More Changes Coming to Alabama's Congressional Map — with State Sen. Sam Givhan - 1-22-26

With you, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate your time day. Appreciate you every day. We'll spend some time with us. Our next guest is Sam Gavann. He is my state senator, and we appreciate him joining us here today. He's also a big Auburn fan. I got a question for him about some Auburn football. Here we go. Let's bring him on the line. The Alabama A&M $350 billion Bulldog Hotline, Senator Gavann. Let me ask you this. Cam Newton's got some eligibility left. He's upset that nobody called him to go play for the Colts. Maybe give him a ring. Maybe he comes back in place at Auburn. Maybe get a year or two out of him. What do you think? I mean, it's amazing how many people in their third year or after their third year declared for the NFL draft. There were great college players. And they declared for the NFL draft, and they got skunked. And they didn't, some of them didn't even get contracts of any nature. And they can't come back. And just this ever-changing world, and I'm assuming this is a Tuscaloosa circuit judge that did this. I don't know that. You know, someone elected by the people. I mean, what do you expect them to rule? And, I mean, I think we need to figure out who our players were that didn't go out. Or not currently on a, unfortunately, I think, well, Jani Broom's out of eligibility altogether, and so is Dillon. So I don't think they matter, but there's some others like Cheney Johnson and Denver that maybe could come back for another year. So it's just silly that every time that someone goes to court. and says, we're going to sue you then if, you know, a NCAA folds like cheap cardboard. Not here. And, I mean, what? They didn't fold here. Well, I mean, I heard you say something about, you know, forfeiting the games. And that, that's maybe the only teeth they have. Yeah. They told Nate Oates, they said, look, if you play this guy, these games aren't going to count. They're not going to count towards the whole thing. He said all the options are on the table. They can't stop the court from saying he has eligibility, but we can count. We can stop the courts from saying this all counts. And, you know, like I said before, I don't really care too much about all these things. But it is chaos. And it is probably not the best way to go about running these parties. But it's the courts. The courts are, I mean, honestly, the parallel to the world that we mostly operate in. is that the courts are out of control, Senator Kavan. They just do whatever the hell they want. And the facts be damned. We can look at a couple situations in Alabama. We can look at the situation with redistricting right now. They're like, nope, sorry, we don't like these districts. Draws a black one. And you can look at the conversation that they're trying to have about the online sales tax. I mean, there are legislators, there are mayors, there are people across the state. That want the courts to come in to be like, hey, you know that tax you guys passed? Sorry, you guys can't do that. They want the courts to do that, right? I mean, there is a wrong law. I've not read that. I hadn't read that lawsuit, okay? I don't plan on reading it. And I don't know. Nobody's articulated to me how they can win it. But that's exactly what the courts are for. I talked about this in committee meeting yesterday on some of the bills that I've got moving forward.

I've elaborated more on a bill that Mark Kelly's bringing up, but I mean, we've got to deal whether we like it or not with these separation of power issues. And the judiciary's role, because we, we, committee yesterday, we adopted the, it was actually Senator Orr's bill, we adopted what I call the anti-chevron, you know. rule that said we don't, you know, defer, the courts don't defer to agency, you know, decisions. Sure. And that is, you know, that is what the courts are supposed to do. There's, we pass the laws, we pass the budgets. The executive enforces them, and the courts determine whether what we and or the executive has done is in compliance with the laws and the Constitution. So that's exactly their job. So I don't, I mean, that's not, that's an unfair criticism of the way this is, you know, it has, A, it hadn't played out because they hadn't ruled, but that's their job. Well, there's a lot of people in the legislature who are apparently pretty pissed about this. Greg Old Britain being one of them. It wasn't playing on talking about this. What happens if that blows up? Oh, wow. Then it's going to be, you know, back to the drawing board and redoing it in accordance with what the court say the law is. And so, again, I have no one's articulated reason other than, you know, we don't like this. We're going to file a lawsuit. You know, how it, how it, you know, what their legal theory is for unwinding this. But, you know, I think if it came back now, you know, and the reason Senator All Britain's so worked up about this is the general fund without SSUT tax would be in big problem, you know, big hurt. And I think just the reality of that now. would dictate that we come back and do something similar from the least of state perspective on SSUT taxes. But, you know, I think there would be a good game of chicken in terms of how things, you know, was laid out, were laid out between the counties, who, by the way, largely don't have sales taxes. I mean, why are they getting it anyway? And in the cities, which is where most of the people are buying this stuff. I think there's an argument to be made about this, but that argument should be, and again, we're just arguing philosophically, I guess, because your point is the courts are supposed to mediate this kind of stuff and say, hey, was this legitimate or not? And I think that's correct. But the argument here is that, look, this is how they divvied up this money in the legislature. They have the taxing authority and all these things. So it's hard to see where they don't have the power to do this. And this is just an attempt to fight.

Go ahead. Dale, let me clarify this. The courts cannot come in and say, well, we think the county should get 1%. And we think the city should get this, and we think that that they can't do. It's like you either did it the right way, and what you've got is what you've got. Or you did it the wrong way, and you've got to start over. Or, you know, it reverts to the prior, I guess, policies what it would do. Yeah, the argument is you either nuke it completely. Right. The argument is you either nuke it completely. or you leave it alone. Right. I get that's the argument, but let me introduce you to another aspect of this. Redistricting. The courts came in and said, you guys can't do this, and they said, here's the map you're going to use. They drew the map. So they came in and drew the map and said, hey, we're going to do this ourselves and we're going to put this in place. Now, I know that's about to blow up, and I can ask you a question about that in a second is the 70 map coming. But, I mean, address that point. Well, I don't know, the consensus, but a lot of people believe that the Supreme Court is going to rule in Clay case coming out of Louisiana in a way that's favorable to allowing us to revert to us being the Alabama Senate to revert to our original map.

They can talk to because they're a Democrat. And I'm not saying you're making that argument. But across this country, the argument has basically been made, no, this is a blood sport and we are going to wipe you out across the board. And that's how this is all gone. And I don't think that your colleagues seem to be in the, oh, let's just lay down and play nicely with this. Do you think they're feeling that way? Well, the other aspect is purely political is that if you take away that district. How does that play with all the districts around it? Does it put three other districts in play? I mean, you know. That's your job, right? Well, you may or may not win. I mean, you may lose two extra seats. You know, so congratulations. Yeah, no, I agree with that. But it sounds like that that is moving down the chain. I mean, it's already passed committee. If the redrawing of districts, if this thing happens in Louisiana. No, no, no, no, no, no. There's nothing like that. It's going back to the original ones. No, that's not what it says. That's not what they're doing. No. I can be wrong on this. You know more than I do. So I'm going to defer to that. But it was my understanding that they're going to redraw the districts before the next election. That was my understanding. If I'm wrong on that, I will correct that. But I think that's, I believe that's what I saw. That's surely how it was reported. So we'll have to see where all of that shows. That's so accurate. All right, fair enough. Fair enough. State Senator Sam Cavan, thank you very much for joining us. We always appreciate you coming on the program and talking with us. We obviously ran out of time here because we do have a lot more we'd like to discuss them, but we just did not have the time to get it in. He joined us here on the Alabama A&M $350 million Bulldog Hotline. Appreciate him being here. You can get in right now on the Scout Pest Control.com, WVNN, hot take text line right here, 866.49. for WVNN. Get those texts in. Tell me I'm wrong. Get your questions in for 10 with him. There's so much you can do there. So keep it locked right here. You're listening to the Dale Jackson Show. The United States Soccer Federation presents the U.S. Soccer Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingerberg. One thing I promised you is an all-access pass that you wouldn't get on any other show. And we found out that whoever comes on scores a goal. Burhope, Freeman, trustee. U.S. soccer podcast magic is real people. We still got plenty of coverage all throughout this World Cup. Okay, let's get into it. The U.S. soccer podcast. Presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite. Scrolling with Haley, join Haley Caronea as she scrolls through the biggest headlines. If you haven't watched this show before, we do blind reactions. I have not seen these videos, so I am seeing them for the first time with all of you. We're going to implement the tinfoil hat time segments and all the stuff you know and love. And I'm going to finish the show and answer some of your questions. Someone asked me, what made you get into podcasting? And I was producing podcasts for other people. And I was like, I could do this for myself. And here I am. Scrolling with Haley, follow and listen on your favorite platform.

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