By BRIAN WITTE

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s first-in-the-nation tax on digital advertising violated the Constitution, a federal appeals court says, because blocking Big Tech from telling customers about the tax violates the companies’ right to free speech.

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Supporters say Maryland needed to overhaul its tax methods in response to significant changes in how businesses advertise. The tax focuses on large companies that make money advertising on the internet such as Meta, Google and Amazon, who say they’re being unfairly targeted.

The ongoing legal fight is being watched by other states that are considering taxes for online ads. Maryland estimated the tax could raise about $250 million a year to help pay for a sweeping K-12 education measure.

Maryland’s law says the companies must not only pay the tax, but avoid telling customers how it affects pricing, with no line items, surcharges or fees, said the appeals court Friday in siding with trade associations fighting the tax.

Judge Julius Richardson cited the Colonial-era Stamp Act, which helped spark the Revolutionary War, and wrote that “criticizing the government — for taxes or anything else — is important discourse in a democratic society.”

The plaintiffs contended Maryland lawmakers were trying to insulate themselves from criticism and political accountability by forbidding companies from explaining the tax to their customers.

“A state cannot duck criticism by silencing those affected by its tax,” the judge wrote.

The unanimous ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a decision by U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby and sends the case back to her with instructions to consider an appropriate remedy in light of the panel’s decision.

Trade groups praised the decision.

“Maryland tried to prevent criticism of its tax scheme, and the Fourth Circuit recognized that tactic for what it was: censorship,” said Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said in a statement.

Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who is the defendant in the case, and the Maryland attorney general’s office, who is representing the state, declined to comment Monday.

The law has been challenged in multiple legal venues, including Maryland Tax Court, where the case is ongoing.

The law imposes a tax based on global annual gross revenues for companies that make more than $100 million globally.

Under the law, the tax rate is 2.5% for businesses making more than $100 million in global gross annual revenue; 5% for companies making $1 billion or more; 7.5% for companies making $5 billion or more and 10% for companies making $15 billion or more.

The Maryland General Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats, overrode a veto of the legislation in 2021 by then-Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican.

There were an announced 80,000 fans or so, combined, at the Twins’ four-game series against the Detroit Tigers at Target Field last weekend and they all got a good, close look at the team’s future.

It didn’t look great.

The young Twins left in the wake of the team’s trade deadline purge did manage to stave off a sweep with a blowout victory over their American League Central overlords on Sunday, so that’s something — if not quite enough to make whatever vision the team has for the future make complete sense.

Now, instead of relying on matriculating prospects to adequately fill gaps between proven veterans, the Twins are counting on the young guys — none of whom have shown they can do it consistently — to be the proven producers. To be the best players on the team, and not just in a relative sense.

If they can, the Twins might have a chance to win because of a Cadillac rotation led by Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober. If they can’t, it’s gonna be tough sledding for the Local 9.

When the Twins cut around $30 million out of the payroll before the 2024 season, it signaled that management — or ownership, or both — were ready to roll the dice on those prospects being ready to complete a competitive lineup with top-line veterans Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa and Carlos Santana.

The hope was that first baseman Jose Miranda and second baseman Edouard Julien were ready, and that Royce Lewis would stay healthy and productive. Didn’t happen, and after Correa, Buxton and Ryan went down with injuries late, the team collapsed, winning only 12 of its last 39 games.

Minnesota Twins’ Brooks Lee runs the bases after hitting a grand slam during the third inning of a baseball game against the Detroit Tigers, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Yet with this summer’s sell-off, management isn’t just doubling down on that strategy, it’s tweaking it further by simply removing the top-line veterans part. Correa, closer Jhoan Duran, utility man and 2024 all-star Willi Castro and setup-man Griffin Jax are gone. That leaves Buxton, who looked a little like royalty in exile at the top of the Twins lineup last weekend.

The eye test, if not just plain common sense, says it won’t work — not anytime soon. Not if the goal is making the playoffs.

If it bears fruit at all, it will be at least a few years down the road, the way it did in 1987 after prospects like Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Tom Bruansky and Frank Viola grew into major leaguers and helped win the team’s first World Series. But that is a rare return on investment.

Manager Rocco Baldelli will regularly pencil four of the Twins’ own first-round picks (Royce Lewis Trevor Larnach, Matt Wallner and Brooks Lee), and one second-round pick (Luke Keaschall), into the lineup the rest of the way, and only Keaschall is an official rookie (and tearing it up).

For the rest, it’s time to lock in.

These guys play a lot of baseball and get a lot of at-bats over the course of 162 games. At some point soon, the numbers will reveal the truth. By the end of next season, only Keaschall won’t be passing the milestone of 1,000 major league at-bats.

They will never have a better chance to prove themselves than over the next 38 games. They will be in the lineup and most likely playing all nine innings, regardless of the situation.

The good news is all of those players were at the center a six-run third that broke open Sunday’s 8-1 victory over the Tigers. After a Buxton homer, Larnach hustled out a double, Keaschall singled, Lewis walked and Lee brought them all home with his first major league grand slam.

It’s been almost three weeks since the sell-off, and Lee was asked Sunday if he feels the young roster is learning how they have to play in order to win games.

“I think so,” he said. “We’re young (but) we have one of the greatest players in baseball (in Buxton) and we have to take advantage of that. But, yeah, I think we’re figuring out our identity. We’re going to have to hit and play good defense, and I think today was a good example of that.”

If we see more of it over the next 38 games, maybe Twins fans will be able to approach 2026 with some enthusiasm.

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By ANDREW DALTON

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A woman known as the “Ketamine Queen,” charged with selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed him, agreed to plead guilty Monday.

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Jasveen Sangha becomes the fifth and final defendant charged in the overdose death of the “Friends” star to strike a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Having initially pleaded not guilty, her change of plea means she’ll avoid a trial that had been planned for August.

Prosecutors had cast Sangha as a prolific drug dealer who was known to her customers as the “Ketamine Queen,” using the term often in press releases and court documents and even including it in the official name of the case.

A federal indictment charged Sangha with one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine, one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, one count of possession with intent to distribute ketamine and five counts of distribution of ketamine.

She and Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who signed his own plea deal June 16, had been the primary targets of the investigation. Three other defendants — Dr. Mark Chavez, Kenneth Iwamasa and Erik Fleming — agreed to plead guilty last year in exchange for their cooperation, which included statements implicating Sangha and Plasencia.

Perry was found dead in his Los Angeles home by Iwamasa, his assistant, on Oct. 28, 2023. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.

The actor had been using the drug through his regular doctor as a legal, but off-label, treatment for depression, which has become increasingly common. Perry, 54, sought more ketamine than his doctor would give him. He began getting it from Plasencia about a month before his death, then started getting still more from Sangha about two weeks before his death, prosecutors said.

Perry and Iwamasa found Sangha through Perry’s friend Fleming. In their plea agreements, both men described the subsequent deals in detail.

Fleming messaged Iwamasa saying Sangha’s ketamine was “unmarked but it’s amazing,” according to court documents. Fleming texted Iwamasa that she only deals “with high end and celebs. If it were not great stuff she’d lose her business.”

With the two men acting as middlemen, Perry bought large amounts of ketamine from Sangha, including 25 vials for $6,000 in cash four days before his death. That purchase included the doses that killed Perry, prosecutors said.

On the day of Perry’s death, Sangha told Fleming they should delete all the messages they had sent each other, according to her indictment.

Her home in North Hollywood, California, was raided in March 2024 by Drug Enforcement Administration agents who found large amounts of methamphetamines and ketamine, according to an affidavit from an agent. She was indicted that June, arrested that August and has been held in jail since.

None of the defendants has yet been sentenced.

Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit series.

With recent commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, it may be interesting to note that the celebrations and relief at war’s end soon gave way to a period of reflection that often led American artists to dark places. One of those artists was William Inge.

Encouraged to pursue playwriting by his contemporary, Tennessee Williams, Inge often populated his plays with people embittered by their life choices who didn’t transform over the course of the story, but rather came to some sort of acceptance about themselves. It was a style that fit the post-war Broadway zeitgeist, giving unhappy Midwesterners a voice onstage alongside Williams’ delusional Southerners and Arthur Miller’s angst-riddled New Yorkers.

The play that put Inge on the map was 1950’s “Come Back, Little Sheba,” a slice-of-life drama that takes us into the household of a Midwest chiropractor and his lonely, unfulfilled wife. It’s realism with a capital R, and that’s what you’ll find in Dark & Stormy Productions’ expertly executed production at St. Paul’s intimate Gremlin Theatre. What could be a musty museum piece in some hands is instead an involving trip in the theatrical time machine, propelled by powerful performances and transporting technical choices.

Dark & Stormy rarely tackles a work as old as “Come Back, Little Sheba,” but it does keep with the company’s customary focus on works with well-written women. In this case, Inge created such a vivid character in Lola Delaney that it’s easy to see why Shirley Booth won both a Tony and an Oscar for her portrayal.

While ostensibly cheerful, Lola clearly perceives something missing in her life, and it’s not just the prodigal dog of the title. She and husband Doc have taken in a boarder, a young woman college student for whom he feels protective while Lola enjoys observing her flirtations with a classmate and engaging in some of her own with the mailman and milkman.

As in several of Tennessee Williams’ plays of the same period, alcoholism is an issue, but Inge’s characters don’t romanticize addiction or wax poetic about their almost certainly unattainable hopes. His characters talk like real people, and this production brings them to bracing life, particularly through the performances of Sara Marsh as Lola and Peter Christian Hansen as Doc. Gremlin’s small space allows audiences to observe at close range the complex layers of Marsh’s conflicted Lola and Hansen’s tortured Doc. Their portrayals draw you in ever deeper, making an explosive second-act reckoning all the more jarring and effective.

Director Brian Joyce has clearly encouraged his eight-member cast to make their characters as realistic as possible, and each actor comes through with a solid performance, right down to Jack Bechard finding nuance within a libido-driven college boy and Katherine Kupiecki summoning up palpable compassion from a neighbor who at first seems merely the necessary ear for Lola’s monologues.

They’re all aided greatly by Bobbie Smith’s period-perfect set, Shannon Elliott’s creative lighting scheme and the sound design of Aaron Newman. The latter becomes something of a character of its own, using what comes out of the household radio to shape the mood, be it to spark nostalgic escapism or underline the sense of loss that permeates this very well done production.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

Dark & Stormy Productions’ ‘Come Back, Little Sheba’

When: Through Sept. 7

Where: Gremlin Theatre, 550 Vandalia St., St. Paul

Tickets: $49-$45, available at darkstormy.org

Capsule: Full of fine acting, it’s impressively faithful to 1950.

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