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Restaurant chain TGI Fridays filed for bankruptcy protection Saturday, saying it is looking for ways to “ensure the long-term viability” of the casual dining brand after closing many of its branches this year.

The Dallas-based company’s Chapter 11 filing in a Texas federal court accelerates a gradual decline for an iconic chain that was once near the center of American pop culture but has seen its customer base dwindle as tastes changed.

The company has boasted that its bartenders trained Tom Cruise for his role in the 1988 film “Cocktail.” Its serving staff’s button-filled uniforms, meant to evoke a fun atmosphere, were later parodied in the 1999 satire “Office Space,” starring Jennifer Aniston.

Rohit Manocha, executive chairman of TGI Fridays, said in a statement that the “primary driver of our financial challenges resulted from COVID-19 and our capital structure.”

Sit-down chain restaurants more broadly have faced challenges in recent years as diners choose to get food delivered or visit upscale fast-food chains like Chipotle and Shake Shack.

In September a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved a reorganization plan for the seafood chain Red Lobster after years of mounting losses. Italian American food chain Buca di Beppo filed for bankruptcy protection in August.

Founded in 1965 as a bar on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, TGI Fridays expanded over the following decades to become a ubiquitous suburban gathering spot known for its ribs, potato skins topped with cheese and bacon, and a decor bedecked with red stripes and Tiffany-style lamps.

Its empire peaked in 2008 with 601 restaurants in the U.S. and a $2 billion business, according to Kevin Schimpf, director of industry research at Technomic. Its sales in the U.S. were $728 million in 2023, down 15% from the prior year, according to Technomic.

It now counts 163 restaurants in the U.S., down from 269 last year. It closed 36 in January and dozens more in the past week.

TGI Fridays Inc. said it only owns and operates 39 restaurants in the U.S., which is just a fraction of the 461 TGI Fridays-branded restaurants around the world. A separate entity, TGI Fridays Franchisor, owns the intellectual property and has franchised the brand to 56 independent owners in 41 countries. Those remain open.

A United Kingdom-based franchisee, Hostmore, also sought debt protection in September and abruptly closed locations throughout that country after a failed takeover deal to acquire TGI Fridays.

During the pandemic TGI Fridays made an effort to expand into the delivery market by making itself a hub for so-called ghost kitchens, which have no storefront and only prepare food for delivery. Among the major creditors owed money by TGI Fridays is the delivery service DoorDash, according to Saturday’s bankruptcy court filings.

Another iconic U.S. sit-down restaurant, Denny’s, announced in October that it is closing 150 of its lowest-performing restaurants in an effort to turn around the brand’s flagging sales.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Nearly 200 families gathered Saturday along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border for heartfelt but brief reunions with loved ones they had not seen for years because they live in opposite countries.

Tears flowed and people embraced as Mexican families were allowed to reunite for a few minutes at the border with relatives who migrated to the U.S. Adults and children passed over the Rio Grande to meet with their loved ones.

This year, the annual event organized by an immigrant rights advocacy group happened three days before the U.S. presidential election, whose monthslong campaigns have focused heavily on immigration and border security. It also took place under increased security, according to the Network in Defense of the Rights of Migrants.

“We did not have barbed wire, we did not have so many soldiers deployed in our community,” said Fernando García, the organization’s director, highlighting the border security changes that the border has seen since the reunions began last decade. “The barbed wire had to be opened so that the families could have this event.”

García said he expects migration into the U.S. to continue regardless of who wins Tuesday’s election. Family reunions, he said, will continue, too.

“Deportation policy, border policy, immigration policy, is separating families in an extraordinary way and is deeply impacting these families,” he told reporters ahead of the event.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The final doors are being knocked, ads are blaring and candidates are making a last pitch to voters. Even with the high-energy final push, the races for control of Congress are at a stalemate, essentially a toss-up for the House and fight to the finish for the Senate.

The outcome of Tuesday’s election will shape the country’s future, determining whether the new White House has allies or skeptics on Capitol Hill — or faces a divided Congress like this past session, which has been among the most tumultuous and unproductive in modern times.

As voters assess their presidential options between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, they also are sizing up who will represent them in Congress.

“This is why I’m an independent,” said voter Gary Motta of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who isn’t happy with either choice for president, as he showed up at an early Sunday morning event for Republican Kevin Coughlin, who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes.

The struggle for control of Congress has gone on for months. Candidates have tussled over the big issues — the economy, the border, reproductive health care and the future of democracy — but also over Congress itself, which had a chaotic session as the GOP-led House ousted its speaker and barely fended off government shutdowns.

This is the first presidential election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and many Republican lawmakers who voted against certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s White House win over Trump are up for reelection.

Republican candidates, many backed by the former president, are finding themselves having to answer for him on several fronts. Among them is the decision by the Supreme Court, with three justices who were nominated by Trump, that ended the right to abortion access

Democrats face tough questions over the Biden-Harris record on the U.S.-Mexico border and on inflation during their time at the White House.

Most of the closely contested House campaigns are being waged beyond the presidential swing states, including in New York and California, where Republican Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted as speaker and then left Congress, had made inroads in his home state. Democrats under New York’s Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s House leader, are now trying to win them back.

Starting Saturday, California Rep. Pete Aguilar, the Democratic caucus chairman, is making a nine-stop swing through the Golden State to win back seats.

“There’s a lot of energy out there,” said Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in an interview from Omaha, Nebraska, a surprising battleground, after a swing through New York. “We’re just working hard to get out the vote.”

She said there are “tons of volunteers on the ground, lots of energy, people very, very focused. They understand there’s a lot at stake.”

With the ever-escalating world of campaign fundraising, this election year stands apart: A whopping $2.5 billion is being spent to win the Senate and almost $1 billion on the House.

The Senate is the Republicans’ to lose, a coda to the long stewardship of their party leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. He recruited wealthy Republican candidates, many backed by Trump, to face off against a half-dozen incumbent Democrats facing tough reelections.

In Montana, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is in one of the most competitive races in the country that could flip control to Republicans. But a half-dozen more Senate races including in the “blue wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, are as tight as the presidential race in those states.

But late-breaking shifts are injecting new uncertainty in other Senate races, putting Sen. Ted Cruz on defense in Republican-heavy Texas where Democratic Rep. Colin Allred has seen a surge of energy, including from Harris’ star-studded rally in Houston with hometown hero Beyoncé. Nebraska independent Dan Osborne has caught Republicans off guard in Nebraska as he tries to unseat GOP Sen. Deb Fischer.

Oher Republican Senate candidates have stumbled.

In Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno, who is facing Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, made comments critical of suburban women making abortion access a priority issue. Republican Tim Sheehy made derogatory remarks about Native Americans, a key voting bloc in his race against Tester in Montana.

As Republicans have outsourced their get-out-the-vote efforts to new groups, including Elon Musk’s America PAC, the campaign committees have had to stand up their own to ensure that people vote.

Davide Cuigini, part of the Young Republicans working to turn out the vote for Moreno last weekend in Ohio, said, “Republicans are finally early voting, so that’s gong to make a difference.”

Yet the energy on the Democratic side grew quickly once Harris replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket over the summer..

Democrat Angela Alsobrooks in Maryland, who could make history alongside Delaware’s Lisa Blunt Rochester as Black women in the Senate, hosted former President Barack Obama last week. Alsobrooks is running against Larry Hogan, a popular former governor.

In the House, Democrats have seen several races shift their way, according to nonpartisan analysts. But others, in Alaska and an open seat in Michigan, tilt toward Republicans. Two of the House’s longest serving lawmakers are in the fights of their political lives in Ohio and California.

Still, a internal DCCC memo showed 21 of 25 contested seats still close, one week from the election.

There are also unusual battlegrounds, including what Nebraskans call the “blue dot” around Omaha, where Republican Rep. Don Bacon faces a challenge from Democrat Tony Vargas.

The outcome of the races will be a test of House leadership under Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. He said at a recent stop near Akron, Ohio, that with the GOP’s “winsome warriors” as candidates, he knows they will win.

Jeffries, in line to become House speaker if Democrats take control, said he has decided to ” remain calm, ” even if the possibility of unexpected events keeps him up at night.

If the two chambers do in fact flip party control, as is possible, it would be rare.

Records show that if Democrats take the House and Republicans take the Senate, it would be the first time that the chambers of Congress have both flipped to opposing political parties.

“This election is a very big deal,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, campaigning for a fellow Democrat in one of his state’s House races.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — It was the hottest September in more than a century in parts of South Florida, and Dwayne Wilson could hear his 81-year-old fellow inmate gasping for breath and crying out for help at the Dade Correctional Institution, 45 miles southwest of Miami on the edge of the Florida Everglades.

The elderly man was confined to a wheelchair and for weeks had been complaining of severe chest pain and difficulty breathing in the unventilated dorm where he was serving his sentence, according to a federal class action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Wilson and two other inmates at the prison.

Early on the morning of Sept. 24, the wheelchair-bound inmate, who is identified in the lawsuit as J.B., was heard once again begging for help, according to the lawsuit. A prisoner wheeled him to the infirmary, where within 15 minutes medical staff ordered him to return to his cell, according to legal filings.

Soon after, J.B. was found unresponsive, his mouth gaping open, the lawsuit says.

Attorneys said that on the day the 81-year-old died, the exhaust fans in his dorm weren’t working and the heat index had climbed to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Living in the prison’s unairconditioned cells could feel like “being locked in a sardine can with no air to breathe,” an inmate identified in the lawsuit as G.M. said, and the heat had taken a toll.

The lawsuit filed this week by the prison reform advocacy group Florida Justice Institute says that heat at the facility has contributed to the deaths of four people there and that prison officials have failed to take “meaningful action” to mitigate the risk posed to the elderly and disabled inmates in their care.

The lawsuit, which names the Florida Department of Corrections, the secretary of the department and the warden of DCI as defendants, argues that the conditions violate the protections of the Eighth Amendment, which bar cruel and unusual punishment, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

“We had to file this lawsuit because they’ve thus far ignored the concerns of incarcerated people and their advocates. And so it appears they need a court to order them to do what they should have done on their own,” said Andrew Udelsman, an attorney with the Florida Justice Institute.

A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said the department doesn’t comment on pending litigation and stated that the agency has no record of being served the lawsuit.

Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths, according to the World Health Organization. While deadly heat is not new, scientists say it has been amplified in scale, frequency and duration with climate change. Last year, the United States had its most recorded heat deaths in more than 80 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Yet the majority of incarcerated individuals in sweltering Florida are serving their sentences in cells that don’t have air conditioning, even as the state’s rising temperatures continue to break records. The risk is even greater for the elderly and those with medical conditions that make them more susceptible to heat-related illness.

According to testimony that Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon gave to state lawmakers last year, 75% of the state’s prison housing units are not air-conditioned. Bills filed last year that would have mandated the department install air conditioning in state prisons died in the Republican-controlled legislature.

“When you are in the facility and you visit a dorm that does not have air conditioning, you look at the guards who are tasked with maintaining security in those spaces, it is absolutely oppressive,” Republican State Sen. Jennifer Bradley said at a hearing last October.

“There are things we can do in our system to mitigate the heat. Or Florida will find itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit,” she warned. “And it will be a lot more expensive.”

Florida is not alone in facing lawsuits over dangerously hot prisons. Cases have also been filed in Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. One filed in Georgia in July alleged a 27-year-old inmate died after he was left in an outdoor cell for hours without water, shade or ice.

Udelsman said he hopes the Florida lawsuit will help compel the courts to set consistent safety standards for incarcerated individuals at risk of deadly heat exposure, at a time when climate change is compounding the threat for the country’s increasingly aging and invalid prison population.

“Courts are increasingly confirming that these kind of conditions are not constitutional,” Udelsman said. “We hope this lawsuit will be another in that line … that these dominoes will continue to fall.”

___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Abortion and reproductive rights have been central to the races for president and governor in North Carolina, a battleground state that has more moderate abortion restrictions than its Southern neighbors.

That’s been even truer in the fight for a seat on the state Supreme Court that abortion rights supporters say will play an important role in determining whether Republicans can enact even more restrictions. Registered Republicans currently hold five of seven seats and could expand that majority even further in Tuesday’s election.

Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat who is running for reelection, is focusing heavily on the issue and touts her support for reproductive rights. Her first television ad featured images of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, who prefers to restrict abortions earlier than the current 12 weeks. She says her GOP rival for the court could be a deciding vote on the bench for such restrictions.

“This is an issue that is landing in front of state Supreme Courts, and it is one that is very salient to voters now,” Riggs said in an interview.

Her Republican opponent, Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, said Riggs is saying too much about an issue that could come before the court.

“I think it’s an inappropriate manner, a clear violation of our judicial standards, our code of conduct,” he said.

The North Carolina race emphasizes how much abortion is fueling expensive campaigns for Supreme Courts in several states this year. Groups on the right and left are spending heavily to reshape courts that could play deciding roles in legal fights over abortion, reproductive rights, voting rights, redistricting and other hot-button issues for years to come.

Experts say the campaigns show how the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning constitutional abortion protections that had been in place for half a century has transformed races for state high courts.

“What Dobbs did was made clear to both political stakeholders and the public that these state courts that hadn’t got a lot of attention are actually going to be really important and they’re going to be deciding some of the biggest cases that people might have expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center, which has tracked spending on state court races.

Thirty-three states are holding elections for 82 Supreme Court seats this year. The 2024 election cycle follows record-breaking spending for judicial races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania last year.

Groups on the left have ramped up their spending on state courts considerably this year. The American Civil Liberties Union has spent $5.4 million on court races in Montana, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio. Planned Parenthood and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee earlier this year announced they were collectively spending $5 million, focusing on court races in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

“We have never invested this heavily in state Supreme Courts before,” said Katie Rodihan, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes. “This is really a groundbreaking move for us, and I expect this will be the norm for us moving forward.”

The targets include Ohio, where Republicans hold a 4-3 majority on the court. Democrats are defending two seats on the court, while a third is open, and Democratic victories in all three races are considered a longshot in the Republican-leaning state.

Control of the court could be key if the state appeals a judge’s ruling that struck down the most far-reaching of the state’s abortion restrictions. The ruling said the law banning most abortions once cardiac activity is detected — as early as six weeks into pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant — violated a constitutional amendment approved by voters last year that protected reproductive rights.

Two seats are up for election on Michigan’s court, where Democratic-backed justices hold a 4-3 majority. Court races are technically nonpartisan, but candidates are nominated at party conventions. Republicans would need to win both seats to flip the court in their favor.

Justice Kyra Harris Bolden is defending the seat she was appointed to two years ago by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Bolden was the first Black woman to sit on Michigan’s bench. She faces Republican-backed circuit court Judge Patrick O’Grady for the remaining four years of the eight-year term.

Republican state Rep. Andrew Fink is competing against University of Michigan law professor Kimberly Anne Thomas, who was nominated by Democrats, for the other open seat that is being vacated by a Republican-backed justice.

Groups backing Bolden and Thomas are framing the races as crucial to defending abortion rights, with one group’s ad warning that “the Michigan state Supreme Court can still take abortion rights away.”

The most heated races are for two seats on the Montana Supreme Court, which has come under fire from GOP lawmakers over rulings against laws that would have restricted abortion access or made it more difficult to vote.

Former U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerry Lynch is running against county attorney Cory Swanson for chief justice, while state judge Katherine Bidegaray is running against state judge Dan Wilson for another open seat on the court.

Progressive groups have been backing Lynch and Bidegaray. Both said in an ACLU questionnaire that they agreed with the reasoning and holding of a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling that the constitutional right to privacy includes the right to obtain a pre-viability abortion.

Groups on the right have been painting them both as too liberal and echoing national Republicans’ rhetoric, with text messages invoking the debate over transgender athletes on women’s sports teams.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, a longtime player in state court races, said its Judicial Fairness Initiative planned to spend seven figures in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

The group’s ads are focusing on issues other than abortion. In one touting three Republicans running for Ohio’s court, the group shows images of President Donald Trump along with images related to immigration.

A super PAC backed by conservative donor and shipping executive Richard Uihlein also has given to groups involved in state Supreme Court races in Montana and Ohio.

Progressive groups are even focusing attention on longshot states such as Texas, where Republicans hold all the seats on the Supreme Court. They’re trying to unseat three GOP justices who were part of unanimous rulings rejecting challenges to the state’s abortion ban.

One group, Find Out PAC, has been running digital ads in San Antonio, Dallas and Houston criticizing justices Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine and Jane Bland. In its ad, the group accuses the three of “playing doctor from the bench.”

In North Carolina, Riggs’ campaigning on abortion rights has prompted complaints from Republicans who say she’s stepping outside the bounds of judicial ethics. But Riggs said she’s not saying how she would rule in any case and is merely sharing her values with voters.

“I’m going to keep talking about my values because, at the core, our democracy works best when people cast informed votes,” she said.

__

DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Associated Press writers Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana, contributed to this report.