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To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website at this time. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions. General Information: Your full name, Address (City, State, Zip Code), Phone number, And an alternate phone number (if any) Obituary Specification: Name of Deceased, Obituary Text, A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo. Ad Run dates There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply. If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information. Policies: Verification of Death: In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification. Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours. A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary. Guestbook and Outside Websites: We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter. Obituary Process: Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear. Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines. After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing. Online: Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions. Payment Procedure: Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents. Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number. Rates: The minimum charge is $162 for the first 12 lines. Every line after the first 12 is $12. If the ad is under 12 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162. Obituaries including more than 40 lines will receive a 7.5% discount per line. On a second run date, receive a 20% discount off both the first and second placement. Place three obituaries and the third placement will be free of charge. Each photo published is $125 per day. For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500. Deadlines: Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested. Hours Deadline (no exceptions) Ad Photos MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries. Please call or email us for more memoriam information Please call 651-228-5280 for more information. HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS) Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280. By MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to throw out a jury’s finding in a civil lawsuit that he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her. Trump’s lawyers argued in a lengthy filing with the high court that allegations leading to the $5 million verdict were “propped up” by a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings” that allowed Carroll’s lawyers to present “highly inflammatory propensity evidence” against him. Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host, testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter in spring 1996 into a violent attack in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower. The jury also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll when he made comments in October 2022 denying her allegation. Trump’s lawyers, led by St. Louis, Missouri-based attorney Justin D. Smith, called Carroll’s claims a “politically motivated hoax.” They accused the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, of warping federal evidence rules to bolster Carroll’s “implausible, unsubstantiated assertions.” They said that by upholding the verdict, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was in conflict with other federal appeals courts on how such rules should be applied. “President Trump has clearly and consistently denied that this supposed incident ever occurred,” Smith and his co-counsel wrote. “No physical or DNA evidence corroborates Carroll’s story. There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation.” A message seeking comment was left with Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. In September, when Trump’s lawyers first indicated they would appeal to the Supreme Court, she said, “We do not believe that President Trump will be able to present any legal issues in the Carroll cases that merit review by the United States Supreme Court.” A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement the Supreme Court appeal was part of the president’s crusade against “Liberal Lawfare.” “The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,” the statement said. A three-judge appellate panel upheld the verdict in December 2024, rejecting Trump’s claims that trial Judge Kaplan’s decisions spoiled the trial, including by allowing two other Trump sexual abuse accusers to testify. The women said Trump committed similar acts against them in the 1970s and in 2005. Trump denied all three women’s allegations. In June, 2nd Circuit judges denied Trump’s petition for the full appellate court to take up the case. That left Trump with two options: accept the result and allow Carroll to collect the judgment, which he’d previously paid into escrow, or fight on in Supreme Court, whose conservative majority — including three of his own appointees — could be more open to considering his challenge. Trump skipped the 2023 trial but testified briefly at a follow-up defamation trial last year that ended with a jury ordering him to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million. The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019 after Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir. Judge Kaplan presided over both trials and instructed the second jury to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll. Judge Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, are not related. In their Supreme Court filing, Trump’s lawyers said Kaplan compounded his “significant evidentiary errors” at first trial by “improperly preventing” Trump from contesting the first jury’s finding that he had sexually abused Carroll, leading to an “unjust judgment of $83.3 million.” The 2nd Circuit upheld that verdict on Sept. 8, with a three-judge panel calling the jury’s damages awards “fair and reasonable.” Trump has since asked the full appellate court to hear arguments and reconsider the ruling. Trump has had recent success fending off costly civil judgments. In August, a New York appeals court threw out Trump’s staggering penalty in a state civil fraud lawsuit. The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
