Down 11 points in the first quarter, Natisha Hiedeman and the Lynx bench provided a much-needed spark.

The starters kept the mojo going in the third quarter, and Minnesota got back in the win column on the second game of a back-to-back set.

Hiedeman tied a season-high with 18 points off the bench — 16 in the first half — to lead four players with double figures in a 91-82 win over the Sparks in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon.

“We have a few players that aren’t playing as well as they want to play or at their best. T’s timing of this game is what our starters needed,” said coach Cheryl Reeve. “If T wasn’t in our locker room today, this game might have turned out differently. She willed our team to shake off that early start and really gave us a bounce in our step.”

Victory came 24 hours after the Lynx were out-toughed and outscored 19-4 down the stretch in a 79-71 loss Wednesday at Phoenix.

“We knew that we just had to come in here and be focused,” said Hiedeman, whose team was playing its sixth game in 10 days.

Hiedeman scored 10 points in less than four minutes of action in the opening frame.

“She’s just a such a spark on the bench,” said Napheesa Collier, who had 17 points and eight rebounds. “She was a plus-14, highest of the game. We feel that when we’re on. T is so quick the way that she’s able to push the pace, especially in transition, getting in the lane, spreading it out, when she’s open taking threes, knocking those down She’s such a dynamic player. … She is what makes the team go, especially when we need that extra spark coming off the bench.”

The seventh-year player finished 7 of 12 from the field after going 6 for 19 and scoring 15 points in her first four July games.

“If the shots are there, I’m going to take them. Today they were there, and we were busting out in transition,” she said. “I don’t think my game is based off points, it’s more so running the offense and finding players.”

The Minnesota bench had 30 of its 34 points in the first half as the Lynx took a 50-40 lead into the break after outscoring Los Angeles 28-14 in the second quarter.

“I’m really, really happy the bench gave the support that it did, because our starters absolutely needed it to kind of help get us going again,” Reeve said.

Up by 27 late in a third quarter where the Lynx outscored Los Angeles 30-19, Minnesota saw the lead dwindle to 80-70 less than three minutes into the fourth quarter before an Alanna Smith basket off a feed from Courtney Williams and a Williams jumper pushed the lead back to 14.

The Lynx lead remained in double digits until the final minute of play.

“Our team does a great job of staying together and keeping winning games the main thing,” said Collier.

Williams finished with 16 points and seven assists, and Smith finished with 15 points. Bridget Carleton had a season-best six assists.

Minnesota won all four games against the Sparks (6-14) this season and has won 17 of the past 19 meetings since August 2020.

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York state law holding gun manufacturers potentially liable when their weapons are used in deadly shootings was upheld Thursday by a federal appeals court.

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The ruling Thursday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan affirmed a decision by an Albany judge.

A three-judge appeals panel said the 2021 New York state law was not unconstitutional or vague. The opinion written by Circuit Judge Eunice C. Lee said a lawsuit seeking to stop the law’s implementation did not show that the law was “unenforceable in all its applications.”

The law requires the gun industry to create reasonable controls to prevent unlawful possession, use, marketing or sale of their products in New York and allows them to be sued for unlawful acts that create or contribute to threats to public health or safety.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association of firearms manufacturers that ships firearms into New York, had sued over the law, saying it was pre-empted by the federal 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which blocks litigation that could destroy the firearms industry.

In May 2022, Judge Mae A. D’Agostino threw out the lawsuit, rejecting arguments that the law’s language did not adequately explain what was prohibited. She said the law closely tracked the language of New York’s general public nuisance law, which has been “good law since 1965.”

Lawyers for the gun manufacturers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a release that the decision was a “massive victory for public safety and the rule of law and will help us continue to fight the scourge of gun violence to keep our communities safe.”

Eric Tirschwell, executive director of the nonprofit Everytown Law, praised the ruling. He said the law creates “a new pathway for victims and their families to hold bad actors in the gun industry accountable for their role in fueling the epidemic of gun violence that is ravaging communities across the Empire State.”

Everytown Law and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence were among gun violence protection groups that filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that the new law “simply does not create the free-for-all” that gun makers predicted.

Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs concurred in the ruling, despite some reservations. He wrote that New York had “contrived a broad public nuisance statute that applies solely to ‘gun industry members’ and is enforceable by a mob of public and private actors.”

And he added: “The intent of Congress when it closes a door is not for States to thus jimmy a window.”

Jacobs, citing a recent Supreme Court ruling, said he agrees with the other two judges on the panel that the law could be applied consistent with the federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

But he also wrote that the New York gun law is “nothing short of an attempt to end-run” the federal law, noting that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said when he signed it that it would “right the wrong” done by the federal law.

“There is some legitimate reach to the law, which suffices for us to affirm the dismissal of this facial challenge. Just how limited that reach is must await future cases,” Jacobs said.

Hello, Joan Beringer.

Fans that were unfamiliar with the No. 17 overall pick in last month’s NBA draft received a quick introduction in the 18-year-old’s Summer League debut Thursday as Minnesota toppled New Orleans 98-91 in Las Vegas.

The rookie blocked the Pelicans’ first two shots of the game and swatted five shots over the first eight minutes of the affair while going a perfect 5 for 5 from the field in the first half and he ran to the rim and lived in the paint.

By game’s end, Beringer tallied 11 points, eight rebounds, seven blocks and two steals as part of a stifling defensive effort from Minnesota, as the Wolves turned New Orleans over 25 times.

After a slow start, Terrence Shannon Jr. dominated the final two quarters offensively to finish with 20 points, nine assists and seven rebounds. Leonard Miller also had 20 points to go with nine boards and three blocked shots.

Rob Dillingham had 15 points on 4 for 14 shooting with six assists and seven turnovers.

The Timberwolves’ Summer League team next plays at 9 p.m. Saturday against Denver in Las Vegas.

Grady staying

Timberwolves television play-by-play man  Michael Grady will be one of Amazon’s primary broadcasters when the station begins airing nationally-televised NBA games this fall, the streaming service announced Thursday.

But that doesn’t mean Grady is leaving Minnesota.

He will still work a modified local television schedule that’s still to be determined, and will do more storytelling in digital content space for the organization that includes game previews and features, among other things.

“Being able to tell the Timberwolves story and stay close to its fanbase is truly a privilege,” Grady said in a statement. “I have deep affection for the team and its incredible following. I’m excited to continue to tell the stories of this incredible franchise, keeping that bond strong as I expand my role nationally.”

Joan Beringer poses for a photo with NBA commissioner Adam Silver after being selected 17th by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the NBA basketball draft, Wednesday, June 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)

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By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel pledged at his confirmation hearing that the bureau would not look backward, but the Trump administration’s fresh scrutiny of the Russia investigation has brought back into focus a years-old inquiry that continues to infuriate the Republican president.

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The Justice Department appeared to acknowledge in an unusual statement this week the existence of investigations into two central players from that saga, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, amid a new report revisiting a 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference.

That the Russia investigation, which shadowed President Donald Trump through his first term, would resurface is hardly surprising given Trump’s lingering ire over the inquiry and because longtime allies, including Patel and current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, now lead the same agencies whose actions they once lambasted. Whether anything new will be found is unclear in light of the numerous prior reviews on the subject, but Trump has long called for investigations into Comey and Brennan, and Patel — in his memoir — placed them on a list of “members of the Executive Branch Deep State” deserving of derision.

“The conduct at issue or alleged conduct at issue has been the subject of numerous other investigations — IG investigations, special counsel investigations, other internal investigations, congressional investigations. And none of those past investigations turned up any evidence that led to criminal charges against any senior officials,” said Greg Brower, a former FBI senior executive and ex-U. S. attorney in Nevada.

Word of the inquiry came as FBI and Justice Department leaders scramble to turn the page from mounting criticism from prominent conservatives for failing to release much-hyped files from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. And as federal investigators have taken steps to examine the actions of other perceived adversaries of the administration, fueling concerns that the administration is weaponizing the criminal justice system for partisan purposes.

At issue now is a newly declassified CIA report, ordered by Ratcliffe, that faults Brennan’s oversight of a 2017 intelligence community assessment that found that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election because Russian President Vladimir Putin aspired to see Trump beat Democratic opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The report does not challenge that conclusion but chides Brennan for the fact that a classified version of the intelligence assessment included a two-page summary of the so-called “Steele dossier,” a compilation of opposition research from a former British spy that included salacious and uncorroborated rumors about Trump’s ties to Russia.

Brennan testified to Congress, and also wrote in his memoir, that he was opposed to citing the dossier in the intelligence assessment since neither its substance nor sources had been validated. He has said it was included at the FBI’s urging.

But the new report casts Brennan’s views in a different light, asserting that he “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness” and brushed aside concerns over the dossier because of its “conformity with existing theories.” It quotes him, without context, as having written that “my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

Fox News reported Tuesday evening that the FBI had begun investigating Brennan for potentially making false statements to Congress as well as Comey, though the basis for that inquiry is unclear. A person familiar with the matter confirmed to The Associated Press that Ratcliffe, a staunch Trump defender and vocal critic of the Russia investigation, had referred Brennan to the FBI for possible investigation.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a referral that has not been made public.

A Justice Department spokesperson issued a statement Wednesday referencing, without elaboration, the “criminal investigations” of Brennan and Comey, saying the department did not comment on “ongoing investigations.” It was not clear if the statement also referred to the continued scrutiny of Comey over the Instagram post. The FBI declined to comment.

Representatives for the men declined to comment this week, though Brennan said in an MSNBC interview on Wednesday that he had not been contacted by the FBI and knew nothing about an inquiry. He said he remained proud of the work intelligence agencies did to examine Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“I think this is unfortunately a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicization of the intelligence community, of the national security process,” Brennan said. “And quite frankly, I’m really shocked that individuals who are willing to sacrifice their reputations, their credibility, their decency to continue to do Donald Trump’s bidding on something that is clearly just politically based.”

A lengthy investigation by former special counsel John Durham that reviewed the intelligence community assessment as well as the broader Russia investigation did not find fault with Brennan.

FILE – Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey speaks at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics’ JFK Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

Comey has separately been interviewed by the Secret Service after a social media post that Republicans insisted was a call for violence against Trump. Comey has said he did not mean the Instagram post as a threat and removed it as soon as he realized it was being interpreted that way.

The Justice Department has taken steps in recent months to scrutinize other people out of favor with Trump opening inquiries into whether former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lied to Congress about his state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and into whether New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has sued Trump and his company, engaged in mortgage fraud. Both have vigorously denied wrongdoing. In other instances, the Justice Department has been directed by Trump to examine the actions of ex-government officials who have criticized him.

At the same time, the department refrained from opening an investigation into administration officials who disclosed sensitive military plans on a Signal chat that mistakenly included a journalist.

“Donald Trump is not interested in justice — he’s interested in settling scores and he views the vast prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice as a way to do that,” said Liz Oyer, who was fired in March as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney after she says she refused to endorse restoring the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson.

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