This is my last weekly report as your congressman. Serving you in Washington these last seven years has been a great honor, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity you have given me. I never once walked out on the floor of the House of Representatives when I wasn’t in awe that I […]

It’s Christmas week, so let’s talk about some Christmas miracles. No, I’m not talking about that monster hit John Metchie put on Florida’s Trey Dean in the SEC Championship game Saturday. We’ve come to expect plays like that from the Alabama football team this year. I’m talking about some truly surprising big deal things. First, […]

When the members of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 debated how to pick the executive, several options were considered. Some wanted the people to directly elect the president, while others distrusted the people to know enough about the candidates to make that important decision on their own. After all, the election would be held across […]

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report covering November. It contained some good news, some bad news and some downright ugly news. First, let’s look at the good news. The economy added 245,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate dropped to 6.7% from a high of 14.7% in April. […]

On the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling which is a very positive signal for the rights of people of faith to freely exercise that faith. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had issued a “Cluster Initiative” which used color coded restrictions on large gatherings in certain parts of New York […]

Four hundred years ago this month, a group of just over 100 people arrived off the shores of Cape Cod after a two-month sail from England. They were dissenters from the Church of England like the Puritans but went further by formally separating from the established church they considered to be corrupt beyond repair. We […]

Congress returns to Washington this week after a six-week hiatus for the election. Since the end of July, we have only met for a few weeks, and the work we need to complete has piled up. This Congress ends at noon on Sunday, January 3 when the new Congress will be sworn in and start […]

Election Day has come and gone. Despite the fact that multiple national news sites have “called” the presidential election, court cases and recounts are going forward in several states where the margin is less than 1%, and we don’t yet “know” who was elected president. By federal law, all election disputes must be resolved by […]

I’ll never forget sitting in the U.S. House Chamber in January of 2017 watching the counting of the Electoral College votes from the 2016 presidential election. Under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, the sitting vice president opens and counts the votes as submitted and certified by the electors chosen from each state, and the […]

Baldwin County voters will soon head to the polls to cast their vote for president, Congress, some statewide offices and a few proposed amendments. As your congressman and a Baldwin County resident, there is one local amendment I encourage my fellow Baldwin County voters to support: Local Amendment 2. On the backside of this year’s […]

Since COVID-19 started to bare down on the U.S. in March we have been told that the ultimate solution would be an effective vaccine providing immunity to the vast majority who receive it. But, in almost the same breath we were told anti-viral vaccines take years to be developed and tested to show their safety […]

Most people in Alabama have heard of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Its name is a little misleading because emergencies by their nature aren’t so much managed as responded to, often after the fact. You can’t manage a tornado or an earthquake, for example, but you can and should respond to it. Hurricanes are […]

The United States is such a big and diverse country with transparent sources of information and data that we are the world’s lab for various policy practices. Take the response to COVID-19. Some states closed down early and hard and stayed that way for a long time. Others were more judicious about their closure, closing […]

Congress was sent home by Speaker Pelosi last Friday without securing a deal with the White House or the Senate on the next COVID bill. While we were told we might get a 24-hours’ notice to return, our calendar doesn’t show us coming back to Washington until November 16. President Truman ran against the Republican […]

On the Friday night after Hurricane Sally passed, while many of us down here were still digging out and cleaning up and without electrical power, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. As an attorney, Justice Ginsburg was a leading advocate for women’s rights and gender equality. She was placed on the powerful U.S. […]

The aftermath of Hurricane Sally has left much of Southwest Alabama in bad shape. From the coasts of Mobile and Baldwin Counties to the northern parts of our district, winds and flooding have let many without essentials like power, water and shelter. Fortunately, help is on the way. As the forecast showed the storm approaching, […]

Last week when I wrote about some good news, I mentioned the recent peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates negotiated by the Trump administration. Just days after I wrote those words another Middle Eastern nation, Bahrain, reached a peace agreement with Israel, again negotiated by the Trump administration. What do these and […]

“We will never accept political gridlock as our fate.” — 2020 Democratic Party Platform Last Saturday, the House of Representatives met to pass a bill blocking the reform of our troubled Postal Service, reform which is desperately needed for a failing agency hemorrhaging billions of dollars each year. It was just a political show as […]

Apparently, I and the rest of the House of Representatives are being called back to Washington for a series of votes this Saturday. Has Speaker Pelosi finally reached an agreement with President Trump and Senator McConnell on the next phase of coronavirus legislation? No, her intransigence killed those negotiations and President Trump was left having […]

On August 18, the U.S. will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to our Constitution which guaranteed women’s right to vote. The women’s suffrage movement in our country began in the 1840s as women abolitionists saw the parallels between the effort to free enslaved Americans and their own desire to […]

Last week was pretty frustrating in Washington. While the House frittered away at useless Democrat messaging bills which have no chance of passage in the Senate, Speaker Pelosi refused negotiations with the Senate on a $1 trillion dollar bill to address the nation’s ongoing needs as a result of COVID-19. At the end of the […]

Last week, I had a virtual conference with the leaders of the local school systems in our district. Starting a new school year is a difficult task in the best of times. Doing so in the middle of a pandemic with the disease spreading as it is now makes this normally difficult job truly daunting. […]

When the House returns to business next Monday, we will take up the National Defense Authorization Act I wrote about last week. Then, we will take up appropriations bills for next fiscal year, which begins October 1, and likely another coronavirus bill. This spring I voted for both of the CARES Acts, which together spent […]

Last week, the House Armed Services Committee, which I’m proud to be a member of, passed and sent to the full House the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. This is the 60th year in a row that we have passed this act out of Committee, and since we […]