Category Archives: Georgia

Harris stresses abortion rights and early voting in packed Atlanta rally

Posted on by

Thousands of supporters, including Usher, rally in battleground Georgia, as campaign focuses on early votes

Kamala Harris highlighted the threat to women’s reproductive rights and Donald Trump’s apparent exhaustion at a rally Saturday in south Atlanta, continuing a full-court press for votes in Georgia as early voting breaks records here.

The race continues to appear close in Georgia, with polls suggesting the Republican nominee holds a one-point lead in the state. Trump has made multiple appearances in Georgia and has a rally with Turning Point Action planned in Gwinnett county, outside Atlanta, next week.

Continue reading...

Georgia jury indicts father and son on murder charges for school shooting

Posted on by

Colt Gray, 14, and his father, Colin Gray, were indicted separately for the mass shooting at Apalachee high school

A grand jury indicted a father and son on murder charges on Thursday in a mass shooting at Apalachee high school in Winder, Georgia.

Georgia media outlets reported that the Barrow county grand jury meeting in Winder indicted 14-year-old Colt Gray on a total of 55 counts, including four counts of malice murder, four counts of felony murder, plus aggravated assault and cruelty to children. Grand jurors formally charged his father, Colin Gray, with 29 counts, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct.

Continue reading...

Georgia election rules passed by Trump-backed board are ‘illegal’, declares judge

Posted on by

Fulton judge invalidates seven new rules, including one that requires ballots be hand-counted after polls close

A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the state election board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void”.

Fulton county superior court judge Thomas Cox issued the order Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated include three that had gotten a lot of attention – one that requires that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

Continue reading...

US south-east reels from ‘catastrophic’ devastation from Hurricane Helene

Posted on by

Communities are stranded, over 200 people have died with more expected, and more than 700,000 are without power

Rescue crews in parts of the south-eastern US were still searching on Friday for those missing as they entered the eighth day since Hurricane Helene roared ashore in Florida and became the deadliest mainland hurricane in the US since Katrina in 2005.

The death toll could grow higher, having surpassed 200 on Thursday, while the sheer scale of the devastation from wind and floods has slowed efforts to find many people’s loved ones and also get supplies to stranded communities and restore power to more than 700,000 people.

Continue reading...

Hurricane Helene: more than 200 dead as search for missing people continues

Posted on by

Hurricane that made landfall as category 4 last week is described as one of deadliest storms in US history

A week after Hurricane Helene made landfall in the US, search-and-rescue teams continue to look for missing people in parts of the south-east that were devastated by the storm, and nearly a million people in the region remain without power.

Officials have reported at least 215 deaths across six states, and have warned that the toll is expected to rise as recovery efforts continue. A separate NBC News tally found that at least 202 people have died, including at least 98 in North Carolina, 19 in Florida, 33 in Georgia, 39 in South Carolina, 11 in Tennessee and two in Virginia.

Continue reading...

‘People are giving, sharing’: Augusta comes together as Kamala Harris surveys damage

Posted on by

As the vice-president visited the Georgia city shattered by Helene, the sense of community spirit was palpable

As Kamala Harris descended Wednesday into Augusta, she met a city contemplating how much of their lives have been unmade by Hurricane Helene.

“I am here to personally take a look at the devastation,” Harris said after receiving a briefing by emergency response leaders in Georgia. “It’s particularly devastating in terms of loss of life that this community has experienced, the loss of normalcy, and the loss of critical resources.”

Continue reading...

Georgian president refuses to sign anti-LGBTQ+ rights bill into law

Posted on by

Salome Zourabichvili opts not to advance bans on same-sex marriages and on adoptions by same-sex couples

Georgia’s president has refused to sign into law a bill aimed at severely curtailing LGBTQ+ rights, weeks after the controversial legislation was passed by the country’s parliament.

Last month Georgia’s parliament was heavily criticised after it approved the legislation, which sets out sweeping bans on same-sex marriages, adoptions by same-sex couples and curbs on gender-affirming treatments.

Continue reading...

Georgia judge strikes down state’s abortion ban, allowing care to resume

Posted on by

Fulton county judge issues order that abortions must be regulated as they were before law took effect in 2022

A Georgia judge on Monday struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban, ruling that the ban is unconstitutional and blocking it from being enforced.

In a 26-page opinion, the Fulton county superior judge Robert McBurney ruled that the state’s abortion laws must revert to what they were before the six-week ban – known as the Life Act – was passed in 2019. The ban was blocked as long as Roe v Wade was the law of the land, but went into effect after the US supreme court overturned Roe in 2022.

Continue reading...

Trump visits hurricane-ravaged Georgia and makes false claims about Biden

Posted on by

The ex-president said Brian Kemp, the state governor, was trying to reach the president who was ‘sleeping’, in vain

Donald Trump spoke in front of a furniture store gutted by Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, claiming falsely that Georgia’s governor had not been able to reach Joe Biden.

Upon landing in Valdosta, Trump claimed to reporters the president had been “sleeping” and that Brian Kemp, the governor, had been “calling the president and hasn’t been able to get him”. He repeated the false claim when speaking in front of the store.

Continue reading...

Over 120 dead and a million without power after ‘historic’ Hurricane Helene

Posted on by

Biden says he will visit North Carolina after devastating storm destroys entire communities across several states

As the south-east US continues recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene’s devastation, the storm’s death toll keeps climbing, with more than 120 killed across several states.

Joe Biden will visit North Carolina, where the western part of the state has been devastated by flooding, on Wednesday.

Continue reading...

Hurricane Helene’s ‘historic flooding’ made worse by global heating, Fema says

Posted on by

It will be ‘complicated recovery’ in five states, says disaster relief agency, with hurricane killing at least 91 people so far

The head of the US disaster relief agency has called Hurricane Helene, which has killed nearly 100 people, a “true multi-state event” that caused “significant infrastructure damage” and had been made worse because of global heating.

The storm killed at least 91 people, according to state and local officials in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Officials feared more bodies would be discovered.

Continue reading...

Who gets to observe elections? A Georgia county dukes it out with its elections board

Posted on by

Fulton county officials had agreed on an external team, but the board wants a team tied to the stop-the-steal movement

After voting this month to require a hand count of paper ballots on election day, the Trump-aligned trio of Georgia state elections board members turned their attention back to one of their favorite topics: how to keep an eye on Fulton county.

Georgia’s most populous county is always on their mind. For people who still chant “stop the steal” almost four years after the 2020 election, Fulton county remains the problem. Earlier this year, the state board entered into a voluntary agreement with Fulton county to embed an external monitoring team into the election apparatus for the 2024 contest.

Continue reading...

At least 64 dead and millions without power after Helene devastates south-eastern US

Posted on by

Flooding and landslides strike southern Appalachians after hurricane pummeled region and wreaked havoc

At least 64 people have been confirmed dead and almost 3.5 million were without power on Saturday, after strong winds and torrential rain from Hurricane Helene wreaked unprecedented havoc across large swathes of the south-eastern United States.

Historic flooding continued over parts of the southern Appalachians on Saturday, as first responders worked to reach stranded communities in trying conditions while local authorities began to assess the scale of the damage and displacement.

Continue reading...

Mother of Georgia teen from school shooting indicted in separate incident

Posted on by

Marcee Gray, 43, charged with exploiting an elderly person in Ben Hill county, 200 miles from Apalachee high school

The mother of a Georgia teenager charged with fatally shooting four people at his high school has been indicted in connection with an alleged domestic incident last year.

The indictment handed down earlier this week charges Marcee Gray, 43, with exploiting an elderly person and other crimes in Ben Hill county, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. It appears unrelated to the school shooting at Apalachee high school earlier this month, which occurred in a different Georgia county nearly 200 miles away.

Continue reading...

Trump-aligned Georgia election board votes 3-2 to require hand-count on election day

Posted on by

Republican majority approves requirement for poll managers to hand-count ballots before tabulating votes

Forty-six days before the election, Georgia’s state election board approved a new rule requiring a hand count of paper ballots cast on election day before tabulating votes.

The three Trump-aligned members that make up the majority on the board approved the rule that would require three people in every precinct to check machine-vote tallies by hand-counting the election results, despite a warning from the state attorney general that this rule and others in consideration “very likely exceed the board’s statutory authority”.

Continue reading...

Lawsuit seeking power to not certify Georgia elections is dismissed

Posted on by

Judge dismisses election board member’s lawsuit because of an incorrect party name, but she is allowed to refile

A lawsuit arguing that county election board members in Georgia have the discretion to refuse to certify election results has been dismissed on a technicality, but the judge noted it could be refiled.

Fulton county election board member Julie Adams filed a lawsuit in May asking a judge to declare that the county election board members’ duties “are discretionary, not ministerial, in nature”. At issue is a Georgia law that says the county officials “shall” certify results after engaging in a process to make sure they are accurate.

Continue reading...

Georgia teacher was trying to protect his students when he was killed, witnesses say

Posted on by

Students say that Richard Aspinwall left his classroom after the shooting started to try protect them

Richard Aspinwall, the mathematics teacher and football coach who was one of two teachers killed in Wednesday’s high school shooting in Georgia, was trying to protect the children in his classroom when he was killed.

His attempt to protect the teens in his care was one of new details that have emerged about the four victims killed in the gun rampage by a fellow student at Apalachee high school, in the small city of Winder.

Continue reading...

Georgia school shooting suspect makes first court appearance

Posted on by

Colt Gray, 14, faces murder charges and his father has been charged over his alleged involvement in supplying the gun

The 14-year-old charged with killing two fellow students and two teachers at his Georgia high school made his first court appearance on Friday – with his father, who was arrested late on Thursday, set to appear shortly afterwards.

Colt Gray appeared in person, dressed in green prison scrubs and hands and ankles shackled to his waist at the hearing in Barrow county courthouse, having previously been understood to be planning to attend by video link. He traveled from the youth detention facility in which he is being held. He is being detained there as a juvenile, even though he is expected to be tried as an adult.

Continue reading...

Georgia school shooting: teen suspect was interviewed over threats last year

Posted on by

Officials say 14-year-old charged with fatally shooting four at Apalachee high school used assault-style rifle

The 14-year-old boy charged with fatally shooting two students and two teachers with an assault-style rifle at a high school in Georgia on Wednesday had previously been interviewed by investigators, with his father insisting the teenager did not have unsupervised access to the family’s guns.

The small city of Winder is in deep shock and mourning over the shooting at Apalachee high school, about 50 miles from Atlanta, as the victims who died were named.

Continue reading...

Georgia high school shooting: student charged with murder after four people killed in Apalachee

Posted on by

Authorities say suspect, 14, also wounded nine others, with FBI later saying they had investigated him and his father a year ago

Two students and two teachers were killed at a Georgia high school on Wednesday in a mass shooting authorities say was committed by a 14-year-old male student at the school.

At least nine others were taken to the hospital following the incident at Apalachee high school in Winder, about 50 miles north-east of Atlanta.

Continue reading...