By JOSH FUNK

Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn’t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay.

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This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan.

Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill “resulted from a company-wide systemic failure, indicating the operator’s fundamental inability to implement pipeline safety regulations,” so the record fine is appropriate and welcome.

“However, even record fines often fail to be financially meaningful to pipeline operators. The proposed fine represents less than 3% of Third Coast Midstream’s estimated annual earnings,” Caram said. “True deterrence requires penalties that make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.”

The agency said Third Coast didn’t establish proper emergency procedures, which is part of why the National Transportation Safety Board found that operators failed to shut down the pipeline for nearly 13 hours after their gauges first hinted at a problem. PHMSA also said the company didn’t adequately assess the risks or properly maintain the 18-inch Main Pass Oil Gathering pipeline.

The agency said the company “failed to perform new integrity analyses or evaluations following changes in circumstances that identified new and elevated risk factors” for the pipeline.

That echoed what the NTSB said in its final report in June, that “Third Coast missed several opportunities to evaluate how geohazards may threaten the integrity of their pipeline. Information widely available within the industry suggested that land movement related to hurricane activity was a threat to pipelines.”

The NTSB said the leak off the coast of Louisiana was the result of underwater landslides, caused by hazards such as hurricanes, that Third Coast, the pipeline owner, failed to address despite the threats being well known in the industry.

A Third Coast spokesperson said the allegations were a shock because the company “consistently meets or exceeds regulatory requirements across our operations.”

“After constructive engagement with PHMSA over the last two years, we were surprised to see aspects of the recent allegations that we believe are inaccurate and exceed established precedent. We will address these concerns with the agency moving forward,” the company spokesperson said.

The amount of oil spilled in this incident was far less than the 2010 BP oil disaster, when 134 million gallons were released in the weeks following an oil rig explosion, but it could have been much smaller if workers in the Third Coast control room had acted more quickly, the NTSB said.

The Trump administration has begun deploying upwards of 2,000 federal agents to the Twin Cities as part of a 30-day surge that seeks to escalate a federal immigration crackdown and growing fraud investigations, according to law enforcement sources cited by CBS News.

CBS said the deployment will involve agents and officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation branch, as well as Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s investigative arm tasked with fighting transnational crimes. The law enforcement sources were unnamed in the report, according to CBS News, because they requested anonymity to discuss operations that have not been publicly announced.

Agents deployed from Homeland Security Investigations are expected to investigate alleged cases of housing, daycare and Medicaid fraud, building on last month’s inspection of dozens of sites in and around Minneapolis, according to CBS News, which said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino will help lead immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities alongside an unknown number of U.S. Border Patrol officers. Bovino has overseen immigration roundups in Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel already had announced an increase in operations in Minnesota. Last week Noem posted on social media that officers were “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud.” Patel said the intent was to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs.”

The new Twin Cities deployment would represent one of the largest concentrations of DHS personnel in an American city in recent years. Tactical units known as Special Response Teams are also expected to be part of the operation, which could grow larger as officers rotate through over the next 30 days.

The new surge, said CBS, comes amid intense state and federal scrutiny of Minnesota following years of high-profile fraud cases involving federally funded programs. They have included some of the largest pandemic-era and post-pandemic fraud schemes in the country, like the Feeding Our Future case, which led to dozens of indictments and convictions.

The deployment, which began Sunday, will make the Twin Cities the first major immigration enforcement target in the New Year. It’s been met with growing resistance from protesters, elected officials and some business owners.

Hotel rooms canceled, observers gathering

On Monday, under the title “No Room at the Inn!,” the Department of Homeland Security shared at least four social media posts on X claiming that a Hilton hotel had canceled reservations for officers who had attempted to book rooms using official government emails and rates. Citing a statement issued to Fox News, DHS later posted that Hilton had apologized for the cancellations, noting “Hilton hotels serve as welcoming places for all. This hotel is independently owned and operated, and the actions referenced are not reflective of Hilton values. We are investigating this matter with this individual hotel, and can confirm that Hilton works with governments, law enforcement, and community leaders around the world to ensure our properties are open and inviting to everyone.”

In St. Paul, some bars and restaurants have posted signs saying, “Federal Agents Not Permitted on Premises. ICE, DEA, ATF or any other agent or agency may not enter or park or stage immigration operations on this property.”

Elsewhere, groups of “constitutional observers” have sought to document ICE actions.

A sign on a St. Paul bar on Jan. 5, 2026 indicates that federal immigration agents are not welcome on the premises. CBS News reported the Trump administration had begun a 30-day surge, deploying 2,000 federal immigration, Border Patrol and investigative agents in the Twin Cities. (Frederick Melo / Pioneer Press)

State Rep. María Isa Pérez-Vega, DFL-St. Paul, circulated video on Monday of ICE agents conducting a Jan. 3 operation on the city’s West Side. Perez-Vega said constitutional observers were gathered in the parking lot of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Concord Street, where they positioned themselves “to ensure community members in the area were informed of their rights. … Despite observers maintaining a clear and safe distance, one observer was pepper-sprayed by an agent. … The use of force appeared unnecessary given the non-confrontational and lawful behavior of those present.”

West Side organizations including Neighborhood House, the West Side Boosters, the West Side Community Organization, the Immigrant Defense Network and the office of St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker are hosting a constitutional observer training next week at the Wellstone Center.

Some officials have promised legal resistance. Speaking at her swearing-in ceremony last Friday, new St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her said she was ready to work with the St. Paul City Council on ordinances intended to oppose aggressive sweeps by ICE.

“From cutting funding to our city or targeting our neighbors, we are facing an unprecedented incursion that we must meet head on,” said Her, who said she plans to ban ICE from staging in the city’s parks and public spaces, and from wearing complete mask coverings that obscure identity.

“One thing we know about this administration is that they won’t play by the rules, but it is important we stand up for our neighbors and set those rules first,” the mayor said. “Let’s not forget who is the aggressor here, who is the one tearing families apart. … I am determined not to allow this federal administration to turn us against each other.”

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By MARC LEVY

SPRING CITY, Pa. (AP) — Tech companies and developers looking to plunge billions of dollars into ever-bigger data centers to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing are increasingly losing fights in communities where people don’t want to live next to them, or even near them.

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Communities across the United States are reading about — and learning from — each other’s battles against data center proposals that are fast multiplying in number and size to meet steep demand as developers branch out in search of faster connections to power sources.

In many cases, municipal boards are trying to figure out whether energy- and water-hungry data centers fit into their zoning framework. Some have entertained waivers or tried to write new ordinances. Some don’t have zoning.

But as more people hear about a data center coming to their community, once-sleepy municipal board meetings in farming towns and growing suburbs now feature crowded rooms of angry residents pressuring local officials to reject the requests.

“Would you want this built in your backyard?” Larry Shank asked supervisors last month in Pennsylvania’s East Vincent Township. “Because that’s where it’s literally going, is in my backyard.”

Opposition spreads as data centers fan out

A growing number of proposals are going down in defeat, sounding alarms across the data center constellation of Big Tech firms, real estate developers, electric utilities, labor unions and more.

Andy Cvengros, who helps lead the data center practice at commercial real estate giant JLL, counted seven or eight deals he’d worked on in recent months that saw opponents going door-to-door, handing out shirts or putting signs in people’s yards.

“It’s becoming a huge problem,” Cvengros said.

Data Center Watch, a project of 10a Labs, an AI security consultancy, said it is seeing a sharp escalation in community, political and regulatory disruptions to data center development.

Between April and June alone, its latest reporting period, it counted 20 proposals valued at $98 billion in 11 states that were blocked or delayed amid local opposition and state-level pushback. That amounts to two-thirds of the projects it was tracking.

People opposed to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds talk during a break in an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

Some environmental and consumer advocacy groups say they’re fielding calls every day, and are working to educate communities on how to protect themselves.

“I’ve been doing this work for 16 years, worked on hundreds of campaigns I’d guess, and this by far is the biggest kind of local pushback I’ve ever seen here in Indiana,” said Bryce Gustafson of the Indianapolis-based Citizens Action Coalition.

In Indiana alone, Gustafson counted more than a dozen projects that lost rezoning petitions.

Similar concerns across different communities

For some people angry over steep increases in electric bills, their patience is thin for data centers that could bring still-higher increases.

Losing open space, farmland, forest or rural character is a big concern. So is the damage to quality of life, property values or health by on-site diesel generators kicking on or the constant hum of servers. Others worry that wells and aquifers could run dry.

Lawsuits are flying — both ways — over whether local governments violated their own rules.

Big Tech firms Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook — which are collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers across the globe — didn’t answer Associated Press questions about the effect of community pushback.

Microsoft, however, has acknowledged the difficulties. In an October securities filing, it listed its operational risks as including “community opposition, local moratoriums, and hyper-local dissent that may impede or delay infrastructure development.”

Even with high-level support from state and federal governments, the pushback is having an impact.

People listen during an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting where an agenda item involved a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

Maxx Kossof, vice president of investment at Chicago-based developer The Missner Group, said developers worried about losing a zoning fight are considering selling properties once they secure a power source — a highly sought-after commodity that makes a proposal far more viable and valuable.

“You might as well take chips off the table,” Kossof said. “The thing is you could have power to a site and it’s futile because you might not get the zoning. You might not get the community support.”

Some in the industry are frustrated, saying opponents are spreading falsehoods about data centers — such as polluting water and air — and are difficult to overcome.

Still, data center allies say they are urging developers to engage with the public earlier in the process, emphasize economic benefits, sow good will by supporting community initiatives and talk up efforts to conserve water and power and protect ratepayers.

“It’s definitely a discussion that the industry is having internally about, ‘Hey, how do we do a better job of community engagement?’” said Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition, a trade association that includes Big Tech firms and developers.

Data center opposition dominates local politics

Winning over local officials, however, hasn’t translated to winning over residents.

Mike Petak of Spring City gestures while speaking to East Vincent Township supervisors in opposition to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

Developers pulled a project off an October agenda in the Charlotte suburb of Matthews, North Carolina, after Mayor John Higdon said he informed them it faced unanimous defeat.

The project would have funded half the city’s budget and developers promised environmentally friendly features. But town meetings overflowed, and emails, texts and phone calls were overwhelmingly opposed, “999 to one against,” Higdon said.

Had council approved it, “every person that voted for it would no longer be in office,” the mayor said. “That’s for sure.”

In Hermantown, a suburb of Duluth, Minnesota, a proposed data center campus several times larger than the Mall of America is on hold amid challenges over whether the city’s environmental review was adequate.

Residents found each other through social media and, from there, learned to organize, protest, door-knock and get their message out.

People opposed to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds attend an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

They say they felt betrayed and lied to when they discovered that state, county, city and utility officials knew about the proposal for an entire year before the city — responding to a public records request filed by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy — released internal emails that confirmed it.

“It’s the secrecy. The secrecy just drives people crazy,” said Jonathan Thornton, a realtor who lives across a road from the site.

Documents revealing the extent of the project emerged days before a city rezoning vote in October. Mortenson, which is developing it for a Fortune 50 company that it hasn’t named, says it is considering changes based on public feedback and that “more engagement with the community is appropriate.”

Rebecca Gramdorf found out about it from a Duluth newspaper article, and immediately worried that it would spell the end of her six-acre vegetable farm.

People sign in and head into an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting where an agenda item involved a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

She found other opponents online, ordered 100 yard signs and prepared for a struggle.

“I don’t think this fight is over at all,” Gramdorf said.

Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.

Edith Renfrow Smith, the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College in Iowa and a longtime Chicago schoolteacher, remained mentally sharp well past 100, becoming the subject for medical researchers studying what they called “SuperAgers.”

Smith, 111, died of natural causes on Friday at the Breakers assisted living facility in Edgewater, where she had moved in October, said her daughter, Alice Frances Smith.  She previously had lived in Lakeview.

Edith Renfrow was born in Grinnell, Iowa, on July 14, 1914, the fifth of six children. Her grandparents, George Craig and Eliza Jan Craig, were born into slavery. Her father was a hotel chef.

The Renfrows were one of the only African American families in Grinnell at that time, and her parents stressed the importance of education for all of their children.

“My mother insisted that education was the only thing that could not be taken away from them,” Smith told National Public Radio’s Scott Simon in 2023.

Smith graduated from Grinnell College in 1937 — 91 years after the college was founded — with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, becoming the first Black woman ever to graduate from the small liberal arts college and the 11th Black graduate of the college to that point.

While at Grinnell, Smith met Amelia Earhart when the famed aviator visited the campus.

“She was one of the celebrities that came to Grinnell to talk to the students,” Smith told National Public Radio in 2023. “And she was just like another one of us. It was a delightful visit.”

She married Henry Smith in 1940. The couple moved to Chicago’s South Side, and Smith worked at a South Side YWCA,  at the University of Chicago and as a secretary to Ald. Oscar Stanton De Priest. She began a 22-year teaching career at Ludwig Van Beethoven Elementary School at 25 W. 47th St. on the South Side, retiring in 1976.

Jazz great Herbie Hancock lived across the street from the Smiths while growing up.

“(Edith) was a very sophisticated lady, and she and my mother hit it off very well,” Hancock told the Tribune in 2024. “My mother was always looking at things like art and culture and those things, and in the neighborhood, there weren’t a whole lot of people looking at that.”

Hancock credited Smith with introducing him to Grinnell College, from which he graduated.

“She talked about Grinnell being a great college for academics, and it made me think that Grinnell would be a really nice thing to do, it’d be a new experience because I’d never lived in a small town and I didn’t know anything about corn, and let’s see what happens,” Hancock said. “I’m happy I went there — it really changed my life, (because) it was where I really decided I wanted to be a jazz musician.”

In retirement, Smith was a longtime volunteer at the Art Institute of Chicago. As she reached her late 90s in the 2010s, she began drawing interest from researchers from Northwestern and from the news media, both of which were intrigued by Smith’s keen, vivid memory and her strong cognitive functioning.

She participated in Northwestern medical school’s 2017 study of “SuperAgers” that showed what was obvious to Smith: Social connections keep one sharp.

“I’m just a person who likes people,” she told the Tribune in 2017. “When you like people, you communicate.”

Edith Renfrow Smith works during an arts and crafts class on Nov. 7, 2017, at Bethany Retirement Community in Andersonville. Smith died Jan. 2, 2026, at 111. She was one of the “SuperAgers,” a group studied by Northwestern made up of elderly adults with the cognitive abilities of much younger adults. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

And that love of people extended to strangers, as well. At one retirement community where she resided, Smith was one of nine people assigned to welcome new residents and to try to help make them feel at home.

“I have a smile for everybody,” she told the Tribune in 2018. “I try to learn someone’s name as soon as they come in.”

In 2018, Smith appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, and three years later, she appeared in a PBS program, “Build a Better Memory Through Science.”

Grinnell awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2019, named a library after her in its Black Cultural Center, and named a student art gallery for her in another campus building in 2021. And in 2024, a residence hall building at Grinnell was named for her. Smith — at age 110 — was on hand for its dedication ceremony, in September 2024.

Due to her many years of volunteer work, Smith was inducted into the Chicago Senior Citizens Hall of Fame in 2009.

“Wake up every morning and thank the good Lord that you are alive and able to look at his wonderful world,” she told NPR in 2023.

Smith’s husband of 73 years, Henry, died in 2013. She is survived by a daughter, Alice.

An earlier version of this story misstated the first name of Edith Renfrow Smith’s husband. 

Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.