U.S. House of Representatives

In a remarkable rebuke of Republican leadership, the House passed legislation Thursday, 230-196, that would extend expired health care subsidies for those who get coverage through the Affordable Care Act as renegade GOP lawmakers joined essentially all Democrats in voting for the measure. This could be good news for up to a half million Alabamians who use the Affordable Care Act for their health coverage.

An estimated half million Alabamians could see the cost of their healthcare jump by up to twenty five percent as soon as today. The Kaiser Family Foundation website says that’s how many Alabamians are covered by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and by how much the cost of that coverage may increase with the expiration of federal subsidies. That apparently doesn’t include the number of state residents who will lose their health insurance altogether.

Alabama Republican Congressman Mike Rogers is scheduled to speak with Vice Admiral Frank Bradley in a classified briefing. At issue is a second attack against an alleged Venezuelan drug boat. Rogers says he spoke with Secretary Pete Hegseth and was satisfied. But, the fact that the Chairman wants to hear from Admiral Bradley, and questions being asked by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, appears to be raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers from both parties said Sunday they support congressional reviews of U.S. military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a Sept. 2 attack. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and the ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement on Saturday on the matter.

A Republican attack on a core provision of the Voting Rights Act that is designed to protect racial minorities comes to the Supreme Court this week, more than a decade after the justices knocked out another pillar of the 60-year-old law. Lawyers for Louisiana and the Trump administration will try to persuade the justices to wipe away the state's second majority Black congressional district and make it much harder, if not impossible, to take account of race in redistricting.

Heather Campbell lost her job working for a food bank over the summer because of federal funding cuts. Her husband serves as an officer in the Air Force in Alabama, but now he’s facing the prospect of missing his next paycheck because of the government shutdown. If lawmakers in Washington don't step in, Campbell’s husband won’t get paid on Wednesday.

Alabama plans to appeal a federal judge's order to swiftly draw new state Senate districts for next year's legislative elections. The Associated Press says this development was revealed in court filings.

Federal judges ordered Alabama to continue using a court-selected congressional map for the rest of the decade, but they declined to put the state back under the pre-clearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act. The decision is to keep the U.S. House district 2 map in place until 2030. What happens after that appears unclear. The APR news team spent eight months investigating issues surrounding the new U.S. House seat along the state’s “black belt.” Congressman Shomari Figures was interviewed about the new district on “APR Notebook.”

Facing a sea of state troopers, Charles Mauldin was near the front line of voting rights marchers who strode across the now infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. The violence that awaited them shocked the nation and galvanized support for the passage of the U.S. Voting Rights Act a few months later. The APR news team covered this year’s sixtieth anniversary of “bloody Sunday.”

A spat over congressional redistricting in Texas marks the latest episode in a long national history of gerrymandering. Democratic lawmakers have fled Texas to try to block Republicans from redrawing congressional districts in their favor. The term "gerrymander" originated over 200 years ago to describe political manipulation in legislative districts. A fight before the U.S. Supreme Court that created Alabama’s new U.S. House in District 2 shows how new maps can be challenged. The legal case was featured in Alabama Public Radio’s new interview program “APR Notebook.”