Minnesota United made the addition of Julian Gressel official on Tuesday morning.

The 31-year-old right-sided player did not play for Inter Miami this season and his skills will help fill needs for the Loons. He is under contract through 2026, with a club option for 2027.

“If you were to sort of script the type of player that we need,” MNUFC coach Eric Ramsay said. He also called Gressel “a serial winner” and “a steady character.”

Gressel has played 245 matches in MLS, winning MLS Cup with Atlanta, Columbus and the Supporters Shield with Miami last seasonA year ago, he totaled nine assists and one goal in 2,340 MLS minutes. Gressel’s lack of playing time this year was a decision from new coach Javier Mascherano.

How Loons got him

This acquisition was not a intra-league trade nor the new for-cash transfer, but rather Miami waiving Gressel and the Loons claiming his rights.

MLS rules state: “If a player with a guaranteed contract is waived, any interested MLS club will have 48 hours from the notice of Waivers to claim the player by notifying the League of the intention to claim the player and the amount of the player’s Salary Budget Charge they wish to assume. The player will be awarded based on a number of factors, including but not limited to, Waiver Order and which club is willing to absorb a Salary Budget Charge that is meaningfully higher than other clubs and at least $15,000 higher than Senior Minimum Salary.”

Gressel made $1.09 million in guaranteed compensation with Miami in 2024, according to the MLS Players Association. This move will bring down his salary for MNUFC, but where it comes down between what he was earning and the senior minimum ($104,000) won’t be known until this year’s MLSPA numbers are released.

Best position?

Gressel has not played for Miami this season, but a year ago he was primarily a right wing or right midfielder as Inter won the Supporters Shield. In 2023, he finished that season at wingback as Columbus Crew won MLS Cup.

Ramsay was noncommittal on Gressel’s best spot in Minnesota, but narrowed it down to right wingback or a right-sided central midfielder, or No. 8, which would help with Hassani Dotson sidelined months with a knee injury

“I feel like the plus point for (Gressel) is that he can do both,” Ramsay said. “I think he’s a player that does take a lot of pride in his versatility, from the conversation I had with him.”

Ramsay said if the club isn’t going to fill all its senior-roster spots, then versatility within the squad is a bigger necessity. If Gressel can fill in at right wingback, Ramsay said a “knockdown effect” would be current right wingback Bongi Hlongwane might spend time at his more-natural position, forward.

“I wouldn’t say, difficulties that we have on that (right) side, but … it’s an obvious point in our squad where you’d say that we between right-sided (No. 8) and wingback, having lost Hassani,  we could do with some options and competition and depth,” Ramsay said.

Ramsay also sees Gressel providing right-footed service on set pieces, something the team doesn’t currently have in the cupboard.

Known commodity

One of the Loons best teams — the 2019 edition — was constructed, in part, from within MLS with Ozzie Alonso coming from Seattle and Ike Opara from Kansas City. The Gressel move is from that same playbook from within the league.

It’s the opposite of how the Loons tried to add diminutive right back Matus Kmet from Slovakia last summer. He never fit and is out on loan in Poland this season.

“That’s really important for us, that we we want to bring players in that you can say with certainty are going to have a level of influence on the team’s success,” Ramsay said. “… The fact that he’s not played for five or six months with any real regularity, doesn’t seem like it’ll be an issue. I think he’s a guy who will have looked after himself really well and should be able to hit the ground running.”

By MAE ANDERSON, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Major orders canceled. Containers of products left stranded overseas. No roadmap for what comes next.

The Trump administration raised tariffs on goods from China to 145% in early April. Since then, small business owners who depend on imports from China to survive have become increasingly desperate as they eye dwindling inventory and skyrocketing invoices.

President Donald Trump seemed to back down somewhat last week when he said he expected the tariffs to come down “substantially.” That helped set off a rally in the stock market. But for small businesses that operate on razor-thin margins, the back and forth is causing massive upheaval. Some say they could be just months from going out of business altogether.

The Massachusetts family-owned game company

Game makers are particularly susceptible to the tariffs since the majority of games and toys sold in the U.S. are made in China, according to The Toy Association.

WS Game Co., based in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, is a family-owned business that licenses Hasbro board games like Monopoly, Candy Land and Scrabble and creates deluxe versions of them. Its most popular line of games come in boxes that look like vintage books and sell for $40.

The company’s games were featured in Oprah’s Favorite Things list in 2024 and sold in 14,000 stores in North America, from big national chains to mom-and-pop stores, said owner Jonathan Silva, whose father founded the company in 2000.

All of WS Game’s production is done in China. The tariffs have brought the past 25 years of healthy growth to a screeching halt.

Over the past three weeks, WS Game has had three containers of finished games, worth $500,000, stranded in China. It lost orders from three of the largest U.S. retailers totaling $16 million in business. And there’s not much Silva can do about it.

“As a small business, we don’t have the runway or the capabilities to move manufacturing on a whim,” said Silva, who has 22 employees. He said the tariffs have “disrupted our business and put us on the verge of insolvency” and estimates he has about a four-month runway to stay afloat if nothing changes.

“We’re really hoping that cooler heads prevail,” he said.

Artificial flowers in Kentucky

Jeremy Rice co-owns House, a home-décor shop in Lexington, Kentucky, that specializes in artificial flower arrangements for the home. About 90% of the flowers his business uses are made in China.

This undated photo provided by Jeremy Rice shows Rice at House, a home-décor shop that specializes in artificial flower arrangements for the home. in Lexington, Ky. (Jeremy Rice via AP)

Rice uses dozens of vendors. The largest are absorbing some of the cost of the tariffs and passing on the rest. One vendor is raising prices by 20% and another 25%. But Rice is expecting smaller vendors to increase prices by much higher percentages.

House offers mid-range artificial flowers. A large hydrangea head will retail for $10 to $16, for example. China is the only place that manufacturers higher quality silk flowers. It would take a vendor years to open a factory in a different country or move production somewhere else, Rice said.

Rice ordered his holiday décor early this year. But even after stocking up ahead of the tariffs, he only has enough everyday floral inventory in to last two to three months.

“After that, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said.

Rice is concerned that the trade war will wipe out a bunch of mom-and-pop stores, similar to what happened in the Great Recession and the pandemic.

“There’s nowhere to turn, there’s nothing to do,” he said.

Tea in Michigan

A tea shop in a Michigan college town is also caught in the middle of the ongoing tariff fight.

“It’s basically just put a big pit in my stomach,” said Lisa McDonald, owner of TeaHaus, located in Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan. McDonald has owned TeaHaus for nearly 18 years and sells tea to customers across the U.S.

Owner Lisa McDonald packages a loose leaf tea orders at the TeaHaus Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Ann Arbor, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Americans drank about 86 billion servings of tea in 2024, according to the Tea Association of the U.S.A.. Almost all of that is imported since tea isn’t grown in the U.S. at scale, due to factors ranging from climate to cost.

McDonald imports loose-leaf tea from China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka and other countries. She says her customer base is “from all over the U.S. and the world.” But she worries there is a limit to what they’ll spend. Her premium teas can cost up to $33 for a 50-gram bag.

“I don’t think I can charge $75 for a 50-gram bag of tea, no matter how amazing that tea is,” she said.

McDonald understands Trump’s rationale for wanting to use tariffs to spur U.S. manufacturing but says it doesn’t apply to the tea industry.

“We can’t grow tea in the U.S. to the extent that we need. We can’t just flip the industry and ‘make tea great again’ in America. It just can’t happen,” she said.

Car accessories in Oklahoma

Jim Umlauf’s business, 4Knines, based in Oklahoma City, makes vehicle seat covers and cargo liners for dog owners and others. To do so, he needs raw materials such as fabric, coatings and components from China.

Umlauf has explored manufacturing in countries other than China since 2018, when Trump first instituted a 25% tariff on goods from China, but has run into complications. In the meantime, 4Knines absorbs the extra cost, which Umlauf says has limited its growth and squeezed its margins.

Now, the new tariffs make it nearly impossible to do business. The demand is there, but the company can’t afford to bring over more products.

“We only have a limited amount of inventory left, and without some relief, we’ll run out soon,” Umlauf said.

As a small business owner who has worked hard to develop a high-quality brand, create jobs and contribute to the community, Umlauf is frustrated. He has tried to contact the White House and other decision-makers to ask for small business support. But he’s gotten zero response.

“It’s time for policymakers to consider the full impact of trade policies not just on stock prices or global competitiveness, but on the real people running small businesses,” he said.

AP videojournalist Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.

By SEAN MURPHY and MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Catholic Church in Oklahoma wants taxpayers to fund an online charter school that “is faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ.” The Supreme Court could well approve.

St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would be the nation’s first religious charter school. A ruling from the high court allowing public money to flow directly to a religious school almost certainly would lead to others.

Opponents warn it would blur the separation between church and state, sap money from public schools and possibly upend the rules governing charter schools in almost every state.

The court hears arguments Wednesday in one of the term’s most closely watched cases.

FILE – The Supreme Court is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

The case comes to the court amid efforts, mainly in conservative-led states, to insert religion into public schools. Those include a challenged Louisiana requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms and a mandate from Oklahoma’s state schools superintendent that the Bible be placed in public school classrooms.

Conservative justices in recent years have delivered a series of decisions allowing public money to be spent at religious institutions, leading liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to lament that the court “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.”

The justices are reviewing an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision last year in which a lopsided majority invalidated a state board’s approval of an application filed jointly by two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma.

A cross sits atop the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City on Thursday, April 17, 2025 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

The K-12 online school had planned to start classes for its first 200 enrollees last fall, with part of its mission to evangelize its students in the Catholic faith.

Oklahoma’s high court determined the board’s approval violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

The state board and the school, backed by an array of Republican-led states and religious and conservative groups, argue that the court decision violates a different part of the First Amendment that protects religious freedom. The Free Exercise Clause has been the basis of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

“A State need not subsidize private education,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in one of those decisions in 2020. “But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

The case has divided some of the state’s Republican leaders, with Gov. Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters supporting the concept of using public funds for religious schools, while Attorney General Gentner Drummond has opposed the idea and sued to overturn the virtual charter school board’s approval of St. Isidore.

A key issue in the case is whether the school is public or private. Charter schools are deemed public in Oklahoma and the other 45 states and the District of Columbia where they operate.

They are free and open to all. Just under 4 million American schoolchildren, about 8%, are enrolled in charter schools.

“Charter schools no doubt offer important educational innovations, but they bear all the classic indicia of public schools,” lawyers for Drummond wrote in a Supreme Court filing.

Those include that they receive state funding, must abide by antidiscrimination laws and must submit to oversight of curriculum and testing. But the schools also are run by independent boards that are not part of local public school systems.

“Charter schools are called public schools, but they’re totally different entities,” said Nicole Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor who is a leading proponent of publicly funded religious charter schools. Other Notre Dame professors are part of the St. Isidore legal team.

If the court finds the school is public, or a “state actor,” it could lead to a ruling against St. Isidore. If instead it determines that the school is private, the court is more likely to see this case as it did the earlier ones in which it found discrimination against religious institutions.

That the court even agreed to take on the issue now might suggest that a majority is inclined to side with St. Isidore.

The Oklahoma court is the only one that has ruled on religious charter schools and only eight justices are hearing the case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself without explanation. Barrett previously taught law at Notre Dame and is close friends with Garnett.

The current court is very familiar with private and, especially, religious education. Six justices attended Catholic schools as children and almost all the children of the justices go or went to private schools, including some religious ones.

Walters, the state schools superintendent, sees the St. Isidore case as “the next frontier” in school choice for parents. He has been an unabashed critic of the separation of church and state and sought to infuse more religion into public schools.

“I see it very clearly, that there’s been a war on Christianity and our schools have been at the epicenter of that,” said Walters, a former high school history teacher elected in 2022 on a platform of fighting “woke ideology” in public schools and banning certain books from school libraries.

“We’re going to give parents more rights in education than anywhere in the country, and that means a free ability to choose the school of your choice, whether it’s a religious education, whether it’s a charter school, public school, home school, all of the above.”

The idea of using public money to fund religious schools is antithetical to the Constitution, said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“This is religious public education, fully and directly funded by taxpayers. It’s as abject a violation of religious freedom as they come, because it forces taxpayers to fund the heart of religion, religious education for religion that’s not their own,” Laser said.

A group of Oklahoma parents, faith leaders and a public education nonprofit that also sued to block the school argue that religious charter schools in their state would lead to a drop in funding for rural public schools.

St. Isidore would lead to other religious charter schools, said Erika Wright, a mother whose two school-age children attend a rural school district in Cleveland County. “And all of those schools would be pulling from the same limited pot of money that we have for our current brick-and-mortar schools across the state.”

A decision is expected by early summer.

Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Italian cardinal at the heart of the Vatican’s “trial of the century” announced Tuesday he was withdrawing from participating in the upcoming conclave to elect a new pope for “the good of the church,” ending days of drama that had overshadowed the proceedings.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu’ s status has dominated discussions in the days after Pope Francis’ death amid questions about whether he would participate in the conclave to elect Francis’ successor or not.

After his 2020 downfall, Becciu had said he would not participate in any future conclave. But in recent days he had asserted he had a right to enter the Sistine Chapel with other cardinals on May 7.

On Tuesday, the 76-year-old Italian issued a statement through his lawyers that said: “Having at heart the good of the church, which I have served and will continue to serve with fidelity and love, as well as to contribute to the communion and serenity of the conclave, I have decided to obey as I have always done the will of Pope Francis not to enter the conclave while remaining convinced of my innocence.”

Becciu was once an influential Vatican chief of staff who was a leading papal contender himself. But he fell from grace in 2020 when Francis forced him to resign his job as head of the Vatican’s saint-making office and his rights as a cardinal because of allegations of financial misconduct.

Becciu denied wrongdoing but was put on trial in the Vatican criminal court and convicted of finance-related charges in December 2023. He is appealing the conviction and 5 1/2-year prison sentence and had participated in the pre-conclave meetings, including on Monday.

Becciu’s withdrawal doesn’t affect the Vatican’s official statistics about the conclave because internally it never considered him eligible to vote. There remain 135 cardinal electors, though Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed Tuesday that two had formally announced they weren’t coming due to health reasons, bringing the number of electors down to 133.

Becciu is under the age limit of 80 and technically eligible to vote, but the Vatican’s official statistics list him as a “non-elector.”

The Vatican document regulating a conclave, known by its Latin name Universi Dominici Gregis, lays out the criteria for electors, making clear that cardinals under 80 have the right to elect the pope, except those who have been “canonically deposed or who with the consent of the Roman Pontiff have renounced the cardinalate.” It adds that after a pope has died, “the College of Cardinals cannot readmit or rehabilitate them.”

There has never been any clarity on what exactly Becciu renounced or how: The one-line statement issued by the Vatican press office on Sept. 24, 2020, said merely that Francis had accepted Becciu’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints “and his rights connected to the cardinalate.” There is no indication he has been sanctioned canonically.

Italian daily Domani reported last week that during the initial pre-conclave discussions, Becciu was presented with two letters signed by Francis before he died saying he should not participate in the conclave. Becciu’s reference to Francis’ will in his statement Tuesday suggests that the letters were the tipping point that convinced him to withdraw from the vote.

Becciu rose to prominence and power under conservative Pope Benedict XVI and is very much affiliated with the conservative Vatican old guard. While he initially became a close adviser to Pope Francis, Becciu’s subsequent downfall at the hands of Francis might suggest he would have voted for someone keen to undo some of Francis’ reforms.

After he forced Becciu’s resignation, Francis visited Becciu on occasions and allowed him to participate in the life of the Vatican. But Francis also changed Vatican law to allow the city state’s criminal tribunal to prosecute him.

Questions, meanwhile, have continued to swirl about the integrity of the trial that convicted Becciu and eight others. During the proceedings, the court heard that Francis intervened on several occasions on behalf of the prosecutors and that the prosecution’s prime witness against Becciu was coached and manipulated by outsiders.

Defense lawyers discovered that the pope had secretly issued four decrees during the investigation to benefit prosecutors, allowing them to conduct intercepts and detain suspects without a judge’s warrant.

Lawyers cried foul, arguing such interference by an absolute monarch in a legal system where the pope exercises supreme legislative, executive and judicial power violated their clients’ fundamental rights and robbed them of a fair trial.

The tribunal rejected their objections, but in recent weeks even more evidence has emerged about the outside manipulation of the witness and apparent collusion with Vatican prosecutors and gendarmes to target Becciu.

The appeal is scheduled to begin in September.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.