Georgia’s public health state of emergency will end on July 1 under an executive order signed by Gov. Brian Kemp.
Kemp first declared a public health state of emergency on March 14, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The declaration helps the state easily access supplies and other resources needed to combat the spread of the coronavirus. It lifts certain medical and commercial transportation regulations.
Tuesday’s order extends the declaration by one day and one minute.
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Fulton County, Georgia poll manager Suzi Voyles said this week that members of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office pressured her to recant her declaring she saw potentially counterfeit ballots last November that favored Joe Biden. Voyles said this when she appeared Wednesday on The John Fredericks Show. Fredericks…
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A Georgia man who founded a charter school to steer young black men away from violence and gang culture reportedly said members of the Dougherty County School System won’t sell him a school already abandoned. That man, King Randall, said school system officials won’t sell him the school unless he agrees to adopt the public school system’s curriculum.
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Alawyer spearheading a major ballot audit inside Georgia’s largest county is warning the irregularities apparent in that county’s election management are “horrendous” and cut against “the basic principle of our democracy.”
Atlanta-based attorney Bob Cheeley made those claims while talking to Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon on Tuesday night’s “Securing our Elections: Protecting Your Vote” special on Real America’s Voice.
Cheeley is among the investigators approved by a Georgia court to audit the 2020 absentee ballots of Fulton County, Ga., a county critical to Joe Biden’s historic 2020 win of Georgia that helped propel him to the White House.
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Federal authorities have arraigned a Snellville, Georgia man for allegedly lying to obtain U.S. citizenship. The defendant, Mezemr Abebe Belayneh, 65, of Snellville, allegedly concealed his involvement in the late 1970s Red Terror period in Ethiopia, where he served as a civilian interrogator at a makeshift prison. A federal grand jury indicted him last month and charged him with two counts of unlawful procurement of naturalization.
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After several Fulton County, Ga., poll monitors testified last year that boxes of mail-in ballots for Joe Biden looked liked they’d been run through a photocopy machine, state investigators quietly broke the seal on one suspicious box and inspected the hundreds of votes it contained for signs of fraud, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively.
At the same time, a key whistleblower told RCI that state investigators pressured her to recant her story about what she and other poll monitors had observed — what they called unusually “pristine” mail-in ballots while sorting through them during last November’s hand recount.
“I felt I was under investigation,” said Suzi Voyles, a longtime Fulton County poll manager whose sworn affidavits have been used by election watchdogs to sue the county for access to the ballots in question.
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State investigators in Georgia reportedly inspected hundreds of potentially suspicious absentee ballots in Fulton County supposedly cast during last year’s presidential election even though those officials didn’t have the legal right to do so. This, according to an article that Real Clear Investigations published Tuesday.
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McDONOUGH, GEORGIA — The lawsuit alleging voting shenanigans in Fulton County during last year’s presidential election continued Monday as Chief Judge Brian Amero heard opposing attorneys spar over voters’ rights and who to hold accountable for violating those rights. Amero presides over the case out of Henry County.
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Hydrogen solutions provider Plug Power will invest $84 million to open a green hydrogen fuel production plant in Kingsland, Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said.
The investment is expected to create 24 jobs in Camden County. Plug Power’s GenKey solution combines critical elements to power and fuel and provides services to Amazon, BMW, Southern Company, The Home Depot, Group Carrefour and Walmart.
“With this hydrogen production plant, we are expanding our green hydrogen network to provide zero-emissions fuel to customers in Georgia and across the Southeast,” Plug Power CEO Andy Marsh said. “Investing in Camden County is the right choice to support Plug Power’s continued growth.”
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Georgia officials announced Friday that the state’s unemployment rate had dropped for the 13th straight month from 4.3 percent in April to 4.1 percent for the month of May. Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler, however, said more pressing matters remain.
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Two Georgia residents in two separate cases allegedly committed massive Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act fraud while another Georgia resident admitted in federal court to committing such fraud. In the first case, federal officials took two Columbus residents into custody after a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging them both with wire fraud and theft of government property related to the CARES Act. This, according to a press release that officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia published this week.
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Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is the world’s busiest drawing room. Georgia is famous for her hospitality and every day we greet thousands of guests with warmth.
A prominent politician came to Georgia on Friday and, as inhospitable as it may sound, she should have been elsewhere.
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Fulton County, Georgia had more election integrity problems during last year’s U.S. presidential elections than were previously known, according to a new investigative report that Just the News published late Thursday night. Reporters John Solomon and Daniel Payne cited a 29-page memo they obtained that documented double counting of votes, insecure storage, threats, and massive chain of custody irregularities.
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Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Wednesday issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against U.S. President Joe Biden’s ban on oil and gas leases on federal lands. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr joined 12 other state attorneys general in filing suit to block the Biden Administration’s violation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) and the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA). Coalition members are citing Wednesday’s action as a major victory.
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In a nationally televised interview in January, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rattled off an impressive list of measures his state used to ensure the November election count was accurate. “We had safe, secure, honest elections,” he declared to “60 Minutes.”
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An African American man who allegedly shot and wounded five white men in Phenix City, Alabama last weekend and then crossed the Chattahoochee River into nearby Columbus, Georgia could face federal hate crimes charges. This, according to Phenix City Assistant Police Chief George Staudinger.
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Members of a group called No Left Turn in Education this month asked Peach State residents to stand up to Critical Race Theory (CRT) and sign a petition asking government officials to ban it. In a press release, No Left Turn in Education Georgia chapter members also said they want K-12 schools statewide to ban the 1619 Project and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion & Action Civics.
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U.S. Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA-12) and U.S. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO-04) reintroduced The Saving American History Act to ban K-12 school officials from using federal funds to teach the 1619 Project. Allen announced the legislation Sunday in an emailed newsletter to his constituents.
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Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) officials have announced they will reinstate the unemployment insurance requirements they had in place before COVID-19. This, according to a press release that GDOL officials published late last week.
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The purpose of this story is to present the analysis that The Georgia Star News has conducted on the chain of custody documents provided by Fulton County for absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes during the early voting and election-day period of September 29 through November 3, 2020.
The documents provided to The Star News have been part of an ongoing series of Open Records Requests made to Fulton County for the absentee ballot drop box transfer forms, which began more than six months ago.
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A little more than two weeks prior to the 2020 election, Atlanta’s Fox5 TV reported on a COVID-19 outbreak at the Fulton County Election warehouse.
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Leaders in the metro Atlanta area said they plan to use American Rescue Plan funding to address public safety issues.
Officials in Fulton and DeKalb counties and the city of Atlanta have announced plans to use a portion of the federal aid to increase public safety or address criminal justice backlogs.
According to several reports, Atlanta and adjacent cities have seen a spike in crime over the past year. State lawmakers have launched a study to look at ways to curb the issue. Gov. Brian Kemp directed $5 million last month from his emergency fund to address the crisis.
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The State of Georgia’s May net tax collections approached $2.66 billion for an increase of roughly $1.08 billion, or 68.1 percent, compared to May 2020. Net tax collections in May of last year totaled $1.58 billion, according to a press release that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp released this week.
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Members of the Georgia General Assembly are preparing to discuss reapportionment, which involves redrawing district lines for the U.S. House of Representatives following the 2020 Census. Members of the Georgia House Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Committee as well as members of the Georgia Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee will hold a joint virtual town hall hearing next week. The hearing will take place from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15 on the Georgia General Assembly’s website.
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Georgia gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones just returned from Arizona where he observed an audit of ballots from the November 2020 presidential election and also witnessed up-close what he said was a calamity at the U.S.-Mexico border. Jones talked to The Georgia Star News Thursday. He said a firm overseeing the audit has done a thorough and professional job that leaves little room to allow mistakes. Jones did not name the firm.
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When Fulton County, Ga., poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden — except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.
Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.
In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.
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A supporter of Susan Opraseuth’s said Tuesday the candidate does not have a database of 330 delegates she needs as she campaigns to replace Fulton County Republican Party incumbent chair Trey Kelly — but she’s supposed to. Party members said this election pits Kelly, an establishment Republican, against Opraseuth, who strongly supports former U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Facebook gave Georgia State University $75,000 to create a narrative film experience about racism.
Georgia State University’s School of Public Health received the grant from Facebook Reality Labs — the technology company’s virtual reality arm — to “create a narrative film that will be an immersive and interactive online platform for combating racial injustice.”
The initiative is meant to “increase viewers’ empathy and enhance their understanding of racism and structural inequality” through augmented and virtual reality technologies.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has suspended Waynesboro Mayor Gregory Carswell Jr. from office after the mayor’s indictment on felony fraud, forgery and theft charges.
Carswell, an evangelical pastor, was elected mayor of the city outside of Augusta in 2017. He was indicted in December on one count of identity fraud, one count of theft by taking, one count of theft by deception and one count of forgery in the second degree. Carswell announced May 17 he was taking a leave of absence as mayor because of his legal troubles and personal issues.
“Of course, you know we have legal issues that are going on, and we want to deal with those, and we want the citizens to have the full confidence and trust and knowing the people they elected are going to do the best things for them,” Carswell said at the May 17 city council meeting.
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Members of the Georgia Board of Education voted Thursday to formally oppose teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the state’s K-12 classrooms. Board members, according to their resolution, described beliefs such as CRT as “concepts that impute fault, blame, a tendency to oppress others, or the need to feel guilt or anguish to persons solely because of their race or sex.”
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A self-described conservative businessman and political outsider has announced he wants to succeed U.S. Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA-10) in Congress. Candidate Matt Richards, in an emailed press release, said he is “a pro-Trump businessman who went from sleeping on a dirt floor to owning his own multi-million dollar demolition company in Atlanta.”
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Republicans throughout Georgia have asked Gov. Brian Kemp to convene a special session of the state legislature so that independent parties can conduct a forensic audit of the state’s November 2020 presidential election. These Republicans sent an open letter to the people of Georgia, which they forwarded to The Georgia Star News Thursday.
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Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) might run for the U.S. Senate next year, although he said he hasn’t decided for certain. Ralston appeared on Georgia Public Broadcasting late last week and praised U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Ralston also said the country’s current direction troubles him. If he does serve in the U.S. Senate then he said his tenure as Georgia Speaker of the House will help guide him.
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday that he would veto funding for his state’s legislature after Democrats delayed the passage of an expansive elections bill.
Democrats in the state House quietly left the floor late Sunday with just hours to spare in the legislative session, preventing the bill from coming up for a vote. If signed into law, Senate Bill 7 would enhance voter ID provisions, empower partisan poll watchers and ban ballot drop boxes and drive-thru voting centers, which were used disproportionately in Texas’ biggest counties.
It would also make it easier to overturn an election in the state, allowing courts to throw out the results of an entire election if the amount of illegally cast votes exceeds the margin between two candidates, regardless of which candidate received more fraudulent votes. In 2020, there were just 43 documented cases of voter fraud, according to the Houston Chronicle.
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Delta Airlines officials did not confirm Tuesday whether they received a letter from an anonymous company employee with two decades of experience who is reportedly angry about CEO Ed Bastian and the company’s Woke culture. Delta officials did not return The Georgia Star News’ request for comment before Tuesday’s stated deadline.
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The U.S. Air Force has announced plans to bring four new missions, including new aircraft, to Robins Air Force Base (AFB), in Houston County, Georgia, beginning fiscal year 2022. This according to a press release that Robins’ AFB officials published this week.
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Georgia lawmakers will study the rise in crime in Atlanta this summer.
The House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee plans to hold a series of hearings to look at the causes and solutions for the increase in crime in the state’s capital city.
“We want to have productive hearings that can get down to exactly what’s going on because, as you all know, the success of the city of Atlanta is directly impacted by the success of Georgia and vice versa,” Committee Chair J. Collins, R-Villa Rica, said.
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Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced this month that the office’s Prosecution Division has concluded its case against Judge William “Allen” Wigington, a former Chief Magistrate Judge in Pickens County. Wigington was found guilty of one count of racketeering, three counts of fourth-degree forgery, five counts of theft by taking, 39 counts of unauthorized use of a financial transaction card, and one count of violation of oath of office. In total, his crimes amounted to 44 felonies and five misdemeanors. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He will serve five years in custody, followed by the remainder on probation.
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Gov. Brian P. Kemp this week announced Georgia has again secured the highest ratings of AAA with a stable outlook from each of the three main credit rating agencies: FitchRatings, Moody’s Investors Service, and S&P Global Ratings. This, according to a press release that members of Kemp’s staff published on his website.
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U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA-01) and U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL-16) this month wrote U.S. President Joe Biden expressing concerns about the president’s support for waiving Intellectual Property (IP) protections related to the COVID-19 vaccines. This, according to a newsletter that Carter emailed his constituents.
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Booksellers are scheduled to release a book later this year that Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan wrote about reforming the Republican Party, but details about how much money Duncan will make were unavailable Wednesday. Members of Duncan’s staff as well as publishers at the New York-based Simon and Schuster did not return The Georgia Star News’ emailed requests for comment before Wednesday’s stated deadline.
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One of Georgia’s top election officials said “Trump supporter-ish kind of people” prompted the audit of Fulton County’s absentee ballots, and he also suggested those individuals are biased and cannot inspect ballots in an honest manner. That man, Gabriel Sterling, is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s chief operating officer.
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said this past weekend that he expects to perform well within the Peach State as he seeks reelection. But his campaign staff remained mum Monday when asked whether supporters of Donald Trump will overlook his and staff members’ past actions against the former president.
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If an audit of absentee ballots that Fulton County officials tallied during the 2020 presidential election produces any irregularities then the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) must step in, said one state legislator. State Sen. Burt Jones (R-Jackson) told The Georgia Star News Monday that if the audit proves any irregularities than that means one or more people committed fraud in last year’s election.
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The University System of Georgia is requiring for next school year’s round of admissions either ACT or SAT test scores from all applying students.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Get Schooled Blog reports that this is part of a larger push by the system to firmly return Georgia’s schools to the pre-COVID status quo.
The system said in a statement that it had “asked all campuses to plan for resuming normal operations for the Fall 2021 semester.”
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U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas ordered the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency to discontinue using its Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, but a congressman said it closed based on a lie. Mayorkas directed ICE to abandon the facility late last week.
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Georgia Department of Labor (DOL) officials announce this week that the state’s unemployment rate dropped another 0.2 percentage points to reach 4.3 percent in April. Last month, Georgia reported the lowest unemployment rate among the 10 most-populated states.
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In 1999, Tim Meisburger helped Indonesia run its first open election in almost half a century.
“The people were very distrustful of the process because in the past the party in power rigged elections to get the outcome they wanted,” Meisburger, former Director of Democracy and Governance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, explained. The United States helped fund more than 500,000 election observers across the country to prevent voter fraud and ballot tampering.
“Because of that scrutiny, the elections were fair and honest,” Meisburger added.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp this week submitted a letter to members of the state board of education and warned about the dangers of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools. But Vernon Jones — Kemp’s declared Republican opponent for next year’s gubernatorial race — also denounced CRT and said, if elected, he’ll do more than just warn about it.
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Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said he’s joining 20 other attorneys general and urging the Biden Administration to reconsider proposals that would impose the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the 1619 Project in America’s classrooms. This, according to a press release that Carr published this week.
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