Patrick Williams is still overthinking it.

That was clear in the first quarter of Tuesday’s preseason game against the Toronto Raptors. After three minutes, coach Billy Donovan had seen enough, yanking the forward off the court for a lengthy discussion about the same improvements Williams has been trying to make for more than a year.

After practice Wednesday, Donovan’s frustration was palpable. Williams didn’t crash the boards enough. He danced away from physical defenders. He passed up multiple 3-point opportunities when defenders ducked under a screen, leaving him wide open with nearly 5 feet of space.

This all might sound familiar.

Williams, 22, hasn’t figured it out. But for Donovan, the disconnect has been mischaracterized.

“The perception of him not being aggressive — really, the thing he’s got to get better at is the moment of the decision of what to be aggressive with,” Donovan said. “When people say, ‘be aggressive’, people think, ‘Hey, just get the ball and drive it to the basket.’ That’s not being aggressive.”

Donovan doesn’t think Williams needs to be bouncing off defenders or throwing himself through double teams in order to unlock his next level. But he needs to start making decisions — to shoot a 3-pointer, to grab a rebound, to drive through an opponent — rather than falling back into his comfort zone.

Decisiveness, aggressiveness — this might all be semantics. But they’re the main thing holding Williams back, even on his best nights.

Williams acknowledged he was in his head too much Tuesday. He didn’t feel as if he was hesitating on specific plays, but the issue was still a mental barrier — especially on the boards.

“It’s definitely something I can do,” Williams said. “I don’t think that’s a secret, that I can rebound. It’s just more so going back and getting it. It’s just a mindset. I don’t think physically there’s nothing I can’t do. It’s just having that mindset to go.”

The problem is nearly universal across the Bulls roster. Every improvement the Bulls want to make — taking more shots, drawing more fouls, generating more catch-and-shoot 3s — stems from aggressively getting into the paint with aggression and decisively shooting the ball.

Players know this. Coaches know this. Fans certainly know it too. Yet the timidity remains.

“We just have too many shots we’re passing up,” Donovan said. “We’re shot-faking and passing them up and we’re trying to drive the ball and we’re not even going to the rim. We’re driving to the elbow and stopping and trying to pass it. Then we end up with a more difficult shot than we had prior to that.”

Williams is the most blatant example of the Bulls’ lack of edge — if only because of the disparity between his best and worst moments. Donovan believes the key to unlocking Williams is to encourage him to embrace contact with the ball in his hands.

“Because of his size, I don’t necessarily mind when he gets to his spot and pulls up,” Donovan said. “The ones I do mind are when he settles, because I do think there’s another gear that he can go to physically where he can just go right through the guy and get to the rim or get to the free-throw line and generate more offense that way. A lot of times he — I don’t want to say gives up on the play — but he’ll stop because he can always go to that. But you don’t get fouled on those shots, you don’t offensive rebound those shots.”

That doesn’t bother Williams’ greatest competition on the roster — fellow forward Torrey Craig, who replaced him with the early sub Tuesday.

It has become clear that Craig will push Williams — either into a better version of himself or potentially out of his position.

Williams briefly lost the starting job to Javonte Green last season, although that rotation change was quickly nixed because of a lingering injury that Green never shook. Donovan made it clear the door is still open for a similar change this season — either on opening day or later.

Craig, 32, has embraced his role as motivator for Williams. It’s a respectful competition — the pair grew up less than an hour away from each other and voiced a deep, long-standing respect for one another’s game.

But Craig wants to get the absolute most out of Williams, even if it means talking trash and roughing him up a bit in practice.

“I stay in his ear,” Craig said. “I make sure most everything is positive, but I show tough love when it’s necessary.”

Craig is a solid perimeter shooter but doesn’t have the same playmaking potential Williams has shown. But potential quickly loses value when it’s competing against consistent results.

The half-life of this edge over Craig has yet to be determined — but it will narrow with each performance like Tuesday night.

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Massachusetts could turn to an additional $800 million in state dollars to help bolster its position when applying for federal grants under legislation Gov. Maura Healey filed Thursday.

A trio of laws — the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — signed by President Joe Biden made more than $1 trillion in federal funds available to states. Local officials estimate Massachusetts can compete for a remaining $17.5 billion that could support everything from transportation to technology services and security.

Most federal grant programs require states to put up cash to cover a portion of proposed project costs and Healey said having money in hand to match federal dollars will make applications from Massachusetts more competitive when they are sent down to Washington. Healey’s bill creates a fund to build up matching dollars.

“This Capital Investment and Debt Reduction Fund will give Massachusetts a competitive edge in pursuing this historic federal funding grant opportunities,” Healey said. “And after we get through the push for federal funding, the remaining funds will be available to invest in state assets, taking pressure off traditional capital programs and our debt portfolio.”

Officials have already identified more than $2 billion in state matching funds from various sources like the fiscal 2024 budget and the state’s capital investment plan.

But estimates show a need for roughly $3 billion in matching funds if Massachusetts applies for and receives all $17.5 billion in grants the state is eligible for, according to the Executive Office of Administration and Finance.

Healey proposed using interest earned on the state’s rainy day fund, an $8 billion account that is typically reserved for emergencies, to pay for the $750 million in state matching dollars.

State officials anticipate the interest generating $250 million each year for the Capital Investment and Debt Reduction Fund, which will also be seeded with $50 million in revenue from a surtax on incomes over $1 million.

The principal of the stabilization fund “will remain preserved for mitigating the impacts of a substantial, unanticipated reduction in revenues that cannot be managed with normal budgetary reductions and savings measures,” the Executive Office of Administration and Finance said in a policy memo.

The state would stop drawing on the interest of the rainy day account if its balance is declining or it drops below 10% of the state’s total operating budget, which in fiscal 2024 neared $56 billion.

“We think those are guardrails that are both fiscally responsible and support our needs in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish, while not jeopardizing the commonwealth’s physical health in terms of its ability to weather a rainy day,” Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz said.

Having a “plan of attack” for going after federal grant programs that require state matching funds “is a really solid approach,” said Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Doug Howgate.

He said protecting the balance of the stabilization is important.

“We got to make sure we protect our stabilization fund, right, and we’re not kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul. And so I think the idea of ensuring that our stabilization fund balance doesn’t decline as we’re gonna go down this road is a really important thing to have,” he said. “As a principal, that makes sense.”

Healey also signed an executive order establishing the Federal Funds and Infrastructure Office led by Director Quentin Palfrey, who unsuccessfully ran for attorney general in 2022. Healey said Palfrey and his team have already “yielded results” even before the office was cemented.

Healey pointed to $108 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation for East-West Rail, a successful bid to serve as one of three hubs for a Biden administration-backed “nationwide health innovation network,” and an application for roughly $1.5 billion for the Cape Cod bridges as examples of Palfrey’s work.

“Today’s executive order also creates a new clearinghouse that will help us to be systematic and strategic and thoughtful in our pursuit of these federal funds,” he said.

He has “the greatest name in politics,” according to former President Donald Trump. But Rep. Patrick McHenry — the GOP’s bow-tied, gavel-slamming temporary speaker — is just now emerging as America’s latest political obsession, memes and all. And he’s poised to step into the speaker’s chair more formally with a decision by the House GOP on Thursday to get past its leadership crisis.

How did he get here?

You’re going to read that the 18-year House veteran is the “adult in the room” compared to other GOP hard-liners — a pragmatist who’s ready to govern and even has Democrats clamoring for him to run the House. But it wasn’t always that way.

Part of the reason the North Carolina Republican has any lingering cred with the far right — though it’s fading in the Matt Gaetz era — is that he used to be one of them, even before the rise of the GOP tea party movement.

McHenry entered Congress in 2005 at 29 and soon made his name as a self-described “bomb-thrower.” He rose through the House GOP ranks by attacking the government’s economic rescue plans in the wake of the global financial crisis, helping sink the Bush administration’s initial attempt to bail out Wall Street — a failed vote that triggered a market crash.

A Roll Call columnist in this early stage of McHenry’s career described him as “the GOP’s attack dog-in-training” as he fought Democrats in an ethics battle against Majority Leader Tom Delay, who faced criminal conspiracy charges.

But then McHenry got serious. He buckled down at the House Financial Services Committee, which writes rules for banking and stock trading, and became a Wall Street policy wonk. He also entered House leadership, emerging as one of the GOP’s top vote counters as chief deputy whip.

McHenry, now a father of three, had a shot at helping run the House after Republicans won back their majority last year. He turned it down — making clear he didn’t want to wrangle conservatives on government funding and the debt ceiling — and became chair of the Financial Services Committee to focus on “making law.”

How does he operate?

McHenry hasn’t quite abandoned his conservative ideals in his transition to GOP statesman. But he’s made clear that he can be flexible to get a deal done.

Just take McHenry’s approach at House Financial Services. McHenry has spent years courting Rep. Maxine Waters — the panel’s top Democrat and McHenry’s polar opposite — in a bid to craft legislation that would have a hint of a shot at getting through the Senate and signed by the president. Before taking the gavel, he described the committee as an active nook of bipartisanship.

“We’ve been able to find compromise around helping families and small businesses getting lending and access to capital,” he said.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to McHenry earlier this year to help resolve the debt-limit impasse. It warmed hearts on Wall Street because bankers had confidence that McHenry would be a voice of reason and help steer the country away from financial calamity. After all, he had warned publicly last year that taking the debt ceiling hostage was a bad idea, knowing McCarthy was going down that road.

McHenry is close to the middle of his party, according to one ideology score. He believes climate change is real and “we have to do something about it.” He’s supported aid for Ukraine. He has sidestepped some of the culture war issues that are dominating GOP politics and even drew flak from the right when he kept diversity and inclusion concerns — a priority of Waters — on the Financial Services oversight agenda.

After a sudden rash of regional bank failures in March, McHenry, unlike some other conservatives, held back from using the crisis atmosphere to attack the Biden administration for their handling of the situation — confirming the full transition from his bomb-throwing days of yore.

“I’m confident in their ability to do the right thing,” McHenry said at the time.

What’s next?

Though it’s not surprising McCarthy would leave a top deputy in charge of the House, it’s not a job McHenry sought. Before McHenry gave the gavel slam seen around the world earlier this month, many in Washington believed he was approaching the end of his time in Congress.

The speculation wasn’t based on hints from McHenry but was more connecting the dots. He didn’t want to be in House leadership. A term limit on his Financial Services chairmanship kicks in after the 2024 election. He has a young family and has been in government since his 20s.

“Conventional wisdom at the start of this Congress was McHenry would serve his final two years as chairman and then either retire or become speaker,” said one former Republican leadership staffer. “Nobody actually believed that speaker would be possible.”

Joe Biden is preparing to nominate Kurt Campbell as the next deputy secretary of State, three people familiar with the decision said, elevating the architect of the president’s China and Indo-Pacific strategy to the nation’s second-highest diplomatic post.

Campbell’s frontrunner status has been known for weeks, after Biden asked the State Department’s top choice for the role, principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, to remain in his current position. Wendy Sherman, the administration’s first deputy secretary, retired in the summer.

Two of the people familiar with the decision said Campbell is nearing the end of his vetting process, and he’ll be formally nominated by the president once the review is completed successfully, as expected. But given a severe bottleneck in the Senate for confirmations, it’s unclear when he’ll get a hearing or even a vote.

Spokespeople for the National Security Council and State Department didn’t respond to requests for comment. Campbell didn’t immediately offer comment about his forthcoming nomination.

Campbell, the National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, has had a hand in virtually everything the Biden administration has done on Asia policy. The nuclear submarine deal with the U.K. and Australia known as AUKUS was his brainchild, and he quietly worked to make it a reality, keeping the development away from many colleagues who were surprised by the deal’s formal announcement.

France, whose own submarine deal with Australia was sidelined by AUKUS, was also caught off guard, and Paris’ anger led to a diplomatic kerfuffle that Campbell’s Europe-focused colleagues had to quash.

That work, and other initiatives, stem from Campbell’s efforts during the Obama administration to “pivot to Asia.” This included sending more U.S. troops to the region, strengthening ties with regional allies, growing partnerships with less friendly countries wary of China and taking a harder line on Beijing. Multiple U.S. officials say that the administration’s current approach toward China and the region writ large was devised by Campbell.

U.S. policy toward China should “seek to achieve not a definitive end state akin to the Cold War’s ultimate conclusion but a steady state of clear-eyed coexistence on terms favorable to U.S. interests and values,” he wrote in a 2019 Foreign Affairs article with Jake Sullivan, now the national security adviser, titled “Competition Without Catastrophe.”

“Coexistence means accepting competition as a condition to be managed rather than a problem to be solved.”

One of the people familiar with Campbell’s potential move said he may use the job to further centralize U.S. competition with China in the State Department’s work.

The Biden administration took office with the goal of taking Beijing on in multiple arenas while avoiding war, but it has faced other pressing challenges demanding senior-level attention, namely Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and now the Israel-Hamas war.

An outstanding question of Campbell’s move is what happens to Victoria Nuland, the acting deputy secretary who was also in line for the post. Nuland did not immediately respond to a request for comment.