Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene became the first congressional Republican to use the word “genocide” to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza Monday, and a Democratic member of the Georgia delegation followed suit Tuesday.

“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” the Rome Republican posted on social media Monday.

The death toll of Israel’s war topped 60,000 Monday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, with women and children reportedly making up around half of the dead. In recent days Gazans have been dying of malnutrition in what critics call a deliberate campaign of starvation on Israel’s part, a claim Israeli officials deny.

Greene’s comments were in response to her House colleague, Florida Republican Congressman Randy Fine, who in a social media post called stories of malnutrition “Muslim terror propaganda.”

“Release the hostages. Until then, starve away,” Fine wrote.

Support for Israel was once a no-brainer for both parties, but support among the Democratic base has taken a nosedive since the war began in 2023 after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing 1,200 and abducting another 251.

A recent Gallup poll found 60% of U.S. adults expressing disapproval for Israel’s military action in Gaza compared with just 32% approving. Only 8% of Democrats and 25% of independents in the poll said they approved, while 71% of Republicans were in favor of Israel’s actions.

Still, skepticism of the war – and especially U.S. bankrolling of it – has taken hold among some prominent conservative politicians, especially Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, while conservative thought leaders and influencers like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Theo Von and Joe Rogan have increasingly questioned Israel’s actions.

Greene is considered one of President Donald Trump’s most stalwart allies, though in recent weeks, she has publicly disagreed with the White House over topics including artificial intelligence regulations, funding for the war in Ukraine and whether to release the Epstein files.

Trump acknowledged the hunger crisis in Gaza on Monday, saying there is “real starvation” there – comments that represented a break from ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had said Sunday that “there is no starvation in Gaza.”

On Tuesday, 43 Democratic senators, including Georgia’s Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock along with one independent, signed a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a large-scale expansion of humanitarian aid into the enclave.

State Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Duluth Democrat who is Georgia’s first Palestinian lawmaker, said she hopes Greene’s remarks will help put the plight of Palestinians into focus but also expressed puzzlement that she made them.

“I cannot speak to the Congresswoman’s motivations considering her past comments about Jewish, Muslim, and Arab community members,” Romman said. “Although this is attention grabbing, it’s another indicator that people oppose the genocide in Gaza. But, I hope people remember that Palestinians have been saying this for almost two years and moving forward will center the community impacted instead.”

Greene has faced criticism for statements and social media posts deemed Islamophobic – after Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim man, won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, she posted a picture of the Statue of Liberty dressed in a burqa – as well as antisemitic – she has been mocked as believing in “Jewish space lasers” after a 2018 post in which she suggested California wildfires may have been caused by a satellite owned by the Rothschild family.

Only a handful of sitting members of Congress have used the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions. Greene joins Democratic colleagues including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Greene previously sponsored a resolution to censure Tlaib for comments opposing the war.

On Tuesday, Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson, a Lithonia Democrat who has long been a vocal critic of Israel’s actions, joined that cohort with his own statement condemning the killing.

“To date, the Israeli military has killed 62,000 people in the war on Gaza — the overwhelming majority being women and children — not Hamas fighters. Now, in addition to aid convoys, even churches where Christians are huddled for safety are being bombed. Meanwhile, the people of Gaza are literally being starved to death,” Johnson said in the statement.

“Silence is no longer an option. What is happening in Gaza is genocide. U.S. military support for genocide in Gaza must end. NOW!”

U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, an Atlanta Democrat who has pushed for more information about Israel’s plans to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, called the situation a “humanitarian crisis.”

“Nowhere in the world should children be dying of starvation or forced to live in the conditions the people of Gaza have endured,” Williams said in a statement Tuesday.

“This is a humanitarian crisis — one that deserves investigation and should be subject to the same level of scrutiny that Rep. Greene referenced. The focus of members of Congress should be how we resolve this crisis, bring all hostages home and reach lasting peace and stability in the region.”

The Recorder reached out to all members of Georgia’s House delegation Tuesday for comment.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

Georgia is closer to a so-called religious freedom bill than it has been in nearly a decade after a House panel passed a bill Wednesday.

Acworth Republican Sen. Ed Setzler’s Senate Bill 36 is now teed up for a full House vote, which would send it to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.

It’s the farthest a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA bill, has come in Georgia since 2016, when then-Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed a similar measure after it sparked outcry from LGBTQ advocates and large employers in the state.

The nearly decade-long push for religious protections began after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark same-sex marriage ruling in 2015.

Setzler says the bill will protect religious Georgians from state and local governments the same way the First Amendment does at the federal level. He often gives examples of RFRA beneficiaries from other states, including a veiled Muslim woman who was allowed to be photographed unveiled for her driver’s license in a private room by a woman photographer so as not to violate her religion.

Opponents instead refer to examples of same-sex couples denied service at shops or other businesses.

Detractors argue that because Georgia does not have a civil rights law, RFRA bills would provide carte blanche to discriminate against LGBTQ Georgians and others under the fig leaf of religion. At a previous committee hearing, lawmakers inserted an amendment including civil rights protections, but that amendment was eliminated ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

Setzler presented the bill as a compromise because it does not prevent local governments from instituting their own anti-discrimination ordinances.

“This bill specifically takes the middle road, doesn’t go after local ordinances that elevate rights of certain people groups,” he said. “It doesn’t invalidate the rights of people of faith, it takes the middle road. It allows those local ordinances to stay in place while the rights of people of faith have the weight they should receive in our legal system. This balanced approach is not what was taken back in 2016.”

“And I think we recognize by exactly mirroring the federal language, by following our governor insisting on language that does exactly that, nothing more, nothing less, no changes,” he added. “That’s why these amendments came off from committee. We don’t need to make these changes to our federal framework and (instead) simply take the same protections that exist in federal law, apply those protections to state and local governments.”

Atlanta Democratic Rep. Stacey Evans said she would have supported the bill with the civil rights amendment, but she has serious objections without it.

“This bill will give a license to discriminate, that’s exactly what it does,” she said. “And all attempts to make sure that that’s not true, all attempts to make sure that it really is about just making sure that folks can exercise their religious beliefs, all of that could be taken care of if we also put in comprehensive civil rights protections for the state or made sure that local ordinances against discrimination would be respected. Every single time, those amendments were rejected, which tells you the intent of the author here is to discriminate. If it wasn’t his intent, if it wasn’t the intent of this body to discriminate, then why are we opposed to amendments that make it clear that we’re not discriminating?”

The bill could come to a full House vote any time before the end of the legislative session on April 4.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

Starting next deer season, hunters in south Georgia will have the option to drop off the heads of deer they take to be tested for a fatal and infectious brain-eating disease sometimes called “zombie deer disease.”

“We’re going to set up self-serve freezer drop-off locations, where a hunter, someone like me and you that wants to process their own deer, when we leave our lease or our property, we can stop at this freezer location, cut that head off or take the skull cap off, put your information on a card, you put in your freezer and our staff will come by and pick those up and get them tested,” said Tina Johansson, assistant chief of game management at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Johansson was briefing state House members on Chronic Wasting Disease Monday morning at a hearing of the state House Game, Fish and Parks Committee. The department announced last week that a deer harvested in south Georgia tested positive for the disease, the first time it has been found in the state. She said DNR’s goal will be to keep the prevalence of the disease at below 5%, but unlike in some other states, Georgia does not plan to require hunters to have their deer tested.

“We don’t anticipate setting up mandatory check stations,” Johansson said. “We will, of course, have our self-service locations down there, and we will be putting staff out on busy weekends to help out and just interface with hunters and explain what’s going on down there. We don’t anticipate any — we’re certainly not proposing any sort of ban on baiting within those counties.”

Baiting deer is a controversial practice that some consider unsportsmanlike. Environmentalists say spreading out deer corn can be bad for wildlife – and that encouraging deer to gather in one place can help spread diseases like CWD.

“Other states with CWD outbreaks have suspended deer baiting in the area,” said Mark Woodall, Georgia legislative chair for the Sierra Club. “DNR’s failure to limit deer baiting appears to be playing politics instead of following the science. I guess they don’t want to offend some landowners and feed mills. This is regulatory malpractice and it’s disgraceful.”

For now, the DNR’s chronic wasting disease management area only includes Lanier and Berrien counties, but it is expected to encompass more of the state as the disease is likely to spread.

Chronic Wasting is a neurological disease that affects members of the deer family including elk and moose. It’s caused not by a bacteria or virus but by prions, a type of abnormally folded protein that can cause other proteins in the brain to misfold. When enough of these build up, the animal will start to show symptoms, which can include listlessness, lack of coordination and weight loss.

The disease is 100% fatal for the animals. It’s bad news for deer, but not necessarily for deer hunters, said Department of Natural Resources Deputy Commissioner Trevor Santos.

“I want to first and foremost assure you and our hunters that deer hunting will continue to thrive in this state,” Santos told lawmakers Monday. “This is not the end of deer hunting as we know it, despite this discovery that we made a week before last. Our plan is to work together with all of the members of the General Assembly, all hunters, as well as all Georgians. This gets outside of just those of us that wear camouflage on their day off to manage this disease and maintain a healthy deer herd.

According to the DNR, hunting in Georgia generates about $1.6 billion and supports over 150,000 jobs. Georgia’s deer hunting season for firearms generally runs from about mid October to mid January.

“You’re not going to hear a lot of positive from the rest of the presentation, but I want you to know that everything is fine as far as our deer herd goes in this state,” Santos added.

The misshapen prions can build up in the infected animals’ brain over the course of 18 to 30 months before they show any symptoms, but they can spread the disease before they appear ill, Johansson said.

“It will look perfectly healthy until the last few weeks or months of the disease course, and that’s when you’ll see that wasting that gives it its title,” she said. “At some point, it starts to shed these infectious prions. Those are shed in saliva, they’re shed in urine, they’re shed in feces. They’re exposing other deer to these prions long before they show any symptoms. They’re also contaminating their environment.”

Deer can spread the disease simply by rubbing noses, and waste and carcasses can spread it onto the landscape, where it can linger far longer than the average virus.

“The prions, what’s their life span outside on the ground?” Asked committee Chairman Trey Rhodes, a Greensboro Republican.

“Indefinite,” Johansson said. “Proteins, as you know, are the building block of the physical body, and so these prions are difficult to destroy. Their infectivity is really unknown once it’s out on the landscape. We know it varies, but it’s not something that you can cook out of the meat or put in the freezer first and then it’s safer to eat. It’s something that is going to stay out there for a long time.”

According to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been no known cases of CWD in humans, but the CDC strongly recommends having deer or elk tested and not eating any meat from an animal that tests positive.

A similar disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, can lead to illness and death in humans.

In addition to offering testing, the DNR will increase its monitoring efforts, which involve working with meat processors and taxidermists to monitor the deer population. Participating processors will send samples to a lab at the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The testing process typically takes about two weeks, and hunters will be notified of their results. The process will not prevent hunters from keeping the deers’ antlers.

Georgia is not likely to ever eradicate the disease entirely, but Johansson said the state is in a better position because it has had time to draw up plans and learn from other states. She said DNR has been monitoring for CWD for about 20 years and is the 36th state to detect the disease.

“CWD is likely here to stay, unless we’re one of the very, very fortunate few who have found it very, very, very early,” she said. “We will have to continually do surveillance and we will have to do adaptive management, and by that, I mean we will continue to learn from other states, we’ll learn from ourselves and we’ll adapt our plans moving forward.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture announced it had detected a case of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, sometimes called bird flu, in a small, backyard flock of chickens and ducks in Clayton County. This is the fourth detection of HPAI in Georgia since a nationwide outbreak began in February 2022, according to the department.

The illness is a highly contagious viral disease that can decimate flocks of birds, both domestic and wild, and can sometimes spread to mammals, including humans. As of Jan. 6, there have been 66 confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu in the U.S., including one case in Louisiana in which a patient died.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also tracking an outbreak of bird flu in dairy cows in 16 states, not including Georgia. At least 40 humans have contracted the disease from cows, in what the CDC calls the first instance of likely mammal-to-human spread. No human-to-human spread has been identified.

When a sick bird is detected, the entire flock is euthanized, which can be economically devastating for commercial farmers with large numbers of birds, and the outbreak has been blamed for contributing to higher prices for eggs, poultry and dairy.

“As the ongoing, nationwide HPAI outbreak continues, implementing and maintaining strict biosecurity measures has never been more important,” said Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper. “To date, the ongoing outbreak has impacted more than 133 million birds nationwide and less than .025% of those birds have been from Georgia, the nation’s top poultry producer – that speaks to the effectiveness of biosecurity and the importance of the work our animal health professionals and poultry producers are doing every single day to ensure the safety of their animals, employees, and operations.”

After confirming the presence of HPAI from a dead bird Wednesday, workers from the Georgia Department of Agriculture visited the affected premises on Thursday to “complete depopulation, cleaning & disinfection and disposal operations,” the department said in a release.

The department said the flock was in a residential neighborhood near a lake that is frequented by wild birds, particularly waterfowl which are known carriers of HPAI.

The department believes transmission most likely came from the wild birds or from viral material they shed into the environment. The department noted there are no commercial poultry or dairy cattle operations within six miles of the affected flock.

The Department of Agriculture encourages owners of poultry flocks to closely observe their birds and report a sudden increase in the number of sick birds or bird deaths to the Avian Influenza Hotline at 770-766-6850.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

Attorney General and announced gubernatorial candidate Chris Carr is hoping a new administration in Washington will mean relief for Georgia farmers who are set to pay more to migrant agricultural workers, but advocates say the laborers often don’t receive what they are owed despite working in difficult and unsafe conditions.

“Our office’s request is to work with you and the Trump Administration to address the rising (wage rate) before Georgia farming simply becomes unaffordable,” Carr wrote in a letter to President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead the U.S. departments of agriculture and labor for his second term, Brooke Rollins and Lori Chavez-DeRemer. “We believe the health of our farms is directly tied to the food security, national security, and economic security interests of the United States.”

The federal H-2A program offers temporary work to people from foreign countries when there are not enough U.S. workers available for the job. The federal government sets their pay rate by region, and the rate is typically higher than the going rate for U.S. workers. That’s in part to prevent farmers from importing cheap foreign laborers and leaving American farmhands jobless.

On average, the rate for H-2A workers is set to rise 4.5%, according to the U.S. Farm Bureau, but the actual changes will vary by region. In Georgia, the rate is set to rise from $14.68 to $16.08, or 9.5%. Nationwide, wages for civilian workers increased 3.9% between September 2023 and 2024, according to the Bureau for Labor Statistics.

Overall, the lowest rate for H-2A workers is set to be $14.83 in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas and the highest is $20.08 in Hawaii.

Last December, Carr’s office reached out to Biden administration officials Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, and agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to express concern about the effect rising wages could have on Georgia farmers.

Carr’s office says farmers are actually paying more because of visa fees and travel and lodging expenses and they argue that the government is not transparent in the methods it uses to calculate rates.

Agriculture and related industries contributed $83.6 billion and 323,000 jobs to Georgia’s economy in 2022, according to the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development. Carr argues that raising costs for farmers could put that industry at risk.

But H-2A workers are already at risk from bad working conditions and often do not even see the money they are owed, said Solimar Mercado-Spencer, director of the Farmworker Rights Division at Georgia Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm.

In a 2021 sting known as Operation Blooming Onion, law enforcement officers charged two dozen people with fraudulently using the H-2A program to traffic workers into south Georgia to work under conditions prosecutors called modern-day slavery.

Three years later, H-2A workers are dealing with exploitation and dangerous conditions.

Georgia currently hosts more H-2A workers than any state except Florida. Most of the workers are men and about 90% of them come from Mexico, Mercado-Spencer said. They rarely speak any English and are usually unfamiliar with the U.S. and its legal system.

Many use the money to support not only their wives and children, but also extended family, so they’re typically eager to work, but sometimes they are taken advantage of by recruiters who charge them illegal junk fees to come work in addition to bona fide fees and expenses.

“Since they pay all these expenses up front, they took a loan back in their country to afford that,” Mercado-Spencer said. “So since they started their work, they already have this debt that they have to pay, they’re thinking about that, and then they come here with overcrowded housing in really bad shape, extreme temperatures, no AC, or heating when it’s cold, you see workers sleeping on mattresses on the floor, in living rooms, because they put so many workers in one spot.”

Most of the workers in Georgia work in the southern part of the state and often work harvesting labor-intensive crops like onions, blueberries and green peppers, Mercado-Spencer said.

“They can work long hours, there’s no right to breaks, they don’t have to provide breaks, it’s very hard work, and then sometimes they get shorted on their hours, so they’re not getting paid all their hours, or there’s amounts deducted from their paychecks that sometimes are bogus, not legitimate deductions, so they’re not getting paid what they’re supposed to get paid,” Mercado-Spencer said.

“Then since they have this debt and they’re only authorized to work for the employer that hired them with this visa, they have no choice really but to stay and just withstand those conditions, so they can at least make some money and try to pay that loan back,” she added.

Mercado-Spencer said a wage increase would make law-abiding farmers pay more or improve conditions to attract American farm laborers, but without enforcement, she’s skeptical the workers that complain to her would benefit from a raise at all.

“All of us, including farmers, including consumers, we all are benefiting from this labor, from these farm workers,” she said. “So we should be treating them fairly. It shouldn’t be all about benefiting farmers and consumers. We’ve got to think about the workers too when we are looking at these issues and be respectful and grateful for their service.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

Georgia Democrats and Republicans clashed over ballot collecting over the weekend in what could be a preview of post-Election Day legal battles over the vote.

With just three days to go before Election Day, Republican officials accused a group of counties run by Democrats of funny business over their decisions to extend paper ballot return hours through the weekend. There has been no evidence put forward of widespread election fraud in 2020 or 2024.

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said the party has filed suit, and that Republican poll watchers were not being allowed to observe the process in populous blue counties including Fulton, DeKalb and Cobb. Whatley said the watchers were later able to observe.

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the practice of receiving ballots at this stage is legal.

“Under state law, election officials can receive absentee ballots in person at govt facilities if the county chooses,” he said in a post on X. “Several counties have chosen to do this. We are working with the counties and the political parties to ensure this is done transparently and within Georgia law.”

Raffensperger later added that while he is pleased that watchers were eventually allowed in, he is concerned that their presence was ever in question.

“The eyes of the world are on Fulton County,” he said. “Local officials must ensure that every process from now until election day and after is transparent and in accordance with Georgia law, given the history of controversy in the county’s election administration.”

Fulton County was at the center of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

The ballots turned in before the county allowed observers likely numbered under 100, according to Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling.

The controversy

In an X post that includes an unverified image of an email purportedly between Fulton County election staff banning poll watchers, State Republican Party Chair Josh McKoon accused Democrats of trying to steal the election.

“Democrats are panicked by the incredible Republican turnout in early voting and will do anything to try to catch up even if it means doing it under the cover of darkness and stiff arming any independent observation of whatever the hell is going on in their four ‘special voting locations’ open today with no notice or approval by anyone authorized to oversee elections administration.”

Josh McKoon speaks at a Protect the Vote event in Alpharetta. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

According to the Harris campaign, a Fulton county judge denied Republicans’ request to shut down the ballot returns Saturday morning. Democrats said the GOP’s efforts are anti-voter and frivolous.

“Across Georgia, the Trump campaign has been cherry-picking facts and making up problems where there are none,” said campaign senior advisor and outside counsel Dana Remus. “But each time, we were prepared, we responded, and we won. We are ensuring our voters can make their voices heard, and we are protecting the integrity of the election so that every legal vote will count — no matter what Trump says.”

Tensions are high ahead of Tuesday’s election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. Georgia’s 16 electoral votes could prove critical, evidenced by the steady stream of visits to Georgia by the presidential candidates and their allies.

After Trump lost the presidency in 2020 to current President Joe Biden, Trump spread unfounded rumors that he was cheated out of victory. He lost in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes.

Many of the party’s strongest backers took the idea that Georgia’s elections were rigged in favor of Democrats to heart, despite two recounts and many unsuccessful court cases. In response, the GOP-led state legislature passed a series of election reforms. Trump has sought to convince his supporters to vote early, and other Republicans have stressed the message that Georgia’s elections are safe and reliable.

According to Fair Fight, the voting rights group started by Democrat Stacey Abrams, expanded mail ballot return hours are available in Chatham, Clarke, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties.

“72,000 Georgians have still not returned their vote-by-mail ballots – that’s a 23% unreturned rate. In Georgia, where presidential elections can be as close as 11,779 votes, every ballot could make the difference. If you have your mail ballot, we recommend hand delivering it to your county. If that’s not an option, you should vote in person on Election Day – just tell a poll worker you’re canceling your mail ballot,” said Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance came to Atlanta Saturday to make the case for his running mate, former president Donald Trump, in the frenzied final stretch of a tight presidential race against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Speaking to a friendly crowd near the state Capitol this weekend, the Ohio senator said a second Trump administration would mean fewer undocumented migrants crossing the border and lower prices on housing, gasoline and groceries.

“Because I’m the first millennial on a major party ticket, I talk to a lot of people in my generation, and a consistent theme that I hear from them is ‘our parents’ generation, they were able to afford to buy a home and our generation is not,’” Vance said. “And what a terrible failure of leadership that is, how much have the present leaders of this country failed our citizens when young people don’t feel like they can afford the American dream of homeownership?”

Vance’s visit comes in between two double-header Trump stops in the battleground state. The former president made stops south of Atlanta and in Duluth Wednesday, and is scheduled to hold events in north metro Atlanta and Georgia Tech next week.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris urged a crowd of supporters at a packed stadium in Clarkston Thursday night to vote early to bank their ballots in Georgia’s closely contested presidential election. Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder

Team Harris is also crisscrossing the Peach State ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5. Harris headlined a star-studded rally in Clarkston Thursday featuring former president Barack Obama.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is scheduled to rally Georgia supporters for his wife on Sunday, while former first lady Michelle Obama is set to lead a get out the vote rally in Atlanta Tuesday. That event is nonpartisan, but is expected to help Harris’ campaign more than Trump’s.

Vance’s event didn’t draw nearly as many supporters as Trump or Harris’ big rallies, but the mood was high. Borrowing a term used to describe the Harris ticket, Vance said the mood was joyful.

As the race nears its end, most Georgia polls show Trump with a slight advantage over Harris, but not an insurmountable one.

Vance said he is encouraged by early voting numbers in Republican-leaning counties across Georgia, saying he credits efforts from the GOP-led state Legislature for convincing Republican voters that early voting is safe.

When asked by reporters Saturday, the aspiring VP said the ticket will “of course” accept the election results from Georgia even if they lose, with an asterisk.

“We believe in two very important principles: one, yes, we are going to accept the results of the election, but two, we’re also going to fight to make sure that every legal ballot and only every legal ballot is counted,” he said.

Georgia was at the center of the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election results in 2020, even after three vote tallies confirmed President Joe Biden’s narrow win and attempts to challenge the results in court were unsuccessful.

In a statement, the Harris campaign expressed confidence in the vice president’s chances.

“We are seeing incredible energy and enthusiasm on the ground, look no further than last night in Atlanta, where a record crowd of 23,000 came out in support of Vice President Harris’ vision for a New Way Forward,” said Matt Blakely, the Harris campaign’s Georgia rapid response director on Friday. “So as Trump and JD Vance parachute into our state, Georgians are ready to turn the page on Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda, which would raise costs on middle-class families by nearly $4,000 a year, gut access to health care, and slash Social Security and Medicare.”

More than 2.5 million people have already cast a ballot in Georgia, with another week of early voting left before the big day.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

Georgia Democrats are sounding the alarm over potential mass voter challenges ahead of the November election.

Georgia law allows local voters to challenge the eligibility of as many people as they want if they suspect the person is ineligible to cast a ballot. Ahead of the Jan. 2021 runoffs for the U.S. Senate, a conservative vote monitoring group called True the Vote challenged hundreds of thousands of voters’ eligibility.

In a ruling this January, a federal judge said he could not condone “TTV’s actions in facilitating a mass number of seemingly frivolous challenges” but could not “under the operative legal framework say that these actions were contrary to Georgia law.”

Atlanta Democratic Rep. Saira Draper, who is also an attorney and voting rights advocate, said Democrats expect even more challenges this year because of two controversial voting laws passed since the last presidential election.

Senate Bill 202, passed in 2021, clarified that there is no legal limit on the number of voter challenges one can make, and Senate Bill 189, signed by Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this month, outlines possible reasons to challenge eligibility.

“We know that right wing activists are planning to make voter challenges a big part of their electoral strategy for this presidential election,” she said at a Thursday press conference outside the state Capitol. “In fact, they are using a software that they developed called Eagle AI that allows a challenger to file thousands of meritless voter challenges at a time with just a few clicks of a mouse. And they are actively recruiting people to use this tool across our state.”

Candace Smith, an Atlanta attorney, said her eligibility was improperly challenged ahead of last week’s primary election.

Smith said she has lived at the same address for more than 20 years and voted in nearly every election since 1993, but when she logged onto her voter page on the secretary of state’s website last Tuesday, she saw her voter registration had been challenged.

“No reason was given for the challenge at all,” she said. “It said the reason for the challenge is blank, and I was directed to contact my county elections office for more information. I have been a Georgia voter for decades and as a result this was pretty shocking.”

Smith said she was able to get the problem resolved and ensure her vote was counted, but she worries that others who don’t have the same time or tenacity might not be able to.

“A voter who doesn’t have the time or the resources to resolve a challenge to the registration might simply give up and go home or not leave the house at all,” she said. “For many, just receiving this intimidating message, whether in error or otherwise, may keep them from voting again.”

Speaking to the Recorder after the press conference, Draper expressed confidence that the results of this year’s elections will be fair, even if that involves going to court.

“In the outcome of the 2020 election, there were dozens of lawsuits that were filed over ballots that had been cast, and those lawsuits were speedily resolved to show that the elections in Georgia were valid,” she said. “So we certainly have the traditional process at our disposal that we can use if we deem that we need to. But part of what we are talking about now is preventative action that we can take with organizing and education with voters so that we can hopefully prevent any of that from happening before it starts. And I think having that two-tier approach is very important.”

“Of course, we’re going to use all the options that are available to us,” she added. “But balancing the messaging and this narrative about the importance of the integrity of elections, we have to consider that in any kind of action that we’ll take because accepting the outcome of legitimate elections is absolutely critical for democracy.”

In an email, Mike Hassinger, spokesman for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, challenged Draper’s characterization of state law and said remarks like Draper’s are often used to fire up voters and raise money.

“Georgia’s ‘voter challenge’ law has been on the books since the early 1980s,” he said. “Prior to this year’s session of the General Assembly, it had virtually no guidance about the process by which anyone can challenge the right of an elector to be listed on a voter registration list. Anyone could challenge the eligibility of any voter, for any reason, at any time. Section 5 of SB 189 defines what can be considered probable cause for bringing a voter challenge (such as a registered voter being deceased, being registered in another jurisdiction, claiming a homestead exemption in another jurisdiction, being registered at a non-residential address as confirmed by a government office or database or publicly available source derived solely from such governmental sources). It also specifies that any voter challenges brought within 45 days of an election will not be considered until after the election.”

“Eligibility challenges are handled at the County level by the local election boards and require both notification of the challenged voter and a public hearing. We urge Georgians to check their voter registration status and information nearly every day,” he added. “They may have changed names, gotten married, or moved within the state and need to bring their voter registration information up to date. That’s what the MVP.SOS.GA.GOV page is for, and we routinely remind voters to check their status.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

President Joe Biden renewed his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and highlighted federal spending in historically Black colleges during Sunday’s speech before hundreds of Morehouse College graduates who represent a demographic Biden needs to win the Nov. 5 election.

Biden’s role as commencement speaker at the storied historically Black college in Atlanta had been met with concern from those who disagree with his handling of Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, as well as from those who feared it would be a distraction from the graduates’ achievement.

Biden’s roughly 25-minute speech went uninterrupted and ended with Biden receiving an honorary degree from Morehouse as the crowd applauded.

“I’m not going home,” Biden quipped with a broad smile after receiving the honor.

But there were some visible signs of discontent on the campus, which is the alma mater of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and which has a long history of social activism. Off campus, well over 100 people, many of them students, gathered to protest Biden’s appearance, largely over his continued support of Israel.

Some graduates, including the college’s valedictorian who wore a small Palestinian flag pin on his stole, displayed some form of the Palestinian flag. A faculty member stood as Biden spoke and turned away with her fist in the air.

With Biden sitting nearby, valedictorian Deangelo Jeremiah Fletcher called for the release of all hostages and for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

“It is only right for the class of 2024 to utilize any platform provided to stand in solidarity with peace and justice,” Fletcher said in his speech.

Biden clapped and then greeted Fletcher with a handshake as the graduate left the stage and later addressed the issue in his speech, saying there is a “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” He renewed his call for an immediate ceasefire and said he is actively working to find a solution.

“It’s one of the hardest, most complicated problems in the world. There’s nothing easy about it,” Biden said to the graduates. “I know it angers and frustrates many of you, including my family. But most of all, I know it breaks your heart. It breaks mine as well.

“Leadership is about fighting through the most intractable problems. It’s about challenging anger, frustration, and heartbreak to find a solution. It’s about doing what you believe is right, even when it’s hard and lonely,” he said.

The speech at Morehouse happened as Biden continues to trail his GOP rival former President Donald Trump in the polls and amid concerns about waning enthusiasm for Biden among young Black voters, who are usually an important part of the Democratic base.

In a New York Times poll published earlier this month, 26% of voters between 18 and 29 said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, less than any other age group. Another 30% said they would vote for Trump, also less than any other age group.

Biden pledged to continue supporting HBCUs on Sunday, while touting that during his administration, the federal funding for HBCUs has eclipsed a record $16 billion. And he warned of the threats extremists pose to democracy.

“Extremists close the doors of opportunity, strike down affirmative action, attack the values of diversity, equality and inclusion,” he said.

“I never thought I’d be a president at a time when there’s a national effort to ban books. Not to write history, but to erase history. They don’t see you in the future of America, but they’re wrong. To me, we make history, not erase it. We know Black history is American history.”

Rasheed Canton, who graduated from Morehouse on Sunday, said Biden’s commencement speech and the protest calls were hard to ignore as the spring semester wound down. Canton, however, said he wasn’t surprised that Biden’s speech and the rest of the commencement ceremony went smoothly despite simmering tensions.

He said that Trump and Biden will try to spur young Black voters to the polls in November, whether through financial pledges or other promises of support.

“Biden will need to make up some ground heading into November, especially if the war remains at the forefront of minds,” the DeKalb County native said following Sunday’s ceremony. “I’ll still be supporting the Democratic presidential candidate, who I think best represents the values of myself, my Morehouse brothers and the Black community overall.”

Morehouse College released a statement following the graduation ceremony stating the administration was upholding the school’s tradition of supporting the rights of people to protest on behalf of social justice issues in a peaceful manner. The statement also applauded the federal funding for HBCUs and the president’s calls for a ceasefire in the Gaza strip.

“The world frequently quotes our most famous and beloved alumnus, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but the world must know that without Morehouse, there would be no Dr. King,” the statement said. “It is fitting that a moment of organized, peaceful activism would occur on our campus while the world is watching to continue a critical conversation. We are proud of the resilient class of 2024’s unity in silent protest, showing their intentionality in strategy, communication, and coordination as a 412-person unit.”

Protesters march outside Morehouse campus

While Morehouse commencement’s ceremony was underway, more than 100 demonstrators gathered at a nearby park before marching to Morehouse. Police officers on bicycles pedaled alongside the marchers and blocked them from entering the campus, but the protest remained peaceful.

Standing outside one of the school’s entrances, protesters banged drums and chanted slogans like “Free Palestine” and “Come November, we’ll remember.”

“I don’t like that he’s here,” said Morehouse junior Daxton Pettus.

A Morehouse student films as protesters march past the campus. (Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder)

“I think it is horrible that he is here when he has committed atrocious acts against the Black community as far as mass incarceration and supporting bills that further that, atrocious acts as far as sending aid to Israel to aid in their war crimes, and atrocious acts against students, especially, Morehouse-Spelman students were already brutalized at the Emory occupation, and the school failed to say anything, but the president did, and what he said is that those students are violent and that the responses were adequate, and I think that’s inappropriate because that sort of language, it allows for us to be brutalized for those people’s voices to be suppressed.”

Many of the young marchers said Biden’s appearance smacks of election-year pandering for Black votes, which they said stings all the more because of Morehouse’s association with the Civil Rights Movement.

Andrea Richmond is immersed in the Atlanta University Center Consortium, the group of historic Black colleges in Atlanta that includes Morehouse, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University. Richmond graduated from Spelman in 2019 and has a brother who went to Morehouse and a sister who went to Clark Atlanta. Her mom worked at Morehouse for 25 years.

“I’ve grown up in the AUC,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of actions at the AUC. I’ve heard about the aura of the AUC, and I want the AUC to actually stand for what it talks about, which is not only the promotion of Black individuals, but also the promotion of all marginalized people.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

Some conservative state senators want Georgia to become the latest state to pull out of the American Library Association, a nonprofit organization that supports libraries and accredits the schools that train them.

On Wednesday, the Senate Government Oversight Committee heard testimony from Georgia’s top librarian who said the Georgia Public Library Service is already not affiliated with with the ALA and a dean at the state’s only university offering a graduate library studies program who said cutting ties with the only accrediting body for degree programs in library and information science could cost millions in tuition.

Under Senate Bill 390, state and local entities would be banned from spending any money on the association, and directors of public library systems would no longer be required to hold a master’s degree from a school with a library program accredited by the ALA.

Montana became the first state to cut ties with the organization after the incoming president referred to herself as a Marxist lesbian in a since-deleted tweet. Several other red states have also withdrawn, with Alabama the latest to join late last month.

Sen. Larry Walker, a Perry Republican, said the genesis for his bill came when his local library accepted an ALA grant for books featuring LGBTQ and diversity as topics, some of which was for the children’s section.

“This of course caused some outrage by some members of the local library board when they fully understood the grant after it had already been done, and I was contacted by some citizens and I went and met with the Houston County Library Board at their regular meeting and expressed my concern and felt like that that was not a reflection of the morals and values of our community and was not appropriate especially in the children’s section,” he said.

“I thought I would be met with kind of an apology or ‘oh, we didn’t mean to do this’ or ‘we won’t do this again’ or ‘yes, we’ll segregate this material,’ or ‘we should have thought through this,’ but instead it’s really kind of met with sort of defiance and ‘we need more diversity in our library materials’ and that kind of thing,” he added.

Committee Chair Sen. Marty Harbin, a Tyrone Republican, asked whether the material would violate local obscenity laws.

“I didn’t see any of the material,” Walker said. “But to me, at some point, a young person does need to be educated on LGBTQ and sexuality and all of that. But I think it’s up to the parents what the appropriate age is to have that conversation. And I don’t want my wife as a grandmother to have a 5-year-old or 6-year-old looking at this kind of material that could be considered pornographic by some people.”

Georgia’s State Librarian, Julie Walker, who is also vice chancellor for libraries and archives in the University System of Georgia, said many library professionals in Georgia don’t agree with the ALA’s positions and libraries’ decisions about collections made at the local level.

She also said the Georgia Public Library Service, unlike its equivalents in other states that ended their membership of the ALA, is already not a member of the ALA.

As the only body that accredits degree programs in library and information science, the ALA is responsible for Valdosta State’s accreditation, but that’s the case even in states that have revoked their affiliation, she said.

“Those states have disaffiliated from ALA, which basically means that the agency similar to my agency has dropped their membership, but they don’t have any legislation currently dealing with ALA, and their accreditation, their library schools are still accredited by ALA, no one has dropped that accreditation.”

David Slykhuis, dean of the James L. and Dorothy H. Dewar College of Education at Valdosta State University, home of Georgia’s only graduate library studies program, said many of the program’s 400 students chose Valdosta because of its accreditation. Most libraries will only hire people with degrees from accredited programs, he said.

“Losing accreditation would eliminate Valdosta State as a viable (Master of Library and Information Science) degree program for most students,” he said. “The loss of the ability to remain accredited would devastate a program that is bringing in over $3.5 million in tuition revenue to Valdosta State annually. Until another accrediting body can be found or formed, I respectfully ask the bill sponsor and committee for consideration to be able to use privately donated funds to continue our accreditation, at least through our currently approved cycle of 2028.”

Slykhuis said accreditation with ALA costs Valdosta State $1,100 each year.

“I believe Sen. Walker has brought a bill that is needed, but needs maybe a little bit of work,” Harbin said.

Speaking to the Recorder after the hearing, Walker said he hopes the bill’s final version will prevent taxpayer dollars from going to the ALA while protecting Valdosta State’s bottom line, and he’s confident he can get that done by Feb. 29, the last day for bills to easily move from one chamber to the other.

“It could be as much as just putting a delayed effective date on the accreditation part,” he said. “You know, right now, the bill as written would go into effect July 1, 2025. I purposely put it out there a little ways already so that people that were currently in the system would have time to react, but we may want to push that out a little bit further.”

“The other thing is maybe we can put some language in there to allow Valdosta State to pay their accreditation fee to ALA with private funds through their foundation, because I think they testified it was only $1,100 a year,” he added.

He also said he’s hopeful another accrediting body will materialize soon.

Separately, Gwinnett Republican Sen. Clint Dixon has sponsored SB 394, which aims to bar school libraries from distributing materials deemed “harmful to minors,” require parental consent for children to check out some items and mandate school systems to only buy books from vendors who use a rating system.

Another proposed Senate bill, SB 154 would remove an exemption for school libraries in the state law against distributing harmful materials to minors, a move librarians say could land them behind bars for doing their jobs.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.