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A statue of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island and an early exponent of religious liberty, is seen on the campus of Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. Williams called for the separation of church and state in part because he believed government inevitably corrupted religion. (Courtesy Roger Williams University) During a recent debate  over school prayer , several Alabama House members rose to proclaim that our nation has Judeo-Christian roots. Roots they wish to dig up, tie into a cross and beat the rest of us with. Rep. Mark Gidley, R-Hokes Bluff, said putting prayer in schools was “returning to the foundations that were there for like 200 years.” And there was Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City: “If we’re going to continue as a nation, we must ask the blessing of God and create that foundational principle in our students.” Here I imagined a puritan — with the black-buckled hat and the heavy jacket topped by a white ruff — crashing Kool-Aid Man style...

Empty beds in a hospital corridor. A recent report from the Alabama Department of Public Health showed that the state's hospitals performed better than the national baseline in three of four recorded heath care-associated infections in 2024. (Jack Yen Joy Photography/Getty Images) Alabama hospitals performed better than expected in health care-associated infections (HAIs) in 2024, according to a report released Thursday. The Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) in Alabama annual report , prepared by the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) using data reported by state acute care and critical access care facilities, found that the standardized infection ratio (SIR) improved among three of the four infections measured in the report.  Melanie Roderick, epidemiologist supervisor at ADPH, said in a phone interview Friday that the report helps patients make an informed decision when they need to get a procedure done. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE “If someb...

A clinic in Salem, Oregon, where lawmakers approved $7.5 million for 12 Planned Parenthood health centers in the state after a tax break and spending cut bill signed by President Donald Trump in July cut off federal reimbursements for one year. (Photo by Mia Maldonado/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Visits for contraception and cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood clinics have dropped by double-digits after Congress passed a bill cutting off Medicaid funding to certain reproductive health care providers last year, according to a new  Democratic congressional report . Between July 1 and the end of December, the report said emergency contraception distribution fell 10%, oral contraception distribution fell 27%, and IUD insertions fell 10%. Republican members of the House and Senate passed a sweeping budget reconciliation bill in July that included a one-year provision barring clinics from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement if they offered abortion services and billed Medica...

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., in an elevator at the U.S. Capitol on June 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C., at a time when Republican leaders were pushing to get President Donald Trump's "One, Big, Beautiful Bill," Act through Congress and to his desk before the July Fourth holiday. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) WASHINGTON — Sure, Sen. Thom Tillis has become the most visible, outspoken Republican insider critic of the second Trump administration. But don’t mistake Tillis for a maverick. The North Carolina senator is being who he’s long been, the sort of GOP stalwart known as an establishment Republican. A Republican who’s conservative on fiscal issues, usually pragmatic on other stuff. A Chamber of Commerce Republican. A Bush-Romney Republican. “Thom Tillis was, and is, best understood not as a moderate, but as a pragmatist,” said Christopher Cooper, author of  “Anatomy of a Purple State,” which analyzes North Carolina politics. “When he speaks, when he acts, and...

Sarah Beckman, left, stands with other staff members of Ohio's Hamilton County Quick Response Team in an undated photo. The team helps people who use fentanyl get treatment. Ohio had the largest drop in opioid overdose deaths of any state as of October 2025 since the national peak in June 2023. (Photo courtesy of Hamilton County Quick Response Team) Since their peak less than three years ago, opioid overdose deaths dropped nearly by half as of October, according to a Stateline analysis. The drop comes as a shrinking fentanyl supply has made the drug weaker and less deadly and volunteer efforts get more people into treatment. The weaker fentanyl tracks to a crackdown on materials used to make fentanyl in China around the time U.S. deaths started dropping in 2023. Some experts see it as a welcome, but possibly temporary, break for states in a scourge that boosted crime as people who are using the drugs sometimes fall into homelessness and steal to support fentanyl habits. The ...

Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, (left) speaks with Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile (right) on the floor of the Alabama Senate on Feb. 10, 2026 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. Figures on Thursday pressed Elliott on why senators should vote for a bill requiring state agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector) A Senate vote on a bill that would have required Alabama governments and agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” was delayed Thursday amid a Democratic filibuster.   HB 2 , sponsored by Rep. David Standridge, R-Hayden, would require all state and local entities to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America .  Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, questioned the need for the bill.  “We’ve got gas prices as high as they are today, we’re in the middle of war . . . and we are here talking about the Gulf of America,” Singleton s...