A Pontiac teen accused of shooting to death a Warren teen in January is scheduled for a preliminary exam in late March where evidence will be presented for a judge to determine if there’s probable cause to advance the case to Oakland County Circuit Court for possible trial.

Kqualin Isaac Douglas, 19, is charged with second-degree homicide for the death of Cornelius Traves Murphy Jr., 19, whose body was discovered on Jan. 8 near a home in the 100 block of North Jessie Street in Pontiac. A caller had reported seeing a man lying in a field and not breathing, the sheriff’s office said.

The man — subsequently identified as Murphy — had been shot in the chest, the sheriff’s office said.

Investigators said the shooting happened Jan. 7. Douglas turned himself in to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office a few weeks later.

The preliminary exam is scheduled for March 30 before 50th District Judge Ronda Fowlkes Gross.

Along with second-degree homicide, Douglas is charged with tampering with evidence, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and using a firearm in the commission of a felony. He’s held in the Oakland County Jail with bond set at $300,000.

As stated in his obituary, Murphy was the son of Cornelius T. Murphy, Sr. and Chantell Hunter. He’s also survived by eight siblings, and several other relatives and friends.

Case advances against Royal Oak man accused of ramming car with infant passengers

Days before trial was to start, psych exam ordered for woman accused of abandoning kids in squalor; seen as possible ‘delay tactic’ by defense

A pair of social media trolls  — including one who sports a “Make America Great Again” red hat  —  have been arrested for trying to light a Black woman’s boots on fire during a clash on a Manhattan street filled with racist insults, police said Thursday.

The demented duo, known online as “ScrubsNYC,” were nabbed late Wednesday, just a few hours after cops released their images and asked the public’s help tracking them down. They were wanted for a bizarre hate crime on W. 26th St. and Seventh Ave. in Chelsea on Feb. 19.

Michael Santiago, 31, and Michael James, 33, were hit with a slew of charges including attempted assault, criminal mischief and menacing, all as hate crimes, as well as aggravated harassment, arson and criminal tampering. The two suspects live in the same apartment building on the Upper East Side, according to cops.

The two approached the 54-year-old victim about 2:50 p.m. and were chatting her up when the provacateur in the MAGA hat began spewing a racist tirade that was caught on camera and posted online.

“I want to f— you right up your n—– a–,” the man in the MAGA hat screamed. “I want to f— a slave. You’re my slave. You’re my slave.”

The woman casually pulled out her own phone and began recording the creeps, throwing insults right back at them.

“Of course you do,” she said of their comments about bedding her. “I could never ’cause you’re a slave — you’re a slave to my Blackness.”

The suspect told the woman, “kiss me,” and she replied saying she “would never.”

“That’s your bitch, not me,” the woman said casually, motioning to the camera man recording the entire exchange.

At one point, one of the provacateur’s asked to kiss the victim’s pair of boots. She agreed, but when he knelt down he set one of her boots on fire with a hand-held blowtorch.

The hair on the boots were singed but the flames quickly petered out, the video shows. Cops say the $89 pair of boots were ruined.

The woman didn’t appear to notice as she continued to trade insults with the creep.

“I just burned your boot,” the provocateur said.

“Of course you did,” the victim replied.

“I want to impregnate you, let’s f—,” the MAGA hat sporting suspect said.

“Of course you want to impregnate me and contaminate my race,” she replied. “Your mother’s a f——.”

The victim reported the incident to police after she realized her $89 boots were damaged. She also gave cops images of the two suspects from her recording of the bizarre exchange.

Scrubsnyc boasts about being the “biggest streamers in New York right now” in one of their online videos.

One video shows the pair lying in traffic and angering strangers with their bizarre rants.

“Yeah, right here bro! Do something!” one angered resident screams at them on the sidewalk in one clip. “Do something! Then don’t f—ing run your mouth! Get the f— out of here!”

Many of the videos show the MAGA hat-wearing provocateur being forced to leave an apartment building or a bodega. In one quick clip, a bodega patron throws a drink at him. In another, a woman knocks the red hat off his head.

“They tell you that the city never sleeps,” Scrubsnyc wrote in the opening of one video. “But they don’t tell you about the ones who keep it awake.”

Sheriff Michael Bouchard is worried about people who want to keep tabs on federal agents for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the U.S. Border Patrol in Oakland County.

There’s confusion between the federal agents in masks and unmarked cars and undercover sheriff’s deputies assigned to the narcotics enforcement or fugitive apprehension teams, he said.

“We’ve had people show up at these high-risk (sheriff’s) raids … running up with their phones and trying to insert themselves, thinking it’s ICE,” he said. “But it’s a very dangerous situation. If a suspect opens fire, the (people with phones) would be in the middle of it.”

Deputies working undercover must wear masks and use unmarked cars for their own safety and the safety of anyone who helped them as part of a criminal investigation, Bouchard said, adding that suspects would recognize an unmasked undercover officer, make the connection with the person who helped the officer, endangering their lives.

Police dispatchers get calls every week from residents who think ICE agents were at a mall, a school or other location, “but that never happened,” he said.

Those are just a few things people don’t understand about the difference between deputies’ and ICE activities.

Another, he said, is that deputies don’t work with ICE.

“The U.S. Supreme Court held that immigration is under federal authority and it’s a federal government job,” he said. “We don’t have the authority, nor do we want the authority, to arrest someone simply for being in this country illegally. But if they’re in our custody and suspected of a crime, we will alert ICE.”

Bouchard said ICE agents would be informed when that person would be released from custody, but if federal agents are not present at that time the person would go free.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald issued a statement last week opposing the presence of ICE in the county.

She reminded people that basic constitutional rights include “the right to be free from unlawful arrest, regardless of immigration status.”

McDonald said she expected any legal violations by federal, local or county officers to be “fully and transparently investigated by independent authorities.”

Federal agents do not have absolute immunity from prosecution, according to the think tank Brennan Center for Justice, which has offices in New York and Washington D.C., however federal officials can impede state or local investigations.

After the shooting deaths of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents, federal officials opposed an investigation by Minnesota officials and would not share information with the state. Deaths during law-enforcement incidents are typically investigated by a separate, independent law-enforcement agency.

Earlier this month, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced her office would accept reports of suspected misconduct by ICE agents using an online form at https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2026/02/04/ag-nessel-launches-form-for-reporting-immigration-action-in-michigan.

What are the worst tourist traps in the world? What attractions live up to the hype?

Stasher, a company that hooks travelers up with temporary luggage storage, weighs in with its blog post, “World’s Best and Worst Tourist Attractions, Ranked.” These rankings were calculated by considering five factors: online ratings, TikTok likes, distance from an airport, the country’s safety and quality of local lodging.

Ergo, Stasher has determined the worst tourist attraction in existence is the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Located 38.1 km from the LAX airport, this sidewalk of celebrity stars had the lowest Google rating and safety score,” it writes. Other sites that supposedly suck in terms of a visitor experience include Disneyland Paris and the Dead Sea, dinged for “accessibility challenges” and “regional instability.”

Conversely, places that scored high include Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Here are the first five from each list; check out the full post for more.

Stasher’s best and worst tourist attractions in the world

Worst:

1 Hollywood Walk of Fame, L.A.

2 The Dead Sea

3 The Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

4 Great Wall of China

5 Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

Best:

1 Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

2 Colosseum, Rome

3 Eiffel Tower, Paris

4 Milford Sound, New Zealand

5 Walt Disney World, Florida

Source: stasher.com/blog/worlds-best-and-worst-tourist-attractions-ranked

As filmmaker Baz Luhrmann was deep into his work on “Elvis,” his 2022 biopic of Elvis Presley, an idea struck him: What if he wove real-life footage of Presley into concert scenes of actor Austin Butler as Elvis?

He reached out to his Elvis experts and quickly heard back.

“This wonderful man called,” Luhrmann says on a recent video call from the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. “Ernst [Mikael Jorgensen] is like the scientist of all things Elvis, and he says, ‘I think there are these lost reels.’”

Jorgensen told him that they might not be easy to get, if they’re even gettable at all, Luhrmann says.

“Unfortunately, they’re in the salt mines in Kansas where they keep all the negatives of everything,” he says of the underground vault in Kansas where many Hollywood studios store their original negatives and master copies.

It’s too expensive to go down, Jorgensen told Luhrmann. But maybe you can get to them, he added.

“I think, ‘Well, maybe I can use the footage in the showroom [scenes in Las Vegas],” Luhrmann continues. “Like to sort of deal with budget.

“We met, and it cost a lot to get down there,” he says. “About $100,000 just to go down and look.”

But what he found there was priceless: 65 boxes of never-before-seen footage from the concert documentaries “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is,” shot in 35mm anamorphic film at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in August 1970, and “Elvis on Tour,” filmed at arena shows in New York, Virginia, Florida and Texas in 1972.

Angie Marchese, vice president of archives and exhibits at Graceland, came up with a few more boxes of unseen footage, a stash of Super 8 movies of Elvis that included rare footage of Elvis with his wife, Priscilla Presley, and only child, Lisa Marie Presley.

Now, Luhrmann had 59 hours of extremely rare footage and the irresistible opportunity to do much more than he’d initially considered.

“And then we find this half hour of audio of Elvis just talking about his life,” Luhrmann says of the epiphany that he and longtime editor Jonathan Redmond experienced as they worked through the archival negatives. “I said, ‘This is it. We’ve got to let Elvis just tell his own story.’

“Because Elvis stuff is always someone telling you about it,” he continues. “That was the light bulb moment. It was that and then all the song choices that help tell the story, you know?”

“EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” opened in IMAX theaters on Friday, Feb. 20, and opens in movie theaters everywhere on Friday, Feb. 27.

It’s a remarkable look at Elvis, the untouchable icon restored to his flesh-and-blood humanity through a forgotten trove of film footage that had sat for decades in a vault hundreds of feet below the Kansas plains.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Luhrmann talks about why he wants everyone to see it on the biggest screen possible, what it took to restore the film and audio, how he fell for Elvis as a boy growing up in Australia, and more.

Q: So you must be a busy guy this week.

A: I’m good, man. It’s like “EPiC” weekend, so you do everything you can. By the end, you just hope enough people come to see the man on the big screen.

Q: I saw it earlier this week in IMAX, and it’s so impressive. People are going to come see this.

A: I hope so. I love the fact that you saw it in IMAX. I’m really glad you took the time because I just think the nature of the subject is there’s no screen big enough for Elvis, you know?

Q: So tell me how you started to explore all those boxes of film.

A: Well, we bring the stuff back to Warner’s, and it smells so strongly of vinegar, which means it’s falling apart. And some is missing, and some is mislabeled, and there’s no sound. So the first thing we do is I convince Warner’s to scan it because it’s going to disappear. Then we spent two years finding mag track [magnetic tape used to sync the audio track to the film images]

We were able to get the mag track, which gave us voices and the band. But a lot of the micing on the orchestra, the Sweets [backing vocalists the Sweet Inspirations], and the gospel singers was a bit up and down.

We wanted to do it in five months. It took two years to sync the sound with the pictures.

Q: Your new film – is that all stuff that’s never been seen before? Or does it include material from the original concert films?

A: Yeah, that’s a good question. There will be some bits that are in the previous doc, but there’s a lot in there where people think, “Oh, I’ve seen that before.” And they might have seen that, but they wouldn’t have seen that camera or that take or that night. [Eleven cameras simultaneously shot performances for the 1972 movie.]

And if you notice, his costume changes all the time, and we didn’t care about that. We didn’t care that in one song we got six versions. The third thing is they would have seen online and on YouTube lots of bootleg. There’s a huge black market in stolen stuff. So even with the sound, sometimes we had deal with gangsters in carparks to get a little bit of missing sound.

There are a few actual bits where we’ve gone, “Ah, that’s what we need to join that to those other two shots [by inserting a piece from the ’70s films between newly discovered footage]. It’s very small. I don’t know what the percentage is.

Q: Watching the movie, I was struck by how real and how human he seemed here.

A: That’s it, that’s it. Like he says in the film, there’s the image, and there’s the man. When you see as much material as I have, you really realize that there’s the humor and the goofiness, too. I think that’s him disarming everyone so they get past the icon and they see the man.

Q: What else struck you as you worked through the footage?

A: Some things really jumped out. There’s some things we couldn’t use because it just didn’t have the focus of the story. You realize he just kind of hung with people, and he’s very human, very empathetic, very polite. And he’s always goofing, because I think he’s just damn shy, and he’s trying to disarm everyone.

It’s like Whitney Houston said. Her mom [Cissy Houston] was in the original Sweets the year before. And she meets Elvis, she was probably 10 or something. She said he walked in the room with a fur coat on, and it wasn’t like, “Hello, Mr. Elvis.” She said, you just stare. You freeze and stare. Because of the way he looks, you know? So there was a lot of that

It’s happening quite a bit actually now. People not into Elvis at all, they know the caricature. But they come out of this film, they go, “Who is this guy? I love this guy!” Because he’s human.

Q: Tell me how the unused audio of Elvis talking about his life was recorded.

A: In the tour, there’s a little bit you see, and he looks very tired. He’s talking about, “Well, I like all kinds of music,” and he talks about gospel, and he says, “Look, I’m too tired. I’ll do it in the morning.”

And when he comes back, he says, “Guys, I can’t be on camera. I’ll just talk.” So they never used the talking bit. That’s where he goes, “I got a whipping from my mother,” and that same bit is where he goes, “I was very shy, you know.” About girls liking him after he started singing.

Q: What needed to be fixed or restored in the film and the audio? And how did you go about it?

A: Yeah, one thing I want to be really clear about: there’s not a frame of AI. Some people said, ‘Oh, it’s AI.” No, no, no. There’s no AI, and there’s no visual effects. But [filmmaker] Peter Jackson, the magician, and his wonderful team at Park Road, we gave them the anamorphic.

I don’t know if you know about anamorphic 35mm, but it’s squashed. And when you stretch it, you just sort of head towards a possible 70mm. You get a lot more out of it. What [Jackson] does is, he’s able to go frame by frame and take out aberrations and really help the grain. There’s 8mm footage in that’s the size of two buildings, and it still holds up.

He’s just brilliant at that. Peter, I mean, he’s a savior of many, many things. He did it with the Beatles [the docuseries “Get Back”]. Love that piece.

And with the sound, some of it we had to do remixes, some we take three [versions of] songs and make new works because we couldn’t just do everything straight off the stage. A lot of it is. I mean, “Suspicious Minds” is just remixed.

Q: The editing is such a terrific part of storytelling. How did you and Jonathan go about that?

A: The process was once we said let him tell the story, we worked out parts. Like, “OK, now he’s going to talk about his Hollywood years, now he’s going to talk about relationships, now he’s going to talk about his feelings.”

You know, when he was asked about politics, he says, “Well, I’m just an entertainer.” They seldom play the second clip where he’s asked, “Should other people speak about their politics?” and he says, “Sure.” Then we put “In The Ghetto” and that other lovely song [“Walk a Mile in My Shoes”] where he goes “There are people on reservations and in ghettos and there but for the grace of God go you.” It’s a very empathetic song.

Then take the cut of “Poke Salad Annie,” which I think is brilliant. Jonathan is a brilliant cutter, anyway. He started with U2 when he was a kid, but he’s worked with me for years, and we make these, like, tone poems. Poetry, more than linear. The vibes of the movie. But it had to be guided by Elvis’s story, and the way we did it was by this question: What would Elvis have done?

Q: You don’t use the usual documentary talking heads – were there models for that for you?

A: The only one I can think of that I actually really enjoyed was that documentary [“Listen to Me Marlon”] where they found all these tapes that Brando did. I was a big Brando fan, and at one stage, Marlon Brando was maybe going to be in “Romeo + Juliet,” believe it or not. I have some very treasured letters from Marlon Brando.

I just loved the way you heard Marlon just talking [in the documentary]. It made you fall in love with Marlon all over again, just the way he illuminated things. [He does a quite good impression of Brando talking about Cary Grant.] I love that stuff. I just think you can’t beat it having someone actually tell their story.

Q: What was it like when you showed “EPiC” to Priscilla and Riley?

A: Actually, Priscilla’s only seeing it for the first time next week, and Riley’s about to see it, too. But I want to explain something. First of all, they were so supportive during the making of the [“Elvis” biopic]. But since then, it was a great sadness of what was a beautiful journey. [Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla Presley’s daughter with Elvis, and Riley Keough’s mother, died in January 2023.]

Right in this building, after the Golden Globes, I remember Lisa Marie saying, “Can you help me down to the car?” And of course, she was gone a few days later. [“EPiC”] is about Elvis, but for Riley, it’s about mom, and for Priscilla, it’s about her daughter. There’s some really poignant unseen 8mm in there that no one’s ever seen of Lisa Marie as a little baby, you know?

I think they need to see it in their own time. Just anywhere that suits them. I mean, I love them, so anytime, anywhere they need it, I’ll make it happen.

Q: As a boy growing up in Australia, how’d you first encounter Elvis and become such a fan?

A: We lived in a very isolated little country town. We had a gas station on the highway through it, and we had a farm. Dad was super industrious. He was in the Vietnam War. So we had artists living with us, and we did everything from command training to ballroom dancing to learning how to shoot film and process photography.

At a certain point, we [owned] the local cinema, and there were Elvis matinees every Sunday. So that was my intro, and I just thought he was the coolest guy in the world, you know? I probably think differently about “Easy Come, Easy Go” now, but then I thought, “Wow, look at that guy in that black sweater.” I wanted to be him.

Then he loomed large, but in life, I ran away and grew and [explored] opera and Bowie and all sorts of different musical forms. He was there, but not in the same way. I’m a great admirer, as I was making films, of “Amadeus,” and a lot of people wanted me to do different musical bios.

Yes, you learn about a lot about Mozart [in “Amadeus”], but it’s really about jealousy then. And I thought, well, if you want to make “Amadeus” for America, it’s Elvis because of this relationship between the Colonel [Tom Parker] and Elvis.

One is the great salesman, promoter, and the other sort of what [the Colonel] thought was a carnival act but turned out to be sort of Orpheus. Sort of Greek, mythical, very sensitive and gifted. A singer, mover, creator. Remember, Elvis didn’t have a choreographer; Elvis didn’t have a stylist.

Q: He just made that up on his own. You see him playing around and seeing what works in “EPiC.”

A: Well, as he says, “I just do what I feel.” And that’s kind of interesting, because that kept the band always having to watch him, and they never knew what he was going to do. Neither did the audience, and that makes it really spontaneous.

By Linda Gassenheimer, Tribune News Service

Chicken simmered in a tomato sauce infused with onion, green pepper, and paprika forms the comforting foundation of this Hungarian goulash.

The key to its authentic flavor is using good-quality Hungarian paprika. It’s available in both mild and hot varieties and found in most supermarkets. This rich, savory goulash is served over pappardelle, a broad, flat pasta similar to extra-wide fettuccine, perfect for catching every spoonful of sauce.

HELPFUL HINTS:

• Any type of pasta can be used.
• Any type of sliced mushroom can be used.

To save preparation time, use diced onion and green pepper found in the produce section.

COUNTDOWN:

Place water for noodles on to boil.

Make goulash.

Boil pasta.

SHOPPING LIST:

To buy: 1/2 pound cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast, 1 jar reduced sodium marinara sauce, 1 green bell pepper, 1 medium tomato,1 container sliced portobello mushrooms, 1 small container reduced fat sour cream, 1 bottle Hungarian paprika, 1 container caraway seeds, 1 package pappardelle

Staples: olive oil, onion, salt, black peppercorns

Chicken Hungarian Goulash

Recipe by Linda Gassenheimer

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1 cup diced green bell pepper
• 1 cup sliced portobello mushrooms
• 1 tablespoon Hungarian paprika or 1 1/2 tablespoons ordinary paprika
• 1 cup reduced sodium marinara sauce
• 1/2 pound cooked boneless skinless chicken breast 1/2-inch pieces
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons reduced fat sour cream
• 1 medium tomato cut into wedges

Heat olive oil in a nonstick skillet over medium high heat and add onion, green pepper and mushrooms. Saute 3 minutes. Sprinkle paprika over vegetables and saute 2 minutes. Add marinara sauce and simmer 1 minute. Add chicken and salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and serve over pappardelle. Dot the goulash with sour cream. Arrange tomatoes on the side.

Yield 2 servings.

Per serving: 369 calories (32 percent from fat), 13.0 g fat (3.0 g saturated, 4.3 g monounsaturated), 114 mg cholesterol, 38.0 g protein, 26.5 g carbohydrates, 7.1 g fiber, 132 mg sodium.

Caraway Pappardelle

Recipe by Linda Gassenheimer

• 1/4 pound pappardelle (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring a large pot with 2 to 3 quarts of water to a boil. Add the pappardelle and boil 3 to 4 minutes or according to package instructions. Drain leaving about 2 tablespoons water on the pappardelle. Toss with olive oil and caraway seeds and salt and pepper to taste. Divide in half and serve on two dinner plates with the Goulash.

Yield 2 servings.

Per serving: 262 calories (20 percent from fat), 5.8 g fat (0.8 g saturated, 2.5 g monounsaturated), no cholesterol, 8.1 g protein, 44.1 g carbohydrates, 3.0 g fiber, 3 mg sodium.

©2026 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

A criminal case has advanced for a Royal Oak man charged with felonious assault and other crimes for allegedly crashing his vehicle multiple times into another — with infant occupants — and then fleeing the scene.

The case against Brian Robert Bock, 54, was bound over to Oakland County Circuit Court on Thursday at the conclusion of a preliminary exam in Troy’s 52-4 District Court.

According to police, on Feb. 3 a woman reported that she was rear-ended while stopped at a red light at Big Beaver and Crooks roads; her car was then struck by the same vehicle multiple times before it went on the road’s shoulder to get around her and drove away.

No injuries were reported, police said.

After reviewing dash camera video from a witness, police caught up with Bock in a vehicle with heavy front-end crash damage — then arrested him.

Along with felonious assault, Bock is charged with malicious destruction of personal property valued at more than $1,000 but less than $20,000, reckless driving and failure to stop at the scene of a property damage accident. He’s held in the Oakland County Jail with bond set at $50,000.

Bock is scheduled for arraignment in the higher court on March 10.

For the MDOP charge, Bock could face up to five years in prison and a hefty fine if convicted. Felonious assault is punishable by up to four years in prison and/or a $2,000 fine; the other crimes he’s charged with are misdemeanors.

Days before trial was to start, psych exam ordered for woman accused of abandoning kids in squalor; seen as possible ‘delay tactic’ by defense

By GISELA SALOMON, JACK BROOK and SARAH RAZA

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Their family spent years opposing Venezuela’s socialist system.

The government retaliated by sending men to beat the father, a state oil company worker whom it accused of being uncooperative. Other relatives were threatened.

The situation became so untenable that the family fled the country for the United States in 2021 after it obtained refugee status, according to one of the daughters, a 24-year-old clothing salesperson who was interviewed by The Associated Press.

The six siblings and their parents settled in Minnesota in 2023, living peaceful lives until the Trump administration said it was casting new scrutiny on refugees. One priority is those admitted to the U.S. under former President Joe Biden, whom the government accuses of prioritizing quantity over detailed screening and vetting, with an initial focus on 5,600 refugees who settled in Minnesota and are not yet permanent residents, making them particularly vulnerable.

Last month, three masked officers got out of a black SUV with tinted windows outside a St. Paul apartment complex, handcuffed the Venezuelan woman and her mother and told them their legal status was under review, according to the woman, who asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Overturning years of precedent, immigration authorities have arrested or questioned dozens of refugees in Minnesota, attorneys and advocates say, with more detentions likely to come nationwide.

In January, a federal judge ordered a temporary halt to the arrest and detention of refugees in Minnesota while a lawsuit challenging the “revetting” continues. The judge ordered the immediate release of all refugees detained in Minnesota, and those taken to Texas.

Three refugees told The Associated Press that whatever happens, the rounds of inconclusive interviews with immigration authorities well after they thought their status was safe has them questioning their futures in the U.S. and living in constant fear.

The young woman from Venezuela hasn’t returned to her job at a clothing factory. A man who fled persecution in Myanmar won’t walk on the streets of Minneapolis without a letter from his church appealing for immigrants to “be treated humanely.” A Congolese refugee arrested in St. Paul despite her refugee status says “everything that’s happened feels like a movie.”

A change in US treatment of refugees

Welcoming refugees has been a source of bipartisan agreement in the U.S. since Congress passed the Refugee Act with overwhelming support in 1980.

The act helped make refugee applications some of the immigration system’s most heavily scrutinized. Government decisions that someone was persecuted for who they are or what they believe are rarely second-guessed, and revisiting refugee status that’s already been granted is a major blow to legal tradition, advocates say.

“They’ve been heavily vetted and were admitted by the government with approval,” said Beth Oppenheim, chief executive officer of HIAS, a major refugee aid group.

Once a refugee is admitted to the U.S. through the resettlement program, the only way to strip them of their status is to prove that they should never have been admitted, Oppenheim said. That is why the Trump administration is interviewing people again, she said.

Matthew Tragesser, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a written statement refugees “are REQUIRED to be subject to a full inspection after a year within the United States.”

“This is not novel or discretionary; it is a clear requirement in law,” he wrote.

While it is correct that refugees must apply for green cards one year after admission — a change of status that brings a renewed layer of scrutiny — the administration is breaking with decades of tradition by revisiting initial decisions to admit people as refugees, and then detaining them while they are under review.

“Arresting, detaining, and rescreening refugees are all new changes which will inflict grave harm on vulnerable populations,” said Smita Dazzo, deputy director of U.S. programs at HIAS.

Venezuela to Minnesota to Houston and back

In January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the Venezuelan women to Houston on a flight where migrants were shackled at the wrists and ankles and forbidden from talking. The daughter said she was told she was there for green card interviews and isolated in a cold room with no food, water or anything warm to cover her. She said she refused to sign documents without an attorney present.

“They told us, ‘Your status is worthless. You’re illegal,’” she said. “What we went through is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone … We were supposed to arrive in this country with refugee status, and we thought we would be protected here. But right now, at this moment, it is quite the opposite.”

The women were released after successfully filing habeas corpus petitions in federal court, part of a flood of last-ditch attempts at freedom under a Trump policy denying bond hearings in immigration court. Friends of their attorney drove them back to Minnesota at their own expense. Since then, the younger woman has been too afraid to leave the house.

The pastor who received a letter and went to the interview

Saw Ba Mya James, a 46-year-old ethnic Karen father of three who fled military persecution in Myanmar, arrived in St. Paul last year after obtaining refugee status with help from a local church.

Despite a pending green card application, the Anglican pastor did not attend church for weeks after friends advised him to avoid going outside.

“I was told to stay at home, so I listened, and I prayed to God with my family,” James said.

James received a letter Feb. 2 ordering a “post-admissions refugee reverification” at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services St. Paul field office, according to a copy reviewed by The Associated Press.

During an interview that lasted several hours, an officer pressed James with questions he said he already addressed extensively before being admitted to the U.S. The officer said the review was needed because an inexperienced employee handled James’ initial vetting.

Within two weeks of the interview, James got another letter asking that he and his family provide fingerprints, which his attorney took as a positive sign.

Still, James remains wary of being detained. He faithfully carries his church sponsors’ letter appealing for him and other immigrants to “be treated humanely as fellow image-bearers of God.”

The Congolese refugee arrested arriving at work

A Congolese woman settled in the Twin Cities area in November 2024 with refugee status, working in the hospitality business as the breadwinner for her husband and four children.

She said an immigration officer approached her parked car when she arrived for work at 7 a.m. on Jan. 14 in St. Paul, saying he knew her name and that she was a refugee. After telling her to exit the vehicle to answer questions, he handcuffed her despite her efforts to show a work authorization document and identification.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears reprisals, was flown to Houston to be questioned in detail about her experiences in the Congo, Uganda and the United States. She and other refugees refused to sign documents to be sent back to their home countries. She was released Jan. 18 without any ID documents to book a flight to Minneapolis. A manager at her company flew to Houston and drove her 17 hours back home.

“If I told you I’m feeling OK, I’d be lying to you,” she said.

Salomon reported from Miami.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY and KAITLYN HUAMANI, AP Technology Writers

Social media addiction has been compared to casinos, opioids and cigarettes.

While there’s some debate among experts about the line between overuse and addiction, and whether social media can cause the latter, there is no doubt that many people feel like they can’t escape the pull of Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms.

The companies that designed your favorite apps have an incentive to keep you glued to them so they can serve up ads that make them billions of dollars in revenue. Resisting the pull of the endless scroll, the dopamine hits from short-form videos and the ego boost and validation that come from likes and positive interactions, can seem like an unfair fight. For some people, “rage-bait,” gloomy news and arguing with internet strangers also have an irresistible draw.

Much of the concern around social media addiction has focused on children. But adults are also susceptible to using social media so much that it starts affecting their day-to-day lives.

Recognizing signs of compulsive use

Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, defines addiction as “the continued compulsive use of a substance or behavior despite harm to self or others.”

During her testimony at a landmark social media harms trial in Los Angeles, Lembke said that what makes social media platforms so addictive is the “24/7, really limitless, frictionless access” people have to them.

Some researchers question whether addiction is the appropriate term to describe heavy use of social media, arguing that a person must be experiencing identifiable symptoms. These include strong, sometimes uncontrollable urges and withdrawal to qualify as addiction.

Social media addiction is not recognized as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the standard reference psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners use to assess and treat patients. That’s partly because there is no widespread consensus on what constitutes social media addiction and whether underlying mental health issues contribute to problematic use.

But just because there is no official agreement on the issue doesn’t mean excessive social media use can’t be harmful, some experts say.

“For me, the biggest signpost is how does the person feel about the ‘amount,’ and how viewing it makes them feel,” said Dr. Laurel Williams, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine. “If what they discover is they view it so much that they are missing out on other things they may enjoy or things that they need to attend to, this is problematic use. Additionally, if you leave feeling overwhelmed, drained, sad, anxious, angry regularly, this use is not good for you.”

In other words, is your use of social media affecting other parts of your life? Are you putting off chores, work, hobbies or time with friends and family? Have you tried to cut back your time but realized you were unable to? Do you feel bad about your social media use?

Ofir Turel, a professor of information systems management at the University of Melbourne who has studied social media use for years, said there was “no agreement” over the term social media addiction, and he doesn’t “expect agreement soon.”

“It’s obvious that we have an issue,” Turel said. “You don’t have to call it an addiction, but there is an issue and we need, as a society, to start thinking about it.”

Noninvasive tips to reduce social media use

Before setting limits on scrolling, it’s helpful to understand how social media feeds and advertising work to draw in users, Williams said.

“Think of social media as a company trying to get you to stay with them and buy something — have the mindset that this is information that I don’t need to act on and may not be true,” she added. “Get alternate sources of information. Always understand the more you see something, anyone can start to believe it is true.”

Ian A. Anderson, a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology, suggests making small, meaningful changes to stop you from opening your social media app of choice. Moving the app’s place on your phone or turning off notifications are “light touch interventions,” but more involved options, like not bringing your phone into the bedroom or other places where you tend to use it, could also help, Anderson said.

Tech tools can also help to cut back on tech overuse. Both iPhones and Android devices have onboard controls to help regulate screen time.

Apple’s Screen Time controls are found in the iPhone’s settings menu. Users can set overall Downtime, which shuts off all phone activity during a set period of their choice.

The controls also let users put a blanket restriction on certain categories of apps, such as social, games or entertainment or zero in on a specific app, by limiting the time that can be spent on it.

The downside is that the limits aren’t hard to get around. It’s more of a nudge than a red line that you can’t cross. If you try to open an app with a limit, you’ll get a screen menu offering one more minute, a reminder after 15 minutes, or to completely ignore it.

If a light touch doesn’t work

If a light touch isn’t working, more drastic steps might be necessary. Some users swear by turning their phones to gray-scale to make it less appealing to dopamine-seeking brains. On iPhones, adjust the color filter in your settings. For Android, turn on Bedtime Mode or tweak the color correction setting. Downgrading to a simpler phone, such as an old-school flip phone, could also help curb social media compulsions.

Some startups, figuring that people might prefer a tangible barrier, offer hardware solutions that introduce physical friction between you and an app. Unpluq, for instance, is a yellow tag that you have to hold up to your phone in order to access blocked apps. Brick and Blok are two different products that work along the same lines — they’re squarish pieces of plastic that you have to tap or scan with your phone to unlock an app.

If that’s not enough of an obstacle, you could stash away your phone entirely. There are various phone lockboxes and cases available, some of them designed so parents can lock up their teenagers’ phones when they’re supposed to be sleeping, but there’s no rule that says only teenagers can use them.

Yondr, which makes portable phone locking pouches used at concerts or in schools, also sells a home phone box.

Seeking outside help

If all else fails, it may be a good idea to look for deeper reasons for feeling addicted to social media. Maybe it’s a symptom of underlying problems like anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression or low self-esteem. If you think that’s the case, it could be worth exploring therapy that is becoming more widely available.

“For people struggling to stay away — see if you can get a friend group to collaborate with you on it. Make it a group effort. Just don’t post about it! The more spaces become phone free, the more we may see a lessened desire to be ‘on,’” Williams said.

A former Cherry Creek School District teacher was arrested Monday on suspicion of child sex assault after a former student came forward, police said.

Robert Combs, 56, was arrested on investigation of five counts of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust and three misdemeanor counts of abusing public trust as an educator, according to Arapahoe County court records.

Combs was a CTE Engineering and Technology Teacher at Grandview High School, 20500 E. Arapahoe Road, between 2002 and late 2025, according to a letter sent to parents and families by the Cherry Creek School District.

The school district placed Combs on administrative leave in October 2025, when Grandview Principal Lisa Roberts was first made aware of the sexual assault allegations by the Aurora Police Department, police wrote in his arrest affidavit. Combs was officially “separated” from the school district on Nov. 13, according to the letter sent to parents.

“The safety and security of our students and staff is our highest priority,” school district officials wrote in the letter. “We appreciate your partnership in these critical efforts. We are committed to keeping you informed about all aspects of your child’s education.”

Aurora officers responded to Grandview High School on Oct. 30, after a former student reached out to Roberts to apologize for lying to her in 2022 and said they were considering reporting Combs, according to the affidavit.

The student previously denied having an inappropriate relationship with Combs to Roberts in 2022 after a security guard and other teachers came forward with suspicions about the nature of the two’s relationship, the affidavit stated. At that time, the student said Combs was “like a father.”

Roberts encouraged the student to report Combs and also contacted the Aurora Police Department in October to report the incident on her own, according to the affidavit.

The unidentified victim first met Combs in August 2021 when the student joined a high school club the man advised, the Technology Student Association, according to Combs’ arrest affidavit.

Other teachers at Grandview High School also recommended that the student reach out to Combs for assistance with getting into a military academy, police wrote in the affidavit. Combs helped the student with interview preparation, essay writing and physical training.

In February 2022, Grandview students and staff attended the association’s state conference in Denver, according to the affidavit. Combs allegedly encouraged the then-underage student to come back to his hotel room, where they kissed and he “expressed romantic feelings” for them.

The victim told Aurora Police they “felt shocked and unsure how to respond,” according to the affidavit.

Combs’ interactions with the student after the conference “became more frequent and increasingly inappropriate,” police wrote in the arrest affidavit.

The student would meet Combs after school to work on applications, and those meetings often turned intimate, the student told police. Combs also sent the student inappropriate photos and text messages.

Combs and the student had sex in classrooms, offices and closets at the high school almost every day between March 2022 and May 2022, according to the arrest affidavit. They would also drive to empty parking lots and have sex in cars.

The student told police that it felt like they “owed” Combs for his help, the affidavit stated.

Combs and the student’s relationship ended in December 2022, according to the affidavit. The student blocked his number and “ceased all contact” with Combs in February 2023, but didn’t come forward about the relationship until October 2025.

Police advised Roberts of the specific sexual assault allegations made toward Combs late that month, at which point Combs was suspended and escorted out of the school, according to the affidavit.

Combs is next scheduled to appear in court on March 20 for a preliminary hearing, court records show. He posted a $50,000 surety bail on Monday.

A 76-year-old man was arraigned Tuesday morning on multiple charges in connection with the non-fatal shootings of a woman and man in West Bloomfield last Saturday.

At arraignment before 48th District Judge Diane D’Agostini, bond was set at $3 million for Fawzi George Kased of West Bloomfield, charged with two counts of assault with intent to murder, discharging a firearm in or at a building, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and four counts of felony firearms.

Assault with intent to murder carries the highest penalty, up to life in prison.

The victims are reportedly recovering from their injuries. The shootings were targeted and not random, according to West Bloomfield Police Chief Dale Young.

Police spotted the suspect — later identified as Kased — while he was driving. He was pulled over and exited the car while holding a rifle, but dropped it when ordered to by officers, police said.

As previously reported, the case unfolded shortly before 9 a.m. when a resident of the Thornberry Apartments — near Maple and Farmington roads — contacted police and said another resident of the apartment complex tried unsuccessfully to force their way in the apartment with an object that looked like a stick. A few minutes later as officers began searching the area for the suspect, police received another call from someone who identified themselves as a family member of an employee at the Maple View liquor store on Maple Road just east of Farmington Road, reporting that the employee had been shot and was driving himself to the hospital. While officers were enroute to the hospital, additional calls came in from residents of the Thornberry Apartment complex, reporting gunshots in the area.

Kased’s next court appearance is scheduled for March 5 for a probable cause conference. A preliminary exam is scheduled for a week later, both to be held before Judge Marc Barron.

The Oakland Press has reached out to police for additional information, including the possible connection between the victims and Kased, and what may have prompted the shootings. Continued coverage of the case is planned.

A new report examining fraud risk in Minnesota government programs describes longstanding vulnerabilities dating back to the 1970s and repeated inaction by state leaders despite nearly a half-century of warnings.

Gov. Tim Walz’s director of Program Integrity, Tim O’Malley, on Monday released what he described as a “roadmap” to address those vulnerabilities, which he said were driven in large part by a culture in state agencies “more based on compassion than compliance.”

“That’s misplaced. If state workers want to provide services, want to directly help people in need, then they should go work for a provider. They should deliver the wheelchairs. They should do the bed baths. They should take people to medical appointments,” he said at a news conference announcing the report’s findings. “The state has a responsibility to make sure those things happen by protecting state (taxpayer) money.”

Every governor and Legislature had been made aware of problems in programs for the last 50 years, according to the review, but plans to strengthen protections against fraud in state welfare programs were never executed effectively.

The review can be read at https://tinyurl.com/4z3ufffv.

‘Inadequate accountability’ in agencies

O’Malley’s report comes after allegations of hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud at the Department of Human Services and Department of Education, and speculation that the fraud could reach the billions. Overall, he found that “inadequate accountability” in agencies was largely to blame.

“Recent events have revealed longstanding vulnerabilities in multiple facets of state administration and leadership and priority setting to specific elements such as enrollment, oversight, data sharing and investigative capacity,” the report said. “These weaknesses have been exploited repeatedly over decades by organized networks of providers, intermediaries and recipients, resulting in significant financial losses, erosion of public trust and inadequate delivery of essential services to vulnerable Minnesotans.”

Questions remain about who exactly has been held responsible for fraud in state agencies — if anyone. Past reports from the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor have pointed to issues with “inadequate oversight” and “pervasive noncompliance” in how the state handles payments and grants.

In December, Walz said there were state employees who should have “done more” and that they were “no longer working in the state.”

Former Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead resigned in January this year, before federal prosecutors brought charges in connection with significant fraud in children’s autism programs and housing stabilization services supported by the agency.

In late 2022, Education Commissioner Heather Mueller announced she would not seek reappointment in Walz’s second term, months after the first charges in the $250 million Feeding Our Future case.

And days before federal prosecutors announced charges tied to housing stabilization in September, it emerged that the assistant commissioner with the program was no longer working with the agency.

Neither DHS nor Walz has said whether Eric Grumdahl, assistant commissioner of Homelessness and Housing Supports, lost his job due to fraud in the program, which was expected to cost $2.6 million a year when it launched but ballooned to over $105 million in 2024.

Fraud czar

Walz, a Democrat, appointed O’Malley in December as scrutiny mounted on his administration’s handling of widespread fraud in state government programs. As program integrity director, O’Malley was tasked with creating fraud prevention measures across agencies and working with the outside financial audit firm WayPoint.

O’Malley was superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension under Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. He’s a former FBI agent and interim chief judge for the state Court of Administrative hearings, and for a decade handled allegations of sexual misconduct by clergy in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

When Walz announced his appointment of O’Malley as state fraud czar on Dec. 12, federal investigators estimated Minnesota had lost hundreds of millions of dollars to fraud in recent years, with former assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson speculating total theft could top more than $1 billion.

That estimate ballooned to at least $9 billion just a week later when Thompson announced another round of criminal charges in Medicaid fraud cases. Thompson told reporters he believed more than half of the $18 billion in federal money the state distributed through “high-risk” Medicaid programs since 2018 could have been lost to fraud.

Officials with the Minnesota Department of Human Services have disputed that estimate. Walz, who suspended his campaign for a third term in office just weeks after Thompson’s remarks, described the $9 billion figure as speculative and defamatory.

The report recommends changing agency culture, boosting accountability measures, modernizing technology and oversight.

It also recommends that state lawmakers, who returned to the state Capitol last Tuesday for the 2026 legislative session, pass several bills to support a “modern fraud‑prevention infrastructure.”

They include ending direct appropriations — which present a high risk of fraud — as well as ending grants without dedicated fraud prevention funding and requiring bills that create or modify programs to have a fraud prevention component.

O’Malley told reporters Monday that he had “independence and autonomy” to go where the facts took him and that the governor had not tried to influence his work.

Senate GOP leader calls report ‘lip service’

Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, called the report an example of Walz “lip service” on fraud, saying it was little more than a compendium of existing public issues in state programs.

“They don’t have to wait for the Legislature. They have the tools to really get started if they need help,” he said. “We’re happy to figure out a bipartisan way forward. But the response has been so lackluster. We need to get going on this.”

O’Malley’s hiring was the latest in a series of moves Walz has made to address fraud allegations in state agencies.

In January 2025, the governor directed the creation of a fraud investigation unit at the BCA. The Department of Human Services moved to shut down a Medicaid-funded housing stabilization program beset by fraud after news emerged in July of a federal investigation into several providers.

Earlier this month, a Walz-ordered third-party audit assessing the 14 Minnesota Medicaid programs at high risk for fraud found the state could safeguard $1 billion in the next four years by changing its policies on payment reviews.

State officials described the report as the “first phase” of developing a payment review process for the high-risk programs.

Gandhi permanent appointment

Before O’Malley shared the findings of his report on Monday, Walz announced the permanent appointment of Shireen Gandhi as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which has been the subject of significant fraud allegations recently.

The post had been vacant for more than a year. Gandhi had served as interim commissioner since the resignation of former Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead in January 2025, before federal prosecutors brought charges in connection with significant fraud in children’s autism programs and housing stabilization services supported by the agency.

Walz praised Gandhi for her leadership during troubled times at the agency.

“Over the past year, she has demonstrated steady, decisive leadership at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, strengthening program integrity, rooting out fraud, and ensuring taxpayer dollars reach the Minnesotans who rely on these services,” he said in a news release.

Gandhi will serve in the remaining months of the Walz administration. The governor, who is no longer seeking a third term, leaves office next January.

Republicans welcomed the appointment, calling it “long overdue,” though they expressed skepticism about the governor’s choice.

“Commissioner Gandhi has worked at DHS for years, including in compliance and oversight, while billions of taxpayer dollars were lost to fraud. For the past 13 months, she has served as interim commissioner as Minnesota’s fraud epidemic has made international news,” House Republican Floor Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said in a statement. “That’s not accountability. That’s failure rewarded.”

Stoney Creek dismissed girls basketball head coach Columbus Williams, who was in his third season with the program, on Monday.

The move, effectively immediately, also sees the majority of his staff let go, with the exception of freshman coach Joey Tocco, son of Dakota boys hoops head coach Paul Tocco.

From a distance, it’s an out-of-the-blue firing considering the Cougars are 16-4 overall and in most scenarios would be favored to win a district title this season were they not looking at a final against Utica Eisenhower, one of just 14 teams above them in Division 1 MPR. But sources told The Oakland Press that even though it wasn’t the only incident that may have led to his dismissal, the Cougars’ most recent game, a 48-29 loss at Rochester last Friday, Feb. 20, was likely a tipping point.

By the end of the weekend, a number of area coaches said they had viewed or shared footage of that game, which was (and remains) available to stream on the NFHS Network. At least a handful of technical fouls were assessed to the Cougars in the defeat — some to players or the bench, and others to coaches, including Williams, who was eventually ejected.

Stoney was at the free-throw line trailing just 34-27 with 3:53 remaining in that game when officials appear to issue a technical, and video shows one Rochester High administrator escorting out what looks to be a Cougars’ parent or fan. In a sequence that followed less than 10 game seconds later, the same administrator is seen giving Williams a similar directive after some degree of confrontation.

Players were notified of Williams’ dismissal on Monday afternoon in a meeting where they were able to ask questions and voice any concerns, and families of those in the program were also sent a statement later in the day. Part of that statement read, “At Stoney Creek, educational athletics are an integral extension of the classroom. Our mission is to maintain a student-centered, caring community with high expectations for conduct and sportsmanship.

“Following the incident at this past Friday’s Varsity game, we have determined that a change in leadership is necessary to uphold these standards.”

All of the Cougars’ previous losses this season have been to teams that range from very good to elite (Goodrich, South Lyon East, Clarkston), but emotions were probably high because of the repercussions of losing to Rochester. If Stoney Creek had won, it would have split a share of the OAA Red title no matter the result of Tuesday’s final league game at West Bloomfield.

Instead, if defending champion Clarkston wins at Rochester on Tuesday, the Wolves will also be 8-2 in the league and share the crown with whoever wins between the Lakers and Cougars. Stoney had been in the driver’s seat after it’d split its meetings with Clarkston, including a win in Rochester Hills, and also beat the Lakers at home back on Jan. 29.

Stoney Creek athletic director Todd Negoshian, a longtime boys hoops head coach at North Farmington before stepping down and taking his new post this year in Rochester Hills, will assume the interim role of head coach for the Cougars for the remainder of their season, at which point the vacant job will be posted.

Williams, who was in his first varsity head coaching role after most recently serving as an assistant at Utica Ford, compiled an overall 52-18 record with the Cougars. In his first year with the Cougars, he guided them to a 20-6 record that included a district title and the program’s first regional championship.

By MARK KENNEDY

NEW YORK (AP) — Early in the first episode of the “Scrubs” revival, Dr. John Dorian jumps onto Dr. Christopher Turk for a piggyback ride down the corridor of Sacred Heart Hospital like nothing’s changed in over a decade. But a lot has.

For one, Turk, now a father of four, suffers from sciatica, cutting the tomfoolery short as they tumble to the ground. And, two, Dorian needs reading glasses. Turns out plenty has changed in the 17 years since “Scrubs” last ended its run.

“They’re still 12 years old every time they’re together, but they’re also still both leading very big, responsible adult lives,” says Bill Lawrence, the show’s creator who has returned for the revival. “It just felt like it was time to revisit the old gang.”

“Scrubs” — whose first two episodes premiere back-to-back Wednesday on ABC and stream next day on Hulu — picks up with the same characters all these years later, but this time, in addition to some physical wear and tear, the onetime interns are the teachers to a group of rookie doctors.

“We were new and we were scared as interns and scared in this new element of medicine and insecure and unsure of what we were doing,” says Sarah Chalke, who plays Dr. Elliot Reid. “So to get to come back, we really have grown and really become great leaders and great teachers.”

Back to reality for ‘Scrubs’

The revival retains Lawrence’s voice for “Scrubs” — pop culture-hyper-aware and surreal but always with sentiment. The cast admits the show became a little too cartoonish in later seasons, with an ostrich wearing a Kangol hat and J.D. stuffed into a backpack to sneak into a movie theater.

“Bill Lawrence would be the first to say that what he really wanted to do was sort of ground it again and start back with the based-in-reality thing that we had in the first couple years of the show,” says Zach Braff, who plays Dr. Dorian. “We still have a mix of drama and comedy, but reset to based completely in reality.”

One thing that had to change was Dr. Perry Cox, the head of medicine played by John C. McGinley with stone-faced rage and fiery contempt. Back in the old days, he could humiliate and berate his interns.

That won’t fly in 2026: “I can’t work them crazy hours or even abuse them anymore,” Cox complains in the revival, calling the new interns “fragile little Christmas ornaments.” One of the new interns says to him: “You’re giving mean football coach vibes.”

Lawrence in anticipation of the relaunch consulted medical residents to find out how hospitals and medicine had changed over the years and was told that administrators would have no patience with a brutal Cox in 2026.

“All the residents we talked about told us that Dr. Cox would be fired immediately nowadays,” says Lawrence. He also added Vanessa Bayer to the cast, playing an HR officer quick to suggest sensitivity training.

The second stage of life

The first seven seasons of “Scrubs” originally aired on NBC, but after Season 7 — which was shortened due to a writers strike — the series moved to ABC for Season 8. A ninth season with J.D., Turk, and Cox was called “Scrubs: Med School.”

Braff and Faison — real friends offscreen — kept the show in fans’ minds with a string of T-Mobile commercials and a podcast that explored the episodes, “Fake Doctors, Real Friends.”

The end of Season 8 — the following season is not considered “Scrubs” canon — had J.D. having all his fantasies come true — marrying Elliot, having children and keeping up his friendship with Turk, who is married to head nurse Carla. That neat bow had to be jettisoned for 2026.

“We knew from the start that we couldn’t live in a world that all of his fantasies had come true,” says Lawrence. “Life throws you some blows and throws you to some victories. You drift from people you care about. Sometimes your world gets smaller. Sometimes things get harder and there still have to be mountains to overcome. So we really wanted to thematically show that journey of what the second stage of life looks like.”

The central bromance of ‘Scrubs’

Central to the success of “Scrubs” is the bromance between J.D. and Turk, which doesn’t end when the cameras are turned off. The revival arrives as the topic of male loneliness and friendship is being debated.

“It’s a half hour comedy, but it takes head on the idea of the joy that you can still find in being silly and having love in your life that isn’t just your romantic love — the joy and love you have with your friends as a man in 2026,” says Braff.

Faison adds: “I value my friendship. I don’t have many of them, but he’s the one friendship that I do have that I know I can count on, at least right now. Maybe in 10 years, he might change his mind on how he feels about me.”

“We’ll see how you behave,” Braff jokes.

Lawrence says he often writes about male friendships because he grew up in a family that wasn’t very demonstrative emotionally. His other current titles include “Shrinking” and “Ted Lasso,” which also explore bonding and mentoring.

“I started very young writing about friendships and, maybe on some level, the wish fulfillment of how personal I truly hoped they could be,” he says. “I crave those friendships and I craved that mentorship so I maybe write about them too much.”

A Troy woman is facing a charge of first-degree child abuse after a 13-month old child suffered serious brain damage, allegedly while in her care, officials said.

An arraignment is pending for Swapna Hari, 44. The complaint was filed on Feb. 24 in 52-4 District Court for the alleged Sept. 3, 2025 incident.

The crime is punishable by up to life in prison.

According to the prosecutor’s office, Hari claimed the infant fell backward while eating and started choking. The infant was hospitalized with severe head trauma and brain damage.

The prosecutor’s office said the injuries suffered are inconsistent with a backward fall or choking.

“In a single moment, this healthy and happy 13-month-old child suffered a life-changing injury, allegedly at the hands of this defendant,” Prosecutor Karen McDonald stated in a news release.  “Our office sees too many cases of childhood brain injuries caused by abusers. These are physical injuries that often never heal completely. It’s heartbreaking and horrifying to learn a caregiver would harm a child instead of protecting them.”

The Oakland Press will report further on this case as additional information becomes available.

Sheriff: Sex customer reports being robbed; 2 now facing charges of human trafficking, prostitution at Southfield hotel

By JOHN HANNA and JUAN LOZANO

HOUSTON (AP) — U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas faced growing calls Tuesday from fellow congressional Republicans to resign over a report of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky joined Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Nancy Mace of South Carolina in demanding that Gonzales step down immediately. Mace also announced that she has introduced a resolution to force the House Ethics Commission to publicly release its reports and records of allegations of sexual harassment against members of Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he would talk to Gonzales on Tuesday.

Johnson said Monday that the accusations against Gonzales “must be taken seriously,” but he added, “in every case like this, you have to allow the investigation to play out and all the facts to come out.”

“If the accusation of something is going to be the litmus for someone being able to continue to serve in the House, a lot of people would have to resign or be removed or expelled from Congress,” Johnson said.

Gonzales’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. He said in a social media post last week that he was being blackmailed and then suggested in another post Sunday that he is the target of “coordinated political attacks.”

“During my six years in Congress not a single formal complaint has been levied against my office,” Gonzales said in the Sunday post on X. “IT WONT WORK.”

Gonzales is in a tough race in Texas’ Republican primary on March 3, with early voting underway for more than a week. His main opponent is Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and gun rights influencer who calls himself “the AK Guy” on YouTube, where his channel has nearly 4.2 million subscribers. Gonzales narrowly defeated Herrera by fewer than 400 votes in a runoff in 2024.

President Donald Trump had endorsed Gonzales for reelection in December.

The San Antonio Express-News reported last week that it had obtained text messages in which the former staffer, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, wrote to a colleague that she had an affair with the lawmaker.

The Associated Press has not independently obtained copies of the messages. An attorney for Adrian Aviles, Santos-Aviles’ husband, has said the husband found out about the affair before his wife’s death.

Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, 35, died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire in the backyard of her Uvalde home. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled her death as a suicide by self-immolation.

“Where are the other men in the GOP?” Massie asked Tuesday in a post on X in calling for Gonzales to resign, adding that Trump should revoke his endorsement.

Gonzales, whose district stretches from San Antonio to El Paso and runs along the U.S.-Mexico border, has six children with his wife.

His allegation of blackmail is based on an email from the attorney for the staffer’s husband, Robert Barrera, discussing a possible lawsuit against the lawmaker and a potential settlement with a nondisclosure agreement. The email says that the maximum recoverable amount is $300,000.

Barrera has said he was not trying to blackmail Gonzales and called the accusation an attempt by the congressman to look like a political victim.

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Also contributing was Associated Press journalist Kevin Freking in Washington.

By STEVEN SLOAN and STEVE PEOPLES

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he has a lot to talk about tonight.

He’s returning to Congress to deliver a State of the Union address at a consequential moment in his presidency, with his approval ratings near an all-time low and restive supporters waiting for him to deliver more tangibly on their struggles with the cost of living.

On top of that, the Supreme Court just declared illegal the tariffs that have been central to his second term. And the foreign policy challenges he promised to fix easily now don’t look so simple with another potential military strike against Iran looming.

The narrow Republican majority in Congress that has done little to counter Trump’s expansive vision of power is at risk of falling away after this year’s midterm elections, when their respective self interests may collide.

Here are some questions we’re thinking about heading into the speech.

How awkward will things get with the Supreme Court?

Trump did little to hide his rage last week when the Supreme Court struck down his far-reaching tariff policy. He didn’t just say that the justices who voted against one of his signature issues — including two who he appointed — were wrong in their legal reasoning. He said they were an “embarrassment to their families.”

Now many of those justices are likely to be seated at the front of the House chamber as Trump delivers his address.

Will Trump criticize the justices to their faces? Will he somehow show restraint in keeping his criticism limited to the decision itself?

Trump would not be the first president to use a State of the Union address as a chance to criticize the court. During his 2010 address, President Barack Obama said the Court’s Citizens United decision — which opened the way for millions of dollars in undisclosed political spending — would “open the floodgates for special interests,” prompting Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head and mouth “not true.”

Since then, attendance by Supreme Court justices has become more sporadic. Alito began skipping them after the 2010 speech, joining fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who has long argued the speeches are too partisan. By last year, when Trump delivered a special address to Congress, just four members of the Court — Chief Justice John Roberts along with Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — were in the House chamber.

At the time, Trump greeted the justices warmly, even telling Roberts “thank you again, I won’t forget it.” The comment was interpreted as Trump showing appreciation for the Court’s decision granting broad-based immunity to the presidency. But Trump said on social media he was merely thanking the chief justice for swearing him in.

Regardless, justices who don’t want a televised bashing from the president may decide to steer clear on Tuesday.

How will Democrats respond?

Democrats were still adjusting to Trump’s return to power when he last addressed Congress — and it showed.

During his 2025 joint address, Democrats entered the chamber with signs containing messages ranging from “Save Medicaid” and “Musk Steals” to simply “False.” Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, heckled Trump at one point, prompting his ejection from the chamber.

The signs were widely criticized as contrived and Green’s protest was something of a distraction. For voters who were outraged by Trump’s aggressive use of power during his opening months in office, the scene didn’t offer much confidence that Democrats were in a position to serve as an effective check on the White House.

Democrats are aiming to avoid a repeat of last year’s tumult. Expect fewer signs and possibly fewer Democrats in the chamber at all. Dozens of lawmakers have said they won’t attend the speech, with some planning to attend rival events in Washington.

That may help avoid some of last years theatrics. But it might do little to encourage frustrated voters that Democrats have a coherent, effective message a decade into Trump’s political rise.

And after Democratic governors boycotted a White House dinner with Trump over the weekend, skipping the State of the Union may only reinforce the sense that America’s two main political parties are charting fundamentally different courses.

Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s newly inaugurated governor, will give the Democrats’ official response to Trump.

How will Trump address affordability and immigration?

Trump will deliver his speech at the outset of a challenging election year for his fellow Republicans, who are holding on to a tenuous grip of Congress. Much of the GOP’s challenge has centered on a sense among voters that the party hasn’t done enough to bring down prices.

The White House insists it is aware of the economic anxiety among voters and is working to address it. But Trump consistently has trouble staying on message. During a trip to Georgia last week that was intended to focus on the economy, the president instead highlighted debunked claims of election fraud and pushed his proposal for voter identification requirements. When he addressed affordability, he said it was a problem created by Democrats that he has now “solved.”

Trump’s tone on immigration could also be notable. Republicans found themselves on defense after two U.S. citizens were killed in Minneapolis last month by federal agents who were conducting an aggressive immigration enforcement operation. While Trump has kept up his hardline rhetoric on undocumented immigrants, his administration has begun to draw down agents in Minneapolis. The president told New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week that he would direct future immigration enforcement surges where they were wanted.

What does he say about foreign policy?

Trump promised a quick and easy end to conflicts across the globe when he was elected. A year later, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to rage, there’s a fragile ceasefire in war-torn Gaza and Trump is threatening a major military strike against Iran just eight months after he claimed the U.S. had “obliterated” the nation’s nuclear facilities.

And let’s not forget about his military action in Venezuela less than two months ago in which U.S. forces snatched leader Nicolas Maduro. Trump has said repeatedly that he’s going to run the country.

Trump supporters may cheer his America First rhetoric, but the Republican president is showing far more globalist tendencies one year into his second term.

And the prospect of war with Iran is real. Trump has already built up the largest U.S. military presence in the Middle East in decades. Last week he warned the Iranian regime that “bad things will happen” soon if a nuclear deal is not reached.

How long will he go?

Trump is rarely one to self edit. His speech last year — technically a joint address and not the State of the Union — clocked nearly one hour and 40 minutes. That was the longest speech to a joint session of Congress — and Trump may want to notch another record.

“It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” he said on Monday.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The Trump administration is suing New Jersey over a state order that prohibits federal immigration agents from making arrests in nonpublic areas of state property, such as correctional facilities and courthouses.

The Justice Department lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Trenton, challenges Gov. Mikie Sherrill ’s Feb. 11 executive order, which also bars the use of state property as a staging or processing area for immigration enforcement.

Sherrill, a Democrat who took office Jan. 20, “insists on harboring criminal offenders from federal law enforcement,” the lawsuit said, accusing her of attempting to obstruct federal law enforcement and thwart President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Sherrill’s executive order “poses an intolerable obstacle” to immigration enforcement and “directly regulates and discriminates” against the federal government, said the lawsuit, which misspelled her name as “Sherill.”

Asked about the lawsuit Tuesday, Sherrill said: “What I think the federal government needs to be focused on right now, instead of attacking states like New Jersey working to keep people safe, is actually training their ICE agents.”

The state’s acting attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, said the Trump administration was “wasting its resources on a pointless legal challenge.” New Jersey will fight the lawsuit and “continue to ensure the safety of our state’s immigrant communities,” she said.

The lawsuit is the latest in the Trump administration’s fight against state and local level restrictions on immigration enforcement.

Last year, the Justice Department sued Minnesota and Colorado, as well as cities including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver over so-called sanctuary laws, which are aimed at prohibiting police from cooperating with immigration agents.

Last May, the Trump administration sued four New Jersey cities — Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Hoboken — over such policies. That case is pending.

By JOEY CAPPELLETTI

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are betting that Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s affordability-focused message, which helped her flip a Republican-held office last November, will resonate with the country when she delivers their party’s response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

The rebuttal gives Democrats a prime opportunity to make their case against Trump and his policies ahead of the midterm elections. Spanberger’s double-digit victory in Virginia last November was viewed by party leaders as validation of a disciplined message centered on lowering costs — one they now want to elevate in campaigns nationwide.

“Virginians and Americans across the country are contending with rising costs, chaos in their communities, and a real fear of what each day might bring,” Spanberger said in a statement. “I look forward to laying out what these Americans expect and deserve — leaders who are working hard to deliver for them.”

Spanberger will deliver the speech from Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum with restored 18th-century buildings, drawing on the site’s role at the heart of Virginia’s early opposition to British rule and connecting that legacy to the current political moment, according to her team.

She will have will have far less time than the Republican president to deliver her rebuttal. Trump’s speech before Congress last year stretched to an hour and 40 minutes, while Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s Democratic response lasted just over 10 minutes. Spanberger’s speech will be the fifth consecutive response to a president’s address to Congress delivered by a female senator or governor.

Trump on Monday told reporters that his State of the Union is “going to be a long speech, because we have so much to talk about.”

As viewership tends to drop the later the speech runs, the response has become one of the more perilous assignments in politics. Now–Secretary of State Marco Rubio was widely mocked for reaching for a water bottle during the GOP response in 2013. Other rebuttals have quickly faded from memory.

Even with the time disadvantage, Democrats argue the political winds are shifting in their favor. Spanberger’s win in Virginia was followed by other high-profile Democratic victories, including a special election earlier this month in Texas, where a Democrat flipped a reliably Republican state Senate district that Trump carried by 17 percentage points in 2024.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California will deliver the party’s Spanish language response. Padilla, who in June was forcefully removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles as he tried to speak up about immigration raids, said in a statement that there is a better path than the one Trump has offered: “one that lowers costs, safeguards our democracy, and reins in rogue federal agencies.”

Some Democrats are choosing to make their point by skipping Trump’s address. Counterprogramming events are planned, including a “State of the Swamp” featuring Democratic lawmakers alongside state and local leaders and celebrities.