If Twins fans feel like they’re living in some sort of baseball time loop, they can be forgiven. Their team’s penchant for oscillating between contention and irrelevance has been remarkably consistent since the Twins emerged from their post-World Series funk.

Starting in 2002, the Twins have been in the playoffs — division winner or wild card slot — 10 times. That’s almost every other year. On the other hand, they have lost quickly in all but the first and last of those appearances, and advanced to the American League Championship Series only once, way back in 2002.

Those are 23 long years of competitive baseball followed by losing baseball, a common, queasy about-face. That loop has played out again when the Twins made the postseason, the brief euphoria of making the playoffs quickly dashed by some internal inadequacy. Whether it was pitching, hitting or injuries didn’t matter. Twins fans knew the real culprit was the miserly ownership of local billionaires.

That’s why Wednesday’s news that the Pohlad family has decided not to sell the Twins surprised few. Never mind that the $1.7 billion price the family sought seemed ambitious. It just never felt like it was gonna happen.

It was too good to be true, but still has to sting for the Twins faithful.

Since Carl Pohlad bought the team from Calvin Griffith for $44 million in 1984, the Twins have won two World Series titles, made Kirby Puckett baseball’s first $3 million player and, in 2011, had the 10th-highest payroll in baseball. But there’s no getting around the fact that the Twins’ success has been limited by payroll

This is not uncommon for mid-market teams such as the Twins, but that doesn’t assuage the frustration. Eight of the past 10 World Series winners are among the 10 highest payrolls in baseball this season, and they make up 70 percent of runners-up. Cleveland and Kansas City are the smallest markets to send teams to the World Series since 2015.

The Twins may be stripped down to prospects and journeymen and left to stumble through the last 40-odd games of the regular season, but yesterday there was the prospect of a new owner that wouldn’t count the change, a group that wouldn’t blink at spending what it takes to not just make the postseason, but to win a World Series.

Instead, Twins fans got to work Wednesday morning and learned from a co-worker or social media that this breach in the loop has closed.

Nothing has changed, and now nothing to do with the team will.

The Pohlads found a couple of groups to join them as limited partners, which could in theory change the current direction of the club, which cut by $30 million after the team’s division title in 2023 and again when they used nine trades to deal away 10 players for prospects at the deadline.

Yet when asked Wednesday if that might allow ownership to spend more on the team, Joe Pohlad — grandson of Carl Pohlad and the team’s current chief executive chair — told the Pioneer Press, “What it allows us to do is pay down some debt and kind of reset our financial picture in order to move forward.”

That sounds like a no.

Since Derek Falvey took over as the head of player personnel in 2016 — he has since become the team’s president — the Twins have increased payroll, and even signed a couple of big-time free agents in Josh Donaldson and Carlos Correa. But those players came with caveats and ultimately were traded well before their contracts were set to expire.

Correa being moved with more than three years left of his deal — for less than nothing considering the Twins are still paying a hefty part of his contract — at this year’s deadline tells us all we need to know. The loop has not been breached.

Is it baseball or ownership? What worked before 1991 just won’t work anymore. It’s unconscionably harder.

And unfortunately for the Twins, it’s back to the future.

Former owner Calvin Griffith, left, holds back tears as new owner Carl Pohlad takes control of the Minnesota Twins in a ceremony at the Metrodome in Minneapolis on June 23, 1984. The Pohlad family, who have owned the team since 1984, announced Oct. 10, 2024 that it is exploring a sale of the franchise. (Pioneer Press file)

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The owner of St. Paul Brewing is suing the city of St. Paul and its housing authority for pushing to rezone parts of the Hamm’s brewery site for new housing development, a move he says will eliminate parking vital to the continued success of his businesses.

Rob Clapp, a developer who owns St. Paul Brewing, a distillery and a fabrication shop at the Hamm’s site, is hoping to block a city plan to rezone parcels of land that are currently industrial into neighborhood zones to accommodate proposed affordable housing.

St. Paul’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority sold property at the Hamm’s site to businesses starting in 2012. The aim was to encourage private development of the site of the former brewery, which closed in 1997. As part of the agreement, the HRA agreed to maintain a parking lot for use by businesses, according to the lawsuit.

Clapp’s lawsuit comes ahead of an Aug. 20 St. Paul City Council vote to approve a plan that would rezone five parcels of industrial land at the 19th-century Hamm’s Brewery campus off Payne and Minnehaha avenues on St. Paul’s East Side.

“We’re done trying to change minds and hearts,” Clapp said last week as he prepared to sue the city. “They’re just not interested in looking for solutions or compromise, and they’ve told us that they’re not interested in creative solutions.”

Expanding businesses

Clapp, who also owns Dark Horse Bar & Eatery in Lowertown and Can Can Wonderland in Hamline-Midway, acquired property on the Hamm’s site in 2021. Since acquiring Hamm’s property four years ago, Clapp’s businesses have expanded. St. Paul Brewing now has a sprawling patio, and there are plans to open a cocktail lounge tied to the 11Wells distillery in another building on the site. Clapp has also stated a fabrication shop where artists build new works for display at his businesses.

Without clarity on parking and zoning, plans to expand into the second floor of the St. Paul Brewing building at 688 Minnehaha Ave. and other growth plans remain on hold, said Clapp, who argues the city needs to continue honoring the parking agreement. Further, the rezoning plan would violate state law, he and others have argued.

Three of the five parcels up for rezoning haven’t drawn controversy, but two parcels on the Hamm’s site will be changed from industrial zones into a mixed-use traditional neighborhood zones.

Those parcels would be islands inside a larger industrial zone, which the city’s Planning Commission found constituted illegal “spot zoning” in a 9-2 May decision. Spot zoning is the reclassification of a small part of a land parcel to allow a project to go forward.

Despite that finding and Clapp’s objections, council members are still moving forward with the plan.

City response

In response to the lawsuit, city council member and HRA chair Cheniqua Johnson referred back to a July 23 statement when the city council voted 6-0 to set the rezoning plan at the Hamm’s site in motion.

“The future of this site is not manufacturing — it’s housing, mixed-use development, and walkable neighborhoods,” Johnson said. “We support bringing affordable housing to this historic site. We want housing, thriving local businesses, and a site where East Siders can live, work, and visit.”

Over the last four years, Clapp’s businesses have invested more than $1.7 million in the property, according to the lawsuit. That total includes the price of the property and improvements, as well as a new distillery. Clapp’s companies are spending about $1.2 million on renovations for the distillery, which will include a cocktail room and patio that could open later this year.

Clapp has told the city council he has no problem with installing housing in the existing brewery building. But a new building in a parking lot on the east side of the Hamm’s site would make it challenging for customers and workers to find parking.

Housing project

St. Paul’s HRA chose the developer JB Vang to build the housing project in 2023. The initial proposal called for 259 affordable housing units and a two-level indoor marketplace.

The brewhouse building would hold the marketplace and 84 artist lofts. The east parking lot would have been turned into 11 rowhomes and 164 rental apartments.

Rowhome plans are no longer moving forward, and JB Vang cut the number of proposed units from 164 to 110 to allow for a parking lot with 70 spots.

But Clapp says that still won’t allow for enough parking at the complex. His lawsuit claims that if fully developed, the area could require as many as 450 parking spaces under the parking minimum requirements the city repealed in 2021

Management for JB Vang couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.

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By JEFF MARTIN, HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and JOHN SEEWER

ATLANTA (AP) — A barrage of bullets launched at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week by a man authorities say was angry over COVID-19 vaccinations is the latest attack directed at health care workers amid hostility lingering from the pandemic.

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Some public health care workers say the shooting that killed a police officer and rattled the CDC campus shouldn’t be surprising in the face of ongoing misinformation and animosity about the safety of immunizations.

“All of us, anybody who stands up for science or vaccines, will at some level get hate mail or a phone call that’s unnerving or a death threat,” said Paul Offit, the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.

Just four years ago, while hospitals overflowed with unvaccinated patients, school board members, local leaders and doctors were regularly confronted in public with taunts comparing them to the Taliban, Nazis and leaders of Japanese internment camps. Sometimes the conflicts descended into violence and harassment.

The distrust and anger that grew since then has been amplified by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said Offit, who heads the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Kennedy has been a leading voice in spreading false information about vaccines, scientists and public health leaders, often using heated rhetoric that says they have caused mass death and injury. People he describes in such language have said his comments have led to threats, intimidation and even violence.

Kennedy denounces violence but criticizes CDC’s work

Kennedy, who toured the CDC campus on Monday, said no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others and called political violence wrong. But he went on to criticize the agency’s pandemic response.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., center, visits the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

“One of the things that we saw during COVID is that the government was overreaching in its efforts to persuade the public to get vaccinated, and they were saying things that are not always true,” Kennedy said during a television interview with Scripps News later in the day.

A spokesperson for Kennedy blasted any notion that blamed vaccine misinformation for Friday’s attack.

“This narrative is pure fiction, built on anonymous complaints and a willful disregard for the facts,” said Andrew Nixon of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Secretary Kennedy is not advancing an ‘anti-vaccine agenda’ — he is advancing a pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability agenda.”

Authorities have said that 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White had written about his discontent with the COVID-19 vaccine before he opened fire on the CDC.

White also had verbalized thoughts of suicide, which led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks before the shooting, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. White died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday after killing DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose.

Shooting rattles CDC campus

Following the attack, CDC employees were asked to scrape off old CDC parking decals from their vehicles. But even before that, some workers had taken steps to become less visible, including not wearing their public health service uniform, said Yolanda Jacobs, a union leader who represents some CDC workers.

The CDC’s new director told employees this week that no act of violence can diminish their mission to protect public health.

The notable bullet marks on the windows of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters are visible on Sunday Aug. 10, 2025. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

“We know that misinformation can be dangerous. Not only to health, but to those that trust us and those we want to trust,” Dr. Susan Monarez told employees during an “all-hands” meeting Tuesday, her first since the attack capped her first full week on campus as director.

The federal agency, tasked with tracking diseases and responding to health threats, has been hit by widespread staff cuts, key resignations and heated controversy over long-standing CDC vaccine policies upended by Kennedy.

“What happened on Friday is a direct result of that misinformation,” said Sarah Boim, a former CDC worker whose job was targeted for elimination earlier this year. “Health Secretary Kennedy is one of the biggest pushers of misinformation.”

The shooting, she said, left her in tears.

“My friends and family still work in those buildings,” she said. “My mom works in one of those buildings.”

In the aftermath, officials are assessing security and encouraging staff to report any new threats, including those based on misinformation about the CDC and its vaccine work.

Anti-vaccine tension has been building

Despite its prominence since the pandemic, anti-vaccine rhetoric leading to harassment and violence took root before then.

In 2019, an anti-vaccine activist assaulted California state Sen. Richard Pan, streaming it live on Facebook, after Pan sponsored a bill to make it more difficult to get a vaccine exemption. Another threw blood at Pan and other lawmakers.

The attacks came after Kennedy spoke outside the California Capitol, two large posters behind him featured Pan’s image, with the word “LIAR” stamped across his face in blood-red paint.

Pan, a pediatrician, blames Kennedy for what happened then and now at the CDC.

“And you wonder why someone would go shoot up the CDC,” Pan said. “Because he basically told them that those are the people you should hurt.”

Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio.

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and MEGAN JANETSKY

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico sent 26 alleged cartel figures to face justice in the United States because the Trump administration requested them and Mexico did not want them to continue running their illicit businesses from Mexican prisons, officials said Wednesday.

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The mass transfer was not, however, part of wider negotiations as Mexico seeks to avoid higher tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump, the officials said.

“These transfers are not only a strategic measure to ensure public safety, but also reflect a firm determination to prevent these criminals from continuing to operate from within prisons and to break up their networks of influence,” Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said in a news conference on Wednesday.

The 26 prisoners handed over to American authorities on Tuesday included figures aligned with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel among others. They were wanted by American authorities for their roles in drug trafficking and other crimes. It comes months after 29 other cartel leaders were sent to the U.S. in February.

In the exchange, the U.S. Justice Department promised it would not seek the death penalty against any of the 55 people included in the two transfers, which experts say may help avoid any violent outburst by the cartels in response. Authorities said the operation involved nearly a thousand law enforcement officers, 90 vehicles and a dozen military aircraft.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier Wednesday that the transfers were “sovereign decisions,” but the move comes as the Mexican leader faces mounting pressure by the Trump administration to crack down on cartels and fentanyl production.

García Harfuch also confirmed Wednesday that a U.S. government drone — non-military — was flying over central Mexico, but at the request of Mexican authorities as part of an ongoing investigation.

So far, Sheinbaum has tried to show the Trump administration a greater willingness to pursue the cartels than her predecessor — a change that has been acknowledged by U.S. officials — and continued to slow migration to the U.S. border, in an effort to avoid the worst of Trump’s tariff threats. Two weeks ago, the two leaders spoke and agreed to give their teams another 90 days to negotiate to avoid threatened 30% tariffs on imports from Mexico.

“Little by little, Mexico is following through with this demand by the Americans to deliver drug capos,” said Mexican security analyst David Saucedo. “It’s buying (the Mexican government) time.”

Saucedo said the Mexican government has been able to avoid a burst of violence by cartels – a reaction often seen when capos are captured – in part, because Ovidio Guzmán, a son of infamous capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, showed it’s possible to negotiate with U.S. prosecutors. Ovidio Guzmán pleaded guilty last month to drug trafficking and other charges and hopes for a lighter sentence in exchange for his cooperation.

But Saucedo warned that if such mass prisoner transfers continue, the Latin American country is bound to see another outburst of violence in the future.