Feb 10, 2025

Welcome back. Today we feature reaction and possible effects from a couple of Trump Administration announcements. Also, we have the answers to Friday's quiz and another story behind a local place name.

Thanks for reading,

Ike

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The National Institutes of Health, amid the Trump Administration's federal cost-cutting binge, this past Friday night announced a major change to biomedical research grants that would have a big impact on some key medical institutions -- and have some worried about ripple effects across the state, according to AL.com reports.

The NIH has capped "indirect costs" at 15 percent of the amount of the grants. "Indirect costs" refer to administrative and facilities costs. It could include paying for support staff, graduate students, custodial workers, security guards and more. Or most of the costs outside scientists' salaries and lab equipment.

According to NIH, grant recipients average spending 30 percent on those indirect costs. It adds up to billions of dollars nationally.

In Alabama, those on the receiving ends of NIH funding include companies such as HudsonAlpha and numerous universities. Birmingham Business Alliance President Steve Ammons didn't speak to exactly how this will play out, but did say that a reduction in funding to UAB would be a hit.

In 2022 alone, UAB pulled $400 million from NIH in medical-research grants.

After the announcement, U.S. Sen. Katie Britt told AL.com she will work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will oversee the NIH if he's confirmed as health secretary.

Britt said that as the administration strives to cut unnecessary spending, “a smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.”

Today the president is expected to announce 25-percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports from any country.

If that's the case, this could indicate more of a pure protectionist tack than the previous negotiating tactics used by Trump against Canada and Mexico. The winners could be steel and aluminum producers in the US, who would see foreign competitors likely either charging more for their product or, if the price isn't right, selling less product in the States.

Losers could include downstream companies, such as car manufacturers, and the shipping industry. While it's to be seen whether any of Alabama's Republican leadership dare part with the Trump Administration this week, as Ruth Serven Smith reports, it was the Port of Mobile's economic impact and Alabama's space industry and automakers that gave Gov. Kay Ivey "serious concerns" back during Trump's previous use of tariffs in 2018.

One of the few surviving Tuskegee Airmen passed away early this month, reports AL.com's Alaina Bookman. He died in his home in suburban Detroit, Michigan.

Harry Stewart Jr. was born in Virginia. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 18-year-old Stewart came to Alabama to become a fighter pilot.

He trained in Tuskegee and served with the all-Black 332nd Fighter Group in World War II. Stewart won the Distinguished Flying Cross for taking down three German aircraft during a dogfight in 1945.

He stayed in the Air Force Reserve and was recalled for duty during the Korean War and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.

He told CNN last year: “I did not recognize at the time the gravity of what we are facing. I just felt as though it was a duty of mine at the time. I just stood up to my duty.”

Harry Stewart Jr. was 100 years old.

Let's take a look at last Friday's quiz:

Some short-tailed shrews might have ...

Clayhatchee flu 13.1%

Cordova fever 10.0%

Camp Hill virus 70.8%

Cusseta pox 6.2%

Who is Alabama's new Senate President Pro Tem?

Garlan Gudger 50.2%

Greg Albritton 42.3%

April Weaver 5.2%

Charles Barkley 2.4%

A Mobile museum is planning an exhibit on the life of ...

Tim Cook 1.7%

Jimmy Buffett 89.0%

Hank Aaron 8.9%

The Crichton Leprechaun 0.3%

Bill Cabaniss, who recently passed away, lost a statewide election to this incumbent opponent.

Gov. Guy Hunt 25.4%

Attorney General Bill Pryor 13.1%

Sen. Howell Heflin 44.3%

Chief Justice Roy Moore 17.2%

Unless another city raises its mayoral salary, this Alabama city's next mayor will be the highest-paid at $195,000 annually.

Mobile 64.9%

Bessemer 17.2%

Tuscaloosa 17.2%

Sipsey 0.7%

Lick Skillet

For some of these Alabama place names that we've been doing, you have to rely a little on local lore. This is one of those.

The story comes to us through AL.com reporter Kelly Kazek, and it was reported years ago by Mike Marshall of the Huntsville Times and surely other places.

The Alabama place is Lick Skillet.

Oddly enough, this isn't the only use of the name "Lick Skillet" as a place in Alabama. There is a Lick Skillet Trail in Guntersville, and a place in present-day Oxford that used to be a community called Lick Skillet. There may be more.

But today we're concerned with the Lick Skillet area near Hazel Green in Madison County. You know, the one on Butter and Egg Road.

Note to our New Jersey readers: I'm not making any of this up.

The story, told by a Tennessee deejay whose grandaddy owned a general store at the intersection of Charity Lane and Butter and Egg Road. The dates are hazy, but it might've been during the 1930s.

The deejay, Bill Malone, said his uncle Hut got into a fight one day in that general store.

In any other establishment, Hut's luck may have gone differently, but it turns out that general stores almost always had skillets about. According to the story, Hut grabbed a skillet and laid it upside his opponent's head.

Well, that ended the fight, everybody talked about how Hut gave that fella a lick with a skillet, and the name formed from that.

At least that's the story.

I'll bet a nickel most of the other Lick Skillets in Alabama and beyond were inspired by local culinary habits.

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