Anthony Edwards received a $50,000 fine from the NBA, the league announced Tuesday.

This one was for “directing inappropriate language and making an obscene gesture toward a fan.”

Video surfaced on social media this week of Edwards getting into a verbal back and forth with a fan while at the scorer’s table during Minnesota’s Game 1 win over the Lakers in Los Angeles.

Edwards was seemingly defending teammate Rudy Gobert, as he repeatedly shouted that Gobert has “$300 million” — the approximate figure the center has made in salary in his NBA career (it’s actually a bit more than that).

But the NBA took issue with what came next, when Edwards said that his genitals were bigger than the spectator’s.

The fine was Edwards’ seventh of the season from the NBA, which add up to $350k on the season.

Clutch?

Edwards is one of three finalists for the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award, along with Denver center Nikola Jokic and New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson.

The winner will be announced on TNT’s NBA pre-game show at 5:30 p.m. CDT Wednesday.

This is the third year of the award’s existence, and voters are still wading through how to determine who fits the description.

Edwards led the NBA in raw scoring in the clutch this season, tallying 157 points in the final five minutes of games that had margins within five points. But the guard’s shooting numbers weren’t great in those situations, and Minnesota was a team that struggled mightily in the clutch as a team throughout the season.

By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has no plans to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, just days after his statement that he would like to terminate the head of the U.S. central bank caused a stock market selloff.

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“I have no intention of firing him,” Trump told reporters.

The U.S. president had previously insinuated otherwise as he said he could fire Powell if he wanted to, having been frustrated by the Fed putting a pause on cuts to short-term interest rates. Powell has said that Trump’s tariffs are creating uncertainty about slower growth and higher inflationary pressures, while the president maintains that inflationary worries are essentially non-existent.

The president maintains that energy and grocery prices are falling, so the Fed should cut its benchmark rates because inflation is no longer a threat to the U.S. economy, Trump said. His remarks indicated that he still plans to use the bully pulpit to pressure a U.S. central bank that is committed to resisting political pressure as part of its mandate to stabilize prices and maximize employment.

“It’s all coming down,” Trump said. “The only thing that hasn’t come down, but hasn’t gone up much, are interest rates. And we think the Fed should lower the rate. We think that it’s it’s a perfect time to lower the rate. And we’d like to see our chairman be early or on time, as opposed to late. Late’s not good.”

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — Three more federal prosecutors who had been involved in the now-dismissed corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned on Tuesday, saying they felt pressured into admitting wrongdoing or regret as a condition for being reinstated to their jobs.

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“We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom wrote in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The three assistant U.S. attorneys had been placed on leave after a number of prosecutors in New York and Washington refused to follow orders to end the case against Adams, a Democrat.

The letter was published by several news outlets. Its authenticity was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person who received the letter.

The resignations came the same day that Jay Clayton, former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was sworn in as the New York office’s new top prosecutor.

Adams was indicted last year, accused of taking illegal campaign contributions and travel perks from a Turkish official and others seeking to buy influence when he previously served as Brooklyn borough president.

In February, after President Donald Trump took office, the Justice Department ordered then-acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, to drop the charges against Adams — not due to the merits of the case, but rather so the mayor could assist in the Trump administration ’s immigration agenda.

Sassoon opted to resign instead, as did several other career prosecutors who objected to the criminal case being dismissed for political reasons. The case was eventually dismissed in April.

Cohen, Rohrbach and Wikstrom wrote in their resignation letter that it had become clear to them that one of the “preconditions” Blanche placed on them returning to work was to “express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the Office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case.”

The new leaders of the Justice Department, they wrote, had “decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington. That is wrong.”

Blanche said in a statement that there was nothing illegal or unethical about “dismissing the flawed prosecution against Mayor Adams.”

“Any suggestion to the contrary by anybody, especially former federal prosecutors, is wrong and disingenuous,” he wrote.

Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, had argued previously that Adams was being prosecuted because he had criticized former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

In dismissing the case, Judge Dale E. Ho noted that the record showed the prosecutors who worked on the case had followed all guidelines.

“There is no evidence — zero — that they had any improper motives,” Ho wrote in his ruling.

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report from Washington.

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and REBECCA BOONE

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Tuesday to block the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America, the 83-year-old international news service created by Congress.

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U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the administration illegally required Voice of America to cease operations for the first time since its World War II-era inception.

Attorneys for Voice of America employees and contractors asked the judge to restore its ability to broadcast at the same level before President Donald Trump moved to slash its funding. Lamberth mostly agreed, ordering the administration to restore Voice of America and two of the independent broadcast networks operated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media — Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks — until the lawsuits are settled.

The judge denied the request for two other independent networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Open Technology Fund.

In a March 26 court filing, plaintiffs’ attorneys said nearly all 1,300 of Voice of America’s employees were placed on administrative leave, while 500 contractors were told that their contracts would be terminated at the end of last month.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America, has operated other broadcast outlets, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Afghanistan. Congress has appropriated nearly $860 million for the Agency for Global Media for the current fiscal year.

Voice of America went dark soon after Trump issued an executive order on March 14 that pared funding to the Agency for Global Media and six other unrelated federal entities. It also moved to terminate VOA contracts with news agencies, including The Associated Press.

Voice of America has operated since World War II, beaming news into authoritarian countries that don’t have a free press. It began as a counterpoint to Nazi propaganda and played a prominent role in the U.S. government’s Cold War efforts to curb the spread of communism.

Trump and his Republican allies have accused Voice of America of having a “leftist bias” and failing to project “pro-American” values to its audience.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys say it reports and broadcasts the news “truthfully, impartially, and objectively.”

“That simple mission is a powerful one for those living across the globe without access to a free press and without the ability to otherwise discern what is truly happening,” they wrote.

Government attorneys argued that the plaintiffs failed to show how they have been irreparably harmed.

“Rather, Plaintiffs take aim at what is best described as a temporary pause on its activities while Global Media determines how to bring Voice of America into compliance with the President’s directive,” they wrote.

The Agency for Global Media’s leadership includes special adviser Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor and political candidate.

In his written ruling, Lamberth noted that the U.S. Agency for Global Media never finalized its grant agreement with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for the current fiscal year, and the Open Technology Fund withdrew its legal request for a temporary restraining order earlier this year.

Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks do have current grant agreements in place, and like Voice of America, are funded by Congressional appropriations.

Lamberth said the funding cuts “reflect a hasty, indiscriminate approach” — particularly since they were made the same day that President Trump signed the congressional appropriation that funded Voice of America and the networks through September of this year.

Not only is there an absence of “reasoned analysis” from the defendants; there is an absence of any analysis whatsoever,” Lamberth said.

The labor union that represents workers at the U.S. Agency for Global Media called the ruling a “powerful affirmation of the role that independent journalism plays in advancing democracy and countering disinformation.”

“These networks are essential tools of American soft power — trusted sources of truth in places where it is often scarce,” said Tom Yazdgerdi, president of the American Foreign Service Association, in a press release Tuesday. “By upholding editorial independence, the court has protected the credibility of USAGM journalists and the global mission they serve.”