SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Houston’s suffocating defense wiped away a 14-point deficit over the final eight minutes and erased Cooper Flagg and Duke’s title hopes Saturday night in a 70-67 stunner over the Blue Devils at the Final Four.

Duke made a grand total of one field goal over the last 10 1/2 minutes of this game. The second-to-last attempt during its game-ending 1-for-9 stretch was a step-back jumper in the lane by Flagg that J’Wan Roberts disrupted. The last was a desperation heave by Tyrese Proctor that caught nothing at the buzzer.

It was Roberts’ two free throws with 19.6 seconds left that gave the Cougars their first lead since 6-5. LJ Cryer, who led Houston with 26 points, made two more to push the lead to three. It was Houston’s biggest lead of the night.

“No one ever loses at anything as long as you don’t quit,” coach Kelvin Sampson said. “If you quit, you’ve lost.”

The Cougars (35-4), who have never won a title, not even in the days of Phi Slama Jamma, will play Florida on Monday night for the championship.

Florida’s 79-73 win over Auburn in the early game was a free-flowing hoopsfest. This one would’ve looked perfect on a cracked blacktop and a court with chain-link nets.

That’s just how Houston likes it. It closed the game on a 9-0 run over the final 74 seconds, and though Flagg finished with 27 points, he did it on 8-for-19 shooting and never got a good look after his 3 at the 3:02 mark put the Blue Devils (35-4) up by nine.

It looked over at that point. Houston was just getting started.

“We had a feeling that we could still win this game,” Roberts said.

A team that prides itself on getting three stops in a row — calling the third one the “kill stop” — allowed a measly three free throws down the stretch. One came when Joseph Tugler got a technical for batting the ball from a Duke player’s hand as he was trying to throw an inbounds pass.

That didn’t make it any better for Duke.

On the possession following the technical, Tugler rejected Kon Knueppel (16 points), then Emanuel Sharp (16 points) made a 3 to cut the deficit to three.

Mylik Wilson stole the next inbounds pass and missed a game-tying 3, but Tugler tipped it in to cut the deficit to one.

Proctor missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 20 seconds left to set the stage for the Roberts free throws.

Duke’s slow walk off the court came through a phalanx of Houston fans who waved goodbye to Flagg, who will likely be off to the NBA as the first pick in the draft.

Houston finished with six steals and six blocked shots, including four from Tugler, who might be the best shot blocker this program has seen since Hakeem Olajuwon, who was on hand at the Alamodome to see the program’s first trip to the final since 1984.

Big win for AI

The huge comeback also netted a $1 million win for artificial intelligence. An AI disruptor bet a professional gambler that his program could do a better March Madness bracket, and it all came down to the Duke-Houston game.

Even if the Houston loses in the final, the AI bracket will get more points in the contest and the disruptor, Alan Levy, will pocket the million.

— By EDDIE PELLS, Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Walter Clayton Jr. scored 34 points and Florida beat Southeastern Conference rival Auburn 79-73 in the Final Four on Saturday night, sending the Gators to the national championship game for the first time since their titles in 2006 and 2007.

The All-America guard for the Gators (35-4) had a driving layup with 2:24 left, on the possession right after Australian big man Alex Condon drew a charge against Johni Broome, the other All-America player in this national semifinal — and who was dealing with an injured right elbow.

After a record 14 SEC teams made this NCAA Tournament, seven got to the Sweet 16 before the league made up half the Elite Eight and then this Final Four filled with No. 1 seeds.

The Gators will have the chance Monday night to win the SEC’s first title since Kentucky in 2012, the only one since they won in back-to-back seasons. Florida takes an 11-game winning streak into the title championship game in the Alamodome against either Duke or Houston.

“We’re just all together, on the court and off the court,” Clayton said.

Even at the end of the first SEC matchup in a Final Four, Clayton chased a loose rebound and tipped it back inbounds to keep the clock running out on the win. When he started to walk back on the court, teammate Alijah Martin was standing watching him at the end line nodding with a smile to greet him.

The Tigers (32-6), in their second Final Four with coach Bruce Pearl, were the top overall seed and had an eight-point halftime lead.

“Auburn had us on our heels in the first half but we came out with a great start and we didn’t look back,” said 39-year-old Florida coach Todd Golden, who joined Pearl’s first staff at Auburn in 2014.

Clayton became the first player with consecutive 30-point games in the Elite Eight and semifinals since Larry Bird for Indiana State in 1979, according to ESPN Stats. Clayton got over 30 with his three-point play with 1:33 left, scoring on a layup while being fouled and adding the free throw.

Martin, who played in the Final Four with FAU two years ago, added 17 points for the Gators. Thomas Haugh had 12.

Florida opened the second half with a 13-3 run, with Clayton capping an 11-0 run with a layup after Rueben Chinyelu’s steal. That put the Gators up 51-49 with 15 1/2 minutes left.

Chad Baker-Mazara, with his left hand partially wrapped because of a thumb issue, led Auburn with 18 points, including four 3-pointers. Broome finished with 15 points on 6-of-14 shooting and had seven rebounds — he had only three points after halftime.

Even before the final buzzer sounded, Broome was hunched over and then was surrounded by cameras to capture his reaction. He eventually stood up to shake hands, then walked off the court with his eyes red from crying — pulling up his jersey to wipe his face as cameras continued to follow his exit.

Broome and Baker-Mazara both were injured in the win over Michigan State last Sunday that sent the Tigers to the Final Four. Broome’s right elbow bent awkwardly during a hard fall in the second half, and in the Final Four he wore some kind of brace on his arm covered by a sleeve.

— By STEPHEN HAWKINS, Associated Press

DETROIT (AP) — Desmond Bane scored 38 points, Zach Edey had a career-high 21 rebounds and the Memphis Grizzlies held off the Detroit Pistons 109-103 on Saturday night.

Ja Morant was a late scratch for the Grizzlies, who had lost seven of nine, because of an illness. Jaren Jackson had 27 points and 11 rebounds.

Cade Cunningham, returning after missing six games with a calf strain, had 25 points and nine rebounds for the Pistons, who have lost three of four. Ausar Thompson added 18 points and 11 rebounds.

Detroit trailed 91-85 when center Isaiah Stewart sat with five fouls. With Detroit’s usual starter, Jalen Duren, missing the game with an injury, the Pistons were forced to use 6-foot-6 Thompson against the 7-3 3/4 Edey.

The Pistons were as close as 93-91 with four minutes left, but struggled to stop the Grizzlies around the rim. Bane hit a 3-pointer to make it 104-98 with 56 seconds left and Memphis wrapped it up at free-throw line.

Takeaways

Grizzlies: Memphis has beaten the Pistons nine straight times. Detroit’s last win came on May 6, 2021.

Pistons: Duren missed the game with a contusion of the peroneal nerve in his right leg.

Key moment

Detroit was within two with 3:56 left, but Thompson fouled Santi Aldama on a 3-point attempt, then could only split a pair of free throws at the other end.

Key stat

Memphis struggled from the field in the first half, shooting 36.7% (18-49) and making just four of 18 3-point attempts (22.2%), but only trailed by one point at the intermission by grabbing 11 of 30 (36.7%) offensive-rebound opportunities. The Grizzlies finished the half with a 10-2 advantage in second-chance points.

Up next

Memphis is at Charlotte on Tuesday night. The Pistons host Sacramento on Monday night.

— By DAVE HOGG, Associated Press

DETROIT (AP) A Michigan couple accused of fraud in a timeshare contract dispute and held in a Mexican prison for 32 days has returned home following negotiations between U.S. and Mexican officials.

Paul and Christy Akeo of Lansing were released from a maximum security prison in Cancun on Thursday and flown back to Michigan, attorney John Manly told The Associated Press.

Previous report: Michigan couple jailed in Mexico in timeshare dispute Michigan couple jailed in Mexico in timeshare dispute

Their release comes as the United State and Mexico are embroiled in a tariff war initiated by President Donald Trump, border security concerns and pressure to stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

Prosecutors in the state of Quintana Roo, where Cancun is located, said in a March 15 statement that the Akeos signed a contract with the Mexico-based hospitality group Palace Co. in November 2021 to buy a timeshare club membership at a resort in the Cancun area, but that the couple subsequently defrauded the hotel chain.

Manly said his clients disputed about $116,000 in credit card charges to Palace in 2022, saying the company had breached the timeshare agreement.

American Express gave Palace the opportunity to respond," he said. "They did and American Express found for the Akeos.

Prosecutors said the company received notices from the credit card company that 13 transactions totaling $116,587 had been canceled, and the couple then shared on Facebook how they had conned the hotel group.

Manley said Christy Akeo did post on Facebook about their experience and how the charges were appealed to their credit card company, but that prosecutors had misrepresented the nature of her posts.

Reporters were on hand to record the arrest of the Akeos at Cancun International Airport on March 4, when they arrived for a vacation at a different resort, and a judge ordered them detained pending trial, Manly said.

Christy Akeo's adult children two-time national champion gymnast Lindsey Lemke Hull and Michael Lemke then posted about their parents' confinement on social media, winning the attention of U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, a Republican from Lansing, Michigan.

Barrett said he became involved around March 23 or 24.

We had some loose connections to friends of friends who kind of knew the family, Barrett said Friday. I spoke directly to the son. I escalated it up to the State Department and the White House that same day.

U.S. Consulate staff in Mexico visited the couple in prison, but there didn't seem to be any movement on their case, Barrett said.

Not satisfied with what we were hearing, I made the decision to go down there and deal with it personally, he said.

Barrett said he flew to Cancun on Wednesday where he met with the U.S. State Department consulate general. He then went to the prison to meet with the Akeos and later met with the president of Mexico's National Supreme Court of Justice.

The Akeos went before a local judge on Thursday and were released after they and the Palace Co. agreed to donate the disputed funds, Barrett said.

This essentially amounted to a contract dispute and shouldnt result in somebody being in max prison, he said.

Palace said in a statement that $116,587.84, the amount that was contested by the Akeos and refunded to them by American Express, will be donated to a bona fide established nonprofit in Mexico benefitting orphan children.

Each party regrets that this incident occurred, Palace said.

Lindsey Lemke Hull and Michael Lemke thanked Barrett, Trump and his special envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, for helping to secure the release.

Through four straight weeks of fear and uncertainty, Congressman Barretts commitment to bringing our parents home safely provided us with hope and reassurance, the family said. No American should be held hostage to the demands of a private company anywhere in the world."

Lemke Hull is a survivor of Michigan State University sports medicine doctor Larry Nassar, who is serving what amounts to life in prison for possessing child pornography and sexually assaulting athletes, mostly female gymnasts.

___

Associated Press journalist Lisa Adams Wagner in Atlanta contributed.

The post Michigan’s top court says police can’t search cars solely because of marijuana odor appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — After weeks of anticipation and speculation, President Donald Trump followed through on his reciprocal tariff threats by declaring on Wednesday a 10% baseline tax on imports from all countries and higher tariff rates on dozens of nations that run trade surpluses with the United States.

In announcing the reciprocal tariffs, Trump was fulfilling a key campaign promise by raising U.S. taxes on foreign goods to narrow the gap with the tariffs the White House says other countries unfairly impose on U.S. products.

“Reciprocal means ‘they do it to us and we do it to them,’” the president said from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday.

Trump’s higher rates would hit foreign entities that sell more goods to the United States than they buy. But economists don’t share Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs since they’re a tax on importers that usually get passed on to consumers. It’s possible, however, that the reciprocal tariffs could bring other countries to the table and get them to lower their own import taxes.

The Associated Press asked for your questions about reciprocal tariffs. Here are a few of them, along with our answers:

Do U.S.-collected tariffs go into the General Revenue Fund? Can Trump withdraw money from that fund without oversight?

Tariffs are taxes on imports, collected when foreign goods cross the U.S. border by the Customs and Border Protection agency. The money — about $80 billion last year — goes to the U.S. Treasury to help pay the federal government’s expenses. Congress has authority to say how the money will be spent.

Trump — largely supported by Republican lawmakers who control the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives — wants to use increased tariff revenue to finance tax cuts that analysts say would disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Specifically, they want to extend tax cuts passed in Trump’s first term and largely set to expire at the end of 2025. The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, has found that extending Trump’s tax cuts would reduce federal revenue by $4.5 trillion from 2025 to 2034.

Trump wants higher tariffs to help offset the lower tax collections. Another think tank, the Tax Policy Center, has said that extending the 2017 tax cuts would deliver continued tax relief to Americans at all income levels, “but higher-income households would receive a larger benefit.’’

How soon will prices rise as a result of the tariff policy?

It depends on how businesses both in the United States and overseas respond, but consumers could see overall prices rising within a month or two of tariffs being imposed. For some products, such as produce from Mexico, prices could rise much more quickly after the tariffs take effect.

Some U.S. retailers and other importers may eat part of the cost of the tariff, and overseas exporters may reduce their prices to offset the extra duties. But for many businesses, the tariffs Trump announced Wednesday — such as 20% on imports from Europe — will be too large to swallow on their own.

Companies may also use the tariffs as an excuse to raise prices. When Trump slapped duties on washing machines in 2018, studies later showed that retailers raised prices on both washers and dryers, even though there were no new duties on dryers.

A key question in the coming months is whether something similar will happen again. Economists worry that consumers, having just lived through the biggest inflationary spike in four decades, are more accustomed to rising prices than they were before the pandemic.

Yet there are also signs that Americans, put off by the rise in the cost of living, are less willing to accept price increases and will simply cut back on their purchases. That could discourage businesses from raising prices by much.

What is the limit of the executive branch’s power to implement tariffs? Does Congress not play any role?

The U.S. Constitution grants the power to set tariffs to Congress. But over the years, Congress has delegated those powers to the president through several different laws. Those laws specify the circumstances under which the White House can impose tariffs, which are typically limited to cases where imports threaten national security or are severely harming a specific industry.

In the past, presidents generally imposed tariffs only after carrying out public hearings to determine if certain imports met those criteria. Trump followed those steps when imposing tariffs in his first term.

In his second term, however, Trump has sought to use emergency powers set out in a 1977 law to impose tariffs in a more ad hoc fashion. Trump has said, for example, that fentanyl flowing in from Canada and Mexico constitute a national emergency and has used that pretext to impose 25% duties on goods from both countries.

Congress can seek to cancel an emergency that a president declares, and Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, has proposed to do just that regarding Canada. That legislation could pass the Senate but would likely die in the House. Other bills in Congress that would also limit the president’s authority to set tariffs face tough odds for passage as well.

What tariffs are other countries charging on US goods?

U.S. tariffs are generally lower than those charged by other countries. The average U.S. tariff, weighted to reflect goods that are actually traded, is just 2.2% for the United States, versus the European Union’s 2.7%, China’s 3% and India’s 12%, according to the World Trade Organization.

Other countries also tend to do more than the United States to protect their farmers with high tariffs. The U.S. trade-weighted tariff on farm goods, for example, is 4%, compared to the EU’s 8.4%, Japan’s 12.6%, China’s 13.1% and India’s 65%. (The WTO numbers don’t count Trump’s recent flurry of import taxes or tariffs between countries that have entered into their own free trade agreements, such as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that allows many goods to cross North American borders duty free.)

Previous U.S. administrations agreed to the tariffs that Trump now calls unjust. They were the result of a long negotiation between 1986 to 1994 — the so-called Uruguay Round — that ended in a trade pact signed by 123 countries and has formed the basis of the global trading system for nearly four decades.

By STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — For a day, at least, Democrats across the country have a sense that their comeback against President Donald Trump may have begun.

It wasn’t just about the election results in Wisconsin, where Democratic-backed Judge Susan Crawford won a 10-point victory against Trump and Elon Musk’s favored candidate for the state Supreme Court.

Some Democrats highlighted New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s marathon, record-setting 25-hour Senate speech as a rallying point for frustrated voters. Others pointed to congressional Democrats lining up with a handful of House Republican lawmakers to oppose a procedural rule that would have stopped a proposal for new parents in Congress to able to vote by proxy.

The series of victories gave Democratic leaders moments of relief and vindication of their strategy to focus on Trump’s alliances with Musk and other billionaires. That’s even as some party officials warned that it was far too early to draw sweeping conclusions from a series of lower-turnout off-year elections with polls still showing that the party’s brand is deeply unpopular among key groups of voters.

“Elon Musk and Donald Trump are on the ropes,” charged Ken Martin, the newly elected chair of the Democratic National Committee. “We’re just getting started.”

Wisconsin gave Democrats a much-needed win

Democrats have had little to cheer about in the five months since Trump won a decisive victory in November’s presidential election in which he peeled away a significant portion of working-class voters and people of color. And in more recent weeks, the party’s activist base has become increasingly frustrated that Democratic leaders have not done more to stop Trump’s unprecedented push to slash the federal government and the reshape the economy.

Democrats in Washington and in state capitals across the country privately conceded that a bad night, especially in Wisconsin, would have been devastating.

Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, lost to liberal-backed Crawford in a relative blowout, five months after Trump carried Wisconsin by less than 1 point.

And in Florida, Republicans won special elections in two of the most pro-Trump House districts in the country, but both candidates significantly underperformed Trump’s November margins.

“I went to bed last night feeling uplifted and relieved,” Kansas Democratic Party Chair Jeanna Repass said Wednesday.

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., predicted further political consequences for Republicans if they don’t resist the sweeping cuts to government services enacted by Musk and Trump.

“In swing districts, if I was a Republican, I would either decide how to stand up for your constituents or find out how to get a discount on adult depends, because one or the other is what you’re going to be needing to do,” Pocan said.

Rebecca Cooke, a Democratic candidate in Wisconsin’s 3rd congressional district, said the election was a clear indication that voters are upset with how Trump and Musk “are messing with their lives.” But she stopped short of projecting confidence in future elections.

“We have work to do to build long term infrastructure in this party and to really build trust back with voters that I think have felt left behind by the Democratic Party,” said Cooke, a 37-year-old waitress who is running against GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden. “I think it takes time to build trust with voters, and it can’t happen overnight, and it can’t happen in just one election.”

Expect more Democratic talking points about Musk

In this week’s successes, Democratic officials believe they have confirmed the effectiveness of their core message heading into the 2026 midterms that Trump and his billionaire allies are working for the rich at the expense of the working class.

Indeed, talking points distributed by the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday reinforced that notion while pointing to what the committee described as “an undeniable trend” after recent lower-profile Democratic victories in Virginia, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Minnesota.

“In 2025, Democrats continue to overperform in special elections as voters send a resounding message: They want Democrats to fight for them, and they want the Trump-Musk agenda out of their communities,” the talking points read.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., told the AP Wednesday that the election results showed that the public is “outraged” by chaos and dysfunction coming from the Trump administration. The chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said Trump and Republicans in Congress are failing to fix high prices and seeking Medicaid cuts, in addition to supporting tariffs that could worsen inflation for families.

“What we saw yesterday in Florida and Wisconsin was Republicans running scared because the American people are angry and scared about the direction the Trump-Musk agenda is taking us,” she said. “They’re seeing prices go up. They’re seeing more and more the focus is not on them, but on Trump and his wealthy donors.”

More protests are to come

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of voters are expected to attend more than 1,000 so-called “Hands Off!” related protests nationwide focused on Trump and Musk. More than 150 political groups worked together to organize what will almost certainly represent the single biggest day of protest of the second Trump administration.

The Washington event, which will feature Reps. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., already has more than 12,000 RSVPs, according to organizers.

Meanwhile, Booker is planning to attend a series of unrelated public events, including a town hall in New Jersey this weekend.

His office reports receiving 28,000 voicemails since he finished his speech shortly after 8 p.m. on Tuesday. At its peak, the 25-hour address was being streamed by more than 300,000 people across Booker’s social media channels. It earned more than 350 million likes on his newly formed TikTok account.

A spokesperson said that the Democratic senator spent much of Wednesday sleeping.

Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Leah Askarinam in Washington and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin contributed reporting.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN and PATRICK WHITTLE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner is facing calls to resign after he issued an order — which was quickly rescinded — that would have required Maine parents to register their newborns for Social Security numbers at a federal office rather than the hospital.

Newly unearthed emails show that the March 5 decision was made as political payback to Maine’s Governor Janet Mills, who has defied the Trump administration’s push to deny federal funding to the state over transgender athletes.

In the email addressed to the agency’s staff, acting commissioner Leland Dudek, said, “no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child.” Staff members warned that terminating the contracts would result in improper payments and the potential for identity theft.

Dudek’s order initially drew widespread condemnation from medical organizations and public officials, who described it as unnecessary and punitive. The practice of allowing parents to register a newborn for a Social Security number at a hospital or other birthing site, called the Enumeration at Birth program, has been common for decades.

Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, one of two House members from Maine, said Dudek should resign immediately. She characterized Dudek’s actions as retaliation for Mills publicly opposing President Donald Trump.

“If a federal agency can be turned into a political hit squad at the whim of an acting appointee, what checks remain on executive power? Commissioner Dudek’s vindictive actions against Maine represent a fundamental betrayal of public trust that disqualifies him from public service,” Pingree said.

Mills said Wednesday that Social Security is being subjected to “rushed and reckless cuts” and needs leadership that treats it like a public trust. She said that is especially important in Maine, which has a high number of recipients.

“Social Security is not a scheme, as some have said, it’s a covenant between our government and its people. The Social Security Administration’s leadership must act in a manner that reflects this solemn obligation,” Mills said.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Dudek on Tuesday, calling for his immediate resignation and a request that he sit for an interview with the committee.

“The American people deserve answers about your activities and communications in the time between President Trump’s February 21, 2025, public threat to Governor Mills and your February 27, 2025, order to cancel the enumeration at birth and electronic death registration contracts with the state of Maine, and about your knowledge that cancelling these contracts would lead to increased waste, fraud, and abuse,” Connolly said in his letter.

Connolly, in a letter on Tuesday, said Democrats on the House oversight committee obtained internal emails from the Social Security Administration that he says shows Dudek cancelled the contracts to retaliate politically against Maine.

A representative from the Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Dudek on a March 18th call with reporters to preview the agency’s tighter identity-proofing measures, initially said the cancellation of the Maine contract happened “because I screwed up,” adding that he believed that the contract looked strange. “I made the wrong move there. I should always ask my staff for guidance first, before I cancel something. I’m new at this job.”

He added, “Well, I was upset at the governor’s treatment, and I indicated in email as such, but the actual fact of the matter was it looked like a strange contract.”

“I’m not interested in political retaliation. I’m interested in serving the public.”

Maine has been the subject of federal investigations since Gov. Mills sparked the ire of Trump at a meeting of governors at the White House in February. During the meeting, Trump threatened to pull federal funding from Maine if the state does not comply with his executive order barring transgender athletes from sports.

Mills responded: “We’ll see you in court.”

The Trump administration then opened investigations into whether Maine violated the Title IX antidiscrimination law by allowing transgender athletes to participate in girls’ sports. The Education Department issued a final warning on Monday that the state could face Justice Department enforcement soon if it doesn’t come into compliance soon.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins also said Wednesday that the department is pausing federal funds for some Maine educational programs because of Title IX noncompliance.

Whittle reported from Scarborough, Maine.

By MEGAN JANETSKY, Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The U.S. State Department revoked the visas of members of a Mexican band after they projected the face of a drug cartel boss onto a large screen during a performance in the western state of Jalisco over the weekend.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who was U.S. ambassador to Mexico during the first Trump administration, said late Tuesday on X that the work and tourism visas of members of Los Alegres del Barranco were revoked.

The visa revocations follow widespread outrage in Mexico over the concert as prosecutors in two states have launched investigations into the projected images, and a larger national reckoning over how to address the rise of a popular musical genre criticized for romanticizing drug cartels.

“I’m a firm believer in freedom of expression, but that doesn’t mean that expression should be free of consequences,” Landau wrote on X. “The last thing we need is a welcome mat for people who extol criminals and terrorists.”

The controversy broke out over the weekend when the face of Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera layered over flames was projected behind the band, originally hailing from Sinaloa, during the concert. Finger pointing ensued among the band, concert producers and the venue.

Oseguera is the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has been connected to a ranch authorities say was used to train cartel recruits and possibly dispose of bodies in Jalisco, where searchers found human bone fragments, heaps of clothing and shoes.

The Jalisco cartel is among other criminal groups in Mexico that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.

While the image was met by applause during the concert, Jalisco prosecutors quickly announced they were summoning the band to testify in an investigation into whether they were promoting violence, a crime which could result in a penalty of up to six months in prison. The state of Michoacan also announced an investigation into the Los Alegres del Barranco for projecting the same images during a concert in the city of Uruapan.

Jalisco Gov. Pablo Lemus said that the state would ban musical performances that glorify violence, adding that violators would “face monetary and criminal sanctions.”

“We know that outrage is not enough,” Lemus said. “Of course it’s possible to ban (the music).”

Since, a number of the band’s future shows have been cancelled, one town’s government saying that the show “didn’t have the municipal permissions needed” to carry out the performance.

Pavel Moreno, the band’s accordion player and back-up singer, didn’t respond to questions by fans asking if his visa had been revoked, simply thanking them for support and saying that “everything is fine.”

The band was scheduled to play in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 4. While the event hasn’t been publicly cancelled, ticket sales websites read: “No tickets available for now on our site” for that date.

The dispute coincides with a larger cultural debate in Mexico as artists like Peso Pluma, Fuerza Regida and Natanael Cano usher in a global renaissance of Mexican regional music, by mixing classic ballads with trap music. In 2023, Peso Pluma beat Taylor Swift out as the most streamed artist on YouTube.

Many of the artists now topping the charts have come under fierce criticism because their lyrics often paint cartel leaders as Robin Hood-esque figures. Others say that the genre, known as “narco corridos”, expresses the harsh realities of many youths across Mexico.

A number of Mexican states have banned public performances of the music in recent years, the most recent being the state of Nayarit in February. Some of the bans have come as famed artists have received death threats from cartels, forcing a number of them to cancel their performances.

Others, including Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum, have sought a less aggressive approach to addressing the genre. Sheinbaum, who has come out against censoring the music, has suggested instead that the Mexican government push forward initiatives that promote Mexican regional music with more socially acceptable lyrics.

The Mexican leader did harden her language on the topic following the Los Alegres del Barranco concert. In her morning news briefing this week, Sheinbaum demanded an investigation into the concert, saying: “You can’t justify violence or criminal groups.”

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump declared on Wednesday a 10% baseline tax on imports from all countries and higher tariff rates on dozens of nations that run trade surpluses with the United States, threatening to upend much of the architecture of the global economy and trigger broader trade wars.

Trump held up a chart while speaking at the White House, showing the United States would charge a 34% tax on imports from China, a 20% tax on imports from the European Union, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan and 32% on Taiwan.

The president used aggressive rhetoric to describe a global trade system that the United States helped to build after World War II, saying “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” by other nations.

Trump declared a national economic emergency to launch the tariffs, expected to produce hundreds of billions in annual revenues. He has promised that factory jobs will return back to the United States as a result of the taxes, but his policies risk a sudden economic slowdown as consumers and businesses could face sharp price hikes on autos, clothes and other goods.

“Taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump said in remarks at the White House. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”

Trump was fulfilling a key campaign promise as he imposed what he called “reciprocal” tariffs on trade partners, acting without Congress through the 1977 International Emergency Powers Act in an extraordinary attempt to both break and ultimately reshape America’s trading relationship with the world.

The president’s higher rates would hit foreign entities that sell more goods to the United States than they buy, meaning the tariffs could stay in place for some time as the administration expects other nations to lower their tariffs and other barriers to trade that it says have led to a $1.2 trillion trade imbalance last year.

The tariffs follow similar recent announcements of 25% taxes on auto imports; levies against China, Canada and Mexico; and expanded trade penalties on steel and aluminum. Trump has also imposed tariffs on countries that import oil from Venezuela and he plans separate import taxes on pharmaceutical drugs, lumber, copper and computer chips.

None of the warning signs about a falling stock market or consumer sentiment turning morose have caused the administration to publicly second-guess its strategy, despite the risk of political backlash as voters in last year’s election said they wanted Trump to combat inflation.

Senior administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to preview the new tariffs with reporters ahead of Trump’s speech, said the taxes would raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually in revenues. They said the 10% baseline rate existed to help ensure compliance, while the higher rates were based on the trade deficits run with other nations and then halved to reach the numbers that Trump presented in the Rose Garden.

In a follow-up series of questions by The Associated Press, the White House could not say whether the tariff exemptions on imports worth $800 or less would remain in place, possibly shielding some imports from the new taxes.

Based on the possibility of broad tariffs that have been floated by some White House aides, most outside analyses by banks and think tanks see an economy tarnished by higher prices and stagnating growth.

Trump would be applying these tariffs on his own; he has ways of doing so without congressional approval. That makes it easy for Democratic lawmakers and policymakers to criticize the administration if the uncertainty expressed by businesses and declining consumer sentiment are signs of trouble to come.

Heather Boushey, a member of the Biden White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, noted that the less aggressive tariffs Trump imposed during his first term failed to stir the manufacturing renaissance he promised voters.

“We are not seeing indications of the boom that the president promised,” Boushey said. “It’s a failed strategy.”

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said the tariffs are “part of the chaos and dysfunction” being generated across the Trump administration. The chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee stressed that Trump should not have the sole authority to raise taxes as he intends without getting lawmakers’ approval, saying that Republicans so far have been “blindly loyal.”

“The president shouldn’t be able to do that,” DelBene said. “This is a massive tax increase on American families, and it’s without a vote in Congress … President Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would lower costs on day one. Now he says he doesn’t care if prices go up — he’s broken his promise.”

Even Republicans who trust Trump’s instincts have acknowledged that the tariffs could disrupt an economy with an otherwise healthy 4.1 % unemployment rate.

“We’ll see how it all develops,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. “It may be rocky in the beginning. But I think that this will make sense for Americans and help all Americans.”

Longtime trading partners are preparing their own countermeasures. Canada has imposed some in response to the 25% tariffs that Trump tied to the trafficking of fentanyl. The European Union, in response to the steel and aluminum tariffs, put taxes on 26 billion euros’ worth ($28 billion) of U.S. goods, including on bourbon, which prompted Trump to threaten a 200% tariff on European alcohol.

Many allies feel they have been reluctantly drawn into a confrontation by Trump, who routinely says America’s friends and foes have essentially ripped off the United States with a mix of tariffs and other trade barriers.

The flip side is that Americans also have the incomes to choose to buy designer gowns by French fashion houses and autos from German manufacturers, whereas World Bank data show the EU has lower incomes per capita than the U.S.

“Europe has not started this confrontation,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We do not necessarily want to retaliate but, if it is necessary, we have a strong plan to retaliate and we will use it.”

Italy’s premier, Giorgia Meloni, on Wednesday reiterated her call to avoid an EU-US trade war, saying it would harm both sides and would have “heavy” consequences for her country’s economy.

Because Trump had hyped his tariffs without providing specifics until Wednesday, he provided a deeper sense of uncertainty for the world, a sign that the economic slowdown could possibly extend beyond U.S. borders to other nations that would see one person to blame.

Ray Sparnaay, general manager of JE Fixture & Tool, a Canadian tool and die business that sits across the Detroit River, said the uncertainty has crushed his company’s ability to make plans.

“There’s going to be tariffs implemented. We just don’t know at this point,” he said Monday. “That’s one of the biggest problems we’ve had probably the last — well, since November — is the uncertainty. It’s basically slowed all of our quoting processes, business that we hope to secure has been stalled.”

By AMANDA SEITZ

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered no new details Wednesday about his massive restructuring of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the day after thousands of layoffs ricocheted through its agencies, hollowing out entire offices around the country in some cases.

Kennedy’s silence is prompting questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, with a bipartisan request for President Donald Trump’s health secretary to appear before a Senate committee next week to explain the cuts.

As many as 10,000 notices were sent to scientists, senior leaders, doctors, inspectors and others across the department in an effort to cut a quarter of its workforce. The agency itself has offered no specifics on which jobs have been eliminated, with the information instead coming largely from employees who have been dismissed.

“This overhaul is about realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again,” Kennedy said on social media, in his only comments addressing the layoffs so far. “It’s a win-win for taxpayers, and for every American we serve.”

The move, the department has said, is expected to save $1.8 billion from the agency’s $1.7 trillion annual budget — about one-tenth of 1%.

The department has not released final numbers but last week said it planned to eliminate 3,500 jobs from the Food and Drug Administration, 2,400 jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 1,200 from the National Institutes of Health. Public health experts and top Democrats have raised alarms about how the deep cuts — about 25% of the department — will affect food and prescription drug safety, medical research and infectious disease prevention.

Still unclear is why certain jobs were eliminated and others were spared.

As the cuts were underway on Tuesday, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, sent a letter to Kennedy calling him before the Senate’s health committee. In a statement, Cassidy said Kennedy’s appearance is part of his promise to appear quarterly before the committee.

“This will be a good opportunity for him to set the record straight and speak to the goals, structure and benefits of the proposed reorganization,” Cassidy’s statement said.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger, a Republican from Tennessee, said the House’s health subcommittee also has questions about job cuts.

“We’re going to find out what the layoffs were all about — 10,000 — we didn’t know it,” Harshbarger said Wednesday at a health care forum hosted by Politico. “We’re going to find out what the premise was for those layoffs.”

At the same event, special government employee Calley Means, a close adviser to Kennedy who is working at the White House, defended the cuts. He struggled, however, to offer an explanation on how the overhaul will improve Americans’ health. Some of his claims were met with shouts and hisses.

“The system is really on the wrong track,” Means said, later adding that he wants to see more research from the NIH.

Politico’s Dasha Burns pressed Means on how the NIH would conduct more research with fewer employees at the agency, which had fired more than 1,000 NIH scientists and other staff before this week’s layoffs. Trump’s Republican administration has yanked hundreds of NIH grants and delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in continuing or new research funds including for studies of cancer and to keep Alzheimer’s centers around the country running.

Means responded by asking: “Has NIH funding been slashed?”

This story has been corrected to show the savings is about one-tenth of 1%, not about 1%.

Associated Press writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed.

By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says executive orders targeting law firms are being issued in the name of national security, with the White House asserting that the firms don’t deserve access to sensitive U.S. government information.

But the firms fear the orders are being written so broadly as to potentially weaken national security by calling into question the status of security clearances of lawyers who, in addition to their legal practice, serve as military reservists and require their clearances to report to duty.

It’s an example of the sweeping and sometimes unintended consequences of White House efforts to reshape civil society, with those affected in some instances not necessarily being the ones who were top of mind when the Trump administration announced the actions in the first place. Military veterans, for instance, have not been spared from Trump’s ongoing slashing of the federal government.

Trump’s law firm executive orders have generally targeted firms that have associations with prosecutors who previously investigated him or employ, or have employed, attorneys he perceives as political adversaries. The orders have consistently imposed the same consequences, including threatening the suspension of all active security clearances held by employees at the singled-out firms.

Security clearances are issued for government workers and contractors who require access to classified national security information as part of their job. The executive branch and its agencies have wide discretion over who does and who does not obtain a clearance.

It’s unclear how many lawyers at the four firms still subject to executive orders — several others have averted them through settlements with the White House — hold security clearances either through their jobs or other work, or whether the Trump administration would move forward with plans to revoke the clearances of military reservists.

A White House spokesman, asked for comment, pointed to the provision of the order that says the clearances are to be suspended “pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.” The response seemed to suggest that clearances of reservists could potentially be spared.

In the meantime, though, the issue was raised during a court hearing Friday in which a lawyer representing WilmerHale, one of the targeted firms, noted that the firm has within its ranks military reservists who have security clearances. Another firm that’s been subject to an executive order, Perkins Coie, also has said that it employs military reservists.

“I don’t think for a minute the government lawyer is going to come up here and tell you that they actually intended to suspend the reservists’ security clearances,” Paul Clement, a prominent Washington appellate lawyer who is representing WilmerHale, told the judge. “But they’re painting with such a broad brush with this thing, they aren’t distinguishing sheep from goats at all.”

He said Friday that “two of those lawyers have to report for their reserve duty next week. Now, I can’t tell you for sure that they’re going to show up and they’re not going to be able to do their job because their security clearance has been suspended.”

Several firms, including WilmerHale and Perkins Coie, have succeeded in winning court orders temporarily blocking enforcement of certain sections of the executive orders. The security clearance provisions, though, have remained in effect, a reflection of a president’s expansive powers when ordering the suspension or revocation of clearances.

Dan Meyer, a lawyer who specializes in security clearances at the Tully Rinckey law firm — which is not among those targeted in the executive orders — said he assumed the number of attorneys at major law firms is small and that it was possible military reservists might be able to keep their clearances, but it could conceivably require a lengthy adjudication.

“It may be that word will go quietly from the White House, ‘Don’t screw with any of these reservists at these law firms,’” Meyer said.

But, he added, “If the cat wants to claw the mouse, there’s an opportunity to do it.”

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Val Kilmer, the brooding, versatile actor who played fan favorite Iceman in Top Gun, donned a voluminous cape as Batman in Batman Forever and portrayed Jim Morrison in The Doors, has died. He was 65.

Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, said in an email to The Associated Press. The Times was the first to report his death on Tuesday.

Val Kilmer died from pneumonia. He had recovered after a 2014 throat cancer diagnosis that required two tracheotomies.

I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed, he says toward the end of Val, the 2021 documentary on his career. And I am blessed.

Kilmer, the youngest actor ever accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School at the time he attended, experienced the ups and downs of fame more dramatically than most. His break came in 1984s spy spoof Top Secret! followed by the comedy Real Genius in 1985. Kilmer would later show his comedy chops again in films including MacGruber and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

His movie career hit its zenith in the early 1990s as he made a name for himself as a dashing leading man, starring alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in 1993s Tombstone, as Elvis ghost in True Romance and as a bank-robbing demolition expert in Michael Manns 1995 film Heat with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

While working with Val on Heat I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Vals possessing and expressing character," director Michael Mann said in a statement Tuesday night.

Actor Josh Brolin, a friend of Kilmer, was among others paying tribute.

You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker, Brolin wrote on Instagram. Theres not a lot left of those.

Kilmer who took part in the Method branch of Suzuki arts training threw himself into parts. When he played Doc Holliday in Tombstone, he filled his bed with ice for the final scene to mimic the feeling of dying from tuberculosis. To play Morrison, he wore leather pants all the time, asked castmates and crew to only refer to him as Jim Morrison and blasted The Doors for a year.

That intensity also gave Kilmer a reputation that he was difficult to work with, something he grudgingly agreed with later in life, but always defending himself by emphasizing art over commerce.

In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzukian life into a myriad of Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio, he wrote in his memoir, Im Your Huckleberry.

One of his more iconic roles hotshot pilot Tom Iceman Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise almost didnt happen. Kilmer was courted by director Tony Scott for Top Gun but initially balked. I didnt want the part. I didnt care about the film. The story didnt interest me, he wrote in his memoir. He agreed after being promised that his role would improve from the initial script. He would reprise the role in the films 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick.

One career nadir was playing Batman in Joel Schumachers goofy, garish Batman Forever with Nicole Kidman and opposite Chris ODonnells Robin before George Clooney took up the mantle for 1997s Batman & Robin and after Michael Keaton played the Dark Knight in 1989s Batman and 1992s Batman Returns.

Janet Maslin in The New York Times said Kilmer was hamstrung by the straight-man aspects of the role, while Roger Ebert deadpanned that he was a completely acceptable substitute for Keaton. Kilmer, who was one and done as Batman, blamed much of his performance on the suit.

When youre in it, you can barely move and people have to help you stand up and sit down, Kilmer said in Val," in lines spoken by his son Jack, who voiced the part of his father in the film because of his inability to speak. You also cant hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you, its very isolating. It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realized that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to."

His next projects were the film version of the 1960s TV series "The Saint" fussily putting on wigs, accents and glasses and The Island of Dr. Moreau with Marlon Brando, which became one of the decades most infamously cursed productions.

David Gregorys 2014 documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanleys Island of Dr. Moreau, described a cursed set that included a hurricane, Kilmer bullying director Richard Stanley, the firing of Stanley via fax (who sneaked back on set as an extra with a mask on) and extensive rewrites by Kilmer and Brando. The older actor told the younger at one point: "'Its a job now, Val. A lark. Well get through it. I was as sad as Ive ever been on a set, Kilmer wrote in his memoir.

In 1996, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story about Kilmer titled The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate. The directors Schumacher and John Frankenheimer, who finished The Island of Dr. Moreau, said he was difficult. Frankenheimer said there were two things he would never do: Climb Mount Everest and work with Val Kilmer again.

Other artists came to his defense, like D. J. Caruso, who directed Kilmer in The Salton Sea and said the actor simply liked to talk out scenes and enjoyed having a director's attention.

Val needs to immerse himself in a character. I think what happened with directors like Frankenheimer and Schumacher is that Val would ask a lot of questions, and a guy like Schumacher would say, Youre Batman! Just go do it, Caruso told The New York Times in 2002.

After The Island of Dr. Moreau, the movies were smaller, like David Mamet human-trafficking thriller Spartan"; Joe the King in 1999, in which he played a paunchy, abusive alcoholic; and playing the doomed 70s porn star John Holmes in 2003s Wonderland. He also threw himself into his one-man stage show Citizen Twain, in which he played Mark Twain.

I enjoy the depth and soul the piece has that Twain had for his fellow man and America, he told Variety in 2018. "And the comedy thats always so close to the surface, and how valuable his genius is for us today.

Kilmer spent his formative years in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles. He attended Chatsworth High School alongside future Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and future Emmy winner Mare Winningham. At 17, he was the youngest drama student ever admitted at the Juilliard School in 1981.

Shortly after he left for Juilliard, his younger brother, 15-year-old Wesley, suffered an epileptic seizure in the familys Jacuzzi and died on the way to the hospital. Wesley was an aspiring filmmaker when he died.

I miss him and miss his things. I have his art up. I like to think about what he would have created. Im still inspired by him, Kilmer told the Times.

While still at Juilliard, Kilmer co-wrote and appeared in the play How It All Began and later turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppolas The Outsiders for the Broadway play, Slab Boys, alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn.

Kilmer published two books of poetry (including My Edens After Burns) and was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for spoken word album for The Mark of Zorro. He was also a visual artist and a lifelong Christian Scientist.

He dated Cher, married and divorced actor Joanne Whalley. He is survived by their two children, Mercedes and Jack.

I have no regrets, Kilmer told the AP in 2021. Ive witness and experienced miracles.

____

Kennedy reported from New York.

Today is Tuesday, April 1, the 91st day of 2025. There are 274 days left in the year. This is April Fool’s Day.

Today in history:

On April 1, 1945, American forces launched the amphibious invasion of Okinawa during World War II. (U.S. forces succeeded in capturing the Japanese island on June 22 after a battle in which more than 240,000 died, including as many as 150,000 Okinawan civilians.)

Also on this date:

In 1924, Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. (Hitler would serve just nine months of the sentence, during which time he completed the first volume of “Mein Kampf.”)

In 1946, a magnitude 8.6 earthquake centered near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands triggered a tsunami that pounded the Hawaiian Islands with waves up to 55 feet (17 meters) tall, killing 159.

In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television beginning in January 1971.

In 1976, Apple Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.

In 1984, singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father after Gaye intervened in an argument between his parents at their home.

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

In 2003, American troops raided a hospital in Nasiriyah (nah-sih-REE’-uh), Iraq, and rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who had been held prisoner since her unit was ambushed on March 23.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Actor Ali MacGraw is 86.
• Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is 75.
• Actor Annette O’Toole is 73.
• Filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld is 72.
• Singer Susan Boyle is 64.
• Hockey Hall of Famer Scott Stevens is 61.
• Rapper-actor Method Man is 54.
• Political commentator Rachel Maddow is 52.
• Actor David Oyelowo is 49.
• Comedian-actor Taran Killam is 43.
• Actor Asa Butterfield is 28.

SEATTLE (AP) — Riley Greene homered and Javier Báez hit a two-run double in Detroit’s six-run first inning, helping the Tigers beat the Seattle Mariners 9-6 on Monday night for their first victory of the season.

Báez, Dillon Dingler and Trey Sweeney each had three of Detroit’s 18 hits. Kerry Carpenter had two hits and two RBIs.

The Tigers were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in their season-opening series.

Randy Arozarena, Cal Raleigh and Luke Raley homered for Seattle. Julio Rodríguez had two hits and scored two runs.

Mariners right-hander Emerson Hancock (0-1) recorded just two outs before he was pulled.

Carpenter singled in Justin-Henry Malloy, and Greene hit a solo drive for his first homer of the season. Dingler and Sweeney each hit an RBI single before Baez chased Hancock with his first double of the year.

Tigers rookie Jackson Jobe permitted three runs and three hits in four innings in his first career start. He struck out three and walked four.

Tyler Holton (1-0) got the win, and Brant Hurter pitched three innings for the save.

Key moment

Baez’s first-inning double broke the game wide open. Hancock was one strike away from getting out of the inning, but Baez’s hit went off the wall in left.

Key stat

Eight players had at least one hit for Detroit.

Up next

Tigers right-hander Casey Mize will start Tuesday against Seattle ace Logan Gilbert (0-0, 1.29 ERA).

— By SHANE LANTZ, Associated Press

By AMANDA SEITZ and MATTHEW PERRONE

WASHINGTON (AP) — As they readied to leave work Monday, some workers at the Food and Drug Administration were told to pack their laptops and prepare for the possibility that they wouldn’t be back, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press.

Nervous employees — roughly 82,000 across the nation’s public health agencies — waited to see whether pink slips would arrive in their inboxes. The mass dismissals have been expected since Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week a massive reorganization that will result in 20,000 fewer jobs at the Department of Health and Human Services. About 10,000 will be eliminated through layoffs.

The email sent to some at the FDA said staffers should check their email for a possible notice that their jobs would be eliminated, which would also halt their access to government buildings. An FDA employee shared the email with AP on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to disclose internal agency matters.

Kennedy has criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient “sprawling bureaucracy” and said the department’s $1.7 trillion yearly budget “has failed to improve the health of Americans.” He plans to streamline operations and fold entire agencies — such as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — into a new Administration for a Healthy America.

On Friday, dozens of federal health employees working to stop infectious diseases from spreading were put on leave.

Several current and former federal officials told The AP that the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy was hollowed out that night. Some employees posted on LinkedIn about the office emptying. And an HIV and public health expert who works directly with the office was emailed a notice saying that all staff had been asked to leave. The expert spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity over fears of losing future work on the issue.

Several of the office’s advisory committees — including the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and others that advise on HIV/AIDs response — have had their meetings canceled.

“It puts a number of important efforts to improve the health of Americans at risk,” said Dr. Robert H. Hopkins Jr., the former chair of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, an advisory committee of the office.

An HHS official said the office is not being closed but that the department is seeking to consolidate the work and reduce redundancies.

Also, as of Monday, a website for the Office of Minority Health was disabled, with an error message saying the page “does not exist.”

Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts have begun at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related funds.

Local and state health officials are still assessing the impact, but some health departments have already identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated because of lost funding, “some of them overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Associated Press writer Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed reporting.

By JANIE HAR

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Monday paused plans by the Trump administration to end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, a week before they were scheduled to expire.

The order by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco is a relief for 350,000 Venezuelans whose Temporary Protected Status was scheduled to expire April 7. The lawsuit was filed by lawyers for the National TPS Alliance and TPS holders across the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has also announced the end of TPS for an estimated 250,000 additional Venezuelans in September.

Chen said in his ruling that the action by Noem “threatens to: inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States.”

He said the government had failed to identify any “real countervailing harm in continuing TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries” and said plaintiffs will likely succeed in showing that Noem’s actions “are unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus.”

Chen, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said his order applies nationally.

He gave the government one week to file notice of an appeal and the plaintiffs one week to file to pause for 500,000 Haitians whose TPS protections are set to expire in August. Alejandro Mayorkas, the previous secretary, had extended protections for all three cohorts into 2026.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress created TPS, as the law is known, in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife, giving people authorization to live and work in the U.S. in increments of up to 18 months if the Homeland Security secretary deems conditions in their home countries are unsafe for return.

The reversals are a major about-face from immigration policies under former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and come as Republican President Donald Trump and his top aides have ratcheted up attacks on judges who rule against them, with immigration being at the forefront of many disagreements.

At a hearing last Monday, lawyers for TPS holders said that Noem has no authority to cancel the protections and that her actions were motivated in part by racism. They asked the judge to pause Noem’s orders, citing the irreparable harm to TPS holders struggling with fear of deportation and potential separation from family members.

Government lawyers for Noem said that Congress gave the secretary clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program and that the decisions were not subject to judicial review. Plaintiffs have no right to thwart the secretary’s orders from being carried out, they said.

But Chen found the government’s arguments unpersuasive and found that numerous derogatory and false comments by Noem — and by Trump — against Venezuelans as criminals show that racial animus was a motivator in ending protections.

“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” he wrote.

Biden sharply expanded use of TPS and other temporary forms of protection in a strategy to create and expand legal pathways to live in the United States while suspending asylum for those who enter illegally.

Trump has questioned the the impartiality of a federal judge who blocked his plans to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, levelling his criticism only hours before his administration asked an appeals court to lift the judge’s order.

The administration has also said it was revoking temporary protections for more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who have come to the U.S. since October 2022 through another legal avenue called humanitarian parole, which Biden used more than any other president. Their two-year work permits will expire April 24.

By WILL WEISSERT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump invited Kid Rock into the Oval Office on Monday and signed an executive order that he says will help curb ticket scalping and bring “commonsense” changes to the way live events are priced.

“Anyone who’s bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 years — no matter what your politics are — knows that it’s a conundrum,” said Kid Rock, who wore a red bedazzled suit featuring an American flag motif and a straw fedora.

Designed to stop “price-gouging by middlemen,” the order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to ensure that scalpers offering tickets at higher prices than their face value comply with all Internal Revenue Service rules.

It also orders the Federal Trade Commission to ensure “price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process” and to “take enforcement action to prevent unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct in the secondary ticketing market,” which the Trump administration argues can restore sensibility and order to the ticket market.

Trump said he knows Kid Rock, a longtime supporter whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, as simply “Bob.”

“He’s been a good friend for a long time,” Trump said.

The president said rising fees for concerts and other events have “gotten worse and worse with time.” Kid Rock agreed.

“You can buy a ticket for $100. By the time you check out, it’s $170. You don’t know what you’ve been charged for,” Kid Rock said. “But, more importantly, the bots, you know, they come in, they get all the good tickets to your favorite shows you want to go to, and then they’re relisted immediately for sometimes 400-500% markup.”

The order mostly directs federal agencies to enforce existing laws. Still, it marks a rare instance of policy crossover with the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden, which used the FTC to target “ junk fees,” or levies tacked on at the end of the purchase process that can mask the full price of things like concert tickets, hotel rooms and utility bills.

Under Biden, the Justice Department also sued Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, last year. It accused them of running an illegal monopoly over live events and asked a court to break up the system that squelches competition and drives up prices for fans.

Those companies have a history of clashing with major artists, including Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift. whose summer 2022 stadium tour was plagued by difficulty getting tickets.

Country music star Zach Bryan even released a 2022 album titled “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster.” A representative for Bryan said he had “nothing to add” when asked to comment on Monday’s executive orer.

The Biden administration used such initiatives as a way to protect consumers from rising prices that were already inflated. Trump, meanwhile, campaigned on combating high ticket prices, calling them “very unfortunate.”

Kid Rock, known for hits like “Cowboy” and “Bawitdaba,” called Trump’s order a ”great first step” and said he’d eventually like to see a cap on resale prices on tickets — while quickly adding, “I’m a capitalist.” He also said he’d spoken to Ticketmaster, which he described as “on board” with the change.

The White House says America’s live concert and entertainment industry has a total nationwide economic impact of $132.6 billion and supports 913,000 jobs, “But it has become blighted by unscrupulous middle-men who impose egregious fees on fans with no benefit to artists,” according to a fact sheet it released Monday.

Trump’s order further directs federal officials and the FTC to deliver a report in six months “summarizing actions taken to address the issue of unfair practices in the live concert and entertainment industry and recommend additional regulations or legislation needed to protect consumers in this industry.”

“Ticket scalpers use bots and other unfair means to acquire large quantities of face-value tickets, then re-sell them at an enormous markup on the secondary market, price-gouging consumers and depriving fans of the opportunity to see their favorite artists without incurring extraordinary expenses,” the White House face sheet said.

It also noted that higher prices don’t mean additional profits for artists but instead go “solely to the scalper and the ticketing agency.”

Kid Rock agreed that such markups don’t benefit artists like himself, then chuckled while offering, “I’ll be the first one to say, and I know the president doesn’t like when I say this, but, I’m a little overpaid right now.”

“It’s kind of ridiculous. I would rather be, you know, a hero to working-class people and have them be able to come attend my shows and give them a fair ticket price,” he said. “I can’t control that right now so hopefully this is a step to make that happen.”

Associated Press writer Maria Sherman contributed to this report from New York.

By ALI SWENSON

NEW YORK (AP) — Two election watchdog organizations sued President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday over his executive order seeking to overhaul the nation’s elections through a proof-of-citizenship requirement, new mail ballot deadline restrictions and other sweeping changes.

The lawsuit, filed by the Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the court to declare the order unconstitutional and stop it from being implemented.

It names three nonprofit voter advocacy organizations as plaintiffs that it alleges are harmed by the order: the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Secure Families Initiative and the Arizona Students’ Association.

“The president’s executive order is an unlawful action that threatens to uproot our tried-and-tested election systems and silence potentially millions of Americans,” said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center. “It is simply not within the president’s authority to set election rules by executive decree, especially when they would restrict access to voting in this way.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Monday’s lawsuit marks the first major legal challenge to last week’s executive order, which election lawyers have warned may violate the U.S. Constitution and asserts power they say the president does not have over an independent agency. That agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, sets voluntary voting system guidelines and maintains the federal voter registration form.

It comes as Congress is considering codifying a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration into law, and as Trump has promised more actions related to elections in the coming weeks.

The lawsuit draws attention to the Constitution’s “ Elections Clause,” which says states — not the president — get to decide the “times, places and manner” of how elections are run. That section of the Constitution also gives Congress the power to “make or alter” election regulations, at least for federal office, but it doesn’t mention any presidential authority over election administration.

“The Constitution is clear: States set their own rules of the road when it comes to elections, and only Congress has the power to override these laws with respect to federal elections,” said Lang, calling the executive order an “unconstitutional executive overreach.”

The lawsuit also argues the president’s order intrudes on Americans’ right to vote.

Trump, one of the top spreaders of election falsehoods, has argued this executive order will secure the vote against illegal voting by noncitizens. Multiple studies and investigations in individual states have shown that noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections, already a felony, is exceedingly rare.

Monday’s lawsuit against Trump’s elections order could be just the first of many challenges. Other voting rights advocates have said they’re considering legal action, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Democratic attorney Marc Elias. Several Democratic state attorneys general have said they are looking closely at the order and suspect it is illegal.

Meanwhile, Trump’s order has received praise from the top election officials in some Republican states who say it could inhibit instances of voter fraud and give them access to federal data to better maintain their voter rolls.

If courts determine the order can stand, the changes Trump is demanding are likely to cause some headaches for both election administrators and voters. State election officials, who already have lost some federal cybersecurity assistance, would have to spend time and money to comply with the order, including potentially buying new voting systems and educating voters of the rules.

The proof-of-citizenship requirement also could cause confusion or voter disenfranchisement because millions of eligible voting-age Americans do not have the proper documents readily available. In Kansas, which had a proof-of-citizenship requirement for three years before it was overturned, the state’s own expert estimated that almost all the roughly 30,000 people who were prevented from registering to vote during the time it was in effect were U.S. citizens who had been eligible.

Monday’s lawsuit is the latest of numerous efforts to fight the flurry of executive actions Trump has taken during the first months of his second term. Federal judges have partially or fully blocked many of them, including efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, ban transgender people from military service and curb diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives among federal contractors and grant recipients.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about the AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By LAURA UNGAR, Associated Press

Federal health officials said Tuesday they are pulling back $11.4 billion in COVID-19-related funds for state and local public health departments and other health organizations throughout the nation.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.

The statement said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects to recover the money beginning 30 days after termination notices, which began being sent out on Monday.

Officials said the money was largely used for COVID-19 testing, vaccination and global projects as well as community health workers responding to COVID and a program established in 2021 to address COVID health disparities among high-risk and underserved patients, including those in minority populations. The move was first reported by NBC News.

Lori Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County & City Health Officials, said much of the funding was set to end soon anyway. “It’s ending in the next six months,” she said. “There’s no reason — why rescind it now? It’s just cruel and unusual behavior.”

In a related move, more than two dozen COVID-related research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health have been canceled. Earlier this month, the Trump administration shut down ordering from covidtest.gov, the site where Americans could have COVID-19 tests delivered to their mailboxes for no charge.

Although the COVID federal public health emergency has ended, the virus is still killing Americans: 458 people per week on average have died from COVID over the past four weeks, according to CDC data.

HHS wouldn’t provide many details about how the federal government expects to recover the money from what it called “impacted recipients.” But HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an email: “The $11.4 billion is undisbursed funds remaining.”

Freeman said her understanding is that state health departments already had the COVID money.

“The funding was authorized by Congress, was appropriated by Congress, and it was out the door, basically, into the hands of the grantees” — states, she said, which decide how to distribute it locally.

Some of the COVID money is used to address other public health issues, Freeman added. For example, wastewater surveillance that began during COVID became important for detecting other diseases, too.

“It was being used in significant ways to track flu and patterns of new disease and emerging diseases — and even more recently with the measles outbreak,” Freeman said.

Under both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, billions of dollars was allocated for COVID response through legislation, including a COVID relief bill and the American Rescue Plan Act.

At this point, it’s unclear exactly how health departments will be affected by the pullback of funds. But some were starting to look at what it might mean for them. In Washington state, for example, health officials were notified that more than $125 million in COVID-related funding has been immediately terminated. They are “assessing the impact” of the actions, they said.

In Los Angeles County, health officials said they could lose more than $80 million in core funding for vaccinations and other services. “Much of this funding supports disease surveillance, public health lab services, outbreak investigations, infection control activities at healthcare facilities and data transparency,” a department official wrote in an email.

Associated Press reporters Mike Stobbe in New York, JoNel Aleccia in Temecula, California, Carla K. Johnson in Seattle and Amanda Seitz in Washington, D.C. contributed to this story.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Today is Wednesday, March 26, the 85th day of 2025. There are 280 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 26, 2018, a toxicology report obtained by The Associated Press revealed that the late pop superstar Prince had levels of fentanyl in his body that multiple experts described as “exceedingly high.”

Also on this date:

In 1812, an earthquake devastated Caracas, Venezuela, causing as many as 30,000 deaths. (The U.S. Congress later approved $50,000 in food aid to be sent to Venezuela — the first example of American disaster assistance abroad.)

In 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans became the first American ice hockey team to win the Stanley Cup, defeating the Montreal Canadiens 9-1 to win the championship series, three games to one.

In 1979, a peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter at the White House.

In 1992, a judge in Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to six years in prison on rape charges. (Tyson would ultimately serve less than three years of the sentence.)

In 1997, the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate religious cult who took their own lives were found inside a rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

In 2013, Italy’s top criminal court overturned the acquittal of American Amanda Knox in the grisly murder of British roommate Meredith Kercher and ordered Knox to stand trial again. (Although convicted in absentia, Knox was exonerated by the Italian Supreme Court in 2015.)

In 2021, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, saying the cable news giant falsely claimed that the voting company rigged the 2020 election. (Fox would eventually agree to pay Dominion $787.5 million in one of the largest defamation settlements in U.S. history.)

In 2024, Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after being struck by a container ship, killing six maintenance workers on the bridge. (Maryland officials have announced plans to replace the bridge by late 2028.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Basketball Hall of Famer Wayne Embry is 88.
• Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 85.
• Author Erica Jong is 83.
• Journalist Bob Woodward is 82.
• Singer Diana Ross is 81.
• Rock singer Steven Tyler (Aerosmith) is 77.
• Actor-comedian Vicki Lawrence is 76.
• Actor-comedian Martin Short is 75.
• Country singer Ronnie McDowell is 75.
• Country singer Charly McClain is 69.
• TV personality Leeza Gibbons is 68.
• Football Hall of Famer Marcus Allen is 65.
• Actor Jennifer Grey is 65.
• Basketball Hall of Famer John Stockton is 63.
• Actor Michael Imperioli is 59.
• Country singer Kenny Chesney is 57.
• Actor Leslie Mann is 53.
• Google co-founder Larry Page is 52.
• Rapper Juvenile is 50.
• Actor Keira Knightley is 40.
• Actor-comedian Ramy Youssef is 34.

By The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of passengers faced flight cancellations at Europe’s busiest travel hub after a fire knocked out power to London’s Heathrow Airport, forcing it to close for the day.

At least 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow were affected, including several from U.S. cities that were canceled, flight tracking service FlightRadar 24 said.

Here’s the latest:

___

United Airlines offers travel waiver to Heathrow customers

United Airlines says that it is offering a travel waiver to its customers while Heathrow is closed so that they can switch to eligible flights to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris or Edinburgh. The airline said that all flights scheduled to arrive at Heathrow on Friday are canceled due to the closure.

Eurostar adding trains to help travelers

Eurostar says it is adding two additional trains between London and Paris to accommodate passengers stranded by Heathrow’s shutdown.

The high-speed train that goes beneath the English Channel said it was increasing capacity by 882 passengers per train on Friday.

Heathrow says it doesn’t know when power will be restored

Heathrow Airport says it doesn’t know when power will be restored and expects disruption to last for days after an electrical substation fire nearby.

The airport said in a statement it does not have “clarity on when power may be reliably restored.”

What is known about the fire that brought London’s Heathrow Airport to a standstill

It said it expects “significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens.”

Heathrow earlier said the airport is not expected to reopen until Saturday.

Analysts say Heathrow closure raises worrying questions

While the cause of the fire that shut down Heathrow Airport is still unclear, analysts say the incident raises concerns about the U.K.’s ability to withstand attacks or natural disasters that damage critical infrastructure such as communications and power networks.

It’s particularly worrisome given recent comments by Britain’s security services that Russia is conducting a reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe, said Alan Mendoza, the executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank focused on security and democracy in Europe.

“The U.K.’s critical national infrastructure is not sufficiently hardened for anywhere near the level it would need to be at to give us confidence this won’t happen again,” Mendoza said.

“I mean, if one fire can shut down Heathrow’s primary systems and then apparently the backup systems as well, it tells you something’s badly wrong with our system of management of such disasters,” he added.

European airline shares fall on main indexes

The Heathrow disruption weighed on shares of European airlines, which posted declines that outpaced the fall in broader main stock indexes on Friday.

Shares of International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways, were down 1.4% after falling as much as 3% in early trading. Shares of Lufthansa, which operates Germany’s biggest carrier as well as Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and others, fell 1.3%. Air France-KLM, which operates the main carriers in France the Netherlands, slid 1.3%.

German leisure and tourism company TUI, which owns five airlines including one that serves the British market, slid 1.8%. Other European airlines that don’t operate at Heathrow were also dragged down by the negative sentiment. Wizz Air shares declined 1.4%, easyJet was down 0.7% and Ryanair dipped 0.8.

UK prime minister calls for rigorous investigation into fire

The British government says “clearly there are questions to answer” about how a single fire could shut down Europe’s busiest airport.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there must be a rigorous investigation to make sure “this scale of disruption does not happen again.”

Tom Wells said the most pressing task is to extinguish the fire, which is still burning on Friday. He said that “at the moment the priority is to deal with the incident in hand.”

He said “it’s very premature” to speculate on the cause of the blaze.

US flight operations normal as Delta issues waiver for Heathrow passengers

Flight operations remained normal in the United States on Friday despite the Heathrow fire, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

Delta Airlines has issued a travel waiver through Sunday for customers who need to rebook their flights due to the Heathrow fire, a spokesperson said in a statement.

The company canceled 10 flights scheduled to depart from Heathrow on Friday.

No indication of foul play in London blaze, police say

Police say there is so far no indication of foul play in blaze that shut Heathrow but counterterror detectives leading the investigation into its cause.

The Metropolitan Police force says that is because of the location of the electrical substation fire and its impact on critical national infrastructure.

The force says counterterrorism command has “specialist resources and capabilities” that can help find the cause quickly.

Starmer thanks emergency services tackling blaze

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he is receiving regular updates on the fire that has shut down Heathrow Airport, as he thanked the emergency services tacking the blaze.

Starmer posted on X: “I know the situation in Heathrow is causing distress and disruption, especially for those traveling or without power in their homes. I’m receiving regular updates and I’m in close contact with partners on the ground. Thanks to our emergency workers for keeping people safe.”

Heathrow closure recalls Icelandic volcano disruption

The Heathrow closure is drawing comparisons to the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption that closed much of European airspace for five days out of fears volcanic ash could damage jet engines.

The eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH’-lah-yer-kuhl), after two centuries of silence, spewed an ash cloud that closed Europe’s airspace and grounded millions of travelers. Iceland was briefly infamous as the country that stopped the world.

Read more about Iceland’s tourism boom in the aftermath of the 2010 eruption.

Scandinavian Airlines cancels 12 round-trip London flights

Scandinavian Airlines has canceled all 12 of its flights to and from London Heathrow on Friday.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and remain in continuous dialogue with Heathrow. Naturally, we hope for a swift resolution,” the company said in a statement.

Known as SAS, it’s considered the national airline of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Hopes dashed for family seeking to travel home to Texas

At Heathrow’s Terminal 5, a family of five traveling to Dallas had shown up in the hopes their flight home — still listed as delayed — would take off.

But when Andrea Sri brought her brother, sister-in-law and their three children to the airport, they were told by police that there would be no flight.

“It was a waste of time. Very confusing,” said Sri, who lives in London. “We tried to get in touch with British Airways, but they don’t open their telephone line until 8 a.m.”

Other London-area airports could reroute stranded travelers

Heathrow is one of the world’s biggest airports, but there are five others in the wider London area as well.

Travelers might be able to rebook through the remaining five airports — City, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted and Southend — in the aftermath of Heathrow’s closure.

However, they aren’t all easy to reach from Heathrow. While City is in inner London, and buses link Heathrow with Gatwick, the others are further out. Southend is about a 78-mile drive from Heathrow, around the congested M25 orbital highway and then out to the eastern coast of England.

Witnesses describe fireball and loud explosion from substation blaze

LONDON — Residents in west London have described hearing a large explosion, followed by a fireball and clouds of smoke, when a blaze ripped through an electrical substation near Heathrow Airport.

Matthew Muirhead, who was working a night shift, said that at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday he saw smoke rising over trees, then “a bright flash of white and all the lights in town went out.”

Delivery driver Adeel Anwar said the heat and billowing smoke from the blaze were “absolutely apocalyptic.” He told Sky News that as he drove past the substation “I just felt the heat … I tried to just get out of the area as quick as possible.”

Firefighters brought the blaze under control after seven hours and were still working to douse the flames on Friday. No injuries were reported.

Electricity supplier National Grid said power was restored to 62,000 customers by Friday morning, with 4,900 still without electricity.

Air India suspends Heathrow flights, with one turning around in midair

NEW DELHI — All Air India flights to Heathrow were suspended until Friday midnight, the carrier said in a statement, adding that it will “update about resumption of operations as soon as we have more information.”

The airline also said one of its flights had to return midair to Mumbai and another was diverted to Frankfurt. The company didn’t specify how many flights were affected in total.

Some passengers at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport said they had been informed of cancellations, while others said they were still waiting for the airline to provide them with alternate flights.

“As soon I went inside to get my boarding pass, they (airline staff) told us that the flight has been canceled and there is no flight for next two, three days,” passenger Vikas Swarup said.

Emma Fulton, who was in India’s Jaipur city for a wedding, said she received a text message en route to the airport.

“We had a text message about 20 mins before we arrived here, but we were already on the road,” she said.

9 flights through Dubai canceled after Heathrow closure

DUBAI — Eight outbound flights from Dubai International Airport to Heathrow, and one inbound from London to Dubai, were canceled Friday, according to Dubai Airports.

Travelers were told to contact their airlines for rebooking options.

What should travelers do?

Any travelers impacted by the Heathrow closure should contact their airline.

If a phone call doesn’t go through, travelers can also try contacting the airline on social media. Several airlines were responding to passengers’ posts on social platform X on Friday. A representative for British Airways, for example, was telling customers on X to send a direct message to the airline’s account so they could assist in rebooking.

For customers who are seeking a refund or other compensation, a European Union regulation known as EU261 could apply. Because the United Kingdom is no longer part of the EU, however, not every flight will be covered under EU261. The regulation covers flights within the EU, as well as flights departing from the EU to a non-EU country.

London flights from Barcelona and Madrid canceled

Spanish airport operator Aena said on Friday morning that 20 flights to and from Madrid and Barcelona had been canceled due to the Heathrow power outage. A total of 54 flights headed to or departing from Spanish airports were affected.

In a post on X, the state-controlled commercial airport operator advised travelers to contact airlines for more information about disrupted flights.

‘An incredibly long day’ for travelers

GLASGOW — Lawrence Hayes was three-quarters of the way to London from John F. Kennedy International in New York when Virgin Atlantic announced they were being diverted to Glasgow.

“It was a red-eye flight and I’d already had a full day, so I don’t even know how long I’ve been up for,” Hayes told the BBC as he was getting off the plane in Scotland. “Luckily I managed to get hold of my wife and she’s kindly booked me a train ticket to get back to Euston (railway station in London), but it’s going to be an incredibly long day.”

Ryanair adds ‘rescue flights’ between Dublin and London Stansted

DUBLIN — Ryanair has added eight “rescue flights” between Dublin and Stansted, another London airport, on Friday and Saturday to help travelers impacted by the fire at Heathrow, the budget airline announced.

Ryanair does not operate at Heathrow.

Four of the flights will occur Friday afternoon, and the remaining on Saturday morning.

Lufthansa Group cancels flights to and from Heathrow

BERLIN — All flights by Lufthansa Group to and from Heathrow were canceled on Friday.

The company didn’t specify how many flights were affected in total, but said in an emailed statement that “passengers affected by the flight cancellations have been rebooked on other flights and informed about it.”

Lufthansa Group includes Germany’s biggest airline, Lufthansa, as well as Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Brussels Airlines and others.

No evidence that substation fire was suspicious, UK officials say

LONDON — British officials working to determine the cause of an electrical substation fire that shut Heathrow Airport have not yet found evidence it’s suspicious.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband says “it’s too early to say” what caused the huge blaze, but there’s “no suggestion” of foul play.

London’s Metropolitan Police say the fire brigade is leading the investigation, suggesting it’s not thought to be criminal.

Flights from Tokyo diverted or turned around

TOKYO — The closure of Heathrow forced two Japanese flights that had already departed to return to Tokyo and a third to change its destination, airline officials said.

Japan Airlines said one of its two Heathrow-bound flights Friday returned to Tokyo’s Haneda international airport, and another one diverted to the Finnish capital, Helsinki. A third flight out of Tokyo, operated by All Nippon Airways, another major Japanese carrier, also returned to Haneda.

Airline officials advised passengers to check the latest flight information for Saturday.

Birdsong replaces aircraft noise for Heathrow neighbors

The noise from Europe’s busiest airport is a constant bugbear for those who live nearby, but has temporarily fallen silent.

“Basically living near Heathrow is noisy. There are planes every 90 seconds or so, plus the constant hum of traffic, but you get used to it, to the point of no longer noticing,” said James Henderson, who has lived next to Heathrow for over 20 years.

“Today is different. You can hear the birds singing.”

Qantas diverts Heathrow flights to Paris

Australian airline Qantas diverted its Singapore-London and Perth-London flights to Paris on Friday and then bused the travelers to London, a spokesperson said.

Customers will be contacted directly if their flight is impacted.

Aviation expert compares impact to 9/11 or Icelandic volcano

LONDON — Aviation consultant John Strickland says it will take several days for global airline travel to recover from a daylong closure of Heathrow Airport.

He said: “We’re talking about several days’ worth of disruption to get the planes recovered and start using them again to move planned and disrupted passengers.”

Strickland compared the disruption to “a contained version of 9/11 or, to an extent, the Icelandic volcanic eruption” that shut European airspace in 2010.

“I remembered seeing on those occasions – particularly more so on 9/11 – it happened so quick and then U.S. airspace was closed, they were turning back aircraft and holding planes. That’s the parallel I would make.

“Heathrow being such a busy airport and full, there’s no kind of wriggle room for getting out of these kind of things.”

Heathrow closure has widespread impact on air travel

The closure of Heathrow rippled through global aviation. The long-haul carrier Emirates in Dubai, which has London as one of its top destinations, canceled six round-trip flights to Heathrow on Friday alone.

Etihad in neighboring Abu Dhabi canceled two round-trip flights, while one flight diverted to Frankfurt, Germany. Qatar Airways said at least seven scheduled flights were “impacted,” with its staff working with passengers.

Blaze that shut down Heathrow is unprecedented, UK government minister says

A British government minister says a “catastrophic” fire knocked out a backup generator as well as the electrical substation that supplies power to Heathrow Airport.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC that the blaze is “unprecedented.”

He said it’s too early to know the cause but that lessons will have to be learned about “protection and the resilience that is in place for major institutions like Heathrow.”

Flights from Hong Kong rerouted to Amsterdam, airline says

Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways rerouted two overnight flights to Amsterdam and canceled at least two daytime flights to Heathrow, according to the flight status page on its website.

Fire that closed Heathrow is now under control but not out

The London Fire Brigade says the electrical substation blaze closed Heathrow Airport is under control.

The fire caused a widespread power outage, affecting thousands of homes, local businesses, and disrupting thousands of flights.

LFB Assistant Commissioner Pat Goulbourne says the fire was under control just after 8 a.m.

“This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as swiftly as possible,” he said. “Thanks to their efforts and a coordinated multi-agency response, we successfully contained the fire and prevented further spread.”

Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports

Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports for international travel. It had its busiest January on record earlier this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers, up more than 5% for the same period last year. January also was the 11th month in a row it averaged over 200,000 passengers a day, with the airport citing trans-Atlantic travel as a key contributor.

Heathrow normally opens for flights at 6 a.m. due to nighttime flying restrictions. It said the closure would last until 11:59 p.m. Friday.

The U.K. government earlier this year approved building a third runway at the airport to boost the economy and connectivity to the world.

Flights turn around as airport closes

Seven United Airlines flights returned to their origin or diverted to other airports and its flights Friday to Heathrow were canceled, the airline said.

The FlightAware website showed more cancellations including two from John F. Kennedy International in New York, a Delta Airlines flight and an American Airlines flight.

Other jets were diverted to Gatwick Airport outside London, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and Ireland’s Shannon Airport, tracking services showed.

National Rail canceled all trains to and from the airport.

Fire cuts off power to Heathrow and thousands of homes

Flames soared into the sky when a transformer at an electrical substation caught fire in west London late Thursday night. The fire continued to smolder after daybreak.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said in a post on X the power outage affected more than 16,300 homes. About 150 people were evacuated.The cause of the fire is yet to be determined.

By JILL LAWLESS The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — A fire that closed London’s Heathrow Airport has sparked one of the most serious disruptions to air travel in years.

More than 1,300 flights were canceled and hundreds of thousands of journeys were disrupted following the blaze at an electrical substation, whose cause is under investigation.

Here is a look at some past incidents:

July 2024: Faulty software causes chaos

A faulty software update sent to millions of Microsoft customers by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused technological havoc worldwide. Airlines lost access to their booking systems, thousands of flights were canceled and tens of thousands were delayed, leading to long lines at airports in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America.

August 2023: UK air traffic control problems

A glitch at Britain’s National Air Traffic Services in August 2023 meant flight plans had to be processed manually, rather than automatically. Hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled at the height of the summer holidays. The NATS system had already suffered several software-related failures in the years after it opened in 2002.

March 2020: COVID-19 pandemic

As a new coronavirus spread around the globe in early 2020, the world’s airports shut down. Many governments closed national borders and imposed travel restrictions. By April, the number of flights around the world had fallen by 80%. When air travel resumed, it was with masks, mandatory coronavirus tests and other measures that made flying more onerous and expensive. It wasn’t until 2024 that global passenger numbers reached 2019 levels again.

December 2018: Gatwick drone sightings

More than 140,000 travelers were stranded or delayed after dozens of drone sightings shut down London Gatwick, south of the U.K. capital and Britain’s second-busiest airport, for parts of three consecutive days before Christmas. A monthslong police investigation failed to identify the culprits or determine how many of the sightings were real.

May 2017: British Airways IT glitch

A computer failure at a British Airways data center forced the airline to cancel all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick on a holiday weekend. The airline blamed a power-supply issue for the incident which affected some 75,000 travelers.

August 2016: Delta outage

Delta Air Lines planes around the world were grounded when an electrical component failed and led to a shutdown of the transformer that provides power to the carrier’s data center. Delta said that it canceled more than 2,000 flights and lost $100 million in revenue as a result of the outage.

April 2010: Iceland’s volcano

People around the world learned how to pronounce the name of Iceland’s tongue-twisting Eyjafjallajökull volcano (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) after it roared to life, sending plumes of ash and dust into the atmosphere. Airspace over northern Europe was shut for several days and airlines canceled flights between Europe and North America because of concerns the ash could damage jet engines. More than 100,000 flights were canceled, stranding millions of passengers, at an estimated cost of $3 billion.

September 2001: 9/11

U.S. airspace was closed to commercial flights on Sept. 11, 2011 after hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Thousands of planes were grounded and flights in the air heading for the U.S. were diverted to Canada and Mexico. Flights began to resume two days later, but air travel was forever altered, with passengers facing more rigorous security, more intrusive scrutiny and longer lines.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers face flight cancellations as Heathrow closes

By CHEYANNE MUMPHREY and JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Education Writers

Until recently, it was a little-known program to help Black and Latino students pursue business degrees.

But in January, conservative strategist Christopher Rufo flagged the program known as The PhD Project in social media posts that caught the attention of Republican politicians. The program is now at the center of a Trump administration campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education.

The U.S. Education Department last week said it was investigating dozens of universities for alleged racial discrimination, citing ties to the nonprofit organization. That followed a warning a month earlier that schools could lose federal money over “race-based preferences” in admissions, scholarships or any aspect of student life.

The investigations left some school leaders startled and confused, wondering what prompted the inquiries. Many scrambled to distance themselves from The PhD Project, which has aimed to help diversify the business world and higher education faculty.

The rollout of the investigations highlights the climate of fear and uncertainty in higher education, which President Donald Trump’s administration has begun policing for policies that run afoul of his agenda even as he moves to dismantle the Education Department.

There is a range of nonprofits that work to help minority groups advance in higher education but The PhD Project was not well known before Rufo began posting on X about its work with colleges, said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.

“It’s not hard to draw some lines between that incident and why 45 institutions that were partners with The PhD Project are getting this investigation announced,” he said.

The 45 colleges under investigation for ties to the organization include public universities such as Arizona State, Ohio State and the University of California, Berkeley, along with private schools like Yale, Cornell, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Education Department sent letters to the universities informing them its Office for Civil Rights had received a complaint and they were under investigation for allegedly discriminating against students on the basis of race or ethnicity because of a past affiliation with The PhD Project. The letters set a March 31 deadline for information about their relationship with the nonprofit.

In a statement, the PhD Project said it aims to “create a broader talent pipeline” of business leaders. “This year, we have opened our membership application to anyone who shares that vision,” it said.

Public reaction from the universities’ leadership has been minimal and cautious, with most issuing brief statements saying they will cooperate with investigators and refusing further comment.

Colleges may see reason not to push back. The Trump administration has shown willingness to withhold federal funding over issues involving antisemitism allegations, diversity programs and transgender athletes. At Columbia University, under fire for its handling of pro-Palestinian protests, the administration pulled $400 million in federal money and threatened billions more if it does not comply with its demands.

“There is a concern that if one university steps up and fights this then that university will have all of their funding cut,” said Veena Dubal, general counsel for the American Association of University Professors. “They are being hindered not just by fear but a real collective action problem. None of these universities wants to be the next example.”

Some colleges moved swiftly to stop working with The PhD Project.

The University of Kentucky said it severed ties with the nonprofit on Monday. The University of Wyoming said in a statement that its college of business was affiliated with the group to develop its graduate student pipeline, but it plans to discontinue its membership.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas issued a statement saying three professors participated in the program, but two no longer work at the university and a third was killed in a shooting on campus in 2023. Arizona State said its business school is not financially supporting The PhD Project this year and it told faculty in February the school would not support travel to the nonprofit’s conference.

Similar fallout came in Texas earlier this year, when Rufo began posting on X about the PhD Project.

“Texas A&M is sponsoring a trip to a DEI conference,” Rufo posted on Jan. 13. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, accused the university of “supporting racial segregation and breaking the law.”

The next day Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbot posted on X that the university “president will soon be gone” unless he immediately “fixed” the matter. Texas A&M responded by withdrawing from the conference, and soon after at least eight other Texas public universities that had participated previously in The PhD Project’s conference also withdrew, the Texas Tribune reported.

Rufo has not responded to a request for comment.

Some of the schools under investigation raised questions about where the complaints against them originated.

Montana State University said it follows all state and federal laws and was “surprised” by the notice it received and “unaware of any complaint made internally with regards to The PhD Project.”

Six other colleges are being investigated for awarding “impermissible race-based scholarships,” the Education Department said. Additionally, the University of Minnesota is being investigated for allegedly operating a program that segregates students on the basis of race.

At the University of California, Berkeley, hundreds gathered Wednesday on the campus known for student protests. But this one was organized by faculty, who stood on the steps of Sproul Hall, known as the birthplace of the free speech movement in the 1960s.

“This is a fight that can be summed up in five words: Academic freedom is under assault,” Ula Taylor, a professor of African American studies, said to the crowd.

In a campus email Monday, Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons did not specifically mention the investigation targeting his school. But he described the federal government’s actions against higher education as a threat to the school’s core values.

“A Berkeley without academic freedom, without freedom of inquiry, without freedom of expression is simply not Berkeley,” Lyons said. “We will stand up for Berkeley’s values and defend them to the very best of our ability.”

Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By MATT BROWN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — For weeks, Democratic lawmakers have met with and mimicked figures they believe may offer them a path back to power in Washington: online influencers and content creators.

Hours before President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress this month, Senate Democrats huddled with a dozen online progressive personalities who have millions of followers. House Democrats were introduced, without staff, to 40 content creators who Democratic leaders said could help them grow their audience online.

An earlier tutorial session in February featured online personalities like the YouTube commentator Brian Tyler Cohen.

The result has been a burst of Democratic online content, including direct-to-camera explainers in parked cars, scripted vertical videos, podcast appearances and livestreams — some topping trending charts online, others drawing mockery from liberal allies and Republicans in Congress.

But while the Democratic Party is largely divided over the path forward after last year’s election losses, party leaders agree that, no matter the message, how they connect with voters in the digital media landscape will be key to a political comeback.

Democrats are aiming to double engagement with digital content

More than a dozen Democratic senators, asked about the party’s digital strategy, pointed to Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey as the architect of their new push.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth of Democratic senators now. They’re engaging in the tools and strategies necessary to elevate their voice in a new, changing media market, where legacy media is not the place that people get their news now,” Booker said. “We’re just weeks into this, but just by making key changes … we’re seeing a massive growth in engagement with the content that our senators are creating, and we’ve only just begun.”

Booker said he’s aiming for Democratic senators to double online engagement with their content over the next year — and early metrics have been noticeable. Democratic senators racked up more than 87 million views on content they published in response to Trump’s joint address to Congress, according to Booker’s office.

But the Democrats’ digital efforts also draw Republican mockery

Not all of that online engagement is positive. After more than two dozen Democratic senators posted identical scripted videos knocking Trump’s speech, saying he should have addressed the cost of living and his support for billionaire adviser Elon Musk, conservatives mocked them as inauthentic and out of touch.

“They are all actors reading a script,” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.

There’s no doubt that Democrats are playing catch-up. Trump and his fellow Republicans built a digital operation that fed on bombast and celebrity, and it’s a strategy they’ve taken with them to the White House. Official government accounts are new filled with right-wing memes, cinematic videos and pugnacious statements.

The Democratic embrace of influencers has also yielded mixed early results. Democrats were ridiculed online after a food and wellness influencer who attended the House Democrats’ creators event created a “Choose Your Fighter” video collage of Democratic congresswomen for Women’s History Month.

The White House posted a video in response that read “America chose its fighters last November,” and the Pentagon, normally known for being studiously non-partisan, posted a video stating “We chose our fighters a long time ago.”

But Booker and other Democratic leaders don’t consider the sneers to be a downside. Missteps are to be expected, they say, but the path to Americans’ attention will require some discomfort from lawmakers.

“I do think that the caucus as a whole is trying to figure out how we show people that we are real people,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, one of the congresswomen featured in the viral “Fighter” video. Crockett, whose posts regularly garner millions of views online, said she was used to criticism for her often frank statements and was more interested in combating perceptions that Democrats are “elitist” or “robotic.”

“I didn’t like the jumping, I’m going to be honest, though,” Crockett added about the viral “Choose Your Fighter” video.

Trump prompts a more aggressive digital posture

Democrats adopted a more combative stance online in recent weeks as Trump’s moves to slash the federal workforce drew protests from liberals and pushback at GOP town halls. Top Democratic digital operatives who worked for the 2024 presidential campaign of then-Vice President Kamala Harris have been in high demand, with many Democrats anticipating close 2026 races in which digital strategies may be key.

Some of the most prominent Democrats across the country have been engaging more in new media since the election. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York has touted the party’s message on progressive podcasts over the last month, including from the comedian Jon Stewart and the progressive outlet MeidasTouch. Clips of those videos were also lampooned online but garnered millions of views.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028, has launched a podcast of his own on which he has welcomed close Trump allies like the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and former Trump aide Steve Bannon to discuss hot-button political topics.

“We want to make sure we hit the podcasters that normally don’t have Democrats on there,” said Rep. Derek Tran, a Democrat from a competitive California House district. “The ones that are more right-leaning or independent, and be able to address a crowd and an audience that’s not typical for the Democratic base.”

Democrats divide on message vs. messaging

Some House Democrats have expressed frustration that the guidance from Democratic leaders about social media is too vague, while others grumble that leaders are too prescriptive in their approach to messaging on platforms they don’t intuitively understand. Meanwhile, Democratic strategists have cautioned lawmakers that garnering attention online is secondary to the goal of using social media as a tool in specific policy fights and campaigns.

“I think there’s a fine line before we’re being cringe and trying too hard and seeming too thirsty. I think the most important thing in any of this is being as authentic and genuine as we can be,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif.

“When it comes to authenticity, it also means leaning into what makes each of us unique. Like many of my colleagues probably should not be doing ‘get ready with me’ videos. It would look super cringe. But I’m a 36-year-old woman, and I do my makeup all the time, and I watch a lot of makeup tutorial videos, so it makes sense for me to do it,” said Jacobs.

Some Democrats think that the party’s messaging strategy hinges as much on the messengers as the medium it’s communicated on.

“If you know how to talk to people, it doesn’t matter what medium is going to exist,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, a freshman Democratic senator from Arizona. “You could be the best freaking spokesperson in the world, but if you don’t know how to talk to working-class people, it doesn’t matter if you have the best TikTok following, it’s just not going to translate.”

By DANICA KIRKA The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Flights to and from London’s Heathrow Airport were canceled Friday after a fire at a nearby substation knocked out power to Europe’s busiest airport, disrupting travel plans for hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Here’s a look at what’s happening and its impact on air travel.

What happened?

A fire at an electrical substation in west London, about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the airport, knocked out power to Heathrow Airport just before midnight on Thursday.

The “significant power outage” forced officials to shut the airport until 11:59 p.m. on Friday “to maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues.”

The London Fire Brigade said 10 fire engines and 70 firefighters responded to a fire at the substation that was reported at 11:23 p.m. on Thursday. The fire has been contained but firefighters will remain at the scene throughout Friday, the fire brigade said.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the “catastrophic” fire appeared to have knocked out a backup generator as well as the electrical substation that supplies power to Heathrow Airport.

National Grid, which maintains energy infrastructure in Britain, said the fire damaged equipment at the substation and crews are working to restore power supplies as quickly as possible. Power had been restored to 62,000 customers by 6 a.m. local time, but 4,900 were still without electricity.

What caused the fire?

The cause is still under investigation, and officials said there was “no suggestion” of foul play.

But the Metropolitan Police said counterterror detectives were leading the investigation into its cause because of the fire’s impact on critical national infrastructure.

“We don’t know the cause of this fire. It’s obviously an unprecedented event,” Miliband said, adding that the fire and subsequent shutdown of Heathrow raises questions about the resilience of the country’s key infrastructure.

How was Heathrow affected?

The disruption disrupted travel plans of the roughly 200,000 people who were expected to travel through Heathrow on Friday. Heathrow advised passengers not to travel to the airport and to contact their airlines to rebook flights.

With all take offs and landings canceled, the first impact was on dozens of long-haul flights from North America and Asia that were in the air when the airport was shutdown. Some were forced to turn around, while others were diverted to airports around the U.K. and Europe.

Heathrow-bound aircraft have landed at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam; Shannon Airport in western Ireland; Glasgow, Scotland; Manchester, England; Charles de Gaulle in Paris; Lyon, France; and Frankfurt, Germany, among others.

The impact on short-haul flights was delayed until Friday morning because flight operations at Heathrow are severely limited between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. every day to minimize overnight noise in surrounding communities. Even so, thousands of people will be unable to travel to and from airports around Europe and the U.K. on Friday.

Some 4,000 tons of cargo have also been stranded by the closure, according to Anita Mendiratta, an aviation consultant.

How long will the disruptions last?

Even if the airport reopens on Saturday, the disruptions are expected to last for days as airlines move stranded aircraft and flight crews back into position and work to accommodate passengers whose flights were canceled.

Mendiratta estimated that it would take two to four days to clear all the backlogs.

“This is an extreme situation where the entire aviation ecosystem is impacted,” Mendiratta said.

“There will be two things that will be happening as a priority number one shall we say. First is airport operations and understanding, from an electrical system point of view, what has been impacted, if anything,” she added. “Did anything short out, for instance? What needs to be reactivated? And then how do you literally turn the airport back on again? Passenger and cargo.

“On top of that, there’s the issue of actually managing the human component of it. You have passengers that are impacted, crew are impacted and operations — so being able to re-mobilize everything.”

How big is Heathrow?

Heathrow was Europe’s busiest airport last year, with 83.6 million passengers traveling through the airport. Its closure will have far-reaching impacts because it is a major hub for connecting flights to cities throughout Britain and around the world, as well as for travel to London.

Does London have other airports?

Yes. Five other air hubs in southeastern England identify themselves as London airports, but they are much smaller than Heathrow. Gatwick, Britain’s second-biggest airport, handled 43.2 million passengers last year. It is in the town of Crawley, 28 miles south of London.

By MORIAH BALINGIT, CHRIS MEGERIAN and BILL BARROW, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A little more than 23 years ago, Republican President George W. Bush sat at a desk at a high school in Hamilton, Ohio, and signed a law that would vastly expand the role of the Education Department and transform American schooling. On Thursday, his Republican successor, President Donald Trump, signed a very different document — this one an executive order designed to dismantle the department.

For years, as right-wing activists called for eliminating the agency, many Republicans paid lip service to the cause but still voted to fund it. Now Trump, emboldened and unapologetic in his drastic remaking of the federal government, has brushed aside concerns that deterred his predecessors.

Thursday’s announcement follows other aggressive decisions, including the enlistment of billionaire Elon Musk to downsize the federal bureaucracy at startling speed, or the review of scientific findings that are foundational for fighting climate change.

Dismantling the Education Department was always high on Trump’s list. He talked about it repeatedly during his campaign, often to cheers from his supporters, including the conservative group Moms for Liberty.

But despite telegraphing his goals, Trump’s executive order was a stunner, even for a president who thrives on audacity. Margaret Spellings, education secretary under Bush, said she was indeed surprised he was following through on his campaign vow.

For years, Spellings said, talk of about eliminating the department was a way for Republicans to signal their adherence to party orthodoxy, even as they voted to send billions of dollars to support its mission. Much of that money ended up at schools in their own districts, funding extra teachers for impoverished schools, for example. As recently as 2023, 60 House Republicans voted against a bill to close the department.

“It was always a little bit of a wink and a nod deal,” Spellings said. “Donald Trump has called the bluff.”

Trump, in remarks at the White House, said: “People have wanted to do this for many, many years, for many, many decades. And I don’t know, no president ever got around to doing it. But I’m getting around to doing it.”

He held the executive order up for photos while standing next to Education Secretary Linda McMahon. He’s joked that he’ll need to find another job for her once her department is gone.

The executive order is likely to get mired in legal challenges, and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle said closing the department can’t move forward without their approval. But Trump, through the Department of Government Efficiency, has already shrunk the department’s imprint, moving to eliminate about half of its staff.

The first talk of eliminating the department came just a year after its formation from President Ronald Reagan, who opposed its efforts to integrate schools. However, calls to get rid of the new department fell out of favor by the end of Reagan’s first term. By the time George W. Bush became president, it was seen as a vehicle to implement his policy vision of a federal government that required states to closely monitor student progress, and hold schools accountable that fell short.

Calls to eliminate the department reemerged with the Tea Party, whose adherents made it a symbol of bloated bureaucracy that usurped power that belonged to local governments.

The most recent push to close the department emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, when right-leaning parents, infuriated by what they saw as unnecessary school closures, began arguing that the government was indoctrinating their children.

Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, was in the White House audience and was recognized by Trump in his remarks. She said the department allowed teacher unions to exert undue influence over schools, a problem that became more apparent while schools were closed and students were learning over Zoom.

“The American people woke up and recognized the fact there were a lot of people that were making decisions that were not in the best interest of their children,” she said.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who as a young lawmaker voted for the 1979 bill to create the department, praised Trump’s move and argued the agency has not accomplished its original mission.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gingrich said of backing Democratic President Jimmy Carter, his fellow Georgian, in a 215-201 vote.

Two generations later, Gingrich argued, “If you take what the scores were then and how much we were spending on education then and compare it now, it’s impossible to escape the reality that it’s been an abject failure.”

For all the talk of overreach, federal law explicitly bars the federal government from telling schools what to teach their students. Day-to-day operations of schools are largely handled by state and local authorities.

And while Trump has talked about eliminating the department, he envisions a more muscular role for the federal government in schools, moving swiftly and aggressively to punish schools that do not fall in line with the administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws.

Early in his administration, he has already taken unprecedented action to sever federal grants from the University of Pennsylvania and from Columbia University over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests.

The executive order to close the department also included language to take federal funding away from schools that promote “diversity, equity and inclusion,” a term that has come to encompass everything from highlighting the achievements of Black Americans to allowing transgender athletes to compete.

Advocates and Democratic strategists have warned that Trump’s efforts could backfire with voters. According to recent polling, six out of ten registered voters oppose the closure of the department.

Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who has worked for multiple presidential campaigns, including Joe Biden’s 2020 victorious effort over Trump, said the president’s moves are a base pleaser likely to backfire for Republicans with the broader electorate.

First and foremost, he said, “education is generally popular with voters” as a priority. Anything that allows Democrats to position themselves as better reflective of those values, he said, works against Trump.

The states whose schools are most reliant on federal dollars include Mississippi, South Dakota, Montana, Alaska, Arkansas and North Carolina — all of which backed Trump. Any disruption in federal funding will hit them hardest.

Spellings said there’s long been a bipartisan consensus that “education is the route to the American dream, and it ought to be afforded to everyone, and the federal role was to level the playing field.”

“If that’s still true, we’re in the process of finding out.”

Sharon Lurye and Linley Sanders contributed.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said late Thursday that he would be meeting with billionaire Elon Musk at the Pentagon Friday to discuss “innovation, efficiencies & smarter production.”

Musk, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, and his Department of Government Efficiency have played an integral role in the administration’s push to dramatically reduce the size of the government. Musk has faced intense blowback from some lawmakers and voters for his chainsaw-wielding approach to laying off workers and slashing programs, although Trump’s supporters have hailed it.

A senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the Defense Department.

In a post on Musk’s X platform, Hegseth emphasized that “this is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans,’” denying a story published by The New York Times late Thursday.

Hegseth is also scheduled to deliver remarks with Trump at the White House Friday morning.

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The post Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin says her job is to be more than just an ‘activist’ against Trump appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

Today is Thursday, March 20, the 79th day of 2025. There are 286 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 20, 1995, in Tokyo, packages containing the deadly chemical sarin were opened on five separate subway trains in a domestic terror attack by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, causing 14 deaths and injuring more than 1,000.

Also on this date:

In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.

In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel about slavery, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was first published in book form after being serialized in the abolitionist newspaper The National Era; it would become the best-selling novel of the 19th century.

In 1854, the Republican Party of the United States was founded by opponents of slavery at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.

In 1976, kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for her part in a San Francisco bank holdup carried out by the Symbionese Liberation Army. (Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison; she was released after serving 22 months and was pardoned in 2001 by President Bill Clinton.)

In 1987, azidothymidine (AZT) became the first medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat HIV/AIDS.

In 1996, a jury in Los Angeles convicted Erik and Lyle Menendez of first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents. (They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)

In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered economic sanctions against nearly two dozen members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and a major bank that provided them support, raising the stakes in an East-West showdown over Ukraine.

In 2018, in a phone call to Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump offered congratulations on Putin’s re-election victory; a senior official said Trump had been warned in briefing materials that he should not congratulate Putin.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Actor Hal Linden is 94.
• Basketball Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley is 80.
• Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Orr is 77.
• Guitarist Jimmie Vaughan is 74.
• Film director Spike Lee is 68.
• Actor Holly Hunter is 67.
• Model-entrepreneur Kathy Ireland is 62.
• Actor David Thewlis is 62.
• Actor Michael Rapaport is 55.
• MMA commentator and former champion Daniel Cormier is 46.
• Actor-singer Christy Carlson Romano is 41.
• Tennis player Sloane Stephens is 32.

MIAMI (AP) — Cade Cunningham banked in a 3-pointer with less than a second remaining, giving the Detroit Pistons a 116-113 win over Miami on Wednesday night and sending the Heat to their ninth consecutive loss.

Cunningham had his ninth triple-double of the season — 25 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists for the Pistons, who trailed for most of the second half and never led by more than two until the final second.

Bam Adebayo finished with 30 points, nine rebounds and eight assists for the Heat, who are stuck in their longest losing streak since an 11-game slide during the 2007-08 season.

Miami was ahead 93-88 going into the fourth quarter and led by eight in the final period. The Heat lost for the NBA-leading 12th time this season when holding a lead at any point in the fourth.

Takeaways

Pistons: How times have changed. Detroit was a 5-point favorite going into the game according to BetMGM Sportsbook — ending a streak of 20 consecutive Heat-Pistons games since February 2019 in which Miami was favored. Detroit hadn’t been such a big favorite over Miami since it was a 6.5-point pick on Jan. 1, 2017.

Heat: Tyler Herro had 29 points for Miami, and the Heat outscored the Pistons by eight points in the 37 minutes he was on the floor. But the Heat got outrebounded 47-37 and gave up 70 paint points.

Key moment

Cunningham had Detroit’s final two baskets — both 3-pointers in the final 57 seconds.

Key stat

Cunningham is the fourth player with two triple-doubles against Miami in a season, joining James Harden (2016-17), Domantas Sabonis (2023-24) and Nikola Jokic (this season).

Up next

Detroit goes to Dallas on Friday, before playing seven of its final 11 games at home. Miami plays the second game of its five-game homestand Friday against Houston.

— By TIM REYNOLDS, Associated Press

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Military officials are reviewing plans that would cut the number of U.S. troops deployed to the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba to handle detained migrants by as much as half, because there are no detainees there now and the program has stumbled during legal challenges, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said the military’s Southern Command was asked to give Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a plan that would outline how many troops are actually needed and what additional space may be required if more detainees are sent there.

That plan, said officials, is expected to recommend that a number of the troops be sent home — and one official said the decision could chop the 900 troops there now in half.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decisions are not yet finalized. Southern Command is preparing options that would address the fact that there have been no migrants transferred to the base since early March, but the administration has warned that future “high-threat” detainees may be sent to the base.

U.S. authorities have transferred at least 290 detainees to Guantanamo since February. But on March 11, the 40 people still housed there were flown off the base to Louisiana.

The base is best known for housing foreigners associated with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but it has a separate facility used for decades to hold migrants intercepted trying to reach the U.S. by sea. That use had been expanded recently to include some of the migrants swept up in President Donald Trump’s broader campaign to secure the southern border.

Trump has said he will send the worst criminal migrants to Guantanamo Bay, but civil rights attorneys say many detainees transferred there don’t have a criminal record and that the administration has exceeded its authority in violation of U.S. immigration law.

A judge recently ruled against immigration and civil rights advocates who sued over the transfers, but it largely hinged on the fact that, at the current time, there were no migrant detainees being held there.

Meanwhile, the 900 troops at the base have little to do. There are roughly 500 Army soldiers, nearly 300 Marines and several dozen sailors and airmen deployed to the base for the detainee program.

Officials said the new Southern Command plan will likely send a significant number home, but they or others may be told to be prepared to deploy if needed. Currently, nearly 800 additional U.S.-based soldiers are already on prepare-to-deploy orders and could be sent to the base quickly if needed.

Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration this month to prevent it from transferring 10 migrants detained in the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay, filing statements from men held there who said they were mistreated in conditions that one of them called “a living hell.”

The judge indicated a willingness to revisit the issue if and when the government sends more detainees to Guantanamo. He said he wouldn’t set a timeline for how quickly the government has to tell him of future transfers.

U.S. authorities say they began transferring migrants to Guantanamo Bay with the first military transport flight out of Fort Bliss on Feb. 4. Initial flights transported Venezuelans — a prelude to the transfer of 177 detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Venezuela, with a brief stopover in Honduras.

By TRÂN NGUYỄN

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California faces a $6.2 billion budget gap in the state’s Medicaid services, which could force Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers to reevaluate future coverage for some of the 15 million people who receive health care through the program, including immigrants.

The shortfall comes a year after California launched an ambitious coverage expansion to provide free health care to all low-income adults regardless of their immigration status. That’s costing far more than the state projected.

California also is bracing for major budget hits if Republicans in Congress follow through with a plan to slash billions of dollars in Medicaid and potentially jeopardize coverage for millions of people. California provides free health care to more than a third of its 39 million people.

Here’s what to know about California’s Medicaid gap:

Did expanding coverage to adult immigrants cause the gap?

Partly. California first extended health care benefits to low-income children without legal status in 2015 and later added the benefits for young adults and people over the age of 50. The program was expanded again last year to cover adults ages 26 to 49.

The cost of the recent expansion to cover all low-income adults is $2.7 billion more than the state budgeted because California underestimated the number of people who would sign up for services. California officials said they only had a month of data last year when the state had to produce projections for the budget.

The state hasn’t said how many people have enrolled through the expansion. Last year, the state projected about 700,000 state residents who are living in the U.S. illegally would gain full health coverage to access preventive care and other treatment.

Other factors that are putting pressures on state budgets across the country also played a role in California, state officials said. Those included $540 million in rising pharmacy costs and $1.1 billion from other issues, such as a larger enrollment by older people.

In Illinois, which also expanded coverage in recent years to more low-income residents regardless of immigration status, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker is proposing a $330 million cut to coverage for immigrants ages 42 to 64, citing rising costs.

What is California doing about the shortfall?

Newsom’s administration last week told lawmakers it took out a $3.44 billion loan, the maximum allowed under state law, from the general fund to make payments for this month.

The Department of Health Care Services, which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, this week said it will need an additional $2.8 billion to cover costs already committed through June. That money will need to be approved by the Legislature in April.

The state has proposed ending pandemic-era protections that have prevented it from disenrolling people from Medicaid. Newsom’s administration is also bracing for “significant variability” after President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Will California roll back coverage for immigrants without legal status?

Newsom told reporters this week that rolling back the coverage expansion “is not on my docket.”

Other Democratic leaders, including Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire, also vowed to safeguard benefits for immigrants but acknowledged “tough choices ahead.”

The budget hole has reignited criticism from Republican lawmakers about the expansion.

“Californians should not be forced to shoulder the burden of radical Democrats’ reckless financial mismanagement,” state Sen. Brian Jones said in a social media post this week.

Newsom recently defended the expansion in one of his podcast episodes, adding that making preventive care accessible to all low-income people helps save the state money in the long run.

How will Congress’ plan to cut Medicaid funding affect California?

The $6.2 billion budget gap is “solvable,” lawmakers said this week. But Congress’ threats of a Medicaid funding cut could add further strain.

California would have to cut coverage, limit enrollment or raise taxes to help cover the costs if Congress follows through.

State officials said they’re certain it would upend coverage for millions of people in the state.

Even with the largest state budget in the country at roughly $322 billion, California doesn’t have the capacity to backfill services funded by the federal government, officials said.

More than half the state’s Medicaid funding comes from the federal government. For the next fiscal year, that’s roughly $112.1 billion. Federal funding doesn’t cover costs related to preventive care for immigrants without legal status.

By KATIE WORKMAN

Some food trends put in deep roots, some are fleeting, some are outright silly and some are just plain fun. I am putting the “just plain fun” label on this one: pearl-shaped foods that pop in your mouth.

Tiny sphere-shaped foods seem to be everywhere, entertaining mouths with their pop-ability and the sometimes unusual transformation of familiar foods.

Call it part of a bubble moment: The bubble hem is hot in fashion, and decor is loving soft, round corners and playfulness.

Here are some examples of pearl-shaped foods, old and new.

Straight from nature

Some pearl-shaped bubble foods have been with us for a long time — not fads at all. Perhaps the classic is caviar, and fish eggs in general. Different fish eggs have different types of “pop” and different flavor profiles.

Fish roe is great on blinis, toast point and potato pancakes, but also eggs, shellfish and pasta.

Not all caviar is pricy, either. California-based Tsar Nicoulai, for example, offers gold pearl trout roe for about $14 an ounce; it’s bright orange with a firm shell and a silky, distinctive pop. Their Estate Malossol Caviar retails for about $100 an ounce; it has a softer texture, a brownish black color and a buttery, earthy flavor.

Could it be time for the finger lime?

Another natural, pearl-shaped product — one not so well-known — is the finger lime. It looks like a skinny, pinky-shaped lime, but inside are wonderful little crunchy caviar-like pearls of lime juice. It’s definitely a novelty, but not a gimmick: The flavor and texture is a terrific addition to anything from oysters to scallop ceviche.

The skin of finger limes can be green, burgundy or dull orange. The pulpy pearls can be green, pale peach or red.

To harvest a finger lime’s caviar, just slice the lime down the middle and then squeeze each half. If your finger lime is fresh, the caviar should spill out easily. Look for them at specialty stores or online.

Boba and boba tea

Boba and boba tea (also known as bubble tea) have been around since the 1980s, introduced from Taiwan and now taking the world by storm.

Boba pearls are usually made from tapioca starch (from the cassava plant), water, and sometimes a sweetener, like brown sugar, using a process known as gelatinization. The little boba balls are chewy and bouncy, and while they are most often served in a sweet cold tea, they can also be used in different preparations. There is also popping boba, designed to burst when you bite into it.

Boba tea is usually sweet and creamy, shaken before serving to create a frothy texture. A fat straw is used to slurp up the balls, which are chewed as you drink.

You can buy boba tea at coffee shops and specialty stores, and get packaged boba pearls to make drinks and other confections at home. Twrl Milk Tea, for example, makes boba offerings like Lychee Popping Boba and Brown Sugar Boba. You can also buy ready-to-drink boba tea in a can, or bubble tea kits.

Spherification: Making foods pop-able

A trend that’s been percolating for years is spherified foods — liquids that become squishy little orbs when a gelled membrane is created around them.

One of my favorites is balsamic and other vinegar pearls. De Nigris, for instance, makes a line of Italian balsamic vinegar pearls, including some flavored with truffle and orange. Messino makes balsamic pearls and also lemon pearls, filled with real lemon juice, and pomegranate pearls. Tartuflanghe turns truffle juice into truffle pearls, and also makes anchovy and pesto pearls.

Prova ’s vanilla, coffee and cocoa pearls are made for pastry chefs to serve on desserts.

You might sprinkle balsamic pearls on crostini or bruschetta, salads, and burrata or other cheeses. Try lemon pearls on top of oysters or grilled fish.

Pomegranate pearls can be served on yogurt, tarts and cocktails — as can the pomegranate’s natural pearls, the jelly-like arils that cover some seeds.

Spherification, or reverse spherification as it is officially called, uses sodium alginate and calcium to create the little orbs. The technique was invented in the 1940s and popularized by chef Ferran Adraia in the 2000s at his famed, now-closed restaurant El Bulli, in Spain. Chefs like Wylie Dufresne at WD-50 in New York have helped bring it to the fore.

Spherification beyond liquids

Some restaurants spherify their own foods, from ravioli to melons. Olive lovers might be dazzled by the spherified olives at Jose Andres’ Mercado Little Spain in NYC.

BelGiosioso makes teeny little mozzarella pearls, weighing in at 2.5 grams each. They look adorable in pasta salads and antipasti platters. They also melt into perfect little cheesy pockets in baked pastas, like baked ziti.

Easter candy, too

On the sweet side, there are translucent hard-candy rabbits stuffed with candy pearls from Pure Sugar. You’ll have to steel yourself to smash them open, or just shake the pearls out from the bottom if you can’t bear to break the bunny.

Katie Workman writes regularly about food for The Associated Press. She has written two cookbooks focused on family-friendly cooking, “Dinner Solved!” and “The Mom 100 Cookbook.” She blogs at https://themom100.com/. She can be reached at Katie@themom100.com.

By MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — If Ellen Pompeo was going to find a new role after 20 years as a series regular on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” it had to be good. She thinks she found it as a supermom whose world collapses in Hulu’s “Good American Family.”

“I was looking for a real creative challenge. I think this was an opportunity for me to completely disappear into a role,″ she says. ”Characters like this don’t come along all that often.”

“Good American Family” fictionalizes the true story of Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian-born orphan with dwarfism, adopted as a child by an American family who soon accuse her of being a troubled adult masquerading as a child.

Pompeo plays the adoptive mother, whose character has become a sought-after speaker and author after raising a son with autism but now finds herself at her breaking point with Natalia, her marriage strained, in legal jeopardy and her reputation in tatters.

“We were taking all of this research that we had and amplifying certain moments or adjusting certain moments for kind of dramatic license,” says creator and co-showrunner Katie Robbins, who also created “Sunny” and wrote for “The Affair.”

“The thing that was important was to tell a propulsive, compulsively watchable thing. But, at the end of the day, the most important thing was to tell it in an emotionally authentic way to the people involved.”

Over the years, the case has been the focus of several TV shows, podcasts and documentaries, including Investigation Discovery’s documentary series “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace.”

If viewers hope to get clarity on who the heroes are, they’ll not get it with “Good American Family.” It tells the story from multiple points of view, flashing forward and back, to create a complex family drama that also has elements of a thriller.

“You really have to pay attention to who’s doing the telling,” says Robbins. “Using perspective felt like an opportunity both to tell the story in kind of a fresh way, but also to allow us as storytellers to take the viewers on an experience that would help them confront their own biases in unexpected ways.”

The series starts from the perspective of the adoptive parents — Mark Duplass plays the husband — who eventually turn on their new family member, but then shifts to Natalia (played by Imogen Faith Reid), slowly cracking any snap judgements the viewer may have had going into it.

“Everybody comes into the experience of this story with sort of a different way of looking at it,” says co-showrunner and executive producer Sarah Sutherland. “It’s sort of like a Rorschach test. I just thought it was super-fascinating to sit with the kind of uncomfortableness of that.”

The eight episodes that begin debuting Wednesday seamlessly blend darkness and light, showing moments of family levity but also scenes of terror, as when Natalia approaches her parents’ bed with a knife.

“In terms of the tone, I am a firm believer that life is a real genre blend,” says Robbins. “The happiest moments in my life have been undercut often with tragedy, and the saddest moments I’ve often found myself finding something absurdly hilarious. So everything that I write, I try to let all live in that sort of tension because that’s what it is to be a person.”

At its core, “Good American Family” is about how we are raised and how that can echo through generations. We learn how Pompeo’s character was treated by her mother and how Natalia wasn’t always raised with familial love, priming them for a face-off.

“We’re examining the ways in which one is parented trickles down and affects the way that one is a parent,” says Robbins. “It changes the way that you perceive the world. And I think that it’s a fascinating thing that runs through the arc of this series.”

Pompeo sees an even larger point — how everyone these days has their own definitive version of events and sees things though their own lens.

“Even if you know you’re wrong, it takes an extraordinary amount of humility to admit you’re wrong. It’s so much easier to just go with it, stick to the ego and say, ‘I wasn’t wrong,’” she says.

“We see that with what’s happening in our country right now. People will fight to the death before they admit they were wrong. It doesn’t matter what we see, right?” she adds.

“We’re seeing things before our eyes, and people are saying something else, and we’re choosing to believe what was said instead of what we’re seeing. And that is the human condition.”