NEW YORK — Two days after the trade deadline had passed, Byron Buxton and Christian Vázquez, two of the most veteran players remaining in the Twins’ clubhouse, convened a team dinner.

The group dined at Morton’s steakhouse in downtown Cleveland. Over the course of the previous few days, nearly 40 percent of the active roster had been turned over, making that Saturday night a prime opportunity for group bonding.

“We wanted guys to come in and relax a bit and know it’s good to be here, be happy about yourself for being here. It’s hard to get up here,” Buxton said. “Don’t take what happened that Thursday and carry it over for weeks. Get together, have a good dinner and go out the next day.”

Though Buxton couldn’t join the group on the field, the all-star center fielder was still doing his part as a team leader in the wake of the roster shake-up. Buxton finally returned from the injured list on Monday. And though the Twins fell 6-2 at Yankee Stadium, he rejoined a group that has seemingly been playing loose and having fun since the July 31 trade deadline.

“I’ve been on the bench seeing them take the extra base, stealing bases,” Buxton said before the game. “It’s fun — we’re a young group, now even younger — to just go out and play baseball. That’s a fun thing to do.”

The center fielder picked off where he had left off before he started dealing with ribcage inflammation, hitting a home run in the sixth inning off Yankees starter Will Warren. It was his team-leading 24th of the season.

It was one of just three hits Warren gave up in a game the Twins (56-62) never led after Yankees left fielder Cody Bellinger took Zebby Matthews deep in the first inning.

Matthews, who struck out nine batters in his 5 2/3 innings, also surrendered back-to-back home runs in the third inning, all of the damage against him in the start coming with two outs.

The Twins chipped away at that three-run lead with Buxton’s home run in the sixth and one from Trevor Larnach an inning later but never came closer than that as the Yankees pulled away late in the game against the Twins’ new-look bullpen.

Keaschall honored

Luke Keaschall ended last week with his first-career walk-off home run and started this week with American League Player of the Week honors.

Keaschall returned from the injured list last weekend in Detroit. He had been out since late April because of a fractured forearm suffered when he was hit by a pitch. He picked up right where he had left off, continuing the torrid start to his career.

The rookie received the award for a week in which he hit .455 (10 for 22) with a pair of home runs, 10 runs batted in and a .455 slugging percentage. The 10 RBIs were tied for the major league lead for the week. Keaschall finished Monday 0 for 3, marking the first time in his 13-game career that he did not reached base.

“You try and be confident and go into it and try to make the most of it. But at the same time, I didn’t expect to play as well as this,” Keaschall said of his first 12 games in the major leagues. “You always expect you have to go out and compete. That’s all I’m trying to do.”

Briefly

The Twins are expected to have some form of a bullpen game on Tuesday night against the Yankees. … Former Twins great Johan Santana has been named the pitching coach for Team Venezuela in the 2026 World Baseball Classic. … The Twins are expecting outfielder Matt Wallner (paternity list) to return Tuesday.

Minnesota Twins outfielder Trevor Larnach, right, watches as fans reach for a ball hit by New York Yankees’ Cody Bellinger for a home run during the first inning of a baseball game Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Minnesota Twins pitcher Zebby Matthews reacts as New York Yankees’ Ben Rice runs the bases after hitting a home run during the third inning of a baseball game Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Hackers who targeted the city of St. Paul in a cyberattack last month published stolen data online after the city refused to pay them a ransom, Mayor Melvin Carter said Monday.

The 43 gigabytes of data largely appear to have come from a computer network drive used by the Parks and Recreation department where employees stored personal files, and is not tied to core systems like payroll or licensing, the mayor said.

Some of the files included images of employee identification cards submitted to human resources, work documents, or even “personal items like recipes.” Carter said the contents are “varied and unsystematic.”

It’s still unclear if the hackers gained access to any other city data in their attack. Since they might have more, Carter said the city should remain cautious.

“While the scope of what they published against us is far smaller than what they’ve accomplished elsewhere, the fact remains: Someone was inside our systems,” he told reporters. “Once that happens, there’s no way to guarantee that they could not have access to more.”

Data posted online

Until this point, the city had said there was no evidence that it had any data stolen.

Carter said city officials and investigators didn’t believe the hackers had any data of serious value because they didn’t attempt to sell it and instead posted it for free online.

Gov. Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard to provide the city with cybersecurity specialists, and the FBI is investigating the attack. Carter said both advised against paying a ransom.

Still, cybersecurity experts and information technology staff continue to comb through every corner of the city’s computer networks to ensure there are no remaining traces of the attack.

City officials have said there’s no evidence that resident information like names, addresses and phone numbers was affected.

Bill payment information, like credit card numbers, is generally handled by “cloud-based” applications and should not have been affected by the hack, Carter said.

Who is responsible?

City officials still haven’t shared how much money hackers demanded or the exact nature of their threats.

But the mayor confirmed that St. Paul was targeted by a ransomware variant known as “Interlock,” and that the origin of the attack is a “sophisticated, money-driven organization known for stealing and selling massive volumes of sensitive information from large corporations, hospitals and governments.”

The federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a warning about Interlock attacks on July 22. The ransomware variant was first identified in September 2024.

It’s unclear where the hackers are located, and there’s still concern that the group responsible for the cyberattack could continue attempting to extort the city.

Systems offline

St. Paul shut down its computer systems after learning of the cyberattack on July 25. Many city services have been disrupted as a result, but officials say the move was necessary to prevent hackers from doing more damage.

Many services remain offline weeks later, including the St. Paul Regional Water Services’ online payment portal. Public libraries are open, but their computers aren’t functioning, presenting a challenge for searching and organizing collections.

City human resources departments had to manually build spreadsheets in a makeshift office in order to make payroll on time, Carter said last week. The city said each employee got paid on time on Aug. 8.

Laptops in police cars also were affected, though emergency services such as 911 are still functioning.

Reset effort

In response to the attack, the city has called thousands of employees to report for in-person password changes and equipment inspections.

The effort started Sunday at 6 a.m., and the city’s goal is to process all 3,500 employees with login information by the end of Tuesday. The operation runs until 10 p.m. each night.

Employees have been reporting to a sprawling operation in the basement of Roy Wilkins Auditorium at the RiverCentre in downtown St. Paul to get new credentials.

As of around 5:30 p.m. Monday, more than 2,000 had gone through the process, according to the city.

Once a sufficient number of employees have new credentials, the city can begin reactivating systems, said Mary Gleich-Matthews, deputy chief information officer for St. Paul’s Office of Technology and Communication.

Carter said he expects that to start before the end of the week. It’s still not clear how much the effort will cost.

“If there’s a fire, we put out the fire and figure out how much the water costs later,” he said.

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By PAUL WISEMAN and DIDI TANG

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump extended a trade truce with China for another 90 days Monday, at least delaying once again a dangerous showdown between the world’s two biggest economies.

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Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he signed the executive order for the extension, and that “all other elements of the Agreement will remain the same.”

The previous deadline was set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Had that happened the U.S. could have ratcheted up taxes on Chinese imports from an already high 30%, and Beijing could have responded by raising retaliatory levies on U.S. exports to China.

The pause buys time for the two countries to work out some of their differences, perhaps clearing the way for a summit later this year between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and it has been welcomed by the U.S. companies doing business with China.

Sean Stein, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said the extension is “critical” to give the two governments time to negotiate a trade agreement that U.S. businesses hope would improve their market access in China and provide the certainty needed for companies to make medium- and long-term plans.

“Securing an agreement on fentanyl that leads to a reduction in U.S. tariffs and a rollback of China’s retaliatory measures is acutely needed to restart U.S. agriculture and energy exports,” Stein said.

Reaching a pact with China remains unfinished business for Trump, who has already upended the global trading system by slapping double-digit taxes – tariffs – on almost every country on earth.

The European Union, Japan and other trading partners agreed to lopsided trade deals with Trump, accepting once unthinkably U.S. high tariffs (15% on Japanese and EU imports, for instance) to ward off something worse.

Trump’s trade policies have turned the United States from one of the most open economies in the world into a protectionist fortress. The average U.S. tariff has gone from around 2.5% at the start of the year to 18.6%, highest since 1933, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University.

But China tested the limits of a U.S. trade policy built around using tariffs as a cudgel to beat concessions out of trading partners. Beijing had a cudgel of its own: cutting off or slowing access to its rare earths minerals and magnets – used in everything from electric vehicles to jet engines.

In June, the two countries reached an agreement to ease tensions. The United States said it would pull back export restrictions on computer chip technology and ethane, a feedstock in petrochemical production. And China agreed to make it easier for U.S. firms to get access to rare earths.

“The U.S. has realized it does not have the upper hand,’’ said Claire Reade, senior counsel at Arnold & Porter and former assistant U.S. trade representative for China affairs.

In May, the U.S. and China had averted an economic catastrophe by reducing massive tariffs they’d slapped on each other’s products, which had reached as high as 145% against China and 125% against the U.S.

Those triple-digit tariffs threatened to effectively end trade between the United States and China and caused a frightening sell-off in financial markets. In a May meeting in Geneva they agreed to back off and keep talking: America’s tariffs went back down to a still-high 30% and China’s to 10%.

Having demonstrated their ability to hurt each other, they’ve been talking ever since.

“By overestimating the ability of steep tariffs to induce economic concessions from China, the Trump administration has not only underscored the limits of unilateral U.S. leverage, but also given Beijing grounds for believing that it can indefinitely enjoy the upper hand in subsequent talks with Washington by threatening to curtail rare earth exports,” said Ali Wyne, a specialist in U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group. “The administration’s desire for a trade détente stems from the self-inflicted consequences of its earlier hubris.”

It’s unclear whether Washington and Beijing can reach a grand bargain over America’s biggest grievances. Among these are lax Chinese protection of intellectual property rights and Beijing’s subsidies and other industrial policies that, the Americans say, give Chinese firms an unfair advantage in world markets and have contributed to a massive U.S. trade deficit with China of $262 billion last year.

Reade doesn’t expect much beyond limited agreements such as the Chinese saying they will buy more American soybeans and promising to do more to stop the flow of chemicals used to make fentanyl and to allow the continued flow of rare-earth magnets.

But the tougher issues will likely linger, and “the trade war will continue grinding ahead for years into the future,’’ said Jeff Moon, a former U.S. diplomat and trade official who now runs the China Moon Strategies consultancy.

Associated Press Staff Writer Josh Boak contributed to this story.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump took unprecedented steps toward federalizing Washington, D.C. on Monday, saying it’s needed to fight crime even as city leaders pointed to data showing violence is down.

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He took command of the police department and deployed the National Guard under laws and Constitutional powers that give the federal government more sway over the nation’s capital than other cities. Its historically majority Black population wasn’t electing its own city council and mayor until 1973, when Republican President Richard Nixon signed the Home Rule Act.

The measure still left significant power to the president and Congress, though no president has exercised the police powers before.

He activated the National Guard

The Constitution calls for the creation of the District of Columbia to serve as the federal seat of power under the jurisdiction of Congress rather than any state.

While the Home Rule Act allowed for greater local control, the president can still call up the National Guard in Washington. His administration did it during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when members were later faulted for flying a helicopter too low over a crowd. The Guard was called out again during Trump’s first term on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters overran the Capitol.

Trump’s second-term moves in Washington come as the legal battle continues over his deployment of the National Guard in another Democratic-led city, Los Angeles, despite the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

His authority is less clear there, but an appeals court has so far refused to intervene. A lower-court judge was starting a trial Monday to determine whether the deployment violated another federal law.

He took over the police

Section 740 of the Home Rule Act allows for the president to take over Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department for 48 hours, with possible extensions to 30 days, during times of emergencies. No president has done so before, said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of Washington.

Trump cited a number of recent high-profile incidents, including the killing of a 21-year-old congressional intern and the beating of a DOGE staffer during an attempted carjacking.

“This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our Capitol back,” the president said.

The Democratic mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser, called the takeover “unprecedented.” She said that violent crime overall in Washington has decreased to a 30-year low, after a rise in 2023. Carjackings, for example, dropped about 50% in 2024, and are down again this year. More than half of those arrested, however, are juveniles, and the extent of those punishments is a point of contention for the Trump administration.

He didn’t specify how long it would last

It wasn’t immediately clear how long the takeover might last or exactly what it might mean. It could also face challenges in court.

Congress still has power over things like the budget and laws passed by the city council, but would have to repeal the Home Rule Act to expand federal power in the district.

It’s something a few Republican lawmakers have pushed to do, but such an overhaul would almost certainly run into steep resistance from most Democrats, making it difficult to achieve.

The law is specific to D.C., and doesn’t affect other communities around the U.S. referred to as having their own “home rule” powers in relationship to their state governments.

Hopkins said Trump’s moves in Washington could foreshadow similar tactics in other cities. “That should alarm everyone,” she said, “not just in Washington.”