Unravels

CHICAGO — Dodgers left-hander Jack Dreyer rubbed a new baseball between his hands as he walked back to the mound, a sold-out Rate Field coming alive around him.

Fireworks crackled over the center-field scoreboard. Digital pinwheels spun. Dreyer had just surrendered his second home run of the inning, transforming a low-scoring battle into a lopsided White Sox advantage.

The Dodgers’ recent bullpen problems persisted in a 6-4 loss Sunday, overshadowing a bounce-back effort from Emmet Sheehan. The Dodgers tried to come back in the ninth, but fell short.

“We’ve gotten bit by the long ball, obviously in Pittsburgh, and here tonight,” said bench coach Danny Lehmann, filling in Sunday for manager Dave Roberts while he attended his daughter’s college graduation. “But overall, it’s more the strike throwing and just getting ahead of guys and doing what they’re supposed to do.”

The Dodgers dropped the series 2-1, marking their first series loss since May 8-10 against the Braves.

Sheehan was charged with three runs in five-plus innings, a massive turnaround coming off the second-shortest start of his career, only rivaled by a planned one-inning outing at the end of last season.

Against the Angels last week, Sheehan threw 49 pitches and recorded just four outs before being pulled.

On Sunday, he didn’t give up a hit until the fourth inning.

“He got strike one and then understood when to leave the zone when he needed to,” catcher Dalton Rushing said. “He did a great job of that. I think a couple of those guys picked up on tendencies, jumped on a pitch. I felt they were good pitches. I thought he did his job today and gave us a chance to win.”

Sheehan’s velocity has been an indicator of how synced up his delivery has been on any given start this season.

Dodgers starting pitcher Emmet Sheehan delivers against the Chicago White Sox in the first inning Sunday.

(Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)

On Sunday, his 95.1-mph average fastball velocity was 0.7 mph above his season average, according to Statcast — a promising sign. Results followed.

Sheehan retired 11 of the first 12 batters he faced, just a hit batter away from perfection. With two outs in the fourth, he gave up a double to Colson Montgomery, on a low line drive up the first-base line, just out of reach of Freddie Freeman as he made a diving attempt.

Then against Braden Montgomery, Sheehan worked back from a 2-1 count for an inning-ending strikeout.

Out of Sheehan’s hand, the pitch looked like it was going to cross the plate on the inside corner, about belt high. But as Montgomery started his swing, the firm changeup veered away from his bat at a sharp downward angle.

Montgomery swung over the pitch. A fired-up Sheehan buried his fist in his glove and shouted. With that strikeout, he preserved the Dodgers’ one-run lead.

Freeman provided that run with a solo homer in the first inning. And Sheehan gave the Dodgers plenty of time to extend that lead. In the sixth inning, however, the White Sox finally got to him.

“I definitely felt better early,” Sheehan said. “And then more of the same towards the end. Just pretty frustrating.”

Sheehan’s fastball to Sam Antonacci wasn’t in a bad spot. But in an 0-2 count, he could have put it a little higher or farther inside. Antonacci drove it over the right-field fence.

A single, a stolen base and an RBI double later, Sheehan walked off the mound, the Dodgers trailing 2-1.

Just a few weeks ago, turning the ball over to the Dodgers’ bullpen was a promising move. They were still riding a franchise-record streak of 38 consecutive scoreless innings.

Lately, however, it’s been a rocky ride. The bullpen entered Sunday with a 6.71 ERA since ending that scoreless streak on May 25. Only the Giants and Rockies produced a worse mark over that stretch.

None of the Dodgers’ relievers have been dominant in recent games. Tanner Scott has been credited with three saves but also two losses. Kyle Hurt’s ERA has risen from 0.60 to 4.22. Dreyer, who went 10 straight games without giving up a run before landing on the injured list with left shoulder discomfort, has surrendered five home runs in seven appearances since returning on May 31.

Dreyer gave up three runs and three hits. Then Blake Treinen and Jonathan Hernández held the White Sox the rest of the way.

The Dodgers tacked on three more runs, on a sacrifice fly and an RBI double from Alex Freeland, and a solo homer from Mookie Betts. They stranded runners at the corners in the ninth.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is backing away from plans to create a $1.8-billion fund to compensate people who claim the government was weaponized against them, a retreat that comes amid a cascade of legal setbacks and a revolt within members of the Republican Party.

But Senate Democrats say the concession is not enough, and are pushing legislation to ensure no president can ever attempt the creation of such a fund again.

“If Republicans are serious about ending this brazenly corrupt scheme, they should have no problem voting for legislation banning any president from creating such a slush fund in the future,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote Monday in a post on X.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) added that Democrats plan to force a vote on a measure to ensure that Trump and Republicans are “truly abandoning this corrupt scheme.”

“Trump’s word is nowhere near enough,” Schumer wrote on X. Earlier in the day, Schumer vowed to force a floor vote to make Republican lawmakers take a public stance on the issue.

Schiff, along with Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, introduced the “Drain the Slush Fund Act” on Monday. The bill, if approved, would bar any payout arising from a lawsuit filed by a president or vice president, language that is designed to permanently foreclose the fund, or anything like it, from being put in place by a future administration.

The White House did not comment on the president’s thinking. But in a statement, the Department of Justice said the decision to scrap the fund was in response to a federal judge’s ruling last week that temporarily blocked payouts from the fund while legal challenges remain pending. The department said it “disagrees strongly” with the move, but stopped short of saying it would challenge the decision.

“This fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise,” the statement read. “The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was nominated to the bench by President Clinton, a Democrat, has scheduled a June 12 hearing for argument on whether to extend the order blocking the fund.

While the court ruling is not permanent, the unraveling over the fund is a notable defeat for Trump, who has cast it as a long-overdue reckoning for Americans he says were targeted by “an evil, corrupt and weaponized Biden administration.” For Republicans who publicly criticized the fund, it may come as a relief as the concept had been widely seen as a political liability heading into the midterm elections.

The Department of Justice created the fund to settle a lawsuit Trump personally brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The settlement also includes a clause permanently barring the IRS from pursuing any tax claims against Trump and his businesses that were filed before May 19 — a provision that, according to an analysis by Forbes, would save Trump and his family more than $600 million.

The White House declined to comment on whether the administration would also make changes to the tax immunity clause. The Democrats’ bill does not address that provision.

“Congress doesn’t need to pass a law to remind the Acting Attorney General [Todd Blanche] that he doesn’t have the authority to grant a blanket pardon for tax crimes by the president, much less when the AG is his personal attorney,” a Schiff spokesperson said in a statement. “The attempt at IRS immunity is corrupt and undoubtedly illegal — and we look forward to seeing it exposed as a fraud.”

Beyond Trump’s own legal disputes with the IRS, the fund was structured to accept claims from anyone who said they had been targeted by the government, a category the administration made clear could include those who were convicted for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump pardoned and commuted the prison sentences of 1,500 people who were charged in connection with the attack, and neither he nor Vice President JD Vance ruled out the possibility that those individuals would be able to receive money from the fund.

That possibility immediately ran into trouble with lawmakers. Senate Republicans, many of whom were caught off guard by the arrangement, publicly revolted against the fund and derailed plans to vote on legislation to fund Trump’s immigration crackdown amid the deep disagreement.

A closed-door meeting last month between Blanche and GOP senators grew heated, with lawmakers demanding answers the administration was seemingly not prepared to give.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who attended the meeting, described it as “angry” in an episode of his podcast last month. Cruz said that roughly 45 Senate Republicans had attended and estimated that “at least half of them were blasting the attorney general.” Based on those reactions, Cruz predicted the administration would need to amend its position on the fund.

“We will see the administration announcing at a minimum a modification of this, because if they don’t they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate,” he said.

The fund also led to criticism outside of Congress. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who served in Trump’s first administration, told NBC News in an interview Sunday that it was a “bad idea from the start.”

“I would encourage the administration just to drop it,” Pence said.