The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a decision by the Washington Supreme Court upholding a judgment against a florist who refused to make a floral arrangement for a same-sex wedding. In so doing, the justices passed up an opportunity to fill in the blanks in last week’s high-profile ruling in favor of a […]

Alabama Democrats followed up a surprise Senate victory in December with an enthusiastic crop of candidates, excited activists with more confidence than the party has had in decades and a competitive gubernatorial primary. Yet, when the dust cleared from Tuesday’s voting, there was scant evidence of a transformation of the state’s politics. Both parties attracted […]

Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s career may have ended in December when he lost a special election for the Senate, but his shadow lives on in the state’s Republican politics. Tuesday’s GOP primary showed that when Moore’s longtime protégé, Justice Tom Parker, took down incumbent Chief Justice Lyn Stuart. Parker openly embraces […]

Campaign money from Alabama’s largest teachers union used to be so toxic in Republican circles that it triggered a party rule — still in effect — discouraging candidates from accepting donations from the organization. No more. In the 2018 election cycle, the Alabama Education Association has been a major player in Republican primaries. The union’s […]

Big money in Alabama judicial races is nothing new, but a week away from primary day, Republican Supreme Court chief justice candidate Tom Parker is in the midst of a campaign that might be unprecedented. Parker, who is challenging incumbent Lyn Stuart in the primary, has reported raising $505,625. Of that, $400,000 has come from […]

The defense spending bill passed Thursday by the House of Representatives includes a provision aggressively pushed by an Alabama congressman — a space force. But don’t expect Captain Kirk to be leading the Enterprise in missions beyond the solar system anytime soon. Those kinds of operations are still the stuff of science fiction. The idea […]

Baldwin County long has been Alabama’s fastest-growing county, so perhaps it should be no surprise that one of its towns is the state’s fast-growing municipality. According to population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, Loxley added 335 new residents from July 2016 to July 2017. The 16.7 percent growth rate over that 12-month […]

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has not been content during his brief tenure in office simply to enforce state law. He has devoted part of his energies to amplifying Alabama’s voice on a variety of constitutional issues. This week’s lawsuit challenging the way the United States divvies up seats in the House of Representatives is […]

Alabamians last year relied on tradition and the Bible in naming their babies, according to data released Thursday by the Social Security Administration. The agency, which produced the data from applications for Social Security cards, determined that 398 Alabama boys got William for a first name. That was the most popular boy name in Alabama […]

From Huntsville to Mobile, Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Dawson blasted Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday for a pair of state grants totaling $800,000 to a gay rights organization. “I want to know our governor’s role in this organization,” Dawson told reporters in Mobile, his third of four stops to highlight the issue. The grants […]

This week is National Bike to Work Week, but you could be forgiven if you don’t know that in Alabama. It’s not obvious by scanning the state’s commuting routes. Alabama ties Mississippi for the smallest percentage of commuters who use bicycles — just a tenth of 1 percent of the state’s workers in 2016, according […]

A trio of Alabama congressmen who helped advance the fiscal year 2019 defense spending bill Thursday highlighted local priorities, from the Redstone Arsenal in the north to shipbuilding on the Gulf Coast. The committee voted 60-1 for the bill — formally called the National Defense Authorization Act — with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) providing the […]

Alabama lieutenant governor candidate Will Ainsworth hit TV again this week, this time with an ad depicting corrupt politicians as burglars. The ad by Ainsworth, a state representative from Guntersville, is part of a previously announced $1.2 million TV campaign that dwarfs his competitors. The spot features Ainsworth in the foreground as masked burglars leave […]

Heflin, Alabama, Police Chief A.J. Benefield does not have much experience with bank robberies, but that did not stop his officers from nabbing a foursome of suspects earlier this week. Benefield attributed the successful arrest to a combination of luck, an alert citizen and good police work. The robbery took place Wednesday at the appropriately […]

The Alabama Crimson Tide celebrated the national football championship in front of millions of TV viewers and visited the White House. But now the University of Alabama’s latest title truly is official — there’s a bobblehead.

Alabama has only a small number of illegal immigrants enrolled in a quasi-amnesty program created by former President Barack Obama’s administration, but that did not stop the state from joining the legal effort to tear it down. Alabama this week was one of six states to sign on to a lawsuit led by Texas against […]

The least likely Republican to support Democrat-backed bills in Congress is U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville), according to rankings released Tuesday by a think tank in the nation’s capital. The Bipartisan Index, an annual scorecard produced by the Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, is based on data from 2017. It […]

The Resistance erupted in anger at the decision by Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) to support Mike Pompeo’s confirmation as secretary of state Thursday, but it should have been an easy call. On paper, Pompeo is eminently qualified. He was first in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and spent six […]

State Rep. Will Ainsworth (R-Guntersville) announced Wednesday that he was launching a $1 million ad buy in support of his bid for lieutenant governor. Ainsworth, who faces two opponents in the June GOP primary, said in a statement that it was the largest ad buy so far of any candidate — not just for lieutenant […]

Today is National Telephone Day, and America virtually has achieved universal coverage — including in Alabama. According to the latest Census Bureau data, all but about 3 million homes have a landline or a cell phone. That is 2.5 percent of all households. The share of homes in Alabama without phones is slightly — but […]

Warning signs are easy to spot in retrospect, but identifying them early can save lives. That is the driving force behind an innovative partnership between the University of Alabama and a private company called Firestorm. They have launched a program called BERTHA — Behavioral Risk Threat Assessment, an online training program designed to help schools […]

New rankings from a prominent national conservative activist group rates Alabama as having one of the nation’s most conservative congressional delegations. The American Conservative Union, which tracks lawmakers’ voting records on key issues every year and puts on the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, released the scorecard. Of the 173 tracked votes cast by Alabama […]

Tuesday is the final day to pay your 2017 taxes, but if you live in Alabama, at least you have stopped working for the government for the rest of this year. Alabama’s “Tax Freedom Day” came 11 days ago, on April 5, according to the Washington-based Tax Foundation. That is tied with Oklahoma and Tennessee […]

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey remains one of the nation’s most popular governors, and new Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) fares better than his predecessor, according to a new poll released Thursday. The survey by Morning Consult included interviews with 275,000 registered voters in all 50 states from Jan. 1 through the end of March. The […]