BW Recommends is a rundown of stories you might have missed this week. It offers insight into issues important to our area and sometimes tickles your curiosity.

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Trump’s ‘Beautiful’ New Law Means States Have Big Decisions This Year on Medicaid, SNAP and Taxes (Alabama Daily News)

States have major decisions to make in 2026 about the social safety net and taxes in the aftermath of a sweeping law President Donald Trump signed last year. The federal government is shifting more responsibilities to states over the next few years, and states must prepare for greater costs in the Medicaid health care and SNAP food aid programs. They also must decide whether to offset upcoming federal funding cuts with state tax dollars. And they must weigh whether to cut state taxes on tips, overtime wages and other items to remain in line with Trump’s big bill.

$11 Million Grant Kickstarts Hallmark Farms’ Transformation into Alabama Farm Center (Yellowhammer)

Plans to repurpose a landmark in north Jefferson County took a leap forward last week as Hallmark Farms received $11 million in federal funding through the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization Program to reclaim abandoned mine land features on the property, enabling development on land previously affected by legacy coal mining.

Plans to transform Hallmark Farms into the Alabama Farm Center, a large agricultural and exhibition complex expected to support economic activity while providing space for education and public events, has received local and state support.

‘We fell in love with it’: Matthew McConaughey Praises Alabama City for People, Politics (AL.com)

Matthew McConaughey might never leave Texas and move to Birmingham, but the Oscar-winning actor is a big fan of the city in central Alabama. McConaughey spent several weeks in the metro area in summer 2023 filming a crime thriller, “The Rivals of Amziah King.” Birmingham evidently made an impression on him, and McConaughey praised the Magic City when the film made its debut at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival and in a recent interview on “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” a podcast hosted by Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, McConaughey gave a glowing review of Birmingham.

Freestanding Birth Centers Are Closing as Maternity Care Gaps Grow (Alabama Daily News)

Hospital labor and delivery units are shuttering across the nation — including more than two dozen in 2025 alone. Freestanding birth centers could help fill the gaps, but they too are struggling to stay open. They face some of the same financial pressures that bedevil hospitals’ labor and delivery units, including payments from insurers that don’t cover the full cost of providing maternity care. Birth center owners also must contend with arcane state rules and antipathy from politically powerful hospitals that view them as competition, especially in rural areas with few births.

What’s Next? Alabama Town Crisis Deepens With Most of Its Council Disqualified by a Judge (AL.com)

Residents of an Alabama town continue to go without local leadership, and the future of their government remains uncertain after a judge upheld his order to oust most of the council. The fate of the town of Lipscomb could end up before the state Supreme Court or Gov. Kay Ivey after Jefferson County Judge David Hodby last week refused to reverse his decision to disqualify three of the five council members. As it stands, with just two members remaining, the council cannot even legally hold a meeting.

Report: Alabama’s Low Tax Collections Hurting Education, Government Services (Alabama Reflector)

Alabama’s tax collections remain among the lowest in the nation, making it harder for local governments to fund education and other services, according to a recent report from the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama. The report found that while Alabama’s overall tax collections grew in 2023, it was still near the bottom of the nation for collections, beaten only by Tennessee and Mississippi, which have cut taxes in recent years. A PARCA analyst said centuries-old tax restrictions and poverty both played a role.

Read two takes from the same events last week. In its story Wes Allen Says He Rooted Out 186 Non-Citizens From Alabama Voter Rolls – 25 Voted Illegally, Yellowhammer reported that the Secretary of State used the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program to identify people who were not citizens but had registered to vote and directed their immediate removal from Alabama’s voter file. Later in the week, Alabama Political Reporter wrote about the Democratic backlash to that action in its story DNC Warns Alabama Secretary of State Over Potential Federal Voting Law Violations.

Phillip Ensler Kicks Off Alabama Lieutenant Governor Campaign (Alabama Reflector)

Alabama Rep. Phillip Ensler, D-Montgomery, kicked off his lieutenant governor campaign Saturday, promising to use the constitutionally weak office to bring people together. “I am running to try to bring Alabamians with different backgrounds and political identities together, knowing that we will never agree on everything, but we can find common ground on the things that we all want,” Ensler said.