involved

LAS VEGAS — The Dodgers’ early offseason to-do list includes a meeting with top free agent Tarik Skubal, the two-time Cy Young winner who they acquired at the trade deadline this year.

Other than the Dodgers’ National League Championship Series exit, the three-month fling was as happy of a partnership as either side could have hoped.

Skubal jelled with the group immediately, becoming especially close friends with fellow lefty Blake Snell, who promised that he’d worked to recruit Skubal back this offseason. And after posting a 2.61 ERA in 10 starts, Skubal, the Dodgers’ Game 1 starter in both playoff series, limited postseason opponents to a total of three runs.

“I know that he enjoyed his time here, we loved having him, so I think that’s certainly helpful as far as these conversations go,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said Tuesday at General Managers meetings. “And outside of that, he’s earned the right to be in this position and figure out what’s best for him and his family.”

That position, while it guarantees him a highly lucrative contract, is complicated by the impending lockout. Skubal’s agent, Scott Boras, when asked during his media availability Wednesday whether he’d consider a shorter deal with a higher average annual value, said he wouldn’t discuss contract negotiations. But creativity around the structure of a deal could help counter teams’ anxieties over a possible salary cap in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement.

It’s clear already that CBA uncertainty won’t fully freeze the market in November. But executives and agents alike have expressed skepticism that the expected lockout will inspire the same kind of spending flurry that arose in 2021, the end of the last CBA cycle.

Boras, however, argued against the notion that salary cap talk could put a damper on the superstar market before Dec. 1, when the lockout is expected to go into effect.

“Much like 2021, there’s a clear intent on a group of players, and we have no reservations by any teams that they’re going to operate within their abilities and freedoms because they want they don’t want to lose to their competitors,” Boras told reporters. “They want the market to be what it is for them, and they’re utilizing their rights to compete. I think they’re very concerned about losing the opportunity to sign select, key players, and they’re pursuing it aggressively.”

The Dodgers are among the teams planning to meet with Skubal, a group that reportedly includes the Mets, Padres and others.

The Dodgers certainly have a track record of splashy offseason deals with eye-popping numbers. Look no further than last offseason, when they broke records with their signings of closer Edwin Díaz (three years, $69 million, highest AAV for a relief pitcher) and right fielder Kyle Tucker (four years, $240 million, highest present-day AAV).

Even the Dodgers’ trade-deadline acquisition of Skubal appeared to be superfluous at the time. Once two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani’s health forced him to give up on pitching for the rest of the season, however, Skubal’s addition maintained the Dodgers rotation’s status as one of the most talented in MLB history.

They were not, however, among the most aggressive teams before the last lockout. And their approach to Skubal’s free agency will hinge, in part, on how they evaluate their starting pitching needs.

That picture isn’t clear, either.

“We’ve talked about the different paths that you can go down, and what does that look like,” Gomes said. “Do you need it? I don’t know. Do you want it? Maybe. You may not know that you need it until it’s too late. So I think it’s balancing all of this, as different scenarios play out. … The floor right now is really high. We do have a good amount of depth in our pitching. So now it’s just taking into account, what makes sense for us based on different avenues of how things shake out.”

As the Dodgers project out the potential of their rotation, they can reasonably expect improvement from some of their younger pitchers. They were pleased with the step forward that right-hander Roki Sasaki took this year.

“Expect him to take another big step forward,” Gomes said, “and really become the front-line-type guy that he knows that he can be and we know he can be.”

Regardless of lefty Justin Wrobleski’s second-half regression, he earned his first All-Star nod with a dominant first half. Though right-hander Emmet Sheehan had an up-and-down season, the Dodgers continue to believe in his upside. And they expect Gavin Stone, who last pitched in the majors in 2024, to be part of the equation, after a long road back from shoulder surgery.

They still have the star power of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a two-time All-Star and 2025 World Series MVP, Snell, a two-time Cy Young winner, and Tyler Glasnow.

Ohtani’s return to the mound, however, raises the most questions. The Dodgers expect him to return to two-way duties, that much is clear. But they have yet to lay out a plan for how to keep him healthy for the season while doing so.

“I think it’s just making sure that we are taking all of the information into account and trying to set up a system that allows him to pitch and be successful and be healthy towards the end,” Gomes said. “Because we know how dominant he can be on the mound.”

The Trump administration believes Nvidia’s (NVDA) CEO, Jensen Huang, had a romantic relationship with a Chinese woman who allegedly served China’s main intelligence agency as a spy, The Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing a government memo.

Based on information

Oct. 28, 2026 9:44 AM PT

MINNEAPOLIS — The parents of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti said the federal government is shielding the immigration enforcement officers involved in their son’s killing, and no one from the government has reached out with any substantive information for nine months.

Michael and Susan Pretti on Tuesday called for the Department of Justice to hold accountable those who shot their 37-year-old son during President Trump’s ramp up in deportations targeting Minnesota. Federal prosecutors disclosed in recent court filings they had stopped sharing evidence with Minnesota authorities who are investigating the January killings of Pretti and Renee Good by federal officers.

“The federal government went on TV and lied about Alex,” said Susan Pretti, his mother. “They tried to slander his memory to cover up their crime. Not only was it wrong, it was shameful.”

Within moments of his Jan. 24 death, Trump administration officials sought to portray Pretti, a U.S. citizen and nurse at a veterans hospital, as an armed disruptor intent on doing harm to federal agents when he brought his own gun to a Minneapolis street where officers clashed with protesters. Kristi Noem, the then-Homeland Security secretary, painted the Veterans Administration hospital nurse as a domestic terrorist who violently resisted federal agents. Court records show he had no criminal record.

Video shot by bystanders that day showed Pretti only had a mobile phone in his hand. No footage has since emerged showing him brandishing a weapon or attacking federal agents in the moments before he was killed.

The Prettis spoke Tuesday at a news conference organized by an attorney representing the family, calling their treatment by the Trump administration “cruelty.” They said they decided to speak out after being “stonewalled” by U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota, U.S. Atty. Dan Rosen.

“At every turn, they have ignored us, misled us, and shielded Alex’s killers,” said Michael Pretti, his father. “We are a family who love this country. We trust in the institutions of this country. We believe in the rule of law — and that people should be held accountable through that law.”

After months of reaching out to Rosen’s office, the federal prosecutor agreed to meet with them in July. But the family and their attorney, Steve Schleicher, said that meeting raised more questions than answers, with Rosen refusing to provide even basic information about the status of the federal investigation into Pretti’s death.

A spokesman for Rosen’s office had no comment when reached by the Associated Press on Tuesday. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Pretti family’s remarks.

Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration in March for access to materials they said they needed to independently investigate the shootings of Pretti and Good. The Trump administration has suggested that state prosecutors don’t have jurisdiction to investigate federal officers, while Minnesota officials have said they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself.

The state is still seeking the cellphones of the officers involved in both shootings and recordings of key interviews.

Pretti’s parents recounted how they first learned of his death when they were called by a reporter for the Associated Press.

“We learned about his death from the media as we saw him being shot repeatedly in the back after helping a woman from his community, a fellow Minnesotan, who had been shoved to the ground viciously,” Michael Pretti said. “No one from the federal government called us on that horrible day, but they did go on TV to tell lies about Alex. No one from the federal government has called us since.”

He said the videos of his son’s killing haunt his family every day.

“I think it haunts many Americans to see a U.S. citizen who was peaceful and in his community shot multiple times on the back, in the back, while on the ground,” the father said, calling his family heartbroken.

“We wish we didn’t have to be here,” he said. “We wish Alex was alive. We wish we were simply in Minneapolis to visit with Alex. For he and I to chat about cars, hiking, biking or anything that came to our mind. This administration has taken that away from us forever.”

Biesecker and Vancleave write for the Associated Press. Biesecker reported from Pittsburgh.