An uphill drive is being revived to make casting a ballot easier in Alabama, which has been at the center of the struggle for voting rights in the United States for more than half a century.
Thomas Jackson, one of the longest serving Democrats in Montgomery, is already gathering support for bills to permit absentee voting without an excuse as well as mandate early voting in every county in the state, one of the few places where neither provision is on the books.
He'll introduce the bills when the Legislature convenes in two weeks. But he's proposed them before and they've never received so much as a committee vote in the lopsided Republican legislature. And Alabama's top elections official, GOP Secretary of State John Merrill, says he's confident both measures will die again this year.
"We have broken every record in the state for voting participation in the last four major elections we've had, so when you're breaking records for voter registration and voter participation, I find it very difficult to believe that we need to change what we're currently doing," he told Alabama Daily News.
"We say we want to move forward, and give everyone the same rights and abilities, but then we keep people away from the ballot, so somebody isn't really being truthful," countered Jackson.
Alabama is among just 17 states that require citizens wanting to vote absentee to proffer a specific reason why they can't get to the polls on Election Day. And it's one of just nine states that do not have in-person early voting. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the states with early voting have it last 22 days on average. The Alabama proposal is for 14 days.
Still, according to secretary of state website, turnout was 67 percent of people registered in the 2016 presidential election (when the national rate was 55 percent) and set a modern record of 74 percent when Barack Obama first ran (and lost the state decisively) in 2008. Donald Trump carried one of the most reliably red states in the nation by 28 points four years ago, the 10th straight victory there for the GOP nominee.
In between the Obama and Trump election was when the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, the requirement that states with histories of racial discrimination in elections get federal approval for any changes to their voting rules. That 2013 case was about Shelby County in Alabama, one of the locations covered by that so-called preclearance requirement.
The investigative news site Birmingham Watch says nearly 100 polling places were closed in 25 counties between 2010 and 2018. County officials said population shifts prompted some of the closures, while others were caused when the buildings where voting happened were condemned.
Since preclearance ended, Alabama has imposed one of the nation's strictest photo ID laws for would-be voters and become one of only four states to require people to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.