English Bulldog Puppies for Sale in Huntsville, AL

U.S. Rep. Dale Strong, R-Monrovia, remains confident that the decision to bring U.S. Space Command to Huntsville will be made shortly after the U.S. Senate confirms President Donald Trump’s nominee for Air Force secretary.

When that happens, it will bring about 4,700 jobs to the Tennessee Valley, the second-term congressman said during his Washington update hosted by the Athens-Limestone Chamber of Commerce at Athens State University on Monday.

“It’s my understanding it will be 1,700 jobs with a 3,000-job spinoff,” Strong said. “You start talking about 1,700 great paying jobs, high education level. You’ve got to have other jobs to spin off to make that happen.”

The congressman said the labor force for Redstone Arsenal, where Space Command would be located, and Cummings Research Park comes from 17 counties in north Alabama and southern Tennessee.

“So, this is not about just Redstone Arsenal,” Strong said. “This is about north Alabama. It shows what our region does. It shows what our region has already done for this country, and what we’re going to do. That’s why I’m bullish on the future of north Alabama.”

Strong said he discussed Space Command with the president during the flight on Air Force One earlier this month to Tuscaloosa for Trump’s speech at the University of Alabama. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey also said she discussed the subject with the president when he was in Tuscaloosa and said “Space Command belongs in Huntsville.”

Strong told AL.com the Senate will vote on the Air Force secretary “either this week or next week.”

“That right there will also start the process,” he said, “… which will then bring us a recommendation for Space Command.”

Strong cited a 21-category evaluation that said Huntsville was the best location for Space Command for national security.

“Not what was best for elections,” Strong said, “not what was best for this state or that state, but what was best for the taxpayers of America and what was best for national security. You look at it and those 21 categories, it talked about everything from education to cost to construct, the cost to maintain, and it wasn’t that Colorado was No. 2. Colorado in one of the reports was five. In the other report, they were four.”

See story: Space Command HQ report reveals fears that civilians would not leave Colorado for Alabama - al.com

Proposed NASA cuts

Strong also discussed proposed NASA budget cuts before taking the stage for his Washington update that included the phasing out of the Space Launch System, the super-heavy, expendable launch vehicle that is intended to propel humans to the moon. The SLS, which the president’s budget request calls “grossly expensive and delayed,” is managed by Marshall Space Flight Center.

“That’s the thing, the (budget) process has begun,” the congressman told AL.com. “I believe the folks here at Marshall are doing a phenomenal job. What we’re going to do is go in there and prove what they’ve done working with science, space and technology.”

He said communication has been ongoing with Rep. Brian Babin, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

“We now finally have the budget,” Strong said. “We’ve got to start doing what is best for America.”

The proposed budget seeks $18.8 billion in funding for NASA, down 24.3%, or $6 billion, from the $24.8 billion approved for the space agency last year.

A White House statement emphasized the request’s funding for both moon and Mars initiatives, including new money for private-sector investment.

The agency’s human space exploration program would see a $647 million boost in funding – the only major NASA program to come out ahead in the president’s proposal.

Yet the budget request would cut $879 million from “legacy” spaceflight projects like SLS and the Orion crew capsule by phasing them out after the Artemis 3 mission, which will land humans on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 and is planned for a mid-2027 launch.

Artemis, NASA’s $100 billion, decade-long human lunar exploration program, includes plans for a permanent colony on the moon, which is intended to serve as a steppingstone for crewed Mars missions. Artemis currently consists of 10 planned lunar missions through 2035, all of them intended to launch atop the SLS and to house the crew in Orion capsules.

See story: Trump wants billions cut from NASA, including ‘grossly expensive’ Huntsville rocket - al.com

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> An updated list of all NFL Players from Johnson High School in Huntsville, AL

Here’s an up-to-date list of all NFL Players from J.O. Johnson High School in Huntsville, AL. The school was closed in 2016 and the building demolished in 2021.

The list includes only those players who have played in an NFL game.

See where it ranks among other schools in the state here.

NFL Players from Johnson HS

Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com

GE Aerospace in Huntsville and Auburn are big beneficiaries of a big deal announced Thursday.

Qatar Airways has signed an agreement with GE Aerospace for more than 400 aircraft engines, including the 60 GE9X and 260 GEnx engines.

The engines will power its next-generation Boeing 777-9 and Boeing 787 aircraft. It’s the largest widebody engine purchase in the history of GE Aerospace.

Huntsville manufactures advanced materials that are one-third the weight of traditional materials and can handle higher heat. These materials go into critical parts used in the widebody engines Qatar Airways is purchasing.

This deal supports the 600 workers GE Aerospace employs across Alabama, including the site in Auburn.

The company generates 55 percent of its revenue from selling engines and services to international customers.

In all, GE Aerospace facilities in 14 states will benefit from the deal, encompassing 20,000 jobs.

The deal was announced during President Donald Trump’s visit to Doha. It also builds on a previous order by the airline for 188 GE9X engines, bringing the total to 248 engines.

The two deals also include service agreements to cover the maintenance, repair, and overhaul of the GEnx and GE9X engines.

The GE9X engine is the world’s most powerful commercial aircraft engine and the most fuel-efficient engine in its class.

Since its introduction in 2011, the GEnx engine family has accumulated over 62 million flight hours. It is GE Aerospace’s fastest-selling, high-thrust engine to date, with more than 3,600 engines currently in service and backlog, including spare units.

“These next-generation engines are critical components in our strategy to ensure our fleet remains modern and efficient,” Qatar Airways Group CEO Engr. Badr Mohammed Al-Meer said.

“Qatar Airways has ambitious plans for the future, and we value our continued partnership with GE Aerospace and their commitment to supporting our operational needs.”

This is an opinion column

First of all, it’s important to know that William Lunsford, a lawyer at Butler Snow’s office in Huntsville, is Alabama’s go-to guy for defending its prisons and their leaders.

The state has paid him $42 million for his expertise since 2020, according to state records, and is slated to pay him much more.

He’s an institution. Top dog, A-1, indispensable, they have said. Or, as one of the guys on Alabama’s Contract Review Committee put it a couple years ago, “Mr. Lunsford is basically a government agency at this point.”

So it was sort of a shock when lawyers for an injured inmate last week pointed out that Lunsford – and other lawyers representing former prison commissioner Jeff Dunn – had signed off on a legal motion citing sources that, well, weren’t really there.

“Defendant (that would be Dunn’s lawyers) appears to have wholly invented case citations in his Motion for Leave, possibly through the use of generative artificial intelligence,” lawyer Jamilah Mensah wrote in a filing last week.

Mensah represents Frankie Johnson, who is suing Dunn after surviving repeated assaults in Alabama’s violent prisons.

Mensah brought the receipts, with some generative natural intelligence. She pointed out five citations in the filing by Dunn’s lawyers that did not exist or did not exist as claimed. For instance, a citation that claimed to bolster arguments about taking depositions of incarcerated people was really a 1939 case about a speeding ticket.

Whoops.

U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco was not amused. If a keyboard can scream, her’s did.

“In the light of the seriousness of the accusation, the court has conducted independent searches for each allegedly fabricated citation, to no avail,” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, each of the four attorneys who signed Defendant Dunn’s motion for leave, and the Butler Snow law firm, are ORDERED to show good cause, if there be any, why they should not be sanctioned … for making false statements of fact or law to the court.”

She ordered them to do so by today.

She also ordered the lawyers to update their filings and provide sworn explanations “for how the motion and allegedly fabricated cases were generated, and their role in drafting or supervising the motion.”

She set a hearing for Wednesday.

The four Butler Snow lawyers who signed the filing were Lunsford, Daniel Chism, Matthew B. Reeves and William J. Cranford. None of them responded to requests for comment.

Lunsford and Chism asked in a motion to be excused from the hearing, arguing they did not participate in the drafting of the questionable filing. Lunsford also told the judge he had to be in Macon, Ga., for a hearing before U.S. District Judge Marc Treadwell.

Again, Judge Manasco’s keyboard screamed.

“The hearing before Judge Treadwell is set for Thursday, May 22, 2025, at 9:00 a.m.. ET – 23 hours after the show cause hearing in this Case,” she wrote. “The May 21, 2025 show cause hearing will last no longer than an hour. Accordingly, Mr. Lunsford will have ample time to travel to Georgia in advance of his hearing the next day, and the motion to excuse as to Mr. Lunsford and Mr. Chism is DENIED.”

The judge told the Butler Snow lawyers to tell the prison system about the order. She told the clerk to notify chief judges in all of Alabama’s federal districts, and also inform Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall “because the attorneys in this case are involved in similar litigation throughout the State of Alabama.”

On Friday she paused Frankie Johnson’s case until further notice.

Marshall, by the way, stripped prison system lawyers of the authority to defend the agency in court, thus paving the way for private attorneys with chat bots to make millions.

This is a big deal. You can’t make up citations. You can’t rely on artificial intelligence for justice.

And Frankie Johnson, is the one who, again, gets lost in it all. His suit argues he was attacked and stabbed nine times while locked up in two different Alabama prisons. He was later stabbed again “while restrained in shackles and handcuffs during a therapy session,” his suit claims.

Alabama prisons are a horror show. The U.S. Justice Department – under Trump and Biden – has said it for years, the state system is overcrowded, underfunded and unconstitutionally cruel. The levels of rape and death and assault are indefensible.

Even with AI.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner for AL.com.

For the third year in a row, Billy Strings and his band will play multiple shows in a row at Orion Amphitheater, in Huntsville, Alabama.

The bluegrass virtuoso turned jam-band superstar returns to Orion on Oct. 23, 24 and 25.

Tickets for Strings’ 2025 Orion run go on sale 10 a.m. Friday. via axs.com. In addition to tickets for the individual concerts, three-night passes are available.

As of publishing, ticket prices weren’t readily available. When they are, we will update this story.

Strings is to 2020s bluegrass what Stevie Ray Vaughan was to 1980s blues. A blazing young guitarist and charismatic singer who reinvigorates a roots genre with hard-earned virtuosity and hot live shows, thereby crossing over to wider audiences.

Earlier this year, Strings won his second Grammy award,, for his first official live album, “Live Vol. 1.” The album features concert recordings of signature tunes like “Dust in a Baggie,” “Turmoil & Tinfoil” and “Richard Petty.”

In ’24, String, a Michigan native now residing in Nashville, also released his fourth studio album, “Highway Prayers.” That LP contains cuts like “Gild the Lily” and “Seven Weeks in County.”

String also guested on rap star Post Malone’s country album “F-1 Trillion.” He’s on the song “M-E-X-I-C-O,” which has been streamed more than 24 million times on Spotify.

Strings’ three nights in Huntsville are the most he’s currently scheduled to play any city on his fall tour, which includes the U.S., Europe and the U.K.

His longtime band features Billy Failing on banjo, Jarrod Walker on mandolin, Royal Masat on bass and Alex Hargreaves on fiddle.

They did two nights at Orion in ’24 and ’23. The ‘23 Orion setlists ranged from originals (“Know It All”) to traditionals (“Tom Dooley”) to rock covers (Mother Love Bone’s “Crown of Thorns”).

Back in 2020, when his star was rising, Strings and band performed at Mars Music Hall at Von Braun Center.