St Paul is a solid choice, especially if you want to buy a house. The city of St Paul has a lot of empty houses that they're trying to fill, and they have a program for lower income people where they'll help you with your down payment. Make sure you check into this program before moving because it's been a few years since I've lived there and it might've changed.
There's a light rail that links St Paul and Minneapolis together so you get the benefits of living in a city that is less crowded and cheaper than Minneapolis while being able to cheaply get into Minneapolis for events and such.
Minnesota is showing the world what kind of people live there and I imagine there's going to be a lot of people moving there after things settle down.
The climate and geography are the worst things about Minnesota, so if you can tolerate those things you'll do fine. Giving up the California climate and national parks is going to sting, though.
Madison and Milwaukee are fantastic cities. The Wisconsin college system never really recovered from the Scott Walker days (he cut $250 million out of it) but I imagine that Madison is still a solid place to go to school. Milwaukee is a very cool city, right on lake Michigan and there's a train you can take to Chicago, which isn't far. Northern Wisconsin is quite pretty as well and is attached to the upper peninsula of Michigan, which is a nice bonus.
Wisconsin broke my heart in 2016 when it went red, and again in 2024. It used to be a solid blue state. Wisconsin is prettier than Minnesota, with more interesting geography and better rivers, but I would still rather live in Minnesota because of the political climate and strong social programs.