by Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector
August 25, 2025

An Alabama child contracted measles while traveling outside the United States, the Alabama Department of Public Health said Monday. 

ADPH said in a statement the 5-year-old living in north Alabama was not vaccinated against the viral respiratory disease. The child did not attend a day care or school and their siblings were vaccinated in accordance with official guidelines on the vaccine. ADPH was not able to find out why the infected child had not been vaccinated.

Symptoms of the disease can take seven to 14 days to present after infection, and can be particularly dangerous for infants and young children.

It is the first confirmed case of measles in Alabama since 2002. Measles is a highly contagious disease, and ADPH officials have for years expressed alarm at the state’s dropping Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccination rates. In 2023-24, the rate among kindergartners was 93.8%, below the 95% rate the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers necessary to achieve herd immunity.

Dr. Karen Landers, ADPH’s chief medical officer, said in the statement that unvaccinated people, if exposed, have a 90% chance of becoming infected, and infected people can spread the disease several days before becoming symptomatic. 

“Measles follows a pattern in which the child first develops fever, cough, runny nose, and watery/red eyes, then a rash develops. Persons can start spreading the virus up to four days before symptoms appear, and those with weak immune systems can spread the measles virus longer,” Landers said. 

The case comes a week after Texas, where a measles outbreak originated earlier this year, announced the outbreak was over. State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said at the ADPH monthly meeting that there had not been any cases in Alabama, but there were two cases where the patient had passed through Alabama.

“We think that the largest outbreak in the country is over, although there’s still several jurisdictions still have active outbreaks, because it’s been less than 42 days,” Harris said Thursday.

ADPH in March investigated possible measles exposure in the state after an unvaccinated child who traveled through Alabama tested positive for measles, but did not report any cases.  A Lee County child who showed measles-like symptoms earlier this year tested negative for the disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 1,375 confirmed cases of measles this year as of Aug. 19. In 2024, there were 285 cases. 

This story was updated at 2:53 p.m. to update a timeline on the infected child’s siblings’ vaccination status.

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

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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The content presents factual information about a measles case in Alabama, focusing on public health data and official statements without expressing political opinions or advocating for a particular policy stance. It emphasizes the importance of vaccination based on health guidelines and CDC recommendations, maintaining a neutral tone throughout. This balanced reporting aligns with a centrist perspective, prioritizing public health facts over political framing.

by Dennis Pillion, Inside Climate News, Alabama Reflector
August 24, 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.

WILSONVILLE — The people of Wilsonville aren’t about to let it happen to them, at least not without a fight.

After seeing residents of nearby Bessemer, Alabama, get blindsided by a proposal for a massive data center, with little public disclosure and public officials silenced by non-disclosure agreements, Wilsonville residents sprang into action when word got out that a developer was looking to build a similar data center in their town.

More than 100 Wilsonville residents packed the town hall for Monday night’s City Council meeting to voice their objections to the proposed “hyperscale” data center in the small, riverside community of fewer than 2,000 residents about 25 miles southeast of Birmingham.

The 3 million square-foot data center project wasn’t on the agenda for Monday’s council meeting, but people showed up anyway, 50 of them carrying red signs that read “No Wilsonville Data Center.” There weren’t enough signs, or chairs, for everyone as the overflow crowd spilled out into the hallway.

Former Wilsonville Mayor Lee McCarty, who was in the crowd among the protesters, said the project, if it proceeds, would be “extremely detrimental to the community.”

“A lot of people live in Wilsonville because they want the country repose,” McCarty said. “They don’t want gigantic power lines and water lines and traffic. They don’t want a Walmart, much less one of these.”

Project planning documents obtained by Inside Climate News from a resident show the site would encompass 664 acres and contain 14 buildings, each 219,000 square feet, more than the size of a typical Walmart Supercenter.

The residents say a data center that size would disrupt their peaceful community that includes multi-generational family farms and million-dollar waterfront homes on Lay Lake.

“All I know is, the people selling this land and the people brokering the deal, that’s going to be their legacy, to potentially destroy a small town,” Wilsonville resident Renny Stanhope said after the meeting.

The Wilsonville data center project is just one in a series of new data center proposals sweeping the country.

In Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, Iowa and elsewhere, data center projects are popping up, often in rural or low-income areas, leaving local residents to deal with noise pollution, air pollution, destruction of forest land and likely higher electricity costs due to massive demand.

The Trump administration has announced plans to waive environmental rules and other regulations for data centers that might slow their development in the midst of an arms race for computing power to run AI systems.

Alabama Power, which will likely provide electricity for the Wilsonville project, has already gotten approval to buy an existing natural gas plant for $622 million, increasing customer bills in anticipation of higher loads from data centers.

In Wilsonville, Monday’s council meeting lasted less than 15 minutes, including the opening prayer and Pledge of Allegiance. After some brief council business, Mayor Ricky Morris said that there were no updates on the project, and that any future rezoning or annexation requests for the project would be on the council agenda.

“When we have something to discuss, it will be on the agenda,” Morris told the crowd.

The data center proposal came to light during the council’s August 4 meeting, when a resident asked the council about the project on the outskirts of town.

At that meeting, council members said they had been approached by representatives from NorthPoint Development, a Kansas City commercial real estate company involved in data center development, which  inquired about annexing parcels of land into the town for a data center project. The project location includes land within Wilsonville town limits and land in unincorporated Shelby County. Annexing the land would put the entire footprint under the control of Wilsonville instead of the county, for zoning purposes, documents show.

Council members said Monday they have not yet received a formal application for annexation.

“We’ve had no other contact with them, they have not requested nothing,” Morris said. “So it’s just like it was last meeting.”

NorthPoint Development did not respond to requests for comment or to authenticate the document.

During a brief public comment period, residents pressed the council members for any updates on the project, and asked whether either they or the mayor would pledge not to sign non-disclosure agreements, which have become common in data center development across the country. The council members did not make such a pledge, with Morris saying they could not promise that for legal reasons. He did not elaborate and declined to answer additional questions from Inside Climate News after the meeting.

Shelby County probate records show NorthPoint Development reached a two-year option on approximately 687 acres from Richard Cashio, a Birmingham steel industry magnate, on Feb. 27. The purchase price was not included in the document. Cashio did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

The project would be located off of County Highway 61, alongside Lick Branch, a small Coosa River tributary. It would be located about 2.5 miles northwest of the Ernest C. Gaston Electric Generating Plant, a coal and natural gas-fired power plant operated by Alabama Power alongside the Coosa.

According to the feasibility plan, the projected peak power demand is 1,008 megawatts, more than half of the maximum output from the Gaston Plant, which is 1,880 megawatts, according to Alabama Power’s website.

Running a 1008 MW data center 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, would use 8.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That’s about half as much as all of Alabama Power’s 1.3 million residential customers used in 2023, according to company filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Wilsonville data center would use about 20 percent less power than the proposed data center in Bessemer, which would use 1200 megawatts at peak.

The plan also states that developers need to “verify volume of water available and capacity of wastewater treatment plant,” as well as “verify if the site is subject to air quality standards,” and “verify power source, location, substation size & location will be adjusted as needed.”

Coosa Riverkeeper Justinn Overton helped distribute signs at the meeting and share information on social media, and said the large turnout should send a message to the elected officials on the dais.

“Although there was not a lot of information shared tonight, our purpose was to apply gentle pressure and let them know how many people are watching and listening,” she said.

If the council approves the data center request, voter ire would take a while to reach them at the ballot box. According to a post on Wilsonville’s web site, the town will not host municipal elections this year, because the candidates for mayor and five council seats are all unopposed.

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

The post Wilsonville residents seek preemptive strike against massive data center project appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content leans center-left as it highlights community opposition to a large industrial project due to environmental and quality-of-life concerns. It emphasizes grassroots activism, environmental impacts, and critiques of regulatory rollbacks, which are common themes in center-left discourse. The article is fact-based and sourced from a nonprofit, non-partisan outlet focused on climate and energy issues, but the framing favors local residents and environmental caution over corporate and development interests.

by Ariana Figueroa, Alabama Reflector
August 22, 2025

WASHINGTON — FBI agents raided the home and office of former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a one-time adviser to President Donald Trump who has become a frequent critic of the president, to investigate Bolton’s handling of classified documents, according to multiple media reports.

The raid on a former Trump adviser’s house represents an escalation from the Justice Department in targeting critics of Trump, whom he vowed to go after should he return to the White House for a second term.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Trump said he was not briefed on the raid of Bolton’s house in the wealthy suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, and office in Washington, D.C., according to White House pool reports.

But the president noted his longstanding feud with his former adviser.

“I’m not a fan of John Bolton,” Trump said. “He’s a real sort of a low life. He could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.”

Earlier this year, the president revoked the security detail for Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019 and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration in 2005 and 2006.

Following his time in the Trump administration, Bolton, who was an important member of the Bush administration’s national security team that favored active military involvement in the Middle East, emerged as a chief Republican foreign policy critic of Trump, authoring a 2020 book that blasted the president and widened the public rift between the two men.

Bolton has not been charged with a crime and is not in custody, according to The Associated Press, which cited a person familiar with the matter.

The first Trump administration launched an investigation into Bolton to probe if he improperly used sensitive information in his book. The current search involves federal officials investigating Bolton’s actions over the last four years, according to the New York Times, which cited a federal law enforcement official.

Trump documents case

Trump himself was prosecuted for mishandling classified documents after the FBI raided his Florida golf course and main residence of Mar-a-Lago in 2022. A federal judge dismissed the resulting criminal charges against Trump.

FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media that “NO ONE is above the law,” and that FBI agents were “on mission.”

The FBI declined to comment.

In 2020, the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Bolton’s book and tried to block its publication, but were stymied in court.

Patel also wrote a 2023 book where he lists Bolton, along with a dozen other people, as members of the “deep state” who are working against Trump, according to the Times. 

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

The post FBI raids Maryland home of Trump critic John Bolton appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content presents a factual and detailed account of the FBI raid on John Bolton, a former Trump adviser turned critic, and provides context about Bolton’s history with Trump and his actions post-administration. It highlights the conflict between Trump and Bolton, includes direct quotes from Trump that are critical of Bolton, and references investigations into classified documents related to both men. While it covers perspectives from both sides and notes legal outcomes such as dismissed charges, it subtly emphasizes alleged abuse of power and retaliation by the Justice Department against Trump’s critics. This leads to a center-left lean, aiming for critical scrutiny of Trump and his administration while avoiding overtly partisan language.