MONTGOMERY, Alabama — This state’s legendary summer heat, humidity, and steamy, power-killing rainstorms aren’t its only current sources of tumult.
A confluence of events has turned the political spotlight on Alabama, a big change from its usual low-key role on the national political stage. After all, former President Donald Trump in 2020 crushed President Joe Biden there by 62% to 37%. And the state has gone Republican in every presidential race from 1980 on. Its Senate and gubernatorial races are usually Republican romps, with the real action taking place only in GOP primaries.
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Yet Alabama is now making national headlines, with a redistricting fight that could be key to determining which party wins the House in 2024, an ongoing Capitol Hill standoff over the seemingly unrelated issues of military nominations and abortion, and a viral video of a riverfront brawl spurred a boat’s effort to dock where it wasn’t supposed to.
Re-Redistricting
A federal court in Alabama will soon decide whether a recently enacted map by state Republican lawmakers and GOP Kay Ivey will stand for the 2024 election. It’s a legal fight that could ascend to the Supreme Court not long after the justices ruled against a previous map that lacked a second black-majority district in Alabama’s seven-member House delegation.
Alabama’s population is about 27% black, and the current map is 6-1 in favor of Republicans. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) and Democratic allies contend the newly-revised map should be thrown out in favor of one where the black population would be over 50% in two prospective House districts, which would likely favor Democrats. They’re backing a federal court challenge to the freshly-minted map.
There is a tight time frame for debates over Alabama’s congressional map. State officials say the final map must be in place by early October to provide candidates with enough time to prepare for the primary elections in March.
The case has national implications since Republicans hold the House majority only 222-213. Along with a similar case in Louisiana to create a second black majority House district there, favorable court rulings for Democrats would effectively hand the party two new seats — 40% of the total needed to nab the majority.
Hold On
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is deeply familiar with a “hold” in football — a player’s illegal use of the hand or arm to restrain an opponent who doesn’t have the ball. Tuberville, a former Auburn University head football coach elected to the Senate in 2020, is using a “hold” in a different way.
Tuberville has for months led a blockade on military promotions in protest of the Department of Defense’s abortion policy. Despite pressure from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Tuberville has stuck with his blockade. It’s prevented the promotions of more than 300 senior military officers, including two nominees for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Neither one has budged an inch in the dispute, over the priority and legality of the Pentagon’s policy to grant paid leave and reinsure travel expenses for servicemembers who would need to travel to a different state to obtain a legal abortion. The standoff stems from the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, effectively making abortion a state decision.
Lost in Space
Perhaps not unrelatedly, Alabama’s congressional delegation is steaming at the Biden White House over its decision to keep the United States Space Command headquarters in Colorado. The move overturned a Trump administration decision to move it to Alabama.
Gen. James Dickinson, the head of Space Command, convinced Biden to keep everything in Colorado because moving would jeopardize military readiness, a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner in late July. United States Space Command headquarters would achieve “full operational capability” in the coming weeks, while moving it to Alabama would result in its opening in the early to mid-2030s, which Biden determined to be an “unacceptable” risk, the official added.
Biden administrations deny conservative charges that it’s simple political payback from Tuberville’s hold on military nominations and promotions, due to Pentagon abortion policy. But Alabama Republicans aren’t convinced.
“The Biden administration’s shameful delay to finalize the permanent basing decision for U.S. Space Command warranted the opening of a Congressional investigation,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the House Armed Services Committee chairman, said in a recent statement.
“I will continue this investigation to see if they intentionally misled the Armed Services Committee on their deliberate taxpayer-funded manipulation of the selection process,” Rogers said. “I will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for their egregious political meddling in our national security. This fight is far from over.”
Riverfront Brawl
Three white men have been charged with assault after an attack earlier this week on a black riverboat co-captain in the state capital of Montgomery.
The melee began when the men refused to move their boat from a docking spot where they were not supposed to be, along the Alabama River.
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Details of the melee that ensued will play out further in court. But the episode has spurred a wave of negative headlines about the Alabama city, as the fight largely broke down along racial lines in a city with a fraught history of racial animus.
Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed, the first black mayor of Montgomery, which was a center of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, said it’s still unclear what role race may have played in the fight. The incident is still under investigation, and officials are looking into all angles of it, Reed said.
