It has been over a year since Raphael Warnock was sworn in as one of Georgia’s senators. In that period, Warnock has proven to be more beneficial and useful to Joe Biden than to Georgians.
Since Warnock’s swearing-in, Georgians have experienced record-breaking inflation, empty shelves due to an unmanaged supply chain crisis, a resurgence in record-setting COVID-19 cases, and a botched withdrawal in Afghanistan at the hands of Joe Biden.
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Georgia retailers say that the public’s demand for Electric Vehicles (EVs) grows more and more with every passing year and, with that, so does the public’s demand for EV chargers. Those same Georgia retailers want to capitalize on that trend — but they said this week that officials at Georgia Power stand in their way.
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Senator Butch Miller (R-Gainesville) this month filed a bill that would, if enacted into law, mandate that Georgia’s law enforcement officers check people’s citizenship status as they make arrests. According to the language of the bill, SB 448, available on the Georgia General Assembly’s website, law enforcement officers could perform this task with or without a warrant.
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Republican Vernon Jones announced last spring that he would run for governor of Georgia to unseat incumbent and fellow Republican Brian Kemp, but on Monday Jones announced he will depart that race to run for Congress. Jones posted the news on Facebook and Twitter. He then endorsed another Republican for governor.
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Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) this week said his chamber’s recently passed America COMPETES Act does not hold China accountable for trade abuses and human rights violations, per the bill’s original intent. Loudermilk, in a podcast, said Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) and other members of the far Left hijacked the bill. Loudermilk said the Left then added what the congressman called a wish list of socialist items.
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Former President Donald Trump released a blistering attack Friday afternoon on former Vice President Mike Pence’s claims earlier in the day about the January 6, 2021 Joint Session of Congress over which Pence presided at which Electoral College votes submitted by the states were counted.
In a speech before the Florida Chapter of the Federalist Society in Orlando on Friday, Pence asserted, “There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes. And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election.’ President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.” (emphasis added)
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Sixteen states again are challenging a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers who work at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Friday’s filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana comes after the issuance of final guidance on the mandate from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), arguing the guidance is an action that is reviewable.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 vote Jan. 13 against the original Louisiana challenge to the mandate and a similar Missouri filing.
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Federal officials in Atlanta have charged 22 people nationwide, including Georgia, with wire fraud conspiracy and other charges in an alleged scheme to obtain nearly $4 million in COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. This, according to a press release that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia published this week.
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A new bill making its way through the Georgia General Assembly would, if enacted into law, remove provisions that keep election ballots and other election documents under seal — but only under certain conditions. The main sponsor, Representative Shaw Blackmon (R-Bonaire) did not return The Georgia Star News’ requests for comment Friday.
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Republican Vernon Jones commented Wednesday about his status as a Republican gubernatorial candidate for Georgia, but the messages he sent seemed unclear and came across as mixed. This, after media outlets speculated that Jones might suspend his campaign and seek another office, per the supposed wishes of former President Donald Trump. Trump, in December, endorsed Republican David Perdue’s campaign to unseat incumbent GOP Governor Brian Kemp.
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State Representative Wes Cantrell (R-Woodstock) on Monday denied that a new bill he’s sponsoring would grant in-state tuition benefits to illegal immigrants.
This, even though the website Immigration Politics Georgia has warned about the bill, HB 932.
Cantrell filed the bill this month, according to the Georgia General Assembly’s website.
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State Representative Wes Cantrell (R-Woodstock) on Monday denied that a new bill he’s sponsoring would grant in-state tuition benefits to illegal immigrants.
This, even though the website Immigration Politics Georgia has warned about the bill, HB 932.
Cantrell filed the bill this month, according to the Georgia General Assembly’s website.
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Georgia’s net tax collections in December totaled $2.98 billion, for an increase of $582.9 million, or 24.3 percent, compared to December 2020 when net tax collections totaled $2.40 billion, state officials announced this month. “Year-to-date, net tax revenue collections totaled $14.85 billion, for an increase of $2.28 billion, or 18.1 percent, over FY 2021 after six months,” according to Governor Brian Kemp’s office.
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Staff at the Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) are teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Marxism to their Advanced Placement language and research combination classes. This, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Action, a right-of-center grassroots network.
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Representative James Burchett (R-Waycross) said Friday that he believes members of the Georgia General Assembly will pass a bill that would, if enacted into law, clamp down on obscene material in public school libraries. But the bill still has a long way to go.
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A bipartisan group of Georgia lawmakers is sponsoring a bill to create a new state-funded scholarship program that would allow parents to select education options for their children.
House Bill 999, dubbed the Georgia Educational Freedom Act, would provide $6,000 for Georgia students each year in scholarship accounts to attend approved private schools of their choice.
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A bipartisan group of Georgia lawmakers is sponsoring a bill to create a new state-funded scholarship program that would allow parents to select education options for their children.
House Bill 999, dubbed the Georgia Educational Freedom Act, would provide $6,000 for Georgia students each year in scholarship accounts to attend approved private schools of their choice.
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday and Friday issued a pair of statements commenting on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s attempts to investigate him for alleged election misconduct. On Thursday, Trump emailed supporters and said his phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the November 2020 election “was perfect.”
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VoterGA officials announced this week that nearly 107,000 drop box ballots in the November 2020 election results have improper chain of custody forms, and that calls into question the authenticity of those ballots. This, according to a new chain of custody study that VoterGA members released Thursday.
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Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue on Thursday proposed creating what he called an Election Law Enforcement Division that would investigate alleged violations of the state’s election laws. Perdue, in a statement, said Election Law Enforcement Division officers would have the authority to make arrests.
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Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11), during a speech late last week about Democrats’ attempts to pass a federal takeover of elections, said that the party wants to create “a homogenous society that is easily controlled.” Loudermilk said this on the floor of the House of Representatives.
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Federal officials have sentenced a Jefferson County, Georgia woman to prison after she admitted she lied to obtain $150,000 in COVID-19 relief funding to spend on a vacation to Miami. That woman, Whitney Adwan Mack, 34, of Louisville, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and will serve 48 months in prison.
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Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan (R-Cumming) this week assigned the legislation that could help Buckhead incorporate into its own city to a senate committee seated entirely by Democrats. Duncan did not return The Georgia Star News’ repeated requests for comment this week.
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Declared Georgia lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Burt Jones on Friday said his campaign has raised $3.75 million for this fundraising period. Senator Jones (R-Jackson) received former U.S. President Donald Trump’s endorsement last September.
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State Representative Brad Thomas (R-Holly Springs) on Thursday filed a bill that he said would, if enacted into law, prohibit Georgia public school officials from teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the 1619 Project. Thomas did not return The Georgia Star News’ request for an interview Thursday. He said in an emailed press release that his bill, HB 888, “would prohibit curriculum that could be considered discriminatory on the basis of race from being taught in public schools.” HB 888 also includes a transparency requirement that would allow all parents to view the educational materials given to Georgia students.
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Governor Brian Kemp delivered his year State of the State address Thursday, where he announced his policy priorities for the 2022 session of the Georgia General Assembly, and they include reducing crime and reforming public education “From the classroom to the ball field, there are those who want to divide our kids along political lines, push partisan agendas, and indoctrinate students from all walks of life. This is wrong, it’s dangerous, and as long as I’m governor, it will not take root in Georgia,” Kemp said.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is scheduled to deliver his 2022 State of the State address Thursday. Kemp is up for reelection this year.
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Staff members for Georgia’s attorney general and secretary of state this week declined to respond to Vernon Jones call for the feds – and not state officials – to investigate new claims of ballot harvesting in 2020. Staff for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger declined The Georgia Star News’ requests for comment.
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Georgia State Representative Josh Bonner (R-Fayetteville) said this week that University System of Georgia officials oppose a bill he’s submitted that would, if enacted into law, bestow students with greater First Amendment rights. “The [University System of Georgia] officials are very opposed to it,” Bonner told The Georgia Star News.
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Tuesday called for a nationwide ban on ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting permits private individuals to collect other voters’ ballots and then submit those ballots to various polling stations.
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Former Republican senator and current Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue on Monday published a Georgia Parents’ Bill of Rights that he said protects children from overzealous school administrators. Perdue’s proposal borrows from federal legislation that U.S. Senator Josh Hawley(R-MO) proposed last year.
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Members of the Georgia House Republican Caucus have elected State Representative Bonnie Rich (R-Suwanee) as their new House Majority Caucus Chair for the remainder of the 2021-2022 legislative term. Georgia House Republican Caucus members announced the news this week.
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Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue said a new state law gives Governor Brian Kemp a significant financial advantage as he seeks reelection, and this week Perdue filed suit to challenge that law’s constitutionality. In his lawsuit, Perdue, a former Republican U.S. senator, cited Senate Bill 221. The bill became law in July of last year, according to the Georgia General Assembly’s website.
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ATLANTA, Georgia – Republican and declared Georgia gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones on Wednesday called on the federal government – and not State Attorney General Chris Carr – to investigate new claims of ballot harvesting during the 2020 election. This, even though Jones and others allege that certain, unnamed individuals in Georgia broke state laws – and not federal ones.
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Salon this week identified former Republican senator and current Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue as one of the nation’s 10 “scariest Republican candidates of 2022.” The Georgia Star News asked Perdue spokeswoman Jenni Sweat on Tuesday whether that article signals that the left takes Perdue’s candidacy seriously and outright fears he’ll defeat incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp later this year.
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Georgia authorities have launched an investigation into an allegation of systematic ballot harvesting during the state’s 2020 general election and subsequent U.S. Senate runoff and may soon issue subpoenas to secure evidence, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed to Just the News.
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A spokeswoman for former Republican senator and Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue said Monday that the candidate wants a Parents’ Bill of Rights. This, after Atlanta Public School (APS) officials announced Saturday that they will operate virtually this week for all students and all staff. APS officials said the district’s most recent COVID-19 data prompted the decision.
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Democrats four years ago rode a blue wave to governors’ mansions across the country, flipping Republican-held seats in the Midwest, Northeast and West alike.
Now, however, many of those governors face Republican challengers amid a political environment that looks potentially promising for the GOP, meaning that contentious races may lie ahead in some of the nation’s most pivotal battleground states. Republicans have already had two strong showings in states that lean Democratic, flipping the governor’s seat in Virginia and coming surprisingly close in New Jersey, a state that voted for President Joe Biden by 16 points in 2020.
Governors in less competitive states are also facing primary challengers from the left and right, making for multiple bitter, closely-followed primaries between candidates from different wings of the same party.
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The Virginia-based Campus Reform late last week called out the Atlanta-based Georgia State University (GSU) for using bias reporting tools that enable students, faculty, and staff to report on one another for alleged acts of discrimination. Campus Reform, according to its website, is conservative and monitors the nation’s higher education system.
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Then-President Donald Trump’s team assembled a 10-day pressure campaign in December 2020 hoping to shame governors and state legislators into officially investigating allegations of Election 2020 irregularities, according to memos newly turned over to Congress by former New York Police Commissioner and Trump confidant Bernard Kerik.
The strategy called for “protests” at governors’ mansions and the homes of politicians ranging from secretaries of states to “weak” congressional members in key battleground states, the memos show.
The documents, turned over Friday night under subpoena to the House’s Jan. 6 commission, are remarkable in part because they show the primary focus of the Trump team leading up to the Jan. 6 certification of the 2020 vote – an event that turned violent when pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol – was to get “support for hearings” to probe allegations of voting irregularities Trump’s team had received but not vetted.
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Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) officials this week announced they are allocating Merck and Pfizer oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19 to select retail pharmacies throughout the state. “Initial supply of Molnupiravir and PaxlovidTM from the federal government is very limited. DPH anticipates additional allocations in the coming weeks as production increases,” according to a DPH press release.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, up for reelection next year, released a campaign ad on Wednesday and told voters he has done everything he said he would do during his first term. Two Republicans running against Kemp said Wednesday that the incumbent governor has fallen short.
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Six of the 10 Athens-Clarke County (ACC), Georgia commissioners have proposed an ordinance that, if enacted into law, would more than double their salaries from $15,000 per year to $31,000. County Mayor Kelly Girtz, under this proposal, would enjoy a pay increase as well, but only a small one, from $57,399 to $62,000.
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Federal officials have announced eight new assistant U.S. attorneys for the Northern District of Georgia. One of them, Mary Jane Stewart, as referred to in a press release is “a career public servant.”
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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) officials this week described Georgia’s Medicaid work requirements as “harmful” and announced that Peach State officials may no longer impose them as a condition of Medicaid eligibility. CMS officials also announced that Georgia officials no longer have the authority to charge premiums beyond those allowed under the Medicaid statute in its Georgia “Pathways to Coverage” demonstration.
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The Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation this month ranked Georgia first on its election integrity scorecard, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took credit. DeKalb County Republican Party Chair Marci McCarthy said this week, however, that Raffensperger was out of line to make such a statement. McCarthy wrote on the DeKalb County GOP’s website that Raffensperger “unilaterally weakened Voter ID protections and controls” and “did not strengthen them.”
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Federal officials say that a Columbus, Georgia public school teacher who was addicted to gambling stole $240,000 from various nonprofits as well as from one of her former employers. Trenna Denise Trice, 59, pleaded guilty to wire fraud Monday. This according to a press release that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia published this week.
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The U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday published new population estimates and ranked Georgia as the eighth most populated state in 2021. The Census Bureau also reported that the Peach State grew in population, however slightly, between April 2020 and July 2021.
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Georgia was one of six states classified as having exemplary disclosure of its Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) spending, according to a new report on transparency in CRF spending.
The CRF was established from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The act was signed into law by former President Donald Trump in March 2020 and gave states a total of $111.8 billion to cover COVID-19-related costs.
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Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) announced late last week that he has asked the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to increase the number of new C-130J aircraft, which are manufactured at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Marietta, Georgia. That Lockheed Martin factory, Loudermilk went on to say, employs 3,000 Georgia residents.
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