After a month in which he gave up 30 runs in 30 innings as he pitched through a hip issue that had bothered him since the end of spring training, Twins starter Bailey Ober described the need to “take a look in the mirror and see what’s really the best course of action.”

That course of action, Ober and the team decided, would be to take a period of time on the injured list and get his hip injury — described by the team as a left hip impingement — healed once and for all while working on fixing mechanical issues that cropped up as a result of the injury.

“I came up to them and said, ‘Hey, I think this is the best thing for the team and for me just to take a little breather and try to get back to normal as much as I can and get ready for the second half,’” Ober said.

Ober is currently doing some light throwing and is hopeful to get back on the mound sometime next week. From there, his absence might not be an extended one, but there will be a focus on getting his mechanics straightened out. While Ober said it’s been “better from a pain standpoint,” in the past few weeks, he said he got to a point where he wasn’t comfortable with how he was throwing as he altered his mechanics to protect his hip.

“(I’m) trying to come in here and get back as soon as I possibly can, so I’m definitely putting in a lot of work right now trying to get my mechanics in line to not really … compensate and affect how I’m throwing the baseball,” Ober said. “I feel like that’s the biggest thing right now.”

The Twins have yet to announce a replacement in the rotation for Ober, but it appears they’ll roll with some kind of bullpen game on Saturday with rookie Travis Adams, who was in the Twins’ clubhouse Friday on the taxi squad, likely getting his share of work.

Adams was called up in June but did not appear in a game. Saturday, he’s expected to be added to the roster again for reliever Kody Funderburk, who will be optioned to Triple-A.

“Getting that three days before helped me get familiar with everything I needed to do and what to kind of expect,” Adams said.

Adams, who has a 3.68 earned-run average across 63 2/3 innings pitched at Triple-A this season, has been primarily coming in in long relief this season as the Twins have thrown him for shorter stints in minor league games typically every four days rather than start him every five days.

“It’s been a longstanding discussion that guys can pitch every four days. They just might not be able to go max effort for 100 pitches every four days,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “But there’s a big difference, I think, between throwing 55 and 100. I think he’s done a good job with it. I think he was very open-minded to it and I think the results, I don’t want to say they’ve spoken for themselves, but it’s proven that this can work.”

Other injury updates

Besides Ober, the Twins are also without starters Pablo López and Zebby Matthews, both of whom landed on the injured list in June. Matthews, out with a shoulder strain, has been throwing bullpens — he is scheduled to throw another on Saturday — and should that go well, he’ll then progress to seeing hitters next week, head athletic trainer Nick Paparesta said.

One of those hitters might be Luke Keaschall, who is progressing well from a broken forearm, an injury suffered in late April. Keaschall has been hitting off the Trajekt machine in the cage, which Paparesta said he has come out of well, and once they get final clearance, they’ll want him face live pitching before sending him into game action. Paparesta noted they have younger players throwing at their facility in Fort Myers, Fla., and Keaschall could travel there to face them before getting in rehab games.

As for López, his return from a Grade 2 teres major strain still is not expected soon but he had magnetic resonance imaging taken on Monday and “things are progressing nicely,” Paparesta said. His strain is healing, though not all the way healed and he has not started throwing yet, Paparesta said.

“The MRI was encouraging and we were happy with what we saw,” Paparesta said. “It’s kind of exactly where we thought he’d be at 26 days post-injury. … He’s moving in the right direction.”

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The Aurora kept their unbeaten season going Friday with a 2-0 win at the Pittsburgh Riveters in the opening round of the USL W playoffs.

Saige Wimes put Minnesota on the board with a goal in the 43rd minute to give the visitors a 1-0 halftime lead.

Natalie Tavana’s free kick strike in the 72nd minute provided the Aurora some insurance until time ran out on the Riveters’ season. It was Tavana’s team-leading seventh goal of the summer.

Minnesota (10-0-2) now advances to the second round of the USL W playoffs for the second time in three seasons.

The Heartland Division champions will face Cincinnati’s Kings Hammer FC, a 2-1 winner over Detroit City FC in its playoff opener, in Pittsburgh at 6 p.m. Sunday.

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By WAFAA SHURAFA, BASSEM MROUE and SAMYA KULLAB

DEIR al-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas said Friday it has given a “positive” response to the latest proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza but said further talks were needed on implementation.

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It was not clear if Hamas’ statement meant it had accepted the proposal from U.S. President Donald Trump for a 60-day ceasefire. Hamas has been seeking guarantees that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war, now nearly 21 months old. Trump has been pushing hard for a deal to be reached, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit the White House next week to discuss a deal.

The Hamas statement came as Israeli airstrikes killed 15 Palestinians in Gaza early Friday, while a hospital said another 20 people died in shootings while seeking aid.

The U.N. human rights office said it has recorded 613 Palestinians killed within the span of a month in Gaza while trying to obtain aid. Most were killed while trying to reach food distribution points run by an Israeli-backed American organization, while others were massed waiting for aid trucks connected to the United Nations or other humanitarian organizations, it said.

Efforts ongoing to halt the war

Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, during which the U.S. would “work with all parties to end the war.” He urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen.

In its statement late Friday, Hamas said it “has submitted its positive response” to Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

It said it is “fully prepared to immediately enter into a round of negotiations regarding the mechanism for implementing this framework.” It did not elaborate on what needed to be worked out in implementation.

A Hamas official said the ceasefire could start as early as next week but he said talks were needed first to work out how many Palestinian prisoners would be released in return for each freed Israeli hostage and to specify the amount of aid that will enter Gaza during the truce. Hamas has said it wants aid to flow in greater quantities through the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the response with the press.

The official also said that negotiations would start from the first day of the truce on a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in return for the release of remaining hostages. He said that Trump has guaranteed that the truce will be extended beyond 60 days if needed for those negotiations to reach a deal. There has been no confirmation from the United States of such a guarantee.

Previous rounds of negotiations have run aground over Hamas demands of guarantees that further negotiations would lead to the war’s end, while Netanyahu has insisted Israel would resume fighting to ensure the destruction of the group.

“We’ll see what happens. We’re going to know over the next 24 hours,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Thursday when asked if Hamas had agreed to the latest framework for a ceasefire.

20 killed Friday while seeking aid

Officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said at least three Palestinians were killed Friday while on the roads heading to food distribution sites run by the Israeli-backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in southern Gaza.

Since GHF began distributions in late May, witnesses have said almost daily that Israeli troops open fire toward crowds of Palestinians on the roads leading to the food centers. To reach the sites, people must walk several miles through an Israeli military zone where troops control the road.

The Israeli military has said previously it fires warning shots to control crowds or at Palestinians who approach its troops. The GHF has denied any serious injuries or deaths on its sites and says shootings outside their immediate vicinity are under the purview of Israel’s military.

On Friday, in reaction to the U.N. rights agency’s report, it said in a statement that it was investigating reports of people killed and wounded while seeking aid. It said it was working at “minimizing possible friction between the population” and Israeli forces, including by installing fences and placing signs on the routes.

Separately, witnesses have said Israeli troops open fire toward crowds of Palestinians who gather in military-controlled zones to wait for aid trucks entering Gaza for the U.N. or other aid organizations not associated with GHF.

On Friday, 17 people were killed waiting for trucks in eastern Khan Younis in the Tahliya area, officials at Nasser Hospital said.

Three survivors told the AP they had gone to wait for the trucks in a military “red zone” in Khan Younis and that troops opened fire from a tank and drones.

It was a “crowd of people, may God help them, who want to eat and live,” said Seddiq Abu Farhana, who was shot in the leg, forcing him to drop a bag of flour he had grabbed. “There was direct firing.”

Airstrikes also hit the Muwasi area on the southern end of Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes are sheltering in tent camps. Of the 15 people killed in the strikes, eight were women and one was a child, according to the hospital.

An Israeli army tank advances in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel on Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Israel’s military said it was looking into Friday’s reported airstrikes. It had no immediate comment on the reported shootings surrounding the aid trucks.

U.N. investigates shootings near aid sites

The spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office, Ravina Shamdasani, said the agency was not able to attribute responsibility for the killings. But she said “it is clear that the Israeli military has shelled and shot at Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points” operated by GHF.

In a message to The Associated Press, Shamdasani said that of the total tallied, 509 killings were “GHF-related,” meaning at or near its distribution sites.

In a statement Friday, GHF cast doubt on the casualty figures, accusing the U.N. of taking its casualty figures “directly from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry”and of trying “to falsely smear our effort.”

Shamdasani, the U.N. rights office spokesperson, told the AP that the data “is based on our own information gathering through various reliable sources, including medical, human rights and humanitarian organizations.”

Rik Peeperkorn, representative of the World Health Organization, said Nasser Hospital, the biggest hospital operating in the south, receives dozens or hundreds of casualties every day, most coming from the vicinity of the food distribution sites.

The International Committee of the Red Cross also said in late June that its field hospital near one of the GHF sites has been overwhelmed more than 20 times in the previous months by mass casualties, most suffering gunshot injuries while on their way to the food distribution sites.

Also on Friday, Israel’s military said two soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza, one in the north and one in the south. Over 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the war began, including more than 400 during the fighting in Gaza.

The Israeli military also issued new evacuation orders Friday in northeast Khan Younis in southern Gaza and urged Palestinians to move west ahead of planned military operations against Hamas in the area. The new evacuation zones pushed Palestinians into increasingly smaller spaces by the coast.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said the number of Palestinians killed in the territory has passed 57,000. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says more than half of the dead are women and children. The ministry is run by medical professionals employed by the Hamas government, and its numbers are widely cited by the U.N. and international organizations.

The war began when Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, and European Union.

Kullab reported from Jerusalem and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and NICHOLAS RICCARDI

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed his package of tax breaks and spending cuts into law Friday in front of Fourth of July picnickers after his cajoling produced almost unanimous Republican support in Congress for the domestic priority that could cement his second-term legacy.

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Flanked by Republican legislators and members of his Cabinet, Trump signed the multitrillion-dollar legislation at a desk on the White House driveway, then banged down a gavel gifted to him by House Speaker Mike Johnson that was used during the bill’s final passage Thursday.

Against odds that at times seemed improbable, Trump achieved his goal of celebrating a historic — and divisive — legislative victory in time for the nation’s birthday, which also was his self-imposed deadline for Congress to send the legislation to his desk. Fighter jets and stealth bombers streaked through the sky over the annual White House Fourth of July picnic.

“America’s winning, winning, winning like never before,” Trump said, noting last month’s bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, which he said the flyover was meant to honor. “Promises made, promises kept, and we’ve kept them.”

The White House was hung with red, white and blue bunting for the Independence Day festivities. The U.S. Marine Band played patriotic marches — and, in a typical Trumpian touch, tunes by 1980s pop icons Chaka Khan and Huey Lewis. There were three separate flyovers.

Trump spoke for a relatively brief 22 minutes before signing the bill, but was clearly energized as the legislation’s passage topped a recent winning streak for his administration. That included the Iran campaign and a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulingshe’s fought for.

Vice President JD Vance was traveling in the Dakotas with his family and missed the ceremony. A line on the bill where he would have signed because of his role as president of the Senate was crossed out and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., added his name instead, photographs show. Cotton has the responsibility of stepping in when the vice president isn’t available for his Senate duties.

The budget legislation is the president’s highest-profile win yet. It includes key campaign pledges like no tax on tips or Social Security income. Trump, who spent an unusual amount of time thanking individual Republican lawmakers who shepherded the measure through Congress, contended “our country is going to be a rocket ship, economically,” because of the legislation.

Big cuts to Medicaid and food stamps

Critics assailed the package as a giveaway to the rich that will rob millions more lower-income people of their health insurance, food assistance and financial stability.

“Today, Donald Trump signed into law the worst job-killing bill in American history. It will rip health care from 17 million workers to pay for massive tax giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations, amounting to the country’s largest money grab from the working class to the ultra-rich,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. “Every member of Congress who voted for this devastating bill picked the pockets of working people to hand billionaires a $5 trillion gift.”

The legislation extends Trump’s 2017 multitrillion-dollar tax cuts and cuts Medicaid and food stamps by $1.2 trillion. It provides for a massive increase in immigration enforcement. Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper projects that nearly 12 million more people will lose health insurance under the law.

The legislation passed the House on a largely party-line vote Thursday, culminating a monthslong push by the GOP to cram most of its legislative priorities into a single budget bill that could be enacted without Senate Democrats being able to block it indefinitely by filibustering.

It passed by a single vote in the Senate, where North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis announced he would not run for reelection after incurring Trump’s wrath in opposing it. Vance had to cast the tie-breaking vote.

In the House, where two Republicans voted against it, one, conservative maverick Tom Massie of Kentucky, has also become a target of Trump’s well-funded political operation.

The legislation amounts to a repudiation of the agendas of the past two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, in rolling back Obama’s Medicaid expansion under his signature health law and Biden’s tax credits for renewable energy.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.

Democrats vow to make bill a midterm issue

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin on Friday called the bill “devastating” and said in a statement that Trump’s signature on the legislation “sealed the fate of the Republican Party, cementing them as the party for billionaires and special interests — not working families.”

He predicted Republicans would lose their majority in Congress over it. “This was a full betrayal of the American people,” Martin said.

Trump exulted in his political victory Thursday night in Iowa, where he attended a kickoff of events celebrating the country’s 250th birthday next year.

“I want to thank Republican congressmen and women, because what they did is incredible,” he said. The president complained that Democrats voted against the bill because “they hate Trump — but I hate them, too.”

The package is certain to be a flashpoint in next year’s midterm elections, and Democrats are making ambitious plans for rallies, voter registration drives, attack ads, bus tours and even a multiday vigil, all intended to highlight the most controversial elements.

Upon his return to Washington early Friday, Trump described the package as “very popular,” though polling suggests that public opinion is mixed at best.

For example, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that majorities of U.S. adults support increasing the annual child tax credit and eliminating taxes on earnings from tips, and about half support work requirements for some adults who receive Medicaid.

But the poll found majorities oppose reducing federal funding for food assistance to low-income families and spending about $45 billion to build and maintain migrant detention centers. About 60% said it was “unacceptable” that the bill is expected to increase the $36 trillion U.S. debt by more than $3 trillion over the next decade.