Moments after Luigi Mangione was handcuffed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.

The discovery, recounted in court on Monday as Mangione fights to keep evidence out of his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.

“It’s him, dude. It’s him, 100%,” an officer was heard saying on body-worn camera video from Mangione’s arrest on 9 December last year, punctuating the remark with expletives as the officer combing the bag, Christy Wasser, held up the magazine.

Wasser, a 19-year Altoona police veteran, testified on the fourth day of a pre-trial hearing as Mangione sought to bar prosecutors from using the magazine and other evidence against him, including a 9mm handgun and a notebook found during a subsequent bag search.

The testimony shed light on the critical minutes after Mangione was spotted at the McDonald’s and the sometimes unusual steps police officers took in collecting evidence critical to tying him to the crime.

Mangione’s lawyers argue the items should be excluded because police did not have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search. Prosecutors contend the search was legal and that police eventually obtained a warrant.

Wasser, testifying in full uniform, said Altoona police protocols require promptly searching a suspect’s property at the time of an arrest, in part for dangerous items.

On body-worn camera video played in court, Wasser was heard saying she wanted to check the bag for bombs before removing it from the McDonald’s. Despite that concern, she acknowledged in her testimony Monday that police never cleared the restaurant of customers or employees.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. He appeared in good health on Monday, pumping his fist for photographers and chatting with his lawyers as testimony resumed.

The hearing, which was postponed on Friday because of Mangione’s apparent illness, applies only to the state case. His lawyers are making a similar push to exclude the evidence from his federal case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Prosecutors have said the handgun found in the backpack matches the firearm used in the killing and that writings in the notebook showed Mangione’s disdain for health insurers and ideas about killing a CEO at an investor conference.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company’s investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police have said “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, about 230 miles from Manhattan, after police there received a 911 call.

Wasser testified that she went to the McDonald’s on her own to assist another officer, Joseph Detwiler. Before that, she said, she had seen some coverage of Thompson’s killing on Fox News.

Wasser began searching Mangione’s bag as officers took him into custody on initial charges of forgery and false identification, after he acknowledged giving them a bogus driving license, police said. The same fake name was used by the alleged gunman used at a Manhattan hostel days before the shooting.

By then, a handcuffed Mangione had been informed of his right to remain silent – and invoked it – when asked if there was anything officers should be concerned about.

Wasser told another officer she wanted to check the bag for a bomb before leaving the McDonald’s because she didn’t want to repeat an incident in which another Altoona officer had inadvertently brought a bomb to the police station.

“Did you call the bomb squad?” Mangione lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo asked.

“No. I didn’t find a bomb yet,” Wasser said.

According to body-worn camera video, the first few items Wasser found were innocuous: a hoagie, a loaf of bread and a smaller bag containing a passport, cellphone and computer chip.

Then she pulled out a gray pair of underwear, unwrapping them to reveal the magazine.

Satisfied there was no bomb, she suspended her search and placed some of the items back in the bag. Some evidence, including Mangione’s laptop, was transported to the police station in a brown paper bag, body-worn camera video showed.

Wasser resumed her search after an 11-minute drive to the police station and almost immediately found the gun and silencer — the latter discovery prompting her to laugh and exclaim “nice”, according to footage. Wasser said the gun was in a side pocket that she had not searched at McDonald’s. Later, while cataloging everything in the bag, she found the notebook.

“Isn’t it awesome?” Wasser said at one point during the search.

Asked to explain, she told Friedman Agnifilo that she was proud of her police department’s work in helping to capture Thompson’s suspected killer.

A Blair county, Pennsylvania, prosecutor testified that a judge later signed off on a search warrant for the bag, a few hours after the searches were completed. The warrant, she said, provided a legal mechanism for Altoona police to turn the evidence over to New York detectives.

As he has throughout the case, assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann described Thompson’s killing as an “execution” and referred to his notebook as a “manifesto” – terms that Mangione’s lawyers said were prejudicial and inappropriate.

Judge Gregory Carro said the wording had “no bearing” on him, but warned Seidemann that he’s “certainly not going to do that at trial” when jurors are present.

Many utility companies are pinning their short-term hopes on “demand response” solutions that require companies to curtail activity at peak times.

AI model builders typically run data centres at full capacity during “training runs” — where they feed LLMs with vast amounts of data to improve accuracy. These rises in activity can clash with consumption from other customers — including households — during peak usage, increasing the risk of blackouts.

Companies including OpenAI have also asked US regulators to speed up interconnection requests for flexible data centres, arguing that it will help “reduce costs” for all users.

“We have to get smarter about using unused capacity on the grid,” said Daniel Eggers, executive vice-president at Constellation, a power company that supplies 2mn US homes and businesses.

Researchers at Duke University said earlier this year that if data centre operators could restrict their consumption 0.25 per cent of the time, the grid could accommodate about 76GW of additional demand. They cautioned that this would not replace the need to build new capacity.

Brandon Oyer, head of energy and water for the Americas at Amazon Web Services, said the company could tolerate some curtailment on a temporary basis, but did not consider it a “smart investment” to do so for a prolonged period of time. “Some customers might be able to tolerate that. Some customers might not. It’s going to be a very nuanced decision.”

A white-knuckle ride

The concern for hyperscalers is that this patchwork of measures will not be enough to power data centres coming online over the next few years.

In this scenario, a raft of projects will no longer be viable because they cannot meet contractual commitments. Others will have to simply wait for upgrades to the electricity grid and the construction of new generation capacity to be completed.

In a race between global superpowers, AI could be slowed down by decades old grid infrastructure and a failure to provide adequate capacity.

For some, the power crunch eases concerns of overbuild. For tech companies and the Trump administration, it may undermine billions of dollars in investment.

“We may not get all this done in the timeframe that hyperscalers would like . . . and they won’t be able to interconnect until we’ve got the resources to meet them,” said Nerc’s Robb. “It’s going to be a white-knuckle ride.”

After the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled in favor of Texas lawmakers last week, Republicans head into the 2026 election year with an edge in the redistricting fight kicked off by President Trump.

The court Thursday allowed Republicans’ new congressional map to move ahead — despite a lower court finding that the Texas legislature had likely conducted a racial gerrymander.

The map could yield five more seats for the GOP.

It is the latest major turn in the nationwide redistricting race, from California to Florida, that Trump started to help maintain Republican control of the House of Representatives.

If Democrats take control of the chamber, they could stymie the president’s legislative agenda and launch investigations of his administration.

The House is currently closely divided, with 220 seats held by Republicans and 213 held by Democrats. The sitting president’s party tends to lose seats in midterm elections.

At this point, it appears the redistricting battle could tilt about 12 or 14 seats toward Republicans and Democrats could counter with around nine seats pushed their way — but that all depends on the outcome of pending court challenges and state legislative votes. So a lot is still in play.

This week, Indiana lawmakers are meeting on redistricting. And in Missouri, petitioners face a deadline on signature collections that could block the redistricting until a public vote is held.

It won’t be clear if this all makes the difference in the House until votes are counted in the election on Nov. 3, 2026.

Trump started the race in Texas, California countered

States usually redistrict early in the decade after the decennial census determines how many seats each state gets based on their population. While states used to redistrict frequently in the 1800s and early 1900s, Trump’s push has set off a redistricting race not seen since the 1960s.

Last week’s Texas ruling followed a drama that played out this summer after Trump called on the state to tilt five seats toward the GOP. Democrats walked out for over two weeks to delay the passage of maps they said diluted the voting power of Black and Latino communities.

Democrats in California countered Texas by approving, with a special election, a map that could flip five seats held by Republicans there.

Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina voted to target a Democratic-held seat in each of those states. On Friday, the Indiana state House passed a new map that could help the GOP win two Hoosier seats. It goes to the Senate next, where Republicans are divided on the issue.

Some Indiana Republicans have been hesitant to follow Trump’s call, though he and Republican Gov. Mike Braun threatened to support primary challenges against those who don’t get on board. Several lawmakers have also faced anonymous threats to their families over the last few weeks.

It’s easier for Republicans to redistrict than Democrats

Republicans have more options for redistricting than Democrats. For starters, redistricting is done by state legislatures and Republicans control more legislatures around the country than Democrats. Also, some of the states that Democrats control have legal barriers to partisan gerrymandering — that is, drawing lines to benefit a party — or they have laws requiring that special commissions draw the lines.

Republican Gov. Mike Braun (in glasses, center left) and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith in the Indiana Capitol attend a pro-redistricting rally last week that was organized by Turning Point Action.

Zach Bundy/WFYI

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Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature has voted to hold a special election that could amend the state constitution to allow redistricting. Another vote is required in January to hold the election in time. If it passes, the redistricting could tilt two or three seats toward Democrats.

The Democratic governor of Maryland has formed a commission to make redistricting recommendations. But that state already only has one Republican-held House seat to target.

Meanwhile, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is urging Republicans in control of the legislature to redistrict this spring and turn as many as five seats toward their party. A Florida House committee held its first meeting on redistricting last week.

But Florida has laws against partisan gerrymandering and could be limited by bans on racial gerrymandering in the federal Voting Rights Act. On the other hand, the Supreme Court is currently considering the VRA and could weaken it, allowing more redistricting that would likely work in the Republicans’ favor.

The VRA outlaws intentional attempts to weaken the voting power of minority communities by “cracking” them apart into new districts or “packing” them into one district.