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      As Trump Inquiry Continues, Republicans Seek Oversight of Georgia Prosecutors

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      The proposals are part of a broader push by conservative lawmakers around the country to rein in district attorneys whom they consider too liberal.ATLANTA — To Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Atlanta, several bills in the Georgia legislature that would make it easier to remove local prosecutors are racist and perhaps retaliatory for her ongoing investigation of former President Donald J. Trump. To the Republican sponsors of the bills, they are simply a way to ensure that prosecutors enforce the laws of the state, whether they agree with them or not.Two of the measures under consideration would create a new state oversight board that could punish or remove prosecutors for loosely defined reasons, including “willful misconduct.” A third would sharply reduce the number of signatures required to seek a recall of a district attorney. The proposals are part of a broader push by conservative lawmakers around the country to rein in prosecutors whom they consider too liberal, and who in some cases are refusing to prosecute low-level drug crimes or enforce strict new anti-abortion laws.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida last year suspended a Democratic prosecutor in the Tampa area, Andrew Warren, after Mr. Warren said, among other things, that he would not prosecute anyone seeking abortions. The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House voted in November to impeach Larry Krasner, the liberal district attorney in Philadelphia. And a Republican-backed bill currently under consideration in the Indiana legislature would allow a special prosecuting attorney, appointed by the state attorney general, to step in if a local prosecutor is “categorically refusing to prosecute certain crimes.”The debate in Georgia unfolding amid mounting concerns over urban crime, particularly in Atlanta. But Ms. Willis has been a centrist law-and-order prosecutor who has targeted some prominent local rappers in a sprawling gang case. She is also part of the changing face of justice in Georgia: The state now has a record number of minority prosecutors — 14 of them — up from five in 2020, the year Ms. Willis, who is Black, was voted into office. And of course, there is the Trump inquiry, the latest accelerant to the partisan conflagrations that have consumed the increasingly divided state for years. The subject of Ms. Willis’s investigation is whether Mr. Trump and his allies tried to flout Georgia’s democratic process with numerous instances of interference after his narrow 2020 election loss in the state. Ms. Willis, center, with her team during proceedings to seat the special purpose grand jury in Fulton County in May 2022.Ben Gray/Associated PressMs. Willis has said she is considering building a racketeering or conspiracy case. Anticipation is rising, particularly since the forewoman of a special grand jury charged with looking into the matter spoke publicly last month, saying that the jury’s final report, which is still largely under wraps, recommended indictments for more than a dozen people.Ms. Willis must now decide whether to bring a case to a regular grand jury, which can issue indictments. A decision ‌could come as early as ‌May.Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5A legal threat to Trump. More

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      ‘Different From the Other Southerners’: Jimmy Carter’s Relationship With Black America

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      How a white politician from the South who once supported segregationist policies eventually won the enduring support of Black voters.ATLANTA — Without Black voters, there would have been no President Jimmy Carter.In 1976, African Americans catapulted the underdog Democrat to the White House with 83 percent support. Four years later, they stuck by him, delivering nearly identical numbers even as many white voters abandoned him in favor of his victorious Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan.This enduring Black support for Mr. Carter illuminates two intertwined and epochal American stories, each of them powered by themes of pragmatism and redemption. One is the story of a white Georgia politician who began his quest for power in the Jim Crow South — a man who, as late as 1970, declared his respect for the arch-segregationist George Wallace in an effort to attract white votes, but whose personal convictions and political ambitions later pushed him to try to change the racist environment in which he had been raised.The other is the story of a historically oppressed people flexing their growing electoral muscle after the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed obstacles to the ballot box. Certainly, for some Black voters, candidate Carter was simply the least bad option. But for others, the elections of 1976 and 1980 were an opportunity to take the measure of this changing white man, recognizing the opportunity he presented, and even his better angels.“His example in Georgia as a representative of the New South, as one of the new governors from the South, was exciting, and it was appealing,” said Representative Sanford Bishop, a Democrat whose Georgia congressional district includes Mr. Carter’s home. “It carried the day in terms of people wanting a fresh moral face for the presidency.”Mr. Carter’s support for Black Americans sheds light on the political evolution of the man, who at 98, is America’s longest living president. (Mr. Carter entered hospice care earlier this month.)Mr. Carter at an event in Georgia during the fall 1976 presidential campaign.Guy DeLort/WWD, via Penske Media, via Getty ImagesMr. Carter greeting supporters in New York City in 1976.Mikki Ansin/Getty ImagesThe foundation of his relationships with Black voters and leaders was built in his home base of Plains, in rural Sumter County, Ga. Its Black residents can recall his efforts to maintain and then later resist the racist policies and practices that targeted the majority Black community.Jonathan Alter, in his 2020 biography “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life,” noted that Mr. Carter, as a school board member, had made a number of moves to accommodate or uphold the local segregationist system of the 1950s, at one point trying to shift resources from Black schools to white schools in the name of sound fiscal management.But Bobby Fuse, 71, a longtime civil rights activist who grew up in Americus, Ga., a few miles from Plains, recalled that Mr. Carter had also shown moments of real character. Among other things, he noted Mr. Carter’s objection to his Baptist church’s refusal to allow Black people to worship there.“I wouldn’t have voted for anybody running against Jimmy Carter, more than likely,” said Mr. Fuse, who said he had first voted for Mr. Carter in his successful 1970 governor’s race. “Because I knew him to be an upright man different from the other Southerners.”There were seeds of this difference early in the life of Mr. Carter. But as a young politician, it did not always translate into action. And the repressive environment of the mid-20th century meant that he had no Black voters to woo when he started his first foray into electoral politics with a 1962 bid for a South Georgia State Senate seat. Due to racist restrictions, hardly any Black people were registered to vote in his district at the time.Mr. Carter waved to the crowd as he and his wife, Rosalynn, arrived at Plains Baptist Church to attend services in 1976.Associated PressPresident Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, with former President Bill Clinton and Mr. Carter at a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHistorians say that Mr. Carter, early in his career, was both a creature and a critic of the strict segregationist system he had been born into. He largely kept his head down as civil rights advocates fought and sacrificed to change the status quo, with serious, and sometimes dangerous, protests and crackdowns flaring up in Sumter County.Later, once he had achieved positions of power, he was outspoken about renouncing racial discrimination, seeking means to redress it and trying to live up to those principles. During his presidency, he famously enrolled his daughter, Amy, in a public school in Washington, D.C. Decades after leaving the White House, he offered a full-throated rebuke of Barack Obama’s Republican critics, calling their attacks racism loosely disguised as partisanship during his presidency.“He saw his role as an elder statesman,” said Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University. “The fact that you have an elderly white president, from the South, who is there saying, ‘Look, the emperor has no clothes; that argument has no weight; that dog won’t hunt,’ is something that he didn’t necessarily have to do.”Mr. Carter had grown up with Black playmates in the tiny community of Archery, Ga. As a boy, his moral and spiritual north star had been a Black woman, Rachel Clark, the wife of a worker on the Carter property. He slept many nights on the floor of her home when his parents were out of town. Mr. Alter, the biographer,  wrote that she had taught him about nature and had impressed him with her selflessness. Mr. Alter wrote that Mr. Carter had even been teased in his all-white elementary school for “sounding Black.”Traffic in Warm Springs, Ga., as visitors arrived to hear Mr. Carter speak in 1976.Gary Settle/The New York TimesRachel Clark, the wife of a worker on the Carter family’s farm, whom Mr. Carter credited with teaching him morals.National Park ServiceBy the mid-1950s, Mr. Carter returned from a stint as a naval officer and settled in Plains, where he built on the family’s successful peanut business. The Brown v. Board of Education decision, which dismantled the old separate-but-equal regime for American schools, had inflamed white Southerners. Despite his efforts to appease white parents while on the school board, he was also, Mr. Alter notes, “the only prominent white man in Plains” who declined to join the local chapter of the racist White Citizens’ Council.After winning his 1962 State Senate race, Mr. Carter, a man of searing ambition, set his sights on the governor’s mansion but was defeated in 1966. He ran again and won in 1970, with a campaign full of unsubtle dog whistles to aggrieved white voters that included promises to restore “law and order” to their communities and, according to Mr. Alter, the dissemination of a “fact sheet” that reminded white voters that Mr. Carter’s Democratic opponent, former Gov. Carl Sanders, had attended Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.In the Democratic primary, Black voters took notice: Mr. Sanders, in the runoff, garnered roughly 90 percent of their votes. But by the general election, Mr. Carter was campaigning heavily in Black churches.The dog-whistle strategy had generated its share of bitterness and criticism. But a course correction followed, in the form of Mr. Carter’s inaugural address.“The time for racial discrimination is over,” he said.Mr. Carter’s supporters at the Democratic convention.H. Christoph/Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesMembers of the Concord Baptist Church congregation listening to Mr. Carter speaking in Brooklyn in 1980.Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times“It was really dramatic for all of us, because he said it in that forum, as he was being sworn in,” Mr. Fuse recalled. “And hopefully we were going to see some activity from that.”They did. Mr. Carter expanded the presence of Black Georgians in state government, from senior officials to state troopers, and welcomed civil rights leaders to the governor’s office.Black skeptics were converted into allies in other ways. In an interview this week, Andrew Young, the civil rights leader who would serve as ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Carter, recalled having “a real prejudice to overcome” when the two men first met as Mr. Carter was running for governor.When the matter of Fred Chappell, Sumter County’s notoriously racist sheriff, came up, Mr. Carter called him a “good friend.” Mr. Young was taken aback: Mr. Chappell had once arrested Dr. King after a protest. When Dr. King’s associates tried to bring him blankets to ward off the cold, Mr. Chappell refused them and turned on the fan instead.Later, however, Mr. Young said he had gotten to know Mr. Carter’s family, including his mother, Lillian. Mr. Young, too, came to trust him. “I decided that he was always all right on race,” Mr. Young said. “He never discriminated between his Black friends and white friends.”Mr. Carter, as president, meeting in 1977 with his commission for the appointment of Black Americans to the federal judiciary in the Fifth Circuit.Harvey Georges/Associated PressAndrew Young, right, campaigning for Mr. Carter in Boston in 1976.Mikki Ansin/Getty ImagesIt went the same way with other influential civil rights leaders in Georgia, including Dr. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and his father, Martin Luther King Sr. According to the author and journalist Kandy Stroud, the elder Mr. King sent a telegram to voters lauding Mr. Carter’s appointment of Black judges and his support for a fair housing law, among other things. “I know a man I can trust, Blacks can trust, and that man is Jimmy Carter,” he wrote.By the time Mr. Carter started his 1976 bid for the White House, it was these leaders who spread the message beyond Georgia voters that Mr. Carter was worthy of their trust. They helped bolster the “peanut brigade,” the nickname for the team of staff members and volunteers spread across the country to campaign for him, making it a mix of Black and white Carter supporters.“They had to tell these people in the rest of the country, ‘Yeah, he’s governor of Georgia, but he’s a different kind of governor of Georgia,’” Mr. Fuse said.In a recent interview, the Rev. Al Sharpton recalled that the King family had lobbied him to support Mr. Carter in 1976. That went a long way, he said, but so did Mr. Carter’s presentation. “A Southern guy that would stand up and talk about racism?” he said. “This was the kind of guy that my uncle trusted down South. And he connected with us for that.”As a presidential candidate, however, Mr. Carter again showed his propensity for trying to have it both ways in a racially divided country.George Skelton, a Los Angeles Times columnist, recently recalled covering the candidate as he campaigned in Wisconsin and watching as he seemed to give contradictory messages on school busing to separate groups of Black and white voters within the span of a single day.Mrs. Coretta King accepting the Presidential Medal on behalf of her late husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1977.Associated PressMr. Carter, second from right, shaking hands with Black seniors at the Watts Labor Community Action Council in Los Angeles, in 1976.Reed Saxon/Associated PressAnd in a speech about protecting neighborhoods, Mr. Carter used the phrase “ethnic purity,” creating a mini-scandal. Soon after, Mr. Young told him that the use of the phrase had been a “disaster for the campaign.” Mr. Carter issued an apology.But Mr. Carter also found common cultural ground with Black voters nationwide, many of whom shared his Christian faith. They saw how comfortable he was in Black churches. “‘Born again’ is the secret of his success with Blacks,” Ethel Allen, a Black surgeon from Philadelphia, told Ms. Stroud at the time.As president, Mr. Carter sought “to mend the racial divide,” said Kai Bird, another Carter biographer. Mr. Bird noted that food aid was significantly expanded under Mr. Carter, benefiting many poor Black residents in rural areas. Mr. Bird also noted that the Carter administration had toughened rules aimed at preventing racially discriminatory schools from claiming tax-exempt status.If that explains why Black voters stuck with Mr. Carter in 1980, it may have also sown the seeds of his defeat. “I think all of these decisions were too much for white America,” Mr. Bird said. “Ronald Reagan came along and appealed much more to white voters.”Mr. Fuse agrees. All these years later, he still laments the fact that Mr. Carter was denied a second term. Instead of focusing on the problems that plagued Mr. Carter’s time in office — the inflation, the energy crisis, the American hostages stuck in Tehran — Mr. Fuse spoke, instead, about that hope that Mr. Carter had engendered in 1976, and not just for Black voters.“When this white man comes along who’s grinning with a broad smile after Watergate, he lifted our spirits,” Mr. Fuse said. “He lifted everybody’s spirits.” More

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      Trump responds to interviews with grand jury foreperson: ‘This Georgia case is ridiculous’

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      Trump responds to interviews with grand jury foreperson: ‘This Georgia case is ridiculous’Former president, under investigation for his election subversion attempts, criticizes jury foreperson for ‘doing a media tour’Donald Trump responded to interviews given by the foreperson of the Georgia grand jury which investigated his election subversion attempts by ridiculing the woman and claiming to be the victim of his political enemies.‘A big freaking deal’: the grand jury that investigated Trump election pressureRead more“This Georgia case is ridiculous,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform, claiming “a strictly political continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time”.It has been widely reported that lawyers for possible Republican targets in the investigation are preparing to seek dismissal of the case based on the foreperson’s comments.Running for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump remains in wide-ranging legal jeopardy over election subversion including inciting the January 6 attack on Congress, his financial affairs including a hush money payment to a porn star, the retention of classified documents and an accusation of rape, which he denies.The district attorney of Fulton county, Fani Willis, requested the grand jury to investigate Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat in Georgia by Joe Biden, the first Republican loss there in a presidential election since 1992.Portions of the grand jury report have been released but indictments have not yet followed.The jury foreperson, Emily Kohrs, was authorized to speak to the media but not to discuss deliberations.Many observers said she went too far, dropping broad hints about indictments and discussing interactions with witnesses.Speaking to CNN, she said it would be a “good assumption” that more than a dozen people would be indicted.Kohrs, 30, told the New York Times it was “not rocket science” to work out if Trump indictments were among those recommended.Speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and told Trump had claimed “total exoneration” through the jury’s report, Kohrs “rolled her eyes” and “burst out laughing”.Trump wrote: “Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) ‘foreperson’ of the racist DA’s special grand jury, going around and doing a media tour revealing, incredibly, the grand jury’s inner workings and thoughts.”Willis, a Democrat, is African American. Claiming she was presiding over “an illegal kangaroo court”, Trump also claimed to have done nothing in Georgia but make “two perfect phone calls”.The grand jury investigated election subversion efforts including a call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump asked the Republican elections official to “find” enough votes for him to beat Biden. Alternate elector schemes and state-house machinations were also scutinised.On Wednesday, amid reports that lawyers were preparing to seek dismissal of the case because of Kohrs’ comments in the media, observers including the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman pointed out that Kohrs led a fact-finding grand jury, meaning a separate panel would deal with any indictments.But Haberman also told CNN: “I’ve covered courts on and off for the last 20 years, more than that. I’ve never heard of a grand jury foreperson speaking this way … I’ve never seen anything like it.“If I’m the prosecutor, I’m not sure that I want this media tour taking place, because I’m confident that Donald Trump’s lawyers are going to use this, just based on what I [am] hearing … to try to argue that this is prejudicial in terms of what she is saying.”TopicsDonald TrumpGeorgiaUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘A big freaking deal’: the grand jury that investigated Trump election pressure

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      ‘A big freaking deal’: the grand jury that investigated Trump election pressureForeperson Emily Kohrs gives insight into process usually cloaked in secrecy, after portions of grand jury report released last weekAsked if the grand jury she led recommended indicting Donald Trump over his election subversion in Georgia, the foreperson of the jury said: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”Ron DeSantis gives Donald Trump kid-glove treatment in new bookRead moreShe also said sitting on the jury was “a big freaking deal”.Emily Kohrs, 30, spoke to the New York Times and outlets including the Associated Press and NBC News on Tuesday. She was authorised to speak but not to discuss details of the grand jury report, most of which remains secret after a judge disclosed portions last week.Those portions showed jurors saw possible evidence of perjury by “one or more witnesses”. Trump did not testify. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who advanced Trump’s lie about voter fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, was among those who did.The grand jury was requested by Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney. Speaking to the AP, Kohrs described how, last May, jurors were led into a garage beneath an Atlanta courthouse, where officers with guns waited. Ushered into vans with heavily tinted windows, jurors were driven to their cars under police escort.“That was the first indication that this was a big freaking deal,” Kohrs said.Kohrs found herself at the center of one of the most significant legal proceedings in US history. She would become foreperson of the panel investigating whether the then president and associates illegally meddled in Georgia election results.The case is one of Trump’s most glaring legal vulnerabilities as he mounts a third presidential run, in part because he was recorded asking officials to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn Biden’s win.Jurors heard from 75 witnesses, from prominent Trump allies to local election workers. A judge, Robert McBurney, advised jurors on what they could and could not share publicly. Kohrs provided insight into a process typically cloaked in secrecy.She told the Times Giuliani, who was mayor of New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks, when she was 11, was “almost like a myth figure in my head”, leaving her “intimidated” in his presence.She told NBC the list of recommended indictments was “not short”, involving more than a dozen people, and that Trump “might” be among them.She told the Times the report would not offer “some giant plot twist. You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately”.Her remarks met with criticism in some quarters.Elie Honig, a federal prosecutor turned CNN analyst, said: “This is a very serious prospect. Indicting any person, you’re talking about potentially taking away that person’s liberty. We’re talking about potentially [indicting] a former president for the first time … she does not seem to be taking that very seriously.”Trump’s lawyers might seek to dismiss any indictment based on grand jury impropriety, Honig said.Trump was the first Republican to lose Georgia since George HW Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat included the famous call to Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, in which he asked his fellow Republican to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” to get to win.Kohrs told the Times the jury “definitely started with the first phone call, the call to Secretary Raffensperger that was so publicised”.She told the AP Raffensperger was “a really geeky kind of funny”. She said the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who fought not to testify, joked with jurors while Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, seemed unhappy to be there.Looking to other parts of Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat, she said the jury “definitely talked about the alternate electors a fair amount” and “talked a lot about December and things that happened in the Georgia legislature”.What does the release of Georgia’s grand jury report mean for Trump?Read moreKohrs told the AP she was fascinated by an explainer by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive. She said the jury studied the “concept of vote fraud in Georgia”, finding “unanimously that there was no evidence of vote fraud in Fulton county in the 2020 election”, which they “wanted to make sure we put in” the final report, “because somehow that’s still a question”.Trump and his supporters still claim the 2020 election was stolen.Kohrs sketched witnesses. When jurors’ notes were taken for shredding, she managed to salvage two sketches, of Graham and Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former vice-president Mike Pence, because there were no notes on those pages.Kohrs said she enjoyed learning about the White House from Cassidy Hutchinson, who was much more forthcoming than the former chief of staff Mark Meadows.Several witnesses have immunity deals. Trump’s attorneys have said he was not asked to testify. Kohrs said the jury didn’t think he would offer meaningful testimony.“Trump was not a battle we picked to fight,” she said.Kohrs told the AP she didn’t vote in 2020 and at the time did not know the specifics of Trump’s allegations of widespread election fraud or efforts to reverse his loss. She said she did not identify with any political party, and did not feel political pressure.“I fully stand by our report as our decision and our conclusion,” she said.
      Associated Press contributed reporting
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      Republicans in the US ‘battery belt’ embrace Biden’s climate spending

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      Republicans in the US ‘battery belt’ embrace Biden’s climate spending Southern states led by Republicans did not vote for climate spending, but now embrace clean energy dollars like never beforeGeorgia, a state once known for its peaches and peanuts, is rapidly becoming a crucible of clean energy technology in the US, leading a pack of Republican-led states enjoying a boom in renewables investment that has been accelerated by Joe Biden’s climate agenda.Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August, billions of dollars of new clean energy investment has been announced for solar, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing in Georgia, pushing it to the forefront of a swathe of southern states that are becoming a so-called “battery belt” in the economic transition away from fossil fuels.Biden’s climate bill victory was hard won. Now, the real battle startsRead more“It seems like all roads are currently leading to Georgia, it’s really benefiting disproportionately from the Inflation Reduction Act right now,” said Aaron Brickman, senior principal at energy research nonprofit RMI. Brickman said the $370bn in clean energy incentives and tax credits in the bill are a “complete game changer. We’ve just frankly never had that before in this country. The IRA has transformed the landscape in a staggering way”.Georgia is part of a pattern where Republican-headed states have claimed the lion’s share of new renewable energy and electric vehicle activity since the legislation, with Republican-held Congressional districts hosting more than 80% of all utility-scale wind or solar farms and battery projects currently in advanced development, according to an analysis by American Clean Power.States blessed with plentiful wind and sunshine, along with significant rural and industrial communities, such as those across the Great Plains and the south, appear best positioned to capitalize on the climate bill. Texas, already a bastion of wind power, could see $131bn in IRA-linked investment this decade, Florida may see $62bn and Georgia $16bn, according to an RMI analysis.The irony of this bonanza, which is coming despite no Republican voting for the climate spending, was alluded to by Biden in his recent state of the union address. “My Republican friends who voted against it – I still get asked to fund the projects in those districts as well,” the US president said, to jeers from some members of Congress. “But don’t worry, I promised I’d be a president for all Americans. We’ll fund these projects and I’ll see you at the groundbreaking.”Beeswarm bubble chart of states’ IRA climate investmentsA mixed political groundbreaking did take place in Georgia in October, when Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, was served champagne by a robotic dog before ceremonially shoveling dirt alongside Democratic senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to kick off Hyundai’s first dedicated electric vehicle plant in the US.The $5.5bn facility in Bryan county, which will create around 8,000 jobs when it opens in 2025, came about because “we heard the clarion call of this administration to hasten the adoption of new electric vehicles and reduce carbon emissions”, according to José Muñoz, Hyundai’s global president.Ossoff told the Guardian he has long held a vision that Georgia “should be the advanced energy innovation and manufacturing hub for the US” and credits a bill he wrote, the Solar Energy Manufacturing for America Act, which was then folded into the IRA, for helping convince Hanwha Qcells, another South Korean-owned company, to commit $2.5bn for two new solar panel factories in the state in January.“This targeted legislation was by no means a foregone conclusion but passing it has opened the floodgates in Georgia,” Ossoff said. Democrats have touted the bill for not only helping tackle the climate crisis but also as a way to wrest the initiative from China, which has dominated the manufacturing of parts for clean energy systems and electric cars until now.Georgia’s embrace of clean energy technology was underway before the IRA, with Atlanta, bolstered by leading renewables research at Georgia Tech, increasingly viewed as an innovative fulcrum. In 2021, Freyr, a Norwegian company, announced a $1.7bn battery plant for Coweta county, south of Atlanta, while SK Battery, yet another South Korean-owned firm, said last spring it will hire another 3,000 workers at its battery factory in Commerce, north-east of Georgia’s capital.Rivian, the electric car company, meanwhile is keen to build a sprawling $5bn facility east of Atlanta although it has faced opposition from some residents in the small town of Rutledge, who have sued to stop the development.But last year’s IRA, with its sweeping tax incentives for emissions-reducing technologies, has made the environment even more enticing. Scott Moskowitz, head of market strategy for Qcells said that Georgia has been a “great home” since 2019 but that the IRA is “some of the most ambitious clean energy policy passed anywhere in the world” and gave the Hanwha-owned company certainty to triple capacity at its site in Dalton, which already cranks out around 12,000 solar panels a day, as well as create a new complex in Cartersville that will manufacture ingots and wafers, the basic building blocks of solar panel components, made from poly silicon.“There’s a ton of opportunity and excitement in [the] clean energy sector right now,” Moskowitz said. “We’ve always had strong support from both sides of the aisle, even if there hasn’t always been agreement.”Map of recently announced clean energy projects in GeorgiaBarry Loudermilk, a Republican congressman whose House of Representatives district includes Cartersville, denied that the rush of investment is politically awkward for the GOP, accusing Biden of an “elementary school-level response” to the issue in his state of the union speech.“I’m not against this industry and I’m all about bringing in new technology, but it has to be market-driven,” Loudermilk told the Guardian. “When the government heavily subsidizes something it will crest and then fall down because the market hasn’t matured.“We aren’t ready for this (full EV and clean energy adoption). This is just subsidizing one industry over another and just throwing taxpayer dollars at something usually just leads to failure, and sets you back a decade.”Georgia is a draw for businesses due to its relatively low tax rate, transport links -including Atlanta’s busy airport and Savannah’s deep port – and a diverse and adept pool of workers, according to Loudermilk. “The days of the backwoods country bumpkin are in the past, we have educated, skilled workforce,” he said.It’s uncertain whether Loudermilk will be at the Cartersville groundbreaking, nor Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right extremist who represents the neighboring congressional district that includes Dalton. Greene has previously said the IRA is an “energy disaster” and erroneously said that global heating is “actually healthy for us”, although she has said she welcomes any new jobs to Georgia.Warned of ‘massive’ climate-led extinction, a US energy firm funded crisis denial adsRead moreKemp, meanwhile, has offered state-level incentives for firms to set up in Georgia, while denouncing Democrats for “picking winners and losers” with the national climate bill. The governor recently pitched his state as a destination for clean tech investment at Davos and has denied any hypocrisy in his stance.“Georgia is a destination state for all manner of new jobs and opportunity despite the bad policies coming out of DC – not because of them,” said a spokesman for Kemp. “Companies are choosing Georgia over places like New York and California because they know they’ll find success here, not because of the IRA.”Even if the causes for the renewables investment are in dispute, the trajectory of the transition is becoming more undeniable. As the cost of renewables continues to plummet and more Americans turn to electric cars, thanks in part to the “unprecedented scale” of the IRA, partisan divides on the issue may soften, according to Ashna Aggarwal, an associate at RMI, the energy research nonprofit.“This is a bill that benefits everyone and it actually benefits the people who weren’t necessarily in favor of the bill the most,” Aggarwal said.“I think what’s really exciting about the clean energy economy is that party lines don’t really matter here. There’s more opportunity for Republican states and I hope that Republican policymakers see that and really think this is good for the people who are living in our states.”TopicsRenewable energyEnergyClimate crisisGeorgiaUS politicsBiden administrationEnergy industryfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘Very alarming’: US airport screenings see a surge in loaded guns

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      ‘Very alarming’: US airport screenings see a surge in loaded gunsYou can’t carry a bottle of water on board the plane, but plenty of people – knowingly and unknowingly – try to carry gunA Connecticut woman was the first of the week, walking her child through security at New York’s JFK airport with a loaded gun in her purse and “one in the chamber”, as officials put it.Over the following days, an X-ray machine detected a 9mm pistol and ammunition in the hand luggage of a passenger in Philadelphia, a .45 caliber handgun and seven bullets in the carry-on bag of a man boarding a plane at New York’s Westchester airport, and a loaded weapon carried through screening in Wisconsin. ‘The kids need help’: how young people want adults to tackle gun violenceRead moreSecurity officers confiscated two firearms in two days at the Columbus, Ohio international airport. Other arrests for guns turned up by searches were made at terminals in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.And that was just a fraction of the 18 guns confiscated every day on average from passengers traversing flight security across the US – a number that has been rising for years and is likely to continue doing so as firearms sales rise and more states make it easier to carry concealed weapons – even in airports.Two decades after 9/11, thousands of passengers who are otherwise conditioned to remove their shoes, bag their liquids and all too often surrender their dignity at security screenings somehow manage to forget they are carrying an object that is the very reason they are being searched in the first place.Last year, the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) seized 6,542 guns from people about to board planes at 262 airports – a sixfold increase since 2010. Nearly nine in 10 of the weapons were loaded.Jeffrey Price, former assistant director of security at Denver international airport and co-author of a book on aviation security, said he wasn’t surprised.“One of our unique American traits is the number of people who purchase a weapon and forget they even have the thing with them. It seems like every time there’s another active shooter incident, a lot more people go out and buy guns because they feel scared,” he said.“A lot of those people who buy a gun in the heat of the moment, they toss it in their laptop bag or in their purse, and then they forget they have it. Next thing you know, they’re at the airport and oh, my gosh, I forgot I put that in there. Which in itself is pretty scary because it could mean they’re leaving a bag lying around at home with a gun in for a kid to get to.”The TSA says that passengers claiming to forget they even have a gun is the most common explanation and is frequently accepted by the police. Although officials were more skeptical about a man who blamed his mother for packing a rifle found in his bag at Baltimore airport.Price said other factors are also at work.”There’s also [a] certain percentage of people that think because they’ve been issued a permit (to carry a gun) they can carry it anywhere, anytime, which is not true. And then you’ve got people that just think they can slip it through. The TSA won’t notice,” he said.They would include the passengers caught trying to smuggle guns stuffed inside a raw chicken, jars of peanut butter, a PlayStation and an arm sling.Some cities and states press criminal charges, and the offending individual is marched out the airport in handcuffs. But it is not uncommon in gun-friendly parts of the country for a passenger to be allowed to put their weapon in their car and return to board their flight.Atlanta airport tops the gun seizure table with more than one a day found in passenger hand luggage.“It is very alarming,” Balram Bheodari, manager of Atlanta airport, told a congressional hearing last year about the record number of guns seized on his watch. “Eighty-six percent of those weapons had a round in the chamber or a loaded magazine in the weapon. Very, very alarming.”Bheodari had to contend with an incident 15 months ago in which a passenger “lunged” for a bag as a TSA agent began to search it and accidentally fired a gun inside, sending people around him diving for the floor and shutting down flight departures. The airport put out a message assuring passengers “there was not an active shooter”.The man ran out the airport with the gun but left his boarding pass behind and was arrested three days later.It was perhaps no surprise that Atlanta leads the nation. In 2014, Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law pushed by the National Rifle Association allowing people to carry loaded guns in the state’s airports.Georgia was also one of 10 states to pass laws over the past couple of years no longer requiring a permit to carry a concealed firearm. Tennessee was another. The state’s TSA’s security director, Steve Wood, drew a direct line between weaker gun regulation and weapons at airports.“Since the implementation of new gun laws in the state last year, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of firearms brought to Tennessee security checkpoints,” he said.There is also the disturbing question of how many guns go undetected.In 2015, ABC News revealed that the TSA sent undercover investigators through airport checkpoints carrying real guns and fake bombs. Security officers only discovered three of the 70 smuggled items.The TSA’s director was sacked. The Department of Homeland Security promised reforms but two years later security agents were still failing to detect about 80% of weapons in tests because of a mix of inadequate equipment and human failings.Since then the TSA has stopped talking publicly about such tests of its system.Ban on marijuana users owning guns is unconstitutional, judge rulesRead morePrice said travelers should assume that some guns get on to planes.“It’s really a matter of deterrence. Can we catch enough prohibited items to make it not worth a terrorist or criminal’s effort to try and get through the system with one? We’re never gonna catch everything. That some guns will get onto planes is just one of those things we have to accept if we’re going to accept aviation as part of our daily lives,” he said.Which makes it something of a miracle that no one has been shot accidentally mid-flight.“It is kind of amazing,” said Price. “One of the few that did go off accidentally was when a US Airways pilot, who was authorized to carry on a gun on the flight deck, fired off a round as he was putting it back in its holster.”The pilot said he was trying to stow the gun for landing when it went off, blowing a hole in the cockpit just below the window.TopicsUS gun controlGeorgiaAirline industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Takeaways From the Report on the Trump Georgia Investigation

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      The released excerpts from the special grand jury’s report suggest that the jurors probably recommended indictments on more charges than just perjury.On Thursday, after a lengthy criminal investigation by a Georgia special grand jury into allegations of election interference by Donald J. Trump and his allies, a judge released excerpts from a report drafted by the panel. The grand jury’s recommendations were redacted, and little new information was released, but a close reading, together with earlier reporting, offers some insights into where the case is headed. Here are some key takeaways.Legal experts say Mr. Trump remains in real jeopardy in Georgia.In a post on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump thanked the special grand jury for its “Patriotism & Courage.“Total exoneration,” he added. “The USA is very proud of you!!!”In fact, the portions of the grand jury’s report that included recommendations on possible indictments were not revealed. Many legal experts continue to see two significant areas of exposure for Mr. Trump.The first is his direct involvement in recruiting a slate of alternative presidential electors after the 2020 election, even after Georgia’s results were recertified by the state’s Republican leadership. The second are the telephone calls he made to pressure state officials after the election, including one in which Mr. Trump told Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, that he needed to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than President Biden’s margin of victory in the state.“Even before we got these initial statements from the special grand jury, we knew Trump was in deep criminal peril because of the mountain of evidence that has accumulated that he violated Georgia statutes,” said Norman Eisen, a lawyer who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of Mr. Trump, and a co-author of a lengthy Brookings Institution report on the Fulton County investigation.The jurors did make recommendations about indictments.The special grand jury noted in its report that it had voted on indictment recommendations, though the released excerpts do not reveal what the results of those votes were. The jurors wrote that they had “set forth for the Court our recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes.” (A special grand jury cannot bring indictments, but can make recommendations to the district attorney.)In ordering that only portions of the report be released, with all names redacted, the judge handling the case may have provided a clue to the grand jury’s recommendations. The judge, Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, said he was limiting the extent of the release because the grand jury inquiry, by its nature, allowed for only “very limited due process” for potential defendants. The judge’s stance would have been unlikely if the grand jury had not recommended indictments.Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5A legal threat to Trump. More

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      It’s Time to Prepare for a Possible Trump Indictment

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      “We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.” With those words, a Fulton County special grand jury’s report, part of which was released Thursday, repudiated Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy.The excerpts from the report did not explicitly offer new detail on a potential indictment of Mr. Trump or any other individual. But they suggest that, combined with everything else we know, Mr. Trump may very well be headed for charges in Georgia.We need to prepare for a first in our 246-year history as a nation: The possible criminal prosecution of a former president.If Mr. Trump is charged, it will be difficult and at times even perilous for American democracy — but it is necessary to deter him and others from future attempted coups.Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, may present the case as a simple and streamlined one or in a more sweeping fashion. Success is more likely assured in the simpler approach, but the fact that the redacted report has eight sections suggests a broader approach is conceivable. In either event, we must all prepare ourselves for what could be years of drama, with the pretrial, trial and appeal likely dominating the coming election season.Ms. Willis opened her investigation shortly after Mr. Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, demand that the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, “find 11,780 votes.” The second impeachment of Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 committee hearings developed additional evidence about that request for fake votes and Mr. Trump and allies pushing fake electors in Georgia and nationally. There is now abundant evidence suggesting he violated Georgia statutes, like those criminalizing the solicitation of election fraud.The parts of the special grand jury’s report revealed on Thursday only reinforce Mr. Trump’s risk of prosecution. The statement that the grand jurors found “no widespread fraud” in the presidential election eliminates Mr. Trump’s assertion that voter fraud justified his pushing state election officials. We also know that the grand jurors voted defendant by defendant and juror by juror, and set forth their recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes over seven (currently redacted) sections. The likelihood that they did that and cleared everyone is very low. And the fact that the grand jurors felt so strongly about the issues that they insisted on writing the recommendations themselves, as they emphasize, further suggests a grave purpose.Also notable is the grand jury’s recommendation of indictments, “where the evidence is compelling,” for perjury that may have been committed by one or more witnesses. It seems unlikely that Ms. Willis will let that pass.She will now decide the next steps of the case. Her statement that charging decisions were imminent came more than three weeks ago. If she does indict Mr. Trump, the two likely paths that she might take focus on the fake electoral slates and Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger. One is a narrower case that would likely take weeks to try; the other is a broader case that would likely take months.Narrow charges could include the Georgia felonies of solicitation of election fraud in the first degree and related general crimes like conspiracy to commit election fraud, specifically focusing on events and people who have a strong nexus with Georgia. In addition to Mr. Trump, that might include others who had direct contacts with Georgia, like his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and his attorneys John C. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani (who already received a “target” notification from Ms. Willis warning him that he may be charged). Such a case would focus on activities around the execution of the fake electoral slates on Dec. 14, 2020, followed by the conversation with Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2, rooting it in Georgia and avoiding events nationally except to the extent absolutely necessary.Or Ms. Willis could charge the case more broadly, adding sweeping state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, charges that could still include the impact of the conduct in Georgia but bring in more of a nationwide conspiracy. This would look more like the Jan. 6 investigation, albeit with a strong Georgia flavor. It could additionally include those who appeared to have lesser contact with Georgia but were part of national efforts including the state, like the Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro and the Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.A more narrow case might make slightly more sense: Given the extraordinary circumstances around it, Ms. Willis will surely have her hands full. And it will feature a likely lead defendant who has demonstrated his propensity for legal circuses — coming in the midst of a heated political season no less.That said, Ms. Willis has a proven propensity for bringing and winning RICO cases. And as we have learned in our criminal trial work, sometimes juries are more responsive to grander narratives that command their attention — and outrage.Whether it’s simple or broad, if a case is opened, one thing is nearly certain: It’s going to take a while, probably the better part of the next two years, and perhaps longer. We would surely see a flurry of legal filings from Mr. Trump, which while often meritless nevertheless take time. Here the battle would likely be waged around pretrial motions and appeals by Mr. Trump arguing, as he has done in other cases, that he was acting in his official presidential capacity and so is immune.That challenge, though not persuasive at all in our view, will almost certainly delay a trial by months. Other likely sallies are that the case should be removed to federal court (it shouldn’t); that he relied on the advice of counsel in good faith (he didn’t); or that his action was protected by the First Amendment (it wasn’t).Even if the courts work at the relatively rapid pace of other high-profile presidential cases, we would still be talking about months of delay. In both U.S. v. Nixon and Thompson v. Trump, about three months were consumed from the first filing of the cases to the final rejection of presidential arguments by the U.S. Supreme Court. In this case, there would be more issues, which would be likely to require additional time. At the earliest, Ms. Willis would be looking at a trial toward the end of 2023. Even on that aggressive schedule, appeals would not be concluded until the end of 2024 or beyond.Needless to say, this would have a profound impact on the election season. It would feature a national conversation about what it means for a former president to be prosecuted, and it would no doubt have unexpected consequences.Still, the debate is worth having, and the risks are worth taking. The core American idea is that no one is above the law. If there is serious evidence of crimes, then a former president should face the same consequences as anyone else. If we do not hold accountable those who engage in this kind of misconduct, it will recur.It would be the trial of the 21st century, no doubt a long and bumpy ride — but a necessary one for American democracy.Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. E. Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and New York State corruption investigator. Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor, is a criminal defense and appellate attorney in Savannah, Ga.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More