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.

By ILLIA NOVIKOV The Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared Tuesday that Russia has not “broken Ukrainians” nor triumphed in its war, four years after an invasion that has severely tested the resolve of Kyiv and its allies and fueled European fears about the scale of Moscow’s ambitions.

In a show of support, more than a dozen senior European officials headed to the Ukrainian capital to mark the grim anniversary of the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people, upended life for millions of Ukrainians, and created instability far beyond its borders.

Zelenskyy said his country has withstood the onslaught by Russia’s bigger and better equipped army, which over the past year of fighting captured just 0.79% of Ukraine’s territory, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. Russia now holds nearly 20% of Ukraine.

“Looking back at the beginning of the invasion and reflecting on today, we have every right to say: We have defended our independence, we have not lost our statehood,” Zelenskyy said on social media, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “not achieved his goals.”

“He has not broken Ukrainians; he has not won this war,” Zelenskyy said.

Despite the show of defiance, Ukraine has struggled to hold off Russia’s onslaught, and the war has brought widespread hardship for Ukrainian civilians. Russia’s aerial attacks have devastated families and denied civilians power and running water.

As the war of attrition enters its fifth year, a U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the largest conflict on the continent since World War II appears no closer to finding compromises that might make a peace deal possible.

Negotiations are stuck on what happens to the Donbas, eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland that Russian forces mostly occupy but have failed to seize completely, and the terms of a postwar security arrangement that Kyiv is demanding to deter any future Russian invasion.

Zelenskyy urges Trump to visit

At a makeshift memorial in Kyiv’s central square, where thousands of small flags and portraits show photos of fallen soldiers, Zelenskyy said he would like U.S. President Donald Trump to visit and witness for himself Ukrainian suffering.

“Only then can one truly understand what this war is really about,” Zelenskyy said.

Trump, who once vowed to end the war in a day, has repeatedly changed his tone toward Putin and Zelenskyy over the past year: sometimes criticizing the Ukrainian leader’s negotiating position while reaching out to the Russian leader and at others lashing out at Putin for heavy barrages and appearing more sympathetic to the Ukrainian predicament.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the invasion would continue in pursuit of Moscow’s goals. They include a demand that Ukraine renounce its bid to join NATO, sharply cut its army, and cede vast swaths of territory.

Zelenskyy said he expected a fresh round of U.S.-brokered talks with Russia within the next 10 days.

A ‘nightmare’ for Ukrainians

The number of soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides could reach 2 million by spring, with Russia sustaining the largest number of troop deaths for any major power in any conflict since World War II, a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated.

European leaders see their countries’ own security at stake in Ukraine amid concerns that Putin may target them next.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X that “for four years, every day and every night has been a nightmare for the Ukrainians — and not just for them, but for us all. Because war is back in Europe.”

“We will only end it by being strong together, because the fate of Ukraine is our fate,” he added.

Putin’s dangerous gamble

Putin believes that time is on the side of his bigger army, Western officials and analysts say — and that Western support will trail off and that Ukraine’s military resistance will eventually crumble. Already Trump has ended new military aid to Ukraine — though other NATO countries now buy American weapons and give them to Kyiv.

But French President Emmanuel Macron described the war was “a triple failure for Russia: military, economic, and strategic.”

The war “has strengthened NATO — the very expansion Russia sought to prevent — galvanized Europeans it hoped to weaken, and laid bare the fragility of an imperialism from another age,” Macron said on X.

The European Union has also sent financial aid, but has sometimes met with reluctance from members Hungary and Slovakia.

While NATO countries have come to Ukraine’s aid, Russia has been helped by North Korea, which has sent thousands of troops and artillery shells; Iran, which has provided drone technology; and China, which the United States and analysts say has provided machine tools and chips.

A defining conflict

Among the European officials visiting Kyiv on Tuesday were the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, as well as seven prime ministers and four foreign ministers.

The only American listed among the official guests in Kyiv ceremonies was Lt. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, a U.S. officer who represents NATO in Ukraine.

British Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said Russia’s war on Ukraine was “the most defining conflict” in decades.

The war has brought a “revolution in military affairs,” especially through the rapid development of drone technology by both sides, according to Carns. Drones now cause the vast majority of battlefield casualties, he said.

Both sides face challenges in finding enough troops and are increasingly turning to uncrewed aerial drones that take the killing to areas far from the front lines, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual report on the global military situation.

“Given both sides’ reliance on external support for materiel, decisions taken in foreign capitals will play an important role in shaping the war’s trajectory,” the think tank added.

The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a new package of military and humanitarian support for Ukraine, including sending teams of British military medics to instruct their Ukrainian counterparts.

The cost of rebuilding war-battered Ukraine would amount to almost $588 billion over the next decade, according to World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations and the Ukrainian government.

That is nearly three times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for last year, they said in a report Monday.

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Associated Press reporters across Europe contributed to this story.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

A Lake Orion High School special education teacher is the Region 9 Teacher of the Year for the 2026-27 school year.

Erik Meerschaert, who was named the Oakland County High School Teacher of the Year in 2024-25, is one of 10 regional educators selected and now a finalist for the Michigan Teacher of the Year.

“We celebrate not only an exceptional educator, but a true champion for students,” said Superintendent Heidi Mercer. “Erik represents the heart of our district—dedicated, innovative, and unwavering in their commitment to helping every child succeed.”

A graduate of Western Michigan University, Meerschaert joined the district in 2019.

“Erik has been a dynamic force in engaging students through meaningful classroom activities and hands-on learning experiences,” said Lake Orion High School Principal Dan Haas. “His approach emphasizes active participation, ensuring that every student, regardless of ability, feels included and motivated. Erik serves as a role model by fostering an environment where students are encouraged to challenge themselves while being supported every step of the way.”

By Andrew Van DamThe Washington Post

Around Y2K, the mighty American private sector hit a momentous milestone. For the first time on record, frontline managers – supervisors, team leads, foremen, forewomen, etc. – outnumbered back-office managers.

That seemed significant, especially for the working-class folks for whom these noncommissioned-officer-style positions provided a rare path to the upper reaches of the career ladder. As quickly as the milestone was crossed, the trend reversed, according to our analysis of about 37 million responses to the census and American Community Survey from 1950 to 2024.

Once ascendant, supervisory jobs crop up all over our lists of the hardest-hit jobs of Americans’ working lives, even as white-collar management soars to new highs. What happened?

Having been burned by data-collection changes before, our first instinct was to take a long, hard look at how the Census Bureau classifies jobs. Or, more accurately, to spend 15 seconds emailing an extraordinarily talented economist and hoping they’ve already done the work for us.

We were in luck. Utrecht University economist Anna Salomons responded within an hour, even though the hour in question was already a wee one in the Netherlands. For her blockbuster 2024 analysis, Salomons and her collaborators collected and analyzed detailed Census Bureau job descriptions from 1930 to 2018 to figure out how our economy had evolved, mutated and automated.

She first mentioned that the change in occupational definitions around the 2000 Census was “notoriously large” and, like us, wondered if that might cause some of the shift we saw in the numbers.

But two factors argue against that thesis. First, as Salomons suggested, we’re using a system from our friends at IPUMS that carefully adjusts for all those changes in the raw census definitions.

Second, the changes come gradually after the inflection point – if a census definition change was the culprit, you’d expect a sudden swerve. But what if, Salomons suggested, those changes in definition took place outside of the friendly confines of the Census Bureau?

Specifically, she suggested we look at title inflation, which immediately blew the case wide open. Or at least blew it ajar.

It seems quite possible that, over the past few decades, jobs that were once called some variation on “supervisor” were now called some variation on “manager.”

A fancier title (and no change in pay) may, at least temporarily, fool a worker who’d been angling for a raise or promotion. But could it really fool the almighty Census Bureau?

We fear the answer must be “probably.” The American Community Survey’s superpower – that it hears directly from about 2 million U.S. households each year – is also, in this case, its Achilles’ heel. Because it must rely on what those households say.

The census crew does its utmost to elicit clean answers, but even the most carefully designed questions would struggle to distinguish a manager from a “manager.”

The survey asks not just for your occupation but also for your most important work activities or duties. That detail, plus answers to other questions throughout the survey, such as education level, give the clerks at the National Processing Center – and the government robot that handles the easiest cases – as much information as possible when they’re determining which job a respondent really performed.

But not everybody fills out those activities. And not every manager-in-name-only will provide enough information to reclassify them as a supervisor or even as an individual contributor. So, a certain percentage of inflated titles will slip through.

But that would mean census surveys still reflect a real trend toward title inflation. And why are titles inflating? Based on a lifetime of observation, we’d guess some of corporate America’s brightest minds have noticed that a title upgrade allows you to give a worker a “promotion” without a change in responsibility – or in pay.

Particularly crafty economists may even have found a way to measure one narrow instance of this. Salomons points to an analysis forthcoming in the Review of Financial Studies. In it, economists analyzed about 450,000 online job postings with salaries near the cutoff that makes you eligible for management under the Fair Labor Standards Act. (The postings came from 2010 to 2018, when the cutoff was $455 a week. It currently sits at $684.)

The authors – Lauren Cohen at Harvard University, and Umit Gurun and Bugra Ozel at the University of Texas at Dallas – found that jobs paying just above the legal cutoff are about five times more likely to have managerial titles than are similar jobs with pay just below it.

Why? Well, even a dubious title such as calling a barber a “grooming manager” or a front-desk clerk a “director of first impressions” could provide cover for employers looking to claim that person is exempt from overtime pay. The economists estimate such spurious classifications save employers about 13.5 percent on the pay of each “manager.”

To be sure, as Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, told us, the definition for overtime-exempt employees says nothing about titles – it’s purely about job function. Faux-promoting a worker to “manager” shouldn’t change anything. But in reality, she said, bosses often use these titles as a smoke screen.

“Titles can still matter a lot in practice,” Ozel said. “A ‘manager’ label can shape expectations about whether overtime is available and can muddy the record for anyone trying to assess the role from the outside. … Job duties are hard to observe and document without access to internal records and day-to-day work.”

But this dynamic, while suggestive, applies only to a narrow slice of the workforce. In any given year, less than a tenth of the workforce earned enough to put them within fudging distance (20 percent) of the cutoff.

What else might drive this title inflation?

Our best clue came in a call from Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University management expert who longtime readers may recognize is also a remote-work data impresario.

Bloom pointed out the rise of managers coincides with what he calls the overeducation of the American workforce. College graduates once made up a tiny, elite minority. Now, America’s colleges churn out so many that they outnumber the share of young people who never made it past high school.

As a result, Bloom said, there aren’t enough highfalutin’ positions for all those brand-new baccalaureates. Of course, employers would still love to attract these talented young grads to their unfilled lower-falutin’ positions. But to do so, they’d need to get creative.

“How do you get a college graduate to do a job that’s honestly probably better suited to a noncollege graduate?” Bloom asked. “You just shove the word ‘president’ into the title!”

When we took Bloom’s hint and charted the rise in managers by education, the fallout of his observation became clear. The increase in managers with a bachelor’s degree or higher drowns out any other trend. If we explain that segment, we explain the whole thing.

We started by looking at where all those college-educated managers worked.

As we should have guessed, they’re in the industries with the most-educated workers overall. In almost every major industry, as more educated workers roll in, the number of educated managers rises at the same rate.

Let’s look at an appropriate example: the industry of higher education. In that business, a four-year degree (or something fancier) gave you almost a 5 percent chance of being in management in 2000. By 2024, the share of educated workers in that sector had more than doubled, but your chances of being a manager conditional on having a college degree didn’t really change.

Many industries – banking, real estate, hospitals – follow this pattern. The exception? Computer services, which added more jobs than all but a handful of (mostly low-wage) industries over this time period, also saw your odds of becoming a manager double.

That matches what we heard from Ben Hanowell, an anthropologist who now helps direct ADP Research, the research arm of the outfit that probably processes your paycheck each month. The company’s endless piles of proprietary payrolls allow Hanowell to produce metrics that us mere civilians can’t match.

In his analysis, Hanowell found that U.S. teams got slightly smaller after the pandemic – an average manager went from 7.4 direct reports to about 7.3. But over that time, tech firms have gone from 6.5 workers per manager to about 5.3, with much of the drop coming after the pandemic.

So, while there are some situations where individuals became more likely to be managers, the much more common story is: People with college degrees had the same odds of becoming a manager as they always did, so as we got more people with college degrees, we got more managers.

But are these Potemkin promotions, or do they signal a change in the economy?

It hinges on whether the new boss, the “manager,” is truly the same as the old boss, the “supervisor.” We don’t have enough data right now to compare their actual duties, but we can at least look at their pay.

And sure enough, when we compare managers to similarly paid supervisors since the turn of the millennium, a clean pattern pops out. At every step of pay scale, managers rose, and supervisors fell in roughly equal quantities (after accounting for workforce growth over that time). To us, that looks a lot like replacement.

To be sure, they may not all be simple swaps in which a firm hires a college graduate to be a glorified supervisor with a cool title. We could also be seeing centralization. Perhaps work that once fell to supervisors – say, scheduling or coaching – now shifts to a central, college-educated staff of trainers and human resources professionals.

Around the edges, we expect those trends have been exacerbated by the decline of small businesses, since a megacorp in search of efficiency will centralize more functions. Similarly, the rise of outsourcing and perhaps gig work means jobs that were once done by small teams with supervisors inside the company are now handled by huge outside contractors.

And of course the increasing reliance on gig workers and outsourced workers that such a model implies might also help explain why tech’s managers now seem to manage so few employees – many of the folks they’re managing are now working outside the company.

But experts like Shierholz confirmed our hunch that the dominant force seemed to be the simplest: Job titles are getting a college-friendly makeover even if the jobs themselves don’t change much. Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, agreed this seemed plausible based on his impressions from the online job site’s vast archives of job postings.

“We’re seeing a lot of jobs that have manager in them, but they are doing these more direct manager or direct supervising type of jobs,” Stahle said. “They are managers who are more directly involved in the day-to-day operations rather than a higher-up.”

Today is Sunday, Feb. 22, the 53rd day of 2026. There are 312 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 22, 2022, three white men were convicted of federal hate crimes in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, who was jogging through their neighborhood near Brunswick, Georgia, when he was attacked in 2020. (The men are serving life sentences after being convicted of murder in state court.)

Also on this date:

In 1732, the first president of the United States, George Washington, was born in Westmoreland County in the Virginia Colony.

In 1784, a U.S. merchant ship, the Empress of China, left New York for the first trade voyage of an American ship to China.

In 1819, a weakened Spain, facing revolutions in Latin America, signed a treaty ceding Florida to the United States.

In 1862, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated to a full six-year term as president of the Confederate States of America after his election the previous November. He previously served as the Confederacy’s provisional president.

In 1959, the inaugural Daytona 500 race was held; although Johnny Beauchamp was initially declared the winner, the victory was later awarded to Lee Petty.

In 1967, more than 25,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops launched Operation Junction City, aimed at smashing a Viet Cong stronghold near the Cambodian border.

In 1997, scientists in Scotland announced they had successfully cloned an adult mammal for the first time, a sheep they named “Dolly.”

In 1980, the “Miracle on Ice” took place at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, as the U.S. Olympic hockey team upset the Soviet Union, 4-3. (The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal two days later, 4-2, over Finland.)

In 2010, Najibullah Zazi, accused of buying products from beauty supply stores to make bombs for an attack on New York City subways, pleaded guilty to charges including conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. (He spent nearly a decade after his arrest helping the U.S. identify and prosecute terrorists and was given a 10-year sentence.)

In 2020, pioneering Black mathematician Katherine Johnson, who calculated rocket trajectories and Earth orbits for NASA’s early space missions and was later portrayed in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures,” died at the age of 101.

In 2024, a private lander built by Intuitive Machines made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years, but the spacecraft only managed a weak signal and spotty communications with flight controllers.

Today’s birthdays:

• Actor Paul Dooley is 98.
• Actor James Hong is 97.
• Actor Julie Walters is 76.
• Basketball Hall of Famer Julius Erving is 76.
• Golf Hall of Famer Amy Alcott is 70.
• Actor Kyle MacLachlan is 67.
• Golf Hall of Famer Vijay Singh is 63.
• Hockey Hall of Famer Pat LaFontaine is 61.
• Actor Paul Lieberstein (TV: “The Office) is 59.
• Actor Jeri Ryan is 58.
• Actor-singer Lea Salonga is 55.
• Tennis Hall of Famer Michael Chang is 54.
• Singer James Blunt is 52.
• Actor Drew Barrymore is 51.
• Comedian Iliza Shlesinger is 43.
• Dancer and singer Genneya Walton is 27.
• Rapper Molly Brazy is 27.

ORCHARD LAKE – The third time facing Huron Valley this year was lucky for South Lyon Unified, who defeated the Titans 7-3 Saturday night to advance to Wednesday’s D3 regional finals.

Huron Valley had won the two regular season meetings, including a 6-5 overtime thriller just under three weeks ago at Lakeland Ice Arena.

“We didn’t change much up (from the earlier matchups),” Unified head coach Dennis Gagnon said. “We just scored more than they did. The puck bounced our way. Hockey is a game of bounces, and we earned our bounces, for sure. But it still boils down to bounces and luck.”

Unified came out hot, needing just 1:16 to get on the board when Aiden Petrovich converted a center ice turnover, getting a breakaway and flipping a backhanded shot into the net for a quick lead. Barely three minutes later, Braden Hillebrand barreled down the win, cut behind the net and then found Alex Kero trailing the play for a quick shot and a 2-0 lead.

Hillebrand would score with 6:51 to play in the period, making it 3-0 and South Lyon Unified seemed to have things well in hand.

But the Titans would not go down without a fight. Unified had jumped out to a 3-0 lead the last time the teams met back on Feb. 2, and the Titans came back to win that one in overtime. And for a while, this looked like it could be a repeat.

“We had a slow start. They (Unified) were on fire. It’s hard to come back. At times, it looked like we were chipping away at it, and then they would get a goal right back,” Titans head coach Tim Ronayne said.

The Titans’ power play connected with 48.7 seconds to play in the first period when Nate Dell scored a one-timer from down low. Then, just 2:28 into the next period, the Titans scored again when Austin Scanlon won a faceoff clean back to Lucas Brethauser, whose shot from the top of the right circle seemed to have eyes for the net. Suddenly, it was 3-2 and the Titans had all the momentum.

But this time, Unified had the answers whenever the Titans pushed back. South Lyon Unified restored the two-goal margin just 24 seconds later on a goal from Grant Daugherty, then added another pair before the period had ended with Petrovich and Hillebrand each picking up their second goals of the game.

Huron Valley had a bit of a push early in the third period when Nate Dell got a power-play marker to cut things to 6-3. Even so, the final period was a penalty-filled affair with South Lyon Unified picking up a few penalties in the early stages of the third, and then Huron Valley took several late penalties, short-circuiting any late rally by the Titans.

Photo gallery of a D3 hockey regional semifinal between South Lyon Unified and the Huron Valley Titans

Both sides first met this winter on Dec. 17 in Brighton. In that initial showdown, unlike in the last two, scoring was scarce early as neither team found the back of the net in the first period. However, the Titans struck four times in the final frame in a 5-2 win. Dell and Scanlon assisted Tommy Colt for the game-winner in OT of the February matchup that decided the LVC.

South Lyon Unified (22-4-2) advances to Wednesday’s regional final where it will face Division 3 defending champion Orchard Lake St. Mary’s, who thrashed Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard on its own ice in the evening's first semifinal.

“We’ll just enjoy this one and look forward to the next one,” Gagnon said. “You can’t ask for anything better, can you?” he added.

Huron Valley finishes its first year as a unified team (Lakeland and Milford) with a 16-12-1 record and the Lakes Valley Conference Championship.

“it’s a disappointing way to end the year, but all said and done, we had a great year,” Ronayne said. “It’s our first year being unified, and it was a lot of fun coaching all these guys. The most impressive thing was that they all got along. They melded together, and they’re all brothers. That’s a life lesson in itself right there."

South Lyon Unified defeated the Huron Valley Titans 7-3 in the D3 regional semifinal played on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026 at Orchard Lake St. Mary’s.

ORCHARD LAKE – The Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Eaglets opened the defense of their D3 state title by rolling to a 10-2 victory over the Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard Fighting Irish.

St. Mary’s started strong with two goals in the first six minutes and never looked back. Sophomore Brandon Kondrat got things going for St. Mary’s, capitalizing on a turnover to snap a shot into the net from close range with 12:48 to play in the first period. Dominic Pizzo’s one-timer exactly 100 seconds later made it 2-0, and both goals would be typical of things to come.

St. Mary’s made a living down low in this one. The Eaglets scored most of their goals from point-blank range, getting tip-ins and close in shots early and often, but especially in the third period when they put the Fighting Irish away with four quick goals, ending the game with 6:55 still on the third period clock.

“That was really the goal after the first period – start getting more of that (getting shots in deep) and being able to move that puck across the whole zone rather than using just half of it,” Eaglets head coach Brian Klanow said.

Pizzo was the top scorer for the Eaglets with two goals and one assist, while Matthew Mourad also had three points (one goal, two assists). Charlie Roberts, J.T. Birkett, John Brown, Cam Sussex, and Daniel Ramos each had two points as the Eaglets spread the scoring throughout virtually the entire team. Nine different players scored and 17 Eaglets got at least one point.

Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard’s top line scored a pair of goals with Kai He and Stephen Joffe both scoring for the Fighting Irish. But that was about all the offense for the Fighting Irish, who mustered just 12 shots on goal for the night.

The Fighting Irish played hard throughout the game and battled up and down the line up, from goalie Zeke Talusan to a defense anchored by Jakub Sienkiewicz, right up to the forward lines. Gabriel Richard scratched and fought for every loose puck and every inch of ice they could get. But the young Fighting Irish just could not overcome St. Mary’s firepower.

Photos of Orchard Lake St. Mary’s and Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard in a D3 hockey regional

With the win, the Eaglets (22-4-2) move on to Wednesday’s regional final where they will host South Lyon Unified, winners of the second semifinal on Saturday night.

“We have to come out, put our heads down, and play like a team the whole game,” Klanow said.

Gabriel Richard finishes the year 14-13-1 overall, even with a roster loaded with freshmen and sophomores.

“Everyone gave it everything they had on the ice. I’m just proud of the effort and proud of the way the guys played today,” Fighting Irish head coach Clint Robert said. “We just wanted to be a family in the locker room, and I thought in the locker room the guys really bonded well. It felt like family, and I think that’s important especially with having the majority of the guys back next year. Despite the lopsided outcome here, I think the way the guys battled and for them to see what it takes and what a top team looks like, I think it’s going to be good for us moving forward,” he added.

Orchard Lake St. Mary’s defeated Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard 10-2 in the MHSAA D3 regional semifinal played at OLSM on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026.

WARREN – Jay’den Williams admits that his bedroom walls are getting littered with wrestling memorabilia and most of it is items he has earned.

The Roseville senior 165-pounder, ranked first in the state, brought home some more poster brackets and a medal to add to his growing collection Saturday at Warren Cousino High School.

Williams – who is 37-1 for the season and 186-4 for his stellar four-year career – recorded a 20-3, technical fall victory over Rochester Adams’ Dominic Beccari in the finals at the Division 1 Individual Regional.

“I have too many,” laughed Williams, a three-time state finalist and a sate champion as a junior. I don’t have room anymore. Let’s see – I have four from (Macomb County), four from districts, four from regionals and one from (the state finals).”

Williams was one of 14 regional winners Saturday at Cousino, as standout wrestlers tangled for some eight hours to determine state qualifiers. The top four individuals in each weight class advance to the MHSAA Division 1 state finals March 6-7 at Ford Field in Detroit.

Rochester Adams’ Deacon Morgan will be joining Williams and 55 others from the Cousino regional at the state finals in two weeks and he was impressive ripping through the field in the 144-pound weight class. Last year’s state runner-up has been ranked in the top three in the state and his aggressive fast-paced style helped him record a 19-3, technical fall victory over fellow state-ranked opponent Lucas Harper from Macomb Dakota. 

“I try my best to keep the pace. I just keep my head in the game and keep working and be relentless,” said Morgan. “I do keep up the pace and try to wear my opponent down.”

With last year’s state champion now in college, the door is open for Morgan this season.

“Last year I was second in the state, so the goal is still to win a state championship,” he added.

Rochester Stoney Creek produced one champion, as Jawad Bazzi outlasted Romeo four-sport star Owen Perry 7-3 in the finals at 150. Romeo produced five finalists and tied Adams for the lead with three champions.

Warren Mott had a pair of champions on the day. John Kaminski recorded a 13-5 major decision win over Dax Fegley of Troy in the 157-pound finals. Two weight classes later, Ethan Drozdowski emerged as the 175-pound champ when he defeated Fraser’s Mitchell Nash.

Romeo’s Tommy Jaynes’ quest for glory in the 190-pound division continued, as he added three more wins Saturday to give home 153 for his career and ended his day with a 17-2 technical fall win over Darnel Boyd of Roseville.

“This is the next step,” said Jaynes, a state runner-up last season who is 49-1 this season. “I just have to keep pushing, eating right and manage my nutrition. But I don have to thank God. He gives me the ability to be able to go out there and do this. I just need to keep working hard and remain focused on the goal.”

Adams’ Maxim Vostryakov (215) improved to 39-9 on the season and his major decision victory of 9-1 over Troy’s Selah Houston gave him his first individual regional title.  He came three days after his team captured its first regional title since 1999. Adams’ John David Quinlan (126) prevailed with a 9-5 victory over Romeo’s Ethan Miller in the finals match.

“Personally, for me, I’ve had blast this season. I love my teammates and I love the fact that we won a team regional and that I was able to get one as an individual, too,” said Vostryakov. “Last year I lost in the blood rounds and I’m excited to be able to win today and also win that team regional in the same week.”

Quinlan is also a big part of the Adams success story this year.

“All of this is a great feeling. This team is a close as a team I’ve been one and to win a individual regional here today and to win team regionals earlier this week is amazing. We had three winners today and Max (Vostryakov) clinched it against Romeo the other day for us to win the first regional match,” noted Quinlan. “We have a lot of very good wrestlers and I think we had seven qualify today (for the state finals).”

Landon Cooke of Utica pinned Dearborn Fordson’s Mehdi Beydoun in 4:00 with a broken hand to improve to 22-3. Cooke was injured over the Christmas break with a broken bone in his right hand and missed nearly a month of action.

“I think this title is big because this will help with my seeding at state,” said Cooke. “I missed quite a bit of time and sat out nearly a month because I broke (a bone in) my hand. I won the county meet and then the injury happened right after Christmas. This is my second tournament win, but it is the regional and that’s important. My goal is to try to get up there (on the podium) and be All-State, maybe even top three.”

Sterling Heights Stevenson 106-pounder Anthony Bertollini won his finals match via forfeit after his opponent, Tristan Ciaramitaro of Chippewa Valley, picked up a minor injury at the end of his semifinals victory and opted out. Detroit Cass Tech’s Cyrus Woodberry edged Dearborn Fordson’s Rasoul Charafeddine 4-3 in the 113-pound title bout, while Roseville’s Branden Halsey (132) defeated Fraser’s Connor Wilson 9-4 to win his division.

Romeo sophomore Nico Adamo pinned Fraser’s Zack Courtney in 3:48 to win his 120-pound weight class, while his older brother Valentin Adamo captured a thrilling, 3-1 overtime victory over Dakota’s Carl Nihranz to end the marathon day. Both wrestlers are ranked in the top 10 in the state.

“I just had to trust myself and keep pushing out there,” said Valentine Adamo. “Carl is one of my wrestling partners (outside of high school) and we’re friends. We train together a lot and we’ve wrestled each other a couple of times before. I knew it would be a close match.”

The younger Adamo captured his first regional title.

“This should help me with my seeding. I want to be All-State and I think winning regionals is a big step towards that,” said Nico Adamo. “I didn’t start off the season too well. I only finished seventh at the county meet. I would love to have that day back. But I think that motivated me because I am wrestling a lot better now.”

CHICAGO (AP) — Jalen Duren had 26 points and 13 rebounds in his return from a suspension to help the Detroit Pistons take charge in the second half and roll to a 126-110 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night.

Duren helped establish Detroit’s dominance after sitting out two games for his role in a fight at Charlotte on Feb. 9. He got a technical foul in this one for casually dropping the ball on the face of Chicago’s Nick Richards in the third quarter while Richards was down on the floor.

Josh Giddey had 27 points on 10 for 16 shooting — including five 3-pointers — but the Bulls couldn’t keep pace with the Pistons after trailing only 53-50 at the half. Matas Buzelis, Jalen Smith and Issac Okoro each added 15 as the Bulls committed 23 turnovers leading to 28 Detroit points.

Detroit outmuscled Chicago, scoring 68 points in the paint, compared to the Bulls 38. The Pistons had 26 on second chances and Chicago just 16.

The Bulls played without Jaden Ivey, who will be out two weeks with knee soreness after playing just four games with Chicago following a trade from Detroit. Anfernee Simons left the game with a left wrist injury

Bulls coach Billy Donovan was back on the bench after missing a game to attend his father’s funeral.

The Pistons led by no more than six points in a tight, scrappy first half. Detroit outscored Chicago 44-26 in third quarter and opened the lead to as much as 28.

Up next

Pistons: Host San Antonio on Monday

Bulls: Host New York Knicks on Sunday.

— By MATT CARLSON, Associated Press