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St. Paul begins clearing Pig’s Eye Park encampment, leaving residents seeking shelter

By CNN

St. Paul to clear out city’s largest encampment, and more headlines

Click here for updates on this story

    MINNESOTA (WCCO) — Crews in St. Paul, Minnesota, plan to clear out the city’s largest encampment on Wednesday.

Crews are expected to begin clearing out the encampment at Pig’s Eye Park around 8 a.m. It will be the first of three sites to close under St. Paul’s new “Coordinated Transition Plan,” which has been controversial since the start.

Advocates are raising concerns about where people will go after the camp is cleared. Before crews move in, a community breakfast and demonstration was happening, with protesters attempting to block the closure.

The city said drug use, assaults and fires are driving up 911 calls and making it too dangerous for the roughly 140 people living at Pig’s Eye Park. City leaders initially said they planned to hold a news conference before the closure, but then canceled it.

Ahead of Wednesday’s closure, city officials said they’ve been focused on outreach, connecting people living in the camp with shelter, housing and health services. The city said it has added emergency shelter capacity through Ramsey County and outreach teams will work with residents to help them move and connect with resources.

For anyone who refuses to leave, the city says it will continue its “Four Es” approach: Engagement, education, encouragement and enforcement as a last resort.

The city designated an area for protesters in anticipation, saying in part, “This is a difficult day” and “we ask that everyone present allow the process to proceed safely.”

“Our focus throughout the day remains connecting people to shelter and services,” the city added.

Emotions were high at a public hearing about the encampment on Tuesday.

“There are real people with real commitments that are ready to help,” one resident said.

“You just threw away $1 million from a city with a very large deficit that I just heard at a budget meeting,” said another resident.

The city said the clearout is expected to continue throughout the day and could last into early evening.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Supreme Court backs Trump’s order to curb mail ballots

By CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday said that President Donald Trump could begin carrying out parts of an executive order intended to restrict mail voting, but additional legal challenges could hinder implementation of his plan before the November midterm election.The ruling injects new uncertainty about the voting rules for the midterms by keeping alive the possibility that Trump will impose policies outlined in the March order that gave the US Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security unprecedented roles in the running of elections.The high court’s ruling, handed down in an unsigned order over the dissent of the court’s three liberals, means that the Trump administration may move forward with a proposal for DHS to compile state-specific lists of people it believes are eligible to vote in the Democratic-led states that had challenged the plan in court.Another part of Trump’s executive order instructs the Postal Service to impose new mandates on states that want to send ballots through the mail, requiring that they submit their own lists of eligible voters to the agency and include information on ballot envelopes to allow those ballots to be tracked. The justices gave USPS the green light to implement that aspect of Trump’s plan, but a lower court blocked that effort nationwide in a separate case. That means more court action will likely be needed before the USPS can move forward.The Supreme Court’s decision did not address the legality of Trump’s order, only the timing of the challenge to it. Trump for years has made baseless claims about widespread voter fraud while specifically attempting to undermine confidence in mail voting.“The court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” the court wrote. “On that score, time will tell. But the order itself does not harm the states, so the District Court lacked jurisdiction to bar the govern­ment from trying to implement it. And for the reasons dis­cussed, that injunction is likely to irreparably harm the government if it remains in place while the appellate pro­cess runs its course.”And it represents a loss for the Democratic states, who warned they will need to immediately begin diverting time and resources away from preparing for this year’s elections, which are fewer than three months away.Election cases have become particularly contentious this year at the Supreme Court, drawing sharp writing from members of both the conservative and liberal wings. In the highest profile case, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority gutted the Voting Rights Act in a significant ruling in late April dealing with Louisiana’s congressional districts.“The ruling is a win for Trump for the moment, but it doesn’t fully clear the way for his effort to limit mail-in ballots to go into effect. There’s already a separate injunction against the executive order that’s not directly affected by today’s ruling, and as soon as tomorrow, a Massachusetts district court may block the underlying USPS rule at issue—which is the real thing to watch heading into November.”This story is breaking and will be updated.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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