Twins: Royce Lewis’ return near; Edouard Julien appears to be odd man out

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When the Twins placed Royce Lewis on the injured list after he suffered a severe quadriceps strain on Opening Day, the thought was that the third baseman would be sidelined for a couple of months.

Just over two months later, at long last, his return is near.

Lewis appears poised to return on Tuesday when the Twins take on the Yankees in a road series that will begin at 6:05 p.m. CT in the Bronx, an exciting prospect both for Lewis and the Twins, who are more than ready to welcome back one of their most dynamic players.

To make room on the roster, it looks as if the Twins have optioned second baseman Edouard Julien to Triple-A St. Paul. While the club has not announced the move, it appears on the transition log on the Twins’ official website.

Lewis’ return comes after a rehab process he described as the most mentally challenging of his career, in part due to the uncertainty of his return timeline. Most recently, he played in a six-game rehab stint with the Triple-A Saints, going 4 for 23 in those games.

While Lewis was out, Jose Miranda saw most of the action for the Twins at third base, a position he was limited at last season because of a shoulder issue that also affected him at the plate.

Miranda, who went 2 for 4 with two RBIs in the Twins’ Sunday win at Houston, has hit .280 with a .780 OPS this season, exhibiting the same kind of productivity as he did in his rookie season in 2022. That helped him survive the roster crunch and left Julien as the odd man out.

After a highly-productive rookie season, Julien hasn’t exhibited the same success this season at the plate and said late last month that that had taken a mental toll. A trip to Triple-A should give him the opportunity to reset in a less pressure-filled environment.

“It’s been tough. Mentally you just start — not trusting your routine, trusting your approach, it’s just every day you don’t succeed as much as last year,” Julien said in May. “I expect myself to be better or the same as last year. Not doing as well, it’s a lot more pressure. You just have to be tough mentally and be stubborn. Trust that everything will work out.”

City Connect reveal plans

The Twins will hold a daylong celebration next Monday when they unveil their long-awaited City Connect uniforms. The City Connect jerseys, designed in collaboration with Nike, have been rolled out over the course of the past few seasons, and the Twins will be the last team to unveil their new look.

The day will begin at 6 a.m. with live art displays at Target Plaza. There will be photo opportunities both with current players and T.C. Bear, live music and a free lunch as long as supplies last. Fans also will have their first chance to buy City Connect merchandise.

The Twins will don the jerseys for the first time later in the week, wearing them for their June 14 and June 15 games against the Oakland Athletics.

Briefly

The Twins will send Bailey Ober to the mound against the Yankees on Tuesday night. He will face Luis Gil, who was just named the American League Pitcher and Rookie of the Month for May. The Yankees acquired Gil in a 2018 trade with the Twins for outfielder Jake Cave. … The Twins were swept by the Yankees when the two teams faced each other last month. After a leadoff home run in first inning of the first game, the Twins went 26 straight innings without scoring a run.

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Biden prepares a tough executive order that would shut down asylum after 2,500 migrants arrive a day

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By SEUNG MIN KIM, STEPHEN GROVES and COLLEEN LONG (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is telling lawmakers that President Joe Biden is preparing to sign off on an executive order that would shut down asylum requests to the U.S.-Mexico border once the number of daily encounters hits 2,500 between ports of entry, with the border reopening once that number declines to 1,500, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

The impact of the 2,500 figure means that the border could be closed to migrants seeking asylum effectively immediately, because daily figures are higher than that now.

The Democratic president is expected to unveil his actions — which mark his most aggressive unilateral move yet to control the numbers at the border — at the White House on Tuesday at an event to which border mayors have been invited.

Five people familiar with the discussions confirmed the 2,500 figure on Monday, while two of the people confirmed the 1,500 number. The figures are daily averages over the course of a week. All of the people insisted on anonymity to discuss an executive order that is not yet public. Other border activity, such as trade, is expected to continue.

Senior White House officials have been informing lawmakers on Capitol Hill of details of the planned order ahead of the formal rollout on Tuesday.

Biden has been deliberating for months to act on his own after bipartisan legislation to clamp down on asylum at the border collapsed at the behest of Republicans, who defected from the deal en masse at the urging of Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Biden continued to consider executive action even though the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border has declined for months, partly because of a stepped-up effort by Mexico.

Gunman in killing of Alex Becker as he walked home in St. Paul gets 30-year prison sentence

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The man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a 21-year-old as he returned to his St. Paul home from work received a 30-year prison sentence Monday.

Arteze Owen Kinerd, now 21, admitted in February to being in a group that selected Alex Becker at random to rob in the North End.

Arteze Owen Kinerd (Courtesy of Minnesota Department of Corrections)

Kinerd is the last person to be sentenced in the case. The prosecution and Kinerd’s attorneys had agreed to a prison term that would fall on the low end of state sentencing guidelines, which Ramsey County District Judge Nicole Starr said Monday she was bound by.

On the evening of Dec. 27, 2022, Kinerd said he was a passenger in a car with two other people when they drove past Becker, whom he didn’t know. He said the driver pulled over and parked, and they waited until Kinerd got into an alley near Lawson Avenue and Kent Street.

Kinerd said during his guilty plea that he had a 9mm gun and he put Becker at gunpoint to rob him. Becker “snatched somebody else’s gun” from the group — a person who was standing in front of Becker and pointing the gun at him, Kinerd said. In response, Kinerd said he shot Becker eight times. To a prosecutor’s question, Kinerd agreed he’d shot Becker with the intention of killing him.

Kinerd also pleaded guilty at his February hearing to kidnapping a man on Dec. 9, 2022, in St. Paul’s Merriam Park during an armed robbery. He said he’d put the man “in the back seat at gunpoint” because he wanted to take his vehicle and everything he had, and they drove away with him in the vehicle. When a prosecutor asked how Kinerd had picked the man, he responded, “He was in a Porsche.”

Kinerd’s guilty pleas were to aiding and abetting intentional second-degree murder and kidnapping.

Federal prosecutors had notified Kinerd he was the target of prosecution in the kidnapping case and additional gun charges, but they’d agreed not to pursue charges if Kinerd was sentenced in Ramsey County court in accordance with the plea agreement, Daniel Gonnerman, Kinerd’s attorney, said at the hearing when he pleaded guilty.

He will serve both sentences at the same time.

Jurors in December found Detwan Cortell Allen, 20, guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder in the killing of Becker. He received a sentence in April of 30 years and seven months.

The third man charged in the case, Shaun Lamar Travis, was acquitted in December. Travis waived his right to a jury trial and a bench trial was held instead. Ramsey County District Judge JaPaul Harris concluded there wasn’t a dispute about the 26-year-old Travis being present, but said the prosecution didn’t prove all of the elements of an intentional murder charge to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

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Trump joins TikTok and calls it ‘an honor.’ As president he once tried to ban the video-sharing app

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By JILL COLVIN, WILL WEISSERT and MEG KINNARD (Associated Press)

Donald Trump has joined the popular video-sharing app TikTok, a platform he once tried to ban while in the White House, and posted from a UFC fight two days after he became the first former president and presumptive major party nominee in U.S. history to be found guilty on felony charges.

“It’s an honor,” Trump said in the TikTok video, which features footage of him waving to fans and posing for selfies at the Ultimate Fighting Championship fight in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night. The video ends with Trump telling the camera: “That was a good walk-on, right?”

By Sunday morning, Trump had amassed more than 1.1 million followers on the platform and the post had garnered more than 1 million likes and 24 million views.

“We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement about the campaign’s decision to join the platform.

“There’s no place better than a UFC event to launch President Trump’s Tik Tok, where he received a hero’s welcome and thousands of fans cheered him on,” he added.

Democratic President Joe Biden signed legislation in April that could ban TikTok in the U.S., even as his campaign joined in February and has tried to work with influencers.

Trump received an enthusiastic welcome at the fight at Newark’s Prudential Center, where the crowd broke into chants of “We love Trump!” and another insulting Biden with an expletive.

It was Trump’s first public outing since a jury in New York found him guilty Thursday on 34 charges of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by covering up hush money payments made to a porn actor who claimed she and Trump had sex. Trump has maintained he did nothing wrong and plans to appeal the verdict. He will be sentenced on July 11.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has used appearances at UFC fights to project an image of strength and to try to appeal to potential voters who may not closely follow politics or engage with traditional news sources. It’s also part of a broader effort to connect with young people and minority voters, particularly Latino and Black men.

TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, is another opportunity to reach those potential voters. The platform has about 170 million users in the U.S., most of whom skew younger — a demographic that is especially hard for campaigns to reach because they shun television.

As president, Trump tried to ban TikTok through an executive order that said “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned” by Chinese companies was a national security threat. The courts blocked the action after TikTok sued.

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share user data such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers with China’s government. TikTok said it has never done that and would not, if asked.

The platform was a hot topic of debate during the 2024 GOP primary campaign, with most candidates shunning its use. Many, including former Vice President Mike Pence, called for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. due to its connections with China

Trump said earlier this year that he still believes TikTok posed a national security risk, but was opposed to banning it because that would help its rival, Facebook, which he continues to criticize over his 2020 election loss to Biden.

“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” Trump told CNBC.

The legislation signed by Biden gives ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress. If it doesn’t, TikTok will be banned. Biden barred the app on most government devices in December 2022.

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His reelection campaign nonetheless uses the app, which it joined the night of the Super Bowl in February. Aides argue that in an increasingly fragmented modern media environment, the campaign must get its message out to voters via as many platforms as possible, including TikTok as well as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Biden’s “bidenhq” account currently has more than 330,000 followers and 4.5 million likes.

Trump’s appearance at Saturday’s fight came after he had sat down for an interview with Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend” that aired Sunday.

In that appearance, Trump said he was “OK” with the prospect of potential jail time or house arrest, saying it was “the way it is.’’’

But he again suggested the public might not accept such a punishment for a former president now running to return to the White House.

“I don’t know that the public would stand it, you know. I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point there’s a breaking point.”

Trump, as he has throughout the trial, maintained his innocence, saying he “did absolutely nothing wrong.”

He was asked how his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, has taken the news.

“She’s fine. But I think it’s very hard for her. I mean, she’s fine. But, you know, she has to read all this crap,” he said.

She did not appear with Trump in court at any point during his seven-week trial.

Colvin reported from Annapolis, Maryland, Weissert from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Kinnard from Chapin, South Carolina.