Pat Duggins
News DirectorPat Duggins is APR’s news director. As a kid, he watched the Apollo manned moon launches along Florida’s space coast. Pat later spent 14 years covering NASA for NPR. After re-organizing the APR newsroom, he and the team were honored with over 150 awards for excellence in journalism. That includes APR being the first radio newsroom to receive RFK Human Rights’ “Seigenthaler Prize for Courage in Journalism.” Pat holds a master’s degree from the University of Alabama and has published two books on NASA. When he’s not at APR, he enjoys cooking with Lucia, and tending his beloved fig tree.
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Parts of the state may be a bit busier tomorrow. Voting rights activists are planning protests following special sessions in Alabama and other states. Demonstrators plan to speak out over efforts to erase African American U.S. House seats including Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee. -
The Mobile Area Water and Sewer System says it will work with state and federal law enforcement to increase security at a federal dam that provides drinking water for Alabama’s Port City after a bomb was discovered. -
Today on Alabama Public Radio, former APR intern James Niiler reports from Arhus, Denmark on how that European nation is trying to do Alabama “one better” on the state's 2025 law limiting cell phone use in school. Denmark is also focusing on how youngsters cope in the “real world” as opposed to going online. The issue is high tech in the classroom still has proponents around the U.S. -
At night, silence fell over the Louisiana immigration detention facility where 85-year-old Marie-Thérèse Ross was held. Then the wailing began. Her story began in Alabama. -
Louisiana and Alabama were the only states where math scores were higher in 2025 than pre-pandemic. Louisiana is also the only state that beat its pre-pandemic average in reading, -
Thousands of Louisiana voters have already cast early ballots for congressional candidates in what soon could be the wrong districts. Alabama's primaries are a week away, but the state plans a do-over for voting on U.S. House races following Monday’s SCOTUS action to allow the State to use a voting map that eliminates District 2, currently occupied by African American Democrat Shomari Figures. A new congressional map in Tennessee upended races that had been underway for months. -
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for Alabama to get rid of one of two largely Black congressional districts before this year’s midterm elections, creating an opening for Republicans to gain an additional U.S. House seat in a partisan battle for control of the closely divided chamber. -
Alabama’s attorney general announced a civil investigation Monday into the Southern Poverty Law Center's fundraising practices in the wake of a federal indictment against the organization. AG General Steve Marshall said he has sent a subpoena to the center seeking information about its donations and payments to informants. He said he is seeking to determine if the organization violated state laws related to charitable organizations or deceptive trade practices. -
Alabama’s special session on erasing African American representation in Congress is over. All side are now waiting to see what the U.S. Supreme Court does. Alabama’s Attorney General is appealing to the justices to overturn an injunction that’s keeping the state from rewriting the U.S. House seat in District two. -
Alabama has asked federal judges to lift a court order requiring the state to have a second district where Black voters are the majority or close to it. Lawmakers are looking to take part in a national redistricting battle. and could vote today plan to alter state's congressional primaries if the courts allow Republican state officials to switch to more advantageous U.S. House maps ahead of the November midterm elections.
