On February 9, 1825, the United States House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as President of the United States, despite his having received fewer popular votes than Andrew Jackson. Congress voted for the President after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the 1824 election.
The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House.
Representative Henry Clay, who was disqualified from the House vote as a fourth-place candidate, agreed to use his influence to have John Quincy Adams elected. Clay and Adams were both members of a loose coalition in Congress that by 1828 became known as the National Republicans, while Jackson’s supporters were later organized into the Democratic Party.
Alexander Stephens was elected Vice President of the Confederate States of America on February 9, 1861.
On February 9, 1926, the Atlanta Board of Education voted to prohibit teaching evolution in the Atlanta Public Schools.
On February 9, 1964, the Beatles debuted in America on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
Under the Gold Dome Today
Monday, February 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . convene for legislative day 15
Tuesday, February 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . convene for legislative day 16
Wednesday, February 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . convene for legislative day 17
Thursday, February 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . convene for legislative day 18
Monday – February 9, 2026
TBD Senate Rules Committee: Upon Adj 450 CAP
7:30 AM Senate Approp: Judicial Sub 450 CAP
7:30 AM Senate Approp: Econ Dev Sub 307 CLOB
9 AM HOUSE RULES 341 CAP
10 AM HOUSE FLOOR SESSION (LD15) House Chamber
10 AM Senate Floor Session (LD 15) Senate Chamber
1 PM HOUSE Education Sub Curric & Acad Ach 506 CLOB
1 PM HOUSE JUDICIARY 132 CAP
1 PM HOUSE W&M Sub Income Tax 406 CLOB
1 PM Cancelled – Senate Pub Safety 450 CAP
1 PM Senate Health & Human Services 450 CAP
1:30 PM HOUSE W&M Sub Ad Val (After Inc Tax) 406 CLOB
2 PM HOUSE REGULATED IND 606 CLOB
2 PM HOUSE HEALTH 403 CAP
2 PM HOUSE W&M Sub Sales Tax (After Ad Val) 406 CLOB
2 PM HOUSE Natl Res & Envt Sub Res Mgmt 415 CLOB
2 PM Senate Approp: Ag & Natl Res Sub 307 CLOB
3 PM HOUSE JUDICIARY JUVENILE 506 CLOB
3 PM HOUSE Approp Sub Public Safety 415 CLOB
3 PM Senate Finance MEZZ 1
4 PM Senate Judiciary Sub 450 CAP
4 PM Senate State & Local MEZZ 1
State House Republicans introduced a package of family-friendly legislation, according to the AJC.
The bills, all sponsored by Republican women, are likely to move forward in the GOP-controlled Legislature.
“Every family deserves a chance to thrive, but for many working parents across our state, the cost of child care is forcing them to make difficult decisions between remaining in the workforce and staying home,” House Speaker Jon Burns said Wednesday.
Some of the measures would increase paid parental leave for state employees up to nine weeks, allow women to get birth control from pharmacists and create a registry of repeat domestic violence offenders.
The legislation is also aimed at helping working parents through some social services.
In 2024, state lawmakers doubled the amount of time new parents who are state employees can take for paid parental leave from three to six weeks. Two years later, Republican state Rep. Sandy Donatucci of Buford is proposing expanding the amount by three more weeks.
House Bill 1351, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Beth Camp of Concord, would give pharmacists the authority to prescribe birth control. Currently, those seeking birth control can only get a prescription after a doctor’s visit. That can be difficult for working mothers who might need to take off work and make a copayment just to get access to the medication.
Another proposal would make Georgia the second state in the nation to create a domestic violence registry for repeat offenders. Tennessee enacted the first list last month. The registry would be managed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and include an offender’s name, date of birth, current photo and the date and county where the convictions occurred.
Other efforts would come through appropriations.
The House wants to include nearly $7 million to support nurse visits to expectant and new mothers in all counties in Georgia outside the metro area, which already have substantial support. Through the home visiting program, a service of the Department of Public Health, nurses visit mothers with high-risk pregnancies through the first year of the child’s life at no cost to the mothers.
Senate Bill 440 by State Senator Kay Kirkpatrick (R-Cobb County) seeks to eliminate waste in the Department of Public Health, according to AccessWDUN.
Last week, northeast Georgia State Senators Drew Echols (R-49) and Bo Hatchett (R-50) [co-]sponsored a bill that would look to “eliminate government waste” within the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH).
Senate Bill (SB) 440 was introduced on Jan. 29. It would look to “modernize” the duties and functions of the DPH.
Echols gave AccessWDUN a statement on Friday regarding the legislation.
“SB 440 puts a fast track towards government efficiency so taxpayers can be better served every day,” Echols said. “This bill will speed up our board processes and eliminate government waste. Last year I was proud to carry SB 96 Which took care of some redundant boards who do nothing and cost taxpayers time and money. In the State Senate, I’m always looking for new ways to cut red tape, delete redundancy, and make government work for citizens. I look forward to supporting SB 440.”
SB 440 would repeal a large swath of functions by the DPH, including doing away with the distribution of informational material regarding HIV/AIDS and testing for sickle cell disease.
It would also repeal a pilot program that provides home visiting in at-risk and underserved rural communities during pregnancy and early childhood.
Some of the other duties the bill would repeal include:
• State regulatory boards governing prescriber’s power to rescind disciplinary action
• The Electronic Database Review Advisory Committee
• The Cancer Advisory Committee
• The Osteoporosis Prevention and Treatment Education Act
• Certain reporting requirements related to infants born with neonatal abstinence syndrome
• Option taxpayer contributions to stem cell research
• Provisions of the Arthritis Prevention and Control Program
• The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services on Monday.
The Georgia State House added $82 million in additional funding for DFCS, according to the Imprint via the Savannah Morning News.
To resolve the ongoing controversy regarding state spending on foster care, the Georgia House of Representatives has approved an $82 million boost for the state’s child welfare agency — twice as much as what the governor pledged last month.
On Thursday, the House voted overwhelmingly in favor of additional funding for the Division of Family and Children Services, a move intended to address a massive budget shortfall and restore controversial foster care service cuts made late last year bythe agency’s director, Candice Broce.
“We filled completely the DFCS deficit hole,” state Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver wrote Thursday on Facebook.
The proposed funding plan heads next to the state Senate.
The state’s foster care budget is $368 million for fiscal year 2026, which runs from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026.
In an interview with The Imprint on Friday, Oliver lauded her chamber’s proposal. She called the prior cuts to services for vulnerable children and families “simply unacceptable.”
“These nonprofit providers cannot stay in business if you’re cutting their funding and refusing to pay them,” she said.
Although restoring service cuts was the House’s primary focus, members ultimately want a clearer understanding of the child welfare agency’s deficit and “are committed to an independent audit,’’ Oliver said.
“What I have said many times publicly, and directly, is that the anecdotal stories about how this deficit has built to the size it is are just not adequate,” she said.
Simultaneously, state lawmakers are also considering two measures aimed at increasing oversight of the Division of Family and Children Services, which falls under the Department of Human Services. House Bill 1192 would require the Department of Human Services to keep funds appropriated by the General Assembly for specific purposes in separate accounts and prohibit the use of those funds for any other purpose. The measure also requires an annual review of the department’s practices to identify potential cost savings. The department’s commissioner would be required to report the findings to the Legislature.
A Senate resolution would create the Evaluating Escalating Costs in Georgia’s Foster Care System joint committee. The bill states that the cost of foster care has increased by 159% since 2022 and this “rapid escalation of costs jeopardizes the sustainability of existing programs.”
Broce, who heads the Division of Family and Children Services and the Department of Human Services, has cited multiple factors contributing to the deficit, including inflation, foster home shortages, the increasing complexity of foster children’s mental health needs and last year’s federal government shutdown. During legislative hearings in January, she also pointed to “performance” issues by contracted service providers, as well as “excessive” court-ordered services.
During those hearings,Broce told lawmakers that she’d brought the projected deficit down from $85 million to $48 million by initiating a strict approval process for the agency’s family support services and terminating several state-funded contracts in November. Broce said the terminated contracts were either duplicative or the providers were not meeting their obligations.
The State House plan to eliminate property taxes for homeowners is raising questions about funding for local services, according to the Current GA.
Georgia state House Republicans have a proposal to help tame the affordability crisis: end property taxes for homeowners by 2032.
Party leaders say their proposal, which would benefit Georgians who own and live in their home, will put money into peoples’ pockets where it belongs.
But the proposed shakeup has municipal and county governments, as well as public school systems, struggling to understand how their traditional method of funding services will be affected.
The ambitious tax change has the support of all 99 House Republicans, according to House Speaker Jon Burns.
Passage is no sure thing before the legislature ends its session April 2. Burns would need 21 Democratic votes for the supermajority it would take just to get the ambitious rewrite of the tax code through his chamber to the Senate. Meanwhile, state Senate Republican leaders have a separate plan to end personal income taxes, rather than property tax reform.
County and municipal leaders have yet to weigh in on the property tax proposal, but in other states alleviating such taxes have ended up moving the burden of funding local public schools and services in other ways, including through higher sales taxes, new homeowner fees or assessments.
Public school systems collected an estimated $2.5 billion in taxes on homesteaded houses statewide in 2025, according to the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia. Cities and counties collected at least $1.7 billion, according to the same data, which is not yet finalized.
Those amounts don’t include some populous counties like Fulton and Chatham. The association is still validating those amounts.
The funding from property taxes fuels government services in each of Georgia’s 159 counties, 180 school districts and more than 500 cities.
For example, Glynn County Schools collected about $23 million from homesteaded properties in 2025. Glynn County and Brunswick collected $19 million toward general operations, police, fire and ambulances.
If the House proposed bill becomes law, this $42 million would disappear.
The 2025-2026 school year’s budget was $307 million. Glynn, Brunswick and the county schools could make up the shortfall with new sales taxes, new fees and assessments on homeowners — or simply cut services.
ACCG’s data estimates that the cost of the Burns-backed bill to Glynn government budgets could be made up with an additional sales tax of slightly more than a penny, and by shifting the use of pennies they already collect toward property tax relief.
The bill’s impact, however, varies greatly from county to county. Other communities would need to raise local sales tax from one-third of a penny to more than five cents to make up the loss of homestead revenue, according to the ACCG data.
Meanwhile, State Senate Republicans led by Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones (R-Jackson) are working to eliminate the state income tax, according to the AJC.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ plan to phase out Georgia’s personal income tax would eliminate more than $1 billion of tax breaks for everything from data centers and insurance companies to medical equipment.
The proposal, contained in two bills introduced Friday, would eliminate the income tax for most Georgians by 2027. It’s a big step toward Jones’ ultimate goal of eliminating the tax altogether by 2032.
The bills are the latest entry in a three-way competition among Georgia’s top Republicans to define the best way to provide tax relief in an election year.
Gov. Brian Kemp took the first shot last month, announcing plans for a $1.2 billion income tax rebate paired with a reduction in the state income tax rate from 5.19% to 4.99% this year. Under Kemp’s plan, single filers would receive a rebate of up to $250, heads of household would get up to $375 and married couples filing jointly would get up to $500.
House Speaker Jon Burns favors property tax relief. This week the House approved an amended fiscal year 2026 budget that scraps Kemp’s rebates in favor of $850 million in property tax relief that advocates say would average $500 per homeowner.
Jones’ bid to eliminate the personal income tax may be the most ambitious, and the most difficult to implement. The state expects to get about $15.7 billion from the personal income tax this year — about 42% of state revenue.
Republican former Public Service Commissioner Fitz Johnson (Cobb County) will run for election to the seat he lost last year, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Former Georgia Public Service Commissioner Fitz Johnson, who lost his election last year, is running to reclaim the position. It’s one of two commission seats on this year’s ballot.
Johnson was appointed in 2021 to fill a vacancy on the commission in district three, which covers Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton counties. A special election for the rest of that term was originally set for 2022 — but called off due to a lawsuit that suspended all PSC elections for several years.
Because of that history, last year’s election for the district three seat was only for a one-year term. Democrat Peter Hubbard won that race, one of two Democrats to unseat a Republican incumbent in a race dominated by voter frustration over rising energy bills.
Johnson said at the time that he planned to reclaim the seat, and now he has formally announced his campaign.
“Reliable, affordable power is not a luxury. It’s the backbone of family budgets, job growth and Georgia’s economic future,” Johnson said in his campaign announcement. “Conservative energy policy is the path to keeping the lights on and costs under control.”
Hubbard is also running for reelection to the seat, this time for a full six-year term.
The seat for district five, which covers an area from the northwest corner of the state down to Newnan, is also on this year’s ballot. Republican Tricia Pridemore has held that seat since 2018. At least one Democrat, Angelia Pressley, is running for the seat.
Candidates for both seats will officially qualify during the first week of March, ahead of the May 19 primary. While PSC commissioners have to live in specific districts, they are elected by a statewide vote.
United States District Court Judge J.P. Boulee (ND-GA) ordered the federal government to supply documents related to the seizure of Fulton Count voting records, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Athens Banner Herald.
A federal judge in Atlanta has given the administration of President Donald Trump until Tuesday to give the court the documentation that led to the seizure of Fulton County ballots from the 2020 presidential election.
The order signed Saturday by U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee also unsealed the court file for the subsequent lawsuit against the Trump administration that was brought by Fulton County Commission Chairman Rob Pitts.
Pitts sued after the Jan. 28 raid on a county elections warehouse, when FBI agents entered a county property in Union City and left with 2020 ballots.
“The Court’s action affirms that this case is a matter of public interest, in Fulton County and beyond,” Pitts said in a statement Sunday. “Fulton County will continue to pursue every legal option to seek the return of election records and to defend our elections from possible takeover.”
The order by Judge Boulee of the Northern District of Georgia gives the federal government until 5 p.m. Tuesday to produce the affidavit that the government filed to obtain the search warrant.
Pitts said county staff were continuing to prepare for the 2026 election, “which will be once again free, fair, transparent and legally compliant.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security bought a facility in Social Circle to use for an ICE detention facility, according to WJBF.
In a Facebook post the city said:
“The City of Social Circle has been informed by multiple sources that the sale of 1365 E. Hightower Trail has been completed. PNK no longer owns the facility; ICE is now the owner. The City of Social Circle will continue to monitor developments and will share confirmed information with the public as it becomes available. – City of Social Circle”
Social City, Georgia is a little over 100 miles west of Augusta.
Detainees are expected to begin arriving at the new facility as early as April, the city said in a social media post on Thursday. Social Circle is located primarily in Walton County, about 50 miles east of Atlanta.
Despite concerns over the toll a large detention center would take on the city’s water and sewer infrastructure, Social Circle City Manager Eric Taylor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution there is nothing the city can do to block ICE’s plans.
“The U.S. Constitution has a supremacy clause that says that the federal government is not subject to state and local regulations,” Taylor said. “Federal law is supreme. So, they don’t have to apply for zoning. They’re not subject to any kind of regulations from the city of Social Circle.”
Most of the city of Social Circle sits within Walton County. In 2024, 73% of voters there backed Trump, while 27% cast ballots for his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Fort Valley Police Department has had two different interim Chiefs since firing their last Chief, according to the Macon Telegraph.
The City Council fired then-police chief Dennis John “DJ” Flores and appointed Capt. Alger Raines as the interim chief on Friday, Jan. 30. Then the council appointed Capt. David Wilson to temporarily fill the role instead of Raines.
“We’ve … accepted the recommendation from the (police) department chair, and he has decided that Capt. Wilson would be the best one to serve the police department,” Mayor Shakeena Reeves said at special called council meeting Thursday.
Without discussion, the council unanimously voted to appoint Wilson, who has been a Fort Valley police captain for about a year, according to his Linkedin.
It was unclear why the council replaced Raines with Wilson in a matter of days.
Flores and Michael Bostic, who was the assistant police chief, were terminated due to ethics and conduct violations, according to Reeves.
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms campaigned for Governor in Augusta, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
Columbia County District Attorney Bobby Christine announced he will not run for reelection, according to WRDW.
Columbia County District Attorney Bobby Christine has decided not to run for reelection.
Christine will finish out his term, which ends Dec. 31, 2026.
Christine sent an email to the Columbia County Commission, the sheriff, and judges informing them of his decision:
“I write to inform Columbia County leadership that I will not seek reelection to the position of District Attorney of the Columbia Judicial Circuit. I intend to serve out the remainder of my term, ending December 31, 2026. Qualifying for the 2026 primary election is a month away, and so I give notice now to you and the community.”
“As a mobilized member of the reserve forces of our Army I am legally entitled to qualify and seek reelection. My absence on ordered military duty does not disqualify me from placing my name on the ballot, standing for reelection, and serving another term. However, I do not assess that it is in the best interests of the residents of Columbia County for me to run in absentia.”
“My half decade of service as District Attorney has been the professional honor of my life and my heart remains in the mission. However, I must place the interests of Columbia County -my home- above my personal interests. Ordered military service is the duty which lies nearest, and it is that duty to which I must attend.”
“I thank the Board of Commissioners, County Manager and staff for your continued support. As a Columbia County property owner, resident, taxpayer and constituent, I thank you for your stewardship.”
Columbia County Board of Education member Kristi Baker will not run for reelection for District 2, according to WJBF.
After nearly 16 years on the Columbia County Board of Education, District 2 board member Kristi Baker has announced her decision not to seek another term.
“I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve this amazing school district. It has meant so much to me to help support our schools and to stand beside the students, teachers, staff and families who make this community so special,” she said in a statement.
Baker said she looks forward to serving with the current board members for the remaining 10 months.
Glynn County reminds candidates where campaign signs may be placed, according to The Brunswick News.
Glynn County officials want to remind residents and candidates that local ordinances regulate the placement, size and location of political signs during election season.
Republican Jason Smith will run for Habersham County Commission District 3, according to AccessWDUN.
Following Habersham County District 3 Commissioner Jimmy Tench submitting his resignation due to medical reasons on Wednesday, a candidate has emerged.
Jason Smith — a familiar face in the county’s local politics — ran against Tench in the 2022 Republican primary. He’s also currently serving on the Habersham County Planning Commission.
“Since Mr. Tench is stepping down, I do have the opportunity to bring a lot to the table that would not be there otherwise,” Smith told AccessWDUN on Saturday.
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