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Father Sues Maine Department of Education and Local School District Over Vaccination Requirements
A central Maine father is suing the superintendent of MSAD 52, which serves Turner, Greene, and Leeds, and state Department of Education Commissioner Pender Makin over state school vaccination laws.
James Childs alleges in the lawsuit that his son, a rising 8th grader, is facing expulsion because he isn’t vaccinated for religious reasons. Maine eliminated religious exemptions for school vaccinations in 2021 and only allows medical exemptions.
Idaho-based advocacy group We The Patriots USA is also a plaintiff in the suit, which alleges that Maine’s law violates the First Amendment. The nonprofit has also filed lawsuits in California, New York, and Connecticut to regain religious exemptions for school vaccinations. The state Attorney General’s Office offered no comment. MSAD 52 did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
W.Va. Public Schools Will Not Accept Religious Exemptions for Vaccines at the Start of the New Year
For West Virginia, the new school year is fast approaching, and parents must be in the know about wellness requirements. In 2025, Governor Morrissey issued Executive Order 7-25, which would allow children and families religious exemptions from required vaccines in schools. However as of now, that allowance has not yet been established.
“West Virginia immunizations have always been required. We have one of the strongest laws in the country, we are in probably the top two, but basically all students in West Virginia have to be immunized in public schools and that’s not changed,” said Jennifer Lilly, A certified RN in the state of West Virginia.
“The executive order that had been put our last year has been put on hold as the Supreme Court looks at it, but as of right now the department of education still is saying that all immunizations are required.”
Battelle Energy Alliance Reaches $5 Million Agreement Resolving EEOC Charges of Religious and Disability Discrimination
Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA), a research, engineering and consulting company based in Idaho Falls, Idaho, agreed to resolve charges of discrimination filed with U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for $5 million and other relief, the federal agency announced today. The EEOC received multiple charges of discrimination alleging that BEA denied employees religious and/or disability accommodations to the company’s vaccine mandate policy.
The EEOC’s systemic investigation found reasonable cause to believe that BEA discriminated against a class of more than 100 employees by denying accommodations for their sincerely held religious beliefs and/or disabilities under the company’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy. The investigation found discrimination included unlawful medical inquiries, denial of accommodations, and in some cases, termination.
Denial of religious and/or disability-related accommodations, absent undue hardship to the employer, violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on religion, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits discrimination based on disability.
Authors Who Dismissed COVID-19 Lab-Leak Theory in Paper Privately Said They Weren’t Sure
Authors of a paper that dismissed the theory that COVID-19 came from a laboratory said months after the paper was published that it was possible COVID-19 came from a lab, according to newly released messages. “Gotta say — some smoking(ish) guns starting to appear that I’m not comfortable with,” Kristian Andersen, one of the authors and a professor at Scripps Research, wrote in a Slack message on June 11, 2020.
He was responding to a social media post that outlined research in 2006 on inserting a characteristic, a furin cleavage site, at the exact place where the cleavage site was in the virus that causes COVID-19. The virus is known as SARS-CoV-2.
“The part I’m really struggling with is that at the end of the day, we really don’t have any hard evidence one way or the other – and especially given some of the recent evidence, we also can’t rule out that somebody actually put it in there,” Andersen added later.
US Data Center Protests Go National As Backlash Grows
Opponents of the rapid buildout of data centers held 142 protests across 42 states on July 18 in the first nationwide effort to channel anger at the AI infrastructure expansion that has ramped up over the past year and roiled local politics.
The protests were coordinated by HumansFirst, co-founded by a former leader of the modern-day Tea Party. She compares growing opposition to data centers to the right-wing populist movement that emerged in 2009 to protest what it saw as excessive taxation and government overreach. Protesters rallied against what HumansFirst calls the “unaccountable” buildout of data centers and “unacceptable infringement on our liberty.”
In Fredericksburg, Virginia, one young man carried a sign reading, “We thrive on water not data.” In Atlanta, a small knot of protesters wielded signs reading, “Georgia never voted for hyperscale AI data centers.”
Erin Brockovich’s Crusade Against Data Centers Is Going Crowd-Sourced
Erin Brockovich is getting Americans to report data centers in their backyards. The renowned environmental activist, whose work inspired the Julia Roberts film “Erin Brockovich,” launched a registry of US data centers in April, inviting nearby residents to report how the projects are affecting their communities.
Speaking in an interview with podcaster Theo Von, released on Sunday, Brockovich talked about how she woke up one day to find 30 emails from people talking about the issues living around data centers.
“So I created what’s called brockovichdatacenter.com, where people, if they were having issues with data centers in their backyard, could self-report,” she said. “This is a place where people who I believe are living, breathing, and experiencing these issues are the best source of information,” Brockovich added.
Massive Power Shortfall In Northeast Thanks to AI Data Centers
The largest US power grid failed for a third straight year to secure enough future supply commitments to ensure reliability for the future amid a historic boom in data center demand.
PJM Interconnection, the largest US power grid (Regional Transmission Organization), which serves 67 million customers in 13 states and Washington, DC, said its auction to procure power for the year starting June 2028 fell 6.8 gigawatts short of what it will need to guarantee system reliability during demand spikes, in a statement released Tuesday. The shortfall is equivalent to almost seven traditional nuclear reactors.
The result ramps up pressure on a grid that’s home to Virginia’s Data Center Alley, the biggest concentration of data centers in the US, and has borne the brunt of criticism for the struggle to manage the AI boom and sufficiently protect customers from soaring costs. Attention now shifts to an emergency procurement mechanism later this year that aims to shift the burden of ramping up power generation to hyperscalers.
