President Donald Trump discusses changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) during a trip to Atlanta on July 15, 2020. (White House video)
President Donald Trump traveled to Atlanta Wednesday to unveil changes to longstanding environmental rules that industries hail as a boon for infrastructure and critics condemn as toxic.
Trump’s visit Wednesday was his second trip to Atlanta so far this year. He previously traveled to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in early March at the onset of the country’s coronavirus outbreak.
The appearance came as the president faces an increasingly tough fight in Georgia to win the state’s 16 electoral votes against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the upcoming Nov. 3 general election.
The president’s 45-minute visit Wednesday focused on an overhaul of key regulatory rules in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a Nixon-era law signed in 1970 that requires construction projects like pipelines, roads and power plants to undergo certain environmental reviews.
Environmental advocates view the NEPA rules as critical to preventing damaging wildlife and human-health impacts from large projects. Industry groups frame the rules as overly cumbersome in a way that hamstrings economy-driving infrastructure.
Under the changes, federal agencies will have to complete environmental reviews for projects within two years, hastening a process that frequently takes far longer. Limits would also be set on how agencies may factor a project’s impacts on climate change into its review.
“Today’s action is part of my administration’s fierce commitment to slashing the web of needless bureaucracy that’s holding back our citizens,” Trump said. “It’s one of the biggest things we can be doing for our country.”
Specifically, Trump highlighted an expansion project for Interstate 75 south of Atlanta that has languished in the review phase for years.
The president said the revised NEPA rules would help jump-start that project, which would add truck-only lanes along I-75 from Macon to McDonough to reduce traveling times for Atlanta-area drivers.
Trump also teased he is working with Gov. Brian Kemp on unspecified infrastructure projects in Georgia but did not go into specifics.
“We have some things planned in Georgia that will be really incredible and everyone’s going to want it,” Trump said.
Backers from trade and industry groups say the NEPA changes the president announced Wednesday would help relieve burdensome environmental reviews and spur needed infrastructure projects.
The American Petroleum Institute praised the move by Trump as a show of support for job-creating industries and a tool to help jump-start the economy amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“Today’s action is essential to U.S. energy leadership and environmental progress, providing more certainty to jump-start not only the modernized pipeline infrastructure we need to deliver cleaner fuels but highways, bridges and renewable energy,” said Mike Sommers, the institute’s president and CEO.
But critics have panned the review rollback, casting it as an attempt to gut key environmental safeguards that have been in place for decades.
They view the relaxed NEPA requirements as a potential means for high-polluting industries to face less scrutiny at the expense of environmental protection and initiatives aimed at curbing climate change.
“This unprecedented move silences the public – especially front-line communities who are impacted first and worst by climate Change, COVID-19 and industrial pollution,” said the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. “We will not let this stand.”
Georgia Democratic lawmakers and leaders also slammed the regulatory changes, arguing looser environmental rules could hurt minority communities the most.
“Georgia has a very poor track record when it comes to protecting communities of color, particularly when it comes to environmental justice issues,” said Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate who now heads a voting rights group.
Further, local Democratic officials cast Trump’s visit to Atlanta as largely an attempt to boost support in the state ahead of the Nov. 3 general election, amid a wave of campaign advertisement buys and recent polls showing a tight race with Biden.
State Sen. Nikema Williams, who chairs the Democratic Party of Georgia, dismissed Trump’s visit as a political maneuver that avoids addressing the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Georgia and across the U.S.
“Donald Trump needs to address the needs of everyday Georgians if he’s going to continue to make pit stops here in our state,” said Williams, D-Atlanta.
State Republican Party leaders have downplayed chances for Biden to win Georgia or for Democratic candidates to flip the two Republican-held U.S. Senate seats up for grabs or the state House of Representatives’ Republican majority.
“It is imperative that Georgians re-elect the president this November,” said Stewart Bragg, executive director of the Georgia Republican Party. “America needs a second term of the administration that never stops fighting for economic growth.”
ATLANTA – The Georgia Lottery has transferred more than $1.2 billion in profits from the fiscal year that ended June 30 to education, a record in the program’s 27-year history.
The fiscal 2020 transfer brings the total the lottery has contributed to the HOPE Scholarship and prekindergarten programs to more than $22.3 billion.
“The Georgia Lottery’s monumental success is a milestone to celebrate,” Gov. Brian Kemp said. “By funding HOPE and Pre-K, the Georgia Lottery continues to help Georgia’s students gain a high-quality education from start to finish, which ultimately makes our state stronger and more competitive.”
Fiscal 2020 marked the fifth consecutive year the lottery has surpassed $1 billion in profits for education and the ninth consecutive year of growth in funding to education.
Breaking the all-time record was in doubt in March, when revenues took a dip as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in Georgia.
But sales rebounded during the final quarter of the fiscal year as players became more familiar with online playing. Also, many lottery retailers remained open while most other forms of entertainment were limited.
“As with all companies, 2020 has been an historic year, challenging us to the max, which makes me even more honored to report this record year of returns for education,” said Gretchen Corbin, the Georgia Lottery’s president and CEO. “Our team has been laser focused on delivering the greatest amount possible to the state in a year where we first focused on outpacing 2019, the year of one of the largest jackpots in history, and then added COVID-19 challenges to our goal to surmount.”
More than 1.9 million Georgia students have received HOPE benefits since the program’s inception, and more than 1.6 million 4-year-olds have attended the statewide, voluntary prekindergarten program.
U.S. Sen. David Perdue speaks at the State Capitol after qualifying for the 2020 election on March 2, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., raised nearly $3 million during the second quarter of this year, the first-term senator’s campaign announced Wednesday.
While that’s less than the $3.45 million Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff brought in during April, May and June, Perdue is sitting on a huge campaign war chest of $10.7 million for the November election.
“Georgians are making a clear statement that they strongly support Sen. David Perdue’s record of bipartisan results and his positive vision for our state,” said Ben Fry, Perdue’s campaign manager. “Our campaign’s continued fund-raising success shows that conservatives aren’t taking this race for granted as we step up to hold the radical left accountable.”
Recent polls show the race between Perdue and Ossoff is tight. Democratic voters turned out in huge numbers in last month’s primary and are expected to remain energized throughout the upcoming campaign.
Both sides have taken to the airwaves since the June primaries, with Perdue and Ossoff running their own TV ads along with ads funded by outside organizations.
Of the $2.97 million Perdue raised during the second quarter, $2.23 million came from the campaign. The rest of the funds were raised from outside donors, including the Georgia Republican Party.
Piedmont Atlanta’s new Marcus Tower will house coronavirus patients in a partnership with the state.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp announced a partnership with Piedmont Healthcare late Tuesday to provide additional hospital bed capacity for treating Georgia’s growing number of coronavirus patients.
Patients will be cared for at Piedmont Atlanta’s new Marcus Tower, which opened almost four months ahead of schedule.
The new partnership will involve an initial use of 62 beds with the capability of adding more based on demand.
Kemp joined Piedmont President and CEO Kevin Brown for Tuesday’s announcement.
“I’m very grateful to Kevin Brown and the entire Piedmont Healthcare team for their willingness to partner with the state of Georgia and provide this critical resource to patients and surrounding hospitals,” Kemp said. “These hospital beds will provide additional surge capacity for health-care facilities in metro Atlanta and ensure COVID-19 patients receive the essential care they need.”
The state will leverage existing medical staffing contracts to provide necessary personnel to Piedmont Atlanta. The facility is expected to be fully operational within the next week.
The partnership with Piedmont is the second step the governor has taken in recent days to ramp up hospital-bed capacity with COVID-19 cases on the rise in Georgia. Last Friday, Kemp announced the planned reopening of the Georgia World Congress Center for standby hospital beds and medical equipment.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 123,964 Georgians had contracted coronavirus, while the virus had killed 3,054.
Coronavirus has sickened tens of thousands and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
A potential vaccine for COVID-19 being tested at Emory University in Atlanta has shown promising early results after months of clinical trials, researchers announced late Tuesday.
The candidate vaccine appears to be producing high levels of virus-blocking antibodies and interacting well with immune systems in 45 adult test subjects who volunteered for the project, said Dr. Nadine Rouphael, an associate professor of medicine at Emory’s School of Medicine and interim director of the Hope Clinic at Emory’s Vaccine Center, who is helping lead the vaccine study.
In a news conference Tuesday, Rouphael said she feels optimistic about the early trial results but that “time will tell” whether the vaccine may be deemed effective and safe enough for mass production.
“Having a vaccine candidate that works and is safe is really the most important part,” Rouphael said.
No serious negative reactions have been seen so far, though more than half of the test subjects reported experiencing fatigue, headaches, chills and pain at the injection point, Rouphael said.
Test subjects ages 18 to 55 were given two doses of the candidate vaccine. Minor adverse reactions were seen most often in the second dose and at higher dosage amounts.
Results of the trial’s first phase were published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Emory is one of two sites in the U.S. where the candidate vaccine has undergone trial runs since March.
Rouphael and a team of researchers led by the Seattle-based Kaiser Permanent Washington Health Research Institute now plan to conduct trials on hundreds more volunteers in Atlanta and across the country.
Rouphael also emphasized researchers need volunteers from populations hit hardest by the coronavirus including Black and Latino communities and elderly persons.
“It’s really important to make sure that all of us in the community sign up,” she said.
Unlike traditional vaccines that introduce disease-causing organisms, the vaccine being tested at Emory involves using genetic sequencing to create proteins that mimic the novel strain of coronavirus and trigger a response from the patient’s immune system to erect safeguards.
These so-called mRNA vaccines can be cheaper and faster to produce but are less tried-and-true than traditional vaccines, according to the nonprofit PHG Foundation at the University of Cambridge.
The potential coronavirus vaccine, called mRNA-1273, was developed in roughly two months by the Massachusetts-based company Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which kicked off clinical trials in Seattle in March.
