Off The Record: The latest rumors and rumblings in Alabama
The Britt-Tuberville housing spat
Congress is headed into a recess on a low note. No housing bill. No SAVE Act. No one’s happy when mom and dad are fighting. The most public dust up within Alabama’s Senate delegation since Tuberville withheld military flag officer nominations is escalating after a closed door meeting between Trump and Republican Senators this week. It was a notoriously nasty standoff after Trump pulled the plug on signing a housing bill that has hundreds of millions of dollars on the line for Alabama-aligned priorities – in exchange for passage of the SAVE Act, which requires the (impossible) elimination of the filibuster.
Tuberville walked out of the meeting and did a live TV hit in which he accused a bill Britt has been working on for over a year of “mostly” benefitting illegal immigrants… It hasn’t gone well for him since. Britt issued a rare correction of her colleague as Congress headed home for a couple of weeks. Notably, Tuberville, or any of the five senators who voted against the housing bill could’ve objected to recessing – and kept colleagues working on whatever their disagreements were – but they did not.
North Alabama solves another impossible defense problem (Gate 3 remains unsolved)
Another day, another reminder that North Alabama can apparently figure out how to track and destroy drones from a moving vehicle. This week, the Army touted a successful test of a new counter-UAS capability developed through work done by many of our friends and neighbors right here in the Tennessee Valley. (We know who you are, even if most of what you do comes with a security clearance)…