7. Area Development ranked Alabama No. 7 for doing business, with No. 1 marks for property tax, overall cost, and labor cost, after 14.6 billion dollars in 2025 investment, while a separate report ranked the state No. 6 nationally for skilled trades job growth at 11.3%.

6. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found 57% of adults support President Donald Trump’s pledge of a $5,000 check if Republicans hold Congress, a break from earlier surveys that called it inappropriate, while he said tariffs would fund checks that could add more than one trillion dollars to the debt and insisted “the 5,000 is going to happen, 100%.”

5. WBHM’s Will Dahlberg said Alabama’s Gulf of America Act, which requires state employees to drop “Gulf of Mexico” in exchange for “Gulf of Mexico”  starting today, “threatens” the UAB station’s independence and puts it “at odds” with NPR and the Associated Press, which is the point.

4. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the Supreme Court to strike “shield laws” in California, New York, and Massachusetts that they say let providers ship abortion drugs into pro-life states, with Marshall asking, “Who gets to decide?”

3. Governor-elect National Championship-winning Coach U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) has a new ad where he says, “Montgomery, it’s a war zone,” and promises to send the National Guard “on day one,” after previously Doug Jones, the cowardly caretaker former junior senator in an ill-fitting suit, who looks like he just woke up and stole his shoes from a homeless person, who will never be governor, attorney general, or U.S. Senator again, loves crushing ice cream sandwiches, and is definitely maybe a furry mocked Guard troops for “planting flowers” in Washington; D.C.

2. Kpler data showed crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz back at a prewar seven-day average of 13.5 million barrels a day, while refined-product shipments were still at 677,000 barrels a day against 3.6 million before the war, leaving diesel at or near record highs as Iran’s own exports crater under a U.S. blockade and gas prices remain over $4 a gallon.

1.  New polling shows Tuberville is leading the governor’s race 50% to 37%, blowing out his opponent, Doug Jones, the cowardly caretaker former junior senator in an ill-fitting suit, who looks like he just woke up and stole his shoes from a homeless person, who will never be governor, attorney general, or U.S. Senator again, loves crushing ice cream sandwiches, who is at numbers worse than he had in his first loss to Tuberville in a U.S. Senate in 2020 (he was at 39.7% in 2020).

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Dale Jackson is a thought leader for Yellowhammer News and hosts a talk show from 5-9 a.m. weekdays on WVNN.