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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Alabama legislators unanimously passed a bill that would expedite access to Medicaid for pregnant women, as more states across the South attempt to stem high maternal and infant mortality rates. The "presumptive eligibility" legislation states that Medicaid will pay for a pregnant woman's outpatient medical care for up to 60 days while an application for the government-funded insurance program is being considered. -
Alabama lawmakers are working on a bill that could bring more doctors to rural parts of the state. The measure would extend tax credits for physicians who practice in rural Alabama. It would eliminate earlier wording that denied that tax break to doctors who live outside the community they serve. -
Several hundred people in Tuscaloosa joined in over a thousand anti-Donald Trump and Elon Musk protests held nationally over the weekend. Marchers in front of the Richard Shelby Federal Courthouse carried signs with slogans calling hands off social security, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and so on. -
Alabama exports to China could become more expensive by Thursday. The communist nation says it will impose a thirty four percent tax on all U.S. imports this week. That could hit Alabama hard. The U.S. China Business Council says the state sent over four billion dollars worth of exports to China in 2024. A billion of that was in the form of automobiles and car parts. -
Alabama and Auburn now have something in common. Neither team will be going for the college men’s basketball championship. The Tigers lost to Florida during the Final Four seventy to seventy three and Houston stunned Duke seventy to sixty seven. Alabama lost to the Blue Devils during the Elite Eight round -
A crackdown on foreign students is alarming colleges, who say the Trump administration is using new tactics and vague justifications to push some students out of the country. College officials worry the new approach will keep foreigners from wanting to study in the U.S. This Tuesday marks two weeks since the arrest of an University of Alabama doctoral candidate. -
The Tiger’s season began with some real turbulence on its first trip. While it is unclear exactly what happened in the air on November eighth, other than there was some kind of in-flight disturbance between players, the plane carrying the Tigers returned home and left two players there. -
Alabama may have more to worry about than retaliation over Donald Trump’s latest tariffs. Europe is talking about beefing it military without U.S. weapons. France makes its own version of the javelin anti-tank missile made here in Alabama. It’s called the AKERON-MP. The U.S. Defense Department says Alabama made four billion dollars selling military hardware to Ukraine. -
Auburn, Houston, Duke, and Florida are gearing up for the Final Four in college men’s basketball’s March Madness this weekend. Alabama is out after falling to Duke during the round of the championship known as the Elite Eight. The Crimson Tide is still in the running for a consolation prize in the form of the John R. Wooden Award for outstanding player -
This week marks two hundred years since a 1825 tour of the United States by the Marquis de Lafayette. The French general served under George Washington during the Revolutionary War. LaFayette later became a key figure in the French Revolution in 1789. He also holds the distinction of being the only foreign leader ever invited to be a guest of the nation by order of Congress. President James Monroe asked LaFayette to tour the U.S., and that included Alabama.
