YETI has released a new insulated tote bag designed to keep food and drinks cold for hours while on the go, perfect for spending hours in the sun this summer.
The new Daytrip Insulated Tote is part of Yeti’s Daytrip Collection. It is a soft, portable cooler bag that fits 20 12-ounce cans. It can also store a wine bottle upright and fits up to three, according to Yeti.
The Daytrip Insulated Tote is also available in three seasonal colors and five core colors. However, the seasonal Peach/Beekeeper color has already sold out.
Daytrip Insulated Tote – $135
The Daytrip Insulated Tote is part of Yeti’s new Daytrip Collection.
“The largest of the Daytrip family, this tote is perfect for grocery trips, picnics and longer lunches. It’s equipped with the same external stash pockets as the Daytrip 6L Lunch Bag but gives you far more capacity for those action-packed days. Plus, the back features a HitchPoint Grid to connect any additional items you might need,” Yeti’s product details state.
Yeti also says that the Daytrip Tote is made with its Cold Cell Flex Insulation, a lightweight, closed-cell foam offers the superior temperature-holding power to keep your lunch fresh.
An overnight shooting in Montgomery left one man dead.
The shooting happened at 12:30 a.m. Monday on East Sixth Street at Teague Street.
Sgt. Tina McGriff said officers and fire medics arrived that the location to find 45-year-old Trent Harris unresponsive from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
No additional details have been released.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 334-215-STOP, Montgomery police at 334-625-2831 or the Secret Witness tip line at 334-625-4000.
By Tareq Saghie | Edited by Dianne Solis & Alfredo Corchado
Last spring, Carmelo Méndez was pruning peach trees in Colorado on an H-2A visa, missing his children and wife back home, but excited about how his $17.70 hourly wage would improve their lives. This spring, he’s back in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala frantically searching Facebook for a job on one of the thousands of farms across the U.S. that primarily employ guest workers like him.
Méndez is one of the over 300,000 foreign workers on H-2A visas who come to the United States every year to plow fields, prune trees, and harvest crops in states from Washington to Georgia, Florida to New York, Texas to California. But as federal immigration policies change rapidly, farmers and workers alike are uncertain about their future.
“Without [this guest worker program], I believe agriculture in the U.S. would decline a lot because people there don’t want to do the work,” Méndez said.
As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farmworkers remains in limbo amid President Trump’s mass deportations threats, and the administration’s H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. The industry isn’t creating new jobs either.
Farmers agree with farmworkers like Méndez. They say they cannot attract other workers to their rural fields.
The debate over guest workers intensifies. Jonathan Berry, nominated to be the solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote the labor chapter for the massive proposal to overhaul government called Project 2025 from the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. That section advocates for replacing H-2A workers with local workers and automation. While technology could replace some specific farm tasks, many crops still depend primarily on human labor, and small farmers say they can’t afford to invest in equipment that could take over a decade to pay off. Other co-authors of the chapter, like economist Oren Cass, do not think the jobs should be eliminated, but that farmers should improve working conditions to attract citizens to them instead.
On the other hand, Trump’s power depends on a coalition that includes agricultural communities, who voted for him at almost 80% in 2024, according to Investigate Midwest, a journalism nonprofit. Agribusiness also donated over $24 million to his reelection. Farm groups insist U.S. citizens are unwilling to do the arduous labor, and that eliminating H-2A workers could collapse the food system. They generally advocate for loosening regulations for H-2A workers, like reducing wage and housing requirements. Trump heeded their calls before. In 2019, his Department of Labor unsuccessfully proposed removing some regulations on the H-2A.
Harvest season approaching
As seasonal harvests begin, farmers nationwide are bringing over workers.
At Crist Bros Orchards in Walden, New York, H-2A workers diligently prune back apple tree branches covered with white flowers freshly burst from pink buds so that each future apple will get the same access to the sun. At the packing house, some load last season’s apples out of refrigerators onto conveyor belts while others check for irregularities before packaging.
The orchard has been in the Crist family since 1883, and Jenny Crist now runs it alongside her brother and parents. She said their first wave of workers came this past March and are preparing the orchards for harvest, when more workers come to pluck apples off the trees. By the end of the year, over 150 H-2A workers will have passed through the compound to help produce the apples sold at supermarkets down the East Coast.
“[H-2A is] providing labor that allows us to have a farm 70 miles north of New York City, and provide food in the United States, and employ people year-round,” Crist said. “Without it, we would certainly not be farming apples. My guess is that this would probably be houses.”
Apples flow through the packing house at Crist Bros Orchards in Walden, New York.Photo by Tareq Saghie for Puente News Collaborative
The H-2A visa was created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a huge measure that simultaneously cracked down on employers hiring immigrants without work authorization and provided “amnesty” to close to 3 million immigrants without legal status. The law says that farmers must demonstrate an attempt to hire locally first and pay H-2A workers above the minimum wage. Unlike local workers, H-2A workers must also be provided transportation to and from their homes, housing for the season, and daily transportation.
Labor leaders argue that farmers prefer H-2A workers, despite their costs, because they are easily exploitable. Since the visa is connected to their employment, workers cannot find a job elsewhere, making their ability to be in the country completely dependent on an employer who can revoke it at any moment, and sometimes holds onto their passports, against DOL requirements.
This reluctance to leave an abusive worksite can be compounded by the fact that many H-2A workers arrive with debt they’ve accrued from paying recruiters to get here. Employers are required to pay all recruitment costs, but recruiters’ practices go largely unregulated since they operate internationally.
“The situation of agriculture workers in the U.S. is really bad already, but what they’re going to do is legalize this oppression.”
Carlos Marentes, executive director of Centro de Los Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos
The D.C.-based liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute has said this amounts to a program that exploits and silences migrant workers, replacing year-round workers in the process. In some cases, U.S. prosecutors have accused farmers and recruiters of using the H-2A program to engage in forced labor trafficking.
“The situation of agriculture workers in the U.S. is really bad already, but what they’re going to do is legalize this oppression,” said Carlos Marentes, executive director of the El Paso-based Centro de Los Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos. “In the H-2A program, the way they’re proposing to get rid of the regulations and any guarantees that workers get is going to look like legalized slavery. The industry understands that they need a labor force, but they [want] a labor force that is going to be afraid, that is going to be grateful because the employer is providing you a job.”
Undocumented workers left behind?
If mass deportations go forward as promised, growers and ranchers will be even more desperate for these workers. Undocumented workers comprise about 40% of the agricultural workforce, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
These longtime farmworkers say that the system is designed to replace them with this more vulnerable group, limiting their work opportunities and decreasing their union’s power by giving farmers an alternative labor pool.
“It’s very clear to us that the deportation of undocumented workers is to clear the field for bringing in H-2A workers instead of having these farmworker families that are part of our community now for over 20 years and providing them [legal] status to continue being productive community members,” said Rosalinda Guillen, a farm union leader in Washington state who grew up in the fields and founded Community to Community, a local nonprofit. “Everybody in this country is an immigrant and has had the opportunity to build community and root themselves and all of a sudden the families that came here from Mexico don’t?”
An abandoned camp stands in Socorro, Texas, where seasonal farm workers passed through as part of the controversial Bracero Program. The H-2A program is the successor to that program, which brought more than 4.5 million Mexicans into the United States from 1942 to 1964 to work the country’s farmland.Photo by Tareq Saghie for Puente News Collaborative
In 2023, a bipartisan coalition in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the Dignity Act, which aimed to address this by extending legal status to long-term farmworkers while at the same time expanding the H-2A visa. The proposal eventually failed, though, after Republicans reversed course on it.
Workers still needed
In Minnesota’s Red River Valley, Scott Field runs Field Brothers Farm with his brother John, growing grains, beans, and sugar beets on the same land his family has worked for five generations. His local community has shrunk as younger generations moved to cities, leaving the Field brothers dependent on H-2A workers.
“There is just flat out nobody out here available to work,” Scott Field said.
With housing and transportation factored in, Field says they spend over $30 per hour on H-2A workers. It would be easier if they could just employ them as U.S. citizens, he said as he detailed why.
“These are people who are working, making money, spending money in our communities, and paying taxes. Talk about a revitalization of rural America if they made it easier for them to come here and stay with their families,” Field mentioned.
Changes to the H-2A visa would also likely be felt in Mexico, where more than 91% of the H-2A workers come from. Some have small subsistence farms, or are part of the two million people who became landless with the 1994 onset of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and depend on their seasonal incomes to provide their families with basic necessities.
Workers conduct the final inspection before packaging at Crist Bros Orchards in Walden, New York.Photo by Tareq Saghie for Puente News Collaborative
Flavio Vázquez has worked at Crist Bros Orchards for the last five years, earning more than double in an hour packing applesthan what he could in a day in his Mexican home state of Morelos. According to 2020 estimates, more than half of Morelos’ population lives in poverty despite unemployment being below two percent. The fact that the visa allows him to escape poverty doesn’t mean it is ideal for him, though.
Vázquez must spend eight months a year living between a warehouse and a dorm 2,500 miles away from his loved ones, relieved to be earning a higher income, but at a cost. While he enjoys his job in New York’s Hudson Valley, he wishes he could bring his family and build a permanent life.
“In Morelos, the situation is difficult, so I come here to stabilize the community there economically and to have resources for my family,” Vázquez said, looking resigned as apple scanning machinery roared in the background.
“In Mexico, you leave your children, your wife, your parents, who support you emotionally. I would feel a lot more comfortable with my family here.”
The No. 2 Oklahoma Sooners play against the No. 12 Texas Tech Red Raiders in the Women’s College World Series tonight.
The matchup will begin at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN. If Oklahoma wins the game, then the two teams will play a second game at 8:30 p.m. CT on ESPN. Fans can watch this softball game for free online by using the free trials offered by DirecTV and Fubo TV. Alternatively, Sling offers a first-month discount to new users.
The Sooners have a 2-1 record in the Women’s College World Series, and they are coming off a 4-1 win against Oregon.
In order to win this evening, the Oklahoma squad will need a great performance from their star player Ella Parker. She currently leads the team with a .424 batting average.
The Red Raiders have a 2-0 record in the Women’s College World Series, and they are coming off a 3-1 win against UCLA.
In order to win tonight’s game, the Texas Tech squad will need to rely on their star player Lauren Allred. She leads the team with 53 RBI, so she will try to continue her offensive success this evening.
Fans can watch the Women’s College World Series for free online by using the free trials offered by DirecTV and Fubo TV. Alternatively, Sling offers a first-month discount to new users.
Allen Media Broadcasting is currently exploring the sale of its 28 broadcast television stations, two of which are located in Alabama.
“Six years ago, Allen Media Group began the process of investing over one billion dollars to acquire big four network-affiliated television stations,” Chief Executive Byron Allen said in a recent release.
“We have received numerous inquiries and written offers for most of our television stations and now is the time to explore getting a return on this phenomenal investment.”
“We are going to use this opportunity to take a serious look at the offers, and the sale proceeds will be used to significantly reduce our debt,” he continued.
Last year, CNBC reported that Allen Media Group had been “consistently late in making payments to its network owners, in some cases as much as 90 days past due, with the payments totaling tens of millions of dollars throughout the year.”
Representatives for Allen Media Group declined to address the reason for the lateness when the outlet reached out, according to their reporting.
The group operates across 21 U.S. markets, with affiliates major networks like Disney’s ABC, Paramount Global’s CBS, Comcast’s NBC and News Corp’s Fox.
Allen Media Regional Vice President Dan Batchelor previously told the West Kentucky Star that the company reversed course on the decision “based on viewer and advertiser reaction.”
Allen Media Group has not addressed how the sale might impact its stations or employees.
Efforts to reach representatives for WAAY and WCOV were not immediately successful.
The San Antonio Brahmas won one game during the United Football League regular season, which concluded on Sunday. The Brahmas placed three players on the All-UFL team for the 2025 campaign released on Monday.
The Birmingham Stallions won the USFL Conference regular-season title and are two victories away from their fourth consecutive spring-league championship. The Stallions placed two players on the All-UFL team for the 2025 season.
Wide receiver Deon Cain and defensive tackle Perrion Winfrey represent Birmingham on the All-UFL team.
The DC Defenders and St. Louis Battlehawks placed seven players apiece on the All-UFL team and the Michigan Panthers had six all-league players this season.
The Stallions and Panthers will square off in the USFL Conference Championship Game at 2 p.m. CDT Sunday at Protective Stadium in Birmingham. ABC will televise the game.
The winner of that contest will play the winner of the XFL Conference Championship Game between the Battlehawks and Defenders in the United Football League Championship Game. The league title game is set for June 14 at the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis.
The Arlington Renegades placed three players on the All-UFL team, and the Houston Roughnecks had one all-league player. No player from the Memphis Showboats earned All-UFL recognition this season.
The All-UFL Team was chosen by a panel of league and team executives, coaches and players from the eight teams and broadcast partners.
The 2025 All-UFL team included:
OFFENSE
Quarterback: Bryce Perkins, Panthers
Running backs: Jashaun Corbin, Brahmas, and Jacob Saylors, Battlehawks
Wide receivers: Deon Cain, Stallions; Chris Rowland, Defenders, and Tyler Vaughns, Renegades
Safeties: Leon O’Neal Jr., Roughnecks, and Arnold Tarpley III, Panthers
SPECIAL TEAMS
Kicker: Rodrigo Blankenship, Battlehawks
Punter: Brad Wing, Brahmas
Long snapper: Alexander Matheson, Battlehawks
Return specialist: Chris Rowland, Defenders
Birmingham Stallions wide receiver Deon Cain runs after making a reception during a United Football League game against the Michigan Panthers on May 24, 2025, at Protective Stadium in Birmingham.(Photo by Butch Dill/UFL/Getty Images)
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.
U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville is dismissing a promised challenge from Alabama Democrats to his candidacy for the governor’s office.
Tuberville, speaking last Friday on “Capitol Journal,” told host Todd Stacy that it was Democrats’ prerogative to pursue some kind of challenge.
But he said he has lived most of the last 25 years in Alabama and they are “wasting their time.”
Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Randy Kelley last week said the party will challenge Sen. Tuberville’s eligibility to run for governor based on the residency requirement in the state constitution.
Speaking by video, Tuberville said he’s spent last six years splitting his time between Alabama and Washington, D.C.
“You have some of these entities in the state, our state,” he said.
“They’re Democrat, what would you call them, strongholds, that just want to do everything possible to keep me from running. Well, they did that, and there was a lot of people that went after me saying different things, and most of that was saying, ‘We got to keep him from running because if he runs he’s going to win and he’s going to be the most conservative governor we’ve had in a long time; we can’t allow that to happen.’
“Well, it’s happened. They didn’t keep me from getting in the race. We’re going to win this race.”
Tuberville said he had enjoyed being a senator but looks forward to an expanded role as a governor.
“I’ve enjoyed it, but you’re a team player as a United States senator,” he said. “You don’t oversee anything.”
Lacing his talk with several football metaphors, he said he wanted to pursue the governor’s office because “it’s kind of like being a head coach.” He plans on “recruiting” businesses after putting together a “coaching staff” and formulating a “game plan.”
“I’ve read more, Todd, in the last six years than I have in a lifetime,” he said.
“In this business, it’s not about offense, defense and kicking game, it’s about education, health care, pensions, laborers, military. I mean, there’s so many things you have to keep up with.”
If elected, Tuberville said he would pursue an agenda similar to President Donald Trump, with less regulation, less taxes and smaller, more consolidated government.
“We have got to grow the state of Alabama. Look at Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, everybody around us. They’re dropping taxes and they’re growing,” he said.
The 2025 WNBA continues into its third week. On Tuesday, the Indiana Fever and Washington Mystics will meet once again, as they’ve done a few times already into the short season. The Fever will be without superstar Caitlin Clark, as she’s expected to miss the next two weeks with a quadriceps strain.
Fans still looking to tune into the Fever vs Mystics game can do so on Fubo, who’s offering a free trial to new subscribers.
Here’s everything you need to know before the Fever and Mystics tipoff:
When: Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Where: Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN
Time: 7 p.m. E.T.
Fans still looking to tune into the Fever vs Mystics game can do so on Fubo, who’s offering a free trial to new subscribers.
After hearing Wammack’s name, Plant and Page turned to each other and simply said, “’Scratchy’.” They were referring to Wammack’s 1964 single, titled “Scratchy” and known for its adventurous guitar playing. The flipside of the single, released when Wammack was still a teenager, featured another notable guitar cut, “Fire Fly.”
In our 2018 interview, Wammack said while hanging with Page and Plant, “Jimmy told me ‘Scratchy,’ ‘Firefly,’ those are the ones that really inspired him to bear down [on guitar]. He said, ‘I could play ‘Scratchy,’ but I never could play ‘Firefly.’’ What a compliment.”
On June 3, Wammack rightfully will get his due again. A slew of top Muscle Shoals musicians will perform at “A Tribute to Travis Wammack” concert at 7 p.m. at Florence’s Shoals Community Theatre, address 123 N. Seminary St.
Tickets for the show start at $45, via eventbrite.com. All proceeds benefit the Travis Wammack Endowed Scholarship at the University of North Alabama’s Entertainment Industry Program.
The tribute concert’s house band includes singer Mickey Buckins and bassist Bob Wray, two of Wammack’s fellow members of the FAME Gang, the FAME Studios session musicians who followed the iconic Swampers as FAME’s go-to instrumentalists.
The tribute’s house band also boasts the likes of: former Jason Isbell bassist Jimbo Hart; fellow Little Richard guitarist alumnus Kelvin Holly; Shoals Sisters backing vocalists Cindy Walker and Marie Lewey; keyboardist Clayton Ivey, known for his work with artist from Marvin Gaye to Toby Keith. Grammy-winning former SteelDrivers singer/guitarist Gary Nichols, “Nashville Star” winning singer Angela Hacker, Alabama blues icon “Microwave” Dave Gallaher, and Wammack’s son “Monkey” Wammack are among the many other musicians lined up for the show, too. Social media posts promoting the tribute concert have also teased special guests who haven’t been announced.
Born in Mississippi, Travis Wammack got his music career started in Memphis and then relocated to the Shoals, as that North Alabama area’s recording scene was booming. He went on to play on an array of Muscle Shoals hits by artists ranging from Clarence Carter to The Osmonds, Wilson Pickett to Bobbie Gentry to Mac Davis. In addition to touring as Little Richard’s guitarist from 1984 to 1996, Wammack wrote and played guitar on Richard’s slamming 1970 single “Greenwood, Mississippi.”
Now 78, Wammack is battling ankylosing spondylitis, the same spine and joint disease Mötley Crüe guitar legend Mick Mars has dealt with for many years. Wammack can no longer play guitar. Last summer he auctioned off much of his guitar, amp and effect pedal collection.
Outside of music, Wammack’s interests include hunting snakes, including cottonmouths and water moccasins, using a slingshot. During our 2018 chat, he joked about how he first got into snake hunting back in the day. “Everybody else was doing drugs and drinking, and I’m chasing rattlesnakes and women.” Not sure about snakes, but he found the right gal, his longtime wife Mitzi Wammack.
Whenever Travis caught rattlesnakes, he’d use their skin for making items like belts and guitar straps. He’d save the meat for cooking. As Wammack put it, “Everybody wants to eat rattlesnake.”
