Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the United States’ top public health official, recently claimed some religious groups avoid the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because it contains “aborted fetus debris” and “DNA particles.”
The United States is facing its worst measles outbreaks in years with nearly 900 cases across the country and active outbreaks in several states.
At the same time, Kennedy, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, continues to erode trust in vaccines.
The biographer Robert Caro says that power reveals. Power lets you do what you want. And your desires show who you are.
After four years in the U.S. Senate, we have few doubts about what Tommy Tuberville wants.
A man sent to Washington to represent Alabama spends a lot of time on television talking about President Donald Trump or his enemies. Alabama is a peripheral concern. In some cases, Tuberville takes positions that are demonstrably bad for the people here.
When he’s not ignoring Alabamians, he’s embarrassing them. Tuberville in 2022 made an overtly racist assertion that Black Americans are criminals at a rally in Nevada. He also took a very long time to acknowledge that white nationalists are racists.
All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~Abraham Lincoln
The formative period for building character for eternity is in the nursery. The mother is queen of that realm and sways a scepter more potent than that of kings or priests. ~Author Unknown
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. ~Spanish Proverb
Congress is moving forward with President Donald Trump’s bill to provide tax cuts for billionaires while ripping social services away from millions of Americans. In particular, the natural resources section of this massive bill reveals how congressional Republicans are trying to sell out public lands to the highest bidder to fund those insider tax breaks, while Big Oil campaign donors and other Wall Street insiders stand to see financial gain.
If passed, this bill would be the largest successful attack by Congress on U.S. lands and waters in modern American history. It would give the oil industry free rein over more than 293 million acres of public lands and waters—an area larger than Texas and California combined—for drilling through its first rounds of mandated lease sales alone.* Factoring in expected tax cuts and other legal changes that would benefit fossil fuel CEOs, the tax bill would be a massive win for Big Oil and a massive loss for the American public.
Republicans in Washington have their sights – once again – on defunding public media.
On May 1, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit that helps fund American public media stations of all sizes, to terminate support for NPR and PBS. His administration is also proposing to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting entirely, threatening the funding of smaller outlets like WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama, and KGOU in Norman, Oklahoma.
Many Republicans have denounced public media programming as biased, outdated, or simply unnecessary.
There’s an old cemetery a few miles from my home. Several weeks ago, flags with three bars and seven stars sprouted over some of the graves.
It’s my annual reminder that we still have Confederate Memorial Day, one of three state holidays honoring men who killed American soldiers in defense of white supremacy.
That’s what the Confederacy was about, and it’s never been a secret. Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs that the Southern cause was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
Millions of teenagers across the land are about to leave the womb of high school for a world full of new freedoms and responsibilities. Although many have been waiting for this event for a long time, eager to get on with their lives as liberated adults, the thought of leaving behind friends and familiar places can be scary.
I appreciate teachers. I struggled with teachers, but I appreciate teachers. I even fought with teachers, but I appreciate teachers. This week includes National Teachers’ Day and it is National Teacher Appreciation Week. It gives me a ready-made opportunity to express my profound appreciation for teachers.
Teaching is one of the most important vocations in our society. In fact, it is a special calling. It is a calling that touches, shapes, and molds young minds for better or for worse. No other vocation provides such an opportunity to touch young, growing minds. Teachers often spend more time with our children than we do. Teaching is a precious gift.
Most states have one General Fund Budget. We are only one of five states that have two.
Some of you have asked why we have two budgets – one for the General Fund and one for Education. Here is why.
During the era of the Great Depression and even afterward, education in Alabama was woefully underfunded, and that is really being generous to simply say underfunded. Our schools were similar to those of a third-world country. We had two separate systems, one for white students and one for black students. Many rural schools were one-room shanties like folks used in the 1800s, like "blab" schools - no air conditioning and wood-burning stoves for heat. There were no buses to transport children, so they really did walk to school - barefoot - many times miles to and from. This was for the white schools. You can only imagine what an abysmal education was afforded to black kids. Many times teachers were not even being paid. They were given script notes in hopes of getting paid in the future.
I’ve given my share of commencement addresses, and I confess it’s a head-swelling experience to tell a captive crowd how you think they ought to live their lives while wearing an academic robe and a very silly hat. After all, didn’t they come primarily to hear what you have to say? Actually, they didn’t. In fact, graduation speakers are impediments to the real goal of the day – celebration, not reflection.
