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      Atlanta center of US political universe once again with Biden-Trump debate

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      Joe Biden will debate Donald Trump on Thursday night in an unnerving repeat of the 2020 election cycle, and once again Atlanta is the center of the political universe.The question is whether the two candidates can influence Atlanta, or if Atlanta, which influences everything in American politics, is beyond their influence.Elections in Georgia have been in a state of trench warfare since 2018, the rise of Stacey Abrams and election outcomes predicated more on supercharged turnout than convincing anyone of anything they didn’t already believe. Georgia’s 2020 election was decided by a figurative hair – the infamous 11,780 votes Trump asked the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find in a “perfect phone call” that led to his indictment here.Within the state, Atlanta has extra significance this year. The Biden administration has sent Kamala Harris to the city repeatedly this year, a sign of Democratic anxiety about losing Black voters in a historically Black city. Biden himself came last month to give the commencement speech at Morehouse College, a historically Black college, to a generally positive reception.Trump also has a relationship with Atlanta, of course. It is markedly less positive.Whether Trump is returning to the scene of the crime is a matter to be decided, eventually, by a Fulton county jury. Trump had his notorious – and lucrative – mug shot taken at the Fulton county jail about two miles north-west of the empty studio he and Biden will debate in, across the street from Centennial Olympic Park downtown.“All I can see coming out of this is memes,” said Bem Joiner, an Atlanta cultural critic and creative consultant. Joiner doesn’t want to diminish the importance of a presidential debate, and knows there are issues for which the public craves substantive argument, but people have already picked a side, he said.“I think it is what it is with this race,” Joiner said. “I cannot see questions being answered in a way that changes the mind of anyone at this point, with these two people. You can only, maybe, do something to fuck it up more for you.”View image in fullscreenFor all the symbolism of a debate in the heart of Atlanta, the format is made largely for the national stage. The two men will be standing in an otherwise-empty room, interrogated by two CNN anchors – Jake Tapper and Dana Bash – who neither live nor work in the city.Perhaps the spare environment will limit casualties from collateral fire. In the 2016 debates, Trump lied repeatedly and floridly about his performance on the pandemic, race relations and the economy, while interrupting the moderators and Biden. We remember Trump telling Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” and Biden, exasperated by yet another interruption, asking Trump to just shut up for once.The vitriolic chaos effectively ended the Presidential Commission on Debates as a mechanism for administering the events. This time, Biden is the one defending a presidential record. Trump wants to focus on that record, looking for a wedge to separate Biden from what pliable voters remain in America. Biden is likely to be comfortable explaining the accomplishments of his administration, but will try to use the debate to remind America of the reasons they got rid of Trump in the first place.CNN’s studios in downtown Atlanta are mostly empty today. The network has been forsaking the CNN Center bit by bit for a decade, accelerating their shift to DC and New York after AT&T sold the building to developers in 2021. The halls are filled with echoes of Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, abandoned set signs in the walkways and ghosts in the studios. The markers of life, such as the Cartoon Network store in the moribund food court, are gone.Workers carted away the CNN sign in March. They just call it “the Center” now.Atlanta itself is thriving, generally, despite the protestations of conservatives like Trump, who has repeatedly attacked its elected leaders and its people over the years. Atlanta also has a flair for expressing its displeasure at such things.Trump even unloaded on the Atlanta civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis in 2017 after the congressman skipped Trump’s lightly-attended inauguration. “Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the US. I can use all the help I can get,” he tweeted.Atlanta responded with a barrage of snark under the hashtag #defendthefifth, posting idyllic pictures of children playing in parks or strolling along the BeltLine. Those hashtags were still being used by people standing in line to vote in Atlanta in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also showed up to the college football championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2018. But the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America projected the words “Fuck Trump” on to the side of the stadium while he was there, and not one soul did a thing to stop them.Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that Trump had to cart in Black supporters for a publicity stunt presented as authentic community support for his campaign two months ago at a Chick-fil-A up the street from the stadium. Even so, Trump claims he’s winning Black voters in record numbers, which – if it were true – might represent the margin of victory in Georgia.“What is absolutely true is the Republicans cannot win the White House without Georgia,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director for the New Georgia Project, a voter outreach organization. “Either way, Georgia is going to be critical this year for any side to perform well in.”“Georgia is also unique in being such a southern state with a large Black population, but also a growing Latino population and API [Asian/Pacific Islands] population. This perfect storm of reasons makes Georgia such a great place to come to, because you can talk to so many people from so many backgrounds, all in one place.”The New Georgia Project’s political action fund is hosting a watch party, “Vibe and Vote”, at a cigar bar on Peachtree Street on debate night, focusing on Black men and voter turnout. Trump’s reported gains with Black men have prompted a wave of outreach from progressive groups.Harris, meanwhile, may as well put down a deposit on a Buckhead condo considering all the time she spends in town. She has made a point of discussing the administration’s investments in the Black community generally and Atlanta specifically, like a $158m plan to use infrastructure dollars on a project to build a cap over Atlanta’s most traveled highway, the Downtown Connector.She again visited Atlanta on Tuesday – her fifth visit to Georgia this year – for a talk with Migos rapper Quavo to discuss gun violence.Biden and Trump are competing for a vanishingly small portion of the electorate – people who haven’t made up their mind about two people who have been in the public eye for much of the last two decades of American life. Neither is popular. But many people have simply tuned out politics, even here in the center of the political storm.The first debate is a warning bell for them, that election season is upon us more than ever and it is time to pay attention. More

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      Muted mics, no props: CNN details rules for Biden and Trump debate

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      The first US presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump on 27 June will include two commercial breaks, no props and muted microphones except when recognized to speak, CNN said Saturday.The rules, agreed outside the Commission on Presidential Debates, are designed to reduce fractious interruptions and cross-talk that have often marred TV encounters in recent presidential election cycles.CNN, a division of Warner Bros Discovery, said debate moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion” during the 90-minute broadcast from Atlanta.Another Biden-Trump face-off will be hosted by ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis in September. The traditional October debate will not take place as part of the agreement between the two campaigns and television networks that cut out the commission following years of complaints and perceived slights.CNN said both candidates will appear at a uniform podium during the 90-minute debate, podium positions will be determined by a coin flip and candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water but cannot use props.“Microphones will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” CNN said.The network also said that during the two commercial breaks, campaign staff will not be permitted to interact with their candidate, and unlike previous debates there will be no studio audience.Biden and Trump, the two oldest candidates ever to run for US president, will be seeking the support of an uncommonly large swathe of undecided voters who may only begin to pay close attention to the contest closer to the 5 November election day.But with polls already narrowing in crucial swing states, the debates come with risks for both candidates with markedly different styles of governance – on a seasoned senator who relies on an extensive staff for policy positions, and a New York developer-turned-reality TV star who shoots from the hip.According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month, Biden is losing support among voters without college degrees, a large group that includes Black people, Hispanic women, young voters and suburban women.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe essence of the argument – Biden accuses his predecessor of being unhinged and a danger to democracy, while Trump accuses Biden of being senile and corrupt – has so far left many voters cool to the prospect of a 2024 rematch between two political candidates who, at 81 and 78, are twice the US median age.According to a campaign memo viewed by Reuters, Biden has three preferred debate topics: abortion rights, the state of democracy and the economy. Trump’s team has indicated that immigration, public safety and inflation are his key issues.The hosting networks will be keen to ensure that the twin debates will run more smoothly than in 2020, when the discussion focused on Trump’s pandemic response and moderator Chris Wallace had to step in to remind the candidates he was asking the questions.The second scheduled debate set for October did not take place due to Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis and his refusal to appear remotely rather than in person. In this election cycle, both candidates have refused to refused to debate rivals for their party’s nomination.CNN said that candidates eligible to participate must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win and receive at least 15% in four separate national polls.It said it was “not impossible” that independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, could still qualify, saying he has received at least 15% in three qualifying polls to date and has qualified for the ballot in six states, making him eligible for 89 electoral college votes.The Kennedy campaign said Saturday that its polling showed he was now in second place alongside Biden in Utah, but behind Trump, and that he outpaces Biden and Trump among independents nationally.Reuters contributed to this story More

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      Georgia elections board member denies plans to help Trump subvert election

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      A new appointee to the Georgia state board of elections has elicited questions about whether she may be part of preparations to subvert the election on behalf of Donald Trump and others who are hoping to cast doubt on results that don’t go his way.Those fears are unfounded, she said.The Georgia speaker of the house appointed Janelle King, a Black conservative podcast host and Republican party hand, to a critical fifth seat on the board of elections in May. The state GOP applauded the replacement of a more moderate Republican with King, seeing her as a vote for “election integrity” ahead of a critical presidential election.But King flatly denies that she intends to interfere in the state’s elections as a board member or that she has had contact with the Trump campaign or its surrogates with regard to her appointment.“I’ve heard several rumors about what I’m going to do or not going to do,” King said. “And the way I see it is that this is what people expect of me and what they perceive. But I’ve never been one to do anything based off of what other people want. I like being fair, I like getting good sleep at night.”The elections board promulgates election rules, conducts voter education, investigates questions of election misconduct or fraud, and makes recommendations to the state attorney general or Georgia’s general assembly regarding elections. The five-member board has one appointee from the Democratic and Republican party and one each from the governor, state senate and state house, which now looks like a 4-1 Republican majority, although governor Brian Kemp sits outside of the increasingly radical Trump wing of the Republican party.“The state elections board has a massive role to play in how Georgia’s elections are run and certified, especially this year in a swing state that decided the last presidential election,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director for the New Georgia Project Action Fund. “The members of the SEB could, quite literally, determine who wins in November.”“With this appointment, I’m increasingly concerned about the future politicization of a board that should be focused on running our elections smoothly and accessibly for Georgia voters, not on moving forward an agenda for partisan gain,” Jackson Ali added.King is a former deputy director of the state party. She has also worked on bipartisan outreach with the League of Women’s Voters. Her husband Kelvin King is co-chair of Let’s Win For America Action, a conservative political action committee that focuses on minority outreach for Republicans. Kelvin King ran for US Senate in 2022, losing the Republican primary to Trump’s preferred candidate Herschel Walker.Janelle King hasn’t been an active participant in the swirling drama of Georgia’s election integrity politics in the wake of the 2020 election. Relative to other appointees to the board, she’s also light on experience with elections. Asked if she believed that the 2020 election was fairly administered in Georgia, she said she didn’t know.“I believe that there were some things that are questionable,” King said. “And I believe that those things have caused a disruption in whether or not people believe in our process.”The role will “allow me to be able to see evidence and – or the lack thereof, whatever it presents”, she added. “There were some things that were questionable. But we respect that the decision has been made, right? I mean, Trump’s not in the White House. So, President Biden is our president. And that’s where we stand.”King joins the board at a sensitive moment in Georgia’s election cycle. Conservatives are raising questions about the competence of the Fulton county registration and elections board in Georgia’s most populous county, which includes most of Atlanta.The state elections board voted last month to admonish Fulton county and require outside oversight through the rest of the 2024 election cycle, as a censure after discovering county elections workers violated state law while conducting a recount of the 2020 presidential election by double-counting 3,075 ballots.The secretary of state’s office determined that the infraction did not impact election results. The results of the 2020 election in both Fulton county and the state have repeatedly been validated in recounts and in court findings.Democratic party activists suggest that the state elections board’s focus on Fulton county is table setting for further denialism if Trump loses Georgia in November.The speaker of the house in Georgia, Jon Burns, appointed King to succeed Edward Lindsey, a former state representative whose lobbying practice for county government and votes on the board rankled Republicans in the Trump wing of the party. Lindsey was the tie-breaking vote earlier this year against recommending restrictions to absentee ballot voting.Rightwing organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation had been calling for Lindsey’s ouster, even as Lindsey’s term expired in March. The house failed to appoint his replacement before adjourning for the year, leaving the decision to Burns.Burns’ appointment of King was greeted by Georgia GOP chairman Josh McKoon as “very good news” at a fundraising dinner in Columbus, where he described it as giving the board “a three-person working majority, three people that agree with us on the importance of election integrity”.“I believe when we look back on November 5th, 2024, we’re going to say getting to that 3-2 election integrity-minded majority on the state election board made sure that we had the level playing field to win this election,” McKoon added.The board does not certify elections in Georgia; that role belongs to county elections board and ultimately the secretary of state’s office.“I’m only one vote,” King said. “I can’t block anything myself if I wanted to at all. And I don’t plan to interfere in elections. What I plan to do is make sure that what comes before us if there’s wrong that’s being done, then we need to address it.”The Georgia speaker’s office denied that Burns has been contacted by Trump, a member of his staff or someone else working on behalf of his campaign with regard to replacing Lindsey on the board with someone amenable to Trump’s interest.“Janelle King’s appointment to the state elections board was not impacted by any outside influence,” said Kayla Robertson, a spokesperson for Burns. “Janelle will be a tremendous asset as an independent thinker and impartial arbiter who will put principle above politics and ensure transparency and accountability in our elections.” More

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      Kamala Harris visits Atlanta to tout investments in minority communities

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      Kamala Harris once again visited Atlanta to tout investments made by the Biden administration in minority and underserved communities, highlighting $158m in infrastructure spending on a project to build a cap over Atlanta’s most traveled highway, the Downtown Connector.The vice-president’s appearance is the continuation of a full court press in Georgia to solidify support among Democrats – and specifically Black Democrats – for the administration.Harris has visited Atlanta repeatedly since winning office, acting as one of the administration’s primary surrogates to the Black community, keenly aware that Georgia remains in play and that perceptions of flagging support among African American voters could be the difference between a win and a loss.Harris kicked off a nationwide tour discussing economic opportunities for minority voters with this visit, she said.The Atlanta project, which local planners call the Stitch, would build parkland and mixed-use buildings including affordable housing and is meant to address the intentional destruction of Black communities by highway construction in the 60s, Harris said.“There was this whole policy push called urban renewal,” Harris said. “It was supposed to be about making life easier for people … but essentially it was about making it easier for folks who had wealth and means to move to the suburbs and still have access to downtown. It ended up decimating these communities for years.” Harris said the Stitch project would create an estimated 13,000 jobs and help reconnect a community bifurcated by the highway.Harris spoke on Monday at the Georgia International convention center near Atlanta’s airport in a conversation moderated by Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings, hosts of the financial podcast Earn Your Leisure. She emphasized the work the Biden administration has been doing to expand access to capital for communities of color.Black entrepreneurs do not have access to the capital needed to launch capital-intensive companies, Bilal said. “Especially when we look at the next generation of unicorn companies – billion-dollar companies – they’re tech companies,” Bilal said.That access is often about relationships that Black business owners often do not have. But federal spending can provide a base from which a business can grow and ultimately build those relationships, Harris said. Home ownership is also critical for building intergenerational wealth and entrepreneurial opportunities, as a source of equity for startups.“To achieve true equality, we must have an economic agenda,” Harris said. “That agenda must mean speaking to people’s economic ambitions.”Harris’s message sharply contrasts with increasing rhetoric from Republicans decrying diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “In spite of those who want to attack DEI, you can’t truly invest in the strength of our nation if you don’t pay attention to diversity, equity and inclusion.”Among other programs and spending made by the federal government since 2021, Harris presented the Stitch as an example of what the Biden administration has accomplished.After federal courts struck down zoning laws that segregated housing, federal legislators responded with the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Massive highway projects like Atlanta’s Downtown Connector were deliberately driven through Black neighborhoods in the name of “urban renewal”. In Atlanta’s case, the connector – which brings I-75 and I-85 together – displaced residents and businesses around Auburn Avenue, which was the heart of Atlanta’s Black middle class.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMartin Luther King Jr grew up a five-minute walk from where the connector splits the city today, a massive highway with more than 300,000 cars passing through every day. Similarly, the construction of I-20 decimated the Summerhill neighborhood, once home to many of Atlanta’s Black doctors. Summerhill has only recently recovered its economic vibrancy. But even as much of the rest of Atlanta experiences gentrification, the area around Auburn Avenue is poor.The representative Nikema Williams and the senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff addressed attendees briefly before the main event, each extolling the virtues of infrastructure investments in Georgia from the infrastructure bill. The Stitch received outsized attention by all three in their remarks.Williams is in her sophomore term as a congresswoman representing much of Atlanta, and sits on the House transportation committee. She and Warnock worked closely together to draw funding on the Stitch project, which eight years ago was little more than a twinkle in the eye of AJ Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a non-profit civic group for downtown businesses which is leading the design process on the Stitch.“We are truly a model for the world,” Williams said, describing the investments by the Biden administration in the Black community as “unprecedented”.Warnock has a particularly high political stake in the Stitch. The cap stands to transform the area around Auburn Avenue, famed home of Martin Luther King Jr and Ebenezer Baptist church, where Warnock is now senior pastor. The church is two blocks east of the Connector, which decimated the once-vibrant street after its construction about 60 years ago.“Let’s be very clear, today is a day of celebration,” Warnock said. “Because at last, we start repairing and revitalizing and reconnecting neighborhoods in the heart of the Black neighborhoods that have been historically torn apart by highway construction … This happens in every community in America.” More

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      Senator Raphael Warnock: ‘The Bible doesn’t need Trump’s endorsement’

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      Donald Trump’s decision to sell Bibles branded under his name is “risky business”, the Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock said on Sunday, as the former president stands accused of having few moral scruples in four separate criminal indictments pending against him.“The Bible does not need Donald Trump’s endorsement,” Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist church, said to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Speaking on Easter, one of Christianity’s holiest celebrations, Warnock added: “It’s a risky bet because the folks who buy those Bibles might actually open them up, where it says things like thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not bear false witness, where it warns about wolves dressed up in sheep’s clothing.“I think you ought to be careful. This is risky business for somebody like Donald Trump.”Warnock’s comments to CNN came days after the Republican who is running against Joe Biden for a second presidency in November presented an offer for the public to buy Trump-endorsed Bibles for $59.99. “Let’s Make America Pray Again”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, a clear reference to the “Make America Great Again” slogan that he rode to the White House in 2016.But indeed more than 80 criminal charges filed against Trump over the previous 12 months – including in Warnock’s home state of Georgia – charge the former president with behaving in ways that many true Bible devotees would frown upon.Trump has pleaded not guilty to allegations that he tried to unduly overturn the outcome of the 2020 election that he lost to his Democratic rival Biden, improperly retained classified government materials after his presidency, and illicitly covered up hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed to have engaged in extramarital sex with him.He is also facing multimillion-dollar civil penalties for business practices deemed fraudulent and an allegation that he raped a woman – a claim that a judge has determined to be substantially true.Warnock on Sunday said he wasn’t surprised Trump had turned to selling Bibles to help raise funds for his soaring legal bills as well as his presidential campaign. The senator alluded to Trump’s history of hawking – among other things – Trump-branded steaks, non-accredited business school degrees and, more recently, $399 gold sneakers.“Now he’s trying to sell the scriptures,” said Warnock, who was first elected to the US Senate in 2020. “At the end of the day, I think he’s trying to sell the American people a bill of goods.”Warnock went out of his way to mention that Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, but recognized that his tact allowed him to triumph in the electoral college. But Warnock remarked: “It did not work in 2020,” when Trump lost both the popular and electoral college votes.“And,” the senator said,” I don’t think it’s going to work in 2024.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring his interview on CNN, Warnock also addressed criticism from Trump and his Republican allies that Biden recognized Transgender Day of Visibility – which falls annually on 31 March – as scheduled on Sunday, even though this year it coincided with Easter.The Republican US House speaker, Mike Johnson, notably asserted that Biden had “betrayed the central tenet of Easter”, something that he called “outrageous and abhorrent”.Warnock, who is part of a succession of Ebenezer Baptist church pastors that includes the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, said the fabricated controversy was another instance of people “who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us”.“Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that,” Warnock said. “The fact of the matter is … March 31 has been a day to lift up transgender people who endure violence and bigotry.“But this is just one more instance of folks … who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith. Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down, but as a bridge to bring all of us together.” More

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      Fani Willis must prove herself before a judge, her voters and the whole country

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      When Fani Willis took the stand to trade sharp elbows with lawyers defending Donald Trump and his co-defendants, she stood before three audiences.But Willis only really cares about two of them.The first is an audience of one: the superior court judge Scott McAfee, who will rule sometime two weeks or so from now on whether Willis, the special prosecutor Nathan Wade and the rest of the Fulton county district attorney’s office will continue to handle the Trump trial, or if instead it will be handed to another attorney chosen by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.If Willis is bumped off the case, it almost certainly means there will be no resolution before the US presidential election in November, in which Trump is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee for president again.Willis and her team have been presenting evidence and testimony to rebut questions about financial motivations for pressing the case against Trump by showing how much personal harm Willis and her staff have had to endure in the process. Willis’s father, the venerable civil rights attorney John C Floyd, gave florid testimony today about the death threats and harassment that drove Willis from her home as she prosecuted the case, for example.McAfee recognizes high-drama courtroom confrontations for what they are: irrelevant to the legal question. He must decide if the appearance of impropriety and the legal question of alleged unjust enrichment raised by the defense are sufficient to create an appellate court problem if Trump and others are convicted at trial. Has there been misconduct, and is removing Willis the appropriate remedy under the law if there has been misconduct? That’s the legal question.But it’s not the only issue for Fani Willis, who is up for re-election in 263 days.Until this moment, Willis looked like an unbeatable shoe-in for re-election. She is, arguably, the highest-profile district attorney in the US today, and she’s as recognizable to a Fulton county voter as the president, governor or Georgia’s senators. In a game of name recognition … well, people have stopped mispronouncing her first name in Atlanta now.But the revelation that she had been dating a highly paid office subordinate while working on a trial with the presidency on the line raises questions about her judgment. She may be contemplating a political challenger, who will argue that Willis is not the one to continue the case … assuming it is still in court in November.Her challenge here was to remind voters why they voted for her in the first place: to aggressively confront crime in Atlanta. Willis beat a 20-year incumbent in 2020 amid sharply rising crime and issues with prosecutions by her predecessor. She won in part by arguing that she would get the job done where her previous boss could not.Willis has to make her case to the Fulton county voters that she’s still their best choice. That’s where the sharp elbows and Black cultural callbacks on the stand come from: she’s speaking to the second audience – the primarily Black, majority-female, predominantly Democratic Fulton county electorate who is watching all of this unfold dreading the possibility that the county’s chance to impose justice on the powerful may be slipping through her fingers.By showing her grief and rage, she humanizes herself before this audience, which is likely to be sympathetic to the horrors of a Black professional’s love life aired like a reality television show before the American public as a Trump defendant’s legal ploy.It’s telling, perhaps, that Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, and the former mayor Shirley Franklin were both in attendance at the hearing on Friday morning, ostensibly as a show of political and moral support for Willis.There is, of course, a third audience. Every other person in the free world.Americans of all political stripes recognize that there’s a lot riding on the outcome of this case. Of all the criminal and civil cases Trump faces today, a conviction in Georgia is the only one for which he is almost certain to do time in prison, because there’s effectively no pardon power to save him. And Trump’s recorded phone call provides powerful evidence for a prosecutor to present to a jury.Voters across the country have a stake in the outcome here. But the only voters that count for Willis’s purposes are the ones that live in Fulton county. And until that changes, she’s not going to care about what they think. More

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      Protests as Atlanta council adopts new rules for referendum on Cop City

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      The Atlanta city council adopted new rules on Monday that would allow the referendum process for the public to vote on the “Cop City” project to move forward. The vote came amid protests against the methodology the council adopted for signature matching on referendum petitions, which critics say gives the city a way to block a public vote on the controversial project.Three people calling for the signature matching element of the ordinance to be removed were escorted from the council chambers ahead of the 10-5 vote adopting the ordinance.“It just comes down to democracy or chaos. Which one do you support?” Tim Franzen asked city councilmembers at a hearing, before being hustled from behind the dais in a brief protest. “Today this isn’t even about a public safety center. It’s about whether democracy works.”Construction of the now-$110m Atlanta Public Safety Training Center began last spring after contentious hearings at which activists criticized its expense, its location in woodlands outside the city and the city’s circumvention of public input. Protests began to escalate in 2022 and began drawing national interest after police killed activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán near the center’s construction site in January 2023, shortly after a state trooper was wounded by gunfire.View image in fullscreenActivists have subsequently sabotaged construction equipment and disrupted development at the site. The city attributed a $20m increase in construction costs to the protests, though requests made to the Atlanta police foundation for additional details about these costs have gone unanswered. The foundation is building the training center under a lease agreement that has been a focal point for public criticism.The fight over Cop City has become a political football in Georgia politics. State and local police have arrested and charged 61 activists under Georgia’s racketeering act, accusing them of crimes ranging from criminal trespassing to domestic terrorism. The district attorneys of Fulton and DeKalb county – both progressive Democrats – have ceded prosecution on these charges to Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, a Republican with political aspirations.Amid these arrests, activists last summer began gathering signatures on a petition for a referendum intended to block the city from opening the training facility. In December, organizers turned in petitions with more than 116,000 signatures, which would represent twice as many voters as any elected official in Atlanta has earned in as generation.However, an analysis by media organizations in Atlanta suggests that only about half of the signatures meet the legal standard under Georgia law required to call a referendum – a registered voter in the city proper, at the time of the last city council election, with a signature that clearly identifies the voter.View image in fullscreenThe method the city uses to validate a signature may make the difference between its acceptance and rejection, and whether the petition effort succeeds or fails. Councilman Michael Julian Bond noted that the ordinance explicitly bars the use optical character recognition, a key criticism of opponents. The adopted ordinance also provides for a mechanism for voters to cure a signature that is ruled invalid.But critics fear, given the procedural hurdles they have faced to date, that signature matching will be applied arbitrarily to block a public vote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“While this is not exact match … the verification as it is listed for me can create issues for people experiencing disability and the elderly,” said Councilwoman Liliana Bakhtiari, an opponent of the proposed facility. “I have done all I can.”The petition has been in a state of limbo while legal challenges by the city over signature validation and the legality of the petition itself are resolved. The impasse kept a Cop City referendum off the ballot last year. Even if the council waived the petition and approved a referendum today – a prospect not under consideration – there isn’t enough time to hold a vote before state primaries on 21 May. City leaders claim construction is 70% complete and expect to open the training center by the end of the year.Organizers say they want a vote as soon as possible.“The next fight is that the mayor needs to drop the appeal, because they need the process to move forward. They need to let the count start,” said Marisa Pyle, an organizer with the Cop City Vote Coalition and former senior aide to Stacey Abrams at Fair Fight Action. “They now have a process. … The mayor said he wants the signatures to be counted. Let them be counted.” More

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      Prosecutor in Trump racketeering case subpoenaed to testify in disqualification hearing

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      The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in her office, have both been subpoenaed to testify at a 15 February hearing seeking their disqualification from the criminal racketeering case against Donald Trump and 14 others for their efforts to overturn the election.It is not guaranteed that either will actually testify. Both could seek to quash the subpoena.Michael Roman, a seasoned Republican operative and a co-defendant in the case, is seeking the disqualification of Willis and Wade and a dismissal of the indictment. He alleges the two had a romantic relationship and that Wade used the money he earned from his employment in her office to pay for vacations. Trump and another defendant, Robert Cheeley, have both joined the request.Experts generally consider disqualification unlikely, but Willis has not directly responded to the allegation. She has said she will respond in a court filing that is due on Friday.Roman filed a new lawsuit on Tuesday accusing Willis’s office of failing to comply with a public records request and failing to turn over records related to the hiring of Wade and other special prosecutors. The lawsuit says Wade and Willis have both been subpoenaed to testify at the 15 February hearing.Wade’s office has told multiple news outlets that it has provided all the information that Roman and his lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, have requested. The district attorney also reportedly sent a letter to Merchant on Friday saying they “disagree with your disingenuous implication” they had failed to meet their obligations. A spokesperson for the office also told ABC News it had not been formally served with the lawsuit on Wednesday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWade had been set to testify as part of an divorce case on Wednesday, but settled it on Tuesday evening. Willis had also been subpoenaed in that case. More