Twins’ starter Pablo López calls injury ‘a tough pill to swallow’

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WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Imagine you decide to change up your workout routine. After months of not doing any lat pulldowns, you decide, for some odd reason, to do 10,000 of them.

That’s how Pablo López described the soreness that he was feeling after being diagnosed with a Grade 2 teres major strain, which will keep him sidelined for the next eight to 12 weeks.

“It’s like a weird soreness, which is why I was hopeful early on,” López said. “It just feels like it’s sore.”

Because he didn’t hear a pop, because he wasn’t experiencing immense pain, López — who left Tuesday night’s game with the injury — held out hope that the results of his magnetic resonance imaging, taken on Wednesday might yield more positive results.

“I hate it,” the starter said. “It’s not what I want to be dealing with. It’s not what I want to hear. Every time you get the game taken away from you, it’s really hard. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

López has been told that he can’t throw for at least four weeks. He has to wait for the discomfort to clear before he can do anything over head. Wednesday, he said he did a “crazy lower-body workout” ans plans to spend the time doing cardio and leg workouts to keep up his conditioning.

Until his teres major, a muscle that attaches the scapula to the humerus, is healed, he’s will be a full-on lefty, he joked.

“We’re just going to aim at getting back on the field in the most responsible fashion and let him heal up fully,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “But I truly believe he’s going to be out there pitching for us, probably not at the very end of the year. We’re talking like he’ll be able to pitch significantly for us. We’re going to stay optimistic and let him do his thing.”

López is hoping that’s closer to eight weeks than 12, though he knows he can’t rush his recovery.

Rotation-mate Joe Ryan suffered the same injury last year in a game on Aug. 7. He did not return during the regular season, though he said he might have been healthy enough to return in a relief role in mid-October had the Twins made the playoffs.

“It stinks. He’s so good. He prepares so well,” Ryan said. “He’s one of the best teammates I’ve been around as far as that goes and what he does off the field. It’s tough to see.”

It’s a tough blow for the Twins’ rotation, which has been among baseball’s best this season. López has been a big reason why, with a 2.82 earned-run average across his 11 starts. To fill his place in the rotation, the Twins called up David Festa, who started on Thursday and gave up eight runs in 3⅔ innings against the Athletics.

And it’s a tough blow for López personally, who said the biggest challenge won’t be his shoulder but his mind.

“The mental side is what’s going to be eating me alive for a while. It’s just that itch, knowing that every day that passes is games I’m not participating in,” López said. “So, the options are simple: I either choose to drown myself in tears of sorrow or I choose to power through, grow internally, grow physically, grow emotionally and just make sure that when the time comes, that I will be able to come back.”

Correa sits

Carlos Correa has dealt with back issues in the past. But this was different, he said.

The current soreness is little higher, in an area of his back that has never bothered him. He hasn’t changed his routine. The only thing that has changed, he said, is slipping every time he took a swing because of the dirt in the Sutter Health Park batter’s box.

Correa was scratched from Wednesday’s lineup and did not play on Thursday, but he projected optimism that he would be back when the team returned home.

“Every swing that I slip at the plate, I feel my back compensating to stabilize me throughout the motion,” Correa said. “It’s just discomfort in my middle back and I don’t want to make it worse, where I miss months of the season (for) two games. We’re taking the smart option of taking these two days (off) so I can go back and play at home.”

Briefly

Reliever Danny Coulombe, on the injured list with a left forearm extensor strain, is scheduled to make a rehab outing with Triple-A St. Paul on Friday. … The Chicago White Sox announced on Thursday longtime owner Jerry Reinsdorf and billionaire Justin Ishbia have entered a “long-term investment agreement that establishes a framework for Ishbia to obtain a future controlling interest in the White Sox.” Ishbia had been among the interested potential buyers for the Twins but shifted his interest to his home-town White Sox earlier this year.

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Man accused of yelling ‘Free Palestine’ and firebombing demonstrators charged with attempted murder

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By COLLEEN SLEVIN and JESSE BEDAYN, Associated Press

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — A man accused of yelling “Free Palestine” and throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza was charged Thursday with attempted murder and explosives crimes in a Colorado court.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, was advised of the charges during a court hearing where he appeared from jail in Boulder. He has been held there since his arrest following Sunday’s attack. Investigators say Soliman, who posed as a gardener, had planned it for a year.

Authorities have said 15 people and a dog were victims of the attack.

Lesli Colin Johnsen, right, hugs Beth Blacker before a community vigil at the Boulder Jewish Community Center, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, in Boulder, Colo. (Andy Cross/The Denver Post via AP, Pool)

He has also been charged with a hate crime in federal court and is jailed on a $10 million cash bond.

Soliman had planned to kill all of the roughly 20 participants the weekly demonstration at the popular Pearl Street pedestrian mall, but he threw just two of his 18 Molotov cocktails while yelling “Free Palestine,” police said. Soliman didn’t carry out his full plan “because he got scared and had never hurt anyone before,” police wrote in an affidavit.

According to an FBI affidavit, Soliman told police he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people” — a reference to the movement to establish and protect a Jewish state in Israel. Authorities said he expressed no remorse about the attack.

Boulder County officials said in a news release that the victims include eight women and seven men ranging in age from 25 to 88, and a dog. Details about how the victims were impacted would be explained in criminal charges set to be filed Thursday, said Boulder County District Attorney’s office spokesperson Shannon Carbone.

Defendant’s family investigated

U.S. District Judge Gordon P. Gallagher on Wednesday granted a request to block the deportation of Soliman’s wife and five children, who like Soliman are Egyptian. U.S. immigration officials took them into custody Tuesday, but they have not been charged in the attack.

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U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Wednesday that the family was being processed for removal.

“It is patently unlawful to punish individuals for the crimes of their relatives,” attorneys for the family wrote in a lawsuit filed Wednesday afternoon.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the plaintiff’s claims “absurd” and “an attempt to delay justice.” She said the entire family was living in the U.S. illegally.

Soliman’s wife, Hayam El Gamal, a 17-year-old daughter, two minor sons and two minor daughters were being held at an immigration detention center in Texas, said Eric Lee, one of the attorney’s representing the family.

Soliman told authorities that no one, including his family, knew he was planning an attack, according to court documents. El Gamal said she was “shocked” to learn her husband had been arrested in the attack, according to her lawsuit.

The family’s immigration status

Before moving to Colorado Springs three years ago, Soliman spent 17 years in Kuwait, according to court documents.

He arrived in the U.S. in August 2022 on a tourist visa that expired in February 2023, McLaughlin said in a post on X. She said Soliman filed for asylum in September 2022 and was granted a work authorization in March 2023, but that has also expired.

Hundreds of thousands of people overstay their visas each year in the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security reports.

Soliman’s wife is an Egyptian national, according to her lawsuit. She is a network engineer and has a pending EB-2 visa, which is available to professionals with advanced degrees, the suit said. She and her children all are listed as dependents on Soliman’s asylum application.

A vigil for the victims

Hundreds of people squeezed into the Jewish Community Center in Boulder for a vigil Wednesday evening that featured prayer, singing and emotional testimony from a victim and witnesses of the firebombing attack in the city’s downtown.

Rachelle Halpern, who has participated in such demonstrations since 2023, said she remembers thinking it was strange to see a man with a canister looking like he was going to spray pesticide on the grass. Then she heard a crash and screams and saw flames around her feet.

Rachelle Halpern, a witness to last Sunday’s attack in Boulder, speaks during a vigil at the Boulder Jewish Community Center Wednesday, June 4, 2025, in Boulder, Colo. (Andy Cross/The Denver Post via AP, Pool)

“A woman stood one foot behind me, engulfed in flames from head to toe, lying on the ground with her husband,” she said. “People immediately, three or four men immediately rushed to her to smother the flames.”

Her description prompted murmurs from the audience members. One woman’s head dropped into her hands.

“I heard a loud noise, and the back of my legs burning, and don’t remember those next few moments,” said a victim, who didn’t want to be identified and spoke off camera, over the event’s speakers. “Even as I was watching it unfold before my eyes, even then, it didn’t seem real.”

Associated Press reporters Hallie Golden in Seattle; Eric Tucker and Rebecca Santana in Washington; Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

A Massachusetts student arrested by ICE on his way to volleyball practice has been released

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By LEAH WILLINGHAM, Associated Press

CHELMSFORD, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts high school student who was arrested by immigration agents on his way to volleyball practice has been released from custody after a judge granted him bond Thursday.

Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 18, who came to the U.S. from Brazil at age 7, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Saturday. Authorities have said the agents were looking for the Milford High School teenager’s father, who owns the car Gomes da Silva was driving at the time and had parked in a friend’s driveway.

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place. This is all a waste,” his lawyer, Robin Nice, told reporters after a hearing in Chelmsford. Gomes da Silva appeared at the hearing via video from elsewhere in Massachusetts before being released on $2,000 bond.

Supporters gather outside federal court in support of Marcelo Gomes da Silva, who was arrested on his way to volleyball practice last weekend, on Thursday, June 5, 2025 in Milford, Mass.(AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

“We disrupted a kid’s life. We just disrupted a community’s life,” Nice said. “These kids should be celebrating graduation and prom, I assume? They should be doing kid stuff, and it is a travesty and a waste of our judicial process to have to go through this.”

She said Gomes da Silva slept on the cement floor of a room holding 25 to 35 men, many twice his age, most of the time he was detained, with no windows, no time outside and no permission to shower. He was able to brush his teeth twice. Nice said that at one point Gomes da Silva asked for a Bible and was denied.

He went to the hospital Wednesday because he had concerns about a concussion he received before he was detained and was suffering from a bad cold, Nice said.

“He’s looking forward to eating Snickers and chicken nuggets when he is released,” she said.

Not ICE’s target, but detained anyway

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said earlier this week that ICE officers were targeting a “known public safety threat” and that Gomes da Silva’s father “has a habit of reckless driving at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour through residential areas.”

“While ICE officers never intended to apprehend Gomes da Silva, he was found to be in the United States illegally and subject to removal proceedings, so officers made the arrest,” she said in a statement.

A homeowner around a sign supporting Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, who was arrested on his way to volleyball practice last weekend, on Thursday, June 5, 2025 in Milford, Mass. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said Monday that “like any local law enforcement officer, if you encounter someone that has a warrant or … he’s here illegally, we will take action on it.”

Gomes da Silva initially entered the country on a visitor visa and was later issued a student visa that has since lapsed, Nice said. She described him as deeply rooted in his community and a dedicated member of both the school marching band and a band at his church.

The immigration judge set a placeholder hearing date for a couple of weeks from Thursday, but it might take place months from that, Nice said.

“We’re optimistic that he’ll have a future in the United States,” she said.

A federal judge considering Gomes da Silva’s request to be released while his immigration case proceeds has given the government until June 16 to respond and ordered that Gomes da Silva not be moved out of Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice given to the court. The government sought permission Wednesday to move Gomes da Silva to a detention facility in a different New England state, Nice said. A judge quickly denied the request.

Supporters gather outside federal court in support of Marcelo Gomes da Silva, who was arrested on his way to volleyball practice last weekend, on Thursday, June 5, 2025 in Milford, Mass. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)(AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

A shaken community

“I love my son. We need Marcelo back home. It’s no family without him,” João Paulo Gomes Pereira said in a video released Wednesday. “We love America. Please, bring my son back.”

The video showed the family in the teen’s bedroom. Gomes da Silva’s sister describes watching movies with her brother and enjoying food he cooks for her: “I miss everything about him.”

Supporters gather outside federal court in support of Marcelo Gomes da Silva, who was arrested on his way to volleyball practice last weekend, on Thursday, June 5, 2025 in Milford, Mass. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell) (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

Students at Milford High staged a walkout Monday to protest his detainment. Other supporters wore white and packed the stands of the high school gymnasium Tuesday night, when the volleyball team dedicated a match to their missing teammate.

Hanna Ghannan, who graduated from the school the day after Gomes de Silva was detained, was among those cheering outside the courthouse as the news came that her classmate would be let out on bond.

“I’m just happy that everyone’s coming to together as a community because there is a lot of hate — and I mean a lot of hate,” she said.

Supporters gather outside federal court in support of Marcelo Gomes da Silva, who was arrested on his way to volleyball practice last weekend, on Thursday, June 5, 2025 in Milford, Mass. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell) (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

Amani Jack, also a recent Milford High graduate, said her classmate’s absence loomed large over the graduation ceremony, where he was supposed to play in the band. She said if she had a chance to speak with the president, she’d ask him to ‘just put yourself in our shoes.’

“He did say he was going to deport criminals,” she said. “Marcelo is not a criminal. He’s a student. I really want him to take a step in our shoes, witnessing this. Try and understand how we feel. We’re just trying to graduate high school.”

Veronica Hernandez, a family advocate from Medford who said she works in a largely Hispanic community where ICE has had an active presence, said cases like Gomes da Silva’s show immigration enforcement is serious about taking “anybody” without legal status, not just those accused of crimes.

“I think seeing that something so simple as a child driving themselves and their friends to volleyball practice at risk struck a chord,” she said.

Associated Press reporter Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this story.

Thomas Friedman: We Are Being Governed by the Trump Organization Inc.

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Wall Street analysts recently began joking that the best way to predict the behavior of President Donald Trump — and make money in the process — was by practicing the “TACO trade,” which stands for “Trump always chickens out.” You can always bet on Trump rolling back a reckless tariff.

This mocking of Trump’s inconsistency, which drives him nuts — “Don’t ever say what you said,” he told a reporter who asked him about it — not only is accurate but also deserves to be more widely applied.

One day he is pushing Ukraine away; the next day he is shaking Ukraine down for its minerals; the next day Ukraine is back in the fold. One day Russian President Vladimir Putin is Trump’s friend; the next day he’s “crazy.” One day Canada will be the 51st state; the next day it is the target of tariffs. One day he brags that he hires only “the best” people; the next day more than 100 experts at the National Security Council are pushed out just weeks after many were hired. One day the president hosts a gala at his Virginia golf club for the biggest buyers of his meme coin, who spent a combined $148 million for the chance to hear him give a talk standing behind the presidential seal, and the White House spokesperson suggests it’s not corruption because the president was “attending it in his personal time.”

Trump is governing by unchecked gut impulses, with little or no homework or coordination among agencies. He respects no real lines of authority, has his golfing buddy (Steve Witkoff) act as secretary of state and his secretary of state (Marco Rubio) act as his ambassador to Panama. He compels anyone who wants to stop him to take him to court, while blurring all lines between his legal duties and personal enrichment.

What is this telling us? We are not being governed anymore by a traditional American administration. We are being governed by the Trump Organization Inc.

In Trump I, the president surrounded himself with some people of weight who could act as buffers. In Trump II, he has surrounded himself only with sycophants who act like amplifiers. In Trump I, he ran a standard, but chaotic, administration. In Trump II, the president is unchained and running the U.S. government exactly the way he ran his private company: out of his hip pocket and with only the markets or the courts able to stop him.

That is especially true because today Democrats are too weak, Republicans are too craven, big law firms like Paul, Weiss and Skadden Arps are too morally bankrupt and government bureaucrats are too defenseless to do anything.

So if the motto of Trump I was “It’s our turn to rule,” the motto of Trump II is the kind preferred by dictatorial African regimes: “It’s our turn to eat.”

Consider …

If you think all of this is funny or exaggerated, it’s not. Consider just a few examples of Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip — “fire, ready, aim” — style of governance, where there is zero second-order thinking.

Weeks after taking office, Trump announced a series of global tariffs without any serious consultation with the U.S. auto industry. Along the way, he discovered that only about one-third of the parts of the popular Ford F-150 are made in America and cannot be replaced anytime soon. The tariffs have been such a blow to the whole auto industry that Ford, General Motors and Stellantis announced they could not give earning predictions for the rest of 2025, citing tariff uncertainty and possible supply-chain disruptions.

Then China reacted predictably to Trump’s 145% tariffs on all Chinese exports to America. As The New York Times’ Beijing correspondent Keith Bradsher reported Monday, Beijing abruptly halted exports of rare-earth magnets that go into U.S.-made cars, drones, robots and missiles. If Trump doesn’t find a way to strike a deal (“chicken out”) on some of his China tariffs, U.S. car factories may have to cut back production “in the coming days and weeks,” Bradsher reported.

What do you think are the chances that Trump had gamed out in advance these second-order consequences of his tariffs on China? I bet zero. He just shot from the hip.

Right-wing woke

It gets worse. As I have been arguing since Trump came to office, his ridiculous right-wing woke obsession with destroying the U.S. electric vehicle industry that President Joe Biden was trying to build up undermines U.S. efforts to compete with China in electric batteries. Batteries are the new oil; they will power the new industrial ecosystem of AI-infused self-driving cars, robots, drones and clean tech.

The consequence of this, economics writer Noah Smith observed, is the weakening of America’s capacity to build the kind of cheap, battery-powered drones that Ukraine just used to destroy part of Russia’s air fleet — and that China could use the same way against our aircraft carriers. “Trump and the GOP,” Smith noted, “have decided to think of batteries as a culture-war issue instead of one of national security. They think they’re attacking hippie-dippy green energy, sticking it to the socialist environmentalist kids and standing up for good old red-blooded American oil and gas. Instead, what they’re actually doing is unilaterally disarming America’s future drone force and ceding the key weapon of the modern battlefield to China.”

Do you think Trump connected any of these dots? Not a chance. It was fire, ready, aim.

Jobs that use steel, not make steel

Here’s another example of that failing. Trump just announced that he would double U.S. steel tariffs to 50%. Surely the president would not have made such a move without studying what happened in his first term when he suddenly raised steel tariffs to 25%. Fortunately, others have. It was a total failure.

At first, the 2018 Trump steel tariffs added about 6,000 jobs to the U.S. steel industry’s workforce, according to the Census Bureau, The Wall Street Journal reported. But by the end of 2019, it added, those gains evaporated, leading to the loss of about 75,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Why? Well, as The Journal wrote in a May 17, 2021, editorial titled “How Trump’s Steel Tariffs Failed,” his 25% tariff “hurt industries that buy and use steel, plus their workers and millions of consumers.” That’s because so many more American jobs are held by people who use steel than make steel.

I challenge anyone in this administration to show me that Trump gamed out his new 50% steel tariff and proved that it would work better this time around.

Driving STEM students elsewhere

How about Trump’s education strategy? You cannot put up a meaningful trade wall against China unless you also have an education strategy to increase our advanced manufacturing.

China’s universities put so much emphasis on STEM education — science, technology, engineering and math — that every year China produces some 3.5 million STEM graduates, just under the number of graduates from associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in all disciplines in the United States.

To compete in the AI-driven economy of the future, a country cannot have too many engineers. But we have a glaring shortage. How have we been filling that hole? By admitting tens of thousands of engineering students and engineers from China and India in particular.

So, surely Trump thought this all through in advance?

Fat chance. He started a technology trade war with China — which controls about 30% of global manufacturing, almost double that of the United States — at the same time that he is trying to crush America’s premier research centers like the National Institutes of Health, while having his secretary of state vow to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.” On top of it all, he has appointed a former professional wrestling executive who once referred to AI as “A1” — like the steak sauce — as education secretary.

Not just Chinese, but now many other international STEM students, seeing all of this, are deciding to stay away. The United States will not feel the negative effects of that tomorrow while we still reap the benefits of decades of welcoming the most brainy or energetic immigrants. But we will a decade from now.

What has distinguished and enriched the United States for so many years — and kept it the dominant global economic and military power — has been the ability to consistently attract that extra scientist or ambitious immigrant, that extra dollar of investment and that extra dollop of trust from allies. As the biggest economy in the world, we benefited disproportionately from a stable, global free market.

“Any conventional understating of U.S. power would say that we would be crazy to put all three at risk, but that is exactly what we are doing today,” Nader Mousavizadeh, a founder of the geopolitical consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners, told me.

“We are behaving as if we are outsiders and outliers to a global order that we are in fact the architects of,” he added. “For now, we are still the preferred destination for savings, investment and talent, but the sound you hear out there today is the beginning of a global workaround for all three. Because more and more people are starting to wonder: Are we really the rock they thought we were?”

Congess on bended knee

In sum, what you are seeing from this Trump II administration, and its bended-knee Congress, is a dangerous, undisciplined, intellectually inconsistent farce that we will pay dearly for in the future. Major geoeconomic moves are being made by one man who has done no homework, modeling or stress-testing and has fostered little apparent interagency process, with no congressional oversight or apparent reference to history.

If you think this is not dangerous, just keep in mind that the Trump Organization Inc. over the years filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six different businesses. There was a reason for that: the operating style and values of its boss.

Thomas Friedman writes a column for the New York Times.