. “It wasn’t easy to come back from two goals down. But as I always say, this group never gives up. We always try to fight until the end.”
French referee François Letexier speaks with Egypt forward Mohamed Salah during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt in Atlanta.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
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Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Afterward, Egypt coach Hossam Hassan complained about the French referee and the officiating. “I am not convinced. I am not convinced with this outcome. I’m not convinced with the way things unfolded during this match,” said Hassan in a post-match news conference. “We have been treated unfairly today. We have suffered injustice.”
“We would have deserved to earn this win, but we are leaving with honor, with pride, regardless of this defeat,” said Hossan.
African soccer teams have been the stars of this World Cup. Morocco has yet to lose a game. Cape Verde qualified for the first time in its history and stymied Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. Argentina barely beat them in a nail-biter of a match.
For Egypt, getting this far in the tournament is historic in itself: it’s the first time the team has made it this far. For Argentina, it was a terrifying yet relieving victory: several players, including Messi himself, cried after the game.
Next, they move to the quarterfinals and will play the winner of today’s Switzerland-Colombia match.
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