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U.S. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, left, and the top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, at a committee markup on Thursday, July 31, 2025. (Photos from committee webcast) WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations Thursday largely rejected Trump administration proposals to slash funding for education programs, medical research grants, health initiatives and Ukraine security assistance. Instead, senators from both parties agreed to increase spending in the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education spending bill for fiscal year 2026, as well as the Defense bill, and rebuked the White House’s move to dismantle the Department of Education. The pushback against President Donald Trump was significant as Congress heads toward a possible standoff and partial government shutdown when the fiscal year expires on Sept. 30. In response to the Trump administration’s separate cancellation of grants and freezing of ...

A California Mini Corps tutor helps a migrant child at McKinley Elementary. The Trump administration said it would unfreeze funding for education programs. Migrant families relied on some of those funds, and some program leaders say damage has been done during the freeze and they’ve had to shut down this summer. (Courtesy of Butte County Office of Education) This story originally appeared on Stateline . Victoria Gomez de la Torre doesn’t know when — or if — the migrant children she serves are going to get the education help they’ve come to rely on. Gomez de la Torre oversees the migrant education program for 12 central Florida counties. The federally funded service helps the children of migrant agricultural workers, who move within and between states based on planting and harvesting seasons. Her staff identifies agricultural workers who’ve migrated to the area and helps them enroll their children in school. It also helps connect them with tutoring and medical care. GET THE MO...

A working model for the Rosa Parks statue sits in front of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery on Oct. 11, 2023. The final version will stand at about 15 feet tall. (Alander Rocha/Alabama Reflector) Statues of civil rights activist Rosa Parks and disability rights activist Helen Keller are scheduled to be dedicated on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol in late October. Members of the Alabama Women’s Tribute Statue Commission on Wednesday discussed a planned unveiling at the Capitol grounds on October 24, with a guest list of 214 that will include “individuals, families, stakeholders, and partner organizations. The ceremony will be held in the Capitol Auditorium, with Gov. Kay Ivey providing the opening remarks, before the unveiling of the statues. “(I) want to say how excited I am as we meet. That means that we are one meeting shorter than we would have been before October 24 and the unveiling. So I want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all who’ve played a major ...

A school bus drives along a rural road outside of Kenosha, Wis. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act established a national tax credit scholarship program, but state leaders can decide whether and how to participate. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) This story originally appeared on Stateline .  When President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, he gave state leaders — not federal regulators — the power to decide whether and how to participate in the first-ever national tax credit scholarship program. That decision now looms largest in blue states, where Democratic governors and lawmakers must weigh whether to reject the law outright on ideological grounds — or try to reshape it into something that reflects their own values. “This isn’t the federal voucher program we were worried about five years ago,” said Jon Valant, a senior fellow in governance studies at the left-leaning Brookings Institution who testified before Congress on earlier versions of ...

U.S. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden testifies before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on July 30, 2025. (Photo via committee livestream) Members of both parties on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee chastised a U.S. Department of Agriculture official Wednesday for not consulting Congress before proposing to shift thousands of jobs out of the Washington, D.C., area. USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden defended the sweeping proposal, which Secretary Brooke Rollins  announced with a  five-page memo last week, saying it would help bring the department closer to the people the government oversees and lower the cost of living for federal workers, while pledging to work with members of the committee over the next month of planning. “The secretary’s memorandum was the first step, not the last step,” Vaden told Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the panel, who criticized several aspects of the plan. The proposal calls for cutti...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference with Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., demanding the release of the Epstein files at the U.S. Capitol on July 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Wednesday began charting a little-known legal path to force President Donald Trump’s administration to release the investigative files on the now deceased Florida sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, requested the “full and complete Epstein files” by Aug. 15. “After missteps and failed promises by your Department regarding these files, it is essential that the Trump Administration provide full transparency. In 2024, President Trump stat...

Emil Bove, President Donald Trump's nominee to be a judge for the 3rd Circuit, testifies during his Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing on June 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday night confirmed President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, to a lifetime position on the federal appeals bench, in the face of whistleblower allegations and criticism from former judges and advocates. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine broke with their party and joined all Democrats in a 50-49 vote to oppose Bove’s confirmation to the U.S. Appeals Court for the 3rd Circuit, which handles cases for Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Bove, 44, currently holds the position of principal associate deputy attorney general at the U.S. Justice Department. Trump initially appointed Bove as acting attorney general at the start of the president...

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, center, announces his agency's plans for deregulation from an Indianapolis trucking facility on Tuesday, July 29, 2025. At left is Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and at right is Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita.  (Photo by Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency submitted a proposal Tuesday to rescind a 2009 finding that has provided the foundation for the agency’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, drawing strong opposition from Democrats and climate groups. Administrator Lee Zeldin said the EPA would scrap what is known as its endangerment finding, established under President Barack Obama. The determination called climate change a danger to human health and therefore gave the EPA power to regulate the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from cars and trucks. The finding provided the framework for numerous EPA regulations, including a 2024 rule requiring increasingly ...

Wayne Reid, the executive director of Alabama Public Television, speaks with a colleague at the Alabama Educational Television Commission meeting on July 29, 2025, in Birmingham, Alabama. Reid said APT remains concerned about recent federal funding cuts to public media, but is working through some possible solutions. (Anna Barrett/Alabama Reflector) BIRMINGHAM — The director of Alabama Public Television (APT) said Tuesday that the public service broadcaster could drop NPR affiliate stations in the state following federal funding cuts.  Wayne Reid, executive director of APT, said it will lose about $3.2 million, equal to about 13% of its FY24 budget , in federal funding after President Donald Trump signed a law revoking $1.1 billion for public media over the next two fiscal years. Reid said there is a possibility that APT will drop the three NPR affiliate stations in Huntsville and instead take up programming from the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). “We’ve got a great plan for t...

The Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C., the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor. A U.S. District Court judge ruled that the U.S. Department of Labor violated the law when it terminated contracts with organizations that managed 99 JOb Corps centers throughout the country, including two in Alabama. (Official Department of Labor photograph) A federal judge on Friday prohibited the U.S. Department of Labor from terminating management contracts for 99 of 124 Jobs Corps Centers in the country, keeping the centers in Gadsden and Montgomery open in Alabama for the time being. U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the District of Columbia wrote that the department violated the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) in closing the centers down. “The WIOA requires DOL to engage in certain procedures — including a period of notice and comment — before closing any Job Corps center,” Friedrich said in her ruling. “The Department failed to comply with these statut...

The entrance to First Liberty Building and Loan is seen on July 11, 2025 in Newnan, Georgia. The Alabama Securities Commission has opened an 'inquiry' into the business, which federal prosecutors accuse of running a Ponzi scheme. (Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder) The Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) has opened an inquiry into an alleged Georgia-based Ponzi scheme involving First Liberty Building and Loan and its owner, Edwin Brant Frost IV. Amanda Senn, director of the ASC, said in a phone interview Monday that the move is not an investigation. The agency is actively monitoring the situation and coordinating with authorities in both Alabama and Georgia “to be sure Alabama investors are protected,” and that the agency will elevate the case to an active investigation if Georgia takes further action. “It’s on our radar,” Senn said. “We’ve got personnel dedicated to monitoring the situation in its entirety.”  GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE A lawsuit filed by the ...