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      US supreme court backs Black voters challenging Georgia election rules

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      US supreme court backs Black voters challenging Georgia election rulesRuling comes as plaintiffs say current Georgia public service commission election system discriminates against Black voters Black voters challenging Georgia’s method of electing members to the state’s public service commission scored a preliminary US supreme court order in their favor late Friday.The decision came after conflicting rulings from lower courts earlier this month, offering up a rare example of the supreme court’s 6-3 conservative majority’s siding with voters over state officials.Louisiana woman faces ‘horrifically cruel’ abortion choice over fetus missing skullRead moreEarlier this month, a federal district judge found that the current system gave Black residents’ votes less weight. Each of the commission’s five seats hold jurisdiction over a specific district, but each seatholder is elected in a statewide race that dilutes Black voters’ power, said that ruling, which came from Trump White House-appointed judge Steven Grimberg.Grimberg ordered the postponement of a November election for two commissioners’ seats to allow the state legislature the time to create a new system for electing commissioners, granting a request from a group of voters challenging the system.However, last week, the federal 11th circuit court of appeals temporarily halted Grimberg’s ruling, citing the “Purcell principle”, which discourages courts from changing election rules immediately before an election.The supreme court on Friday reinstated the Grimberg ruling, with the plaintiffs citing testimony from numerous experts who found the current Georgia public service commission election system to be discriminatory against Black voters.Political data analyst Bernard Fraga, who focuses on the behavior of voting within communities, testified that statewide voting lets Georgia’s majority white population drown out votes coming from districts with mostly Black residents.“And, because elections are staggered, a minority group has less of an opportunity to concentrate its voting strength behind a candidate of choice,” Fraga said, according to the ruling.The ruling also cited the testimony of a former employee at the US justice department’s civil rights division, Stephen Popick.He said his study on voting behavior in Georgia between 2012 and 2020 showed “voter polarization” between Black and white voters, and the latter’s candidate always won even though Black voters all got behind the same leader as a group.Plaintiffs attorney Nico Martinez on Saturday told the Guardian he is “confident the district court’s well-reasoned decision will ultimately be upheld” as the case continues playing out in the 11th circuit, which could still block Grimberg’s ruling on other grounds, paving the way again for the November election date.“We are pleased that the supreme court took this important step to ensure that this November’s [public service commission] elections are not held using a method that unlawfully dilutes the votes of millions of Black citizens in Georgia,” said Martinez, a partner at the law firm Bartlit Beck.TopicsGeorgiaUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Stacey Abrams’ Personal Evolution on Abortion Rights

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      The Georgia Democrat, a child of Methodist preachers, once identified as an abortion foe. Now, she is putting her defense of abortion rights — and the story of her conversion — at the center of her campaign for governor.DUBLIN, Ga. — On the day that a leaked draft opinion suggested the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Stacey Abrams addressed the abortion rights group Emily’s List and preached about abortion rights with “the zeal of the converted.”Early in her professional career, she opposed abortion rights, she volunteered, adding that as a teenager she had criticized a friend who considered having an abortion.“I was wrong,” she said. “But I’ve worked hard to make myself right.”Ms. Abrams is among scores of Democrats pushing their defense of abortion rights to the center of their midterm campaigns, hoping anger over the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade will energize the Democratic base and push fence-sitting moderates into her corner. But she is the rare Democrat eager to acknowledge that she didn’t always support abortion rights.The daughter of Methodist ministers living in the Deep South, Ms. Abrams grew up believing abortion was morally wrong. Conversations with other women, a friend’s deliberations over having an abortion and her own political ambitions led her to rethink her stance, she says.Ms. Abrams’ personal approach to talking about abortion is new for the longtime Georgia politician. She did not emphasize her shift when she first ran for governor in 2018. But today, Ms. Abrams says she uses the story to connect with voters who may personally oppose abortion but, perhaps for the first time, are confronting the reality of new government restrictions. In Georgia, most abortions are now banned after six weeks of pregnancy, based on a law signed by Ms. Abrams’ Republican rival, Gov. Brian Kemp.Talking about her own story is “giving them permission to say that choice should exist,” Ms. Abrams said in an interview.“I want people to understand that I know where they’re coming from,” Ms. Abrams said. “But it also creates the opportunity for people to tell you where they stand, as well.”Ms. Abrams’ strategy is something of a throwback. For decades, Democrats treaded carefully when talking about abortion, often assuming voters were disapproving and uncomfortable with the procedure, even if they supported the rights protected by Roe v. Wade. For years, Democratic leaders, starting with Bill Clinton in 1992, declared that their goal was to make abortion “safe, legal and rare,” in an attempt to unite voters with a broad range of views on the issue.For some Democrats, the phrase became emblematic of the party’s willingness to cede ground to abortion rights opponents and attach shame to the procedures. And in the wake of the court’s decision this summer, some are again criticizing the party for using messaging that lets abortion foes frame the debate.“I don’t think that Democrats as a whole — as a party — have talked enough about this issue,” said Renitta Shannon, a Georgia state representative, who did not specifically criticize Ms. Abrams. “All this time, we’ve been relying on the opinion of the court to hold intact people’s reproductive freedom, and that is not a good strategy.”Ms. Abrams has clear reasons for trying to use the issue to cast as wide a net as possible. After voters in conservative Kansas overwhelmingly voted to guard abortion protections, Democrats across the country are hoping the issue shifts momentum in their direction during a year when other political forces — ongoing economic anxiety and President Joe Biden’s weak approval ratings — are working against them.Abortion rights demonstrators outside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesNearly 55 percent of voters in Georgia oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling reversing Roe v. Wade, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released last month.That poll also showed Ms. Abrams trailing Mr. Kemp by five points and, notably, losing ground with Black voters in the state. More

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      Rudy Giuliani informed he is target of criminal investigation in Georgia

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      Rudy Giuliani informed he is target of criminal investigation in GeorgiaThe former New York mayor has been identified as a key figure in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election Donald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani is a target of the criminal investigation in Georgia that has been examining efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state by the former president and his allies, a source briefed on the matter confirmed on Monday.Georgia grand jury subpoenas Trump lawyers over effort to overturn electionRead moreThe move to designate Giuliani, 78, as a target – as opposed to a subject – raises the legal stakes for the ex-New York mayor, identified as a key figure in the attempt to reverse the former president’s electoral defeat to Joe Biden in the state.The office of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney prosecuting the case, told Giuliani he was a target of the criminal investigation into that attempt.Willis has already told about a dozen others they are targets, including two state senators and the head of the state Republican party.The disclosure, earlier reported by the New York Times, presents Giuliani with difficult choices, including whether to invoke his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination in a deposition or cooperate in the hope of earning leniency at sentencing.Giuliani is scheduled to testify before the special grand jury on Monday in Atlanta. The news of his target designation comes days after a Fulton county judge told prosecutors to indicate to Giuliani whether he was a target or a subject of the criminal investigation.The Fulton county judge said informing Giuliani about his status would give some clarity on “what impact that has on the extent of his time in front of the grand jury”, given he is scheduled to appear after having taken a long road trip from New York, where he lives.TopicsRudy GiulianiDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2020GeorgianewsReuse this content More

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      Will Asian American Voters Continue to Rally Behind Democrats?

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      The party confronts a mood of frustration among the rising electoral force that helped vault it to power. The campaign in Georgia will test that bond.JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — At a brightly lit restaurant in suburban Atlanta, nestled in a tidy neighborhood of office buildings and private drives, State Senator Michelle Au brought up the mass shooting that lingers as a singular trauma in the local Asian American community.Addressing a predominantly Chinese American group of about 40 people, Dr. Au, a practicing anesthesiologist, delicately alluded to “the shootings that took place in metro Atlanta on March 16 of 2021” as she launched into a plea for new gun-control laws that Georgia Republicans oppose. She did not need to remind her audience of the details of the deadly attack carried out last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area, killing eight people including six women of Asian descent.“Republicans, while they talk a big game about public safety, they don’t seem to be as interested in actually proposing concrete solutions to deal with it,” Dr. Au told the crowd.The issue of gun safety is one of several that Democrats like Dr. Au are putting at the center of their argument to Asian American voters ahead of the November elections, as they work to win over the array of communities that make up America’s fastest-growing demographic group.Dr. Au’s district — a well-paved tangle of shopping centers and office complexes where law firms list their names in Korean and Indian grocers compete for space with bubble tea chains — is a case study in the social and political complexity of an electoral force rising in swing states: the diverse collection of communities jammed into the census label “Asian American.”The attack last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIn 2020, Georgia voters turned out in force to eject Donald J. Trump from office and then elect two Democratic senators in a runoff that decided control of the Senate. It was a breakthrough in Asian American mobilization, with turnout surging nationally by about 40 percent over the 2016 election — the largest spike of any demographic group. It amounted to an emphatic repudiation of a president who trafficked in race baiting amid a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans.Yet just two years later, Democratic candidates in states like Georgia are confronting a mood of frustration and fear among Asian American voters that threatens to weaken the political coalition that turned Georgia blue for the first time this century.The anxious mood, voters and local leaders say, comes from persistent alarm about public safety and a feeling of being overlooked by national political leaders despite growing electoral clout.They warn that too many Democrats are still treating Asian Americans as a constituency of secondary importance, while Republicans continue pushing an agenda that is broadly unfriendly to Asian American communities even as the G.O.P. makes sporadic overtures on issues like education and crime.The ongoing scourge of racist harassment and violence, stirred during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and stoked by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, has kept the electorate on edge and heightened concerns about lax gun laws and crime. At Dr. Au’s event in Johns Creek, one speaker brought up attacks against Asian Americans on the New York City subway as part of a national atmosphere of menace.Narender G. Reddy, Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesSeveral state elections in Georgia will represent a revealing test of Democrats’ bond with the Asian American electorate. The party has nominated a number of Asian Americans for important races, including Bee Nguyen, a Vietnamese American state legislator running for secretary of state against the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, and Nabilah Islam, a Bangladeshi American seeking a State Senate seat in the Atlanta suburbs.Republicans have put forward a handful of Asian American candidates, too: Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, Narender G. Reddy, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor who has pressed Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans to do more to woo South Asian voters. There are signs this year that Mr. Kemp is making a meaningful effort.Gun Violence and Gun Control in America2022 Mass Shootings: Gun violence is a persistent American problem. A partial list of mass shootings this year offers a glimpse at the scope.Ending a Stalemate: A bipartisan bill, the most significant gun measure to clear Congress in decades, was forged by an unlikely coalition of senators.California’s New Law: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that provides a minimum $10,000 award to residents who successfully sue makers of illegal guns. The measure is modeled after a Texas anti-abortion law.Armed and Ready to Teach: Lawmakers in Ohio have made it easier for teachers and other school employees to carry guns. The move is part of a wider strategy by Republicans and gun rights advocates, who say that allowing teachers, principals and superintendents to be trained and armed gives schools a fighting chance in case of attack.Democrats are counting on voters in communities like Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, to help Stacey Abrams defeat Mr. Kemp and re-elect Senator Raphael Warnock. About a quarter of residents in the area identify as Asian American.In an interview, Dr. Au, 44, said Democrats needed to connect with Asian American voters on policy issues like gun safety and abortion rights rather than assuming Asian Americans would continue to vote Democratic chiefly out of distaste for Republicans. Economic frustrations over inflation and gas prices were part of the Asian American experience, too, she said.The community, Dr. Au said, wants “to have a voice and have power and be listened to.”“It’s not a safe thing to say that all voters of color, uniformly, will vote for Democrats because they have a more inclusive platform,” she said. “And I think it’s not safe to say that all Asian voters will vote for Democrats, because of that same reason.”Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, could be a pivotal community for the Democratic Party in November. About a quarter of the residents in the area identify as ethnically Asian.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAsian American voters have steadily shifted in the direction of Democrats since the turn of the century, as a younger and more liberal generation has come of age politically, while conservative-leaning older voters have turned away from the Republican Party’s increasingly hard-line views on race and national identity.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats in November because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights. The law enacted by Georgia Republicans to ban most abortions, Ms. Xu said, reminded her of the repressive reproductive policies in China, where she lived for the first half of her life.But Ms. Xu, 51, who works in the financial industry, said she still considered herself a political independent and did not see either party as having a dominant advantage with voters like her.“Just like the country’s split, our community is very split,” Ms. Xu said.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats this year because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA Fragile AllianceThe relationship between Democrats and the Asian American community was tested almost immediately after the 2020 election, in tense exchanges between Mr. Biden and Asian American lawmakers who questioned whether the incoming president understood the role their community had played in his victory.Asian American voters made up about 4 percent of the national electorate in 2020, with studies showing they voted for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by a margin of roughly two to one. That was enough to secure victory for Democrats in a narrowly split state like Georgia.Still, Republicans maintained support in more right-leaning parts of the community, particularly among older and more religious voters; in Southern California, Vietnamese American voters helped elect to Congress two Korean American Republican women who branded the Democratic Party as a vehicle for socialism.Mr. Biden struggled at the outset to forge a tighter bond with Asian American political leaders, clashing with lawmakers over the near-absence of Asian Americans from early appointments to his administration. Private frustrations exploded into a damaging public spectacle when Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a Democrat of Thai ancestry, threatened a blockade of Mr. Biden’s nominees until the administration pledged to put more Asian Americans in important positions.Representative Judy Chu of California, the head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said lawmakers had been “severely disappointed” during the transition but that the president had given convincing assurances he recognized the influence of the Asian American vote.After the spa shooting, Mr. Biden traveled to Georgia to meet with Asian American leaders. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of an Indian American immigrant. Weeks later, Mr. Biden returned for a rally marking his 100th day in office.Asian businesses along Buford Highway in Doraville, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIntroducing him on that April day was Long Tran, a cafe owner in Dunwoody who said he spoke backstage with Mr. Biden about the shooting and the impact of “anti-Chinese rhetoric.” The president, Mr. Tran said, stressed that he and Ms. Harris “haven’t forgotten that Asian hate is still rising in the country and it’s something that needs to be addressed.”Yet in the 2021 off-year elections, Republicans recovered some ground with Asian American voters in New York City and Virginia, offering a hard-edged message about crime and opposition to liberal education policies that would have reformed or abolished certain kinds of selective public-school programs that are popular with Asian families but that many Democrats regard as exclusionary of Black and Hispanic students.Asian American voters motivated by similar concerns helped upend local politics in San Francisco, ejecting members of a left-wing school board and a progressive district attorney in recall elections that showed powerful currents of discontent within the overwhelmingly Democratic city.This summer, focus groups conducted by national Democratic pollsters found Asian American voters expressing dismay that Democrats often prioritize other constituencies defined by race or sexual orientation above Asian Americans, according to two people briefed on the studies.Long Tran, a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters, said many people he met were uneasy about left-wing ideas on police reform and concerned about support on the right for lax firearm laws.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesStill, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll conducted annually, found in July that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic congressional candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent. Those voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on issues including guns, the environment and race — but split evenly on which party they preferred to handle the economy.Mr. Trump remained intensely unpopular with Asian American voters.EunSook Lee, the head of the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, a progressive nonprofit, said Democrats still had a window to solidify their political relationship with the Asian American electorate.Of Asian American voters, she said, “They care about reproductive rights. They care about gun control. And on all those issues, the Republican Party isn’t budging.”Divide and ConquerIn a real estate office in Duluth, Ga., minutes away from Johns Creek, Mr. Reddy — Dr. Au’s Republican opponent — gave a blunt assessment of his party’s efforts to court Asian Americans: “Still not there.”Mr. Reddy’s office is all but wallpapered with photos of himself with Republican politicians like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, an expression of his personal devotion to the G.O.P. But Mr. Reddy, 71, said most of his Indian American friends saw the Republican Party as “all white.”“That’s the only popular perception,” he said. “And there is truth to it, actually.”The party, he said, had been harmed by episodes like a rally at the end of the Georgia Senate runoffs when Senator David Perdue, a Republican incumbent, had mocked the pronunciation of Ms. Harris’s first name. National Democratic organizations, including the advocacy group Indian American Impact, mounted a fierce campaign targeting Asian American voters with information about Mr. Perdue’s insulting conduct.The G.O.P.’s business-friendly economic agenda could resonate in the community, Mr. Reddy argued, but Republicans were still seen as “anti-immigrant” and overly tied to Mr. Trump. A supporter of Mr. Trump for years, Mr. Reddy said it had grown difficult to justify his behavior.Republicans in Georgia have taken something of a divide-and-conquer approach to the Asian American vote. The governor appointed the first Asian American justice to Georgia’s Supreme Court and Republicans have recruited a few Asian American candidates to run in state legislative seats.At the same time, the Republican-dominated legislature has used gerrymandering to break up ethnically Asian communities and mute their influence at the polls. Dr. Au became a victim of that strategy last year when Republicans demolished her State Senate district, prompting her to run for a Democratic-leaning seat in the lower chamber instead.Mr. Tran, the businessman who introduced Mr. Biden last year in Atlanta, is now a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters. Mr. Tran, 46, said he often found voters expressing unease about left-wing ideas on police reform.He said he had encountered pervasive concern about gun violence and Republican support for lax firearm laws. “Everyone is scared to death about guns,” Mr. Tran said. “I was eating dim sum and the waiters were saying, ‘We can’t stop looking at the door and wondering if the next person who comes in will have a gun.’” More

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      Trump Hires #BillionDollarLawyer

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      As top allies of Donald J. Trump are called to testify in Atlanta, he has hired a high-profile local attorney best known for representing rappers.ATLANTA — Amid a deepening swirl of federal and state investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has hired a prominent Atlanta lawyer to represent him in a criminal inquiry into election interference in Georgia.The lawyer, Drew Findling, has represented an array of rap stars including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos, and is known by the hashtag #BillionDollarLawyer. But he is also well regarded for a range of criminal defense work that he has done in Georgia, and his hiring underscores the seriousness of the investigation — as well as the potential legal jeopardy for Mr. Trump.The investigation is being led by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta. At least 17 people have been designated as targets who could face criminal charges. Mr. Trump is not among them, but a special grand jury is continuing to consider evidence and testimony, with several top Trump advisers still to appear. Ms. Willis has said that she is weighing a number of potential criminal charges, including racketeering and conspiracy.In a hearing on Tuesday, a state judge told lawyers for Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that their client needed to travel to Atlanta to testify next week. On Wednesday, lawyers for Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina faced a skeptical reception from a federal judge to their efforts to quash a subpoena from Ms. Willis’s office seeking the senator’s testimony. The lawyers for Mr. Graham who appeared in court included Donald McGahn, former White House counsel for Mr. Trump.Mr. Findling brings decades of trial experience ranging from high-profile murder cases to local political corruption scandals. But in the past, he has been openly — indeed, scathingly — critical of the former president.Understand Georgia’s Trump InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Trump Hires ‘Billion Dollar Lawyer’

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      As top allies of Donald J. Trump are called to testify in Atlanta, he hires a high-profile local attorney best known for representing rappers.ATLANTA — Amid a deepening swirl of federal and state investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has hired a high-powered Atlanta lawyer to represent him in an inquiry into election interference in Georgia.The lawyer, Drew Findling, has represented an array of rap stars including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos, and is known by the hashtag #BillionDollarLawyer.But he has not been a fan of Mr. Trump; in one 2018 post on Twitter, after Mr. Trump criticized LeBron James, Mr. Findling referred to Mr. Trump as “the racist architect of fraudulent Trump University.” In 2017, after Mr. Trump fired the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, Mr. Findling said on Twitter that it was “a sign of FEAR that he would aggressively investigate the stench hovering over this POTUS.”He has also called Mr. Trump’s history of harsh comments about the five Black and Latino men who as teenagers were wrongly convicted of the brutal rape of a jogger in Central Park “racist, cruel, sick, unforgivable, and un-American!”Mr. Findling, who has been an advocate of criminal justice reform and a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.In addition to becoming a sort of celebrity among celebrities for his vigorous defense of famous hip-hop artists — with multiple appearances in Instagram photos alongside A-list rappers, often sporting dark sunglasses — Mr. Findling has done criminal defense work for a number of high-profile political clients in the Atlanta area.Among them was Mitzi Bickers, who once worked in the administration of former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, and who was convicted in March on nine federal corruption counts as part of a multimillion-dollar contracting and kickback scandal.Another client, Victor Hill, is the sheriff of Clayton County, a suburban area south of Atlanta. Mr. Hill, an African American with a tough-on-crime reputation, has been indicted on numerous federal civil rights charges for the alleged mistreatment of detainees at the local jail, and has been suspended from his position pending trial.The investigation into postelection meddling is being led by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta. To date, at least 17 people have been designated as targets who could face criminal charges. Mr. Trump is not among them, but evidence and testimony are still being taken in by a special grand jury, and Ms. Willis has said she is weighing a number of potential criminal charges, including racketeering and conspiracy.In a hearing on Tuesday, a state judge told lawyers for Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that their client needed to travel to Atlanta to testify next week. And in a hearing in federal court here Wednesday, lawyers for Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina faced a skeptical reception from a judge on their efforts to quash a subpoena from Ms. Willis’s office seeking the senator’s testimony. More

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      Stacey Abrams temporarily steps off the campaign trail after contracting the coronavirus.

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      Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, taking her off the campaign trail temporarily in her race against Gov. Brian Kemp.Ms. Abrams, 48, confirmed her diagnosis on Twitter, writing that she took daily tests and had received a positive result Wednesday morning. “I’m experiencing mild symptoms, and I’m grateful to have been vaccinated and boosted,” she wrote.She said she planned to hold meetings by Zoom and phone for “the next few days,” and added that she had tested negative before delivering a speech Tuesday evening in Atlanta.A spokeswoman, Jaylen Black, said Ms. Abrams would still make a scheduled appearance on the Pod Save America podcast on Saturday, by phone, if she feels up to it. Before her diagnosis, she was also scheduled to attend the March for Our Lives Atlanta rally for gun violence prevention on Saturday, and Ms. Black said it was “undetermined at the moment” if she will be able to participate.“Consistent with C.D.C. guidelines, she will isolate at home and looks forward to traveling across the state to meet Georgians as soon as possible,” Ms. Black said, adding that the campaign would send surrogates to some events in Ms. Abrams’s absence and that she would not do any in-person events during the C.D.C.-recommended isolation period.Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instruct people with the virus to isolate for at least five days — though many people remain positive on rapid tests, and potentially contagious, for longer than that — and to continue to wear a mask around others through Day 10.Ms. Black confirmed that Ms. Abrams had tested negative on a rapid antigen test before her speech on Tuesday, and on a P.C.R. test on Monday.The race between Ms. Abrams and Mr. Kemp is a rematch of a 2018 contest that Ms. Abrams narrowly lost, falling short by about 1.5 percentage points. Election forecasters rate this year’s race as “lean Republican,” meaning it is competitive but Mr. Kemp is favored; recent independent polls have found him leading by low to mid-single digits.Ms. Abrams is known for her voting rights advocacy, but her campaign this year has focused heavily on Georgia-specific policy issues as well as abortion rights. Mr. Kemp has been emphasizing economic issues, including inflation and taxes. More

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      Herschel Walker Is Target of Ad on Domestic Abuse Accusations

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      ATLANTA — In his campaign for the Senate, Herschel Walker has not hidden his past struggles with mental illness and violence in past relationships, aspects of his background that he outlined in a 2009 memoir and that his campaign sought to address in its earliest days.Now, a group of anti-Trump Republicans is hammering him over one of those episodes.In a new advertisement running on major networks in the Atlanta media market, footage of Mr. Walker scoring a touchdown for the University of Georgia is juxtaposed with close-up video of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, describing how he once held a gun to her temple and threatened to pull the trigger.“Do you think you know Herschel Walker?” a narrator asks. “Well, think again.”Mr. Walker has not denied Ms. Grossman’s accusations, saying his violence against her was a consequence of his struggles with mental health. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.The ads were purchased by a subsidiary of the Republican Accountability PAC, a group that grew out of Republican Voters Against Trump, which was established in 2020 by “never-Trump” Republicans including the strategist Sarah Longwell and the writer William Kristol. It says it has allocated $10 million in negative advertising and voter mobilization efforts over the next three months to stop Mr. Walker and other candidates it views as unfit for office or a danger to democracy. They include two candidates for governor, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Nevada.The initial ad buy against Mr. Walker in the Atlanta media market is just $100,000. It would take far more to make serious inroads with Georgia’s vast Republican base, for whom Mr. Walker still retains near-godlike status from his career as a college running back. But the anti-Trump group is hoping at least to turn the heads of some swing voters.Specifically, Ms. Longwell, the group’s executive director, said it hoped to exploit what she called an emerging gap in support for candidates atop Georgia’s Republican ticket. While Mr. Walker was running roughly even in the polls with Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat, she said, Gov. Brian Kemp was outpacing his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, by a slightly larger margin.“We think that there’s a lot of these voters in Georgia who will split their ticket, and who will vote for Kemp, who will vote for Brad Raffensperger, but cannot vote for Herschel Walker,” she said, also naming the Georgia secretary of state. “For a lot of these voters, it’s about understanding the difference between the football player and the person running for Senate.”One such voter she pointed to was Brenda James, a Republican from Columbus, Ga., who in an interview said she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but President Biden in 2020, according to the Republican Accountability PAC. She condemned Republicans for “attempting to manipulate and use” Mr. Walker.“Bless poor Herschel’s heart,” Ms. James said. “The man needs help. He doesn’t need to be thrust into political limelight in the way that they are doing. Frankly, I think it’s disgusting and despicable.” More