General Robert E. Lee’s Confederates met General John Pope’s federal forces at the Second Battle of Manassas on August 29, 1862.
Union General William T. Sherman’s forces tore up 12 miles of railroad between Red Oak and Fairburn on August 29, 1864.
On August 31, 1864, Confederates charged Union forces at the Battle of Jonesboro, in which the CSA suffered more than 1400 casualties in one hour.
On August 30, 1888, Asa Griggs Candler bought one-third interest in the Coca-Cola company, bringing his total ownership to more than two-thirds of the company.
Georgia native Ty Cobb debuted with the Detroit Tigers on August 30, 1905.
August 28, 1929 saw Governor Lamartine Hardman sign a Constitutional Amendment authorizing the levy of a state income tax.
On August 31, 1955, the first solar powered car was demonstrated by William Cobb of General Motors.
The United States Air Force Academy moved to its permanent home in Colorado Springs on August 29, 1958.
On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the “I Have a Dream Speech” on the Mall in Washington, DC.
On August 31, 1965, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which the Senate had previously passed.
The Beatles played their final concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.
On August 29, 1971, Hank Aaron broke the National League record for most seasons with 100 or more RBI, as he drove in his 100th run to make 11 seasons hitting that mark.
An obscure college professor named Newt Gingrich began his political career on August 28, 1974, as he kicked off his first campaign against Congressman Jack Flynt.
On August 29, 1977, Lou Brock stole his 893d base, to surpass the record set by Georgia-born Ty Cobb.
On August 30, 1979, President Jimmy Carter reported being attacked by a rabbit near Plains, Georgia. Here’s an interview in which President Carter was asked about the rabbit incident.
Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell was indicted on August 30, 2004 on racketeering, bribery and wire fraud charges and would later plead guilty to tax evasion.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
Governor Brian Kemp announced two appointments, a State Court Judge and a Solicitor General, according to a Press Release.
BUENOS AIRES – Governor Brian P. Kemp today announced the following court appointments: Kevin W. Drummond as State Court Judge for Carroll County and B. Kyle Thompson as Barrow County Solicitor General.
Kevin W. Drummond currently works as a litigation attorney with Tisinger Vance, P.C. in Carrollton, Georgia. In addition to his private practice, he serves as an associate judge for the Carrollton Municipal Court and as the city attorney for Bowdon, Centralhatchee, Ephesus, Franklin, Roopville, Villa Rica, and Whitesburg. Drummond previously served as an assistant district attorney and as a solicitor for several municipalities. He also formerly served as a public defender in both State and Superior Court. He has argued cases before the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court.
Drummond earned a B.B.A. in finance from West Georgia College and a J.D. from Georgia State University College of Law. An active member of the community, he is a Rotarian and a member of Carrollton First Baptist Church. He and his wife, Alison, volunteer as youth mountain coaches and live in Carroll County with their three children.
B. Kyle Thompson currently works as an assistant district attorney with the Walton County District Attorney’s Office where he tries cases of murder, vehicular homicide, domestic violence, theft, and possession of controlled substances. He previously served as an assistant district attorney in the Western Judicial Circuit and as an assistant solicitor general in Macon-Bibb County. He has extensive experience representing the State of Georgia in cases, including all misdemeanor violations.
A graduate of Apalachee High School, Thompson earned undergraduate degrees in economics and geography at the University of Georgia and a J.D. from Mercer University School of Law. He and his wife, Jessica, live in Winder with their son, Miles, and are members of Winder First Baptist Church.
United States District Court Judge Victoria Marie Calvert (ND-GA) dismissed a lawsuit by Attorney General Chris Carr in his personal capacity against Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, according to the Capitol Beat News Service.
A federal judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr filed early this month challenging the legality of a law giving Lt. Gov. Burt Jones a leg up in the gubernatorial race between the two Republicans.
The suit claims legislation the GOP-controlled General Assembly passed in 2021 in the name of election reform gives Jones an unfair and unconstitutional advantage in next year’s Republican gubernatorial primary.
The law allows certain elected officials in Georgia – including the lieutenant governor – to form “leadership committees” that can raise unlimited amounts of money to finance campaigns. As attorney general, Carr does not have access to such a fundraising vehicle.
Thursday’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Marie Calvert held that Carr lacked legal standing to bring the case.
The Jones campaign reacted to the decision with a slap at Carr.
“If Chris is this bad at being a lawyer, why would anyone want to give him a promotion?” Jones campaign spokeswoman Kendyl Parker said.
Carr’s campaign responded by noting the ruling was technical in nature and did not deal with the merits of the attorney general’s case while hinting there may be an appeal.
“The court acknowledged that this statute gives Burt Jones an unfair and harmful advantage – the same conclusion other federal judges have reached when examining it,” Carr campaign spokeswoman Julia Mazzone said. “We are reviewing all legal options to right this wrong.”
Jones and Carr are vying for the Republican nomination to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. The primary will take place next May.
Jones’ campaign has called Carr a hypocrite because Carr’s office in 2022 defended the same finance law he sued to block Jones from using. Carr has said he’s obligated as attorney general to defend challenged laws even if he personally disagrees with them.
Carr announced his run for governor last year, saying he needed a head start raising money because he isn’t personally wealthy. Carr’s campaign has voiced concerns for months that Jones will use his leadership committee and family wealth to win the primary.
Jones has already made a $10 million loan to his leadership committee, which Carr’s campaign tried unsuccessfully to get the state Ethics Commission to investigate.
Carr’s lawsuit cited a 2022 federal judge’s ruling that Kemp’s leadership committee could not spend money to help him win the Republican primary that year. U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen found that the “unequal campaign finance scheme” violated challenger David Perdue’s free speech rights.
But Carr sought more extensive restrictions on Jones’ leadership committee than Cohen ordered, such as seeking to cut off both fundraising and spending by Jones’ committee until the primary is over.
Carr’s campaign spokeswoman said Thursday that the judge “acknowledged that this statute gives Burt Jones an unfair and harmful advantage” and that the suit was dismissed “on a procedural technicality, not on the merits.”
On Thursday night, Carr posted a video on the social media platform X about the lawsuit, stating that what Jones is doing is an “unconstitutional attack on the First Amendment and the fight is far from over.”
The State House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Election Procedures heard testimony on Thursday, according to the Capitol Beat News Service.
Members of the Republican-controlled State Election Board offered differing views on election security Thursday when lawmakers held their third of six listening sessions around the state.
Board members also disagreed about whether there is a problem.
“We can count our votes accurately on Election Day and we can trust the results,” board Chairman John Fervier said. Last year, he said, all 5.3 million ballots were scanned by an optical reader during an audit that found only 87 discrepancies, all but one due to human error during the counting of hand-marked ballots.
“That’s an incredible result that you would hope would silence a lot of the conspiracy theorists and naysayers that cause confusion by claiming that Georgia’s elections are rigged and unfair,” said Fervier, who was appointed to the board by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican.
But Janelle King, another Republican appointee on the board, pointed to problematic elections, such as one in DeKalb County in 2022 when a candidate lost election to a seat on the county commission only to win after a hand recount. Technical errors in scanners caused the initial miscount.
“Ask DeKalb Commissioner Michelle Long Spears if technology is reliable,” said King, who was appointed to the board last year by state House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican from Newington. “So, it’s not to say that technology is all bad, but to assume that technology doesn’t fail is inaccurate. And to make people who feel like technology should not be the sole purpose out to be quacks or crazy, it’s just completely absurd.”
King, like several who testified at the hearing at North Georgia Technical College in Clarkesville, wants paper ballots. Paper is likely coming because the legislature outlawed the QR code readers now used by the Dominion voting machines. Georgia elections must be conducted without those digital codes starting in July.
Those pushing for change also argued that the board should get more taxpayer dollars to pay for investigators and technology systems, so it does not have to rely on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.
Lawmakers stripped Raffensperger of his role on the board, known as the SEB, after President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and Raffensperger rebuffed Trump’s demand to find him more votes.
Brad Carver, a metro Atlanta district chairman of the state Republican Party, testified for a third time Thursday, having presented to lawmakers at both prior meetings, in Atlanta in July and in Rockmart in early August.
The election board needs more staff and its own attorney to make local election officials comply with the law and to clear a backlog of election-related complaints, said Carver, who also advocated for paper ballots.
“You have county election boards that are not following the law. They’re continuing to not follow the law. And the way that we can ensure uniform application is to have the SEB enforce that if you give them the appropriate authority,” said Carver.
His evidence of problems was a slide he showed that indicated 104% of voting-age Georgians were registered to vote. Carver did not have an answer when a Republican lawmaker on the panel asked if the number of voters in the numerator included those purged or about to be purged because they had not voted in years.
Then Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta, pounced.
If 104% of eligible Georgians had voted, Carver would have brought that statistic, she said.
“That would have been a red flag of something going wrong. This in and of itself is completely explained by the inactive slash active voter process,” she said, suggesting that Carver was “fear mongering” with misleading statistics.
The meeting revealed deep personal divisions on the board, with its recently hired executive director, James W. Mills, publicly excoriating Fervier, who is technically one of his bosses.
“After almost 30 years of being in and out of the state, I’ve never served under a more dysfunctional, dishonest chairman than Chairman John Fervier,” said Mills, 62, a former state representative and member of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles who has been in his new role for a few months.
Draper later called that attack embarrassing, saying she felt like she was at home managing fights between kids. She also questioned whether Mills had the requisite expertise for his new job, and he responded that nearly two decades of running for office was experience enough.
The House Election Procedures Study Committee will hold another hearing on Sept. 18 at Savannah Tech.
A divided, bickering State Election Board was on full display Thursday as Georgia legislators repeatedly heard about its deep “dysfunction.”
The accusations included the board’s backlog of election investigations, a director who attacked the integrity of the board’s chairman, and a board member whose husband is running for secretary of state.
State representatives were not impressed during a meeting of a House elections study committee at North Georgia Technical College.
“We’ve seen grandstanding, bombastic rhetoric and public disputes that have done little to serve voters and have at times undermined the confidence in the system itself,” said Chairman Tim Fleming, R-Covington.
State Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta, compared the board to immature children.
“I felt like I was at home managing fights between my kids. There has been so much finger pointing and blaming,” said Draper, the only Democrat on the committee. “I have followed the State Election Board for many years and across many different members, and it has never, ever reached this level of dysfunction.”
If the board doesn’t learn to work together instead of fighting among itself, the General Assembly will have to step in during next year’s legislative session, Fleming said.
Chairman John Fervier, who has led the board since his appointment in 2024, urged the committee not to take drastic measures overhauling Georgia’s election system.
“My belief is that Georgia already has the best and most reliable procedures for voting,” Fervier told the committee.
“We don’t have a broken system,” he continued. “It doesn’t need to be fixed. I would urge the General Assembly to continue to fund the ballot image audit for upcoming elections. The cost would be a fraction of replacing what we currently have or going to hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots.”
Board member Sara Tindall Ghazal, the sole Democratic appointee, also highlighted what she sees as an increasing number of activists on the board, as well as a lack of consistency in decisions that she says diminishes trust with voters.
“For the most part, the vast majority of our cases are decided unanimously,” she said. “But increasingly, we’re seeing more and more politicized cases where the outcome appears to depend on the party involved.”
King, who spoke in place of board member Rick Jeffares, criticized what she called a lack of transparency from Fervier and members of the secretary of state’s office who still oversee the board’s website. She called for greater funding as the board works to further separate itself from the secretary of state’s office.
“We need to be properly funded, where we have control over all the funds. . . so that it can actually benefit us, and we can stand on our own two feet,” she said.
King also deflected criticism that her husband’s campaign presented a conflict of interest.
“It becomes a conflict if there were decisions that I was making that will directly benefit my spouse,” she said in response to questions from state Rep. Saira Draper, an Atlanta Democrat. “There is no decision that I make as a member of the state election board that directly benefits any candidate.”
You can watch the hearing online here if you’re a glutton for punishment.
The State House Blue-Ribbon Committee on Insurance Rates heard testimony, according to the AJC.
State lawmakers are looking for ways to provide relief for Georgians feeling the pinch of expensive insurance rates.
State Rep. Matt Reeves, who is overseeing the special legislative committee on insurance rates, said lawmakers will examine the insurance industry’s system for setting rates and processing claims over five meetings throughout the state. The Republican-dominated committee will also review the industry’s profit margins and develop suggestions to force insurers to comply with state laws.
“My constituents and the constituents of all 180 House members have made us aware of this issue (insurance rates) that is a broad problem that we are looking for solutions on,” said Reeves, R-Duluth.
The House established the Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Insurance Rates to study how to make the market more affordable.
Lawmakers also are seeking to ensure the state’s 2022 mental health law is being enforced. It mandates insurance companies to cover mental health care the same as physical health. King has been criticized for failing to uphold the requirements of the statute.
State Rep. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek, suggested some insurers may be choosing to avoid covering mental health claims and instead paying fines at a lower cost. Reeves said lawmakers could revisit those fine amounts next year.
Again, for the gluttons.
The State Senate Study Committee on the Impact of Social Media and Artificial Intelligence on Children and Platform Privacy Protection heard testimony on the detrimental impact of online services on children, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Savannah Morning News.
A generation of children are reaping what the technology industry sowed when it merged smartphones with social media, and the results have spurred calls for regulation.
That is what motivated state senators on Wednesday to hold the first of a series of hearings about the impact of social media and artificial intelligence on children and what to do about it.
The bipartisan committee was authorized by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican running for governor. He backed a new law that sought to limit social media companies’ access to children, but it is tied up in court.
So children remain targets for social media platforms and application designers, said several experts and lawmakers who spoke at the hearing at the Capitol.
The committee is jointly helmed by a Democrat and a Republican. The Democratic co-chair, Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, opened the meeting with an anecdote about raising her own kids as “guinea pigs” in the new technology environment, and how they had become glued to their devices.
It disrupted family dinners and caused them to lose interest in going outdoors and reading books, she said. But the impact she saw was comparatively minor: three people testified Wednesday that their children committed suicide because of social media.
Sharon Winkler said her son left a note explaining why he had taken his own life: he had gone to an online platform for solace after a breakup with his girlfriend but was instead met with bullying.
“We have to hold these technology companies accountable,” Winkler said.
The question is how.
Georgia’s General Assembly has already tried. The Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act sailed into law with broad bipartisan support last year. It was a top priority for Jones, but tech companies sued and have stopped the measure for now.
A federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia ruled in June that the industry-backed plaintiff in the case was likely to prevail on claims that the law violates the First Amendment’s speech protections.
The plaintiff, a group called NetChoice, represents a who’s who of social media companies, including Instagram, YouTube and X. The group contended the law went too far by requiring everyone to prove their age and identity to access their platforms, forcing adults to turn over personal information.
The law required companies to “make commercially reasonable efforts” verify users are at least 16 — or obtain parent consent. It also regulated advertising to children.
Experts who testified Wednesday said rulings by other courts suggest a path forward, with several saying states have the authority to require companies to set privacy defaults at the strictest level rather than making them wide open from the start. Parents generally are too busy or lack the knowhow to fiddle with such settings, they said.
Winkler was among many who testified that tech companies face no significant regulatory limits on application and platform designs that addict children, even toddlers. The lawmakers were given copies of the 2024 book, “The Anxious Generation,” by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who dissects such designs and the resulting impact.
The committee will meet several more times through the rest of this year before formally recommending new legislation. Harrell said the next meeting, on Sept. 17, will offer a detailed look at age-verification laws and explore regulatory approaches to “manipulative” algorithms.
Her co-chair, Sen. Shawn Still, R-Johns Creek, said the issue was non-partisan, which makes some kind of legislation likely.
“It’s a societal issue,” he said, “and we’ve got to solve this together.”
A new law will stop Georgia schoolchildren from using their phones in class next year. Now, state Sen. Sally Harrell wants to make sure lawmakers know what that feels like.
The Atlanta Democrat this week convened the first meeting of a committee studying the impact of social media an artificial intelligence on children. She’s scheduled a few hearings for the rest of the year, including one in November to talk about technology in schools.
“That November meeting … is going to be a cellphone-free meeting,” Harrell warned her colleagues. “You will be expected to put your phone in a pouch before you come into the meeting. I’m just giving you a warning before that happens.”
School districts have until July 2026 to begin implementing the new law, which applies to students in kindergarten through the eighth grade. Some districts are experimenting by requiring students to put their phones in a locked pouch when they arrive at school, the AJC’s Cassidy Alexander reported.
Harrell said the motivation for her study committee comes from raising her own children, whom she described as being members of the “guinea pig generation.”
“The pull to that phone was so strong that the parental-child relationship became nothing but a struggle,” she said. “I do believe this technology fundamentally changed my children.”
I think Sen. Harrell’s idea is fantastic. Here’s the video.
The City of Kingsland wants to annex a huge tract of land owned by U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-SSI), according to The Brunswick News.
Kingsland officials have been asked to consider a request to annex a 471-acre tract owned by U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-1, in unincorporated Camden County.
But the request isn’t being greeted with much enthusiasm by the Camden County Commission.
In response to the request, county officials sent a formal letter to city officials expressing “significant concerns” about the annexation of Sheffield Island off Harrietts Bluff road for a 750-home subdivision.
While the city currently provides water services along Harrietts Bluff Road, the city does not intend to annex the roadway leading to the subdivision. This would create an annexed “island” within the unincorporated area of the county, raising governance, jurisdictional, and service coordination concerns.
“For these reasons, the Camden County Board of Commissioners strongly urges the city of Kingsland to carefully reconsider this annexation proposal,” Commission Chairman Ben Casey said.
Kingsland Mayor Grayson Day said city officials have neither the intent or authority to formally consider the request without permission from the county.
“City officials have remained neutral in their review of the application, pending public comment and the opportunity to fully address safety, traffic, drainage and other concerns that have been raised,” Day said. “We understand and share the importance of these considerations and want to emphasize that the city will not, and indeed cannot, advance the application without Camden County’s consent.”
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