Category Archives: Georgia

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

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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.”

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Mother of Georgia teen from school shooting indicted in separate incident

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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.

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

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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”.

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Lawsuit seeking power to not certify Georgia elections is dismissed

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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.

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

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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.

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Georgia school shooting suspect makes first court appearance

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Kamala Harris defends policy stances and shares plan for office in first major interview

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In sit-down with CNN’s Dana Bash, vice-president defends shifts on policy issues and her support for Biden

Kamala Harris sat for her first interview as the Democratic presidential nominee with CNN’s Dana Bash alongside her running mate, Tim Walz, on Thursday, and defended her shifts on certain policy issues over the years and her support for Joe Biden.

In the interview, which was taped in Savannah, Georgia, earlier on Thursday, the vice-president said her highest priority upon taking office would be to “support and strengthen the middle class” through policies including increasing the child tax credit, curtailing price gouging on everyday goods and increasing access to affordable housing – all policies that she has announced since she started campaigning for the presidency.

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Democrats sue Georgia officials over election rules that could ‘invite chaos’

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Lawsuit alleges new rules that could let local state boards delay certification of presidential election are illegal

Democrats sued Georgia state election officials on Monday, alleging new rules that could allow local officials to delay certification of November’s presidential results were illegal.

The lawsuit was filed in the superior court of Fulton county by local Georgia Democratic politicians, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic party of Georgia. It says the rules approved by the Republican-controlled Georgia state election board this month were intended to give individual county election officials the ability to delay or cancel the certification of votes.

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‘Georgia’s ours to lose’: Trump and Harris camps zero in on swing states

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Amid close race, Harris to go on tour in Georgia as Trump surrogate insists state’s governor will back ex-president

As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump brace themselves for what promises to be an ugly and bruising sprint to the finishing line in November, both presidential candidates’ campaigns are turning their sights back on the handful of desperately close swing states where the battle is likely to be decided.

Georgia is coming into view as a critical battleground for both leaders as they struggle to gain voters’ attention in an epochal election. On Wednesday, the vice-president will travel from the White House to southern Georgia to hold her first campaign event in the state with her recently anointed running mate and former high school football coach, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.

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Statue of John Lewis unveiled in Georgia to honor late civil rights leader

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Statue of congressman, who died in 2020 of cancer, replaces obelisk erected in 1908 celebrating the Confederacy

A 12ft-tall statue of John Lewis was unveiled in Georgia on Saturday morning, honoring the legacy of the civil rights leader and congressman who died in 2020.

The statue stands in Decatur Square outside the historic Decatur courthouse in outer Atlanta, in a district Lewis represented in Congress from 1987 to his death. Lewis was 80 when he died due to complications related to pancreatic cancer.

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Name-calling and hyperbole: Trump continues fear-mongering fest at Georgia rally

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Ex-president touched upon a range of topics from crime to immigration in his speech with mostly made-up statistics

Donald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.

His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point.

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