By KIMBERLEE KRUESI, LEAH WILLINGHAM and RODRIQUE NGOWI, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — Tommy McCarthy’s Irish bar just outside Boston’s city limits pours more Guinness than almost anywhere in the U.S., yet come this St. Patrick’s Day, the longtime owner of The Burren is stocking up on plenty of nonalcoholic options too.

“It’s come a long way since we first opened,” McCarthy said, who started slinging pints at the beloved establishment in 1996 after moving to the Boston area from West Clare, Ireland.

A St. Patrick’s Day decoration is displayed between two drink menus at the Burren Pub, Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Somerville, Mass. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

There is perhaps no other holiday tied more to a city than St. Patrick’s Day in Boston. According to historians, the city was the first in the country to throw a celebration for the patron saint of Ireland on March 17, 1737, as a way to support the city’s wave of Irish immigrants.

Yet while the holiday has become connected to heavy drinking over the centuries, a small but growing crowd has found ways to participate in the St. Patrick’s Day parades, festivals and banquets without a buzz. They’re doing so by turning to nonalcoholic beers, mocktails and solely sober spaces — even in the heart of Boston.

A holiday that’s not just about booze

“St. Patrick’s Day is a huge drinking holiday. It is promoted absolutely everywhere,” said Jackie Taylor who has been sober for 12 years.

But she’s found lots of ways to celebrate the holiday — whether out on the town or at home — without risking a situation where “you might not make it out of there sober.”

Nonalcoholic drinks are popular on St. Patrick’s Day weekend during The Burren’s four days of Irish music shows, which can last 10 hours each. McCarthy said he’s a Guinness drinker but sticks to the nonalcoholic brew when playing the fiddle.

Tommy McCarthy, owner of the Burren Pub, pours a non-alcohol Guinness 0, Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Somerville, Mass. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

“I top it up with the real creamy alcohol head,” he said. “You’re only getting a small bit of the alcohol, but you get the real cream. But you’re also getting the taste of the real Guinness without the alcohol. It kind of beats all.”

Michelle Flynn, manager at the Brendan Behan Irish pub in Boston’s Jamacia Plain, said most bars now serve nonalcoholic beers — a significant shift from decades ago.

“The neighborhood, society, everything has changed, has shifted a 1,000% — especially in the youth,” she said.

Young people don’t drink as much anymore

It’s not just bar owners noticing an uptick in a demand for nonalcoholic options. Young adults are drinking less than they were in decades past, according to polling by Gallup, which reported in 2023 that adults under 35 were less likely to say they use alcohol at least occasionally than they were in the early 2000s.

Gallup also saw a decline in the share of young adults who drink regularly or say they sometimes drink “more than they think they should” over the same time period.

Michael Scelfo, chef and owner of four Boston area cocktail bars, said his businesses have served mocktails since he opened Cambridge-based Alden & Harlow 11 years ago. But after the pandemic, demand significantly increased.

“It’s really kind of an expected and formidable part of the menu now,” he said, with bartenders putting just as much care into a mocktail’s execution.

Reclaiming St. Patrick’s Day for Irish heritage

For nearly 15 years, William Spencer Reilly has been throwing a “Sober St. Patrick’s Day” in New York City — which kicks off after the parade with Irish bands, dancers and food — and may soon expand the mission to Boston.

The sober event’s founder and chairman has always had his eye on Boston “for all the obvious reasons.”

According to Reilly, it’s about refocusing the typically-booze forward festivities on celebrating Irish heritage and honoring St. Patrick, the priest born in the late fourth century who was enslaved in Ireland and later returned to promote the spread of Christianity. It’s also a chance to break hurtful stereotypes of Irish people.

When he first proposed the idea of a sober event on such a booze-heavy day, he was met with incredulity and doubt over public interest. Now he’s in talks with Boston’s local leaders and believes there’s finally enough interest and support to branch out next year.

People generally seem more interested in being healthier, said Scelfo. That includes how they choose to spend their holidays.

“The perils and pitfalls of alcohol are well-documented when not used responsibly,” he said. “We’ve got an intelligent young generation that’s focused on health and wellness. And I think that that’s a great thing.”

Krusei reported from Nashville, Tennessee, and Willingham reported from Charleston, West Virginia. Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington D.C. contributed.

By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — If it’s March, and it’s green, it must be St. Patrick’s Day.

The day honoring the patron saint of Ireland is a global celebration of Irish heritage. And nowhere is that more so than in the United States, where parades take place in cities around the country and all kinds of foods and drinks are given an emerald hue.

In fact, it was among Irish American communities that the day became the celebration it is, from its roots as a more solemn day with a religious observance in Ireland.

But even in America, it was about more than a chance to dye a river green (looking at you, Chicago) or just bust out a favorite piece of green clothing, it was about putting down roots and claiming a piece of the country’s calendar.

Who is St. Patrick and why does he even have a day?

Patrick was not actually Irish, according to experts. Born in the late fourth century, he was captured as an adolescent and ended up enslaved in Ireland. He escaped to another part of Europe where he was trained as a priest and returned to Ireland in the fifth century to promote the spread of Christianity.

Several centuries later, he was made a saint by the Catholic Church and like other saints had a day dedicated to him, which was March 17. He became Ireland’s patron saint, and even when religious strife broke out between Catholics and Protestants, was claimed by both, says Mike Cronin, historian and academic director of Boston College Dublin.

How did an Irish saint’s day become an American thing?

The short answer: Irish people came to America and brought their culture with them. St. Patrick’s Day observances date back to before the founding of the U.S., in places like Boston and New York City. The first parade was held in Manhattan in 1762.

While the day was marked with more of a religious framing and solemnity in Ireland until well into the 20th century, in America it became the cultural and boisterous celebration it is today, marked by plenty of people without a trace of Irish heritage.

It was because people in Ireland started seeing how the day was marked in the U.S. that it became more of a festival in the country of its origin rather than strictly a religious observance, Cronin says, pointing to the parades, parties and other festivities that are held.

Oh, and by the way, for those who like to shorten names: Use St. Paddy’s Day, not St. Patty’s Day. Paddy is a nickname for Pádraig, which is the Irish spelling of Patrick.

Why is it such a big deal?

Holidays aren’t simply days to watch bands go by, or wear a specific outfit or costume.

Being able to mark a holiday, and have others mark it, is a way of “putting down roots, showing that you’ve made it in American culture,” says Leigh Schmidt, professor in the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. “You’ve made your claim on that American calendar, in American civic life, by having these holidays widely recognized.”

The spread of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the U.S. was a way for Irish immigrant communities, who in the 19th century faced discrimination and opposition, to stake that ground, he says: “It’s a kind of immigrant Irish way of combating nativist antagonism against them.”

What’s with four-leaf clovers, anyway?

A popular sight around the holiday is the shamrock, or three-leaf clover, linked to Ireland and St. Patrick.

The lucky ones, though, come across something that’s harder to find: a four-leaf clover. That’s because it takes a recessive trait or traits in the clover’s genetics for there to be more than the normal 3 leaves, says Vincent Pennetti, who has been fascinated by the plants since high school.

Four-leaf clovers “are real. They are rare,” he says.

That doesn’t mean they can’t be found. People just have to keep their eyes open and “get really good at noticing patterns and breaks in the patterns, and they just start jumping out at you,” he says.

Katie Glerum finds them. She says it’s not unheard of for her to be somewhere like out in a park and see one. She usually scoops it up and often gives it to someone else, to a positive response.

“If it happened every day, then I probably would be less excited about it,” she says. “But yeah, when it happens, it is exciting.”

A dynamic storm that prompted foreboding predictions of dangerous weekend weather spawned tornadoes, dust storms and wildfires that killed at least 39 people and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses.

A stump smolders as a remnant of the Crabapple Fire over the weekend in Gillespie County, Texas, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (Robin Jerstad/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)

The weakening but still volatile weather system was moving Monday into the U.S. Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, bringing thunderstorms, hail, damaging winds and the potential for more tornadoes.

Here’s what to know about the unusually erratic and damaging weather.

Monday forecast

Forecasters warned of dangerous winds from Florida all the way north to New Jersey, while heavy rain was likely across New York and New England.

A tornado watch was in effect until early Monday for a large swath of North Carolina and Virginia, with gusts potentially reaching 70 mph and possible hail the size of ping pong balls, according to the National Weather Service office in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The massive storm that began Friday earned an unusual “high risk” designation from meteorologists. Still, experts said it’s not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.

Multiple tornadoes in several states

In Tylertown, Mississippi, tornadoes ripped tall trees in half and wiped out entire neighborhoods. Six people were killed and more than 200 were displaced, Gov. Tate Reeves said.

Hailey Hart and her fiancé Steve Romero hunkered down with their three huskies inside their 1994 Toyota Celica as a twister ripped apart their home Saturday. Romero said he prayed out loud and hugged Hart as the car rolled onto its side, windows shattering, before it landed on its wheels again.

A toy panda bear lies amid the rubble of a mobile home that was destroyed from tornado in Tylertown, Miss., on Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

“It was a bad dream come true,” Romero said. The couple escaped with only scratches.

Wayne County, Missouri, resident Dakota Henderson said he and others rescuing trapped neighbors found five bodies scattered in rubble outside what remained of his aunt’s house. Scattered twisters killed at least a dozen people in the state Friday, authorities said.

Coroner Jim Akers of Butler County, Missouri, described the home where one man was killed as “just a debris field.”

“The floor was upside down,” he said. “We were walking on walls.”

Wildfires and dust storms also proved deadly

Wind-driven wildfires caused extensive damage in Texas and Oklahoma and officials warned that parts of both states would again face an increased risk of fire danger in the coming week.

More than 130 fires were reported across Oklahoma and nearly 400 homes were damaged or destroyed, Gov. Kevin Stitt said.

A cat cries out while sitting before a destroyed cabin from a tornado at Paradise Ranch RV Resort in Tylertown, Miss., Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

“Nobody has enough resources to fight fires when the wind is blowing 70 mph,” said Terry Essary, the fire chief of Stillwater, Oklahoma. “It’s an insurmountable task.”

Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management spokesperson Keli Cain said Sunday that two people were killed as a result of the wildfires and weather.

Meanwhile, dust storms spurred by high winds claimed almost a dozen lives on Friday. Eight people died in a Kansas highway pileup involving at least 50 vehicles, according to the state highway patrol. Authorities said three people also were killed in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle.

Refuge and recovery efforts

President Donald Trump said the White House was monitoring the storms and would assist state and local officials to help in the recovery. He said National Guard troops were deployed to Arkansas, where officials confirmed three deaths.

“Please join Melania and me in praying for everyone impacted by these terrible storms!” Trump posted on his social media network on Sunday.

At least three people, including an 82-year-old woman, were killed in central Alabama when multiple tornadoes swept across the state.

In Troy, Alabama, parks officials said the recreation center where many residents had taken refuge had to be closed due to damage from overnight storms. No one was injured.

“We are thankful the Lord provided protection over our community, and over 200 guests at the Recreation Center storm shelter on Saturday night,” the parks department said in a statement.

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and REGINA GARCIA CANO, Associated Press

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday temporarily blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement Sunday, responded to speculation about whether the administration was flouting court orders: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”

The acronym refers to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump targeted in his unusual proclamation that was released Saturday

In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s decision, said it would not use the Trump proclamation he blocked for further deportations if his decision is not overturned.

Trump sidestepped a question over whether his administration violated a court order while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening.

“I don’t know. You have to speak to the lawyers about that,” he said, although he defended the deportations. “I can tell you this. These were bad people.”

Asked about invoking presidential powers used in times of war, Trump said, “This is a time of war,” describing the influx of criminal migrants as “an invasion.”

Trump’s allies were gleeful over the results.

“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.

“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.

The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.

The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.

Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.

The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.

In this photo provided by El Salvador’s presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)

The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights

The Trump administration said the president actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn’t announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn’t be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.

“Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defense,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.

The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they’d be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.

Boasberg barred those Venezuelans’ deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.

The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.

He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.

“Once they’re out of the country,” Boasberg said, “there’s little I could do.”

Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.