Medicaid cuts could jeopardize Martin Co. hospital in NC
Jackson, Miss. Police Chief resigns; New Texas map the target of lawsuits; Virginia getting another data center
It's Friday, August 29, 2025 and in this morning's issue we're covering: Mixed signals on whether plans to relaunch Martin County hospital can move forward after Medicaid cuts, Jackson, Miss. Police Chief Joseph Wade Resigns, Felony disenfranchisement a factor in judge’s ruling on Mississippi Supreme Court districts, Fresh off Texas Senate’s approval, new congressional map is target of lawsuits, Wise County voters asked to consider new electric authority, Google Expands Data Center Investment in Virginia, Doesn’t Share Site Specifics.
Media outlets and others featured: Carolina Public Press, Mississippi Free Press, Mississippi Today, El Paso Matters, The Texas Tribune, Cardinal News, Inside Climate News.
Medicaid cuts create hurdle for rebirth of Martin Co. hospital
by Jane Winik Sartwell, Carolina Public Press
August 25, 2025
East Carolina University Health is officially pursuing the idea of reopening Martin General Hospital, the shuttered hospital in Eastern North Carolina. But first, it needs $220 million — and for cuts to Medicaid to stop coming.
That’s starting to seem increasingly unlikely.
The uncertainty around the plan for Martin General shows just how vulnerable rural health care access is to the headwinds of policy decisions coming out of Washington and Raleigh.
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ECU Health filed a letter of intent in July to reopen the hospital as a Rural Emergency Hospital, a new type of hospital for the state: one that sees only outpatient, emergent cases. The designation, created in 2021 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, is a new tool to save struggling hospitals or revive closed ones.
But the cuts to Medicaid in Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, now law, are a serious curveball. More than 40% of Martin County residents are enrolled in Medicaid. The program would be a critical funding source for the hospital.
Meanwhile, at the state level, North Carolina’s recently passed minibudget falls $319 million short of fully funding Medicaid. It’s likely that the state will have to reduce what it pays hospitals for services provided to Medicaid beneficiaries.
Hospital and county officials say that as long as the legislature provides the $220 million they need, and a permanent solution to the Medicaid problem is determined, the plan is a go. Those are some big ifs.
“ECU Health and Martin County are committed to partnering together to build a sustainable model for health care in the community,” ECU Health spokesperson Brian Wudkwych told Carolina Public Press.
“While the nonbinding letter of intent represents an important milestone, there are many complex rural health care challenges that must be solved to make the proposed rural health care model a reality in Martin County. These challenges include navigating new federal health care legislation as well as securing vital public funding needed to build a long-term, sustainable regional system of care.”
In a break from the official line, ECU Health’s chief operating officer Brian Floyd told the New York Times that “the chances of reopening the hospital are low” due to the loss of Medicaid expansion. But Wudkwych and Dawn Carter, a health care consultant with the county, maintain that both parties fully intend to move forward with the plan.
The signals are mixed, to say the least. For Martin County, however, the confusion hasn’t crushed its dream of restoring the hospital.
“Martin County has, for the last two years, faced obstacles one after another, and worked tirelessly to get around and through all these different issues,” Martin County attorney Ben Eisner told CPP.
“Now we’ve got these Medicaid issues and federal headwinds. This little county is one of the smallest, most rural, poorest in the state. It has risen to the occasion anytime something’s been thrown its way. This is the little engine that could.”
ECU Health’s proposal would create a scaled-down version of the hospital. Rural Emergency Hospitals, or REHs, are not designed to provide inpatient services that would require overnight stays — think hip replacements, C-sections or appendectomies. For that kind of care, Martin County residents would still need to travel 30 minutes to the nearest full-service hospital, ECU Health Beaufort in “Little” Washington. Part of the $220 million ECU is asking for would go towards expanding capacity there.
CMS doles out $3 million to each REH each year in order to keep their doors open. They also receive higher reimbursement rates for each patient visit.
Due to the age and condition of the building, the new REH will be relegated to a corner of the old hospital. For residents of Martin County, the reopening of the hospital in any capacity would be a major boon.
“The closure has been a huge hit to the county in terms of lack of emergency care and transport times and strain on our EMS,” Eisner said.
“There’s the medical part of it, then there’s the economic part of it. ECU Health is a major economic engine in the eastern part of the state. This would have downstream effects of hiring new providers and staff. It could be really big for the region.”
If all goes well, Martin General would become North Carolina’s first Rural Emergency Hospital, clearing a path forward for other struggling hospitals across the state.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade Resigns: ‘The Stress of the Job Has Taken Its Toll’
by Shaunicy Muhammad August 26, 2025
JACKSON, Miss.—Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade has stepped down after two years leading the department, Mayor John Horhn announced during the Jackson City Council meeting on Aug. 26.
Horhn said Wade called him last week to submit his resignation. His last day on the job is Sept. 5.
“The stress of the job has taken its toll on him, and he said, ‘Mayor, I’ve got to resign,’” Horhn told the Council on Tuesday. “He has the opportunity to take another position that’s a lot less stressful for a lot more money. I regretfully accepted his resignation and today I publicly do so.”
Wade’s experience on the Jackson Police force spans nearly 30 years; he took the helm in August 2023, under former Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba.
This year, JPD has touted significant reductions in homicides. But on Tuesday, Wade reiterated the mayor’s statements that the job has taken a toll on him, which ultimately led to his decision to step down.
“We are facing so many issues (with) crime and quality of life. I don’t take that lightly as (just) stats or data. I internalize that,” he said. “I take it home with me. I empathize with people. When I’m awakened in the middle of the night and a kid has been killed or a baby has been killed or an elderly person has been killed, I can’t roll over and go back to sleep.”
Building relationships between police and the community was also a challenge, Wade said.
“What I’ve seen in our community, in some situations, is people want the police, but they don’t want to be policed,” he said. But he said he is confident that he “left the Jackson Police Department in a better place than what I inherited.”
Horhn issued a proclamation declaring the day as “Joseph Wade Day.” The mayor and members of the council gave Wade a standing ovation in celebration of his decades of service.
Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones will take over temporarily as Jackson’s interim chief of police as the City of Jackson looks for a chief to fill the role permanently.
“Let me be clear, I have no aspirations to permanently hold this position of Chief of Police, nor do I seek a confirmation,” Jones said. “My responsibility as Sheriff of Hinds County will continue uninterrupted.”
In an Aug. 26 press release, the City of Jackson’s Communications Director Nic Lott said former “U.S. Marshall George White and Former Chief of the Mississippi Highway Patrol Colonel Charles Haynes will lead a Law Enforcement Task Force that will conduct a nationwide search for the next chief, a process expected to last between 30 and 60 days.”
“The Task Force will also closely evaluate all aspects of law enforcement challenges in Jackson, including youth criminal activity, drug-related crimes, the needs of the Jackson Police Department, and coordination among the Police Department, Sheriff’s Office, and Capitol Police,” Lott continued.
Further details about the Law Enforcement Task Force, the search process, and opportunities for public input will be announced in the coming days, he said.
Felony disenfranchisement a factor in judge’s ruling on Mississippi Supreme Court districts
by Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
August 27, 2025
The large number of Mississippians with voting rights stripped for life because they committed a disenfranchising felony was a significant factor in a federal judge determining that current state Supreme Court districts dilute Black voting strength.
U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock, who was appointed to the federal bench by George W. Bush, ruled last week that Mississippi’s Supreme Court districts violate the federal Voting Rights Act and that the state cannot use the same maps in future elections.
Mississippi law establishes three Supreme Court districts, commonly referred to as the northern, central and southern districts. Voters elect three judges from each to the nine-member court. These districts have not been redrawn since 1987.
READ MORE: Mississippians ask U.S. Supreme court to strike state’s Jim Crow-era felony voting ban
The main district at issue in the case is the central district, which comprises many parts of the majority-Black Delta and the majority-Black Jackson metro area.
Several civil rights legal organizations filed a lawsuit on behalf of Black citizens, candidates, and elected officials, arguing that the central district does not provide Black voters with a realistic chance to elect a candidate of their choice.
The state defended the districts arguing the map allows a fair chance for Black candidates. Aycock sided with the plaintiffs and is allowing the Legislature to redraw the districts.
The attorney general's office could appeal the ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. A spokesperson for the office stated that the office is reviewing Aycock's decision, but did not confirm whether the office plans to appeal.
In her ruling, Aycock cited the testimony of William Cooper, the plaintiff’s demographic and redistricting expert, who estimated that 56,000 people with felony records were unable to vote statewide based on a review of court records from 1994 to 2017. He estimated 60% of those were determined to be Black Mississippians.
Cooper testified that the high number of people who were disenfranchised contributed to the Black voting age population falling below 50% in the central district.
Attorneys from Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office defended the state. They disputed Cooper’s calculations, but Aycock rejected their arguments.
The AG’s office also said Aycock should not put much weight on the number of disenfranchised people because the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Mississippi’s disenfranchisement system doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Aycock, however, distinguished between the appellate court’s ruling that the system did not have racial discriminatory intent and the current issue of the practice having a racially discriminatory impact.
“Notably, though, that decision addressed only whether there was discriminatory intent as required to prove an Equal Protection claim,” Aycock wrote. “The Fifth Circuit did not conclude that Mississippi’s felon disenfranchisement laws have no racially disparate impact.”
Mississippi has one of the harshest disenfranchisement systems in the nation and a convoluted method for restoring voting rights to people.
Other than receiving a pardon from the governor, the only way for someone to regain their voting rights is if two-thirds of legislators from both chambers at the Capitol, the highest threshold in the Legislature, agree to restore their suffrage.
Lawmakers only consider about a dozen or so suffrage restoration bills during the session, and they're typically among the last items lawmakers take up before they adjourn for the year.
Under the Mississippi Constitution, people convicted of a list of 10 types of felonies lose their voting rights for life. Opinions from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office have since expanded the list of specific disenfranchising felonies to 23.
The practice of stripping voting rights away from people for life is a holdover from the Jim Crow era. The framers of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution believed Black people were most likely to commit certain crimes.
Leaders in the state House have attempted to overhaul the system, but none have gained any significant traction in both chambers at the Capitol.
Last year, House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, advocated a constitutional amendment that would have removed nonviolent offenses from the list of disenfranchising felonies, but he never brought it up for a vote in the House.
Wallace and House Elections Chairman Noah Sanford, a Republican from Collins, are leading a study committee on Sept. 11 to explore reforms to the felony suffrage system and other voting legislation.
Wallace previously said on an episode of Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast that he believes the state should tackle the issue because one of his core values, part of his upbringing, is giving people a second chance, especially once they’ve made up for a mistake.
“This issue is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” Wallace said. “It allows a woman or a man, whatever the case may be, the opportunity to have their voice heard in their local elections. Like I said, they’re out there working. They’re paying taxes just like you and me. And yet they can’t have a decision in who represents them in their local government.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Peruvian in Fort Bliss ICE detention says ‘American nightmare’ began after selling ceviche in Miami Beach
by Cindy Ramirez, El Paso Matters
August 25, 2025
It was a hot July summer day in Miami when, looking to make a little extra income, Ricardo Quintana Chavez took to the beach to sell ceviche.
In just four weeks since, he’s been in four different detention centers – including the Dade County jail, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz, and two immigration detention facilities in El Paso.
“Hace un mes que no veo el sol. He bajado de peso 15 libras y tengo barba del siglo 19. Estoy desesperado y tambien por mi familia,” Quintana told El Paso Matters during a brief phone call from the East Montana Detention Facility on Fort Bliss. “I haven’t seen sunlight in a month. I’ve lost 15 pounds and have a 19th-century beard. I’m distressed for myself and for my family as well.”
Quintana, 57, an investigative journalist from Peru, said he sought asylum in the United States in 2021 after receiving death threats for his coverage of the Peruvian presidential elections and government corruption. While he had authorization to remain and work in the United States while his asylum case was heard, he said a definitive court date had never been set.
While in Florida, he worked in restaurants, ride-share companies and for a Peruvian natural products company. But as his salary and work hours were cut, he said he looked for ways to make extra income.
When he was detained in Miami for the civil infraction of selling items on a public beach without a permit, he paid the $180 fine – but was released to ICE agents who quickly and unexpectedly took him to Alligator Alcatraz. He was there through Aug. 8, when he was transported to the detention facility in Northeast El Paso, and transferred to the Fort Bliss center Aug. 15.
The $1.2 billion ICE detention complex – which will be the largest federal detention center for civil detainees in the country when it expands to accommodate 5,000 people – opened Aug. 1. Within two weeks, it held about 1,000 people.
The facility includes a game room, library, dining area and health care areas. The white reinforced tent facility sits on military land in the desert north of Montana Avenue near George Dieter Drive. It is staffed by ICE personnel and temporary employees who work under a private contractor.
“Es mejor aquí, si, pero mejor que que?” (“It’s better here, yes, but better than what?”) Quintana asked about the facility on the Eastside, which he characterized as cleaner, bigger and “more humane” than the one in Florida. In Alligator Alcatraz, he said, he was made to use the restroom while shackled and with an ICE agent in front of him with his back turned.
“When they took me to the county jail in Miami, that’s when my misfortune began,” he said in Spanish. “It was traumatic to be shackled at my feet and hands as if I had committed a major crime – or a crime at all. How is it that being in this country – with the government’s permission at that – is now a crime? Why was I considered to have legal status when it came to paying taxes but not now?”
Quintana came to the United States on a visitor visa for two weeks in 2019, and returned to Peru within the required time, according to his family. In August 2021, he returned to the United States on another visitor visa.
At that time, his family said, they received a letter containing death threats against him and his family stemming from his work as a journalist. Quintana said that’s when he decided to request asylum – a move his family supported for his safety. He was granted authorization to remain in the country and work here.
On July 20, he was selling ceviche on the beach when he was approached by local police. He was taken to the county jail and issued a fine, which he paid. Upon his release, he was turned over to ICE agents, who accused him of having overstayed his 2019 visa, he said, adding that he wasn’t given an opportunity to present the necessary documents needed to prove otherwise.
He was transported to Alligator Alcatraz, a converted airstrip at the abandoned Dade-Collier airport in the marshy Everglade wetlands just west of Miami. The center has a capacity of about 3,000 people and is among several ICE facilities erected to expand immigrant detention capacity under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
In response to a lawsuit by environmental groups, a federal judge on Thursday ordered that detainees be moved out of the facility within 60 days, no longer accept new detainees and that equipment such as generators and fencing be dismantled.
“En una miseria increíble,” Quintana said Thursday, recounting that it took 12 hours to be processed into the facility – all while shackled. Eventually he was placed in a 13-by-10-foot cell with about 30 other people. The facility was overcrowded and dirty, he said, and the meals were like dog food. “It’s unbelievably miserable.”
He said he – like many others – weren’t told why they were being transferred to Texas. At the Northeast El Paso facility, he said, staff were generally nicer and more tolerant than in Florida. But detainees were still demeaned, he said.
Nights are always the worst, he said.
“Los llantos y gritos de la gente desesperada te rompe el corazón, especialmente porque sabemos que la mayoría de los que estamos aquí no deberíamos,” he said. “The cries and screams of desperate people break your heart, especially because we know that the majority of those here shouldn’t be.”
Civil rights organizations such as ACLU Texas, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Border Network for Human Rights have denounced what they call inhumane conditions at the detention facilities, also protesting that they’re being built on military bases with Department of Defense dollars.
On Thursday, the groups gathered alongside the veterans organization Common Defense in El Paso, saying in a statement that converting the base into an immigration detention center is “a betrayal of our values, a misuse of resources, and a stain on our nation.” The groups pointed out that a tent facility leaves detainees exposed to brutal heat and sandstorms.
“Military bases are meant to protect our freedoms, not cage human beings,” Common Defense's Lead Texas Organizer and Air Force veteran Britni Cuington said in a statement. “The fact that ICE is detaining people at Fort Bliss is disgraceful and unacceptable.”
Waiting to be sent home
For Quintana, the site of a detention center is not a concern as much as being locked up not knowing where he stands or where he might be sent next.
Quintana said he wants to self-deport rather than wait to be officially removed, which can take much longer than the alternative, he said. Under voluntary departure, he’d be allowed to leave at his own expense and on his own terms. A forced removal, or deportation, carries consequences such as reentry bans.
The wait might be especially long since deportation flights to Peru are much less frequent. In July 2025, four deportation flights to Peru were recorded – compared with 54 to Guatemala, the highest for any receiving country that month, according to an ICE flight monitor known as Witness at the Border, now under the organization Human Rights First.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January through July, 1,036 deportation flights have been recorded – an increase of 15% over the same time the previous year, according to the flight monitor.
At the same time, detentions of immigrants continue on the rise: As of Aug. 10, more than 59,000 people were in ICE detention – 70% without any criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, or TRAC. The majority of detainees – over 13,000 – are in Texas.
TRAC isn’t yet reporting the number of detainees at the East Montana facility, but another ICE detention center in East El Paso had an average daily population of just over 800 in early August. The tent facility in Northeast reported just under 200 at that time.
Quintana, a longtime reporter and editor who last worked for Digital TV Peru, graduated from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima and the Universidad de San Martin de Porres, earning communication and journalism degrees. He said men of all ages and backgrounds are being detained at the East Montana facility.
He said his heart breaks most for the young men who braved traversing thousands of miles across dangerous countries with the goal of working and earning a little money to send home. Now they’re imprisoned, he said, and they’re too young to understand why.
Journalist’s case gets news, government attention
For Quintana, his reporting background has helped his story get news coverage in his home country, he said, prompting his case to be discussed in a foreign relations committee hearing by the Peruvian congress Aug. 18. Committee members said that the government should seek to help Peruvians detained not just in authoritarian countries, but in democratic countries where they’re essentially being disappeared.
Sadith Tavara, Quintana’s wife, said journalism has always been a way of life for him. “He’s a police investigative journalist and he’s very passionate about his profession, about ensuring that people know the truth,” Tavara told El Paso Matters.
Quintana’s family had struggled to find an attorney, particularly as he’s been moved around so much. On Friday, he talked to an attorney who is now working to get his case file from Florida to set up a hearing, Tavara said.
“We’re a little more hopeful, but we won’t be at ease until he’s home,” Tavara said.
Tavara said the family most fears that he’ll remain locked up longer than his mental health can handle – or that he’ll be deported to a country other than Peru. Their hope, she said, is that he’s allowed to self-deport soon.
“A place like that can break anyone,” she said, adding that being jailed in a foreign country where he’s unwanted has been difficult for her husband. “We want him back.”
Quintana’s sister, Monica, called his situation, like that of many others, a violation of civil rights.
“Everything that is happening is devastating for families who are undergoing the same travesty,” she said.
She said she’s been able to talk to her brother almost daily. On days she doesn’t hear from him, she fears the worst. On a recent call, she said, he broke down and there was little she could say to comfort him.
“You just don’t know, “ she said, “and not knowing is the worst.”
In his call with El Paso Matters, Quintana said he has changed his perspective about the United States.
“Estoy viviendo la pesadilla americana,” he said. “I’m living the American nightmare.”
“No pienso regresar nunca más en mi vida,” he added. “I don’t plan to ever return in my lifetime.”
Quintana said he had planned to return to Peru soon: His ailing mother is 81 and has had heart complications.
On Aug. 10, his family was being interviewed by a Peruvian news organization, Cuarto Poder, when he called his mother to check in.
“Tranquila, mami, tranquila. Ya pronto nos veremos las caras o sea lo que quiera Dios.
Cuidate,” he told her as she sobbed. “Remain calm, mami, remain calm. We will see each other face-to-face soon, God willing. Take care of yourself.”
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Fresh off Texas Senate’s approval, new congressional map is target of lawsuits
By Colleen DeGuzman, The Texas Tribune
Aug. 23, 2025
"Fresh off Texas Senate’s approval, new congressional map is target of lawsuits" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Hours after the Texas Senate approved a new congressional map early Saturday morning that more heavily favors Republicans — legislation Gov. Greg Abbott plans to “swiftly” sign into law — a lawsuit against the governor was filed, alleging that the redrawn districts are racially discriminatory.
The 67-page complaint against Abbott and Secretary of State Jane Nelson supplements legal action filed by LULAC in 2021 challenging the state’s original maps and argues that redrawing districts mid-decade is unconstitutional.
[Texas redistricting map: How the GOP could increase its stronghold]
Redistricting usually happens at the start of the decade after U.S. census data comes out. The complaint argues that because the new map was drawn based on the same data used for the initial map passed by the Legislature in 2021, the measure was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
“Even if racial and partisan considerations are an unavoidable part of redistricting, there is no need for legislatures to take those considerations into account a second time in a single decade,” the complaint reads.
The complaint, which is expected to be followed by others targeting House Bill 4, was filed by two law firms on behalf of 13 Texas residents collectively called “the Gonzales plaintiffs.” The bulk of their argument is that the new congressional map “dismantles majority-minority districts” by prioritizing Republican representation in Congress.
The NAACP, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Mexican American Legislative Caucus joined LULAC in two additional supplemental suits against Abbott on Monday and Tuesday, also calling the maps unconstitutional and "intentionally discriminatory."
Reference
The 67-page complaint filed on behalf of 13 Texas residents.(1.3 MB)
Abbott’s office defended the maps, stating that it allows “more Texans to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Andrew Mahaleris, the governor’s press secretary, said Monday in a prepared statement.
“Voters, especially Hispanic Texans, are increasingly moving away from Democrats and deserve to vote for candidates who better align with their values,” Mahaleris added, later calling claims that the maps discriminatory “absurd.”
On the Senate floor Friday, Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford who carried HB 4 in the upper chamber, said the plan “meets the critically important goals of legality, of political performance for Republicans and of improved compactness,” and that he did not consider racial population data while crafting it.
Republicans pushed for the new map with their eyes set on gaining five more seats in Congress after pressure from President Donald Trump, who wants to preserve the GOP’s slim U.S. House majority in the 2026 midterms. But the complaint says that effort came at the cost of Latino and Black communities, which have largely supported Democratic candidates.
The new lines squeeze more Democratic voters in Houston and Dallas into districts the minority party already controls — a strategy known as “packing.” The Republican-backed map also “cracks” left-leaning communities by splitting voters who supported Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 into Republican districts, according to an analysis by The Texas Tribune.
The complaint was filed by two law firms, The Law Office of Max Renea Hicks and the Elias Law Group, the firm of prominent Democratic attorney Marc Elias. They also allege that the new maps violate the Voting Rights Act for not creating enough Latino-majority districts to match the growth of Texas’ Latino population.
For example, the complaint points to Harris County, where the new map carves out only one district that’s majority Latino, although the county is nearly half Latino, according to the latest U.S. census.
The census also confirmed that Latinos make up the largest share of Texas’ population, and that Texans of color made up 95% of the state’s population growth in the last decade — but that’s not reflected in the new congressional map, the complaint alleges.
With the new district lines, the lawsuit charges, lawmakers are “intentionally destroying majority-minority districts and replacing them with majority-Anglo districts.”
Democratic lawmakers have waged a lively battle to fend off the GOP’s proposed map since Abbott announced that the first special session in July would include redistricting. House Democrats fled the state halfway through the first session, breaking the lower chamber’s quorum and halting all operations. But the members returned to Austin at the start of the second session.
And on Friday, state Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, signaled her intention to filibuster the map well into Saturday. Republicans, however, ended the debate on HB 4, killing her effort. Lawmakers also listened to hours of hearings from Texans across the state who pleaded with them to leave their districts alone.
The complaint and others that are sure to follow are a sign that Democrats and civil rights groups will continue to fight the implementation of the maps ahead of the 2026 election.
The National Redistricting Foundation, which brought LULAC’s initial lawsuit, is also directing this new case.
“Texas’s existing map already dilutes the voting power of communities of color,” Marina Jenkins, the foundation’s executive director, said in a news release.
“In spite of that, the state has doubled down with an even more extreme racial gerrymander that goes even further to pack and crack communities of color and minimize the number of congressional districts where minority voters have the ability to elect candidates of their choice,” she later said. “The court has already agreed to consider expediting this case, and we are confident that justice will be delivered for Texans.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/23/texas-congressional-map-lawsuit/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Wise County voters asked to consider new electric authority
If approved by voters, the authority would work directly with large businesses that seek to build their own power plants in Wise County.
by Matt Busse August 27, 2025
Matt Busse
When voters in Wise County head to the polls in November, they’ll be asked to vote on an issue unique among Virginia localities this year.
“Shall Wise County, Virginia, participate as a member of an electric authority created by the County to operate within the County?”
If voters approve its creation, the electric authority would not replace residents getting their electricity from Appalachian Power or Old Dominion Power, both of which serve Wise County.
Rather, it would work directly with large industries that want to come to the county and build their own power plants because they require lots of electricity, Wise County Administrator Mike Hatfield said.
“It’s important for future economic development in the county,” Hatfield said.
The authority would ensure that these hypothetical industries pay for any new power plants that they need so county residents wouldn’t be on the hook, he said.
Members would be appointed by the board of supervisors, but details such as how many members would sit on the authority and how long their terms would be have yet to be determined, Hatfield said.
Hatfield said conversations about potentially creating an electric authority have been in the works for about a year.
The idea grew out of concerns that Old Dominion Power would not be able to supply enough electricity for a large industrial user, he said.
“This is really more preemptive than it is anything, but people we have talked to, their biggest concern is the lack of available power,” Hatfield said. “And so if they can generate their own power, if we can help them with that by having an electric utility, then that puts us in a better spot to bring in industry that would have zero impact on the electrical grid for the people in the county.”
Old Dominion Power serves about 28,000 Southwest Virginia customers in Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott and Wise counties. It’s the Virginia arm of Kentucky Utilities, which has a larger footprint with more than 500,000 additional electricity customers in Kentucky.
In an email to Cardinal News, company spokesperson Liz Pratt did not directly comment on the Wise County proposal but noted that Old Dominion Power draws electricity from a 7,200-megawatt power generation portfolio in Kentucky that is slated for expansion.
Along with Louisville Gas & Electric, Kentucky Utilities is a subsidiary of Allentown, Pennsylvania-based PPL Corp. The utilities have “several major capacity and enhancement projects currently underway to support overall load growth across our service areas,” Pratt said.
Those projects, which are in various stages of development, include three new 645-megawatt natural gas plants and two 120-megawatt solar facilities.
“We welcome opportunities to partner with the communities we serve to ensure we’re meeting their needs, now and for decades to come,” Pratt said. “The growth of new and expanding energy-intensive industries, including major manufacturing and data centers, and customers’ overall energy needs are analyzed as part of our long-term planning processes.”
Hatfield declined to specify whether Wise County officials have a particular industry in mind with regards to the proposed electric authority.
Nonetheless, recent conversations in Virginia about potentially building new power plants specifically to serve large industrial electricity users have often focused on data centers.
Data centers are, generally speaking, large buildings full of computer servers that run a variety of online services from Amazon to ChatGPT to Google to Zelle. They used about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report.
Wise County is no stranger to data centers. It’s home to DP Facilities’ 65,000-square-foot Mineral Gap Data Center in the county’s Lonesome Pine Regional Business and Technology Park.
Mineral Gap has access to up to 45 megawatts of power from Old Dominion Power and also is supported by a 3.5-megawatt solar installation built on land previously mined for coal.
Wise County is also where the nonprofit Energy DELTA Lab is establishing a “Data Center Ridge” on 450 acres for future data center development.
Wise County officials have expressed openness to small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. Such reactors are designed to be smaller than traditional nuclear reactors, but none have yet been deployed commercially in the United States.
Hatfield said the county doesn’t have SMRs in mind with the proposed electric authority. The county would be more interested in a natural gas power plant, he said.
One example of the model of co-locating a data center with natural gas power generation is in Ashland, where energy infrastructure developer LS Power hopes to sell up to 300 megawatts of power to a potential data center client next to its power plant, according to the industry publication Utility Dive.
Another example could have been developed in Pittsylvania County, where Herndon-based Balico initially proposed building a campus of dozens of data center buildings alongside a 3,500-megawatt gas plant. That proposal was scaled back and then withdrawn in April.
The Wise County Board of Supervisors voted at its June 12 meeting to petition the circuit court to add the electric authority referendum to the November ballot.
Election Day is Nov. 4. Voters in Wise County and elsewhere in Virginia will be asked to choose the commonwealth’s next governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. All 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for grabs. Some localities have local offices on the ballot.
Wise County’s referendum is one of six on Virginia ballots. The others ask voters whether to issue bonds for capital projects in Loudoun County, whether to change Northumberland County’s elected school board to an appointed board, and whether to change how city councilors in Virginia Beach are elected.
Google Expands Data Center Investment in Virginia, Doesn’t Share Site Specifics
Considered the data center capital of the world, Virginia will see more of big tech’s energy- and water-intensive facilities.
By Charles Paullin
August 27, 2025
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
CHESTER, Va.—And just like that, there’s another data center to be built in Virginia by one of the richest companies in the world, Google.
Except, instead of being located in the data-center-dense region of Northern Virginia outside the nation’s capital, this massive server farm is on the drawing board a couple of hours south, just outside Richmond in Chesterfield County.
“Today, all of us are demonstrating that cutting-edge technology can thrive in every corner of the commonwealth and every corner of the country,” said Ruth Porat, chief investment officer at Google and its parent company, Alphabet, at an announcement of a $9 billion investment by the company in Virginia.
Porat spoke at Brightpoint Community College, describing an investment that will be used across the state, at existing data centers in Loudoun and Prince William counties in Northern Virginia, as well as at the new center proposed in Chesterfield County.
Other recent Google investments in Virginia include a data center in Botetourt County, in southwest Virginia. In July, the tech company announced a partnership with the state to offer 10,000 scholarships that residents can use to learn AI and other job certification skills. Within six weeks of the announcement, about 4,500 people signed up, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said at Wednesday’s announcement.
But details on the specifications of the Chesterfield County warehouse-like facility that will house the computers processing Google’s artificial intelligence and internet functions are scant, which is also the case with the proposed Botetourt County facility—and Google officials declined to go into detail about either facility. The timeline to build the data center in Chesterfield County, the size of the structure and how much electricity and water it will need have yet to be publicly disclosed.
Still, Jim A. Ingle, chairman of the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, touted Google’s support for Chesterfield County’s schools and YMCA—a sentiment echoed by Youngkin.
“Having a company of Google’s caliber in Chesterfield County solidifies our position that’s a hub for innovation and economic development,” Ingle said.
Youngkin, an ally of President Donald Trump, said that AI is “at the heart of the future of business, from the manufacturing floor to marketing to financing … it’s everywhere. … I look forward to spreading it across all [of Virginia’s] students.”
Youngkin also said he’s “a big advocate” for the data centers that power AI.
“Why? They bring enormous investments, they bring a great tax base, they have great jobs” and they hire people who earn very good salaries, said Youngkin.
Still, construction of the massive data facilities raises numerous vexing questions about whether the energy-intensive server farms will be powered with renewables or fossil fuels, who will pay for the electric grid upgrades and how much water they will require to cool server networks that run non-stop, seven days a week.
Data centers in 2023 demanded just over 10,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in Virginia. An expected increase to just over 30,000 gigawatt hours by 2040, if there weren’t barriers to build them, is partly why Dominion Energy, the state’s largest utility, is proposing a natural gas plant in Chesterfield County that would provide electricity to the grid during peak demand periods. The company is also undergoing a customer rate review to assign more costs to the industry for contracted periods.
Critics say the tech companies pursuing multiple sites for data centers inflate demand projections, which in turn calls into question a utility’s claim that dirty fossil fuels are needed for reliability, instead of investments in renewable energy, battery storage and electricity conservation measures from the industry and residents.
According to Amber Tillman, a spokesperson for Google’s data center arm, the company is committed to 100 percent carbon-free electricity 24/7 by 2030 and that 95 percent of its operations in Northern Virginia have already achieved that goal.
How much of that electricity will come from solar and wind—as opposed to more speculative new nuclear technologies—isn’t clear, Tillman said in response to an Inside Climate News question.
Porat, earlier in the announcement, said the company last year had reduced its “data center emissions by 12 percent even as our electricity consumption grew.”
Tillman said Google’s energy projections do not currently include carbon-free electricity that could be realized from another company investment in a proposed nuclear fusion plant to be built in Chesterfield County by Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
Traditional nuclear power plants, and yet-to-be built small modular nuclear reactors, rely on a fission process, which splits atoms from mined uranium to create electricity while also producing radioactive waste. The fusion process, still considered years away from commercial viability, if it is ever perfected, melds hydrogen atoms together, like the sun, to create electricity without generating long-lived nuclear waste.
“It’s a future investment that we’re really excited about, and should it come online, we will commit to be an offtaker of that,” Tillman said.
In terms of how much water data centers require to cool banks of computers, a December 2023 Virginia report found that they consume an amount of water equal to that of a large office building.
In Virginia, Julie Bolthouse, land use director with the Piedmont Environmental Council, said data centers have become efficient with water use, but the increase in AI use through data centers will bring an ever increasing demand for water.
There are alternatives, like air conditioning systems, but Bolthouse noted those would require even more electricity and can’t keep up with the AI chips heating rates. A data center could also have its own wastewater treatment plant to return water to the ecosystem, but that’s only a percentage of the water used after most of it evaporates in the cooling process.
There are ways to recycle water used in cooling data centers, she said, but that takes water out of the ecosystem, which becomes a concern during periods of drought that are increasing because of climate change.
“Really, what it comes down to is money,” said Bolthouse. “Between the amount of water consumed to cool massive facilities and the companies not being willing to put in the extra dollars to help protect our water supply. That’s the problem.”
Devon Smiley, another Google spokesperson, declined to say if the Chesterfield County data center would have its own water treatment plant, but said that the company is working with the local authority and would soon be making an announcement on water requirements.
Charles Paullin
