The Timberwolves held their annual Media Day on Monday in Minneapolis to kick off training camp with, frankly, little in the way of news. For a franchise that in the past has started camp with news of major trades, pending contract situations and trade demands, it was awfully calm.

With most of its nucleus back from last season’s Western Conference Finals run, Minnesota is drama-free.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t a few highlights on Monday. Here are the best quotes and notes:

Quotes

Anthony Edwards, on how he will motivate himself to play non-marquee opponents:

“Try to get a career high in points. I think that’s how I’m going to try to do it, because I usually approach it like, ‘Ah, I’m going to let my teammates get that (stuff) off.’ Instead, I’m just going to go for a career high. I think that’s how I’m going to stay engaged.”

Mike Conley, on getting his first hole in one this summer:

“I tell you what, I told my wife, she was out of the country at the time. I said, ‘It’s probably the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.’ And I doubled down on it, man. But it was great. It was great. It’s hard to do, obviously, I’ve been trying for almost 17 years. So, I’m thankful.”

Conley, on sharing the ball on a team featuring Edwards and Julius Randle:

“We talk about it all the time, and it’s something that I tell them every time. ‘If I get the ball, I promise y’all, I’m not trying to go shoot this thing. I promise you, if you run, I’m gonna throw it up to you. I want to play quarterback, all-time quarterback.’ That’s what I want to do. I don’t want to move. I want to throw it to you and let you guys just have the world.”

First-round pick Joan Beringer, on where he has the most room to grow:

“I don’t want to put a limit on my potential. I want to be one of the best players of the league, be the best defender. This is my goal, and every day I wake up for it.”

Jaylen Clark, on re-establishing being hard to play against:

“I feel like leaning into, like, what Minnesota is about. It’s cold as hell here. Plenty of people would rather be in Miami when they come play. Just embrace the fact that, you know, people are trying to get out of here as quick as possible. Make this night as long and hard for them as possible. Be antagonizing, getting under people’s skin. Just being the people nobody wants to play against, like what Detroit used to be in the Bad Boy era against the Bulls. You just knew you were in for a long night.”

Notes

After originally committing to play for Italy in EuroBasket over the summer, Donte DiVincenzo pulled out just ahead of the team’s training camp out of precaution for his sprained toe, suffered in the middle of last season.

He explained his health situation Monday.

“I’m healthy. I’m fine. To finish the season last year, as you guys know, I had the option to get surgery. I elected not to. Surgery would have put me out, I think, five, six months, and we put a plate in the shoe to restrict that mobility of my toe and just precautionary of being able to open that range up and get the strength back in that toe,” DiVincenzo said. “Because now the season ended, I pulled the plate out of my shoe. I want to get back to being my normal self, and so it’s all precautionary. There’s nothing to worry about to start the season.”

Bones Hyland spent much of the offseason in Miami, unsure of what his basketball future might hold. The free agent guard even pondered the idea of playing overseas before ultimately finding his way back to Minnesota.

“Minnesota is something I wanted to come back to, I kept telling the front office that, and they kept calling: ‘We want you back, we want you back.” So it was just a matter of getting something done. But that was in the back of my mind like, ‘Yeah I’m coming back for sure.’ And then we figured something out, and it was perfect.”

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All work by the Minnesota Department of Transportation was paused Monday to honor two construction contractors killed last week and to focus on improving safety in work zones, authorities said.

Along with honoring the two workers — killed within 24 hours of one another in Twin Cities construction zones — the first-ever statewide safety stand-down day included discussions and sharing of experiences to help workers improve safety.

“I am deeply saddened and concerned by the recent tragic incidents that took the lives of two contractors working to improve Minnesota roads. Today, MnDOT staff took an unprecedented step to pause work and honor the lives of these two men and to recommit and focus on the safety of every person who works for and with our agency,” MnDOT Commissioner Nancy Daubenberger said in a statement. “Safety is always our number one priority at MnDOT, and we will continue to work closely with our staff and contractors to improve our work zones to help ensure we all get home to our families safely.”

According to the State Patrol, Pierre Raymon Mack, 29, of St. Paul, was killed Wednesday in a construction zone at Interstate 35W and Burnsville Parkway in Burnsville when a construction boom truck backed up and struck him.

The next day, Adam Frederick Smith, 25, of Seymour, Wis., was killed when a dump truck in a construction zone at Minnesota 610 and Maple Grove Parkway in Maple Grove backed up and struck him, according to the State Patrol.

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“Every crash is more than a statistic — it’s a family changed forever. Work zones are places where Minnesotans are on the job, not just cones and signs on the road,” said State Patrol Col. Christina Bogojevic. “We need every driver to slow down, pay attention and treat those areas with extra care. The safety of our workers and of everyone traveling on our roads depends on it.”

Contact with objects or equipment remains the leading cause of workplace fatalities in Minnesota, said Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, noting that an average of eight workers die this way annually. “These are not just statistics — they are people who didn’t make it home to their loved ones at the end of the workday. Preventing these tragedies starts with proper training and strong safety protocols. Employees exposed to traffic or mobile earth-moving equipment must wear high-visibility garments, and that equipment must be outfitted with functioning backup alarms or guided by trained signal persons. These safeguards are not optional — they are essential to saving lives.”

Officials said that drivers should also do their part to help keep workers safe, such as being prepared when entering work zones by obeying posted speed limits, avoiding distracted driving, giving workers room by moving over, doing the zipper merge, avoiding unnecessary lane changes and never entering a road that is blocked.

 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has had one refrain in recent days when asked about the looming government shutdown.

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Will there be a shutdown? Yes, Trump says, “because the Democrats are crazed.” Why is the White House pursuing mass firings, not just furloughs, of federal workers? Trump responds, “Well, this is all caused by the Democrats.”

Is he concerned about the impact of a shutdown? “The radical left Democrats want to shut it down,” he retorts.

“If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Trump said Friday. “But they’re the ones that are shutting down government.”

In his public rhetoric, the Republican president has been singularly focused on laying pressure on Democrats in hopes they will yield before Wednesday, when the shutdown could begin, or shoulder the political blame if they don’t. That has aligned Trump with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who have refused to accede to Democrats’ calls to include health care provisions on a bill that will keep the government operating for seven more weeks.

Those dynamics could change Monday, when the president has agreed to host Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Johnson and Thune. Democrats believe the high-stakes meeting means the GOP is feeling pressure to compromise with them.

Still, Republicans say they are confident Democrats would be faulted if the closure comes. For Trump, the impact would go far beyond politics. His administration is sketching plans to implement mass layoffs of federal workers rather than simply furloughing them, furthering their goal of building a far smaller government that lines up with Trump’s vision and policy priorities.

This time, it’s the Democrats making policy demands

The GOP’s stance — a short-term extension of funding, with no strings attached — is unusual for a political party that has often tried to extract policy demands using the threat of a government shutdown as leverage.

In 2013, Republicans refused to keep the government running unless the Affordable Care Act was defunded, a stand that led to a 16-day shutdown for which the GOP was widely blamed. During his first term, Trump insisted on adding funding for a border wall that Congress would not approve, prompting a shutdown that the president, in an extraordinary Oval Office meeting that played out before cameras, said he would “take the mantle” for.

“I will be the one to shut it down,” Trump declared at the time.

This time, it’s the Democrats making the policy demands.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, left, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, tell reporters that they are united as the Sept. 30 funding deadline approaches, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

They want an extension of subsidies that help low- and middle-income earners who buy insurance coverage through the Obama-era health care law. They also want to reverse cuts to Medicaid enacted in the GOP’s tax and border spending bill this year. Republican leaders say what Democrats are pushing for is too costly and too complicated to negotiate with the threat of a government shutdown hanging over lawmakers.

Watching all this is Trump. He has not ruled out a potential deal on continuing the expiring subsidies, which some Republicans also want to extend.

“My assumption is, he’s going to be willing to sit down and talk about at least one of these issues that they’re interested in and pursuing a solution for after the government stays open,” Thune said in an Associated Press interview last week. “Frankly, I just don’t know what you negotiate at this point.”

Back and forth on a White House sit-down

At this point, Trump has shown no public indication he plans to compromise with Democrats on a shutdown, even as he acknowledges he needs help from at least a handful of them to keep the government open and is willing to meet with them at the White House.

Last week, Trump appeared to agree to sit down with Schumer and Jeffries and a meeting went on the books for Thursday. Once word got out about that, Johnson and Thune intervened, privately making the case to Trump that it was not the time during the funding fight to negotiate with Democrats over health care, according to a person familiar with the conversation who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Not long after hearing from the GOP leaders, Trump took to social media and said he would no longer meet with the two Democrats “after reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats.” Republicans privately acknowledge Trump’s decision to agree to a meeting was a misstep because it gave Democrats fodder to paint Trump as the one refusing to negotiate.

“Trump is literally boycotting meeting with Democrats to find a solution,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., wrote on the social media site X before Trump reversed course again and agreed to meet with the leadership. “There is no one to blame but him. He wants a shut down.”

It was not immediately clear what led Trump over the weekend to take a meeting he had once refused. Schumer spoke privately with Thune on Friday, pushing the majority leader to get a meeting with the president scheduled because of the approaching funding deadline, according to a Schumer aide. A Thune spokesman said in response that Schumer was “clearly getting nervous.”

Another reason why Democrats suspect Trump would be fine with a shutdown is how his budget office would approach a closure should one happen.

The administration’s strategy was laid out in an Office of Management and Budget memo last week that said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse, are not otherwise funded and are “not consistent” with the president’s priorities. A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but also eliminate their positions, triggering yet another massive upheaval in the federal workforce.

Jeffries argued that Trump and his top aides were using the “smoke screen of a government shutdown caused by them to do more damage.”

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

By STEVE KARNOWSKI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota man accused of trying to join the Islamic State group pleaded guilty Monday to attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

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Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan, 23, changed his plea to guilty during an appearance before U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank in St. Paul.

When Hassan was charged in February, prosecutors said he had expressed admiration on social media for the man who carried out a Jan. 1 truck attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that killed 14 people. That attacker was killed by police. His truck bore the flag of the militant Islamic State group.

Prosecutors say Hassan tried twice in December to travel from Minnesota to Somalia to join the group and fight on its behalf but failed both times. The FBI had been tipped beforehand about a social media user who had expressed support for the Islamic State group and the Somali militant group al-Shabab, and agents conducted surveillance of Hassan on both attempts.

The first time Hassan tried to travel to Somalia, according to court documents, the airline denied him boarding because he lacked the proper travel documents. He missed the second flight while federal officers questioned him, but he wasn’t detained until his arrest in February.

The FBI said it observed Hassan driving with the group’s flag the day before his arrest.

“There is no margin for error when it comes to terrorism,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said in a statement. “Hassan flew the ISIS flag, venerated attacks on the homeland, and wanted to kill Americans. We are not taking chances. We will not let Minnesota become a safe haven for terrorists.”

Hassan, a naturalized U.S. citizen, remains in custody. A sentencing date has not been set. Under a plea agreement, the government agreed not to seek a sentence longer than 17 years, while the defense is free to recommend anything it wants. The final decision is up to the judge.

A New York man accused of plotting an attack on behalf of the Islamic State group in 2019 was sentenced last week to nine years in prison.

Hassan was the latest of several Minnesotans suspected of leaving or trying to leave the U.S. to join the Islamic State group in recent years, along with thousands of fighters from other countries. In 2016 nine Minnesotans were sentenced on charges of conspiring to join the group, and one who actually fought for the group in Iraq was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison.