From ou statehouse studio in Montgomery.

I'm Todd Stacy.

Welcome to Capitol Journa making news in Alabama politics today is US Senator Tommy Tuberville.

The former Auburn coach and Alabama's senior senator for months has been rumored to be a potential candidate for governor in 2026.

That's the yea that most unexpected Tuberville to run for reelection to the US Senate.

But today, Tubervill confirmed to our own Alex Engle that he is indeed considerin a run for the state's top job.

Tuberville sai he has not made up his mind yet, and that it would be difficult to leave the current Republican majority in the Senate, but that the governor's office does interest him.

He said, quote, if you're the CEO of a state, then you can help more in a certain amount of time.

I'm not going to be up here forever, even if I do stay.

Tuberville went on to say that he has not yet talked about the prospect with President Donald Trump, but he has discussed it with his Senate colleagues.

He also says he's bee encouraged to run by supporters.

There is an open race for governor, as current Governor Kay Ivey is term limited.

Other who have expressed an interest in running for the state's top job include Lieutenant Governor Wil Ainsworth, who said he won't make an announcement until after the legislative session.

And Agriculture Commissioner Rick Pate, who has said he hasn't ruled out a run.

Speaking of Tuberville, he had legislation on the Senate floor yesterday that would prevent transgender athletes from competing in women's sports.

That bill was blocke from moving forward as senators voted along party lines 51 to 45.

60 votes were needed to advance it.

The legislation would categorize gender under title nine as, quote, based solely on a person's reproductive biology and genetics.

At birth end quote.

Tuberville said his goal was to preserve the intent of title nine and protect women's sports.

You know, I sat up last night trying to think of a word to describe what happened yesterday to girl and women across this country.

I still didn't come up with amazing to me that anybody would be against girls and women's sports, but that's what happened yesterday for the third time since I've been here, going on five years.

I spent all my life in coaching, and the best thing that's ever happened to women and women's sports is title nine.

But folks, that's being attacked and attacked daily by the Democrats, there is no reason why that should not have been a 100 to 0 vote.

It makes no sense.

It really does.

And I want you to look at this.

Women's sports is being attacked.

Men and women's sports.

The Democrats say there's only a few.

Well, it doesn't take one to injure somebody.

Again, I've spent my entire life watching competition, and this is a no nonsense vote.

A voting for girls and women.

Back here to Alabama's capital city and the legislature's 11t day of the 2025 regular session.

The House had a mostly non-controversial day, but the body did go through some debate on House Bill 146 from Stat Representative Phillip Pettus.

The bill would prohibit judge from granting youthful offender status to anyon 16 or older charged with murder.

The details of the bill wer come through on the House floor.

What this bill does.

It says if you commit the crime of murder you do not get youth offender.

What the community sub does.

The capital murder was left off.

This changes.

It includes capital murder.

If I understand the law correctly, if an individual is 16 years old and charged with certain charges, they're automatically charged as an adult.

Is that correct?

Not for murder?

No.

Yeah.

Well, they're charged with it, but the judge can reduce it back to.

You could give a youthful offender.

Okay.

So what does your bill say?

Is it only murder and capital murder that cannot be or draws a youthful offender?

Yes.

Well, there's an amendment coming is going to move it.

Just the intentional murder right now.

The way this is, is any murder.

If, capital murder or murde could not get youthful offender.

So any murder, capital murder or murder or murder.

Yes.

They would be charge as an adult because of their age and the seriousness of the crime.

Yes.

All right.

But.

But today, they could make an application for youthful offender.

Yes.

And that application would either be granted or not granted.

That's correct.

Okay.

Why do we bring this to its discretion here?

Well, the the first case was in Clay County, where a judge gave, a guy that killed his girlfriend.

He got a youthful fender in the Court of Criminal Appeals, said they could not overturn his discretion.

And when was that?

Thing was 2017.

I think it's the last case was done on it.

That legislation did ultimately pass and now goes to the Senate, now to the Senate, where it was also a mostly non-controversial day in terms of bills.

However there was tension on the floor stemming from the ongoing fallout over last week's Democratic filibuster of Republican legislation seeking to overhaul the governance structure of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Democrats successfully filibustered the bill for more than six hours last week, preventing it from reaching a vote.

Today, Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton pushed back against some comments made over the weekend on a conservative radio show suggesting tha Republicans might cut off debate or even change Senate rule to limit Democrats resistance.

But we were accused of being bottom basic embarrassment, based on the fact that two senators from the minority caucus who just took over the mic and I heard on that radio show more of a talk about how they let us do what we do and how they can control this process with their nuclear option is called cloture.

And as we talked through this process, they talked also about rule changes and making rule changes to handle us on this side of the aisle.

President.

Well, I'm waiting to be handled.

And I'm waiting to see the Senate rule changes come.

And maybe with just talk with the radio show guy to make him feel like you got something under control here in Montgomery.

So I'm sorr if you get tired of us hearing us on this side of the aisle talking about we don't have an agenda, but we have more than 46 plus bills that are in committees.

That committee chairman won't hear.

And so we are a value on this side of the aisle, whether you want to listen to it or not.

You're going to get it.

Capital Journal sought interviews from Republicans for their response to Singleton, but none were available.

It was Japan Day here in the state House.

State Representatives Mike Shaw of Hoover and Laura Hall of Huntsville, led the legislature in welcoming the Consul General of Japan and a contingent of Japanese businesses to an event recognizing the special relationship between the United States and Japan.

Warm welcome.

You.

Yeah.

We have the largest contingency of Japanese companies in the entire state.

I've got four that reside within my district alone, which is likened to a Mazda and Toyota.

And so they employ all together a little over, I would estimate around 10 to 15,000 employees.

So it's a tremendous, tremendous impact on our local economy and the state GDP as a whole.

What we were able to d through representative Mike Shaw to speaker's office as well, Senator or in the Senate, we were able to put together the Japanese, those Japanese businesses, the Japanese community with the legislators legislatures across the state, but more importantly, th senators and the House members who represent those districts where these companies are.

We could talk a lot about the economic impact that Japan has on this of the state of Alabama.

But I would talk about the need for international relationships.

I mean, the world teaches us over and over again that we need to understand each other.

We need to have friendships, around the world.

And, if we can have those relationships, then sometimes we can avoid some of the conflicts that we see in the world today.

And so, it's it's a grand vision, but I hope that, this legislative exchange group that we have can help facilitate those relationships.

And, make it a better world out.

We'll be right back with tonight's guest.

You can watch past episodes of Capital Journal online at Video adaptive.org.

Capital Journal episodes are also available on AP TV's free mobile app.

You can also connect with Capital Journal and link to past episodes o Capital Journals Facebook page, and you can listen to past episodes of Capital Journal.

When you're driving or on the go with Capital Journal podcast.

Keep up with what's happening with Capital Journal.

Alabama Public Television is your place for quality educational services.

Free professional development for educators and childcare providers with access to free, curriculum aligned videos, lesson plans and instructional resources with PBS Learning Media and all the PBS kids programs, parents know and trust.

Learn something new every da with Alabama Public Television.

Visit us at AP tv.org/education to learn more.

Harpe Lee is best known as the author of one of the most affecting and widely read books of American literature, To Kill a mockingbird.

The native Alabamian drew deeply from her coming of age years in he small hometown of Monroeville.

The 1961 Pulitzer Prize winning novel explores the dimensions of prejudice, hate, loyalty and love through the eyes of a young girl as she awakens to the complexities of human nature and its capacity for both good and evil.

The film version of To Kill a mockingbird underscored the success of the novel with its own success.

Both novel and film continue to hold the public and academia's interests.

Lee was widely recognized throughout her life, including the presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 and the 2010 National Medal of Arts.

Welcome back to Capitol Journal.

Joining me next is state Representative Brock Calvin from Albertville.

Representativ thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

Well, I thin it's your first time on Capitol.

It's been elected a couple of years ago.

So I know we got a lot to get to in terms of legislation, but can you kind of, give our audience an idea of your background before you got into politics an and an idea about your district, because it's Albertville, a little bit of Guntersville and a lot of that in, northeast Alabama.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I got elected in 2022, was an open seat.

My predecessor retired.

So, you know, I was only 26 at the time and decided to throw my name in the hat.

I believe in younger people getting involved in public service.

And I was a young conservative and wanted to, you know, give some, you know, inspire other young conservatives across the state to give it a shot.

And I was fortunate enough to win at the age of 27 that November, and I was very excited for the opportunity.

And my background, I'm from Marshall County, I live in Albertville.

I went to school at Albertville and Snead State Community College, and then wrapped up at the University of Alabama.

Went back home after I graduated and starte working in the insurance field.

Now I'm a financial advisor with Ameriprise Financial there in Albertville.

And I've been doing that for going on four years now.

And I got elected in 2022.

I'm married and I live in Albertville, and that's my district is Albertville, Boaz Douglas and a little bit of Guntersville there in Marshall County.

Okay.

An interesting area in that kind of informs our conversation about your bill.

So we've got, your bill i it has to do with immigration, but really about high school athletics and the classifications, because, the reporting o this kind of showed that the way an influx of illegal or just immigrants really into an area might, I don't know, messed u the proportions in terms of how, athletic conferences or divisions are classify.

Talk abou maybe you should just talk about what your build actually does.

So immigration is no new issue for Albertville specifically, but really northeast Alabama, when you look at the cab in Marshall County, it's been going on in our area for 20 years now.

So it's not a new issue.

And what we've seen is, you know, there's a lot of problems and consequences from immigration.

And one of those and I think no one has addressed yet is how it's affected high school athletics.

In 2022, the legislature unanimously passed a law that said when students test in the air or the English language learners, those who cannot speak English, you know, the state already exempts their scores from the schools report card when they report tha to the Department of Education.

I'm taking that same principle and applying it to athletics.

And my point is, why do we not count them if we're not going to count them academically?

Why are we counting them athletically?

So what I'm what we've seen in the data is that these kids that test and ell, they're really there to work.

And our community, they have no interest in extracurricular activities.

A very, very low percentage of those actually are involve in extracurricular activities, such as sports at the high school level.

So what my bill does, it takes that same approach from the academic side and says, we're just not going to count them on the athletics side for their first five years unless they participate.

So if they do participate they are counted in that number.

When we report that to the Department of Ed for the High School Athletic Association, that count them when they classify schools.

And that's all my bil does.

It's not discriminatory.

Everybody can still play.

And if you play your count.

But what we've seen are schools like Albertville within one decade went from a middle tier five school to a middle tier seven high school.

Because of the influx of immigrants to our area.

We've seen it with Boaz going from, I think, 5 to 6, a, Crossville increase so much there, over 80% ell that they just shut down their football program altogether.

And we're seeing a similar situation going in Russellville, Jefferson County.

So many others across the state.

And it's created a not a level playing field.

You know, Albertville.

And the reality i we don't have the athletic pool to compete at the seven, seven, seven, eight level, especially in football.

So it's a it's a safety hazard for our student athletes.

It's a moral issue.

Kids are just quitting playing sports and sports.

You know I grew up playing sports and it's an opportunity for kids to get out of trouble, to get scholarships, maybe to go to the next level for their education.

And I'm disheartened to see that there's so many kids now in my district and others across state that just aren't intereste in sports because of this issue.

So what I'm hoping to do is level the playing field back for our student athlete and hopefully get them excited to play sports again at the high school level.

Okay, so if I'm hearing you right, a school like Albertville, maybe some others up there in other parts of the state.

Influx of the population, kids that are learning to speak English.

Right.

They have to have extra help and all that kind of stuff.

And so discount that percentage from the actual numbers that you turn in just to determine 586878.

But, an important point I want to run rehash on.

If that student wants to play football, they can or wants to play basebal or whatever they can, and then it would still be counted, because I guess what I'm getting at is you wouldn't want to discourage ELO students from playing athletics or being right.

You wouldn' want to penalize them somehow.

Yeah, exactly.

No If they do play, they'll count.

So it's certainly not discouraging anybody from participating or discriminating against a certain race or how your language from playing sports.

That's certainly not the intent or the reality of this piece of legislation.

So absolutely, if they can have all the access to play, and if they do play, they'll count.

Now, I know you've had some conversation with the Alabama High School Athletic Association.

They're the ones that determine that classification, right?

Yes.

How did those conversations go?

Yeah.

So the I've sat down with their new director, he recently this session to have this discussion regarding this piece of legislation.

It was a cordial meeting.

I'll give him credit for that.

But I think they made it clear they had no interest in addressing this issue right now.

And, you know, I told them unfortunately, student athletes in my district can't wait any longer.

This is not a new issue.

We've studied this issue enough, and it's time to act.

And the reason, I guess I am a little frustrated with their inability and their and how they have an active did it because they have had the opportunity to address this issue year.

A few years ago, our high schoo submitted a proposal to the SCA, trying to resolve this issue, and they didn't even bring it up for a vote.

The former director and, had a conversation that discouraged me.

I'll just say that.

And they made it clear they weren't going to act on this issue.

And that was the time I decided it was time to bring this to the legislative body, to decide for them.

So you're saying perhaps this issue could have been addressed without legislation?

It could have.

Okay.

And they had the opportunity to do that and did not act, which is, I guess, is why you're bringing it.

What's been the response from your colleagues here in the House?

It's been very positive.

You know, to those of us who have immigration in our districts, they understand the issue.

It's very easy for us to see, you know, I guess the difficult part of the challenging part has been educating my, my colleagues who are not impacted by immigration.

They just don't understand the issue.

It's, it's not they're they're dumb or they're just ignorant, and it's not an issue in their district, so they really need to be educated on it.

So I'm really having to work hard to educate, my colleagues, who don't are not familiar with immigration in their districts.

But when I do educate them, they understand it.

I believe it's bipartisan.

I've talked to Republican and Democrats who understand it, and I do think we'll ge bipartisan support on the issue.

We'll talk about that immigration issue a little bit, because, it does change the district, right?

An influx of immigrants, no matter what languag they speak, is going to impact the district.

It's going to impact your constituency.

So I'm curious how that works, because you're a it's not a new thing.

Everybody that's been down here representing that area has talked about how you guys y'all don't understand.

It's different with the chicken plants and all that kind of stuff.

So how does it impact you?

How does it impact you as a state representative, understanding that your constituency a little different than a lot of others, and you represent them all?

Yeah, I certainly do.

Like you said, it's not a new issue in our area.

We have a high Hispanic population in my district, and as of last year, we started getting a very high population of Haitians.

In our area.

And, you know, a lot of that is the chicken plants.

They come to our are to work in those chicken plant.

So I don't fault anybody for wanting to better their lives and get a job and come to our area and be involved in our community.

But, you know, there is some frustration involved there.

You know, whether it's a language barrier, the culture barrier.

So we have to we do a lot of, you know, there's groups that perform night classes, you know, kind of teaching these immigrants the American way of life.

You know, in our schools, we have to make a very focused approach to teach them English at a very quick pace to get them caught u so they can really attend school just like every other kid and get, you know, the education they, they have in America.

So it's not a new issue.

It's interest, like I said, I have Haitian constituents, I have Hispanic constituents.

And I appreciate the diversity, I really do.

But it can be frustrating because you may have seen the articles last year where we had the charter busses dropping off the Haitian immigrants in my district.

And I think it creates frustration with some of my constituents because they're confused.

They don't know exactly what's going on.

You know, the rumors were that was the Biden administration dropping off immigrants in my district.

Turns out it was just the poultry plant bussing their employees to work.

But there's a lot of confusion and something get shared on social media.

Exactly.

The hysteria takes off like wildfire.

So I think this entire package we're bringing brings transparency to the immigration process and will really relieve a lot of the frustration and confusion we've seen with immigration.

Yeah.

Well, I know that that is really interesting.

And, you know, they've talked about also on the education front, we're going to see this proposal will probably move to the legislature.

Is that so you have an English language learner.

It costs more you know, to educate that person.

And they're talking about, you know, using some weights and everything to make sure that districts like I'm sure those that you represent are compensated for that.

And so they're having that conversation in more than just sports.

Yeah.

Well, I'm on the Ways and Means Education Budget Committee in the House.

And I'm a big supporter of the change and the foundation formula.

We need to make changes to that to better serve areas like mine and Albertvill and Boaz and Douglas and Asbury that have these high ell populations and that we're not an we're not spending money on that like we could right now.

And I think we can we can change the foundation formula, really free up some money for these local boards.

It'll help and it'll help this issue.

I think we're going to be talking about that in the second half of this session.

Before I let you go, you've got a new title behind your name, the House Republican Whip.

Talk about that.

Congratulations.

But I talk about wha the House Republican whip does.

Yeah, well, I'm grateful for leader Scott Nagin for the appointment.

I was shocked and honored when I heard that I had the, the appointment to serve as the majority whip in the House.

You know, my basically my job is to thing is to count this, to count votes, to make sure that we're goin to pass our conservative agenda.

And the Alabama House of Representatives.

But also, I see myself as a bridge for you know, Republican leadership to all of our members in the House and our caucus, to share their visio and agenda with all the members and the vice versa.

I share the concerns of all the members.

Two leadership.

So there's no surprises on the floor.

Nothing comes up that we're not aware of.

And I'm honored for the challenge and the opportunity to serve our caucus in this capacity.

No surprises on the House floor.

Yes, that is an important job of the House Republican whip.

Well, we're out of time, but thanks again for coming on the show.

We'll we'll be tracking your bil We'll be right back.

You can watch past episodes of Capital Journal online any time at Alabama Public Television's website.

aptv.org.

Click on the online video tab on the main page.

You can also connect with Capital Journal and link to past episodes on Capital Journal's Facebook page.

Waterloo site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960.

The day known as the Fort Toulouse Jackson State Park, during the colonial period, Fort Toulouse acted as a commercial, religious and diplomatic frontier outpost for the French from 1717 until 1763.

It was one of a series of fort built by the French to protect their holdings and French colonial Louisiana from British and French during the 18th century.

Fort Jackso played a major role in the Great War of 18 1314, when General Andrew Jackson and the U.S. Army used Fort Jackson, buil on the old side of Fort Toulouse on August 9th, 1814, after their defea in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the Upper Creeks surrendered to the United States and the Treaty of Fort Jackson, effectively ending the Great War.

19 million acres of cree lands were open for settlement, resulting in Alabama becoming a state only five years later.

APT is Alabama's storyteller.

Stories of Alabama history.

The arts.

Alabama music.

Learn more online at AppleTV.

Dawg.

That's our show for tonight.

Thanks for watching.

We'll be back tomorrow night at the same time, right here on Alabama Public Television for our Capital Journal team.

I'm Todd Stacy.

We'll see you next time.