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Trump will return to Minnesota to try to swing blue state

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Trump will return to Minnesota to try to swing blue state


Donald Trump is taking his campaign back to Minnesota, a state that has favored Democrats but that the former president thinks could be in his reach this year.

Trump is set to hold a rally Saturday night in St. Cloud, Minnesota, this time bringing along his running mate, JD Vance, and the expectation Trump will face Vice President Kamala Harris in November instead of President Joe Biden. He plans to speak at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier in the day.

In May, Trump headlined a GOP fundraiser in St. Paul, where he boasted he could win the state and made explicit appeals to the iron mining range in northeast Minnesota, where he hopes a heavy population of blue-collar and union workers will shift to Republicans after years of being solidly Democratic.

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That’s also a group of potential voters Trump’s campaign has seen Vance, an Ohio senator, as being particularly helpful in trying to reach, with his own roots in a Midwestern Rust Belt city.

Appeal to Midwesterners and union workers is something that has also helped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz land on the list of about a dozen Democrats who are being vetted to potentially be Harris’ running mate.

Minnesota is a state where Trump in 2016 was 1.5 percentage points shy of defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton. But four years later, Joe Biden expanded the Democratic win, defeating Trump by more than 7 percentage points.

But the Republican former president has been bullish on the state.

In a memo last month to the campaign and the Republican National Committee, Trump’s political director, James Blair, called Minnesota a battleground where Trump compared favorably to Biden, their opponent at the time, and said the campaign was hiring staff there and in the process of opening eight offices in the state.

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The campaign didn’t clarify Friday whether those eight offices were open.

Earlier this month, Republican congressional candidate Tayler Rahm dropped out of his primary race and began serving as a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign in the state.

“The Biden/Harris Administration has been so disastrous, and Democrats are in such disarray, that not only is President Trump leading in every traditional battleground state, but longtime blue states such as Minnesota, Virginia and New Jersey are in play,” Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement.

Lexi Byler, the Harris campaign’s communications director in Minnesota, said Trump and Vance are “wildly out of step with Minnesotans’ values, and the state is not going to be won by a Republican presidential candidate this year.

“Democrats are fired up and taking nothing for granted, with a powerful, well-organized, coordinated campaign and thousands of volunteers ready to elect Kamala Harris to continue fighting for them,” she said in a statement.

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While Trump is set to give the keynote address at the bitcoin conference, he was not always a fan of cryptocurrencies, writing on social media in 2019 that their “value is highly volatile and based on thin air.”

But he has embraced the digital currency in recent years. In May, his campaign began accepting donations in cryptocurrency.



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Minnesota

Party City to shutter hundreds of stores across the U.S., including 10 in Minnesota

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Party City to shutter hundreds of stores across the U.S., including 10 in Minnesota


Hit by headwinds including inflationary pressures, competition from e-commerce sites, big box retailers, pop-up stores and even a helium shortage, Party City is going out of business.

The closing of the nation’s largest party supply store, reported by CNN on Friday, is expected to shutter more than 700 retail stores in North America by the end of February, including 10 stores in Minnesota.

According to the company’s website, Party City has outlets in Apple Valley, Bloomington, Chanhassen, Coon Rapids, Maple Grove, Maplewood, Roseville, St. Cloud, St. Louis Park and Woodbury. Employees contacted at stores in Roseville, St. Cloud and Apple Valley said they had heard of the closing but could not comment.

Party City, which sells everything from balloons, costumes and birthday banners to gender reveal props and New Year’s Eve tiaras, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2023. That resulted in the cancellation of nearly $1 billion in debt.

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The 38-year-old New Jersey-based company exited bankruptcy after naming a new CEO, Barry Litwin, in August. But the company was still contending with more than $800 million in debt, according to CNN. The New York Times reported the company employed more than 16,000 people.



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Report: Falcons likely to cut former Vikings QB Kirk Cousins

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Report: Falcons likely to cut former Vikings QB Kirk Cousins


The Atlanta Falcons are likely to cut Kirk Cousins before mid-March, less than a year after he left the Minnesota Vikings to head to Georgia.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that “executives across the leave” believe Cousins’ exit from Atlanta will happen before a $10 million roster bonus is due on Mar. 17, with Schefter citing “multiple sources” who say a split is now inevitable.

It comes in the week that Falcons made the decision to bench Cousins in favor of rookie QB Michael Penix, Jr., whom the Falcons drafted at No. 8 in March shortly after signing Cousins to a four-year, $160 million deal.

Given Cousins has a no-trade clause in his Falcons contract, Schefter notes that it’s unlikely Atlanta will be able to find a suitable deal to trade Cousins, meaning he’s likely to hit the free agent market for the second year running.

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Cousins entered the season still recovering from the Achilles injury that ended his final year with the Vikings, and has struggled under center, with the tipping point for Atlanta coming after a 41-21 loss in Minnesota to the Vikings and a 15-9 win over the struggling Las Vegas Raiders, where Cousins threw for only 112 yards, one TD and one INT.

He still showed flashes of his old brilliance however, namely in the 31-26 win over the Tampa Bay Bucaneers in late October, when he threw for 276 yards and four TDs.

After moving on from Cousins, the Vikings signed Sam Darnold for a one-year, $10 million deal and drafted JJ McCarthy with the 10th pick of the 2024 NFL Draft.



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NEXT Weather: 10 p.m. report for Minnesota from Dec. 20, 2024

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NEXT Weather: 10 p.m. report for Minnesota from Dec. 20, 2024


NEXT Weather: 10 p.m. report for Minnesota from Dec. 20, 2024 – CBS Minnesota

Watch CBS News


WCCO meteorologist Mike Augustyniak says there’s a chance for small amount of precipitation on Monday.

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