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Today is the 15th legislative day of the 2025 regular session, which marks the halfway point allowed by the Alabama Constitution, and while much work still awaits us, the Senate has already approved several significant measures designed to make an already great state even better.
It is my first session as Senate president pro tem, a post that became vacant when my predecessor, Sen. Greg Reed, R – Jasper, resigned his seat in order to join Gov. Kay Ivey’s cabinet, and I am grateful that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle unanimously elected me to lead the chamber.
On my first day as Pro Tem, I noted that someone once referred to politics as “a circus hitched to a tornado,” and now, almost two months into the job, I can assure you that the tornado is spinning even faster, and the circus has added a third ring.
A quirk in our body’s rules prohibits bills from being pre-filed in the Senate if the pro tem’s office is vacant, so my election immediately opened a floodgate of legislation. For that reason, it would have been understandable if we had slow rolled the start of the session, but we went in the opposite direction and came out of the gate hot.
The Senate leadership made a conscious decision to focus our early efforts on supplementing and paralleling the policies being enacted by President Trump in the White House and the Republicans in the U.S. Congress, and the reasoning behind that choice is simple.
When conservative policies are enacted on the federal level, great things can happen, and when conservative policies are enacted on the state level, great things can also happen, but when conservative policies are enacted on both the federal and state levels simultaneously, great things can happen twice as fast.
It is the reason why the very first bill passed by the State Senate this session was the “What is a Woman Act,” a measure that injects a strong dose of clarity into a silly debate that has dominated the national conversation for far too long.
Sponsored by Sen. April Weaver, R – Brierfield, it enacts easy-to-understand, biology-based definitions for terms like man and woman, male and female, boy and girl, and mother and father into state law.
While some woke extremists claim that there are as many as 74 different genders, most Alabamians understand an eternal truth that has remained in place since Adam first laid eyes on Eve — men are born men and women are born women.
Priority passage of the legislation, which Gov. Kay Ivey has already signed into law, demonstrates that the Alabama Senate is guided by common sense and traditional values, not by trendy social fads and woke nonsense.
We have also worked through a package of bills addressing illegal immigration, which resulted after several state senators toured Joe Biden’s open Mexican border in Texas last year.
Illegal immigrants thumb theirs noses at our laws the moment they arrive, and they use our services and drain our resources without contributing a dime in state income tax in return, so one bill by Sen. Chris Elliott, R – Josephine, invalidates out-of-state drivers licenses issued to those who did not first prove their legal status, another by Sen. Wes Kitchens, R – Arab, establishes the crime of human smuggling for knowingly transporting an illegal immigrant, and a third by Sen. Lance Bell, R – Pell City, allows state and local law enforcement to collect fingerprints and DNA from illegal immigrants who are in custody.
All three measures have passed the Senate with additional bills related to illegal immigration expected to join them soon.
Too many Alabamians today feel unsafe in the communities that they call home, too many criminals feel empowered to ignore the laws that keep us safe, and too many law enforcement officers feel that they lack support from elected officials who are supposed to have their backs.
In response, the Senate has already passed several pieces of a public safety package designed to reverse these trends and combat the lack of respect for law and order that took firm root in some areas of Alabama in recent years.
Another interesting and much-needed bill sponsored by Sen. Merika Coleman, D – Pleasant Grove, seeks to require men to accept their responsibilities by allowing judges to order child support beginning at conception if paternity is legally established within one year of a child’s birth.
In presenting her bill, Sen. Coleman noted that the costs of having a child begin well before birth as nurseries are prepared and clothes, diapers, and other supplies are purchased. She argued that all of those costs, too, should be shared.
The legislation received unanimous approval with members from both sides of the aisle speaking in its support because we all understand that men who father children should not be allowed to financially shirk the result of their actions.
Other important bills too numerous to mention here have also secured approval since the session’s start, but the Senate must keep its eyes firmly focused on the work that awaits us in the second half.
Passage of the Education Trust Fund and General Fund budgets — the Legislature’s predominant constitutional duty — remains before us along with consideration of several tax cut proposals, education reforms, and additional measures designed to make Alabama an even better place to live, work, worship, and raise families.
So as impressive as the accomplishments detailed above may appear, sit back and wait because you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
