A Virtual Journey Through Very Red Alabama

      As I watch protests across the country—in front of Tesla dealerships, on city hall plazas, outside Social Security offices—I’m particularly struck by those in towns and cities in solidly red states, from Ohio to Idaho, Alabama to Alaska.

      Protesting takes energy. And, in places in which a fair share of residents consider Donald Trump to have been anointed by God himself, it takes a good amount of courage, too.

      But Americans of all political persuasions are being hurt by this administration’s cruel and seemingly arbitrary cuts. Some have lost jobs as a result of deep slashes in federal programs. Others—veterans, for example—have lost counseling and health care. Still others are forced to wait hours to seek new benefits or solve problems with existing ones in the face of federal phone lines that have fallen silent.

      Just what’s next is anyone’s guess. But with well more than 500 days remaining until the midterm elections, I suspect the best hope for our democracy to survive that long rests on consolidating the growing and reasonably rapid realization among our neighbors in red communities and red states that Donald Trump’s vision of America isn’t actually what they bargained for.

      So, what, I wonder, is actually going on in Dubuque, IA; Peoria, Ill., Amarillo, TX; Andalusia, AL, and points in between? In order to better understand how non-urban and non-coastal Americans are feeling and what upsets them, I’ve decided to take virtual tours of this country through the headlines in news outlets in the South, the heartland and the mountain states.

      It's a journey that long ago I did in person. As a young man, I crisscrossed the country twice by car; worked in the Rockies from Colorado to Montana; dipped my toes in the Pacific in California and Washington State. Eventually I visited or at least drove through 47 of this country’s 50 states. Along the way I met my wife, Kathy, in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, and, in the 57 years since, we’ve lived in eight states, on both coasts, in the Rocky Mountains and in the Midwest as well as in the nation’s capital.

      Looking back, these experiences leave me wondering how this country has become so divided and whether even the growing extremism of Trump’s second term can bring us back to something approaching a reasoned and rational center.

      But how? The headlines at least give hint of people’s priorities.

      Today I decided to drop in on Alabama, one the three states, along with Alaska and Mississippi, that I’ve never visited in person and a state in which President Trump recently gave a commencement speech at the University of Alabama.

      The state’s capital is Montgomery, the newspaper of which, the Montgomery Advertiser, has been around since 1829. It opposed secession in 1861 but aligned itself with white supremacy after the Civil War and was an avid supporter of Gov. George Wallace. It has also won its share of awards, including three Pulitzer Prizes.

      On May 6, 2025, the lead story is titled “Mothers’ Day is on the way and so are these Montgomery events.” Lower on the homepage can be found the headlines, “Alligator harvest permit applications start in June” and “Who shined in Montgomery area high school sports.”

      But a little deeper dive suggests all isn’t hunky-dory in Montgomery these days. Three headlines stand out. They are “Alabama unemployment claims increased previous week,” “Rep. Sewell reacts to $15 million mental health grant pulled” by the Trump Administration from Birmingham schools, and “Trump Budget Cuts Target Parks. What’s at stake in Alabama?”

      The latter notes that “the park service cuts are part of more than $33 billion in proposed reductions affecting parks, public lands, environmental programs and science-related grants.” That’s nationwide, but it’s a lot of money. As for the impact on Alabama parks, the article isn’t yet sure. But it lists 10 distinct national trails, national monuments and historic sites that could soon see cuts in staff and services.

      The 54 mile-stretch between Selma and Montgomery has become a national historic trail. It was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, on March 7, 1965, that civil rights activist John Lewis, later a Georgia congressman, was badly beaten by state troopers in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday. That event helped build support in Congress for the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year.

      The Selma Times-Journal was initially founded as the Selma Courier in 1827. The paper steered a careful course during the civil rights movement, but, according to Wikipedia, it provided “meaningful coverage” of the Selma to Montgomery marches.

      The paper now publishes five days a week. The lead story the morning of May 6 was that the Alabama Department of Mental health is promoting “mental health awareness month.” There was news, too, of a new art exhibit and a “non-violence symposium.”

      But Trump Administration policies seem to be causing hurt here, too. Read the lead to one article: “Earlier this week, the City of Selma announced the termination of the Selma AmeriCorps Neighborhood Development Initiative. …

      “This abrupt termination brings an untimely end to a program that has not only rebuilt homes but restored lives and strengthened the very fabric of our city,” said Mayor James Perkins Jr. The article goes on to note that the closure is a result of cuts by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency that obliterated the budget of Teach for America in Selma and elsewhere.

      Perkins, the article noted, said the program has been a part of Selma for decades. “Over the decades, this program has closed the digital divide for families, advanced K-12 literacy in our schools and prepared countless young people for a lifetime of leadership and learning,” Perkins said. He called for the restoration of funds.

      Not all the newspapers I visited delved into politics or economics. The Anniston Star has been around since 1883. It was one of the few progressive newspapers in the South to support Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his four successful runs for the White House.

      Today’s big news? “The Anniston Star begins new chapter with return to downtown.” In an age of growing news deserts nationally and shrinking newspaper readership, that’s surely heartening. Given the paper’s history, however, it strikes me as interesting that the Star steers clear of so much as a hint of politics, local, state or national. Two pastors dominate the Opinion page each week and today’s news is laser-focused on local and positive stories.

      Yet even in Alabama, where nearly 65 percent of voters backed Donald Trump in the 2024 election, the negative impacts of the president’s policies aren’t hard to find.

      Newspapers clearly are trying different things to survive. But while some seem to be steering as far as possible from the impact of our increasingly autocratic federal government, even in ruby red Alabama the Trump Administration’s sweeping cuts have seeped onto the pages of others.

      Jerry Lanson is a writing consultant at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He is a professor emeritus at Emerson College. A version of this article first appeared on his Substack.