NEW YORK (AP) — Pete Alonso ended the longest home run drought of his career with a two-run shot and the New York Mets took advantage of some shoddy Los Angeles Dodgers defense in a 3-1 victory Sunday night.
Shohei Ohtani hit a leadoff homer — hours after throwing 22 pitches of live batting practice in a significant rehab step — but that was all Los Angeles could muster against Kodai Senga (5-3) and three relievers.
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New York Mets pitcher Reed Garrett, left, and Pete Alonso, right, celebrate after a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani watches his solo home run during the first inning of a baseball game against the New York Mets, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
New York Mets pitcher Kodai Senga throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
New York Mets' Pete Alonso reacts after hitting a two-run home run during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
New York Mets' Pete Alonso watches his two-run home run during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A hustling Juan Soto contributed an RBI groundout and a difficult running catch in deep right field to help New York take two of three from the Dodgers after losing to them in six games in last year's National League Championship Series.
Los Angeles committed a season-high four errors, two of which led to all three Mets runs.
Alonso homered in the first off hard-luck loser Landon Knack (2-2), who permitted one earned run and four hits in six innings for the NL West leaders. He struck out five, walked none and set down 11 straight during one stretch.
The slugger connected on the next pitch after third baseman Max Muncy booted a two-out grounder by Soto, who beat a rushed throw to first.
It was the 236th career homer and 10th this season for Alonso, who had gone 16 games and 65 at-bats without a longball — both career worsts.
Senga struck out five and walked four in 5 1/3 innings of five-hit ball. He retired cleanup batter Will Smith on a bases-loaded grounder to end the fifth.
Ryne Stanek induced an inning-ending double play in the sixth, Max Kranick pitched two perfect innings and Reed Garrett worked a one-hit ninth for his fifth major league save and first this season.
Center fielder Tyrone Taylor made a terrific defensive play to stop the Dodgers' early momentum in the first. Already leading 1-0, they had runners at second and third with nobody out when Smith sent a flyball to shallow right-center. Taylor sprinted in and to his left to make the catch, then threw out Mookie Betts at the plate for a double play. Betts was initially ruled safe, but the call was overturned following a replay challenge.
Senga went 202 batters and a career-best eight games without allowing a home run until Ohtani connected. ... New York improved to 19-6 at home, the top mark in the majors. ... Soto got his seventh stolen base, matching his total last year with the Yankees.
Dodgers RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto (5-3, 1.86 ERA) pitches Monday night in Cleveland against RHP Gavin Williams (4-2, 3.94).
New York RHP Clay Holmes (5-3, 3.13 ERA) starts Monday at home in the opener of a three-game series against Chicago White Sox RHP Adrian Houser (1-0, 0.00), who pitched for the Mets last year before getting released on July 31.
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New York Mets pitcher Reed Garrett, left, and Pete Alonso, right, celebrate after a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani watches his solo home run during the first inning of a baseball game against the New York Mets, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
New York Mets pitcher Kodai Senga throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
New York Mets' Pete Alonso reacts after hitting a two-run home run during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
New York Mets' Pete Alonso watches his two-run home run during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
President Donald Trump is testing his midterm message on the economy in a toss-up congressional district in New York, even as voters largely disapprove of his stewardship. The event's promoted focus is the tax law Trump signed last year, which quadrupled the federal deduction for state and local taxes, a critical change for high-tax states like New York.
Meanwhile, Republicans are struggling to find the votes to keep supporting Trump's war with Iran. In Havana, a huge crowd of Cubans is taunting Trump while protesting the U.S. indictment former President Raúl Castro amid Trump's pressure campaign. And in Europe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing NATO allies confused by contradictory Trump administration statements.
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The secretary of state said he and other foreign ministers discussed the issue of reopening the critical waterway, and that he reiterated the need for a “Plan B” if a deal isn’t reached between Washington and Tehran.
“Someone’s going to have to do something about it, okay?” Rubio said. “They’re not just going to voluntarily reopen the straits in that scenario.”
Rubio said he received lots of “nods” from European allies when he brought it up Friday. In the same breath, Rubio confirmed what Iranian officials had been saying, that progress is being made in the negotiations.
“I wouldn’t exaggerate it and I wouldn’t diminish it,” he said. “But there’s more work to be done.”
Rubio says America’s NATO allies understand that eventually there will be a reduction in the U.S. troop presence in Europe as the Trump administration evaluates its force posture globally.
“I think there’s a broad recognition that there are going to be eventually less U.S. troops in Europe than there has historically been for a variety of reasons,” Rubio told reporters.
NATO allies have been confused by contradictory statements coming from Trump and his top aides, including an announcement last week that troop levels would be reduced in Poland that Trump appeared to reverse on Thursday. A previously announced troop reduction in Germany appears to be going ahead but Rubio noted that the Germans “didn’t freak out about it” because it brought the numbers back to where they were three years ago.
The U.S. secretary of state has met with his NATO foreign minister counterparts in Sweden and reiterated U.S. demands for Europe and Canada to increase their defense spending and military industrial capabilities.
In meetings with his colleagues in Helsingborg on Friday, Rubio said the U.S. remains committed to NATO but said the force posture of American troops in Europe is contingent on what allies contribute. The alliance has been jolted by Trump’s abrupt decisions on troop deployments.
Trump has expressed strong dissatisfaction with some allies and their reluctance or refusal to assist in the war with Iran. Rubio said the president’s views and “frankly, disappointment at some of our NATO Allies and their response to our operations in the Middle East, they are well documented” and need to be addressed by NATO leaders at their summit in Turkey in July.
While the president’s handpicked candidates are winning GOP primaries, many are untested heading into general elections this fall. Trump’s own approval rating sits at a low point, and he’s spending his political capital, alienating would-be allies and threatening to detail GOP priorities.
Trump’s announcement of nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for people he believes were wrongly prosecuted blindsided senators already fuming over his push for $1 billion to provide security for his new White House ballroom. The audacity of the arrangement proved too toxic for the Senate to bear.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called it “stupid on stilts” and a “payout for punks.”
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader.
Voting on a roughly $70 billion budget package that would fuel Trump’s immigration and deportation operations for the remainder of his presidential term, into 2029, was postponed until Congress resumes next month. That blows Trump’s June 1 deadline to have it on his desk.
Trump shrugged when asked during an Oval Office event if he was losing control of the Senate.
“I really don’t know,” the president said.
And it wasn’t just the Senate. For the first time this year, enough Republican House members broke ranks to signal support for a war powers resolution from Democrats that’s designed to halt Trump’s military action in Iran. House Speaker Mike Johnson postponed the voting to avoid confronting the president.
Trump’s political revenge tour met its potential match this week as angry Republican senators, pushed to a breaking point by his seemingly insatiable and outlandish demands — particularly a $1.776 billion fund for Jan. 6 rioters and others he believes were wrongly prosecuted — did the unthinkable.
They simply refused, closed up shop, and went home.
The moment was as rare as it was daring, a sudden flex from the Congress that has become a shell of its former self as a coequal branch, the Republican majority almost always more willing to accommodate the Republican president than to confront him.
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Rubio says America’s NATO allies understand that eventually there will be a reduction in the U.S. troop presence in Europe as the Trump administration evaluates its force posture globally.
“I think there’s a broad recognition that there are going to be eventually less U.S. troops in Europe than there has historically been for a variety of reasons,” Rubio told reporters.
NATO allies have been confused by contradictory statements coming from Trump and his top aides, including an announcement last week that troop levels would be reduced in Poland that Trump appeared to reverse on Thursday. A previously announced troop reduction in Germany appears to be going ahead but Rubio noted that the Germans “didn’t freak out about it” because it brought the numbers back to where they were three years ago.
The U.S. secretary of state has met with his NATO foreign minister counterparts in Sweden and reiterated U.S. demands for Europe and Canada to increase their defense spending and military industrial capabilities.
In meetings with his colleagues in Helsingborg on Friday, Rubio said the U.S. remains committed to NATO but said the force posture of American troops in Europe is contingent on what allies contribute. The alliance has been jolted by Trump’s abrupt decisions on troop deployments.
Trump has expressed strong dissatisfaction with some allies and their reluctance or refusal to assist in the war with Iran. Rubio said the president’s views and “frankly, disappointment at some of our NATO Allies and their response to our operations in the Middle East, they are well documented” and need to be addressed by NATO leaders at their summit in Turkey in July.
“Who do they think they are to judge Raúl?” Gerardo Hernández asked as the crowd cheered. He’s one of five Cubans accused of being a spy who was imprisoned and later released by the U.S. in 2014.
“For the United States, the law is a tailor-made suit,” he said before punching the air with this fist, to a shout of “Viva Raúl!”
The crowd responded to his call: “Homeland or death, we will vanquish!”
Thousands of people have crowded along Havana’s famed seawall to decry the U.S. indictment. Attendees include daughter, Mariela Castro, and his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro. Salsa songs with biting anti-Trump lyrics are booming across the old city.
The Castro indictment has many thinking the Trump administration is following a playbook it used to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a military operation in January. Maduro is now imprisoned in the U.S. on federal drug trafficking charges and has pleaded not guilty.
The U.S. military touted the arrival of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier group for maritime exercises in the Caribbean Sea as the charges against Castro were announced. But professor William LeoGrande, a Latin America specialist at American University, warned against assumptions that a Maduro-like extraction would succeed in Cuba.
“The United States certainly has the military capability to seize Raúl Castro, just as they seized Maduro, although it would probably be more costly,” LeoGrande said. But Castro has been retired for almost a decade. “He still has influence and the leadership seeks his opinion on major decisions, but he is not running the government on a day-to-day basis. If the US were to abduct him, it would not change the operations of government, unlike what happened in Venezuela.”
A huge crowd of Cubans rallied Friday outside the U.S. Embassy in Havana to honor former President Raúl Castro and to protest the Trump administration’s criminal indictment.
“The Cuban people reaffirm that neither threats, nor blockade, nor energy embargo, nor false accusations will be able to break the will of an entire people in defense of their Revolution,” read a statement published by state media.
Raúl Castro has rarely appeared in public since stepping down and handing over to President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who was joined by military leaders at the rally.
Castro was last seen surrounded by tens of thousands of people at a state-organized rally on May 1.
The Trump administration has approved a modest $108 million arms sale to Ukraine that will help the country maintain and sustain its midrange air defense missile system.
The State Department announced the sale of ground-to-air Hawk missile components, spare parts and logistic support late Thursday. The administration has notably reduced military support for Ukraine over the past 18 months as it seeks to mediate an agreement with Russia to end the conflict.
The sale “will improve Ukraine’s capability to meet current and future threats by further equipping it to conduct self-defense and regional security missions with a more robust integrated air defense capability,” the department said in a statement.
Republicans struggled Thursday to find the votes to dismiss legislation that would compel President Donald Trump to withdraw from the war with Iran, delaying planned votes on the matter into June.
The House had scheduled a vote on a war powers resolution, brought by Democrats, that would rein in Trump’s military campaign. But as it became clear that Republicans would not have the numbers to defeat the bill, GOP leaders declined to hold a vote on it. It was the latest sign of the slipping support in Congress for a war that Trump launched more than two months ago without congressional approval.
Republicans in the Senate are also working to ensure they have the votes to dismiss another war powers resolution that advanced to a final vote earlier this week, when four GOP senators supported the resolution and three others were absent from the vote.
The actions by congressional leaders showed Republicans are struggling to maintain political backing for Trump’s handling of the war.
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NATO allies and defense officials expressed bewilderment at Trump’s decision to send 5,000 U.S. troops to Poland.
“It is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told reporters at a meeting she was hosting of her NATO counterparts, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
U.S. defense officials were also confused. “We just spent the better part of two weeks reacting to the first announcement. We don’t know what this means either,” said one of two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.
NATO allies have been blindsided, despite a U.S. pledge to coordinate troop deployments. “We’re going to stay well-synchronized with our allies moving forward,” NATO’s top military officer, U.S. Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, promised on Wednesday.
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Trump on Thursday said the U.S. will send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland, stirring confusion following weeks of changing statements from Trump and his administration about reducing — not increasing — the American military footprint in Europe.
The Trump administration has said it was reducing levels in Europe by about 5,000 troops, and U.S. officials confirmed about 4,000 service members were no longer deploying to Poland. Trump’s social media announcement raises more uncertainty for European allies that have been blindsided by the changes, as the administration has complained about NATO members not shouldering enough of the burden of their own defense and failing to do more to support the Iran war.
Trump and the Pentagon have said in recent weeks that they were drawing down at least 5,000 troops in Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized what he called a lack of strategy in the war.
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Trump is heading to a toss-up congressional district in New York on Friday to test his midterm message on the economy, even as voters largely disapprove of his stewardship of it.
Trump will travel to the Hudson Valley area to appear with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who is up for reelection in what will be one of the most closely watched House races this November. The focus of the event is to promote the tax law Trump signed last year, particularly the quadrupling of the deduction for state and local taxes, which is critical in a high-tax state like New York.
The White House has been looking for more opportunities to highlight Trump’s economic accomplishments as his approval rating on the economy has slumped. About one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the economy, according to a new AP-NORC poll, down slightly from 40% at the start of Trump’s second term.
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Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, leaves after speaking to reporters outside the White House, Thursday, May 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Work continues on the construction of the ballroom at the White House, Thursday, May 21, 2026, in Washington, where the East Wing once stood, as work also begins for the upcoming UFC fight on the South Lawn. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One, Friday, May 15, 2026, as he returns from a trip to Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
