‘The Sound of Music,’ ‘The Outsiders’ and ‘Hamilton’ on tap for new Broadway on Hennepin season

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A new production of “The Sound of Music,” a musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s classic “The Outsiders” and venerable smash “Hamilton” are among the offerings in the newly announced Hennepin Arts 2026-27 Broadway on Hennepin season. The 12 shows in the season have won a total of 37 Tony Awards.

“This season represents the kind of bold, welcoming and unforgettable experiences we aim to deliver through our work,” said Todd Duesing, Hennepin Arts president and CEO in a news release. “By presenting Broadway at its best, we are helping to energize downtown Minneapolis, strengthen our cultural ecosystem and create meaningful experiences that resonate far beyond the theater.”

New season ticket packages are on sale now via hennepinarts.org. Current subscribers will be contacted via email with renewal options. Single tickets will go on sale in the coming months. Productions will be staged at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre.

Shows include:

“Mamma Mia!” (Sept. 15-20): While ABBA wasn’t particularly interested when British producer Judy Craymer first approached the band with the idea to stage a musical using their songs, they’re probably happy they eventually agreed to a deal. The show was an instant hit when it debuted in London in 1999. The Broadway production ran for nearly 14 years and stands as the ninth-longest running show in Broadway history.

“Clue” (Oct. 9-11): The murder mystery board game Clue debuted in England in 1949 and has remained on shelves for the decades that followed. It also inspired a cult 1985 film, a 1997 musical and this latest iteration, a stage play that premiered in 2017. The North American tour began in Minneapolis in February 2024 and returns for an encore engagement.

Cayleigh Capaldi plays Maria Rainer in the new touring production of “The Sound of Music” which runs Oct. 20 through 25, 2026, at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. (Courtesy of Jeremy Daniel)

“The Sound of Music” (Oct. 20-25): Based on the 1949 book “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers” by Maria von Trapp. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” remains a much-loved show more than 65 years after it first debuted, thanks in part to the 1965 film adaptation starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. This new North American touring version launched in September.

“Maybe Happy Ending” (Nov. 17-22): This winner of six Tony Awards, including best musical, follows two human-like “helper-bots” in a Seoul of the future that develop a connection and question the ideas of relationships, love and mortality. It debuted in South Korea in 2016 and opened on Broadway in 2024 to warm reviews and word-of-mouth buzz from theatergoers.

“Buena Vista Social Club” (Dec. 29-Jan. 3): The musical ensemble Buena Vista Social Club formed in Cuba in 1996 and featured a dozen veteran musicians, some of whom came out of retirement to join. The group released their self-titled debut album the following year. It was an international hit, as was Wim Wenders’ 1999 documentary of the same name. Marco Ramirez, a writer best known for his work on Netflix shows like “Daredevil,” wrote the book for this musical adaptation that follows the lives of four musicians during the rise of Fidel Castro.

“Operation Mincemeat” (Jan. 26-31): Winner of the Olivier Award for best new musical and a Tony Award winner, this musical comedy stands as the best-reviewed show in West End history. It’s based on a true story about a top-secret World War II mission involving a stolen corpse, a fake love letter and a plan that helped change the course of history.

“Hadestown”(Feb. 9-14, 2027): Written by singer/songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, “Hadestown” follows a variation of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. After staging it in Vermont and Massachusetts in 2007, Mitchell released an acclaimed 2010 concept album that featured Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Ani DiFranco and Greg Brown as guests. It’s been running on Broadway since 2019 and won eight Tonys, including best musical, original score and direction.

“The Outsiders” (March 9-14, 2027): The latest adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s beloved 1967 coming-of-age novel follows working-class “greasers” and upper-middle-class “socs” in Tulsa in the ’60s. Francis Ford Coppola brought it to the silver screen in 1983 and it’s now considered one of the classics of that era. This new musical take debuted on Broadway in 2024 and is still running today. The North American tour began in September.

“The Who’s Tommy” (March 30-April 4, 2027): When the Who sat down to record their fourth album, Pete Townshend convinced his bandmates to record a rock opera about the fictional Tommy Walker and his path to becoming a spiritual leader and messianic figure. A hit with critics and fans, “Tommy” has been developed for other media numerous times, including a ballet in 1970, a Seattle Opera production in 1971, a film directed by Ken Russell in 1975 and this musical version that debuted in 1993 and was revived in 2024.

Tyler Fauntleroy, left, and A.D. Weaver star in the Broadway smash “Hamilton,” which returns to Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre April 20 through May 16, 2027. (Courtesy of Joan Marcus)

“Hamilton” (April 20-May 16, 2027): Since its Off-Broadway debut in 2015, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip hop musical has enjoyed massive commercial and critical success. It tells the story of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton with a cast of nonwhite actors. It received a record-breaking 16 Tony nominations and won 11, including best musical. It also received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A filmed version of the Broadway production is available for streaming on Disney+.

“Beetlejuice” (June 25-27, 2027): This musical adaptation of Tim Burton’s 1988 film “Beetlejuice” follows a deceased couple who are haunting their former home and summon a “bio-exorcist” ghost named Betelgeuse to help chase away the family who has moved in. It opened on Broadway in April 2019 but didn’t recoup its $21 million investment. It’s been a hit on the road, though, and returns to the Orpheum for a second local run.

“Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen” (July 13-18, 2027): Alicia Keys had a massive audience from the moment she released her debut album “Songs in a Minor” in 2001. It sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and won Keys her first five of a total of 17 Grammy Awards. Kristoffer Diaz wrote the book for this jukebox musical loosely based on Keys’ own life.

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Attorney says Gabbard is holding up a complaint about her actions, which her office denies

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By DAVID KLEPPER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has withheld a complaint made about her conduct from members of Congress for eight months, claiming the delay is needed for a legal review, an attorney for the person making the allegations said Monday.

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The complaint was reviewed by the office of the intelligence community’s inspector general, which deemed it not credible, Gabbard’s office said. The person then sought to have the complaint referred to members of Congress’ intelligence committees, as is permitted by federal law, but that has not occurred.

Andrew Bakaj, the attorney for the person who made the complaint, said he could not identify his client, their employer or offer specifics about the allegations because of the nature of their work. But he said there’s no justification for keeping the complaint from Congress since last spring.

There was no delay in getting the complaint to members of the intelligence committees, Gabbard’s press secretary Olivia Coleman said, though she added that the number of classified details in the complaint made the review process “substantially more difficult.”

Gabbard’s office disputed the claims, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Coleman noted that the inspector general who deemed the complaint non-credible wasn’t selected by Gabbard and began their work during then-President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Director Gabbard has always and will continue to support whistleblower’s and their right, under the law, to submit complaints to Congress, even if they are completely baseless like this one,” Coleman wrote in a post on X.

Gabbard coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies. In an unusual role for a spy chief, she was on site last week when the FBI served a search warrant on election offices in Georgia central to Trump’s disproven claims about fraud in the 2020 election, raising questions from Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Bakaj, meanwhile, has asked Congress to investigate the handling of the complaint.

A spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Gabbard pledged under oath during her confirmation hearing that she would protect whistleblowers and make sure Congress was kept informed.

“We expect her to honor those commitments and comply with both the letter and the spirit of the law,” Warner’s office said in a statement.

The inspector general’s office, which is tasked with providing independent oversight of the intelligence community, did not immediately respond to questions about the complaint.

A former intelligence officer with the CIA, Bakaj previously represented an intelligence community whistleblower whose account of a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy helped initiate the first of two impeachment cases against the Republican leader during his first team.

Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate in February 2020 over the call during which he asked the Ukrainian president for a “favor” — to announce he was investigating Democrats including 2020 rival Joe Biden.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

FACT FOCUS: Images of NYC mayor with Jeffrey Epstein are AI-generated. Here’s how we know

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By MELISSA GOLDIN

Multiple AI-generated photos falsely claiming to show New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a child and his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and his confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, along with other high-profile public figures, were shared widely on social media Monday.

The images originated on an X account labeled as parody after a huge tranche of new Epstein files was released by the Justice Department on Friday. They are clearly watermarked as AI and other elements they contain do not add up.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Images show Mamdani as a child and his mother with Jeffrey Epstein and other public figures linked to the disgraced financier.

THE FACTS: The images were created with artificial intelligence. They all contain a digital watermark identifying them as such and first appeared on a parody X account that says it creates “high quality AI videos and memes.”

In one of the images, Mamdani and Nair appear in the front of a group photo with Maxwell, Epstein, former President Bill Clinton, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. They seem to be posing at night on a crowded city street. Mamdani looks to be a preteen or young teenager.

Another supposedly shows the same group of people, minus Nair, in what appears to be a tropical setting. Epstein is pictured holding Clinton sitting in his arms, while Maxwell has her arm around Mamdani, who appears slightly younger.

Other AI-generated images circulating online depict Mamdani as a baby being held by Nair while she poses with Epstein, Clinton, Maxwell and Bezos. None of Epstein’s victims have publicly accused Clinton, Gates or Bezos of being involved in his crimes.

Google’s Gemini app detected SynthID, a digital watermarking tool for identifying content that has been generated or altered with AI, in all the images described above. This means they were created or edited, either entirely or in part, by Google’s AI models.

The X account that first posted the images describes itself as “an AI-powered meme engine” that uses “AI to create memes, songs, stories, and visuals that call things exactly how they are — fast, loud, and impossible to ignore.”

An inquiry sent to the account went unanswered. However, a post by the account seems to acknowledge that it created the images.

“Damn you guys failed,” it reads. “I purposely made him a baby which would technically make this pic 34 years old. Yikes.”

The photos began circulating after an email emerged in which a publicist, Peggy Siegal, wrote to Epstein about seeing a variety of luminaries, including Clinton, Bezos and Nair, an award-winning Indian filmmaker, at 2009 afterparty for a film held at Maxwell’s townhouse.

While Mamdani appears as a baby or young child in all of the images, he was 18 in 2009, when Nair is said to have attended the party.

The images have led to related falsehoods that have spread online in their wake. For example, one claims that Epstein is Mamdani’s father. This is not true — Mamdani’s father is Mahmood Mamdani, an anthropology professor at Columbia University.

The NYC Mayor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS raises conflict of interest concerns

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By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legal experts say President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax information raises a plethora of legal and ethical questions, including the propriety of the leader of the executive branch pursuing scorched-earth litigation against the very government he is in charge of.

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The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Florida, includes the president’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric as plaintiffs. It alleges that the leak of Trump’s and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, of Washington, D.C. — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about Trump and others to two news outlets between 2018 and 2020.

The outlets were not named in the charging documents, but the description and time frame align with stories about Trump’s tax returns in The New York Times and reporting about wealthy Americans’ taxes in the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. The 2020 New York Times report found Trump paid $750 in federal income tax the year he first entered the White House and no income tax at all some years thanks to reported colossal losses.

Legal analysts say that Trump does have a legitimate claim against the IRS but question the amount he is seeking as well as his decision to pursue the case at all. The disclosure violated IRS Code 6103, one of the strictest confidentiality laws in federal statute, which provides a legal remedy for individuals whose tax information is leaked, including a minimum of $1,000 per disclosure.

Since Littlejohn stole tax records of other billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, there is a possibility the case sets a precedent for other high-wealth earners to seek compensation from the government over the leak.

David Gair, a tax attorney with Troutman Pepper Locke in Dallas who represents individuals whose tax information was included in the Littlejohn leak, told The Associated Press that several clients have already reached out about bringing a potential claim against the government.

“People are saying, well, if he can do it, then why can’t I do it? And so I think you will have a lot more people filing similar lawsuits, thinking that they might be able to piggyback on what he’s doing.”

Amy Hanauer, executive director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, says a legal remedy has already been provided for the leak.

“The contractor who leaked this information has been imprisoned, the Trump administration’s Treasury Department canceled its contracts with the company that employed the leaker, and the IRS issued a rare public apology to taxpayers affected by the leak,” and the IRS has pledged to strengthen its data protection procedures as a result, Hanauer said.

She adds that “even if an unbiased judge rightly rejects Trump’s demands as preposterous, there is a great danger that the IRS would ‘agree’ to settle and pay out an enormous sum of taxpayer dollars to Trump.”

Trump, when asked by a reporter over the weekend how he will manage being on both sides of the lawsuit, referred to a previous complaint he filed against the Department of Justice seeking roughly $230 million in damages over investigations into his 2016 campaign’s Russia ties and the 2022 Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

He added that he’s supposed to “work out a settlement with myself.”

“I think what we’ll do is do something for charity,” Trump said Saturday. “We could make it a substantial amount. Nobody would care because it’s going to go to numerous very good charities.”

A White House representative did not offer details on what organizations might receive any settlement money.

Individuals whose tax information has been leaked don’t have to prove compensatory damages, Gair noted, though Trump is also seeking punitive damages, changing the stakes.

Referring to the deals that Trump’s family business has inked since he won reelection, Gair said Trump may have a hard time showing real harm.

“It’s hard for me to believe that he really had any losses, but maybe,” Gair said.