Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm to stop Republicans from voting.
Now Democrats in Montgomery tried a filibuster – and got a fire alarm anyway.
Alabama Republicans passed their redistricting bill 26-7 while the alarms were still sounding.
Alabama Democrats Ran Out of Moves
Alabama's special session was already crackling with tension when the Senate took up SB 1 on Tuesday. The bill would authorize Gov. Kay Ivey to call special primary elections for Senate Districts 25 and 26 – two Montgomery-area seats a federal court had redrawn last fall – if the courts lift the injunctions currently blocking the state's preferred maps.
Democrats filibustered.
They held the floor as long as they could, running out the clock on a bill Republicans had the votes to pass from the moment the session was called. Then, mid-debate, fire alarms started blaring through the Alabama State House.
Alabama Capitol reporter Jeff Sanders captured the scene in real time – senators scrambling, staff evacuating, media clearing out. The Senate moved anyway. Republicans called the vote, Democrats dropped the filibuster, and SB 1 passed 26-7 along party lines before lawmakers filed out of the building.
Maintenance crews later traced the alarms to flooding in the lower levels caused by construction drainage problems. No threat. No arson. No Jamaal Bowman.
https://twitter.com/JeffSandersNews/status/2052159855633322066
Republicans Smell Seven House Seats
SB 1 is a contingency measure, not a redistricting order. Alabama isn't drawing new lines today.
What the bill does is position the state to move fast if the courts allow it. The U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais last week dramatically narrowed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act – the provision that had been used to force majority-minority district carve-outs for decades. Under the new standard, plaintiffs have to prove intentional discrimination, not just show that a map produces racially unequal outcomes.
That ruling cracked the door open. Alabama walked straight through it.
Attorney General Steve Marshall filed emergency motions asking the Eleventh Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the injunctions blocking Alabama from reverting to its 2021 state Senate maps and its 2023 congressional maps. If any court says yes before the May 19 primary, Alabama needs the machinery in place to run a special election. SB 1 builds that machinery.
Marshall put it plainly: "The Alabama in 2026 is not the Alabama of the early 1960s. It's a new time and a different era."
Democrats Know What's Coming
House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter and Senate Pro Tem Garlan Gudger made no secret of what Republicans are after. A successful redistricting push, Ledbetter said, could send seven Republicans to Congress from Alabama – which means erasing the two Democrat-held districts that only exist because federal courts drew them that way.
That's two seats Democrats are terrified of losing before a single midterm vote is cast.
Democrats held a rally outside the State House on Monday, calling the session a waste of taxpayer money. Sen. Rodger Smitherman called it shameful. They filed their own competing bills – SB 2 and SB 3 – but those require two-thirds approval and have no path forward in a chamber with 27 Republicans and eight Democrats.
So they filibustered. And then the alarm went off. And Republicans voted anyway.
Democrats spent three days pulling every procedural lever they had. They rallied outside. They filibustered inside. They filed doomed bills that went nowhere. The Callais ruling changed the rules, Republicans played by them, and two federally engineered Democrat seats are now one court order away from disappearing. The filibuster didn't stop the vote. The fire alarm didn't stop the vote. Nothing stopped the vote.
Sources:
- Jeff Sanders, @JeffSandersNews, X, May 6, 2026.
- Andrea Tinker, "Alabama House approves primary bills as Republicans seek to redistrict," Alabama Reflector, May 6, 2026.
- Brian Lyman, "Alabama Legislature begins special session on primary elections for court-altered districts," Alabama Reflector, May 5, 2026.
- Staff, "Alabama special session kicks off as state leaders await redistricting court decisions," WSFA/WTVM, May 5, 2026.
- Staff, "Alabama and Tennessee governors move fast on redistricting after Supreme Court narrows Voting Rights Act," Conservative Institute, May 3, 2026.
- Staff, "House censures Rep. Jamaal Bowman for pulling fire alarm," Fox News, December 7, 2023.
