SUMMARY: A statewide manhunt is underway for Daniel Victor McCartney, 29, suspected of shooting a Scottsboro police officer during a domestic incident call around 1 a.m. McCartney fled after crashing his car and opening fire on officers. The wounded officer is hospitalized in Huntsville with non-life-threatening injuries and is expected to recover. Residents were ordered to shelter in place as police conducted an extensive search lasting over 17 hours, focusing on a limited area. McCartney, described as a 5’10”, 170-pound white male with brown hair and eyes, walks with a limp, is armed, and considered dangerous. Authorities continue the search.

The Scottsboro Police Department said it is looking for a suspect involved in a police chase and manhunt Saturday morning.

News 19 is North Alabama’s News Leader! We are the CBS affiliate in North Alabama and the Tennessee Valley since November 28, 1963.

https://whnt.com/
https://www.facebook.com/whntnews19
https://www.instagram.com/whntnews19/
https://twitter.com/whnt

Source

by Shalina Chatlani, Alabama Reflector
July 26, 2025

This story originally appeared on Stateline.

Twenty-eight-year-old Michaela Bonner has been working 12-hour shifts as an emergency medical technician in Norfolk, Virginia, for the past four years, while attending and paying for college to finish her prerequisites for medical school.

But now that President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending law bars students from borrowing more than $50,000 annually in unsubsidized federal loans for medical school, Bonner is worried her dream of becoming a doctor is financially out of reach.

“I get told, ‘Well, we really need you. We have a physician shortage, and you’ve done all this work leading up to this point,’ and that’s true as well, and it’s not that I want to quit,” Bonner said in a recent interview. “But there are no systems in place that I can rely on to support me now that I can’t take out the full cost of living through loans.”

The tax and spending law includes provisions that significantly alter the student loan process for higher education. The law halts current student loan repayment plans for loans that are granted on or after July 1, 2026. On that date, the law also terminates Grad PLUS loans, which have helped people pay for their higher education degrees and total cost of attendance. Current borrowers will be grandfathered in.

The federal law gives current borrowers enrolled in loan repayment plans for students based on income — such as those plans known as SAVE or IBR — until July 1, 2028, to switch to a new plan. Interest collection will resume Aug. 1 for students enrolled in the Biden-era SAVE plan.

At the same time, medical or law school students hoping to get unsubsidized federal loans — in which the borrower is responsible for paying the interest at all times rather than the government — will only be able to borrow $50,000 per year, with a $200,000 lifetime cap. Those seeking advanced degrees in areas such as history or philosophy have a $100,000 lifetime cap.

The average yearly cost of medical school for the 2024-25 academic year ranged from around $42,000 to $72,000, depending on whether the school was private or public and whether the student was a resident or nonresident, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Some congressional Republicans say that students need to be working harder to pay for higher education, like medical school, on their own. Others say the caps put the onus back on colleges and universities to rein in the rising cost of tuition. But critics of this legislation say the loan caps are only going to harm students, especially from lower-income backgrounds, and will exacerbate physician shortages.

In recent years states have tried to ease physician shortages by implementing various policy solutions. Since 2023, at least nine states have made it easier for doctors trained in other countries to get medical licenses. States have also participated in interstate licensing compacts, allowing nurses and physician assistants to travel across state lines to work, so long as they are licensed in one state within the compact.

For student loan relief, more than 20 states have enacted legislation to address student loan forgiveness, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a group that tracks states policies. Georgia passed a measure that will expand a cancelable loan program for physicians working in rural and underserved areas. Idaho also created the Rural Nursing Loan Repayment Program, offering nurses $25,000 in forgivable loans after three years of service in a rural area.

McKenzie Richards, a health care policy fellow at the conservative think tank Cicero Institute who has been studying the pace of physician shortages, told Stateline that the national physician shortage could potentially exceed 100,000 by 2034. At the end of 2024 that projected number was closer to 64,000 physicians.

Richards said states will be looking toward more policy solutions should the student loan changes exacerbate physician shortages.

“We know what’s going to be happening coming down the line in just five years, so I think policies that states can adopt to get out of this are really important to be looking at now,” she said.

“The hope is that by capping [federal loans], it will encourage schools to lower tuition prices,” Richards added. “Then maybe they need to be admitting more students, which would have a great downstream effect for getting more doctors through.”

Other students will be in the same boat, said Lesley Turner, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Chicago and an economist.

“This is going to hit some students worse than others,” Turner told Stateline. “Those [students] in more expensive programs tend to borrow more, and so for those students they will need to return to private student loans or other ways of financing their graduate education.”

Many students were already questioning their capacity to go to medical school before the student loan caps, said Shannon Jimenez, dean of the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine.

“I expect that this bill, this cap, is going to push people out of primary care and into specialties to help pay off those higher interest rate loans,” Jimenez told Stateline. She added that caps will likely deter students from lower socioeconomic statuses from going into primary care — important in places like Arkansas, where she says there is a “maldistribution of physicians.”

“Many schools like us try to attract those students, because they’re more likely to go into primary care and serve in underserved areas. So it’s going to tie our hands in a lot of ways.”

Large states and more rural states will feel the gaps more deeply, said Richards, of the Cicero Institute. Louisiana, for example, is projected to be short almost 5,000 doctors from a variety of specialties by 2030, including close to 400 primary care doctors. Already more than a third of Louisiana physicians are close to retirement age — similar to the situation in neighboring Arkansas.

As for whether schools will just be able to lower tuition, Jimenez said, “it makes no sense.”

“We still function in a somewhat market-driven economy and have to compete with other schools around us, so our cost is based mostly on what we have to pay our faculty, and that’s not going to go down,” she said. The annual cost of attendance at her school is between $80,000 and $85,000.

Bonner, the EMT, holds a political communications degree from Regent University and now is studying biomedical sciences at Old Dominion University. She already has $20,000 in loans, she said, and for the rest of college tuition, she has paid out of pocket. Since she’s supporting herself, she hasn’t been able to save much.

She’d planned to take the medical school entrance exam next spring, but now worries about how she’d pay for living expenses while attending. “Medical school scheduling doesn’t allow for working, so you have to take out loans for living expenses,” she said.

“A lot of people, I feel, would be panicked if you had worked for eight to 10 years of your life and found out that all the systems that you were banking on in a really academically challenging space are disappearing,” Bonner said.

“I don’t see a path forward for certain, but I’m fighting to make one.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The post Student loan caps might worsen the national doctor shortage, critics worry appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content critiques the impact of a Republican-backed tax and spending law limiting student loans, highlighting concerns that it may harm future doctors, especially those from lower-income backgrounds. The article emphasizes the challenges faced by aspiring medical professionals and the potential exacerbation of physician shortages, which aligns with a viewpoint often associated with center-left perspectives that advocate for expanded access to education and social support. However, it also fairly presents Republican arguments about personal responsibility and controlling tuition costs, maintaining a balanced tone overall, thus positioning it slightly left of center but not strongly partisan.

by Jennifer Shutt, Alabama Reflector
July 25, 2025

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Friday it’ll soon release billions in Education Department funding that has been frozen for weeks, delaying disbursements to K-12 schools throughout the country.

The funding — which goes toward migrant education, English-language learning and other programs — was supposed to go out before July 1, but the administration informed schools just one day before that it was instead holding onto $6.8 billion while staff conducted a review. Members of both parties in Congress objected to the move.

The Education Department released $1.3 billion for before- and after-school programs as well as summer programs in mid-July, but the rest of the funding remained stalled.

Madi Biedermann, a Department of Education spokesperson, wrote in an email to States Newsroom that the White House budget office “has completed its review” of the remaining accounts and “has directed the Department to release all formula funds.”

The administration will begin sending that money to school districts next week, Biedermann wrote.

Appropriators cheer

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement the “funds are essential to the operation of Maine’s public schools, supporting everything from classroom instruction to adult education.”

“I am pleased that following outreach from my colleagues and me, the Administration has agreed to release these highly-anticipated resources,” Collins wrote. “I will continue working to ensure that education funds are delivered without delay so that schools have adequate time to plan their finances for the upcoming school year, allowing students to arrive back to class this fall to properly-funded schools.”

Collins and nine other Republican senators wrote a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought earlier this month asking him to “faithfully implement” the spending law Congress approved in March.

“The decision to withhold this funding is contrary to President (Donald) Trump’s goal of returning K-12 education to the states,” the GOP senators wrote. “This funding goes directly to states and local school districts, where local leaders decide how this funding is spent, because as we know, local communities know how to best serve students and families.

“Withholding this funding denies states and communities the opportunity to pursue localized initiatives to support students and their families.”

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the Education Department, wrote in a statement released Friday she was glad to see the funding unfrozen.

“The programs are ones that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support like after-school and summer programs that provide learning and enrichment opportunities for school aged children, which also enables their parents to work and contribute to local economies, and programs to support adult learners working to gain employment skills, earn workforce certifications, or transition into postsecondary education,” Capito wrote. “That’s why it’s important we continue to protect and support these programs.”

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The post US Education Department to unfreeze contested K-12 funds appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

This content presents a factual and balanced report on the Trump administration’s temporary freeze and subsequent release of Education Department funds, emphasizing perspectives mainly from Republican lawmakers who support local control of education funding. The focus on comments from Republican senators and framing their position positively gives the article a center-right leaning, as it aligns with conservative values of state and local governance over federal intervention. However, the article avoids partisan language or criticism, maintaining an overall neutral tone with a slight conservative tilt.