Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, reaches into his pocket on the floor of the Alabama Senate on March 31. 2026 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. Elliott last week said if elected governor, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville would send the National Guard into Montgomery. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector) Montgomery reported 61 homicides last year. That was the same as in 2024, but fewer than the 73 that occurred in 2023. To state the obvious, one homicide is one too many. The 61 lives taken in the capital city last year matter as much as the 88 in Birmingham , the 32 in Mobile and the 21 in Huntsville . But Republicans are singling out Montgomery, a majority-Black city, as the target for their wildest fears and fantasies. Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, recently said he tries to get rooms on the top floor of a hotel when he travels to Montgomery. “I hope that when the random gunfire from the street erupts below, that the trajectory of the bullet t...
Members of the National Guard patrol the entrance to the Union Station stop on Washington, D.C.'s Metro system, on March 25, 2026. President Donald Trump was appearing at a GOP event at Union Station that night. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom) The National Guard’s top general told Congress on Friday that it would follow the Constitution and the law when he was asked about the possibility President Donald Trump would order troops to polling places for the midterm elections. The remarks at a U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee hearing came as Democratic lawmakers also voiced unease over the continuing deployment of nearly 2,500 National Guard members in Washington, D.C. Rep. Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat, asked Gen. Steven Nordhaus, chief of the National Guard Bureau, what assurances he could provide to Americans concerned about the deployment of troops at the polls. “The National Guard, obviously, always follows the Constitution, law, policy and g...