The hit medical sitcom “Scrubs” is getting a reboot, and its original stars are on board.
ABC, the network that aired the show’s final two seasons, has ordered another season of the show, it confirmed to CNN on Friday. The new series will be broadcast in 2025-2026, outlets including The Hollywood Reporter and Variety reported on Thursday.
Over on Instagram, the show’s leading trio – Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and Donald Faison – all posted about the show’s revival, and ABC confirmed their involvement as both actors and executive producers.
Braff – who played daydream-prone protagonist J.D. Dorian – posted his own rendition of the “Scrubs” theme song, tweaking the lyrics to: “I can’t do this all on my own. I need Sarah Chalke and Donald Faison.”
Faison and Chalke both posted throwback photos of the trio with the caption “Hello again,” and “YAY!!!!,” respectively.
“Scrubs” ran for nine seasons between 2001-2010 and told the story of Dorian, a young doctor working at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital.
His best friend from college, Christopher Duncan Turk, played by Faison, and his on-off love interest Elliot Reid, portrayed by Chalke, are fellow doctors at the hospital.
In the revival, “JD and Turk scrub together for the first time in a long time,” according to a synopsis shared with CNN.
“Medicine has changed, interns have changed, but their bromance has stood the test of time. Characters new and old navigate the waters of Sacred Heart with laughter, heart and some surprises along the way.”
The show’s creator, Bill Lawrence, who later went on to co-create “Ted Lasso” and “Shrinking,” has been teasing the idea of a reboot for years.
“We’re definitely going to do it, just because we’ve all been enjoying hanging out,” he told LadBible in August last year.
“I think we’ll figure it out in the next six months or so what we want to do,” he added.
In a statement sent to CNN on Friday, Lawrence said: “‘Scrubs’ means so very much to me. So excited for the chance to get the band back together.”
Justin Bieber has surprised fans by releasing a new album titled Swag, his first in four years – but critics have not been bowled over by the comeback.
In a three-star review, the Guardian said it has “moments of brilliance”, but is “no long-awaited masterpiece”.
The Telegraph gave two stars, agreeing that it is “not the return of a pop titan”, and describing it as “an uncomfortable and unfiltered cry for help”.
The paper pointed to spoken-word interludes including the “self-pitying, super-short Therapy Session”, on which he addresses the toll of press speculation about his mental health; and another titled Standing On Business, which features a viral clip in which he confronted a photographer.
The video, filmed on Father’s Day, showed the exasperated singer saying: “I’m a dad. I’m a husband. You’re not getting it. It’s not clocking to you. I’m standing on business.”
The video was widely circulated and remixed online, and now features as part of the promotion of the new album as well as in the track listing.
“Standing on business” has gained currency as slang for standing up for yourself and taking care of your responsibilities and ambitions.
‘Saccharine cliche’
With a run time of just under an hour, the teen icon-turned-megastar collaborates with a host of rappers on Swag including Sexxy Red, Cash Cobain and Gunna.
Its title appears to hark back to the singer’s 2012 hit Boyfriend, featuring the line “swag, swag, swag, on you”.
Promotional pictures shared by the Canadian singer feature his wife, Hailey Bieber, and their son – at points being held over his head.
The Guardian’s Rachel Aroesti wrote that the album “opens extremely promisingly with All I Can Take, a hauntological twist on spotless, energetic 1980s R&B”.
Overall, it’s “very considered, cleverly nostalgic and subtly satisfying – there’s not a craven chart smash in earshot”, she wrote.
“Lyrically, however, Swag isn’t such a classy and thoughtful affair. Dadz Love is an inane celebration of Bieber’s nascent fatherhood that essentially just repeats the title into meaninglessness.
“The other love songs – which are addressed to his wife, Hailey, whose viral lip gloss-holding phone case gets a shout-out on Go Baby – rarely transcend superficial, saccharine cliche.
“But they are at least preferable to the eye-watering spoken-word segments.”
‘Wiping the slate clean’
The Independent’s Adam White awarded two stars, saying the album is “just further confirmation of the artistic lethargy that has plagued his most recent work, and an unfortunate insight into a man who seems awkwardly caught between sex, God, and self-pity”.
Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger said it was “Bieber as we’ve never really heard him before – stripped of most of his usual big pop trappings, with a much more organic-sounding, alt-R&B-focused sound”.
But fans hoping for an album full of songs like his 2015 smash hit Sorry may be disappointed, he added.
The album was awarded 7/10 by Clash magazine’s Robin Murray, who said its 21 tracks have lyrics “that move from an emotive depiction of fatherhood through to in-jokes”.
“Stylistically, it broadly sits on 90s-adjacent synth pop – sometimes fixed in its approach, sometimes vaporised. It’s always colourful, and – for all its breadth – it’s always entertaining.”
However, Murray added: “One of the core strengths of SWAG is also its weakness: there’s a lot of it. His first album in four years, this feels like an outpouring of ideas, a wiping clean of the slate.”
@lilbieber
The album drop also comes on the back of fans’ worries for Bieber’s state of mind. In recent months, the singer has shared multiple posts online about the intrusion of paparazzi in his personal life.
Bieber’s marriage has also been under the spotlight after another controversial social media post. The singer celebrated his wife featuring on the cover of Vogue with a social media post detailing an argument between them.
The lyrics of Daisies, the second song on Swag, appear to allude to the couple’s relationship with “falling petals do you love me or not” and “you said forever babe, did you mean it or not?”
Other song titles on the album seem to touch on religious themes including Devotion, Soulful and Forgiveness, in keeping with Bieber’s Christian faith.
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Kerr County officials were told flooding began an hour before they sent first alertpublished at 15:31 British Summer Time
15:31 BST
Brandon Drenon Reporting from Washington DC
A Texas firefighter located upstream of the deadly floods in Kerr County asked if emergency flood alerts could be sent to residents about an hour before the first warnings were received, audio reveals.
In the recording, obtained by US outlets, the firefighter asks at 04:22 on 4 July if a CodeRED alert can be issued. The dispatcher replies that a supervisor needs to approve the request.
Residents didn’t begin receiving the alert until an hour later – for some it took up to six hours, according to reports.
In the recording of the firefighter’s dispatch call, the emergency responder can be heard saying: “The Guadalupe Schumacher sign is underwater on State Highway 39.
“Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home?”
“Stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor,” the dispatcher replied.
Local officials are now facing mounting questions over when Kerrville’s residents were notified about deadly flash floods that killed 96 in Kerr County alone, with over 160 others still missing.
Asked about a possible police radio failure at a press conference on Thursday – almost a week after 4 July flooding – Kerrville Police community services officer Jonathan Lamb said, “I don’t have any information to that point.”
The questioning followed a tense exchange the day before when reporters asked officials repeatedly about a possible lag in emergency communications.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha earlier this week declined to offer specifics about timing, saying that officials were instead focused on rescue and recovery efforts.
Leitha said he was first notified around the “four to five area”, and told local media, “we’re in the process of trying to put a timeline” about what exactly happened in the pre-dawn hours.
“That’s going to take a little bit of time,” he told them. “That is not my priority this time.”
Federal immigration agents carried out immigration sweeps at two Southern California cannabis farms on Thursday, prompting a heated standoff between authorities and several hundred protesters at a Ventura County site and reports of a farm worker gravely injured in a fall.
Videos shared on social media showed nearly a dozen agents using less-lethal ammunition on a crowd that had gathered near Glass House Farms, a large, licensed cannabis greenhouse in Camarillo. Meanwhile, 35 miles up the coast in Carpinteria, federal agents entered another Glass House Farms growing site, where a smaller crowd gathered around the perimeter.
The United Farm Workers union said they were told one worker fell several stories from a greenhouse. UFW official Liz Strater said the person was taken from a Ventura County farm by ambulance. Strater said the person suffered catastrophic injuries and is not expected to survive. The worker’s name was not released, and local law enforcement officials could not immediate provide any details.
Eight people with injuries were transported from in and around Camarillo facility Thursday afternoon to local hospitals, according to Andrew Dowd, a spokesperson for the Ventura County Fire Department. He said he did not know the extent of those injuries or their current status. Dowd said an additional four people were treated at the scene for minor injuries and did not need hospital care.
U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli confirmed in a statement on X that federal agents had executed a search warrant at a marijuana farm. He said they arrested several individuals on suspicion of impeding the operation and warned that people who continued to interfere would be arrested and charged with a federal offense.
A spokesperson for the FBI said the agency was investigating a shooting that occurred during the operation in Camarillo. Video captured by ABC7 News appeared to show a protester opening fire at federal immigration agents after smoke canisters were thrown to disperse the crowd.
Ten minors without documentation were found at the farm during the raid, eight of whom were unaccompanied, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a statement on X. The facility is now under investigation for child labor violations, he said.
Cesar Ortiz, 24, told a Times photographer in Spanish that his brother works at the farm and was detained and being held in a hot container without air conditioning.
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“They are taking everyone and the truth is it’s not right because these people come to work, struggle every day, to earn for bread every day,” he said. “It feels like they are against us but there are no narcos here, no one is armed here and they come fully armed, full of military personnel.”
The Ventura County Fire Department was dispatched around 12:15 p.m. to provide medical aid as a result of federal enforcement activity along Laguna Road in Camarillo, according to agency spokesperson Andrew Dowd. Five patients were transported to hospitals for treatment and four were treated on the scene.
Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the area to assist with traffic control but were not involved in any way with the federal operation, he said. Dowd also noted that the Fire Department has no connection with any federal immigration enforcement actions and will never ask for a patient’s immigration status.
“There’s so many family and friends who work here at the Glass House Factory, it’s a huge factory. … We were notified that the people working inside were all being detained, whether they were U.S. citizens or not,” said Angelmarie Taylor, who is with the 805 Immigration Coalition, a volunteer organization that tracks immigration activity by federal agents.
About 500 people gathered near the farm to protest during the day, according to Taylor. As of around 6:30 p.m. Thursday, about 200 protesters remained at the site where around 40 troops, some holding shields, and agents made a stand.
Marc Cohodes, an investor and famed short-seller who has invested in Glass House, called the raid “beyond outrageous.”
“The government is aware of cartels, illicit crime, the whole thing and yet, and yet, they decide to spend their resources going after a total legal company that pays the state of California hundreds of millions of dollars excise tax,” he said.
He added that Glass House is “the largest cannabis cultivator in the world” and “a highly regulated business fully licensed by the state of California,” with a site in Ventura County and another in Santa Barbara County. “It’s run by a guy named Kyle Kazan, who is an ex-cop who plays by the rules and does things by the book.” Kazan, he added, is also a supporter of President Trump.
Ortiz, whose brother was detained Thursday, said he had a message for Trump: “We all have a right to come here and work. Here, we all have a dream, we have to give it our all.”
Farther north in Carpinteria, U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) attempted to enter the marijuana farm after hearing reports of an immigration operation but was not let past the masked federal agents agents who formed a perimeter along the road about 75 yards from the raid.
“It was disproportionate, overkill,” Carbajal said. “These tactics are creating an incendiary, hostile environment the way they are being deployed, which could lead to, regrettably, violence in the future.”
He identified himself as a Congress member conducting oversight but said he was told to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was turned away. A crowd had gathered around the perimeter, but he said they dispersed after agents wrapped up and boarded a military-style vehicle.
Aerial views of the scene in Camarillo taken by news helicopters showed dozens of workers sitting in the shade alongside a warehouse, with federal agents standing guard.
Protesters blocked the roads in and out, and at one point federal agents drove their vehicles through the fields. Multiple ambulances had gone in and out of the facility, Taylor said.
Sarah Armstrong, outreach chair with Americans for Safe Access, said it appeared that Homeland Security and the U.S. National Guard were at the location firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the Camarillo protesters.
Lucas Zucker, co-executive director of Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, or CAUSE, said Thursday that the organization had staffers on the ground after reports of a raid at Glass House, but he asked them to leave once federal agents started deploying tear gas.
The vast area is largely remote farmland, Zucker said, and the use of rubber bullets and tear gas on a small crowd was “pretty unusual.”
“I don’t think there’s any credible case that they were under threat,” he said, describing the scene as “a small crowd of community members … in pretty remote agricultural areas.”
He added that Glass House had been targeted by immigration authorities in the past couple of months, including when federal agents began conducting workplace raids in the region in June. Numerous videos on social media showed agents chasing after farmworkers and making mass arrests at farms.
Glass House Farms said in a post on X that the company was “visited today by ICE officials” and “fully complied with agent search warrants.” The statement said nothing else, except to add that the company would “provide further updates if necessary.”
Zucker said Ventura County saw a drop in worksite raids after an intense week in June, when community members mobilized to the fields and began patrolling farmlands. For the last few weeks, he said, they’ve received reports of raids in more suburban areas, including Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. This raid represented the first major workplace raid in the region since then.
In a social media post, Oxnard Mayor Luis McArthur said he was “in communication with emergency services to ensure that safety personnel are on standby and ready to provide immediate assistance if necessary.”
“While this matter is taking place outside the jurisdiction of Oxnard, I am increasingly mindful that many of the facility’s employees are likely from Oxnard and are seeking refuge in their vehicles amid the high temperatures, raising concerns about the safety and well-being of those individuals,” he said.
He then commented on the broader strategy apparent from the raids across the Southland.
“It is becoming increasingly apparent that the actions taken by ICE are bold and aggressive, demonstrating insensitivity toward the direct impact on our community. These actions are causing unnecessary distress and harm. I remain committed to working alongside our Attorney General and the Governor’s office to explore potential legal avenues to address these activities.”
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, criticized the protests.
“What happened in California is just another example of protesters becoming criminals, and they’ve been emboldened by even members of Congress who compare ICE to Nazis and racists and terrorists,” Homan told Fox News.
Freelance photographer Julie Leopo and staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
