Forest Service, Anchorage, Alaska (27,770 square feet)

A short drive west toward Tuscaloosa sits, one of the earliest examples of foreign auto manufacturers coming to the American South, where state laws are

. The plants have provided jobs at wages higher than the local norms but in some cases lower than in union shops of the Great Lakes region around Detroit. Many suppliers have followed in the South, but not so many that the assembly plants don’t still import many parts that now will be subject toTerry Martin, a county GOP committeeman in Tallapoosa County, said he supports the tariffs as leverage. Trump has “something to bargain with,” Martin said. But, “the parts that are coming from overseas … it’s going to pop it up” in price, he said, at least in the short term.Agriculture, meanwhile, is still a dominant Alabama industry. Meat processing plants in the North and row crop farms in the South depend on migrant labor that Merrill, the former secretary of state, said involves workers who are in the U.S. both legally and illegally. Alabama, he recalled, passed its own strict immigration bill during Barack Obama’s presidency only to roll it back after industry leaders complained of a depleted workforce.

Wahl, in an interview after the gala, took a more nuanced approach than he did at the podium.“It is possible to secure our border and still take into account migrants who deserve to be here,” he said. “This has to be a two-pronged approach.”

Back in Birmingham, Interstate 65 splits the city. The aging, increasingly congested artery is a local priority for widening. The proposal has support from Alabama’s two Republican senators, Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt. U.S. interstate projects, though, are typically a 90-10 split, meaning 90% of the money comes from Washington, 10% from the state.

That funding — along with money for schools, Medicaid and other areas — could be at risk with Trump adviser Elon Musk and DOGE carrying Trump’s blessing to slash spending. GOP lawmakers who control Congress have supported Trump’s agenda, which also includesFederal employees make up 7.6% of the workforce in Alabama’s 5th District, which includes Huntsville and is represented by Republican Rep. Dale Strong. The area encompasses NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, which has had a role in rocket engineering and U.S. space exploration efforts from the Saturn rockets integral to moon missions, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station’s laboratory modules.

The data examined here doesn’t pertain directly to military jobs. Thousands of civilian government employees across the country work in areas near or attached to military installations.Alaska’s sole U.S. House member, Rep. Nick Begich, represents a state with a total federal worker percentage of 6.3%.

Scott Goldsmith, an economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage, has described the state’s economy as a “three-legged stool” kept balanced by three components: the oil and gas industry, the federal government, and then all other industries combined.The federal government manages a significant amount of land in Alaska. Workers are employed by the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service, among others.