By BRIAN WITTE

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland lost its triple-A bond rating from Moody’s on Wednesday, a rating the state has cited for more than 50 years as a sign of strong fiscal stewardship.

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Moody’s downgraded the state’s credit rating to Aa1. Maryland had received a triple-A bond rating from Moody’s since 1973. The state has benefitted from the higher rating by paying the lowest rates when it sells bonds to pay for infrastructure, likes roads and schools.

“The downgrade was driven by economic and financial underperformance compared to Aaa-rated states, which is expected to continue given the state’s heightened vulnerability to shifting federal policies and employment, and its elevated fixed costs,” Moody’s said.

Gov. Wes Moore and other leading Maryland Democrats blamed President Donald Trump’s mass layoffs of federal workers, which is having a big impact on the region. The District of Columbia also recently received a credit-rating downgrade.

“To put it bluntly, this is a Trump downgrade,” Moore said in statement made jointly by the presiding officers of the state’s legislature, Comptroller Brooke Lierman and Treasurer Dereck Davis, who are all Democrats. “Over the last one hundred days, the federal administration’s decisions have wreaked havoc on the entire region, including Maryland.”

Maryland Republicans described the downgrade as “a harsh indictment of the state’s current direction under Governor Wes Moore.”

“Donald Trump didn’t downgrade Maryland’s bond rating — Annapolis Democrats did. And now they’re scrambling for someone else to blame,” Republican Sen. Steve Hershey, the Senate minority leader, said in a statement. “This is the result of reckless spending, bloated budgets, and an economy that’s been hollowed out by overregulation and overreliance on the federal government.”

Moody’s had noted earlier this year that federal cuts pose a greater threat to Maryland than any other state.

Maryland lawmakers recently concluded a challenging legislative session to balance the state’s budget. They closed a $3.3 billion budget deficit for the next fiscal year with a combination of tax increases, budget cuts and fund transfers.

Maryland lawmakers also directed the governor’s budget office to keep track of the impact of federal cuts, alert them if it reaches $1 billion and make recommendations on how to deal with the impact.

The Democrats’ statement noted that Moody’s acknowledged that the state had closed its budget gap, even as it remains exposed to the economic consequences of federal funding cuts and layoffs.

“Maryland still holds one of the highest possible credit ratings in the nation,” the joint statement said, “and as we have for decades, we will always pay our debts.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A former food delivery driver pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to steal more than $2.5 million from DoorDash by getting the company to pay for deliveries that never occurred, federal prosecutors said.

Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in San Jose to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Devagiri, 30, of Newport Beach, California, admitted to working with three others in 2020 and 2021 to defraud the San Francisco-based delivery company, federal prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Devagiri used customer accounts to place high-value orders and then used an employee’s credential to gain access to DoorDash software and manually reassign the orders to driver accounts that he and others controlled. He then caused the fraudulent driver accounts to report that the orders had been delivered when they had not, and manipulated DoorDash’s computer systems to pay the fraudulent driver accounts for the nonexistent deliveries, officials said.

Devagiri would then use DoorDash software to change the orders from “delivered” status to “in process” status and manually reassign the orders to driver accounts he and others controlled, beginning the process again, prosecutors said.

Devagiri is the third defendant to be convicted of his role in this conspiracy. Two co-defendants previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, authorities said.

Devagiri faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. He is scheduled to return to court on Sept. 16, 2025.

By DEE-ANN DURBIN

More than 1,000 Starbucks baristas at 75 U.S. stores have gone on strike since Sunday to protest a new company dress code, a union representing the coffee giant’s workers said Wednesday.

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Starbucks put new limits starting Monday on what its baristas can wear under their green aprons. The dress code requires employees at company-operated and licensed stores in the U.S. and Canada to wear a solid black shirt and khaki, black or blue denim bottoms.

Under the previous dress code, baristas could wear a broader range of dark colors and patterned shirts. Starbucks said the new rules would make its green aprons stand out and create a sense of familiarity for customers as it tries to establish a warmer, more welcoming feeling in its stores.

But Starbucks Workers United, the union that represents workers at 570 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned U.S. stores, said the dress code should be subject to collective bargaining.

“Starbucks has lost its way. Instead of listening to baristas who make the Starbucks experience what it is, they are focused on all the wrong things, like implementing a restrictive new dress code,” said Paige Summers, a Starbucks shift supervisor from Hanover, Maryland. “Customers don’t care what color our clothes are when they’re waiting 30 minutes for a latte.”

Summers and others also criticized the company for selling styles of Starbucks-branded clothing that employees no longer are allowed to wear to work on an internal website. Starbucks said it would give two free black T-shirts to each employee when it announced the new dress code.

Starbucks said Wednesday that the strike was having a limited impact on its 10,000 company-operated U.S. stores.

“Thousands of Starbucks partners came to work this week ready to serve their customers and communities,” the company said in a statement. “It would be more productive if the union would put the same effort into coming back to the table to finalize a reasonable contract.”

Starbucks Workers United has been unionizing U.S. stores since 2021. Starbucks and the union have yet to reach a contract agreement, despite agreeing to return to the bargaining table in February 2024.

The union said this week that it filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging Starbucks’ failure to bargain over the new dress code.

Max Martin isn’t a household name – unless you live in a household with a serious pop music aficionado. But the Swedish songwriter and producer has been a dominant force in that field for a few decades now.

In fact, he’s written more No. 1 singles than anyone in music history, save Paul McCartney. Since 1998, Martin has put 27 songs atop the charts, helping create the sound that’s made stars of Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande.

So call it a fun coincidence that Perry was playing Minneapolis’ Target Center on Tuesday night while a musical full of Martin’s songs (including a few made famous by Perry) was setting up shop a few blocks away at the Orpheum Theatre. I can’t speak to Perry’s performance, but I can say this: The North American touring production of “& Juliet” might be the apotheosis of the jukebox musical, the most successful effort yet of that theatrical subgenre, which uses familiar music to tell a fresh story.

While “Mamma Mia” and “Moulin Rouge!” did fine things with the idea, they’re nowhere near as imaginative and inspiring as “& Juliet.” And this touring production is terrific, full of eye-popping full-cast dance numbers rooted in nightclub moves of the ‘90s and ‘00s and featuring some magnificent voices that I daresay eclipse those of these songs’ original purveyors.

And it helps that it’s very funny. David West Read has written a script that’s a kind of meta historical fantasy: We watch as a very 21st-century version of William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, debate the merits of “Romeo and Juliet,” which she regards as dissatisfying because of Juliet’s lack of agency in that quintessential romantic tragedy.

So together they fashion a sequel that unfolds before our eyes and ears, each writer upping the other with new scenarios and characters, including Hathaway inserting herself into the story as a friend of Juliet. And Martin’s songs (mostly) fit the action well, from the playwriting pair arguing over the show’s direction with the help of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” to Rachel Simone Webb’s Juliet making an affecting ballad of Spears’ “Baby One More Time” to a showstopping take on Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” directed at a recently revived Romeo.

The driving force at the center of almost all the show’s best numbers is Webb’s voice, which is a marvelous instrument for this music, equally capable of delivering touching tenderness or a velvety wail of triumphant transcendence. But Teal Wicks’ Anne is the quirky catalyst for this offbeat tale – spiriting Juliet and friends away to Paris to be tossed into the middle of a romantic triangle or two – and Wicks makes her magnetic in a lovably dorky kind of way.

She’s a strong singer, as are Kathryn Allison as Juliet’s nurse and guardian, Angelique, and Nick Drake as May, our heroine’s nonbinary sidekick and possible romantic rival.

Director Luke Sheppard and choreographer Jennifer Weber have inspired the cast to embrace the material with energy and enthusiasm, and the vision is complemented splendidly by Soutra Gilmour’s versatile set design, Paloma Young’s costumes, and the animations and projections of Andrzej Goulding.

They help make “& Juliet” a supremely well-executed bit of frothy fun that also holds some inspiring messages about empowerment and finding your own path.

‘& Juliet’

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave., Mpls.

Tickets: $337-$53, available at hennepinarts.org

Capsule: Contemporary pop meets the Elizabethan era to fun and funny effect.

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