It's Friday, August 22, 2025 and in this morning's issue we're covering: Hurricane Erin Closes Facilities At Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout National Seashores In North Carolina, Native Nations Reshape Rural Health Care Through Tribal Governance, Gas boom fueled by current U.S. president has fenceline Gulf Coast communities on edge, Gov. Reeves deploys Mississippi National Guard soldiers to D.C., following other GOP-led states, Election lawyers, Obama alumni renew Illinois redistricting reform push, 5 things to know about Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw California’s election maps, Despite years of serious safety violations, Holly Hill Hospital looks to treat more patients, Hickory police face lawsuit over fatal shooting, Loudoun County neighbors fight proposed Dominion transmission lines for Data Center Alley, Chapel Hill flood victims ask city for help as deadline to move nears.

Media outlets and others featured: National Parks Traveler, The Daily Yonder, Floodlight, Mississippi Today, Capitol News Illinois, CalMatters, North Carolina Health News, Carolina Public Press, Virginia Mercury, NC Newsline.

Hurricane Erin Closes Facilities At Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout National Seashores In North Carolina

By NPT Staff – August 20, 2025

Editor's note: This updates with the latest information on closures and expected impacts.

Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout national seashores, both located in North Carolina, closed facilities and beaches due to the threat of high surf and up to 4 feet of storm surge as Hurricane Erin moves through the Atlantic Ocean. 

Cape Lookout National Seashore announced that the Harkers Island Visitor Center closed Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. Other park operations, including ferry service and cabins, were already closed. Cape Hatteras National Seashore next door also closed beach access and other facilities.

"Ocean overwash has been observed at numerous Highway 12 hotspots within the seashore and waves are washing over and through dune areas along some beach boardwalks, off road vehicle ramps, and village roadways adjacent to the beachfront," an update posted Wednesday morning by Cape Hatteras National Seashore said. "Soundside flooding is expected on Thursday afternoon and evening."  

The National Weather Service forecast for the area Wednesday morning noted that "extreme beach and coastal damage is likely along the oceanside, resulting in a significant threat to life and property. Large dangerous waves will likely inundate and destroy protective dune structures. Severe flooding will likely extend inland from the waterfront causing flooding of many homes and businesses with some structural damage possible."

Breaking waves standing as much as 20 feet tall were expected in the surf zone.

North Carolina's Dare and Hyde counties on Sunday issued a mandatory evacuation of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands.

Closures are also in place at  Assateague Island National Seashore in Virginia and Maryland.

In addition to the closures, officials are warning people up and down the East Coast to stay out of the water due to the threat of potentially life-threatening rip currents. 

"For your safety, avoid swimming, use caution near the water, and stay weather aware," Florida's Canaveral National Seashore warned visitors. 

Cape Cod National Seashore issued a similar advisory. 

Here's a look at the status of some key facilities at Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout national seashores:

Visitor Facilities

The Museum of the Sea at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the Discovery Center on Ocracoke Island are closed. Facilities will not reopen until the storm passes and assessments are made to determine a safe opening. Bodie Island Lighthouse is closed Wednesday and Thursday.

At Cape Lookout, the light station visitor center and Keeper's Quarters Museum were expected to remain closed at least through Friday. Island Express Ferry Service ceased operations at Beaufort and Harkers Island Wednesday through at least Friday. 

Campgrounds and Lodging

Cape Point, Frisco, Ocracoke, and Oregon Inlet campgrounds are closed at Hatteras.

Reservations at Cape Lookout's Great Island and Long Point Cabin Camps are cancelled from Tuesday through Friday, with additional closure beyond this time frame pending the Erin’s impact on the seashore.

Beaches and Off-Road Vehicle Access

Off-road vehicle (ORV) ramps and beach accesses are closed.  

Native Nations Reshape Rural Health Care Through Tribal Governance

by Madeline de Figueiredo, The Daily Yonder
August 18, 2025

For decades, the Indian Health Service ran health care in Native American communities. Now, a growing number of tribes are reclaiming control of those systems, asserting their sovereignty in ways that are reshaping how care is delivered on rural reservation lands and beyond. In South Dakota, the tribally-owned Oyate Health Center has outperformed Indian Health Services in its revenue generation, expanded access, and made space for cultural tradition in its delivery of care. 

“What has been really exciting in the last few years is seeing our tribes in the Great Plains reevaluate what sovereignty means in the space of health care,” said Jerilyn Church, chief executive officer of the Great Plains Tribal Leader's Health Board (GPTLHB). Church spoke during the “Building Sustainable Futures for Tribal Communities” panel at the 2025 Rural Progress Summit, a national event that brought together rural advocates, local leaders, and policymakers to address key issues facing rural communities. “It makes a huge difference when it's your own community members, your own tribal members, running and taking ownership of health care.”

The Oyate Health Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, is operated by the GPTLHB on behalf of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Beginning in 2019, the GPTLHB assumed control of the former Indian Health Service Rapid City Service Unit and Sioux San Hospital and opened Oyate Health Center. As an arm of the GPTLHB, which advocates for the health and wellness of 18 Great Plains tribes, Oyate represents a significant step in tribal control of health care and improving services for tribal communities in the region.

“Nobody loves our community and our relatives like we do,” Church said. “No one's going to look out or take care of our health system and advocate for our health systems like we will.”

“We have been able to bring in a cultural advisor, not only for our staff, but also for our community members who on their health journey want to work side by side with their primary care provider and also a knowledge keeper [or] traditional healer,” Church said. Oyate Health Center’s cultural advisor has helped plan a community garden and taught traditional food practices, like buffalo harvesting, to promote nutritious lifestyles rooted in tribal culture.

As of June 2023, tribes directly operated 792 of the 1,008 health programs across the United States, reflecting a significant transformation in the delivery of care in Native American communities. By April 1, 2025, the Indian Health Service had formalized 118 self-governance compacts and 145 funding agreements with tribal governments and organizations across all 12 of its service areas. This growth marks a sharp contrast to the early 1990s, when barely more than a dozen tribes had entered into such agreements.

According to research conducted by the National Indian Health Board on tribally-operated healthcare centers, 86% of leaders from tribes with self-governance compacts said that they believed the quality of care had improved over the past three to four years.

The Choctaw Nation assumed full control of its health system in 1995, entering a self-governance compact under Title V of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. Prior to that, the system was federally operated by the Indian Health Service until 1985, then managed by the tribe through a Title I contract from 1985 to 1994.

Tribal representatives said that taking control of their health system has allowed the Choctaw Nation to expand and strengthen services across its reservation in rural southeast Oklahoma. 

“Tribal health program oversight has allowed Choctaw Nation to strategically determine the best usage of funds in order to maximize health outcomes of our tribal members,” said Todd Hallmark, executive director of health for the Choctaw Nation, and Melanie Fourkiller, director of self-governance for the tribe, in a joint statement to the Daily Yonder. “The Annual Funding Agreement along with third party revenues has generated funding which has enabled our health system to grow and expand the services provided to our tribal population.” 

They said that by optimizing its revenue sources, the Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority (CNHSA) has expanded clinics and specialty services while improving its ability to quickly adapt health services to meet local needs.

“The Nation can more quickly respond to local needs by designing and redesigning its health services and reallocating resources as necessary,” Hallmark and Fourkiller said. “The Nation also has more flexibility than the Indian Health Service in leveraging other resources to enhance the health system.” 

Through compacting and self-governance, Hallmark and Fourkiller said the Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority is able to stretch funding further, invest in modern equipment and software, and make faster decisions to improve health care delivery. 

“Utilizing the self-governance process has literally given Choctaw Nation the ability to take our health system to the next level in regard to services, quality, and, most recently, converting to a new interactive electronic medical record system, Epic, while the Indian Health Service remains burdened with an antiquated electronic health record system,” Hallmark and Fourkiller said. 

CNHSA also supports both tribal members and the broader community with initiatives like free vaccinations, a rare rural residency program that hires the majority of its graduates, and housing for health care providers to address local shortages.

Church said that she is eager to facilitate the continued exercising of sovereignty by supporting other tribes in taking over management of their own health systems and building on the successes seen at Oyate Health Center.

“There's nobody in Washington, DC, on either side of the aisle, that will do that with as much passion and commitment as our own people,” Church said. “So [I’m] looking forward to seeing more unfold around sovereignty, in taking ownership of our health care.” 

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Trump-fueled gas boom has fenceline Gulf Coast communities on edge

Residents cite pollution, loss of fishing and diminished tax revenue as liquefied natural gas production accelerates here, feeding demand from Europe and Asia

This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight's newsletter here.

Pam Radtke/Floodlight, Evan Simon/Floodlight, Jeffrey Basinger/Floodlight

Aug 20, 2025 

For more than a decade, Rebekah Hinojosa has fought the buildout of liquefied natural gas terminals near the Texas border with Mexico. She wants to save the pristine land fronting the Gulf of Mexico from massive terminals and the hulking ships that would carry billions of cubic feet of gas all over the world.

Using what they call a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy of opposition, Hinojosa, a founder of the environmental nonprofit South Texas Environmental Justice Network and her fellow advocates have traveled the world. They’ve pleaded with banks, politicians, insurers and companies to drop their support for the LNG terminals in the overwhelmingly Hispanic community near Brownsville on the edge of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

They have notched some David-vs-Goliath victories. Some insurers and investors have severed ties with Rio Grande LNG. One of the three proposed LNG projects there was canceled in 2021.

The most significant legal win came a year ago, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval of Rio Grande and Texas LNG, citing the agency’s failure to fully consider the terminals’ environmental justice impacts, among others things. 

But then Donald Trump was elected for a second time.

The day he was inaugurated, Trump declared an energy emergency and rolled back rules on environmental justice and protections that had helped groups in Texas and Louisiana fight back. Eight months into his second term, at least six projects that had been awaiting crucial federal approvals — including those that Hinojosa has fought — are moving forward again. 

And residents along the Texas and Louisiana coasts, from which the vast majority of the nation’s LNG flows, are facing a different kind of emergency.

Fisherman Tad Theriot has seen his yearly income from shrimping in the water near the LNG facilities drop from $325,000 in 2021 to $87,000 last year. This year he estimates the income from his catch will be less than half of that. 

“If … you don’t get away from Cameron, you’re not catching shrimp,” Theriot said of the small Louisiana community that already hosts three LNG terminals and where at least two others are planned to be built. 

‘They give little peanuts’ 

The United States has been the world’s largest LNG exporter since 2023. Along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, six terminals are operating, six are under construction and another six are proposed. The amount of LNG exported — last year it was 11.9 billion cubic feet a day — is expected to double by 2028.

The growth is fueled by the nation’s vast reserves of natural gas that can be forced out of the ground by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracked gas is sent by pipeline to an LNG terminal where it is superchilled until it’s a liquid and then shipped around the world. 

While a million British thermal units (MMBTU) of natural gas can be purchased in the United States for about $4, after it’s superchilled and transported across oceans, countries such as  Japan and Germany pay $12 to $15 per MMBTU for that gas.

Even after the cost of producing and shipping the LNG, companies that export LNG stand to make billions of dollars in profits. Billions more are made by the middlemen who buy and sell the fuel.

A U.S. Department of Energy study finalized in May said LNG creates jobs, expands the United States’ gross domestic product and helps close the trade gap.

“President Trump was given a mandate to unleash American energy dominance, and that includes U.S. LNG exports,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in the report. “The facts are clear: expanding America’s LNG exports is good for Americans and good for the world.”

Developers promise jobs and economic benefits to the areas that host the plants — although studies show those promises aren’t always kept. In exchange, LNG facilities in Louisiana receive billions of dollars of local property tax breaks. Louisiana’s Cameron Parish alone would forfeit nearly $15 billion between 2012 and 2040 if all proposed terminals were built.

Several companies that produce LNG along the Gulf Coast did not respond to requests for comments for this story.

Local residents, like James Hiatt, founder of the regional environmental and community advocacy group, For a Better Bayou, say the communities do not benefit. Pointing to houses abandoned in Lake Charles after Hurricane Laura five years ago, Hiatt said, “If they have so much money, why don’t they actually pour that money into the communities where they operate? They give little peanuts. (It’s) nothing to the amount of money that they have been given by the government and the people here.”

They do get one thing, activist Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project, says: pollution. While families struggle to pay for their own energy, Ozane said all the local community gets from the methane buildout is “more health problems.” The production and transportation of LNG also generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, including methane and carbon dioxide.

John Allaire, a retired oil and gas engineer, owns land adjacent to the Commonwealth LNG site in Cameron Parish, one of the terminals that has received conditional approval from the federal government. And across the Calcasieu Ship Channel from his property, he can see Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass 1 LNG, and the site of its expansion, called CP2. 

He has watched 90 meters of his shoreline disappear in the past 27 years because of climate-change-caused rising sea levels and subsidence. Burning more fossil fuels, including LNG, will speed the rise of the waters around the terminals — and around the globe. 

While the terminals themselves will be protected by 26-foot-high seawalls, Allaire and others around the terminals will not.

“These are the estuaries that supply the seafood that Cameron Parish and Louisiana's so famous for,” Allaire said, pointing to wetlands near his home where crabs and shrimp lay their eggs. “But that'll all be backfilled (with) concrete and sheet pilings and tanks. … It’ll change this environment forever.”

Is the LNG boom headed for a bust?

LNG is sometimes promoted as a “bridge fuel” because it burns cleaner than coal. But Cornell scientist Robert Howarth warns that its full lifecycle emissions — including methane leaks during drilling, liquefaction, shipping and regasification — is 33% worse for the climate than coal. That claim is disputed by industry, which has produced its own study claiming LNG is more environmentally friendly than coal. 

The International Energy Agency has warned that any new fossil infrastructure jeopardizes global climate goals. 

The LNG industry says its fuel is helping by replacing coal in countries like India. But a recent analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that India is turning toward renewables, not LNG, to replace coal.

Others are questioning whether demand for the fuel will support the boom in the production of LNG. Export terminals require gas prices of around $8 MMBTU to break even — far more than the $3 to $5 per MMBTU equivalent of energy that countries like India can afford. 

Despite these analyses, developers are touting a booming market. Trump has extracted promises from Asian countries, including Japan and Vietnam, to purchase more LNG, but not all of the deals are binding — or even new. 

Allaire has seen such promises fail in the past. Golden Pass LNG in Texas, Allaire notes, was originally built as an import facility, but is now being refashioned as an export terminal after a pause caused by the bankruptcy of the construction firm building the project.

“They spent billions of dollars, took out hundreds of acres of wetlands, and they imported seven loads of LNG,” Allaire said, predicting, “These places will go out of business, and they will be stranded resources.”

In the meantime, new numbers from the Energy Information Administration, the Department of Energy’s statistical agency, indicate the rapid increase in LNG production is increasing the cost of natural gas — the country’s main fuel source to generate electricity. “The high demand for gas exports is … pushing up the price of the gas that supplies 40% of U.S. electricity — a cost that will be passed on to consumers,” predicted the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

‘It’s about continuing to exist’

Despite Trump’s aggressive promotion of LNG, Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program for Public Citizen, said there are still grounds to fight the buildout, even if the environmental and justice arguments have been removed by his administration. 

“These additional exports are going to expose Americans to higher gas prices,” he said. “You can’t declare an energy emergency where you claim domestic shortages of energy at the same time you’re going to greenlight a bunch of export terminals.”

For residents like Roishetta Ozane, adding more LNG facilities is not an abstract energy debate. It’s a lived experience of cumulative harm, environmental erasure and political abandonment caused by the petrochemical industries around Lake Charles, 30 miles north of the epicenter of the LNG development.

“Our community is already surrounded by pollution,” she said. “It makes absolutely no sense to approve two or three new LNG facilities here in southwest Louisiana when we already have as much industry as we do.”

“It’s just like a death sentence.” 

Still, both Ozane and Rebekah Hinojosa refuse to give up. In late July and early August, Ozane was among roughly 70 Gulf Coast advocates who protested outside companies in New York City that are financing and insuring the LNG boom.

“We will still keep fighting and speaking up to do everything we can to stop these projects, because our community doesn't want these projects,” Hinojosa said. “I mean, for us, it’s about continuing to exist here.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

Gov. Reeves deploys Mississippi National Guard soldiers to D.C., following other GOP-led states

by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today
August 18, 2025

Mississippi will send about 200 Mississippi National Guard soldiers to Washington, D.C., to support President Donald Trump’s push to federalize law enforcement in the nation's capital.

Following the governors of at least three other Republican-led states, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said on social media on Monday that he deployed the troops to bolster Trump's "effort to return law and order to our nation’s capital."

"Crime is out of control there, and it’s clear something must be done to combat it," Reeves said. "Americans deserve a safe capital city that we can all be proud of. I know the brave men and women of our National Guard will do an excellent job enhancing public safety and supporting law enforcement."

The move comes after Trump signed an executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia National Guard members. He did so after claiming the nation's capital was gripped by "lawlessness."

Washington's elected officials have disputed these claims, noting that violent crime is lower than it was during Trump’s first term in office. Hundreds of residents of the city marched in protest of the federal crackdown on Saturday.

Reeves, a staunch ally of President Trump, opted to participate in the federal takeover after at least three other Republican-led states had already done so.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said he was deploying 300 to 400 guard troops. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he deployed 200 at the Pentagon’s request. And Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he sent 150 guard military police at Army Secretary Dan Driscoll's request.

Reeves' announcement on social media did not say who requested support from Mississippi's National Guard.

The activations from Republican-led states suggest the Trump administration sees the need for additional manpower after the president personally played down the need for Washington to hire more police officers, according to The Associated Press.

Trump declared an emergency due to the “city government’s failure to maintain public order.” He said that impeded the “federal government’s ability to operate efficiently to address the nation’s broader interests without fear of our workers being subjected to rampant violence.”

Monday was not the first time Reeves followed other Republican governors in sending National Guard troops outside the state.

In 2023, Reeves mobilized a National Guard unit to help with security at the U.S. border with Mexico. That came a day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent officers to Texas to assist with border security.

In a letter to city residents following Trump's executive order, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, wrote that “our limited self-government has never faced the type of test we are facing right now.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Election lawyers, Obama alumni renew Illinois redistricting reform push

by Andrew Adams, Capitol News Illinois
August 19, 2025

Article Summary

• Former federal officials are backing an effort to reform the state legislature’s redistricting process. Congressional districts would be unaffected.
• Illinois’ state Senate map gives a partisan advantage to Democrats, and its House map isn’t compact enough, according to researchers at Princeton.
• Ray LaHood and Bill Daley hope to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November 2026, but they’ll need hundreds of thousands of signatures and millions of dollars to do so.
• Past efforts to reform legislative redistricting, most notably in 2016, failed after ballot measures were thrown out by state courts.

This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

CHICAGO — A group of former Obama administration officials and election lawyers announced Tuesday they are attempting to reform the way the state draws district maps for the state legislature. They want to do this by passing a state constitutional amendment via a ballot initiative during the 2026 general election.

They say the current legislative redistricting process leads to overrepresentation of Democrats and few competitive legislative districts, meaning politicians must do less to serve their constituents.

Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, a Republican, and former Secretary of Commerce Bill Daley, a Democrat and member of the Daley political family, are leading the effort. Both served under President Barack Obama, with Daley as his chief of staff.

Former State Board of Elections Chair Bill Cadigan and election lawyer Michael Dorf, whose past clients include the Democratic Party of Illinois and several sitting statewide officials, also are backing the effort.

12-member redistricting commission

The proposal would create a 12-member “Legislative Redistricting Commission,” appointed by the top Democrat and Republican in each legislative chamber. Each legislative leader would appoint one member of the General Assembly and two members who are not lawmakers.

Commissioners would be barred from considering political party registration or voting history data when drawing maps. Districts also would be required to be compact, contiguous and drawn along existing county and municipal lines where possible.

The amendment would only apply to the redistricting process for the state legislature. It would not apply to congressional districts, which would still be drawn by state lawmakers.

The amendment would also change the size of the state legislature, so that if the state's population significantly increases or decreases, so too would the number of districts.

This model is based on Iowa, Arizona and Pennsylvania. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which analyzes how severely gerrymandered states’ legislative maps are, gives Illinois a “B” grade for the state House and an “F” for the state Senate. Iowa and Arizona received A grades for their state maps and Pennsylvania received “B” grades.

“I’ve talked to people in Iowa and I’ve talked to people in California,” LaHood said. “They love the idea that politicians are not drawing their maps. And if you look at their maps, they’re compact and contiguous. And people like that.”

The amendment, according to its backers, will need about 320,000 valid signatures to appear on the 2026 November ballot. Because some signatures might be invalid, Cadigan said they’ll aim for roughly double that.

LaHood said the effort would need “3 to 4 million” dollars, “primarily to pay people to help us get the signatures.”

Failed 2016 effort

In 2016, the state Supreme Court case threw out an effort to reform legislative redistricting on a 4-3 vote. The court ruled along partisan lines that the wording of the amendment didn’t comply with the state’s constitution’s narrow wording on citizen initiatives.

The Supreme Court now has a 5-2 Democratic advantage after the General Assembly redrew its district lines in 2021.

The 2016 effort was itself a response to a 2014 court case that tossed out a proposed constitutional amendment that year.

Dorf said the wording of the proposed amendment takes into consideration court precedent, but LaHood noted that “no one will predict what the Supreme Court does.”

Still, Daley said the amendment will hopefully influence the 2026 campaign.

“I think politicians will respond to that when it's on the ballot for the general election in 2026. Everyone running — from state rep to the state Senate, congressional and statewide officeholders — will be asked the question ‘Where do you stand on the fair maps amendment?’” Daley said. “And woe with those who don’t say they’re for it.”

The effort comes as Texas considers an unorthodox mid-decade redistricting in order to expand the Republican majority in Congress, which has sparked Democratic states like California and Illinois to consider something similar to counteract Texas’ move.

“As far as the congressional thing is concerned, I fully understand what (California Gov. Gavin) Newsom is doing and what Gov. (JB) Pritzker has said he’s considering because of the egregiousness, at the congressional level, of what's going on in Texas,” Daley said. “If Texas just played according to the rules and in five years wanted to do a map to do away with five Democrats, that’s their right.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

5 things to know about Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw California’s election maps

By Alexei Koseff, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

The fight over redistricting is about to hit overdrive in California.

As the Legislature returns to Sacramento today for the final month of session, Democrats are racing to finish a plan that could tilt the state’s congressional map in their favor — and thrust California into another confrontation with President Donald Trump.

Republicans, who stand to lose more than half their seats in the state, decry the scheme as a self-serving power grab. But supporters, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, contend they are saving democracy by stopping Trump from rigging the outcome of the 2026 midterms.

Ultimately, California voters will likely decide in a special election this November.

Here’s what you need to know:

Wait, what is Newsom trying to do?

The governor is leading the charge for the Democratic response in a burgeoning partisan showdown that could effectively determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives before a single vote is cast next November.

This kicked off thousands of miles away from Sacramento — in Texas. Earlier this year, Trump began pressuring Republican leaders there to redraw its congressional lines to shore up the GOP’s narrow majority in the House. As his approval rating sinks, the president is worried Democrats could win back Congress in the 2026 election and disrupt the final two years of his term.

Even as dozens of Democratic members have fled the state in protest, the Texas Legislature is advancing a new map that could flip five Democratic House seats to Republican control. Other conservative states, including Ohio, Missouri, Indiana and Florida, are considering similar actions.

So, channeling the anger of Democratic voters, Newsom has launched California into a retaliatory redistricting that would offset the Texas map with five new Democratic-leaning seats.

“Donald Trump, you have poked the bear and we will punch back,” Newsom said during a rally last week formally kicking off the campaign. “Don't mess with the great Golden State.”

How would it work?

It’s complicated!

Unlike Texas, where the Legislature determines congressional lines, California voters in 2010 gave that power to a bipartisan citizen commission. The commission draws a new map once each decade, after the U.S. Census, to ensure each congressional district has roughly an equal number of people. It last did so in 2021.

Newsom is proposing to temporarily override the commission and create districts more favorable to Democrats until after the 2030 Census. That requires going to the voters for their approval.

Democratic officials already drew a new map in secret, which they finally shared publicly on Friday. The Legislature, where three-quarters of members are Democrats, plans to vote before the end of this week to put that map on the ballot in a statewide special election on Nov. 4.

“Voters will see the maps and have the final say,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Salinas Democrat, said in a statement.

Why the rush?

California’s primary election is in June, so work backwards from there. The deadline for candidates to declare is in early March. Those who want to collect signatures to qualify, instead of paying a filing fee, can start in December.

That means new congressional lines need to be in place by the end of the year, so candidates actually know which voters they need to reach.

Newsom is eyeing Nov. 4 for the special election to consolidate it with municipal elections across the state that day. State law requires elections officials to mail a ballot to every voter starting 29 days before the election, and to military and overseas voters 45 days before, which means ballots must be ready by late September.

The secretary of state’s office has said the Legislature must act by Friday to leave enough time for local elections officials to meet those deadlines for a Nov. 4 election. Even then, the next month will be extremely busy for them.

How much will this cost?

The state has promised to cover the expenses counties incur running this unexpected election, which won’t be cheap. The last state special election, an unsuccessful recall of Newsom in September 2021, cost about $200 million.

Newsom has said consolidating the election with already scheduled local elections on Nov. 4 could save money. But early estimates from counties — up to $4 million in Fresno and up to $16 million in Riverside — are higher than they were for the recall.

“No price tag for democracy,” Newsom told reporters last week following the kickoff rally.

Will this plan succeed?

Democrats feel good about their chances, but it’s a heavy lift.

A Politico poll found that nearly two-thirds of California voters prefer retaining the state’s independent redistricting commission over returning authority to the Legislature to draw congressional lines.

That is not exactly what Newsom’s plan would do, however. His messaging has emphasized that the commission would only be sidelined temporarily, because of what he calls a Trump-induced political emergency. It’s reflected in the name of the measure: the Election Rigging Response Act. Internal polling shared with lawmakers put support, when framed along those lines, at 52%.

While that’s enough to win in November, it may not be enough to withstand an intense campaign this fall that is expected to draw hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. Charles Munger, Jr., the longtime Republican donor who poured more than $12 million into the campaign to pass independent redistricting, has said he will open up his wallet again to defend it.

“Citizens, not politicians or partisan party insiders, should not only hold the power at the ballot box but also the power to draw the lines,” Amy Thoma Tan, a spokesperson for Munger's campaign committee, said in a statement.

The National Republican Congressional Committee said in a statement that it was prepared to "fight Gavin Newsom’s illegal power grab in the courts and at the ballot box."

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Despite years of serious safety violations, Holly Hill Hospital looks to treat more patients

by Taylor Knopf, North Carolina Health News
August 21, 2025

By Taylor Knopf

A for-profit psychiatric hospital in Raleigh — regularly sanctioned by regulators and visited by police due to fights, patient escapes and reports of alleged sexual assault — is expanding to serve more people. 

Last year, Holly Hill Hospital announced a partnership with the Raleigh Police Department in which officers would take people in mental distress directly to the hospital’s campus in downtown Raleigh instead of first going to a hospital emergency department or other facility for evaluation. 

Holly Hill announced on social media in June that it opened a new unit on its south campus near WakeMed Hospital off New Bern Avenue for adults with less severe mental health needs, such as those needing substance use detox or help with depression. The hospital is also in the process of launching a “Patriot Support Program” to treat veterans and active-duty military members, which includes a new 32-bed inpatient unit, according to the hospital’s Facebook page.

Holly Hill’s CEO Leigh Holston declined to be interviewed for this story and answered some of North Carolina Health News’ questions in an email that included few details about the hospital’s partnership with the police and the new military support program. The Raleigh Police Department did not provide details about its partnership with Holly Hill.

These new initiatives are underway despite serious shortcomings at Holly Hill that have been documented repeatedly over the past five years by federal and state regulators during a dozen on-site investigations into patient complaints. Inspectors have found repeated problems, including patient escapes, allegations of sexual and physical assault, missing treatment plans, medication errors, contraband on patients, documentation issues in patients’ medical charts, unsafe patient discharge practices, unsanitary living conditions and lack of language interpretation services. 

READ PART ONE OF THIS TWO-PART STORY

Holly Hill under scrutiny again: State finds repeated failures after violent patient uprising

Since 2020, regulators have put Holly Hill under immediate jeopardy three times. Immediate jeopardy is the most severe sanction a hospital can receive; it indicates that serious harm or death has, or is likely, to occur. Holly Hill was under immediate jeopardy as recently as January 2025 after a fight broke out among adolescent girls in which they overtook staff and the nurse’s station and got into the room where medications are stored.

North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services officials said in an emailed statement that immediate jeopardy sanctions used to be rare, but that now they are finding dangerous conditions at hospitals deserving of this highest penalty more often. State officials told NC Health News they are having conversations with federal regulators about additional measures they can take to keep patients safe at facilities with recurring violations.

In response to questions about the repeated sanctions at Holly Hill, the CEO wrote in an email: “Each survey provides opportunities for the facility to improve upon its services.”

The issues at Holly Hill mirror claims against other facilities across the country that are owned by the hospital’s parent company, Universal Health Services, which has faced multiple lawsuits in recent years. The company was the subject of a scathing report released in 2024 by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee titled Warehouses of Neglect. The report claimed that Universal Health Services, which operates 181 inpatient behavioral health facilities in the U.S. — including three in North Carolina — offered minimal treatment and poor conditions with too few staff, all in an attempt to maximize profits. 

Universal Health Services released a statement in response to the Senate report, calling the committee’s findings “incomplete and misleading.” 

Nonetheless, in North Carolina, state budget proposals being debated by legislators include expanding a program that would give more money to free-standing psychiatric hospitals, including Holly Hill, Brynn Marr Hospital in Jacksonville and Old Vineyard in Winston-Salem, all owned by Universal Health Services. 

Despite expensive lawsuits and troublesome reports, Universal Health Services presses on — opening new facilities and boasting record profits year after year. 

Direct path to Holly Hill 

Last year, Holly Hill announced that the hospital would be partnering with the Raleigh Police Department so officers could bring people experiencing mental health crises directly to Holly Hill. 

“The collaboration was birthed with a desire to circumvent unnecessary emergency department referrals for individuals experiencing behavioral health crises,” read the news release from Holly Hill. “By presenting directly to a behavioral health facility, individuals in crisis receive quicker access to appropriate care and reduce the overflow experienced in emergency rooms.”

Since the pandemic, more people in mental distress have been showing up at North Carolina’s emergency rooms, which puts strain on medical hospitals. 

Holly Hill dedicated a hospital liaison to work directly with the police department, according to the release. When asked about the partnership, Holly Hill CEO Holston wrote in an email that this process can alleviate some of the strain on emergency departments and allow them to focus on patients’ medical needs. 

Raleigh Police officers get called to Holly Hill Hospital hundreds of times per year to respond to everything from 911 call hang ups and trespassing, to suicide threats and drug overdoses. The department keeps a call log that shows the addresses officers go to, the dates and times, and the reasons for the calls.

The police records show officers responded to 262 calls for assault, 147 for sex offenses, 24 for rapes or to pick up a rape kit, and 17 for patient escapes between January 1, 2019, and May 6, 2025, at Holly Hill Hospital.

When asked about the many calls for help to police about Holly Hill’s CEO Holston said that mental health patients have rights, including “the right to make and receive phone calls.” 

“[Raleigh Police] are quick to provide support to our patients whenever they are called for assistance,” she wrote. “All allegations are investigated as appropriate.” 

NC Health News asked Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman how many of these incidents led to criminal charges, and she wrote in an email that her office “did not find a pattern of cases being referred to our office for charging.”

Raleigh police committed to partnership

The issues inside Holly Hill have played out in the public eye a few times in recent years, particularly when patients have escaped the facility. Law enforcement officers get involved to track down escaped patients, instances that catch the attention of local TV news stations.

When asked about the police department’s partnership with Holly Hill by WRAL-TV shortly after it was announced in August last year, since-retired Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson told the station that if Holly Hill did not provide good care, her department was open to re-evaluating the collaboration. Patterson also told WRAL that the department’s mental health unit, called ACORNS, would be heavily involved in the partnership. 

The ACORNS unit is a specialized team of officers and social workers that respond on a referral basis to calls from other officers and community members to assist people experiencing mental health issues, homelessness and substance use challenges. This spring, NC Health News interviewed the head of the ACORNS unit, Sgt. Madeline Horner, who said “most of that partnership is above my pay grade, so I don’t have any details to share.” 

NC Health News followed up with the police department’s communications team asking if the repeated safety violations and number of times officers have responded to escapes, alleged assaults and sexual abuses at the hospital had affected the department’s assessment of the partnership. 

“The Raleigh Police Department has maintained a long-standing partnership with Holly Hill, which predates Chief Patterson’s tenure as Chief of Police, and this collaboration will continue moving forward… We do not provide comments on any incidents that have occurred there. It would be most effective to obtain information directly from the source rather than through our department,” Lt. David Davis of the department’s public affairs office said in an email.

Davis did not respond to NC Health News’ follow-up questions.

Opening a new military unit 

Holly Hill is also poised to expand inpatient services to military members, veterans and first responders. 

The hospital has been promoting a new Patriot Support Program and recently opened a military program, according to the hospital’s website. The hospital’s CEO Holston wrote in an email that Holly Hill plans to open a Patriot Support Program in the future. The program includes a new 32-bed inpatient unit at Holly Hill’s adult hospital in Raleigh, according to the hospital’s Facebook account. 

After declining NC Health News’ request for an interview, Holston answered select questions via email. But those answers lacked specifics about the Patriot Support Program. 

“It is an honor to provide specialized support for the unique challenges that active duty and Veteran populations face,” Holston wrote. “Many of our Holly Hill staff members are Veterans or have family members who have served, and they are trained in best practice interventions for this population.”

Universal Health Services, the hospital’s parent company, has Patriot Support Programs at 34 of its behavioral health facilities throughout the United States. The company reported in its most recent annual report that it treated more than 17,800 active-duty military personnel, veterans and family members last year. According to a map on the company’s website, the program opening at Holly Hill would be its first in North Carolina. 

UHS’ Patriot Support Program made national news in 2022 when former football star Herschel Walker claimed to have founded the program during his failed campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia. The Associated Press fact-checked Walker’s claim and reported that Walker was actually a paid spokesperson for the UHS program. 

In the same story, the Associated Press reported on a “sprawling civil case brought against Universal Health Services by the U.S. Department of Justice and nearly two dozen states” in which UHS was accused of aggressively pushing military members and veterans into the Patriot Support Program in an effort to boost the company’s profits and defrauding the federal government in the process.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that UHS agreed to pay $117 million to resolve those allegations against several of its hospitals for knowingly filing false claims for payment for behavioral health services that weren’t necessary or appropriately provided to people covered by federally funded insurance programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare and Department of Veterans Affairs.

UHS entered the settlement agreement without admitting guilt. 

“During the course of this matter, UHS denied the allegations and was able to present significant evidence to effectively rebut the claims made by the government. Many of the allegations involved facilities that UHS acquired from other operators and the claims pre-date our acquisition of those facilities,” wrote UHS Public Relations Director Jane Crawford in an emailed statement to NC Health News. 

“Third-party healthcare industry analysts confirmed the dubious nature of the claims, for example concluding that UHS average length of stay is similar and, in many cases, lower than that of our industry peers,” she wrote.

In that case, the government claimed UHS hired military liaisons to build relationships on bases and facilitate military members’ use of the Patriot Support Program. The AP also reported that Tricare — the insurance coverage for military members and their families — was particularly valuable to UHS, as the plan does not limit the length of psychiatric hospital stays so long as specific criteria are met. 

Holly Hill has hired a military liaison, a veteran, who has been making his way to North Carolina's military bases and county veterans associations, posting photos on the hospital’s social media page. 

UHS also owns Brynn Marr Hospital, an inpatient psychiatric facility near the Marine base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville. In an investigation by NC Health News, former employees alleged that Brynn Marr also favored patients with Tricare, the military sponsored insurance. The better a patient’s insurance, the longer they would end up staying, alleged one former employee. 

Several former Brynn Marr employees said they left that hospital in part due to what they described as unethical practices, including cherry picking patients with better insurance and using questionable tactics to keep them there longer. One of those practices, they alleged to NC Health News, included documenting more severe diagnoses for patients to make them appear sicker than they were so that the hospital could bill more to insurers. 

Brynn Marr’s CEO at the time denied these allegations, and Crawford called them “unsubstantiated and inaccurate” in a statement to NC Health News.

Record profits, expensive lawsuits

Universal Health Services leaders say their goal is to reach more than $17 billion in revenues in 2025, and they’re banking on their behavioral health services to get them there.

UHS — one of the largest for-profit health systems in the country — operates 72 medical facilities and 195 behavioral health facilities in the U.S., and 149 behavioral health facilities in the United Kingdom. In 2024, the company reported $15.8 billion in revenues, nearly an 11 percent increase in net revenue over the previous year, according to UHS’ annual report. 

Last year, UHS derived its largest revenue increase, an additional 10.7 percent, from its behavioral health services, which saw approximately 730,000 patients in the United States. UHS added 164 inpatient beds at new and existing behavioral health facilities in the U.S. last year and is building three more facilities and expanding multiple others, according to the company’s annual report. 

UHS reports and officials highlight behavioral health as a key part of boosting its future profits, with an up to 3 percent patient day revenue increase goal set for this year, according to UHS’ first quarter earnings call with investors. By July, UHS leaders told investors during their second quarter call they’ve seen a lower volume of inpatient behavioral health patients than expected and their previously stated long-term goal of increasing the number of inpatient admissions in 2025 has been “elusive.” 

“What we're seeing in behavioral [health] is payers trying to shift more patients from the inpatient setting to the outpatient setting,” said the company’s CFO Steve Filton on the July earnings call with investors. “We have always had an outpatient presence, but I don't know that our focus has been as intense as it is currently in part to take advantage of that shift. [...] We've been not necessarily capturing what I would describe as our fair share of that outpatient business.”

He said UHS plans to open 10 to 15 new outpatient behavioral health facilities each year moving forward.

Filton also spent a significant amount of time fielding questions from investors about the impact the One Big Beautiful Bill will have on the company’s Medicaid payments.The potential stakes for UHS are high now that Congress passed a budget that will cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid over the coming decade, eroding health insurance for many who purchase coverage on the individual marketplace and even have ripple effects on Medicare financing. The Wall Street Journal reported that 68 percent of UHS’ pretax income in 2024 came from supplemental Medicaid payments. 

Filton told investors that in a worst case scenario if the law is not amended, UHS could take a $360 million hit from Medicaid cuts starting in 2028 when the policies are set to go into effect. He said the Medicaid work requirements could adversely impact the company’s Medicaid revenues. 

The company is also fighting some expensive lawsuits. 

In a case against a UHS-owned children’s hospital in Virginia, multiple former patients made claims of sexual and physical abuse, as well as allegations of medical record falsification. A jury ruled in September to award three plaintiffs a combined $300 million in damages. In UHS’ annual report, the company said it plans to challenge that verdict and that it expects this litigation to be drawn out for years because 40 more plaintiffs are making similar allegations. 

In Illinois, a UHS-affiliated facility was ordered in 2024 to pay $535 million in a negligence lawsuit following allegations of the sexual assault of a 13-year-old patient by another patient. The company’s lawyer called the verdict excessive, and the hospital challenged it. In October 2024, a judge reduced the verdict to $120 million, but UHS still plans to appeal the remaining judgement. 

In both cases, UHS Public Relations Director Crawford told NC Health News that the hospitals were “shocked by the verdicts in those cases and vehemently disagree with the juries’ verdicts.” Both hospitals are in good standing with their local regulatory authorities and continue to earn favorable feedback from patient satisfaction surveys, completed at time of discharge, Crawford wrote in an email.

In a statement deep in the company’s annual report, there’s a notation that shows company officials worry that all of these lawsuits could use up much of their commercial insurance coverage deductibles.

“We are uncertain as to the ultimate financial exposure related to” the two largest cases, the company stated in its annual financial report. “And we can make no assurances regarding timing or substance of their outcome, or the amount of damages that may be ultimately held recoverable after post-judgment proceedings and appeals.” 

Potential gains in North Carolina 

In North Carolina, UHS-owned hospitals could get a boost if the state budget plan, currently being debated by lawmakers, becomes law. Both the House and Senate proposed extending a Medicaid-related reimbursement program to free-standing psychiatric hospitals. This would benefit UHS-owned Holly Hill, Brynn Marr and Old Vineyard. 

The plan includes a recurring $40 million starting in fiscal year 2026 so that free-standing psychiatric hospitals get enhanced reimbursements for treatment of Medicaid managed care enrollees. Sen. Jim Burgin (R-Harnett) told NC Health News the discussion that led to this proposal was entirely about how to help three state-owned psychiatric facilities, which have struggled to recruit and maintain enough staff to open beds that are currently unstaffed.

“The big push was to try to take advantage of the money for mental health, so that we could open the 300 beds that are closed in the three different [state] facilities,” he said. 

Burgin said there was no discussion about how for-profit psychiatric facilities would also benefit from the expanded state reimbursements. The senator expressed great concern over the repeated violations at some inpatient facilities, including Holly Hill, saying he’s been part of state-level meetings about how to address some of the issues.

When asked about this money going to for-profit psychiatric facilities with poor track records, physician and state Rep. Grant Campbell (R-Norwood) told NC Health News that lawmakers “can’t make blanket policy on individual institutions.”

“Inpatient psychiatric has got overwhelmingly disproportionate Medicaid population that makes it very difficult to keep their doors open,” he said. “We’ll certainly address any concerns on an individual basis, but we’re not going to make state policy on individual examples of problems.”

As North Carolina lawmakers propose increased payments to psychiatric hospitals, state health officials say they are working on ways to hold facilities with repeat offenses — such as the ones Holly Hill has racked up — accountable. 

The human cost

Meanwhile, many former patients say they are haunted by their time inside Holly Hill and other UHS-owned hospitals. Some have told NC Health News that they struggle with increased symptoms of anxiety and depression after their hospitalizations and hesitate to reach out for mental health support for fear they will end up locked inside a psychiatric hospital again. 

“I was broken and terrified and just not okay, and I’m still traumatized by that,” said Kate, a 37-year-old Charlotte resident, about her week spent inside Holly Hill. “It has prevented me from seeking emergency mental health services since.”

Kate, who is identified by first name only to protect her privacy, tried to end her life in the spring of 2022. She was involuntarily committed and taken by a sheriff’s deputy to Holly Hill, where she waited for more than seven hours in a small overcrowded room to be admitted to the hospital. She told NC Health News that other patients were lying on the floor around her because there weren’t enough chairs. The small bathroom attached to the admissions room was covered in fluids, she alleged, recording her impressions in a black and white composition notebook she received after being admitted to Holly Hill.

In her journal, Kate alleged that on her first day a nurse gave her two of the same type of medication she had used in her suicide attempt, before she ever saw a doctor. 

Kate also alleged that she was only allowed outside for one hour during her eight-day hospital stay and that she felt lethargic due to the lack of activity and fresh air. She said she spent most of her days at Holly Hill doing word puzzles and watching television. The group therapy sessions consisted of a mental health technician asking one question and documenting it in patients’ charts, she wrote in her journal.

Patients would get into fights, and she told NC Health News that staff appeared to be unbothered, doing nothing to intervene.

“They got into one of the nastiest physical fights I’ve ever seen between two women. This was like a street fight, like people who are used to fighting. It was brutal and horrifying to watch,” she said. “No one moved from where they were. No one said anything.”

On her last day, Kate told NC Health News that she was punched in the face by a large male patient because she changed the television station. She said she told the psychiatrist what happened and demanded to go home. The doctor refused, saying she needed to stay, Kate recalled. 

When she threatened to call the police and report the assault, Kate alleged that the psychiatrist quickly changed his mind and said she could go home that day. 

As she waited the three hours for her spouse to drive from Charlotte to pick her up, Kate said the man who had punched her followed her around the hospital, staring at her through the cracked door of her bedroom and shoulder-checking her in the hallway.

Kate says she feels distress when she sees the news reports of patient escapes and reads the experiences of patients at Holly Hill shared on online chat boards with hundreds of comments calling out the hospital for its treatment of patients. 

“When I got out, part of the trauma was knowing that all these people that deserved help and care were still there,” she said. “And then thinking about all the people in the past who have suffered from that as well, and that they were going to keep taking more people in.”

Reporter’s notebook: How I reported this story

After I reported a series of stories about the problems at Brynn Marr Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Jacksonville, several former patients and employees of Holly Hill Hospital reached out to say they experienced similar issues in Raleigh. They urged me to look into reports from Holly Hill as well.

Both hospitals are owned by Universal Health Services, which has been the subject of investigations by a U.S. Senate committee, the U.S. Department of Justice and national news organizations. They all found a pattern of deficiencies across UHS-owned facilities. 

Then, last year Holly Hill announced that it was partnering with the Raleigh Police Department to bring patients directly to the facility. I made a records request to the Raleigh Police Department for its call log of visits to the Holly Hill Hospital campus, which includes the times, dates and reason for which officers responded to a call there. I received several spreadsheets from the Raleigh Police Department with thousands of calls to the multiple addresses owned by Holly Hill. I also requested a copy of the 911 call recording to Raleigh Police Department from the night of the violent patient uprising in December 2024, but the department said the recording was no longer available. 

I also tried to talk with the Raleigh Police Department about its partnership with the hospital. I spoke with the head of the police department’s mental health unit who said she didn’t know anything about the partnership. When I pressed the police department’s communications team for more information, they sent an emailed statement that did not answer my questions. The department never responded to emailed follow-up questions. 

I made a records request to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services for all the reports generated from regulatory visits at Holly Hill over the past five years. I received more than 20 document files from the state Department of Health and Human Services totaling more than 700 pages, which were highly redacted. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also releases reports of deficiencies cited at facilities, including psychiatric hospitals. These deficiency reports are released periodically by CMS in large data drops, which the Association of Health Care Journalists has been downloading and then uploading to its site and organizing the reports by state in a searchable way. CMS acknowledges that AHCJ makes these reports more accessible to the public. The federal report was anonymized but not redacted and provided more details, particularly on the violent uprising that happened at Holly Hill in December 2024. 

To report this story, I talked to state health officials, state lawmakers, law enforcement officers, a former CMS regulator, a district attorney and former patients and employees of Holly Hill Hospital. I requested an interview with the CEO of Holly Hill, but she declined and only agreed to answer emailed questions. I sent multiple rounds of questions by email to the hospital CEO and to the leadership of Universal Health Services to give the hospital leadership an opportunity to respond to allegations. The CEO and a spokesperson for UHS responded each time, answering many but not all of my questions. 

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Hickory police face lawsuit over fatal shooting

by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press
August 21, 2025

A Hickory woman is suing the city and several current and former police officers for the 2023 death of her son, who was shot and killed after officers fired dozens of times as he fled from them on foot.

Two Charlotte-based law firms that specialize in police misconduct filed the lawsuit in Catawba County Superior Court last week.

Attorney Anthony Burts told Carolina Public Press that U.S. Supreme Court precedent dictates that police cannot use lethal force simply to prevent a non-threatening suspect from getting away.

[Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ alerts and weekend roundup newsletters]

The U.S. Supreme Court decision Tennessee v. Garner established that under the Fourth Amendment — which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures — law enforcement officers “may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead.”

“We need there to be appropriate law enforcement tactics being used in our communities,” Burts said.

“When deadly force is used and someone dies, that person is never coming back.”

The man at the center of the lawsuit is Timothy Setzer Jr., who was 27 and working in construction before his death. Police were responding to reports of gunfire near a park in downtown Hickory shortly after midnight when they spotted Setzer walking and talking to himself, the lawsuit said.

Setzer matched the description of a suspicious individual who dispatchers reported being seen in the area, according to the lawsuit. Hickory Police Officer Austin Steele ordered him to stop and show his hands. Setzer raised his hands in the air but continued to walk away from the officers. After being ordered to stop again, Setzer fled.

Steele and Officer Isam Shamseldin gave chase, following Setzer into a nearby empty parking lot. According to the lawsuit, that’s when the officers opened fire with Setzer’s back still turned to them.

A third officer, Aaron Travis, who had just arrived on the scene in a patrol car driven by his trainee also fired at Setzer out of the passenger-side window of his vehicle, the lawsuit said, calling the maneuver “more suited for an action movie or first-person shooter video game.”

Altogether the three Hickory officers fired 28 shots at Setzer and hit him 15 times, killing him on the spot, according to the complaint.

The officers stated in their initial incident reports that Setzer had a firearm and had pulled it out of his waistband before they opened fire, but the lawsuit said a body-worn camera footage acquired from the State Bureau of Investigation tells a different story.

“Body-worn camera footage confirms that (Setzer’s) back remained turned to Defendant Officers, and he never (1) stopped running, (2) brandished a weapon, or (3) made threats,” the complaint stated.

Travis admitted in a SBI interview following the shooting that he never saw Setzer with a weapon and that his back remained turned to Steele and Shamseldin as he was running away, the lawsuit said.

An autopsy showed Setzer was shot several times from behind, indicating he was not facing the officers when they opened fire, the lawsuit said.

Further, the complaint alleged that the Hickory police officers never gave Setzer a verbal warning that they would use deadly force before they started shooting. Burts said violated the city's use-of-force policy, which states that officers, when determining whether to use deadly force, should give a verbal warning “when feasible.”

No gun was found on Setzer’s person after the incident, but an SBI agent found a firearm in a wooded area near the parking lot using a 3-D scanner. SBI investigators also recovered an empty handgun magazine allegedly belonging to Setzer, although the lawsuit maintains that there is no physical evidence, including fingerprints, DNA or gunshot residue, linking it to Setzer.

“Unequivocally, there was no gun on Mr. Setzer’s person,” Burts told CPP.

Burts said he filed a petition to release the body-worn camera footage of the incident. Under North Carolina law, such footage is not a public record and requires a court order to be released.

“We want the public to be able to weigh in because Mr. Setzer is no longer here and never will be able to say what happened himself,” Burts said.

The lawsuit brings claims against three Hickory police officers — Steele, Shamseldin and Travis — for their use of deadly force, which it claims was unreasonable, excessive and violated Setzer's Fourth Amendment rights.

The primary argument of the lawsuit is that Setzer was unarmed and nondangerous at the time of his death. Even if the firearm found near the site of the shooting had belonged to Setzer, that he did not have it on his person and that he didn’t threaten the officers should be enough to constitute excessive force, Burts said.

The complaint also brings state-law claims against the officers and the City of Hickory for assault and battery, wrongful death and negligence.

Hickory City Manager Warren Wood, who is cited in the complaint as the official who reviewed the shooting and determined it to be in compliance with the city’s use of force policy, did not respond to CPP’s request for comment before the publication of this article.

Neither Travis nor Shamseldin have active law enforcement certifications in North Carolina, according to the NC Justice Training and Certification Portal. The circumstances or timeline of their departures from the Hickory Police Department is unclear.

Steele still has an active certification associated with Hickory P.D. A public information officer with the department did not respond to a request for comment prior to the publication of this article.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Loudoun County neighbors fight proposed Dominion transmission lines for Data Center Alley

by Shannon Heckt, Virginia Mercury
August 14, 2025

As the demand to pump power to energy-thirsty data centers concentrated in Northern Virginia swells, a debate about where to put  towering high-powered transmission lines in populated areas has put one Loudoun County community on the defensive.

Dominion Energy is working to bring a reliability loop of power to the so-called Data Center Alley in Ashburn. Two routes that will connect substations to over 100 data centers in the area are already approved and in the process of being built. To complete the last portion of the loop, the utility, state regulators, local leaders and community members must determine which route is most palatable for the more developed areas of town.

Photo of Dominion Energy’s proposed transmission lines for the Golden to Mars substations in Loudoun County.

A group of neighbors in Loudoun Valley Estates in Ashburn have banded together to try and prevent the 165 foot, 500kv high-voltage transmission lines from being built in their backyards as part of one of the routes proposed by Dominion. One homeowner said she was blindsided by the new route being added to the proposal this year, which moved the transmission line from the Rock Ridge High School grounds up the nearby hill, cutting her backyard in half.

“I mean, we’ve got so many memories in our house, the same as our neighbors. And this thing just shattered our life. We haven’t put everything on hold because we just don’t know what’s going to happen,” homeowner Vicky Hu said.

Hu has lived in the Loudoun Valley Estates neighborhood for 20 years. She raised her daughter there and enjoys the forested look of the area – which is what drew her from Fairfax County. She also sold many of the homes in the community. 

Her yard is projected to have one of the massive towers placed in it under proposed route 3a. There is the possibility that eminent domain laws, with approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, could remove her from her home if the State Corporation Commission (SCC) approves the 3a route and the lines come too close to her house.

Even if she is able to stay, she and her husband fear it could mean major property devaluation, with the tower looming over the house and trees cleared away from the cliffside.

“The house is going to be worthless, if they put a power line there. Because we want to live next to a power line?” Hu said, “And the whole reason we bought the house in Ashburn is because of the view, the nature, the wildlife.”

Dominion said they would assess the fair market value of the property they would need for the project and try to come to a deal with the impacted homeowners along that route. They do not plan to approach the owners unless 3a is selected.

“We would approach the resident and say we are requesting to negotiate with you on an easement on your property. That means the property is still yours, you still own it,” Robert Richardson, an electric transmissions communications consultant for Dominion, said. “An easement gives us certain rights and restricts the use of the property in certain ways.”

The Loudoun County School Board voted against two of the proposed routes that touch the grounds of the Rosa Lee Carter Elementary School and the high school, saying they wouldn’t approve unless the lines could be buried. Route 3a was then added to the proposal, which impacts Hu and her neighbor’s properties.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted to support route 4 that runs parallel to the high school. They also requested that no power lines be built within 500 feet of any residence or public school without being buried, but they have no enforcement authority.

In response to the board’s concerns, Dominion spokesperson Aisha Khan said a feasibility study was done on 500kv power lines being buried. The only other place in the country that has done a project like that is in California. There are several factors that make burying the lines in Ashburn impossible, Khan said, from acreage needed for the entry point into the earth for the lines, water supply, and other challenges.

“However, we think it’s the right thing to do. These houses, these neighborhoods were built prior to knowing we’re going to have these huge electrical power lines in our neighborhood,” said Kerry Canfield, a Loudoun Valley Estates resident. “All of Loudoun County needs to know what’s coming, and we need to push them to go underground.”

Many of Hu’s neighbors attended a Loudoun County School Board meeting on Tuesday. They wanted the school to play a role in the SCC case in order to gain details on the proposed routes and file comments in the case before the board rules on which route will be selected.

“We are concerned about the long-term safety, property values, not to mention the impact on our children. If these power lines are not good for the school property, it’s definitely not good for the residents. So we urge you to support us here by filing a notice of participation in the (SCC case),” Loudoun Valley Estates resident Ravishankar Krishnamoorthy said at the meeting.

Eight supervisors voted in favor of participating in the case, with one abstaining. 

Richardson said they hope to talk with the school board again about the possibility of the two routes that touch their property.

“Route 3a is not our preferred route, 3 remains our preferred route. The problem with Route 3 is we can’t build Route 3 unless the school system says, ‘you can,’” Richardson said.

One of the proposed routes mostly runs along the Loudoun County Parkway. The board of supervisors voted against supporting that one because they did not want the power lines along the road. But the SCC could still select that route as the best option after hearing the case.

In a hallway outside the school board meeting, Hu said she feels her residential area is the easiest way for Dominion to get around the school and county concerns. Now her and her neighbors are stuck in limbo until the SCC decides which route is selected.

If the power lines are not built it will create a major energy gap for the data centers in the area. Dominion said there could be violations brought down by regional grid operator PJM Interconnection if they don’t supply the needed power by June 2028, the projected date that the project will come online.

“That’s where you would expect problems on the grid by that date if this project isn’t energized. If you’re providing too much, if you’re serving too much load with not enough transmission lines, you can damage equipment,” Richardson said.
”You can damage conductors. And so then, you start having other challenges with serving the greater region.”

There is a public hearing scheduled September 18 at Rock Ridge High School near Loudoun Valley Estates. The official SCC hearing where both sides will present their arguments for the project will be on Dec. 15.

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.SUPPORT

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.

‘I’m gonna be homeless.’ Chapel Hill flood victims ask city for help as deadline to move nears.

by Greg Childress, NC Newsline
August 20, 2025

Displaced residents of Camelot Village in Chapel Hill are growing anxious as time runs out on their stay at the Comfort Inn in Durham. The residents were forced to leave their rental homes in early July after rain from Tropical Storm Chantal sent Bolin Creek overflowing its banks and spilling into the nearly 60-year-old townhome community.

At a press conference Wednesday, the residents told reporters that they must leave the hotel Aug. 29 after disaster assistance from Orange County, Triangle Mutual Aid and private citizens runs out.

“I’m gonna be homeless, pretty much because I haven’t found a place to go that I can afford,” said Jessica Tickles. “I had to take out of work to find housing, so I’m like restarting back to work and it’s like starting from zero.”

Their rent and those deposits are their money and that’s not being returned so that they can move forward with their lives, get housing, return to their dignity.

– C.R. Clark, Triangle Tenant Union

Residents complained that landlords and town and county officials have been slow to respond to concerns and have not done enough to help as they struggle to find housing in the aftermath of the storm, which they say left them financially strapped and stressed.

With the help of the Triangle Tenant Union, the residents issued these demands:

• Return of July rents due to the uninhabitability of the units after the storm.
• Return of security deposits to assist tenants in securing new housing.
• Cancellation of leases and August rent for tenants who want to move.
• Relocation assistance in securing permanent housing that meets their needs.
• Temporary accommodations for tenants who want to return after building repair and remediation.

“It’s unlawful to charge rent for an uninhabitable apartment in North Carolina,” said C.R. Clark with Triangle Tenant Union. “This is a legal violation, but we’re trying to ensure that people can make demands of this landlord and move that forward rather than trying to go through court.”

Clark said the former tenants have only one week to secure housing and the county is telling them to “just figure it out.”

“A lot of these people have been through so much trauma that figuring it out is really hard …” Clark said. “Their rent and those deposits are their money and that’s not being returned so that they can move forward with their lives, get housing, return to their dignity.”

He said “people are gonna be on the street” if Chapel Hill Mayor Jess Anderson doesn’t step up and provide staffing to “get some of these things done, to get some relocation assistance, to pay for some of these application fees … so that folks can get relocated and begin to rebuild their lives.”

Many residents lost everything in the flood and as many as three-fourths of them were unhoused before moving into Camelot Village, Clark said. The townhome rentals provided low-income residents with rare  affordable housing in affluent Chapel Hill, he said.

Some residents had federal Section 8 vouchers which means their rent was based on income. Others without vouchers pay as much as $950 a month to live there.

“Camelot was the only affordable housing that I was able to be placed in, and I was not made aware of a flooding situation until the time of signing my lease, and at that point, I could not back out because of how the system works with people that are on county funding and things like that,” said Heather Gibbs. “If you say ‘no’ to something in the process, then you are put out on the street and left to find housing somewhere else on your own.”

Gibbs said she has applied to three or four places for housing and paid more than $300 in non-refundable application fees. The fees aren’t refunded even if the unit doesn’t pass required inspections for Section 8 vouchers, she said.

“It’s been really complicated for us to get in somewhere else that is safe,” Gibbs said. “I definitely would not return there [Camelot Village].

Dale Weldele, a recent amputee who now walks with the aid of a prosthetic leg, said he barely survived the flooding at Camelot Village.

“The neighbors saved my life, they got me to safety,” Weldele said. My prosthetic came off in the current. I couldn’t stand against it, so I’m on one leg with crutches, trying to make it to the stairs …”

The prospect of starting over is daunting,” Weldele said.

“Everything got destroyed. It’s starting all over at an old age, and the whole thing, so it’s really hard,” he said.

Putting someone who is not stable on their feet in a ground level unit that you know floods and to leave them there and walk away, that should be illegal.

– Devin Gilgor, volunteer Triangle Mutual Aid

Devin Gilgor, a volunteer with Triangle Mutual Aid, said many Camelot Village tenants have medical conditions and cannot afford to be unhoused.

Gilgor noted that one of the former tenants is a paraplegic and that Weldele is still learning to navigate the world with his prosthetic. He said neither is capable of living in a tent in the woods if they’re unable to find safe, affordable housing.

“They’re not capable of being unhoused,” Gilgor said. “They have medical conditions, they have special equipment for mobility purposes and some of them have intellectual disabilities that are creating massive hurdles for us in terms of getting through the application process for apartments.”

Long history of flooding

Camelot Village has a long history flooding, Gilgor said.

“I’ve lived down the street from Camelot my whole life, but my first memorable flood in Camelot was in 1972,” he said. “I’ve been over there and mucked out apartments eight times now.”

Apartments are currently being refurbished, he said, with plans to put new residents in them, despite flooding and safety concerns. Some units are privately owned and others are corporate owned.

“They’re rebuilding to put more people in who are going to be low income, who are going to be on vouchers, who are going to have a special needs, and someone’s going to drown,” Gilgor said. “Putting someone who is not stable on their feet in a ground level unit that you know floods and to leave them there and walk away, that should be illegal.”

Gilgor lamented the fact that few elected officials attended the press conference despite being invited.

“I think the citizens need to take a good, hard look at town council,” Gilgor said. “Being that this is an election year, I would venture to say you’d think more people would have showed up today because I personally invited everybody from town council and the mayor of Chapel Hill.” 

Jamezetta Bedford, chairwoman of the Orange County Board of County Commissioners did attend the press conference.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor for questions: info@ncnewsline.com.

Journalism and the free flow of trusted news and information continues to be a strong need.

While the articles in Down Ballot are free to read they are not free to produce.

There are no paywalls on the website so everyone can have some access to information. We do charge a nominal fee to receive newsletters and other information by email.

Help keep all of Down Ballot free for everyone by subscribing.

Preview