Lynx blow 20-point second-half lead as Mercury tie semifinals in OT

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Up by 20 points in the third quarter, the Minnesota Lynx failed to take a commanding lead in their WNBA semifinal series Tuesday night.

Sami Whitcomb sent the game to overtime with a late 3-pointer, Kahleah Copper drained one in overtime, and the Phoenix Mercury escaped Target Center with an 89-83 win to even the best-of-five series at a game apiece.

Game 3 is Friday night in Phoenix. Game 4 is Sunday in Arizona.

Minnesota was outscored 7-2 in the final 1:55 of regulation and did not score in nearly the first four minutes of overtime, yet it still had a chance.

Courtney Williams scored on a floater, and a Napheesa Collier jumper got a couple friendly bounces off the rim to make it 85-83 Phoenix with 30.1 seconds left.

Alyssa Thomas made a pair of free throws for the Mercury with 21.7 seconds to play, Collier missed a long 3-pointer, and Thomas made four more shots from the charity stripe.

Collier led Minnesota with 24 points, Kayla McBride had 21, and Courtney Williams added 20 and nine assists. But she also had seven turnovers. Alanna Smith had 13 points and nine rebounds.

The Mercury trailed by 20 midway through the third quarter yet continually chipped away at the lead — including a 16-4 surge — to tie the game with 3:32 left.

“They just kept fighting,” said Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts. Satou Sabally led the Mercury with 24 points, including five 3-pointers.

McBride made a 3-pointer for Minnesota, DeWanna Bonner countered on a layup after a Lynx turnover, and Collier scored inside and Williams on a layup to make it 77-72 Lynx with 1:55 to play.

Its lead cut to one, Minnesota next scored with 20.7 seconds left on a pair of Williams free throws, but Whitcomb’s 3-pointer tied the game with 3.4 seconds left in regulation. Collier’s jumper at the buzzer fell off the iron, and five more minutes were put on the game clock.

Minnesota shot 50% from the field in the opening half, was uber-aggressive on defense and led 48-32 at intermission.

And the Lynx ended the second quarter on a 9-2 run, including a jumper by Collier followed by a steal and layup from Williams, further electrifying the 10,824 fans in attendance.

Early in the third quarter, Williams intercepted a cross-court attempted pass and fed Smith for a fast-break layup and a 17-point lead. Twenty seconds later, Smith blocked Thomas on a drive and let out a big yell of excitement. Collier drained a 3-pointer soon thereafter to make it 59-39.

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Maui officials lift evacuations, close shelters after wildfire threat to north shore town recedes

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By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER

HONOLULU (AP) — Officials on the Hawaiian island of Maui have lifted evacuation orders for residents living near a wildfire that broke out late Tuesday. Police went door-to-door evacuating residents and emergency sirens sounded before firefighters stopped the blaze’s forward progress.

Emergency shelters were also closing late Tuesday as residents returned home.

The fire, which grew to about 300 acres (40 hectares), was first reported at 1:30 p.m. near the north shore town of Paia, officials said. There was no containment estimate and no immediate information on what caused the fire.

Paia is a former sugar plantation town that has become popular with windsurfers. It is on the other side of the island from Lahaina, which was destroyed by a deadly wildfire in 2023.

Before the situation improved, residents were fearful of another devastating blaze.

Maui County Councilwoman Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins said her family, including her 86-year-old grandmother, had to evacuate from Paia to stay with her.

“It’s terrifying,” she said. “We never have to learn the lessons of Lahaina twice; that’s never something we need to learn once again. But from my house I’m watching my hometown burn.”

Paia resident Rod Antone was trying to coordinate evacuation of his elderly parents.

“It’s nerve-wracking,” he said. “Hopefully nothing happens to the neighborhood.”

Antone was working in a county building in Wailuku where he listened to radio updates but didn’t hear the sirens. In the hours before the wildfire engulfed Lahaina in 2023, Maui County officials failed to activate sirens.

Antone noted that winds didn’t feel particularly strong Tuesday, unlike in August 2023 when wind-whipped flames burned Lahaina and left 102 people dead. But like Lahaina, Paia is surrounded by dry brush, he said.

The Maui Fire Department was using two helicopters to help fight the blaze. During the Lahaina fire, helicopters were grounded due to the strong winds.

When traffic out of Paia started building, Wayne Thibaudeau decided to open a gate to give motorists an alternate evacuation route. Thibaudeau is one of the owners of Paia Sugar Mill, which closed in 2000 and is being renovated.

The route takes motorists through old sugarcane fields.

There was a steady stream of “cars packed with people” using the route, he said.

A report on the Lahaina fire said that some back roads that could have provided an alternative escape were blocked by locked gates.

Anoka County judge suspended 9 months for misconduct

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The Minnesota Supreme Court has suspended Anoka County Judge John Dehen for nine months without pay after he “abused his position of authority” in a salary dispute involving his court reporter’s salary and for holding a remote juvenile court calendar while riding as a passenger in a moving car headed to a family member’s swim meet.

Anoka County Judge John Dehen (Alex Carroll / Minnesota Judicial Branch)

The Board on Judicial Standards filed a formal complaint against Dehen with the Supreme Court last year. A three-person panel found that Dehen committed three acts of misconduct and recommended that he be censured and suspended from judicial office without pay for six months.

Dehen appealed the findings, and the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April.

Dehen was first licensed to practice law in Minnesota in 1988. He’s been an elected judge in the Tenth Judicial District since 2010.

According to the Supreme Court’s 72-page order released Tuesday, Dehen’s court reporter, who was in the job since 2017, felt that she was not getting paid enough — and Dehen agreed. Her salary level was at step 2 out of 11, making her one of the lowest paid court reporters in the Judicial Branch.

The court reporter learned that another court reporter in Anoka County was able to get a pay increase by resigning and then being immediately rehired by that court reporter’s judge at a higher step. The Judicial Branch did not have a written policy against that tactic.

“In August 2023, Judicial Branch human resources clarified that the treatment of the other court reporter was contrary to the Judicial Branch’s practices,” the order states. “But Judge Dehen was not immediately made aware of that clarification.”

Dehen’s court reporter resigned in September 2023 and reapplied, a move that Dehen supported.

The Tenth Judicial District Court Administrator then sent Dehen a copy of a 2022 union arbitration decision that concluded judges do not have authority under the collective bargaining agreement to set compensation for their court reporters.

Dehen did not accept that response, and hired her back as his court reporter. He then filed a court order directing the court administrator to immediately start the employment of his court reporter at a step 11 salary.

The Court of Appeals was brought into the mix and disagreed with Dehen, issuing a court order of its own that vacated his order. However, Dehen filed and served a second order to the court administrator directing her to respond and appear at a hearing before him in November 2023 and show cause for not hiring the court reporter at a step 6, the midpoint salary for court reporters.

The Court of Appeals issued a special term order vacating Dehen’s second order.

The Supreme Court concluded that “Judge Dehen’s conduct in [the court reporter compensation dispute] severely undermines the public’s trust in the judicial system, giving the impression that a judge may treat their office as a weapon to be used in professional disputes.”

Moreover, Dehen has “exhibited little if any remorse for his flagrant and egregious actions involving the court reporter dispute,” the Supreme Court’s order said.

Meanwhile, in proceedings before the panel, Dehen did not dispute that he committed misconduct when he held a remote juvenile court calendar while riding in a moving vehicle, acknowledging that it was a “bad idea,” the order said.

However, in a brief to the Supreme Court, Dehen argued that his actions were “not ethical misconduct” and that conducting a remote calendar from his car would be preferable to “either canceling the calendar with less than one day’s notice or finding a replacement judicial officer.”

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The Supreme Court disagreed and cited several rules, including one that states a judge’s duties “take precedence over all of [their] personal and extrajudicial activities.”

“Absent extraordinary circumstances, conducting court from a moving car is not consistent with decorum in proceedings before the court,” the Supreme Court concluded.

On the third issue, the Supreme Court concluded that Dehen’s conduct over at-risk juvenile guardianship proceedings did not constitute misconduct.

If Dehen stops being a judge before his suspension ends, the order says, he will be suspended from practicing of law for a term equal to the balance of his judicial suspension.

Trump’s ‘tough it out’ advice to expectant moms is the latest example of men opining on women’s pain

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By LAURIE KELLMAN

From the pulpit of the presidency, Donald Trump offered some advice to pregnant women: “Tough it out” before taking Tylenol.

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Nine times in all, Trump said expectant mothers should suffer through their discomfort instead of reaching for acetaminophen — or paracetamol in countries outside the U.S. — to cure their fevers or headaches, despite the drug being one of the few painkillers that pregnant women are allowed to take.

“Fight like hell not to take it,” Trump instructed at a Monday news conference meant to address autism. He added that if pregnant women absolutely have to take Tylenol, that’ll be something that they “work out with themselves.”

What many women and experts heard was the latest example of a man telling women how much physical pain they should endure — and an age-old effort to blame mothers for their babies’ autism.

“His use of ‘tough it out’ really was infuriating because it dismissed women’s pain and the real danger that exists with fever and miscarriage during pregnancy,” said women’s rights advocate and social media influencer Amanda Tietz, a 46-year-old mom of three in Wisconsin, in an email. “Not to mention the pain we can experience in pregnancy that can be debilitating.”

Others saw a man opining — again, without evidence that maternal use of Tylenol causes autism or ADHD in children — on mothers, children with disabilities and their health at a time when studies show pain suffered by women is frequently dismissed. Women’s health and their autonomy are especially fraught issues in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in 2022 to strip away constitutional protections for abortion, a deeply personal change for Americans nearly a half century after Roe v. Wade. The debate now roils state legislatures nationwide.

“Yesterday 5 powerful men stood together in the WH and shamed: Pregnant women, told to ‘tough it out’ through pain; Moms of autistic kids, blamed for their child’s condition; Autistic people, called broken & in need of fixing,” Trump’s former surgeon general, Jerome Adams, posted on social media. “Can we all be kinder and less stigmatizing?”

Three women also spoke at Monday’s press conference and thanked Trump: Dorothy Fink, the acting assistant secretary at HHS; and Jackie O’Brien and Amanda Rumer, two mothers who said they have autistic children.

Dr. Nicole B. Saphier of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center said pregnant women generally are advised to take acetaminophen only under medical supervision, when necessary and at the lowest effective dose. But equally important — and missing from Trump’s message — was that untreated fever or severe pain can also pose serious risks to mothers and babies, she said.

“For decades, women have endured a paternalistic tone in medicine. We’ve moved past dismissing symptoms as ‘hysteria,’” Saphier, who also is a Fox News medical contributor, wrote in an email. “The President’s recent comments on Tylenol in pregnancy are a prime example. Advising moderation was sound; delivering it in a patronizing, simplistic way was not.”

Trump is not known for a delicate touch around policy where women are concerned. Ahead of the 2016 election, he erupted over tough questioning by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, later telling CNN: “You can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” He’s got a special playbook for female opponents that includes put-downs about their appearance, their emotional stability and their intelligence.

There’s a long history of men holding forth, sometimes incorrectly, about women’s reproductive health. Former Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin sank his 2012 U.S. Senate campaign with remarks about what constituted “legitimate rape.” Others have erred by suggesting publicly and falsely that rape victims can’t get pregnant.

History offers a long list of men making medical policy for women based on the beliefs of their time — and, some say, suspicion about the power of women to create and shape their unborn babies. A nearly half-century-old theory, long discredited, held that “refrigerator mothers” — cold or distant figures — were responsible for their children’s autism.

Trump’s advice “took me straight back to when moms were blamed for autism,” said Alison Singer, founder of the Autism Science Foundation. “He basically said, if you can’t take the pain, if you can’t deal with the fever, then it’s your fault.”

Trump’s “tough it out” advice is familiar to Mary E. Fissell, a professor of medical history with Johns Hopkins University. “It’s the classic blame-the-mother …over and over again,” she said. The “maternal imagination,” for example, was a principle once thought to influence the way a baby forms.

“It’s the idea that what a pregnant woman desires or feels or imagines will shape the form of her unborn child,” said Fissell, who focuses on 17th- and 18th-century medical history.

Trump offered at least one moment of introspection during his news conference, acknowledging the awkward nature of his directive.

“You know, it’s easy for me to say tough it out,” the president allowed. “But sometimes in life or a lot of other things, you have to tough it out also.”