Philadelphia police are searching for a man they say walked up to a couple sitting on a porch and opened fire late Sunday night, killing the woman and injuring the man before fleeing.
Shariff Perry, 35, is charged in an arrest warrant with murder, possession of an illegal firearm, and related crimes in the killing of Michelle Wilson, 61, and the shooting of her 67-year-old husband.
Surveillance video from a business on Sunday captured a man wearing a hat and surgical mask — who police now say is Perry — walking to Wilson’s home in the 2800 block of North 24th Street in North Philadelphia. There, the video showed, the man pulled out a gun and fired repeatedly.
Wilson was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital shortly after the 11:49 p.m. shooting. Her husband was also taken to the hospital, where, police said, he was stable.
Police described Perry as a male, 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and weighing 170 pounds. Anyone with information about Perry or the killing is asked to contact the department’s homicide unit at 215-686-3334 or its tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477). A $20,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to Perry’s arrest and conviction, police said.
Staff writer Ellie Rushing contributed to this article.
Albert James Mamary, 59, of Wynnewood, attending physician and professor of thoracic medicine and surgery at Temple University, researcher, writer, mentor, artist, outdoorsman, craftsman, and amateur bicycling champion, died Thursday, July 9, of cholangiocarcinoma at Temple University Hospital.
A 1999 graduate of Temple’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Dr. Mamary spent his career at Temple and affiliated hospitals. He was an expert in pulmonary disease, transplants, and sleep disorders at the Temple Lung Center, and became program director of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at Temple Hospital in 2006.
He earned a master’s degree in anthropology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and his premedical school credits at the University of Pennsylvania. In a tribute, his family said: “His education in both medicine and anthropology reflected a lifelong belief that caring for a patient required understanding not only the disease but the whole person.”
Over more than three decades at Temple — as a student, resident, fellow, professor, and physician — Dr. Mamary treated thousands of patients, mentored hundreds of students and doctors, lectured in classrooms and at seminars, and wrote more than 60 scientific papers and textbook chapters. He was named a top doctor by Philadelphia Magazine several times and was featured in The Inquirer and on 6abc TV for his lead role in a successful double-lung transplant in 2015.
“It’s been 120 to 145 patients, individual patients that we’ve been able to help every year,” Dr. Mamary told CBS News in 2024. “That’s really the aim here, is to add years of life to patients who otherwise wouldn’t have that opportunity.”
Colleagues called Dr. Mamary a “physician’s physician” and noted his “amazing intelligence and clinical acumen” in tributes. Gerard J. Criner, chair of Temple’s Department of Thoracic Medicine and Surgery, said: “His patients loved him not only for his clinical skills but also for the warmth, compassion, and humanity he brought to every encounter.”
A former patient said online: “He was a calm in the storm of my end stage disease. … The world has lost a hero.”
A former student said: “His kindness, thorough and balanced approach to medicine, and quiet, thoughtful approach to even the most stressful emergencies reminded me of a Jedi master.”
Dr. Mamary and his wife, CeilaSue, married in 1996.Courtesy of the family
Away from the hospital, Dr. Mamary liked to bike, hike, and camp. He built his own 18-foot mahogany canoe, walked the entire 272-mile Long Trail in Vermont, and won masters bicycling championship races.
He also painted and sculpted, and earned a bachelor’s degree in art and psychology at Haverford College. He and his wife, CeliaSue, initiated the Shortridge Memorial Park Arboretum in Wynnewood and earned a 2024 community service award from Narberth and Lower Merion officials.
“James brought wisdom, kindness, curiosity, and genuine joy to every moment,” his wife said.
Albert James Mamary was born June 12, 1967, in Hempstead, N.Y. He grew up in Binghamton, N.Y., became an Eagle Scout, and was a wilderness river guide for the Boy Scouts in Maine during his college years.
Dr. Mamary was an avid bicyclist and won masters championship races. Courtesy of the family
He met CeliaSue Jaffe in class at Haverford, and they married in 1996 and had daughters HannahRose and LilyRuth. They lived in East Falls and Wynnewood, and he rode his bike from home to Penn and then Temple as often as he could.
Dr. Mamary enjoyed traveling, baking, cooking, and gardening. “His specialty is fruits and vegetables, and I grow the flowers,” his wife said.
He followed the Phillies, rescued cats and dogs, and doted on his daughters. Everybody said he was funny and silly.
“He was curious and always learning or doing something new,” his daughter LilyRuth said. “He took joy in simple things.” His daughter HannahRose said: “Even if he wasn’t my dad I would want him as a friend because he was so interesting and so easy to talk to.”
Dr. Mamary was a wilderness river guide for the Boy Scouts in Maine during his college years.Courtesy of the family
Dr. Mamary was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, bile duct cancer, in 2020 and treated by longtime colleagues and friends at Temple, some of whom he had mentored. “It was a profound reflection of the life he lived,” his family said, “that so many of those he had taught ultimately became his caregivers.”
His wife said: “He was a very vibrant and adventurous person but so thoughtful, steady, and reliable. James was incredible.”
A former top official at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a storied civil rights organization at the center of a Justice Department prosecution, was indicted Wednesday in an escalation of the case against the nonprofit, officials said.
Federal prosecutors in Alabama accused Heidi Beirich, the nonprofit’s ex-chief financial officer, of overseeing payments to informants working with a variety of hate groups, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters.
A lawyer for Beirich denounced the allegations as an attempt by the Justice Department to “silence political opponents” and vowed she would fight the charges.
“Violent extremists have not stopped or intimidated Dr. Beirich from her vital work during her time at the SPLC or in the six and a half years after she left the SPLC,” defense lawyer Michael Proctor said in a statement. “Dr. Beirich won’t be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized allegations now. She welcomes the opportunity to present the truth in court.”
In April, Blanche unveiled an 11-count indictment against the SPLC charging it with bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, saying it misled donors by using their money to secretly fund informants in extremist groups.
The organization’s leadership denounced the case as an effort to weaponize the Justice Department against groups unfriendly to President Donald Trump. The SPLC’s donors intended their money to be used to combat extremist groups, they said, and that’s exactly what the informant program did.
The indictment alleged the SPLC had defrauded its donors by paying more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to at least eight individuals working inside groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement. In some cases, prosecutors said, the source of the money was disguised through accounts associated with fictitious businesses.
Beirich, in her role as chief financial officer, oversaw some of those payments, Blanche said.
“She was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate or described,” the attorney general said Wednesday.
Attorneys for the organization have said the SPLC began paying informants to help infiltrate those organizations as a means to protect its staff and gather intelligence on hate groups that posed a threat. Often the information they learned was shared with federal and local law enforcement to advance their investigations, they said.
A spokesperson for the SPLC said earlier this year that the informant program has been discontinued.
The nonprofit has rejected the claim that payments to informants amounted to fraud, saying that donors were well aware of the organization’s work and that the payments to informants furthered that mission.
The SPLC was founded in Montgomery, Ala., in 1971 with the goal of ensuring that civil rights laws passed by Congress and enshrined by the courts would become a reality on the ground. It is known for its efforts to monitor and take legal action against white supremacist groups.
In recent years, the SPLC has become a frequent target of Republican-led congressional inquiries, with conservative critics accusing it of coordinating with the Biden administration to unfairly malign Christians and conservatives exercising their First Amendment rights.
That criticism reached its peak following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year. The SPLC had described the organization he led, Turning Point USA, as emblematic of the “hard right” in a 2024 report on hate and extremist groups. FBI Director Kash Patel announced in October that the bureau was severing ties with the organization, which had long worked with federal agents to identify and provide tips on domestic extremist groups.
Under Trump, the Justice Department has launched criminal investigations of several people and organizations viewed as politically opposed to the president. That includes groups such as ActBlue, Democrats’ main fundraising platform, as well as outspoken critics from Trump’s first administration and law firms that have represented Trump’s political adversaries.
Proctor, Beirich’s attorney, described her Wednesday as a “renowned authority on white supremacist and far-right extremist movements in the United States and abroad” who has testified before Congress and served as an expert witness in prominent court cases.
“Heidi Beirich has dedicated her life to fighting hate groups and extremist movements like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists,” Proctor said in a statement, adding, “Her decades-long record of success dismantling hate groups — and the resulting threats to her life — speak volumes.”
WASHINGTON — Democrats remain mixed over what ideological direction the party should take. But across a series of closely watched primaries, they are sending a clearer message about the party’s path forward: They want change.
In marquee Senate primaries in Michigan and Minnesota, progressive candidates defeated two members of Congress with significant backing from party leaders. Wisconsin voters narrowly rejected a democratic socialist but still chose a 40-year-old county executive who is seeking to become the state’s first Black governor. And in Connecticut, voters ousted one of the longest-serving Democrats in Congress for a challenger who campaigned on generational change.
The results so far this month deliver no clear ideological mandate. Instead, they add to mounting evidence from this year’s primaries of a Democratic appetite for turnover that is cutting across the party’s traditional divisions.
“The through line between these races isn’t ideology. It’s impatience with this political system that feels disconnected from the urgency voters feel,” said Lis Smith, a national Democratic strategist. “The demand for change is much broader than the demand for socialism.”
The immediate challenge for Democrats is whether they can harness the frustration fueling revolts against their own party and turn it against Republicans in November. Beyond that looms the 2028 presidential race, when a new generation of leaders will compete to shape a changing Democratic Party.
“If leaders in our party don’t recognize that we need to make changes, then the changes are going to come from the ground up,” Luke Bronin, a former mayor who defeated 14-term Connecticut Rep. John Larson in Tuesday’s primary, said in his victory speech. “That’s a message our party needs to hear.”
Progressives are ascendant, but Wisconsin shows their limits
Progressive leaders touted Tuesday’s results as further proof that their message is working after victories in Minnesota and Michigan.
“What we are seeing is that people are sick and tired of establishment politics and establishment policies,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told the Associated Press on Wednesday, pointing to a string of progressive victories around the country.
In Wisconsin, Democratic socialist Francesca Hong had hoped to also ride the wave of recent progressive victories to the Democratic nomination for governor. Instead, she narrowly lost to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a more moderate Democrat who had the backing of outgoing Gov. Tony Evers.
Hong’s defeat also came after a number of her past comments resurfaced, including support for defunding the police and a call to cancel Thanksgiving, which she said was a joke. Unlike El-Sayed, Hong didn’t receive the backing of some of the nation’s most prominent progressive leaders, including Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Sanders said Wednesday that he didn’t endorse Hong because his team lacks the resources to “get involved in every single race. Period. And that’s about it.” He nevertheless praised her “very strong grassroots campaign” for getting “a whole lot of people excited.”
The result illustrates a tension for the party’s ascendant left flank. Candidates running on populist economic messages have found growing success with Democratic voters. But some positions associated with the progressive movement’s recent past remain vulnerabilities — particularly among voters worried about electability in November.
“A lot of Democrats are traditionalists on things like culture issues. This is not about culture, it’s about economics. It’s about corruption,” said David Axelrod, who was an adviser to President Barack Obama. “The closer that candidates hew to those issues, the larger the base they’re going to be able to accumulate.”
That tension was evident Tuesday for Sarah Atkins Hoggatt, 61, who said she agreed with Hong on some issues but worried that Hong’s deeply progressive politics and the democratic socialist label would make it harder for her to defeat Republican Tom Tiffany. She voted for Crowley.
“I didn’t vote my heart,” Atkins Hoggatt said.
Progressives scored a much clearer victory in Minnesota, where Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan resoundingly defeated centrist Rep. Angie Craig. Craig had the backing of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other prominent Democrats, while Flanagan was supported by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Flanagan, similar to El-Sayed in Michigan, highlighted her opponent’s support from wealthy donors while also attacking her vote for a Trump-backed immigration bill that became a liability after immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
As in Michigan, the winning progressive candidate was significantly outspent.
“Super PACs spent over $80 million trying to defeat El-Sayed and Peggy Flanagan,” Sanders said. ”They lost both elections. I think what people are saying is, we’re sick and tired of billionaires and their super PACs buying elections.”
Democrats are hungry for change
Flanagan is 46 years old. Crowley is 40. And El-Sayed is 41. But nowhere was the demand for generational change more explicit Tuesday than in Connecticut.
Bronin, 47, defeated the 78-year-old Larson — who was first elected to Congress in 1998. A central theme of Bronin’s campaign was the need for a new generation of leadership in Washington.
Larson became the seventh Democratic House incumbent to lose a primary this year, many of them to younger challengers. The defeated incumbents and the Democrats replacing them span ideological lines, making the wave of losses difficult to explain simply as a shift to the left.
The push for generational turnover has taken on greater urgency since Democrats’ defeats in 2024, when concerns about President Joe Biden’s age ultimately ended his reelection campaign and forced the party into an uncomfortable reckoning over a generation of leaders who had remained in power for decades.
Bronin himself has connected his challenge to that experience. Earlier this year, he argued that Democrats needed “new members of Congress, new Democratic leaders who have the energy and courage and clarity of mission that this moment demands.”
That sentiment was evident among voters in Larson’s district. Dan Schnaidt, a 73-year-old Democrat, said he appreciated Larson’s service but believed it was time to move on.
“It’s time for new blood, for new ideas,” Schnaidt said.
The generational divide extends to the electorate
While Hong fell just short in Wisconsin, the strength of her insurgent campaign highlighted another force reshaping Democratic politics: younger voters.
Cody Chandler, a 35-year-old software engineer, voted for Hong and called her “probably the most exciting candidate I’ve seen.” Unlike in elections past, Chandler said, he voted for the candidate he most wanted to win rather than the one he considered most electable.
Jesse Heer, a 32-year-old Madison business owner, also backed Hong, citing her focus on affordability.
That support showed up geographically. Hong won Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus, by nearly 7 percentage points, though it wasn’t a big enough of a margin to help her win the nomination.
A similar pattern helped propel El-Sayed to victory a week earlier in Michigan.
El-Sayed won Washtenaw County, home to the University of Michigan, by nearly 25 percentage points and Ingham County, home to Michigan State University, by 23 points. He also won Grand Rapids, with its large population of younger, college-educated voters, by nearly 26 points.
Jordan Snyder, a 20-year-old Michigan voter who supported El-Sayed, said she backed him because of his progressive positions and because she viewed him as someone she could trust, rather than “someone who I feel could be bought and sold.”
“People are feeling like a lot of the people that they’ve trusted that have been in government haven’t really been living up to expectations,” Snyder said.
A former cardiac thoracic surgeon at one of Main Line Health’s flagship programs says in a federal lawsuit that he was fired after reporting a series of bad patient outcomes.
Gianluca Torregrossa accuses the nonprofit hospital system in the Philadelphia suburbs of failing to thoroughly investigate a pattern of complications among the patients of another senior surgeon, including one instance that led to a heart transplant.
The Italian physician attempted to have the cases reviewed multiple times during his tenure, which was just short of five years, but instead Torregrossa was marginalized by hospital leadership, suspended, and eventually terminated before the end of his contract, according to the suit.
The termination caused issues with the physician’s visa, which required him to return to Italy without his wife and daughter while he got his new visa in order, according to the complaint. Torregrossa, who began working at Cleveland Clinic in June, says he also lost wages during the three-month period and his reputation suffered.
“Cardiac surgery is a small professional field, and news of his suspension and termination spread nationally and internationally, creating questions about his professional standing despite his clinical outcomes and subsequent employment by Cleveland Clinic,” the suit says.
Torregrossa’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit, filed July 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, names only Main Line Health as a defendant. The health system declined to comment on the active litigation.
“Main Line Health’s Robotic Cardiac Vascularization Program is an important part of our commitment to providing advanced surgical care,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The program helps ensure patients have access to specialized surgical expertise and innovative, minimally invasive treatment options close to home.”
Torregrossa was recruited by the Montgomery County hospital system in 2021 to assist in expanding the robotic heart surgery programbased at Lankenau Medical Center, the lawsuit says.
The opportunity to join Main Line Health was lucrative. The surgeon signed a five-year contract starting at $800,000 a year, plus bonus, according to the lawsuit.
Main Line Health is a national leader in a robotic procedure to replace a clogged artery with a new one, known as coronary artery bypass graft, which is the most commonly performed heart surgery in the United States. But at Main Line it is often performed in an uncommon way.
Shortly after joining Main Line Health, Torregrossa became concerned about the outcomes of patients whom Sutter operated on robotically that the physician believed were preventable, the suit said.
Torregrossa asked in 2023 for a review of seven of Sutter’s cases, the complaint says, but a team discussed them “only superficially, no meaningful follow-up was initiated, and the pattern of complications involving a single surgeon was not examined.”
The physician continued to raise concerns over allegedly preventable complications through 2025, as well as ethical breaches in patient assignment at the program, according to the complaint.
The Inquirer was unable to reach Sutter, who retired in July, based on publicly available records.
Michael Carboine (left), physician assistant, and Jeff Roman (right), scrub nurse, watches the monitor as lead surgeon Francis Sutter moves the robotic instruments in the patient’s heart on Monday, June 26, 2023. Lankenau Hospital, part of Main Line Health, uses robotic coronary bypass surgeries at a higher percent than other hospitals.Allie Ippolito / Staff Photographer
Following his internal reports, the suit says, Torregrossa was marginalized by leaders of the program and hospital.
Human resources opened an investigation into Torregrossa based on a comment he had made in a brief recruitment interview, according to the complaint. The documents do not repeat the comment or provide more context to what was said.
“That HR event reflected a broader pattern in which routine professional interactions involving Dr. Torregrossa were escalated against him, while more serious concerns involving others, like patient safety, were not meaningfully investigated,” the lawsuit says.
In November 2025, the hospital system told Torregrossa that his contract would not be renewed past June 30, the suit says.
Torregrossa continued to push internally for reviews, but his pleas fell on deaf ears, according to the complaint. In January, he submitted an external patient safety report to the Pennsylvania Licensing System and the Joint Commission, a hospital accreditation organization, which conducted a surprise visit to Lankenau shortly after.
The surgeon also circulated an anonymous letter about the Sutter cases in question, the suit says without saying who were the recipients.
Sutter’s medical license is active and Pennsylvania Department of State records show no disciplinary history. Lankenau has passed a series of Pennsylvania Department of Health inspections since January that found the hospital in compliance.
Main Line Health placed Torregrossa on administrative leave in February and barred him from accessing the system’s hospitals and clinics. The system accused him of disparaging the health system during a presentation and engaging in unprofessional conduct.
The lawsuit says both excuses were false and pretextual, leading to his March termination.
The complaint accuses Main Line Health of violating the Pennsylvania whistleblower protection law and breaching his employment agreement. It asks for damages in an unspecified amount greater than $75,000.
“Being removed from practice for approximately three months deprived him of the ability to operate, teach, proctor, maintain case volume, and continue refining a rare and demanding surgical technique,” the lawsuit says.
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo is on track to surpass the deadliest one in history, which erupted over a decade ago and killed over 11,000 people, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
“At its current pace, it’s on track to eclipse the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. That outbreak horrified the world and jolted efforts to develop a vaccine.
The outbreak in eastern Congo, considered the fastest-growing one yet, has killed over 2,000 people out of more than 4,300 cases. The outbreak was declared on May 15, but health authorities now say sequencing showed it began months earlier, in February.
It is unlike recent Ebola outbreaks because the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for it has no approved vaccines or treatments, though efforts to address that are underway.
WHO says this outbreak ‘had a big head start’
Experts say this outbreak is moving faster than efforts to track and manage it in a remote part of eastern Congo facing ongoing conflict, near the borders with South Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda.
Most new cases and deaths are being reported in communities outside the reach of health workers in a region of poor infrastructure and ill-equipped health centers. Some workers have gone on strike over lack of pay. Misinformation about the virus circulates in communities where some are wary of outsiders, keeping some people from clinics.
“The outbreak had a big head start, still way ahead of us, and we’re playing catch-up,” Tedros said.
Abdirahman Mahamud, WHO’s director for health emergency alert and response operations, said the agency expects the peak of the outbreak to be reached in six months.
“But … that’s the moderate scenario,” Mahamud said. “There is a one-case scenario where this outbreak may last nine months to 12 months.”
This Ebola outbreak has killed more people at a faster rate than any other, including the 2014-2016 outbreak that had at least 28,000 cases. That one took about eight months to reach 1,000 deaths.
Two vaccines for this type are being tested
Ebola is rare but highly contagious and can be contracted from bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and from contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing. The disease it causes is severe and often fatal.
Clinical trials of two possible treatments for this type of Ebola began last month in Ituri, the most affected of the five provinces in Congo where cases have been reported.
Two vaccines developed specifically for the Bundibugyo virus are now being tested in people for the first time, Tedros said Wednesday.
WHO also plans to test whether an existing Ebola vaccine could protect people against the virus after studies in animals showed promising results.
The origins of the outbreak are becoming increasingly clear.
A study published in Nature Medicine on Monday added evidence that the outbreak began when the virus jumped from an infected animal to a person, rather than stemming from earlier outbreaks. Researchers found the virus is genetically different from versions seen in Bundibugyo Ebola outbreaks in 2007 and 2012.
CENTERVILLE, Texas — Nikki Meador grew up here in East Texas. She’s a lifelong conservative and a three-time Trump voter unaccustomed to activism. That’s mostly because there’s never been much to protest in rural Leon County.
That changed when the nurse practitioner heard data centers were coming.
“We are the people who built this community, and we intend to pass it down to our children. We deserve protection, not to be sacrificed for outside investment. Industrialization is irreversible,” said Meador, 43.
Meador, wearing a camo green T-shirt bearing the state’s unofficial motto, “Come and take it,” was among several dozen attending the county commissioners’ regular meeting on a recent Monday.
“We’re asking you to consider the long-term cost to taxpayers, the environmental and safety risks, the permanent loss of what makes this place home,” she said.
Ann McCoslin (from left), her cousin Daniel McCoslin, and Nikki Meador walk on Meador’s Leon County property, which is next to the proposed site of a power plant expected to fuel a proposed data center. Antranik Tavitian
Texas conservatives love free markets, the energy industry, development, and small government. But in scores of deep-red Texas communities such as Leon County, longtime Republican voters are setting aside those principles to battle an onslaught of data center projects that pro-business GOP leaders initially welcomed.
Opposition to data centers has been notably bipartisan in communities across the country. But the fierce pushback from conservatives in Texas has required no help from liberal groups, and it has been felt everywhere from the state GOP’s new party platform to the campaigns of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott, Republicans who now support varying degrees of increased data center regulation.
At the GOP convention in June, the platform included a new plank that would require data centers to disclose and finance infrastructure needs without shifting costs to residents; prioritize the use of reclaimed water; and protect aquifers and the state’s electrical grid.
Patrick, a staunch Trump ally, has made AI regulation a priority for the next legislative session in January.
On the campaign trail, Abbott and other elected officials speak openly about restraining data centers. On Aug. 3, Abbott announced he is requiring audits of every data center seeking power from the Texas grid before they can connect. On Aug. 6 and 7, he announced that several data center companies had agreed to state audits.
“I established clear guardrails to ensure data centers protect our electric grid, conserve our water, respect our neighborhoods and pay their own way,” Abbott said in a Monday post on X, noting OpenAI had agreed to comply with the new Texas standards. “They must not pass costs on to Texas families or interfere with their quality of life.”
Still, Meador said Abbott has not done enough to stop data centers.
“He’s just trying to scramble because he realizes he’s basically making rural Texas mad, and that’s where a lot of his votes come from,” she said, dismissing the governor’s audits as “very vague.”
Meador said she won’t vote for Abbott and instead might vote for a Democrat for the first time — Gina Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin and South Texas — because “she’s against data centers in rural areas.”
Donna Hull stakes an anti-data-center sign on her property, which is next to a proposed data center, in Leon County. Antranik Tavitian
In Leon County, population 17,000, where 88% of voters like Meador chose Donald Trump last election, residents have been frustrated to learn how little their local GOP elected officials can do to stop the projects being proposed. Until now, the largest industries Leon County had were oil and gas, a steel plant, and chicken farms, which drew much less opposition.
Last month, commissioners refused an application from Crusoe Technologies for tax breaks for its proposed 800-acre, $34 billion data center, citing an incomplete submission. But Crusoe can reapply or build without the tax breaks, and commissioners said they’ll be helpless to block the project because the county — unlike many cities — has only narrow zoning authority to regulate places like landfills, liquor stores, and adult video stores.
Commissioners attempted to reassure residents that they, too, were troubled by the Crusoe project, which is expected to break ground within a year and cost the county $4 million to $5 million in added services.
Commissioner Thomas Jefferson “T.J.” Foley noted that he is responsible for the volunteer fire department, lives within 600 feet of one of the proposed power plants expected to fuel the data center, and worries about how the county will cope with their increased demand for resources and services, especially if there’s a disaster at the massive sites.
“Leon County and no rural county is prepared to handle this,” he said. “Until there is a catastrophe and one of these things blows up, there’s probably nothing we can say.”
“That’s not very comforting,” a man shouted from the audience.
Residents listen during a town hall meeting about data centers at the Jewett Civic Center in Leon County last month.Antranik Tavitian
Leon County GOP Chair Carol Milder is emblematic of the shift among conservatives when it comes to opposition to data centers.
The retired real estate appraiser’s father worked on an oil rig. Growing up in Houston, she saw the oil and gas industry build the middle class. But attending a panel on data centers at the state GOP convention in June in Houston awakened her to the differences between the industries.
Panel experts, including her neighbor Michael Rice, 46, who used to work at an Austin data center, explained that unlike oil rigs and refineries, data centers bring few jobs — 40 proposed so far in Leon County — and even those are often staffed by workers from elsewhere. Milder and others at the commissioners’ meeting said they resented paying taxes only to see data centers initially get tax exemptions, effectively subsidized by residents the way manufacturing and solar industries have been.
She told the commissioners: “We’re being held hostage for the money for them to build.”
“We’re trying to be as prepared as we can,” said Commissioner Kyle Workman, a construction consultant. He said that unlike in Texas cities, the unincorporated community’s limited government — which many in the audience historically favored — left commissioners with few tools to block the data centers. “Leon County has kept government down over the years,” Workman said. “There’s limits to what we can do.”
Michael Rice points out proposed data center sites during the town hall meeting at the Jewett Civic Center last month.Antranik Tavitian
Residents said they thought that was precisely why data center companies were targeting rural areas. Of the nearly 248 data center projects proposed statewide, nearly half are in unincorporated rural areas where zoning and other restrictions cannot be used to block them.
And residents worried that any state legislation that might help defend against the projects would not pass until late next year — too late to block the data center proposed by Crusoe and others expected to follow. Belltown Power has proposed building a 900-acre data center in Leon County, and Black Mountain — another North Texas-based company — bought property and announced plans to build a massive power plant there.
Milder said she alerted an adviser to the governor this year about growing local opposition in counties such as Leon. She reminded him that a majority of the state’s 254 counties are rural and that they are a key part of Abbott and the GOP’s conservative base.
“Texas is red because of rural Texans, and we need to be listened to,” Milder told him. “You need to be concerned with what concerns us. And we’re being raped and pillaged.”
Leon County GOP Chair Carol Milder. Antranik Tavitian
Texas is poised to overtake Virginia as the nation’s top data center hub by 2030. A recent poll found 56% of Texans oppose data centers being built in their communities.
“They love our farmland because it’s flat, it’s clear, there’s water and electricity there, and they can just come in and start building,” GOP Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said at an anti-data-center protest outside the state Capitol in Austin recently. The small crowd chanted, “Special session now!”
After hailing Texas as “the epicenter of AI development” last fall, Abbott recently reversed course as he campaigns for reelection to a record fourth term, urging state lawmakers to repeal the centers’ sales tax exemptions and regulate where they can be built. Last month, he ordered the state Public Utility Commission and council managing the electrical grid that covers most of the state to enforce restrictions on data centers, including requiring them to “fully fund the costs of electric infrastructure.”
“We must prohibit them from building AI data centers in rural Texas neighborhoods,” Abbott said at a campaign stop about 90 miles north of Centerville on June 30.
By the end of July, the governor announced that the state had “begun sweeping changes to how data centers pay for the infrastructure needed to serve them, ensuring data centers do not shift those costs onto everyday Texans or place unnecessary strain on our state’s resources.”
But Miller and Leon County conservatives said those stepped-up regulations are not enough. They want Abbott to call a special legislative session — as he has in recent years for conservative priorities such as school vouchers, congressional redistricting and property tax cuts — to pause data center development and increase regulations and oversight.
A spokesman for the governor declined to comment about whether Abbott will call for a special session on data centers.
“Governor Abbott has been clear that data centers cannot come before Texas families,” spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement, noting that the state regulators’ new requirements “protect Texans from higher costs and negative impacts on their communities.”
Andrew Schmitt, a spokesman for Crusoe, said: “Crusoe is committed to protecting the natural resources and character of every community where we operate, while ensuring local families benefit from our economic investment for generations to come. We are working closely with local leaders as we evaluate development in Leon County to address community needs and deliver jobs for local workers along with significant new tax revenue for schools, public safety, and infrastructure.”
Daniel McCoslin stands next to family photos dating back to when his ancestors settled Texas. Antranik Tavitian
Daniel McCoslin, 48, is a retired railroad engineer who fought with the Marines in Iraq. He ranches land that’s been in his family since the 1800s and that abuts the proposed Belltown data center site. A relative’s ranch borders the Crusoe site. That’s why McCoslin — a libertarian who voted for Trump three times — organized a local anti-data-center group to educate neighbors.
McCoslin dismissed Abbott’s recent data center regulations as “pandering.” In November he plans to vote for a Democrat for the first time in his life. Clayton Tucker, a rancher running for agriculture commissioner as the anti-data-center candidate, has called for a data center moratorium.
When data center companies started offering neighbors up to $50,000 an acre — “life-changing money” — McCoslin recalls talk at the feed store turning to whether folks would take the millions. McCoslin was adamant he would not.
“Family means a lot more than money,” he said.
The evening after the commissioners’ meeting, McCoslin helped organize a town hall to update neighbors. The crowd that settled into folding chairs at a local community center included plenty of retirees, at least one of them in a MAGA hat. There were also workers, some in volunteer firefighter T-shirts, others in straw cowboy hats and boots with spurs.
Mandy Williams holds onto her daughter Violet as she gets out of a hay harvester in Centerville. Antranik Tavitian
Organizers used a projector to display maps of the proposed data centers and power plant, and fielded questions about potential environmental and economic effects: How many jobs will they bring, and for whom? Will they pollute the ground and water? Are they expected to decrease property values? Can they be stopped?
Organizers displayed phone numbers and emails for Abbott and other state and local GOP lawmakers. They urged residents to contact the officials with data center concerns.
“We’ll be calling,” said Mandy Williams, 46, as she left the meeting with her husband and towheaded 4-year-old daughter, Violet, in a “Cowgirl forever” T-shirt.
The couple live on the eastern side of the county on a cattle ranch of more than 200 acres. Stephen Williams’s ancestors settled the land when Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836, nine years before it became a state. Like many other Texans, owning land is part of his identity, a birthright he feels a duty to steward.
“Hopefully we get enough pressure on him,” Stephen Williams, 46, said of the governor.
When commissioners met Monday, they did not take action on the tax breaks and told residents that Crusoe had yet to reapply, Milder said.
Back at his modest ranch house, McCoslin pointed to turn-of-the-century black-and-white portraits of his ancestors taken under the oaks just steps away.
“At night, you can hear how quiet it is and see so many stars,” he said, describing his evening routine of settling outside to smoke a cigar and sip bourbon, his only soundtrack the crickets, frogs and occasional coyote. “We don’t want 24-hour industrial hum and lights destroying the sky. If I wanted that, I’d live in Houston.”
BEIJING — Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, the impatient, sharp-tongued reformer who helped ignite China’s explosive economic boom by forcing wrenching change on state industry in the 1990s and leading the country into the World Trade Organization, has died of illness, state media reported Wednesday. He was 97.
Mr. Zhu died in Beijing at around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, the official news agency Xinhua reported.
Once sent into rural exile to do manual labor for praising reforms in other communist countries, Mr. Zhu pushed through a dizzying array of changes as premier, China’s top economic post, from 1998 to 2003 under former President Jiang Zemin.
Mr. Zhu clashed with Communist Party conservatives and state industry bosses as he pushed state-owned companies to become efficient and profitable. That cost millions of layoffs, but helped propel China to overtake Japan as the second-largest economy behind the United States in 2010.
Building on former leader Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 reforms, Mr. Zhu is credited with supplying the resourcefulness and tenacity to push through history-making changes such as China’s WTO membership, which helped to transform China into the world’s biggest exporter.
Those changes helped to keep economic growth above 8% a year from 2000 to 2010, peaking at 14.2% in 2007.
A spiky personality who fought corruption and conservatives
Named premier in 1998 at age 69, Mr. Zhu became a popular figure by criticizing official bungling and graft and accepting blame when the government fell short. His demanding style earned him the nicknames Boss and Zhu Fengzi, or Madman Zhu.
“I have prepared 100 coffins here — 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself,” Mr. Zhu said in 1998, according to the party newspaper People’s Daily.
Mr. Zhu ranked No. 3 in the party hierarchy behind Jiang and Li Peng, chairman of the ceremonial legislature, the National People’s Congress. But he was a technician without his own power base. Mr. Zhu complained that allowed officials to ignore his orders.
Mr. Zhu made his name as a deputy premier in the 1990s by crushing inflation. He enforced price controls and cut off loans to money-losing state companies, rebuffing resistance by local leaders — a pattern Mr. Zhu would repeat as he fought conservatives over the pace of reform.
Mr. Zhu led efforts to secure WTO membership following marathon negotiations that began in the 1980s. That status would enshrine free trade as a national commitment, giving Mr. Zhu a tool to force local officials to stop protecting favored companies.
Mr. Zhu’s campaign was nearly derailed when he went to Washington in 1999 with market-opening concessions to win U.S. endorsement of the WTO bid. The Clinton administration rejected the offer as inadequate, while his political enemies at home accused him of offering too much, but Zhu survived and China went on to join the body in December 2001.
Mr. Zhu launched China’s home ownership boom in 1998 with an initiative to sell apartments owned by state companies. Families rushed to buy, and within a decade the majority of urban housing was privately owned.
Still, Mr. Zhu was less an advocate of free enterprise than a skilled bureaucrat who carried out party orders to whip state industry into shape.
Mr. Zhu showed no interest in privatizing the economy. He played a key role in drafting plans in the 1990s to turn banks, airlines, oil companies, and other enterprises into profit-oriented corporations but to retain government ownership.
Zhu stood out for admitting official failings
Born Oct. 23, 1928, in Mao Zedong’s home province of Hunan, Mr. Zhu paid an early price for his willingness to take risks and speak out.
After a start as an economic planner, his career went into a 22-year eclipse when he was labeled a “rightist” in 1957 for praising reforms in Hungary and Yugoslavia. He was banished to the countryside during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution to do manual labor.
Rehabilitated in 1979, Mr. Zhu rose swiftly, becoming deputy Shanghai party secretary in 1987 and mayor the next year.
As mayor in 1989, Mr. Zhu gained a reputation for moderation when he placated protesters and pledged not to call in the military.
“He managed to defuse, with considerable subtlety, a tense political situation that could have developed into localized violence or worse if the military had felt it necessary to intervene,” wrote Australian diplomat Shelley Warner in the 1991 book The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces.
Mr. Zhu’s boss, Jiang, would soon be called to Beijing by Deng and made party leader. Mr. Zhu was named deputy premier in 1991 and joined the party’s ruling Standing Committee in 1993.
Mr. Zhu broke with the leadership’s stance of infallibility by admitting and taking blame for official failings.
In 1998, after summer floods killed 4,150 people and officials were accused of embezzling money meant for anti-flood dikes, Mr. Zhu complained some barriers were no stronger than bean curd.
Three years later, he apologized on national television for his cabinet’s failure to protect the public after an explosion in a schoolhouse in southern China killed at least 42 people, most of them children.
Mr. Zhu enlivened the party’s bland image by cracking jokes in public, sometimes at his own expense. Laughter erupted at a 1999 news conference when he said a recent photo “made me look like a dead man.”
One of Mr. Zhu’s proudest triumphs as deputy premier was to craft a tax system that required local officials to hand more revenue to Beijing. He said in 1996 that he deserved a Nobel Prize in economics for that.
Mr. Zhu rarely appeared in public after leaving office as premier.
Mr. Zhu was married to Lao An, a fellow Hunan native. Their son, Yunlai, also known as Levin Zhu, is a former CEO of China International Capital Corp., a government-owned investment bank.
Their daughter, Yanlai, led a charity organization supporting schoolchildren that was backed by Zhu Rongji.
Two people charged with participating in an international scheme to rig basketball games for professional gamblers pleaded guilty in Philadelphia’s federal court Wednesday — the latest development in a scandal that shook the sports world when prosecutors unveiled a sprawling set of indictments earlier this year.
The pleas entered by Bradley Ezewiro and Alberto Laureano mean that half the 26 people charged with participating in the scheme have admitted their crimes in court or have signaled in paperwork that they intend to do so before trial.
None of the defendants has been sentenced, and cases remain pending against some of those charged with taking more active roles in the conspiracy — including Shane Hennen, a former Philadelphia resident and prolific sports bettor whom prosecutors have described as a key organizer.
Still, Wednesday’s guilty pleas — which proceeded with little fanfare — served as a notable moment in a case that has attracted widespread attention as federal authorities across the country in recent years have increasingly been unveiling charges in sports gambling-related prosecutions.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the charges in January, saying it had arrested 26 people, including 20 basketball players, for participating in a multiyear scheme to fix games in the NCAA and the Chinese professional league.
The scam was relatively straightforward, prosecutors said: Professional gamblers and some basketball trainers bribed players to underperform in games, and bettors then wagered against the players’ teams at various sportsbooks. The conspiracy involved dozens of games and millions of dollars in fraudulent bets, prosecutors said.
Some of the bets were placed by Hennen or others in Philadelphia, prosecutors said, including a six-figure wager on a Chinese basketball game at Rivers Casino’s sportsbook in Fishtown.
And some of the NCAA players charged with participating in the scheme spent time in the Philadelphia area, although none was accused of accepting bribes while playing for a local university.
Ezewiro and Laureano each pleaded guilty Wednesday to bribery-related charges. Both were accused in court documents of playing supporting roles in the scheme.
Laureano served as a “fixer” who recruited players into the conspiracy and sometimes delivered them bribe money, prosecutors said.
Ezewiro joined the operation in 2024 while playing for St. Louis University, and also worked with another fixer to identify other players to bribe, prosecutors said.
Their pleas came several days after other accused coconspirators also pleaded guilty.
Over the last week, two former players at the University of New Orleans — Cedquavious Hunter and Dyquavion “Jah” Short — admitted accepting bribes while they played on that team.
And last week, Shawn Fulcher pleaded guilty to taking bribes while playing at two schools, prosecutors said: the State University of New York at Buffalo and Alabama State University.
U.S. District Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro has scheduled sentencing hearings in the coming months for the people who have pleaded guilty.
A trial for the remaining defendants, meanwhile, is currently scheduled to take place early next year.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.
ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security.
The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Ky. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.
DHS said Tuesday that it was working on a response to an Associated Press inquiry and offered no immediate comment. Jeff Niklaus, the founder and CEO of Compliant Technologies, wrote in an email, “Unfortunately, we are unable to speak on this subject.”
The notice said the solicitation for a no-bid contract could be published as early as Friday.
Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode. The gloves must be applied directly to someone’s skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company.
“It’s immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting,” said John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, who is studying how the device has been used. “If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool.”
Peters said he believed ICE’s planned purchase would likely be the largest from the company to date. He said he could envision ICE officers using the gloves to help remove uncooperative subjects from cars and houses and in and out of detention facilities.
“For smaller officers or weaker officers or older officers, I think it has a great advantage” because it can produce faster takedowns and shorten confrontations, he said.
The manufacturer warns the device should not be used as punishment, against people merely exhibiting “verbal defiance or belligerence” or on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women, or elderly or disabled people.
Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the public should have no confidence that ICE officers will use the devices appropriately. She questioned why the devices would be necessary for civil immigration enforcement and noted those getting shocked might have no advance warning.
“ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do,” she said. “Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public.”
Supporters say the devices are generally used in specific jail and transport situations, rather than broadly to patrol on the streets. They have been used to subdue violent suspects who are refusing to get into squad cars and inmates who are harming themselves and threatening officers, according to Compliant Technologies.
Peters said he expected the devices to be misused by a small number of employees, as with other policing technologies, but he said they are unlikely to cause injuries. He said it would be important for ICE to have robust policies and training in place.
To use the device, officers must complete a course and be recertified every two years, the manufacturer says.
