Rural white voters have long enjoyed outsize power in American politics. They have inflated voting power in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and the Electoral College.
Although there is no uniform definition of “rural,” and even federal agencies cannot agree on a single standard, roughly 20% of Americans live in rural communities, according to the Census Bureau’s definition. And three-quarters of them – or approximately 15% of the U.S. population – are white.
Right-wing activists who have long criticized liberalism and “wokeness” in higher education and helped force the resignation of Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s first African American president, have now set their sights on ending the diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs that these activists claim helped place figures like Gay in her job in the first place.
Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who played a pivotal role in forcing Gay’s resignation, stated this view bluntly on X – formerly known as Twitter– following Gay’s ouster: “Today, we celebrate victory. Tomorrow, we get back to the fight. We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America.”
Before 2017, I would have struggled to pick out Jim Patterson in the Alabama House of Representatives.
Patterson was a Meridianville Republican elected to the chamber in 2010. In his first term, he did what most freshman representatives do: handle local legislation and vote the party line. He sponsored tax exemption bills, too, and in his second term added education and retirement legislation to his docket.
But Patterson didn’t stand out until he took on a big project.
Ever since July 1, 2021, student-athletes have been able to pursue endorsement deals. But when it comes to getting paid by the universities for which they play, the students have been shut down. Here, Cyntrice Thomas, a professor of sport management at the University of Florida, answers questions about the hurdles that stand in the way of college athletes being compensated for their athleticism.
What stands in the way of paying college sports players?
NCAA rules are the main obstacle.
Not long after it was formed in 1906, the NCAA prohibited schools from compensating student-athletes for their athletic ability. In 1948, the NCAA adopted the Sanity Code, which also prohibited athletic scholarships for students who couldn’t demonstrate financial need or economic hardship.
The Alabama Supreme Court handed down an unprecedented decision in February 2024, holding that stored frozen embryos created for in vitro fertilization, known as IVF, were “minor children” under a state wrongful death law.
The impact on the medical community was immediate and acute. Fearing newfound civil or criminal legal liability if embryos were now considered “persons” under Alabama law, IVF clinics had to make an overnight choice between providing patient care and risking that liability. As a result, multiple IVF clinics across the state immediately suspended IVF procedures. And the most direct impact, of course, was on patients.
The Rosa Parks statue in Montgomery’s Court Square is not what you expect from a monument. That’s why I love it.
There’s no pedestal. No stage. Nothing separating the viewer from Parks. It’s a life-sized and human-scaled depiction of a civil rights hero.
This is no divinely ordained messenger walking in the sky above us. This is a woman going home after a day at work – a dignified, respected citizen with a long track record of activism. She has a plan for the bus ride ahead.
Proponents of America’s system of immigration controls lament what they say are “invaders” crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and entering the United States. Many of them say that this “invasion” is a conspiracy to alter the culture of the United States in a Hispanic direction.
Ironically, very few, if any, of these anti-invaders ever condemn what the U.S. government did with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. That treaty did more to change the culture of the United States in a Mexican direction than immigrant “invaders” could ever hope to do.
Growing up as a teenager in the 1960s, I served as a page in the Alabama Legislature. One day when I was around 13 years old, I was looking around the House of Representatives and it occurred to me that north Alabama, as well as the state’s largest county, Jefferson, was vastly underrepresented. Even at that early age, I knew that the U.S. Constitution required that all people be represented equally and that the U.S. Constitution superseded our state constitution. Both Constitutions clearly state that the U.S. House of Representatives and the Alabama House of Representatives must be reapportioned every 10 years, and the representation should be based on one man, one vote. In other words, all districts should be equally apportioned. That is why the census is taken every ten years.
Congress has once again been making headlines for all the wrong reasons, with multiple news outlets in recent months touting the current 118th Congress as possibly the least productive in the institution’s history. In 2023, Congress only passed 34 bills into law, the lowest number in decades.
Congress was only recently able to pass a budget bill that will keep the government open until the fall of 2024 after months of delay and stopgap measures.
As a result, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s gavel seems to be hanging in the balance yet again, as conservative Republicans revolt over his support for the bill.
When a vacation approaches, do you ever get the feeling that it’s almost over before it starts?
If so, you’re not alone.
