alabama

Republican lawmaker blames drop in school enrollment on LGBTQ curriculum

An Alabama state GOP lawmaker says expanding the current “Don’t Say Gay” law would stop the record drop in school enrollment.

State Rep. Mack Butler of Rainbow City has filed legislation to expand the “Don’t Say Gay” law, first passed in 2021, from K-5 classrooms to all public school grades, according to the Alabama Reflector:

“Butler said in an interview Wednesday the bill is meant to help public schools focus on educating students and claimed that the recent enrollment decline partially comes from parents who are unsatisfied with LGBTQ content in schools. Alabama public officials have not said that was a reason for the drop in the K-12 population.”

Rep. Butler added, “as you’re seeing with the decreased enrollment, and a lot of it’s the CHOOSE Act and the virtual school or home schooling, but there absolutely is a dissatisfaction with what we’re doing, and I see this as helping public education get them back to their actual core charge.”

The “Don’t Say Gay” legislation would “prohibit classroom instruction or discussions related to gender identity or sexual orientation from being provided to public school students in prekindergarten through twelfth grade.”

It would “prohibit public preK-12 teachers and education employees from displaying a flag or insignia relating to sexual orientation or gender identity on school property,” and “prohibit public preK-12 teachers and education employees from referring to a student by pronouns inconsistent with the student’s biological sex at birth.”

The Reflector also reported that the “Alabama Legislature in the last five years has passed several laws targeting LGBTQ+ people, including the original ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law passed in 2021 and a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth the following year.”

According to BillTrack, Butler also has sponsored legislation prohibiting “schools and public libraries from presenting or sponsoring drag performances,” a bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all public schools, a bill requiring the “broadcast of the Star-Spangled Banner” weekly, and several bills related to religious exemptions for vaccine requirements.

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'Utterly absurd': Experts alarmed over Trump 'admitting' big change driven by retribution

During a Tuesday press conference, President Donald Trump said he was moving U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama. But the president's stated reason for the change has multiple journalists and commentators sounding the alarm.

While speaking at the Oval Office — his first public appearance in nearly a week — Trump told reporters several times that he decided to relocate U.S. Space Command to the Yellowhammer State because he was angry with how Colorado (a Democratic stronghold) conducts its elections.

"The problem I have with Colorado, they do mail in voting," Trump said. "They went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections. And we can't have that."

Trump's statement prompted both concern and mockery among political experts. University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato called the move "utterly absurd but right in character for Dear Leader." In a separate post, he sarcastically called the announcement that a major military installation was being relocated "completely coincidental" and not due to "petty partisan politics."

Others opined that Trump's stated reason for the move didn't make sense, with New York Sun correspondent Matt Rice observing that "Alabama also has mail-in voting." Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim O'Brien also made that point, while adding a sarcastic emoji. Podcast host Brian Allen emphasized that Trump was "admitting to using military assets for political payback." Florida International University political scientist Carlos Rodríguez López tweeted: "This is political retribution and corruption. It has nothing to do with national security." And Michigan-based Army veteran Bruce Crossing pointed out that deep-red Utah should be next in line for retribution, given that it conducts all of its elections by mail.

"What on earth does mail in voting have to do with the location of a military facility?" Boxing announcer Al Bernstein wrote. "He is basically admitting he is spending millions to move this facility for no other reason than politics."

"Translation: I’m wasting millions in taxpayer money and punishing Colorado because they didn’t vote for me," the X account Republicans Against Trump wrote.

Watch the video of Trump's remarks below, or by clicking this link.

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'Who pays?' GOP rep exits through back door after constituents hound him over Trump policy

Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) encountered a contentious audience during a town hall in Daphne, Alabama, on Wednesday evening, where he was met with boos and chants as constituents grilled him over President Donald Trump's tax and tariff agenda.

When he failed to answer a question about who pays Trump's tariffs, his constituents began chanting, "Who pays the tariffs!? Who pays the tariffs!?"

There were also chants of “shame!” as he defended the president's policies and his own legislative record.

AL.com reported that the 45-minute session, which was neither publicly announced nor open to the media, was disrupted by a vocal crowd, many of whom opposed the Trump administration.

Moore, who announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate earlier this month, addressed various topics, including immigration, Medicaid work requirements, election security, tariffs, and the deployment of the Alabama National Guard to patrol Washington, D.C. streets.

When questioned about Trump's signature legislation, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," Moore clarified that it referred to the Trump tax cuts. His comment elicited immediate boos from the audience.

The most intense reactions came during discussions on abortion, where Moore faced significant heckling, per the report.

After the event concluded, Moore exited through the back of City Hall, according to AL.com.

Earlier in the week, he reportedly held a town hall in Satsuma, which some attendees described as sparsely attended.

Information about the Daphne town hall spread on social media, particularly through the Baldwin County Democratic Facebook page, leading to a turnout that mirrored the rowdiness of similar events held by Republicans nationwide. Despite the smaller crowd compared to other protests, nearly every question posed to Moore was met with heckling.

Republican lawmakers across the country have faced intense public backlash during recent town halls, with constituents expressing frustration over economic policies.

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) also encountered a hostile crowd of over 500 attendees in Butler County, Ohio, on Wednesday. The crowd jeered and interrupted him as he defended Medicaid cuts and National Guard deployments in U.S. cities.

Similarly, Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) was met with chantsof “vote him out” after defending tax cuts that critics argue disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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'Just ethics': Alabama threatens funding for schools that don’t say Pledge of Allegiance and prayer

A bill proposed in Alabama would require schools to begin each day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer -- or else, the school will lose millions in funding. Lawmakers debated the bill on Wednesday, AL.com reported.

“It’s just ethics and the basics of what our country is built on,” said Republican Rep. Reed Ingram, the bill’s sponsor.

HB231, a constitutional amendment, would apply to kindergarten through 12th grade. If a school does not follow the requirement, the state Superintendent would “withhold twenty-five percent of state funding allocated to the offending local board of education,” according to the bill.

“My biggest concern is the punitive aspect of taking 25 percent education funding from schools that don’t comply,” said Democratic Rep. Marilyn Lands. For example, Birmingham City Schools get about $158 million in state funding, so they would lose nearly $40 million.

The legislation requires “a prayer consistent with Judeo-Christian values,” although it is unclear what that prayer would look like.

“Lands asked Ingram if a silent prayer would be allowed. Ingram responded that the focus was on reciting a Judeo-Christian prayer, comparing the public displays within the legislation to the nation’s motto, ‘In God We Trust.’ The motto was added to government buildings throughout the state eight years ago under the influence of conservative activists,” AL.com’s John Sharp reported. Students would not be required to take part in the prayer, Ingram said.

Ingram said that there is a law, amended in 2019, requiring public schools to conduct the Pledge of Allegiance, but not all do.

“Our recruiting is down for the National Guard,” Ingram said. “It’s down in every branch of the military. A lot of these kids don’t understand what the flag is.”

“The bill is coming at a time when a number of GOP-led states are testing the separation of church and state limits in public schools,” Sharp writes.

The legislation was passed by the House State Government Committee and is now set to be considered by the full House.

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'Shrug': The 'lack of fervor' Alabama college football fans had for Trump was 'notable'

Former President Donald Trump doesn't need to do a lot of campaigning in Alabama, as it's a deep red state that he carried by 26 percent in 2020 compared to only 5 percent in Texas that year.

But on Saturday night, September 28, Trump attended a major college football game at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama — where rap-rocker Kid Rock and country singer Hank Williams Jr. were with him. And according to NOTUS reporter Ben T.N. Mause, Trump's presence at the event didn't inspire as much excitement as it would have in the past.

"In the heart of the South — in the left ventricle of college football — there are three things people here care about most: God, SEC football and Donald Trump," Mause explains. "And not necessarily in that order. But at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday night, on the University of Alabama quads during the day and ESPN’s College GameDay set that morning, something was missing. Maybe it's just that the football seemed to mean more than usual. No. 4 Alabama was hosting No. 2 University of Georgia in a September battle that would establish the hierarchy of college football dynasties for months to come. But over the course of dozens of interviews Saturday, there was a common feeling."

Mause adds, "Ask these people about their excitement over Trump coming to the game, and you're often greeted with a physical reaction: a shrug."

The reporter points out that "on a scale of the Trumpiest places on Earth, an Alabama football game is about a nine" and "just below a Trump rally." But at Bryant-Denny Stadium, the "lack of fervor" for Trump was "notable."

"Unfortunately for Trump, according to the fans on the ground, few seemed to be paying enough attention to even associate his visit with electoral matters," Mause writes. "Even the fans who loudly proclaimed their early morning drunken adoration for him said it wouldn't get them any closer to filling out a ballot if they weren't already planning to."

Democratic strategist Tharon Johnson observed that Alabama is far from a swing state, although Georgia most definitely is.

Johnson told Mause, "He's doing something that's sort of unorthodox by going to a non-battleground state to try to appeal to battleground voters."

Read Ben T.N. Mause's full NOTUS article at this link.

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Senate GOP campaign memo: 'Imperative' to 'clearly and concisely reject' Alabama IVF ruling

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) — the main campaign arm for GOP candidates for the US Senate — is urging Republicans to distance themselves from the Alabama Supreme Court's recent controversial ruling that frozen embryos are equivalent to human children.

Since the ruling, three in-vitro fertilization (IVF) providers in Alabama have ceased fertility treatments for people hoping to become pregnant in the Yellowhammer State in order to avoid prosecution. In response to the ruling, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has had to publicly state that his office will not prosecute people who are either receiving or providing IVF treatments.

CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox tweeted the memo on Friday, which stated that the Alabama ruling was being exploited as "fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain," and emphasized that there are "zero Republican Senate candidates who support efforts to restrict fertility treatments."

"NRSC encourages Republican senate candidates to clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF," the memo read, citing research by Kellyanne Conway that found 85% of respondents — including 86% of women — support "increasing access to fertility-related procedures and services."

"When responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, it is imperative that our candidates align with the public's overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments," the memo continued.

The Alabama decision has also proven divisive for Republican presidential candidates. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who is hoping for a strong showing in her home state of South Carolina tomorrow, agreed with the ruling and stated that frozen embryos were indeed "babies." However, former President Donald Trump took a different stance, and called on the Alabama legislature to "act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF."

"Like the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans, including the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, and Pro-Life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby," Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

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GOP strategist predicts Alabama IVF ruling will hurt Republicans 'badly' in 2024 election

Firebrand author Ann Coulter, a self-described "pro-life conservative," has vehemently criticized some of the anti-abortion laws passed in red states following the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling of 2022 — laws that, Coulter argues, are going too far and hurting the Republican Party in elections.

Coulter, who applauded the overturning of Roe v. Wade, recently told "Real Time" host Bill Maher that Republicans are "getting slaughtered" at the polls. And she isn't the only person on the right who believes that the anti-abortion movement is overreaching.

On Tuesday, February 20, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and that harming those embryos in any way — even by accident — is punishable under the state's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Conservative political consultant Stan Barnes — who formerly served as a GOP state senator in Arizona — fears this ruling will hurt Republicans in November.

Barnes told Politico's Alice Miranda Ollstein, "It certainly intersects badly with general election politics for Republicans. When a state, any state, takes an aggressive action on this particular topic, people are once again made aware of it and many think, 'Maybe I can't support a Republican in the general election.'"

In response to the Alabama ruling, the state's largest hospital has ceased in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.

Reporting for Politico Playbook on February 22, journalists Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels and Ryan Lizza note that "the issue is already rearing its head on the campaign trail" and that GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley told NBC News she agrees with the Alabama ruling — saying, "Embryos, to me, are babies."

"Democrats, meanwhile, are on the attack," the Politico reporters observe. "(Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) spokesperson Nebeyatt Betre told Playbook that voters are 'tired of Republicans' dangerous and blatantly anti-woman agenda,' and vowed that House Democratic candidates will 'make sure to continue holding Republicans accountable for their disastrous impact on women's rights.'"

Read the full Politico Playbook column at this link.

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How ‘that’ and ‘which’ can profoundly alter an Alabama law

When a bill is filed in the Alabama Legislature, it may contain major changes to state law and policy.

But it may also try to drag some language into the 21st century.

”Look at the bills from say, in Title 22, which is the health department, and you look at some these old– they’re fascinating– but some of those sections talk about the importance of, like, fresh milk and the scourge of vermin,” Paula Greene, deputy director of the Alabama Legislative Services Agency Legal Division, said.

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Many bills filed in the Legislature contain “nonsubstantive code changes,” generally updates to language, to make things more modern or clear, to update Alabama law as the Legislature goes.

The Legislative Services Agency includes people who handle a lot of the bill drafting for the Legislature or help lawmakers draft their bills. The agency will be busy as legislators return Tuesday for the 2024 regular session.

For example, Greene says they try to avoid the word “such,” an old drafting style that they longer use. She says they replace “such” with “the,” “a” or “an” if possible. They will take out extraneous words.

“We try to update thereunders, whereins, theretofores, that sort of old complicated language,” she said.

So far, 93 bills have been filed for the 2024 Legislative Session. Over 900 bills were filed last year.

Alabama has a short drafting style manual that emphasizes clear and accurate language.

“The principal functions of a bill are (i) to create or establish, (ii) to impose a duty or obligation, (iii) to confer a power, create a right, or grant a privilege, and (iv) to prohibit,” reads the guide. “A bill is often subject to conditions, qualifications, limitations, or exceptions. The clarity and precision of the bill are enhanced by a plain and orderly expression of those functions.”

But Greene said that watching other states leads to updating drafting language.

“These things just come from national trends, what we hear, but we’re not making monumental changes in how we draft here,” she said.

She said they just had a meeting with the staff where they could use the word “must” more than they do in lieu of “shall.”

Greene said that “shall” is prohibition telling a person, legally defined to include corporations or organizations beyond individuals, that they have to or can’t do something.

“Must,” she says, is a condition.

“‘The application must include the address of the applicant, the name of the social security number, the applicant,’ whatever it is,” Greene said. “We’re not telling the application to do something. We’re not commanding the application to include these things.”

Greene said that a block of text or something with a lot of “legalese” might be rewritten into a more digestible format. They also change any “he” in the law to “he or she” to update the language.

“If it’s all substantive, then it’s not nonsubstantive,” she said.

Drafting language does have its quirks. Greene said the way they use “that” and “which” are different from how most people use them.

“Probably how you would write as a journalist, in how you use ‘that’ and ‘which,’ chances are fairly good that you use it differently than how we use it in our office,” she said.

For example, ‘which’ qualifies a word that does not come directly before it. In the sentence “a county with a municipality, which has a population greater than 50,000,” the word “which” refers to the county.

But if ‘that’ is used – “a county with a municipality that has a population greater than 50,000 people” – ‘that’ refers to a municipality.

To put it another way, a single word change in a bill can decide whether a law affects a county government, or a city government. Greene said that sentence would be neater in an actual bill.

“Most states follow that rule, but a lot of lawyers and a lot of lay people don’t understand that difference,” she said.

The goal, Greene said, is for all laws to be written as clearly as possible for the public.

“I know the public complains that bills are difficult to read,” she said. “That’s not on purpose. And sometimes it’s highly negotiated language and it ends up being more than we want, but that being said we really do have a duty to make non-substantive changes, if we think it’s going to be clearer and easier to read for the public generally.”

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Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus 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. Follow Alabama Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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The road to death penalty abolition runs through Alabama and Oklahoma

Countless cases lay bare the raw injustice of the death penalty in the United States. The case of Richard Glossip is certainly one of them. He’s been on Oklahoma’s death row since 1998, facing nine separate execution dates. He’s been given his final meal three times, and, in 2015, was saved from death just hours before his execution only after prison officials admitted they had ordered the wrong drug for their lethal cocktail. Richard Glossip has always maintained his innocence in the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese, who employed him as a motel manager in Oklahoma City. The flawed prosecution had no physical evidence linking him to the crime. Only the testimony of the actual killer, Justin Sneed, another motel employee who had already confessed to the crime, implicated Glossip. In exchange, Sneed was able to avoid the death penalty.

Last Monday, Richard Glossip was granted what might be his last lifeline: The U.S. Supreme Court, after issuing a stay of execution last May, announced it will hear his appeal. Even Oklahoma’s elected Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond is supporting Glossip’s appeal.

In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court expects the parties to answer several questions, including “[w]hether due process of law requires reversal, where a capital conviction is so infected with errors that the State no longer seeks to defend it.”

In addition to Attorney General Drummond, a bipartisan group of Oklahoma state legislators is also advocating for Glossip. After Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board failed to act on the group’s clemency recommendation, the legislators recruited the ReedSmith law firm to conduct a pro-bono independent inquiry. Between June and September 2022, the law firm released four reports detailing flaws in the prosecution’s case and Justin Sneed’s attempts to recant his testimony against Glossip and the prosecution’s efforts to stop him from recanting.

In their 343-page final report, ReedSmith attorneys detailed the cases many problems: “The State’s destruction and loss of key evidence before Glossip’s retrial deprived the defense from using the evidence at trial (and has deprived the defense today of the ability to perform forensic testing using DNA and technology advancements), the tunnel‐vision and deficient police investigation, the prosecution’s failure to vet evidence and further distortion of it to fit its flawed narrative, and a cascade of errors and missed opportunities by defense attorneys, fundamentally call into question the fairness of the proceedings and the ultimate reliability of the guilty verdict against Glossip for murder.”

Since the Supreme Court stayed Glossip’s execution last May, a Republican-led group of Oklahoma legislators formed a committee, seeking a moratorium on the state’s death penalty overall. The likelihood that Richard Glossip, an innocent man, could be executed was the primary motivation behind the effort.

Oklahoma already imposed a brief execution moratorium, after a botched execution in 2014 called into question the state’s lethal injection protocol. Oklahoma lawmakers then passed a law that would allow the state to kill using an experimental technique referred to as “nitrogen hypoxia” or “nitrogen asphyxiation,” which had never been used. Scores of workers have died in industrial accidents from nitrogen gas leaks and spilled liquid nitrogen, including six people who died at a poultry plant in Gainesville, Georgia in 2021. Accidents like this have led those who devise execution methods to look to nitrogen as the latest, fool-proof method to kill.

Alabama became the first state to use nitrogen gas with its execution of Kenneth Smith on Thursday night. Smith survived Alabama’s first attempt to kill him, by lethal injection in November, 2022. The executioners frantically sought a vein to deliver the deadly cocktail, resorting at one point to subjecting Smith, strapped to a gurney, to an “inverted crucifixion position” as one person on the team repeatedly and painfully jabbed a needle under his collarbone. Even Alabama’s ultraconservative Republican Governor Kay Ivey saw the need to explore alternative means of execution, hence this new foray into gassing people to death.

Grotesque abuses of state power as in Oklahoma and Alabama are what led the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Henry Blackmun to conclude, in a dissenting opinion in a 1994 case, “the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice, and mistake.” Blackmun, a conservative when appointed by President Nixon in 1970, rendered increasingly liberal opinions during his tenure on the bench (he wrote the Roe v. Wade opinion, for example). In his 1994 death penalty dissent, Blackmun pledged, “From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.”

According to The Death Penalty Information Center, there are over 2,300 prisoners on death row in the United States.

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Alabama carries out first US execution using nitrogen gas

Washington (AFP) - The southern US state of Alabama on Thursday put to death a convicted murderer using nitrogen gas, the first time the controversial method criticized by human rights advocates has been used in the country. Kenneth Eugene Smith was pronounced dead at 8:25 pm (0225 GMT Friday), according to the state attorney general. "Justice has been served. Tonight, Kenneth Smith was put to death for the heinous act he committed over 35 years ago," the statement by Attorney General Steve Marshall said. Smith, 58, was on death row for more than three decades after being convicted of the 1988...